IAM2471 – The Rollercoaster Ride of a Franchise Broker’s Journey

On day 154 of his franchise broker journey, Gresham Harkless reflects on the emotional and strategic challenges of building momentum without having closed a traditional deal.

While others in his cohort have closed deals—mostly through personal connections—he’s navigating the harder road of building a system that doesn’t rely on warm leads.

Gresham acknowledges the temptation to press clients when deals lag, especially with long lead times, like one prospect who keeps pushing meetings back months at a time—but he consciously focuses on planting seeds and celebrating small wins.

Gresham recognizes lead quality as the biggest challenge and is shifting his strategy toward more targeted outreach, including cold emailing, LinkedIn messaging, and Google Ads aimed at experienced franchise owners.

He also sees potential in reconnecting with candidates who didn’t complete the process with other brokers, viewing partnerships and strategic collaborations as a smart path to create new opportunities.

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Transcription:

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Intro 00:00

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.

Day 154 of this franchise broker journey. And I feel like I'm going back to day one just because at the end of the day, it's really hard like doing these recordings and not having a close deal yet.

And I'm not the only one like are from our class there's three of us and we had the first person that closed the deal.

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But the deal that was closed was pretty much one was himself the other one was a friend that he knew so those are the two ultimate deals as you hear the music in the background that's the baby.

But with those two deals being closed, like that's the most from everybody in our class, which is wild to me.

And then you start to look at who's at the top of the leaderboard. You start to realize, of course, you have to submit those deals.

So you don't know if they're always submitted. But at the end of the day, I've noticed there's not a lot of new brokers that are there outside of one broker that actually hit the ground running, it's been that.

So it's something I got to look a little bit more into and think a little bit more about, about like how I'm going to maneuver it through this new business.

I think that when you have the appeal of saying, hey, I'm going to get two deals back.

Then you start to really look at that. But if you look at it a little bit differently, like, hey, it's just going to be one deal, which is kind of where I'm at.

But really, I needed to get two deals, but really at least two deals just to get the money back, just get back to zero. You want to get beyond that.

So, the six deals that I wanted to do is really like still very much so in play and what I want to happen.

You think positively about the things, you see the wins. I think that's something that's getting back to day one is just saying, hey, there are certain wins that we want to really tap into.

So let me pause this. One of the things that starts happening when you go through a sales process is you start to press.

And when you really want a deal to get done, then you start to press, you start to put pressure, you start to do all those things related to your clients or candidates, potential clients or candidates kind of in that place now where I'm feeling those feelings.

So I'm trying to catch myself as far as pressing and just really celebrate the wins.

Like for example, one of the candidates that literally wanted to meet in a month. I met her, talk with her.

She said, hey, can we meet in a month? I spoke with her and I'm like, hey, can we schedule our next follow up?

And you can complete the entrepreneur assessment. She said, oh, let me do it in another month.

So like, we're talking about two or three months of time, you know, just from that.

And I think the frustrating thing is like, it's been 60 days. We haven't even gotten past stage two.

When the reality is, is that she did complete the store, the entrepreneur assessment, she did do some of the things she did accept the meeting, things like that.

So you're starting to see like some of the seeds are being implanted, to really go to that next level.

But man, it definitely is a challenging thing. And I think one of the things I spoke about with.

My co-classmate is that he said the biggest challenge was learning the inventory. I said, I think the biggest challenge is leads.

Because I think from what I can tell, quality leads is the biggest thing. The quality of the leads is going to indicate how successful you are.

If you don't have quality leads, you're not going to be able to do this. And then I think the quick, adjustment is just like, hey, I'm just going to pay for leads.

And I think that while there's a time and place for that, I think that there is a lost opportunity because it just doesn't seem like that's the right thing either.

So right now I'm looking at a combination of cold email to a very segmented list of multi-unit franchisees or people that have existing franchise.

So this is maybe one I add on more on. I'm also looking at multi-unit franchisees through cold email, LinkedIn, and then we're starting to do some Google ads around that and we'll see what happens from there.

I think the biggest kind of opportunity and actually my coworker had mentioned, or my coworker, my classmate had mentioned this, is people that don't get through to the finish line and then they they're looking for deals.

So, those are people that I'm really kind of interested in and actually connecting with brokers or franchisors just to see if I can make that happen.

But I just want to get that deal first to get the deal. And then it opens up all the opportunities.

So that's really what I'm focused on. But again, I'm trying to celebrate those wins.

It's going back to day one and just saying, hey, Let's celebrate where we're at and what we're doing.

Because if we don't do that, then we don't really have much else to do because it's such a long process to go from first conversation or first interest.

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.

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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