IAM2602 – Unlocking Progress: Strategic Moves for Tomorrow

In this episode, Gresh shares the highs, lows, and lessons in real‑time creates a roadmap for fellow founders and holds you accountable.

He also shares on building a Lead‑Gen Ecosystem First – Before scaling, focus on a self‑sustaining machine that continuously feeds qualified leads into your pipeline. It’s the foundation of a repeatable growth model.

Gresh wants to adopt a Marathon Mindset – Speed isn’t everything; pacing yourself, iterating, and avoiding “move‑too‑fast” mistakes leads to lasting results.

• 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 Jr. 00:26
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 document my journey into starting what is now called Blue Star Franchise.

We're also going to do a kind of subsite within CB nation called 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 document 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.

And it's day 250 of this broker journey. And as I have the baby on my lap, we're transitioning into doing more marketing. I've gotten a lot more steam. our headway with marketing, which is fine.

Like I should be shifting gears here and there between the businesses. And I think that that has really changed my perspective when I look at like from a portfolio, what I want to build and what it looks like.

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I think that there's a limit to the marketing business and I can see that being a quarter of a million dollar type of annual revenue business as a baby drops something.

But I think what I really want to look into and see is how I can make that shift in other places, you know, in the in the company and see what I can grow and build.

Now I'm looking at it a lot differently than I was before. It was like me transitioning out of something or transitioning away from something.

But I think once I'm able to kind of lean more into this, lean more into what I think is going to be that content creation piece, which I plan on doing this for weeks, it should be some really cool things that should happen from there. And, you know, overall, I mean, I think things are going better.

If you look holistically at the different types of businesses that I have, I'm definitely the plan it didn't take off because I was looking to get the, you know, two or three deals probably right now, probably maybe four deals, four deals, and then move over into what that next thing is.

But it just hasn't happened that way. And I don't think the economy has definitely helped, but we'll see. I think as things hopefully settle out, settle down, start to make some transition transitions, we'll see, you know, ultimately what happens.

But I know summer typically is probably a slower time. And I do have a candidate that's looking just for financing. So she didn't make it to the meeting yesterday.

So hopefully she shows up tomorrow. But we'll just see and continue on from there.

So You know, just take it a step at a time, control the journey, control that narrative, and then just see what happens from there.

So, yeah, I'm excited around this, excited around, you know, continuing to progress, like, overall.

I'm glad, you know, I tell you the best decision that I think I made from this is that I didn't really listen to what everybody said, is that I would just leave what I was doing before to start this.

I would definitely be, you know, really gung-ho on what this looks like. But I think this tells me that I probably want to build it from a marketing standpoint.

I want to do a lead generation standpoint and see what I can do there.But I think it's only going to be relevant when I start generating leads that can go into clients.

But my, you know, somewhat, I don't call it hesitation, but I just you want to be able to build this machine, this ecosystem.

And what I'm realizing is that this ecosystem, as the baby looks at me, as I say ecosystem, What I realize is that I can generate leads, I just have to generate leads through that ecosystem.

So that's the machine I have to kind of get up and running and up and going. And we'll ultimately kind of take it from there.

So we take it a step at a time. I'm doing it from more of a marathon mindset, but I think that I'm excited around what it's going to look like to move forward and take those steps. I don't want to make a mistake of trying to move too fast.

And that's the big thing that I want to keep in mind. So we'll see what happens. I'll take it from there and we'll make it work.

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 05:18
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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