IAM2476 – Day 156: Starting Anew: Embrace Change

Gresham Harkless reflects on the challenges he's facing as a new franchise broker, particularly when candidates encounter unexpected financing obstacles.

Gresham shares that one of the toughest but most important parts of the process is recognizing when a candidate may be heading in the wrong direction and making the pivot early—even if it sets the timeline back by several weeks.

He emphasizes how financing plays a central role in determining what brands are accessible, with more established brands often being easier to fund than emerging ones.

Gresham also mentions the importance of leaning on funding experts earlier in the process to provide clarity and avoid delays.

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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.

You realize that maybe you went down the wrong path. And the hardest thing to do is to make that pivot.

That's why you want to try to make adjustments as quickly as possible. You want to trust the process, trust the time that it takes, but at the same time say, hey, maybe this is just along the wrong path.

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And I think that's really one of the hardest things. It's kind of like where I'm at now.

I have a candidate that's kind of going through the process and financing hasn't necessarily gone through the way that I wanted it to.

It's kind of going back to the brands. Now, I think with that being said, there's more options that open up for him because we've increased potentially what might be his max investment.

But I think what ends up happening is like talking with the finance people, it ends up being those emerging brands that end up becoming a little bit more of a challenge to finance.

So what I'm learning, as a broker, new broker, baby broker, I think at the conference I said I was a newborn baby broker is that really have to look at this process in terms of like learning a lot.

And that first year I probably learned a lot the biggest thing that I think I've learned is that sometimes if you have a candidate that's maybe around a lower investment if they're able to get a larger investment or larger level of comfortability with the maximum investment, then it opens up a lot of opportunities.

And those opportunities sometimes are more established brands. More established brands means you're able to get funding easier, potentially, especially if all the other things kind of check off.

So that's kind of like where we were at. Is that OK? We have to see, what we can do, what those times are going to be, what that's going to look like.

And, unfortunately, that's just kind of ends up being where we're at. I realized that we kind of have to start a little bit more from scratch. That probably puts us like four to five weeks back at least.

But I think he's very inspired to kind of get the ball rolling. So it might be a lot quicker.

But I think it becomes a question now, as a broker, when someone says this is my max investment, they also don't have a good idea of what that looks like.

So I think now it's important for me to, when someone says, hey, my max investment is $10, I'm like, okay, well, we're going to work with $10.

I might show a little bit that are outside that range, but the idea is that I'm going to stick with that $10.

But I think what I have learned now as a broker is that I also want to educate clients that if you're able to go, this level, it can open up more opportunities.

And I'm not, by no means am I pressuring you to do that, but just want to give you an idea, because I think sometimes brokers don't always, candidates don't always realize that it's that by increasing your investment, you're getting higher quality investments.

You get high quality investments that have more backing. I think especially for the people that end up being those people that want more enterprise or empire brands or those hybrid brands, it ends up being a really good fit.

These are all terms from the historical entrepreneurial assessment. I think it becomes something important for me to make sure that we educate clients.

I have a client that was really set on dry cleaning that I talked with yesterday. And, I asked, what would be your maximum investment?

It was one of those things. Well, what do you think the maximum investment could be?

And it's like I gave a range and I'm like, OK, do you know what it could be? And it's all depending on financing.

So it becomes one of those things where we say, OK, like, I don't know exactly what you want to invest in.

And I'm kind of like playing that dance where you're trying to feel like where they're at.

But I think now I'm gonna lean a lot more on the the funding people that I can get a hold of and see what can happen in that connection.

So money mindset and motivation, the money part ends up being a huge part because if you are financing or potentially 100% financing, you want to know exactly what you qualify for.

And I think that's really, the big thing to kind of get into is just to understand that and then kind of take some steps from there.

So we'll ultimately see what happens with this, but lesson learned. Definitely continue to kind of get better.

It's like, how can I arm my candidates with the best information so that they can succeed as best as possible.

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 06:26

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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