IAM2625 – 90 Days Left: The Journey Continues

In this episode, Gresham reflects on the steep learning curve of his one‑year franchise‑broker program, now 276 days in, noting that the experience has been far tougher than expected. He describes how competing priorities, imposter syndrome, and a lack of closed deals have forced him to reassess his focus.

Using a vivid gym metaphor (pushing a weighted sled), Gresham illustrates the temptation to “look up” and over‑analyze versus staying “head‑down” and grinding.

He underscores that business success requires a clear why, vision, and the willingness to recalibrate goals, strategies, and revenue streams. Though the franchise venture hasn’t yet yielded fruit, he remains committed to building an ecosystem of multiple income sources—digital marketing, affiliate programs, and “CEO hacks”—and promises to keep the audience updated with fresh goals and actionable moves.

• Blue Star Franchise: http://bluestarfranchise.com
• Browse the Franchise Inventory: https://bluestarfranchise.com/franchise
• Is franchising right for you? Check this out to see: http://bluestarfranchise.com/assessment
• Franchise CEO (A CBNation Site – coming soon) – http://franchiseceo.co

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Transcription:

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Intro 00:01
Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:28
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. And this is a special episode of our I AM CEO podcast. And this is actually going to be a snippet of a snippet.

So to speak, I'm just doing an intro because I've been starting to docent my journey into starting what is now called blue star franchise. We're also going to do a kind of subcite within CB nation called a franchise CEO.

So you'll see some links in the show notes related to that. But I just want to give you a little bit more insight, give you a little bit more color in some of the aspects of why I'm actually doing this.

Because one of the things I was doing as I was going through training to start up this new business was realizing and hearing from the founder of FBA, the Franchise Brokers Association, that it'd be really cool to docent your journey.

Going through and building this out. I think it's something that would be super helpful, obviously, for people that are looking for and thinking about starting franchises.

But frankly, if you're starting anything, any type of business, I think it's really cool to kind of just even see the journey and how it's been going from there. So I'm going to share a few of those snippets from the from the first couple of videos that have been created.

But definitely, of course, subscribe to our YouTube. Check out a lot more where I figure out exactly where we're going to post this. So I have that information that's available to you. But Regardless, if you're a builder, continue to keep building, continue to do your thing.

The world definitely needs exactly what you're trying to build. It needs you to be your unique self. So make sure to run your own race because nobody can run your race like you. This is Gresh signing out.

I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

It's day 276 of this franchise broker journey. Just got done with my workout. We just got back.

I didn't do any recordings the last few days. I just completely kind of checked out. But it's crazy because there's less than 90 days left in my one year journey of this franchise broker. being a franchise broker, it's been extremely hard, a lot harder than I thought.

I think one of the hardest things for me probably is that sometimes when you have other things, it's harder to burn the boats and try to take the island. But also like when you see that it's not, I don't want to say it's not easy.

But there's not a lot of, you take the wins, I think you create those wins. You see, you get somebody further along in the journey so that the next person you hopefully get further along in the journey. I think that's where I was kind of at.

But I think at some point I started to say, hey, like, I need to focus more on my digital marketing business because that's bearing fruit. And I have a team there and things like that. And you start to look and you say, hey, should I have done this?

And all the doubts, the imposter syndrome, all those things fill up and come and take over you.
But in these last 90 days, I think that I've had to pivot and I've had to pivot pretty strongly in what I was doing like to really like focus on a specific kind of market.

Those are people that have been laid off and I think that even with that there's the whole psychology of actually running a business. And I think that what I really wanted to do was try to find the low-hanging fruit of people that were interested in business, had already started a business and maybe wanted to move forward. And, you know, I definitely gave it, you know, gave it my energy.

And I think that, you know, will I reevaluate this and see if this is something that I ultimately want to do? probably, but I think I've already made the investment.

And once you make that initial investment, it's just a matter of saying, okay, like, how do you want to go about doing this? Are you doing this as, you know, your main thing?

Are you doing this as your secondary thing? And I think that's kind of like where I'm at. It's like, really you know, being clear and honest about like what this is and what it looks like. And I think that I definitely wanted to be able to sit down and say, hey, this is the goal that I had.

And this is me kind of crushing those goals and and getting in that mindset in order t

o do that. And I think that the I don't want to even say mistake. I think I'm further along than I would have been if I would have started probably when I said I should have started, which is probably maybe around May, June timeframe.

But dang, I think this, I'm so shocked still that I haven't been able to close a deal yet.
And I'm even more shocked that I've started to like, you know, I started to look up from the sled. I think I talked about it in the beginning when I went to train with my cousins.

They were trying to go to the NFL and they played football and they went to this, you know, one of these box gyms that was like a warehouse and there's just a bunch of weights there and stuff's clanging and all that stuff. So I went to train with them.

And I remember I did the weight workout where you put the weights on the sled and you push the sled and you literally go down. And I remember my cousin saying, you were getting it. And then you just stop. And I said, I looked up and they were like, you never look up.

And I think that I have looked up in this process. And I know I looked up in this process. And once you look up in this process, that makes you slow down. It makes you stop.

That makes you reconsider things. So what I need to do is just to get back on the weights, get down, put my head down and just start pushing.

And I think that's something that I have as a reminder I think that I wanted to recalibrate and I think that it's hard in business because a lot of times you can't just keep doing the same thing over and over again. You can't just keep pushing the sled the same way if you're not getting the success that you want.

But at the same time, you can't look up and say, wait a minute, why am I even pushing this? Why am I doing this? What am I doing this for? And that's where your why and your mission and your vision and those things end up being very strongly.

So for me, like I'm this is very much so a challenge, probably the biggest challenge that I've had in some time. Um, there's some other things I definitely want to do, but what I'm trying to do is to create this whole ecosystem of different revenue streams that I have.

And the digital marketing is still something that's up and going. And I'm very close to that, you know, talking about maybe two clients away, recurring clients away, , the.

The affiliates, the CEO hacks is something that I could build up. But this is the thing that I'm most surprised that I've had the biggest challenges with because I've invested in it.

I've done the things. but it just hasn't bared fruit as much as I would have thought.
There's lots of external things I can't control, but I can control the internal.

What I can do is have a new goal, have a new focus, have a new strategy, lean into that, and get going. So that's what I'm going to do, and we'll definitely take it from here. Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help. And of course, looking forward to giving you more and more updates.

Outro 06:43
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Want to level up your business even more?
Read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at CBNation.co. Also, check out our I Am CEO Facebook group. This has been the I Am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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