IAM2603 – Breaking Free from the ‘Should Be’ Shackles

In this special episode, Gresh shares on being transparent – Your Story Is Your Super‑Power. Recording every win, stumble, and “aha!” moment not only keeps me accountable, it creates a roadmap for anyone thinking about starting a franchise (or any business).

When you share the real process, you become a living case study that educates and inspires.

He also shares about Mindset Over Milestones. It’s easy to get fixated on the numbers: “two or three deals by week 10.” But the real growth happens when you re‑calibrate, ask yourself if the expectations are realistic, and treat setbacks as data points—not failures. The journey builds you as much as it builds the business.

Gresh emphasized Leverage (and Iterate) Your Tools. He set up LinkedIn automation and digital‑marketing funnels, but early results are modest. The key is to tweak, test, and keep the feedback loop tight—the automation will only work when it aligns with your personal outreach and referral strategy.

• 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

Check out our CEO Hack Buzz Newsletter–our premium newsletter with hacks and nuggets to level up your organization. Sign up HERE. 

I AM CEO Handbook Volume 3 is HERE and it's FREE. Get your copy here: http://cbnation.co/iamceo3. Get the 100+ things that you can learn from 1600 business podcasts we recorded. Hear Gresh's story, learn the 16 business pillars from the podcast, find out about CBNation Architects and why you might be one and so much more. Did we mention it was FREE? Download it today!

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. 00:28
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 subcite 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 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 just like that, it's day 254, 251 or something like that. To be honest, I'm not 100% sure. I think it's 251 of this franchise broker journey. and you know I'm still you know battling with it where I should be mentality I was just thinking like literally like had I started.

I probably would have started in June I think that would have been the right time on June maybe July or so so just
would have just got to start I've gotten started but still feel like I should have had some close deals or at least two or three by now honestly.

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So this is definitely a lot more challenging than I thought it would be and I think it means that she can't. I see what people are saying he can't really you gotta be locked in on it. And I think that's just the reality.

But I think the big thing is just with candidates. It's trying to keep them aligned with the process of like where you wanna go, what you wanna do, what you wanna be.

And knowing that sometimes along that process, you don't always get where, you don't always get what you want to be where you wanna be.

And what I mean by that, if that made any sense, I don't know if it made sense, but the bottom line is this, like you don't always have the process that you want to have. So you don't get what you want to get to where you want to be.

You don't have the things that are in place that you want to have in place so that you can get to where you want. And all that means is that, you know, there's just challenges along this process. on the journey, but the big challenge you have is mentally things not taking off as fast. Like there are no kind of, this is high level sales.

This is, you know, making sure that you have the relationship connections and the the professionalism that's needed for people that are making lifetime investments. And it's not always easy to do that.

It's a large amount of money. It's a large amount of investment, large amount of, you know, ways to approach this.

So you want to make sure that you're on point with those things. And I think for me, like I really, really was locked into being able to kind of leverage this, being able to kind of you know, not start from zero with the digital marketing, but also just with the podcast and the blog.

And honestly, I have not leveraged it nearly as much as I thought I would. So that's something I really want to lean into to this, you know, second week of the 12 week year.

But you also have to battle the, I've already failed. I've made a mistake and, you know, battle those things. And I think that maybe even talk with my coach around that.

And it's just like getting back to reality, understanding like when you have those feelings, and being able to say, and center yourself and be able to use some of the, I don't know if it's activities or exercises or just ask yourself, is this realistic?

Have you really failed? And when you start to really like be aware of where you're at, but be able to, I wanna say, negate those because some of them might be valid.

It might be very valid that I have the expectation to close a deal and I have not closed the deal. I had an expectation to close two or three deals and I have not closed two or three deals.

So that's the reality. But is it that I failed? And that's the thing. Is it that I made a mistake?

Or is it that I have to recalibrate and change and things like that? So you start to have those conversations. But I think one of the things that as much as we try to build the business, we are also building ourselves.

And the challenges are sometimes the biggest builder of ourselves. So as I go through this journey, as I figure out what's going to be the next steps and what that's going to look like, I just want to continue to kind of bring that home to remind people and remind myself that you will have challenges.

Sometimes they happen earlier, sometimes they happen later. But I think the interesting thing about this business is it doesn't really build upon itself. So I see it as a highly, highly, highly referral based business.

But I do think you can leverage things like LinkedIn. And that's where I've had automation set up, but those automations haven't really done much. as of yet.

So it's just looking at those things and continue to kind of tweak and change and improve to see what will actually work.

So I'm excited around that, excited to see what happens. And then we'll ultimately just kind of take it from there.

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

Outro 06:25
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. Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at blue16media.com.

This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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