IAM2559 – Am I Really Starting Over?

In this special episode, Gresham Harkless shares his surprise and disappointment that over 100 generated leads—mostly through Google Ads and Facebook—yielded limited traction, with only about 10 being truly qualified and just 1–2 currently viable.

He acknowledges that while the business model requires volume, speed, and a long-term mindset, external factors, like economic uncertainty and personal life events, have significantly influenced lead engagement and conversions.

Gresham chooses to reassess and pivot, deciding to step away from underperforming tactics and refocus on higher-trust strategies like LinkedIn networking, organic content creation, and tapping into warm relationships.

Likewise, he emphasizes resilience in the face of setbacks and expresses cautious optimism about the new strategic direction.

• 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 document my journey into starting what is now called Blue Star Franchise.

We're also going to do a kind of sub-site within CB Nation called Franchise CEO. So, you'll see some links in the show notes related to that.

But just wanted 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 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'll 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 and 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 216 of the Franchise Broker journey. And I'm kind of leaving myself with this question of, am I really, really starting over? I went through and regenerated leads, got over a hundred leads or so.

We did the Google ads, we did all those things, and it just has not gotten any traction, which I'm shocked by. We haven't really been as much traction, but this is such a unique type of business that it's very much so volume, it's very much so speed, and it's very much so like a long-term approach.

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Now, I would say overall, out of those hundreds of leads, probably around maybe 10 of them are quality leads that we got through a different montage of different ways, from Facebook to Google.

That probably gave us two, probably had about four or so through Facebook, one through FDD. Those are maybe around seven or so are those, I would say, are a little bit more quality.

But it's wild to me to think how I think the economy definitely plays a part as far as like people being open to moving, but it's definitely like a shot.

And I think anytime again, you get punched in the face, you have to figure out, like, OK, what am I going to do differently? Not throwing myself out of the game, but I am going to move differently because I don't want to continue doing the same thing.

So, sometimes it's just like pulling a plug on the things that you need to and reevaluating everything.

So, I'm definitely looking a lot more into LinkedIn, looking a lot more into warm networks, content creation, things like that.

And we'll see how those things go. They tend to be a lot longer of a cycle, which is kind of like my hesitation.

But to be honest, the reality is that I do have, I would say one, maybe one and a half, two viable candidates with those viable candidates.

And I have two more that kind of dropped off for external reasons that had nothing to do with me not wanting to do this, just with life and family things and health and things like that.

So, with that being said, you just have to say, OK, maybe some of these will still pan out.

Maybe a good five of them will in some form, shape, or fashion. You want to continue doing the things that you can do to try to get better, to try to see that constant improvement. And then ultimately kind of just take things from there.

It's interesting how all of this is, has, has kind of played out, but it is also shocking.

Like as much as I say, hey, it's been 216 days, it's wild. I'm like, okay, I feel like I'm starting from scratch.

And, I've heard brokers say that, hey, I didn't do anything my first year. And I'm like, okay.

Well, that's not gonna be me, I'm gonna do at least like, six or so, probably four to be conservative, but six, but in reality it's looking less like that, but I think the good thing is that I'm willing to start anew.

If things aren't working, I'm willing to just say, okay, let's just throw out these things and stop these things and let's go into these next things.

So, we'll see what happens, related to that. And then we'll ultimately kind of take it from there, but excited to see what this new kind of focus kind of comes up with.

I feel like I'm a little scrambling, but looking organically, networking, LinkedIn, and then content creation are going to be the things that I'm going to lean a lot more into.

Please let me know if there's anything I could do to help. And of course, looking forward to giving you more and more updates.

Outro 05:22

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.

Check out the latest and greatest apps, books, and habits to level up your business at CEOhacks.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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