IAM2532 – The Art of Persistence: From Ghosting to Meeting

Gresham Harkless reflects on the critical role of persistence and resilience in business, particularly within entrepreneurship, consulting, and franchising.

He emphasizes that success isn’t solely about talent, money, or intelligence; it’s often about the willingness to keep going despite setbacks.

Inspired by concepts from Angela Duckworth’s Grit, Gresham shares a real-life example involving a candidate who initially ghosted him, then briefly reappeared, only to disappear again.

Gresham also highlights the unique challenges of working with entrepreneurial-minded individuals, who may lack traditional follow-through yet possess the drive needed for franchising success.

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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, 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.

The art of persistence, one of the things that you realize is that resilience and persistence ends up being some of the most important things that you could do.

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Of course there's people that are talented, of course there's people that have more money, of course there's people that speak better.

And they're younger and they're smarter and all those things but persistence and resilience is something that I think even there's a book by Angela Duckworth called Grit that talks a lot around this idea of grittiness, being able to kind of not have things be perfect.

But continue on ends up being one of the greatest indicators of who's going to be successful, especially in entrepreneurship and business.

Like everything does not go the way you want it to go. But the reason I bring that up is because I actually had a candidate that I believe goes to me, came back and said, hey, I want to talk with you and then completely disappeared again.

So I reached back out again after maybe about three or four weeks and said, hey, did you ever get a chance to pursue that opportunity we're talking about?

He said, no. I said, can we touch base in a couple of weeks? Take it as a win.

Again, you got to get to the meeting, got to have the meeting, have the conversation, then kind of go from there to see what happens.

But at the end of the day, I really bring that up is because of how important persistence is, I think, especially, related to sales and this is basically sales.

Like I'm seeing so many synergies and so much alignment with the sales process, even though we're consultants, it is ultimately that sales, because you do have to follow up with people.

You do have to check in with people. And sometimes one of the things that you find out around people that are really entrepreneurial and really into business is that they're, they a lot of times are joking, say that I'm unemployed.

No one would want to hire me. I'm not going to be a good employee.

And sometimes some of those things that make a person a good employee, like following through and things like that, sometimes is what you need or looking for in a candidate.

So it's just so interesting. I believe that franchising is such a different ballgame because to some degree, you have systems in place. So you just have to execute those systems.

So you get the people that are consistent, do things like that. But sometimes you get those entrepreneurial people, the people that have multiple brands and that want to do multiple things.

Sometimes they have those entrepreneurial tendencies, which sometimes make them really great.

Sometimes it makes them not so great when you're talking about a candidate.

So, but I'm here for it because I love it. I think it's one of the most exciting traits to have.

But I say all that to say the persistence of being such a big part is because you never know what people are going through.

Unless they tell you, you never know all the things that they're juggling unless they tell you even if they tell you have to make sure that you are paying attention to things.

So with that being said, it's just a good reminder that you have to be persistent, sometimes you have to take a step back and follow up.

And just see how things go but I'm excited around, getting the opportunity to have another conversation.

Like I said, I think for the number of needs that I have, I feel like I should have maybe at least two deals.

Deal-ly, I would love to be able to say that I have four deals. But, I think the reality is that I have those two deals.

It's quite possible that I, it's quite possible that I do have, I want to say maybe around three deals.

And, if I have those three deals, then that could be really, really good. There might be some other hidden deals in there.

I could say like if I was to feel like I based it on conversations, I would say maybe around five of the leads that I have, and they just gotta get over the finish line.

It's continuing to kind of check in with people. I feel like I've had some good conversations. I have some people that have completely goes to me.

I understand that 100% and I have those that haven't. But one of the other things I went through my numbers with the coach from FBA and the coach from FBA.

One of the big things that came about is that it's basically a lead quality issue. So I have to improve the quality of the leads that I'm getting in.

And to improve the quality of leads that I'm getting in, I think I have to, be more precise, but I think I also have to experiment a little bit more.

I think I'm getting leads the way that most other people might be getting leads, so I have to really measure that and see like how good that is, you know, as far as like helping out.

So we'll see. Learning, learning, learning. Again, first year I need to be experimenting tremendously, so I'm looking forward to leaning into that.

But I'm super excited to understand that just like in sales and everything else in life, if you're able to be persistent, you're able to be resilient, you can definitely go far.

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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