IAM2896 – Why Cultivating Your Talents Transforms Small Beginnings Into Big Opportunities

The Trap of Despising Small Beginnings

A pervasive roadblock for high-performing builders is refusing to value the tiny, unpolished initial stages of a new endeavor. We frequently assume that a major enterprise must emerge fully formed with a massive, airtight business plan, completely dismissing the simple classes, informal conversations, or small invitations that actually carry our future breakthroughs. In this episode, pulling high-leverage insights from workshop facilitator and best-selling author Phyllis on episode 87 of the I AM CEO podcast, we break down why excellence has to be watered—and how moving from timid to tenacious requires cultivating your skills exactly where you are today.

The Entrepreneurship Pillar: Iterating from MVP to Platform

True execution within the Entrepreneurship Pillar dictates that the business journey is systematically revealed while you are actively moving, not before you step out. Much like the core philosophy of a Lean Startup, massive scaling is built on the backs of minimum viable products—beginning with small, consistent experiments and iterating over time.

Your largest future platforms are almost always born from simple skills developed long before you understand where they will ultimately lead. When you deliberately water your talents every single day, a simple public speaking habit evolves into high-ticket workshops, raw writing transforms into a published book, and a deeply personal evolution becomes a highly visible corporate brand.

Choosing to Excel Rather Than Just Exist

The core takeaway for any CEO is to actively step out of survival mode and embrace the vulnerability required to cultivate your innate potential. It is entirely too easy to spend years simply surviving the heavy daily workload, but scaling your impact requires the immense courage to place yourself in rooms where growth feels highly uncomfortable at first. Tenacity is rarely born fully formed; it is built through the daily discipline of watering your gifts and refusing to treat your unique voice as something small.

Ask yourself this defining question: “What specific gift, skill, or perspective have you been treating as insignificant that would completely transform your enterprise if you nurtured it consistently?”. Lowering your hesitation and committing to that first timid yes is the ultimate lever required to unlock your inner excellence and dominate your market lane.

Previous episode: https://iamceo.co/iam2895-leadership-is-not-just-getting-people-to-follow/

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Transcription:

Gresham Harkless 00:00
Sometimes the thing you're called to do starts as something small, extra, or even almost accidental. Doesn't always arrive with a full business plan. Sometimes it starts out as a class, a club, a conversation, or one invitation that actually turns into another, and another and another. That's what actually stood out to me in episode number 87 of the I Am CEO Podcast. I had Phyllis on the show and at the time of our conversation, Phyllis was a workshop facilitator, best selling author of the Art of Me and Blogger who went from timid to tenacious and was helping others to over ultimately do the same.

If you're building something meaningful, you're in the right place. This is the I Am CEO Podcast. I'm gresh and for over a decade I've had the honor and the privilege of Learning directly from CEOs, entrepreneurs and business owners just like you on how to build. After recording more than 1600 episodes, one thing has become clear. Success isn't about following someone else's blueprint. And as I like to say on the show, if you run your own race, you can't lose, even when you feel the journey should be a straight and linear path. What I've come to find out is success is a lot more like a plate of spaghetti. So in this special segment and episode, I'm starting to curate and share some CEO hacks and CEO nuggets that I've been dying to share. Drawn from thousands of episodes with phenomenal guests that have provided awesome value on the show, but also my 10 years of business experience as well too. These lessons are designed to strengthen the foundational principles that every business is built on and guided by a simple equation that we always go back to with our content. Visibility plus resources times connections equals success. This is practical wisdom you can apply almost immediately, so be sure to check out the show notes for more resources and next steps on how to level up. And of course, enjoy this special episode of the I Am CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 01:55
Sometimes the thing you're called to do starts as something small, extra, or even almost accidental. It doesn't always arrive with a full business plan. Sometimes it starts out as a class club, a conversation or one invitation that actually turns into another and another and another. That's what actually stood out to me. In episode number 87 of the I Am CEO Podcast, I had Phyllis on the show and at the time of our conversation, Phyllis was a workshop facilitator, best selling author of the Art of Me and Blogger who went from timid to tenacious and was helping others to ultimately do the same. Her Story started out in Toastmasters. She described herself as a timid as him and never imagined she would be speaking, being workshops or building around that kind of work and building that type of business. But that's the thing she kept growing. And that's really where I want to spend some time with in this snippet is that excellence is already inside of you, but it has to be watered not just once in a while, but every single day. For builders, that's a huge thing, because we sometimes underestimate small beginnings. We think of the if the opportunity doesn't look big yet, maybe it doesn't matter. But many businesses begin as skills being developed before the founder actually fully understands where it's going. Think about even things like the Lean Startup, which is one of my favorite books and great CEO hack. A lot of times it starts out with an mvp, a minimum viable product product. And it starts to iterate and grow from there. We as leaders, entrepreneurs, business owners, builders, we build in exactly the same way. Think about it. Speaking can become workshops. Writing becomes a book, a personal transformation becomes a platform. A small step becomes evidence. This connects perfectly to the entrepreneurship pillar, largely because the journey is often revealed while you're moving, not before you start. And if we really, truly understood the full journey, I think, of entrepreneurship and the business of problem solving, of creating things, we wouldn't stop ourselves before we get started. We would understand that the small step is actually the big thing, actually leads towards the big thing that we're actually trying to move into. Phyllis's line about excelling not just existing, is the part I keep coming back to. Builders can spend years just surviving the work, but there's another level where you start asking, what would it look like to actually cultivate what's in me? That requires practice, probably some patience. It requires courage. It requires putting yourself in rooms where growth is uncomfortable at first. The idea I really want you to kind of carry with you is that don't despise the small environment where your confidence is being developed. So here's something worth asking and considering a little bit more. What gift, skill, voice have you been treating as small that might grow if you watered it consistently? Because tenacity is not usually born fully formed. Sometimes it just starts with one timid yes. If you're in a season where the opportunity feels small, still feels small, but something in you feels called forward and to move forward and for more. This conversation with Phyllis is definitely one worth revisiting.