IAM2394 – Mastering Time and Effort with Pareto and Parkinson

Gresham Harkless shares his journey as a franchise broker, focusing on time management, entrepreneurship, and starting a business.

He emphasizes that many people delay taking action because they feel they need to have everything perfect and all their time available.

Gresham highlights the importance of focusing on the key activities that produce the most significant results rather than trying to do everything.

Gresham also discusses Parkinson's Law, which suggests that work expands to fill the time allocated for it.

He uses an example from his friend Dave, who transitioned out of his full-time job using “power hours”—intentional, focused time to make progress toward his business goals.

Gresham recommends that even dedicating a small amount of focused time, like an hour or 10–20 minutes, can significantly move things forward.

• 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 00:26

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 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.

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh, and this is day, I believe, 32 of this franchise broker's journey to be able to start this business and what this looks like.

So I just got done with my workout, so that's why I'm wheezing a little bit. But one of the things that really came up for me and just came to me is this idea of time.

And I think so many times one of the reasons that people don't end up starting a business because they feel like they have to have all that time in the world.

And I think one thing around franchising is that we start to realize that, you know, there's a playbook.

So you have a good idea of like what equals success, what you need to do to be successful for any good and well put and well tested franchise system.

You get an idea of exactly what you need to do what are the activities that get you to where you need to be?

If you're starting a business, you don't have that maybe as much, but you could probably find some of that information.

It's just asking people, how much time do you spend on this, that, and the third? And that'll give you a little bit more of an idea on what you need to do.

But one of the things that actually came up for me, and I've talked about it a little bit, is that we feel like we need to have all the time to be able to take a step.

You feel like we need to have all the things that are checked off on the list before we take the step.

But in reality, I don't believe that throughout the journey, you're gonna have all the things that you wanna have in place anyways.

So with that being said, and that understood, a lot of times it's not having all the things in the place, but still taking a step.

And I think often we really forget that taking a step is not going out and being a seven figure business from one day.

It's often the journey of a thousand steps begins with one, if that's the right quote, because I'm the king of butchering quotes.

But with that said, two things that kind of came up for me, the Pareto principle, also known as the 80-20 rule, states that 80% of the outcome comes from 20% of the causes.

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So what we're always trying to do, I think, is like really understand, and that's why I'm a big digital marketer, analytics person and really leaning on the analytics to be able to make decisions.

And I feel like that's the case for all aspects of life where now we have so much data and information we can see kind of like what is bearing those fruits, the fruit of those results.

However, I do want to say sometimes we do things because they fill up our cup. They fill up our cup because it makes us more full to be able to take those steps.

So those are those things that are literally causing the effects that we want. And there's the things that we don't necessarily know what the effects are.

It's a little bit harder to quantify, might be a better way to say it. So I think it's being aware of those things.

But the point that I wanted to bring up is sometimes we want all the time in the world because we want to do the 100% of things, but really it's the 20% of things that actually is giving us most of those outcomes.

So we have to really understand exactly what that is. And there's also this principle, which is a Parkinson's law, which is the idea that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.

Basically, that means that I remember when I started to do the CEO chat podcast, I had one of my friends, Dave, on the show.

And he was talking about how he transitioned out of his full-time job. And the way he transitioned out of his full-time job is he had these things called power hours.

The power hours were like focused time to really spend on intentional activities that can lead him to getting out of that full-time job to start what eventually became his business.

And I think when we start to realize that it could be just an hour that really helps set things up more than anything else, it ends up being something that's huge. Because if we can be intentional, we understand that 80-20 principle.

And we can be intentional with our hour time or 30 minutes of time once a week, once a day, whatever it is that you can outline and say, hey, I'm going to dedicate on this.

It ends up moving things forward a lot more than we thought. And really, entrepreneurship is truly that journey.

So once we start to understand that, it's something that I've been trying to remind myself of over and over again.

Then it ends up being something that you could say, OK, I can't do all the things today, but I can do this thing right here. I just got done with the workout, and I usually do 10 to maybe 20 minute workouts.

Sometimes I'll get in a 30, 40 minute workout here or there. But one of the things that really came up that the instructors always say is they say, hey, you can't get a good workout in 10 minutes.

They say that they hear that all the time. But you can if you're very intentional on that 80%. So taking that into life, it's really important to understand that you can maximize your time if you're intentional with that time.

And in being intentional with that time, it allows you to open up so many different things. So with that being said, just make sure that you're really intentional on what that is.

Make sure you're letting go of those things that are not moving the business forward. And then from there, you'll get to maximize the time as much as possible.

And if you're not maximizing your time, do that. Look at what's happening so that you can move things out.

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 06:40

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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