IAM2630 – The Unseen Journey: Day 85 as a Broker

He outlines his immediate marketing strategy: leveraging LinkedIn for leads, doubling down on SEO and content creation, and exploring co‑broker relationships to broaden his network and close deals.

He admits he’s not yet where he hoped to be, expressing frustration over wasted investment and missed milestones, yet he remains committed to learning, adapting a media‑company mindset, and building momentum through consistent, targeted outreach.

Gresham encourages builders and founders to stay mentally resilient, be intentional with their language, and keep pivoting when challenges arise.

• Blue Star Franchise: bluestarfranchise.com
• Browse the Franchise Inventory: bluestarfranchise.com/franchise
• Is franchising right for you? Check this out to see: bluestarfranchise.com/assessment
• Franchise CEO (A CBNation Site – coming soon) – 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 subcite within CB nation called a 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 docent 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.

Documenting my journey and it's not been what I wanted to be so it's been less and less of me wanting to even come and do these videos because I'm not exactly where I want to be and I think that there's a lot of things, a lot of feelings that I have. I actually was just on Perplexity, which is an AI app.

And I was asking, is there a lot of brokers? And he said, yes, there's definitely an increase in the amount of saturation of brokers, very similar to real estate.

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So you end up having to be able to build that. But I think the difference between real estate is there's more opportunities than there are probably in real estate, because you can literally do this anywhere.

So I'm in DC area. I can get a client. California, I can get a client in Virginia, I can get a client in Texas, get a client in Alaska, whatever it is. So you have those situations where there really are no health bars.

And I think there's just less opportunities. So when you have this saturation of people, you really want to be that first mover. and anything like this, but needless to say, I'm not, but there is a disruption that's happening. So I do still feel like there's an opportunity.

So part of like where I'm at is like, okay, let's continue to use LinkedIn, see what nibbles we get there, but then to go heavy into the SEO part.

I think that the more that I spend time here, I don't want to spend as much time trying to figure out what do I like about this business, what do I not like about the business, what the challenge is, what's drawing me, what's not drawing me.

The draw of it is always going to be the marketing for me. Not always, but it definitely has the marketing for me.

I do like the idea of getting someone through to the end of the finish line, but I think I'd rather work with another broker and co-worker and be like, Hey, you know, I can send you this opportunity.

I would love to document the journey with the person and be able to kind of share that. But at the same time would love to just get, you know, you know, half of a watermelon rather than, you know, none of a grape or none of a watermelon either, none of anything. So the co-burkering is something that I'm probably definitely going to lean more into.

I think when I, depending on how everything ends up, or probably regardless of how it ends up, when I step into The conference, I'm probably be looking really to co-broker and see what things I could do to kind of build relationships with some of the senior brokers that can move things along better, do better than I did.

So I'm sure I made some mistakes, but I still feel like it's very, very important to try to get these closed deals in this closed business prior to that. So I'm not going to do that prior to me.

I don't plan to do that. I should say prior to me, you know, closing business. But I think it's very important that I kind of continue to kind of learn, continue to kind of get better and see what happens from there. But very disappointed with, you know, my myself.

But, you know, try not to beat yourself up. But I think you just go through all the feelings and I just want to be completely transparent. I doubt that I make a mistake. you know what am I doing I just threw away this amount of money that I invested in this and you know all those things come up but I did do some things well.

So I didn't go as much in as I could have went in and frankly I
think I'm in this place now where it starts to become more of a how do I adapt that media company mindset here, but knowing that it will take longer.

So I think between that maybe getting into a networking group, networking group, you know, doing some outside networking in addition to that, you know, leaning heavily into the SEO and content creation and leaning into LinkedIn.

I think those are going to be the three or four pieces that I'll probably lean into for this and just see what happens. But yeah, that's kind of like where I'm at.

Not exactly where I wanted to be, but, you know, continue to kind of take a step at a time and, you know, see what happens. But I think the biggest thing is like when you're going through struggles, is to keep your mental.

And I think that that's the thing that is the most easily influenced if you're not able to stay on top of your mental.

And that has happened to me the way that I've been thinking the doubts and like, oh, this is a possible or it's not going to, you know, you know, it's hard to make money.

There's some of the things that I've even heard, you know, people say sometimes you start to have that be a part of you. And I think it's just a matter of changing how you're approaching things. And you don't want to take money for granted, like it's just something to spend.

But at the same time, you want to be very intentional. with the words that you're saying because when you say it's hard to make money that means that a lot of times that makes you want to strive to make money but sometimes you just have to think differently to be able to generate that revenue.

So that's kind of like where I'm at pivoting and pivoting and pivoting and we'll see what everything goes from here. 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 06:42
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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