IAM2573 – A Day 226 Adventure: Light Jogging for a Bright Highlight

In this special episode, Gresham Harkless shares a powerful insight into the importance of pacing and sustainability in both physical fitness and his journey as a franchise broker.

After going for a jog on Father’s Day, he recognizes that while he could have pushed himself to go farther, stopping at 2.5 miles was the smarter, more sustainable choice.

He reflects on how, at the beginning, he tried to go all in—chasing quick wins and putting in intense effort, but that approach left him teetering on burnout.

Now, he's learning to value the small, consistent steps—the equivalent of simply lacing up his shoes, as the true markers of progress.

Additionally, Gresham emphasizes that respecting the journey, knowing his limits, and investing in long-term momentum is what will allow him to thrive over the next 5, 10, or more years, just as he has done in his digital marketing career.

• 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 00:29

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.

Day 226 of the Franchise Broker Journey, and I have my dad's hat on. I went for a jog today, since it's Father's Day, or when I went for a jog anyways.

It's a little misty, not too rainy, but it is misty, so I don't want to actually knock down and get completely asleep, but that's all well and good.

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I'm actually proud of myself because I did about two and a half miles. I wanted to go to three or four miles. That's what I've been doing. I decided to not go.

Don't get me wrong. I was definitely winded. But I think that's part of it. It's like sometimes in order to do the things that you need to do, you don't need to go all in every single day at every single moment.

And I think that's where you start to lock into this marathon mindset and this marathon mentality.

So going back to, what I said and what I was thinking around how I was going to approach, being a broker.

I think I wanted to do the activities and do the jogging to kind of continue to do this for three, four, five years, 10 years, even like I've done the digital marketing.

And I think sometimes when you burn yourself out, it ends up being to a place where you're like, this isn't it.

I don't wanna do this anymore because I'm burnt out. I put in all this time and energy. And I feel like I approached it like that in the very beginning.

It's definitely, you want to take the adrenaline and use that, but you want to have it harnessed in the correct places to represent this marathon that you're running.

Even if you're going to run a business for three years or five years or something like that, or less, you want to set it up so that you can set yourself up for the next thing.

You want to set it up so that you can respect the absolute journey that you have. And I think oftentimes, especially if you're doing it part-time.

If you're doing it part-time, you're like, I'm gonna just go back and do what I was doing before.

But I think if you go too much in, or you do it at a detriment to the other things that you might have going on in your life, then it's less likely to be sustainable.

And I can honestly say, like within this first 200, I would say probably 20 days, I feel like just in the last week or two, I've had a different mentality.

I've approached it like that. I think that's one of the really big things is like today, I could have went farther, could have pushed it more because I've done it before.

I can do it again. But at what result? When I woke up the next day, my body was destroyed. It was tired.

I was just not at my best self. So, it took away from the next workout and the workout after that.

And a lot of times when you look at people that run marathons, they're not running the fastest in mile one.

They're not running the fastest in mile 26, finding out what pace that they can do that is sustainable.

I think oftentimes when we're starting something new, we either do too little or we do too much.

We don't get in that sweet spot. We do too little, where we just say, hey, I'm not gonna do it, I'll do it tomorrow.

We're not actually doing anything. Or we just say, hey, you know, and don't get me wrong, I'm just gonna say, hey, we're gonna lace up our shoes.

And don't get me wrong, lacing up your shoes is a big thing. It's actually, I think, one of the habits that you lean into.

If you continue to say tomorrow, I'm going to lace up my shoes, you know that when you lace up your shoes, you're more likely to run. That's going to do that. That's more of a habit. That's not the thing.

That's the thing you focus on. But you really start to say, like, hey, I just want to run a mile. I just want to run across the street or around the block or whatever it is.

Then you start building up from there as you start to realize that this is sustainable.

I can run across the street. I can put on my shoes. Maybe just putting on shoes is the thing. I just put on my shoes every day, my workout shoes every day.

That's what I can do because I can consistently do that. I can do that now for the next 10 years. I can literally just lace up my shoes.

Then you find out what the next thing is after you start doing that, and you start building up upon that.

I think that when I approached this franchise broker business, I didn't approach it that way. Not at all. I didn't say to myself, what can I do every single day?

And honestly, a lot of it is maybe just look for leads. Maybe it is to run a campaign, whatever that is.

But maybe it is to find leads or opportunities. Or maybe it's to connect with one person to say, hey, I started this franchise, go for business.

Or maybe that's once a week. I don't know, whatever it is. And I got to figure exactly what that is, that out with what figure out what that is, and then I can kind of lean more into that.

But yeah, I'm just excited again that I didn't try to go for the four miles.

I went for the two and a half miles because I know that tomorrow I'm going to be able to do a bigger, better workout.

I'm going to be able to go instead of for the five minutes or get up 10 minutes later because I'm tired.

I'm going to be able to show up better. So, I'm excited about that, excited about the growth.

Again, not in pushing it to go farther, but actually in taking a step back and saying, hey, how can I run a marathon?

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 06:47

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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