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IAM2300 – Chief Hiring Coach Transforms Hiring Process Using AI-Driven Techniques

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 06:16:23 -0500

Fletcher Wimbush is the CEO of Discovered Performance Hiring Software, who has extensive experience in hiring practices and decades of experience tackling hiring challenges, including reference checking, aptitude assessments, and AI-driven talent selection.

Fletcher's system has helped over 2,000 companies and led to multi-million-dollar results in the hiring process.

Fletcher discusses that hiring the right people is the foundation of good leadership. This concept has driven much of his career and leadership philosophy.

He emphasizes the need for leaders to focus on people selection to build great teams, even in the early stages of entrepreneurship when resources are limited.

Fletcher also mentions the importance of understanding the differences between an entrepreneur, a manager, and a technician.

Fletcher advocates mastering tasks before delegating them and creating frameworks, systems, and processes to delegate.

In addition, he emphasizes the importance of becoming an entrepreneurial leader who shifts from managing day-to-day tasks to leading with vision and strategy.

LinkedIn: Fletcher Wimbush

Website: Fletcher Wimbush

Previous Episode Link: iam780-ceo-helps-in-talent-search-and-assessment

iam1434-ceo-helps-hr-leaders-get-the-right-people

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Transcription:

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Fletcher Wimbush Teaser 00:00

So now once you have that person in front of you, how do you evaluate them? And again, having some really great kind of legacy assessment tools that help you measure for integrity and energy and intelligence, right? Okay, that's great.

And then having the now the ability to sort of customize those assessments to any specific need that you have is now phenomenal.

Intro 00:28

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 00:56

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have an awesome guest back on the show today at Fletcher Wimbush. Fletcher, excited to have you back on.

Fletcher Wimbush 01:03

Awesome, thanks for having me, Gresham.

Gresham Harkless 01:05

Yes, absolutely. Super excited to have you on and to delve deeper into some of these hiring practices and best tips and tools that you've had and been able to kind of experience.

But of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Fletcher so you can hear about why and how he's doing so many awesome things.

And Fletcher, the transformative CEO of Discovered Performance Hiring Software, has dedicated decades to tackling hiring's hardest problems.

A thought leader in his field, he's published extensively on reference checking, aptitude assessments, and AI's role in candidate selecting.

His fact-driven hiring system drives multi-million-dollar results, proving his role as a game-changer in the hiring field.

Fletcher's reach extends beyond organizations to individuals, facilitating thousands of successful careers.

And as an ethical AI proponent, he's pioneering AI's powered initiative for talent selection.

Fletcher's transformative approach to hiring is not just rewriting the rules, it's setting a whole new standard.

And as I mentioned, Fletcher is coming back on the show. He was on episode number 780 and 1434 of the I AM CEO Podcast.

But one of the reasons that I'm sure we're gonna delve down deeper into these best practices around hiring's because Fletcher has a record of assisting more than 2000 companies when and hiring and conducting over 10, 000 candidate interviews.

So I know he has entrepreneurship in his DNA and obviously has hiring as well too. So Fletcher, excited to have you back on. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Fletcher Wimbush 02:35

Yeah, thank you Gresham. I'm looking forward to it, man.

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Gresham Harkless 02:38

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm super excited to kind of jump into these best practices, but just to give the audience a little bit more of who Fletcher is, what led you to get started, what's your coming of age story, what's your CEO story, what led you to get started with all the awesome work you're doing?

Fletcher Wimbush 02:52

Well, I mean, I've been on a few times, but maybe if you haven't heard the other ones, come on about every 700 episodes or so right?

Gresham Harkless 02:58

Exactly.

Fletcher Wimbush 03:01

But no, I mean, look, it's really a kind of a labor of love for me. My father, created a series of, behavioral aptitude, attitude and integrity assessments.

And at a young age, I think it was like 9 years old, I was like the first guinea pig, you'd make me complete these assessment, calibrating them against me or whatever he was doing.

But as I became a teenager, I found myself in leadership roles, captain of the football team, student body president, just like, shift supervisor, leader, and my little job, whole thing.

And I really gravitated to the idea of you can get the right people on the bus or on the team, that great things are gonna happen inside your organization.

And I just laser focused on that. I wrote a paper to graduate from high school. We had this, I don't know, like capstone paper we had to write or whatever.

And I really leaned into this concept and everything I did through my early career, which was outside of this space and running businesses and being a leader in a business or other businesses.

Fletcher Wimbush 04:06

I leaned into this concept that just hiring and selecting the right people is the absolute number one focal point in being a great leader, not to diminish all the other things that you have that you should do to elevate your leadership skills and to drive and drive results and grow business.

But this was the one place that I wanted to spend my career focusing on. And so that's what I did.

And 11 and a half years ago, I took over this business and we've really leaned in. And that's where I came to, I made sure that I followed Malcolm Gladwell's best practices, if you've seen Red Outliers, and I just wanted to immerse myself in this, not just from a theoretical perspective, but put my hands on it.

So I interviewed over 10, 000 people. We've worked with over 2000 organizations and just really got real world experience beyond my 10 years of leadership experience hands on, growing businesses prior, right?

Gresham Harkless 05:11

Nice. I absolutely love that. And so I want to drill down a little bit more because I know that a lot of people that are listening to this might be in not the Elon Musk mode.

And understanding like we have this amount of revenue or this amount of money that we can hire those same people or also the Nvidia’s where they're not sure how they're gonna let alone get a million dollars in revenue to let alone hire somebody for a million dollars.

Like what types of things have you seen or ordered some of those best practices of like what people might be missing or things that they can do better related to their hire?

Fletcher Wimbush 05:43

Well, I'll reference a few other kind of influences in my life. E-Myth was revisited or E-Myth. I think any good entrepreneur, especially early in your entrepreneurial journey should read that book.

So it's the difference between being an entrepreneur, a manager, and a technician. And most of us, and I started as a technician.

And I often still wear a manager hat and keep aspiring towards being an entrepreneur. And, it's a great way to kind of think about that, what it's like to be an early stage entrepreneur.

You have to be able to do a lot of things and then eventually you have to be able to manage a lot of things and eventually you have to be able to lead and set the vision.

Now, as an early entrepreneur, you have to be able to do a lot of things. And then eventually you have to be able to manage a lot of things.

And eventually you have to be able to lead and set the vision. Now, as an early entrepreneur, you have to be able to do all 3 of those things, essentially moving towards that entrepreneurial hat or role that, that you're going to play.

And, I think in the early days as a technician or a manager, it's often difficult to give up control of those things.

I think, first and foremost, you have to start to identify what are your own special powers, what is your mission, where are you trying to go?

And I say this on both sides of coins for any human being, like where do you want to be in 10 years? What is your personal goal or vision for your own life? Right.

And what are your own personal core values? And, I don't think often enough, any of us stopped to really think about those things.

But our work should be driving us towards our own personal goals and missions and support our own personal value systems.

Early days of entrepreneurs, that personal mission and core values often becomes highly reflective in the organization's mission and vision. Right. But it's okay.

So you understand where you're going and what your personal ambitions are, for your life. Right.

And then you begin to identify the things that you love doing and that you wish you weren't doing.

And then it's beginning to identify those roles and that's essentially that org chart. And at first you're in every single bucket. So you got to put what's finance, marketing, sales, production, cooking, bottle washing, bottle washing, right?

So you put all those things under your name and then you begin to identify, well, where's my zone of excellence?

And begin to take some of those technician roles off and begin to wear more of a manager hat eventually.

And there's another good one that references Dan Martell and he wrote a good book called Buy Back Your Time.

So, I would definitely encourage also to probably read those 2 books in tandem, right? You never visited and then followed it up with buy back your time.

And I really liked the way he approached it is he said, you got to master the task and then you got to delegate it.

Well, master might be extreme, but you need to grasp it. You need to get a hold of that task and then delegate it to hopefully somebody who can do it a lot better than you.

But you're laying out the framework, the structure, the system, the process and defining what good looks like in that process.

It's all of these are foundational steps to going from a solo or small entrepreneur with a handful of employees to a NVIDIA.

Gresham Harkless 09:27

Yeah, I love that you mentioned that. I think to be able to understand that if you do have this specific ass of going from 10,000 people come to your site to 100,000 or a million or whatever that might be, you can ask for that specific thing.

You can ask for the specific industry and get these applicants that you can take out to lunch or to breakfast, to get coffee, whatever it might be, and they can be a fit.

And I think understanding like this technology is now there where you can be that precise in what's going to help you succeed is incredibly powerful.

Fletcher Wimbush 10:00

Yeah, it was important to us to build it all into one platform and to make it available to the non-recruiters.

So these are all things that professional recruiters do, right? Particularly when it goes to sourcing people who are not necessarily looking for a job, right?

But you can do this stuff yourself. And, I great example is I had a friend who's in a foreign mine and he was a food broker.

And I kind of understood the business. I came from the food service industry prior, but not really my area of expertise. He was a friend and I don't want to muddy work and friendship here.

So he's like, I think he was going to ask me to go do the headhunting. I was probably going to cost him 30 grand to do this job.

And so I said, look, just spend 15 minutes a day looking at these, put in your ideal person. Now, in this case, it was a little easier. It's just who are your competitors? There weren't that many. It's such a niche industry. So there's 15 competitors and the Metro that he wanted to hire.

So put in the names of the competitors and then let the search find all the people who work there and just spend 15 minutes a day looking at those people's resumes, LinkedIn profile, social profiles, whatever information that you know we can get gather from them which is a lot.

And almost everything and say yeah this person would be this is exactly who I want right you know and starts ranking them this one's perfect almost perfect looks perfect looks interesting not not relevant right you know build that little bit of a list.

And again, it doesn't take that much time really. And again, if you just, it's like habit stacking you just okay, I'm 15 minutes a day while I drink my cup of coffee, I'm going to just do this task and then begin to do an outreach to these people.

And again, sending an email, sending a LinkedIn connection, sending them a message on Facebook, whatever. I mean, it doesn't take very long to do.

And it's this be impatiently patient, right? And chip away at this. And within another 30 days, he hired the number one sales guy from his top competitor there. That's a million dollar hire.

Gresham Harkless 12:24

Yeah. And that's such a huge thing because I think so many times we can over-complicate it.

So that's why I love the tool and everything you've been able to do, I always say, and I didn't say it actually was a quote, the true sign of genius is being able to kind of simplify things for other people.

You have a high level knowledge of what's happening, how those things are going, but to be able to simplify, as you have all done really well, is to be able to create a tool or abundance of tools to be able to help do that process to simplify for the person that maybe is not as knowledgeable about hiring.

And what to do and what not to do, what questions to ask, what skill aptitudes has to give, and what does all those things look like.

So to bring all those things together ends up being extremely powerful because you've been able to simplify for those that are not as knowledgeable as you all have been.

Fletcher Wimbush 13:11

Yeah. So that's a big piece of it. And then you get into these assessment things and we kind of talked about those a little bit right prior prior to that.

And then having now the ability to sort of customize those assessments to any specific need that you have is now phenomenal.

And then building in other tools just that allow you any different type of hiring process that you might be going for like one-way video interviews that you can automate interviewing and AI will evaluate you know those people for you and give you a starting point.

I wouldn't, I'm not gonna say you should be relying on AI to make your hiring decisions, but it's speeds it up.

Gresham Harkless 14:07

Yeah, that is a big huge thing.

Fletcher Wimbush 14:09

Yeah, so that's what we do. And Aaron on our team, he calls it services as a software, right?

So, our clients, they get a hiring coach who blocks them through this, helps them dial in the different tools that are appropriate. Not every tool is appropriate for every situation, right?

Gresham Harkless 14:23

Absolutely. Appreciate that. So Fletcher, now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

And our goal is to have different quote unquote CEOs on the show. And I know you've been on a few times, but how would you define being a CEO for you?

Fletcher Wimbush 14:36

You are the visionary and the shepherd for your vision, right. Or, chief, I think I told you, the chief evangelist for your mission, right, that's inspiring your people and your customers to be excited about what you're doing and the service or product that you are offering.

And yeah, I think, I mean, ultimately that's where you want to be in that hierarchy in the E-Myth we're visited, right?

We're on this journey to become that, chief evangelist, and inspire for people. And that's a journey to get there, but you gotta have it in the beginning to start off.

Gresham Harkless 15:24

Yeah, absolutely. I love that definition. Now, what I want to do is just see if there's anything additional you wanna let our readers and listeners know, and of course, how best people can get a hold of you find about all the awesome things you're in team are working on.

Fletcher Wimbush 15:36

You can Google me. And, I'll come up on like the first 10 pages. So, but LinkedIn is a great place to find me. You can get Fletcher Wimbush. And then also you can check us out at discovered.ai.

So again, discovered, so like discovered the best people.ai and you can check us out there, but I'm an open connector on LinkedIn.

You can just say, you heard me on the podcast and I will respond. You can ask me any random questions about how to find the best people. You can schedule a call with me. I'll spend, I'll spend my time with you sharing everythin

IAM2299 – Director Trains Organizations and Individuals on Rapport-Based Interviewing

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 06:16:06 -0500

Mark Anderson is a retired special agent and former instructor at the Inspector General Criminal Investigator Academy. He is an expert in interviewing and investigative techniques.

Mark is the Director of Training and Development at Anderson Investigative Associates. He has worked with the FBI, NRC, and the New York State Office of the Inspector General.

Mark Anderson shares his extensive background in interviewing and training, emphasizing the significance of listening skills in communication and relationships.

Mark discusses updating his curriculum with the latest interviewing research and explains his process for identifying client needs in interview training.

Mark shares his habit of reviewing current research to stay effective in training and offers advice on understanding others and focusing on people over the business.

He highlights the importance of caring for the people who matter most and staying safe in professional and personal life.

Website: Anderson Investigate Associates

LinkedIn: Mark A. Anderson

Previous Episode Link: iam255-investigator-develops-programs-to-address-effective-interviewing-and-investigations

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Transcription:

The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!

Mark Anderson Teaser 00:00

I don't go into this clients and provide the same training every time. I'm going to build it based on what their needs are.

And then I'm going to go back to them and say, do you see that return on investment? Did we hit the areas?

Are you seeing improvements in certain regard that are going to benefit you. So that's kind of how we deal with the clients that come into us.

Intro 00:22

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 00:50

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have an awesome guest back on the show today. I have Mark Anderson. Mark, excited to have you back on.

Mark Anderson 00:58

Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. It's good to catch up again.

Gresham Harkless 01:03

Yes, absolutely. It's always great to catch up. And that's one of the things I'm most excited about the podcast is to get to have awesome guests back on the show.

And of course, before we jump into having that great conversation, I want to read a little bit more about Mark so you can hear about some of the awesome things he's been working on.

And Mark is the Director of Training and Development with Anderson Investigative Associates.

He is a career interviewer in the audit and investigation arena who believes interviewing is a skill at the foundation of our best and most complete work.

He's a retired special agent with the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, who served as a program manager and instructor at the Inspector General Criminal Investigator Academy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia.

He also serves as a special agent with, he had also served as a special agent with the FBI, NRC, and a Deputy Inspector General with the New York State Office of the Inspector General.

He now trains interviewees nationwide on scientifically research rapport based interviewing. And one of the exciting things is, like I mentioned, Mark was previously on the show episode number 255 of our I AM CEO Podcast, which was absolutely awesome.

One of the things that I remember is we talked a lot around not just how interviewing is really dedicated to law enforcement and things like that. It's actually used in all aspects.

So I say so often we forget about the human part of business and frankly about life to actually hear how that can be used in so many different ways is so powerful.

And I was actually reading one of his LinkedIn posts and he said that many people seek to improve their communication and interview skills.

They want to be better questions, questionnaires. They want to be better at presenting evidence.

They often ignore something equally important, listening, building good listening skills and you will improve your relationships, enjoy more success and improve your knowledge base.

So Mark, excited to have you back on the show, excited to do a lot more listening. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Mark Anderson 03:03

Absolutely. I'm excited about it.

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Gresham Harkless 03:05

Well, let's get it started then. So to kind of kick everything off, that's rewind the clock. Hear a little bit more on what you've been working on. We'll let you get started with all the awesome work you're doing.

Mark Anderson 03:12

Okay. Well, first of all, Gresh, man, you talk about contemporary references. You just referenced a blog I just posted today. I mean, that's not even been out there for more than 8 hours.

So kudos to you for being on top of it, man. That's impressive. I was listening to it and I was saying, wait, what? I just did that one.

Listening is so important, and you obviously were listening enough to pick up on that and then and then recite it here.

And I actually listened well enough that I knew you were referring to that. So that's good stuff because listening is so important to what we do.

And you're absolutely right with what you just said about the fact that I may have come out of that interviewing and investigation and auditing background, but these communication skills are across the board.

And I'm not sure they don't have more applicability in the leadership realm and the management realm than they do in the interviewing realm.

So many things we make harder for ourselves because we don't ask good questions, we don't communicate well, and we don't listen real well.

So kudos for you on catching that one. What are we doing? We're still doing more or less the same thing, but there's been a lot of changes in the research and the science with regard to interviewing.

So I just started a huge push to rework a lot of my curriculum so that I've got the most recent techniques and gotten rid of things that there isn't scientific proof for.

There's stuff that we can change all the time in order to become more effective at the way we communicate.

So we've been focusing on that. We've been doing a little bit more leadership training and training of human resources people with regard to the whole issue of interviewing people that we're bringing on board.

I mean, there's some statistics that say that 70% of resumes that are submitted for jobs have material fault statements in them.

And man, we want to know about that before we hired a person. So how do we know about that?

We ask better questions when we're interviewing them. So we've been spending a lot of time working in that area of interviewing research in order to be up to speed so that we can serve our clients better.

Gresham Harkless 05:37

Nice. So I know you touched a little bit upon like how you work with your clients. I want to drill down a little bit more if you could take us through a little bit more on like what that looks like and how you're serving and working with the clients that you have.

Mark Anderson 05:48

A lot of times, and this goes back to the statement you just made before, so I'll play off of that.

There's an awful lot of people with regard to this issue of communication that say, well, you've been talking your whole life.

There's no reason you can't sit down in a room and ask some questions. I mean, we can all talk, you know, so they want us to get training on this electronics or that electronics, but we don't need training on interacting with people, you know.

So, I mean, I spent most of my career in the field with very minimal training on how to do interviews.

So I learned by screwing up a lot and then deciding not to do that same thing again. We still see that same thing within management and leadership, an awful lot of times with regard to these communication skills.

Anybody can do it. A lot of times what happens with my customers is that a client will call me and say, hey, look, we need some interview training.

And so it becomes an extensive process that they might not sign up for. I ask them why you need interview training.

I ask them what they're seeing that tells them that they need interview training. I want to drill down and find out where they're seeing weaknesses in their system in order to get rid of those weaknesses.

Now they'll have other things to deal with, but I'm going to build the program based on what they tell me in that regard.

And a lot of times they don't know exactly where it's located. So I ask a lot of questions that would help me to focus in on what they need and how to optimize that which we deliver.

Because I mean, I've got enough curriculum to probably teach a couple of weeks of full time of training and nobody has the time for that.

So it's like, how do we build this in a way that maximizes your return on investment? If you see that return on investment, then maybe next year you'll give me a call again and say, hey, let's do a little bit more of this stuff.

But the key with the way I do business with them, especially people that are up to speed and have been into business for a while, is I build that program based on what they need.

Now I might throw in a couple things they didn't think they needed, but are contemporaneous and scientifically validated that's going to benefit them in the long run.

But I'm going to build that. I don't have any off the shelf training. I don't go into this clients and provide the same training every time. I'm gonna build it based on what their needs are.

And then I'm gonna go back to them and say, do you see that return on investment? Did we hit the areas?

Are you seeing improvements in certain regard that are gonna benefit you? So that's kinda how we deal with the clients that come into us.

Gresham Harkless 08:34

Nice. I almost wonder if that is maybe part of what I like to call your secret sauce. It could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both. But I feel like you have that ability.

Again, I'll go back to seeing the forest for the trees. But I also feel like I'm going to use this kind of analogy of conversation almost being like being on the dance floor, so to speak.

Mark Anderson 08:52

I think so. It's probably too, because you look at me, you realize I have a little bit of age on me.

I've been around for a while, gotten run over enough, had enough bad experience in life. You look at situations differently than you did in the past, certain amount of that is experience of, I've worked in a lot of different areas, so I've been exposed to a lot of different people.

But I think it does come down an awful lot to the issue you just hit upon is we don't go out in the dance floor and do the same dance step every time. The steps that we're gonna do depends on the person that we're on the dance floor with.

So that empathy and ensuring understanding of the people that we're with becomes so relevant to fashioning a solution for them in moving forward.

Gresham Harkless 09:44

Yeah, And that's such a huge thing. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack.

So this could be like an Apple book or even a habit that you have, but what's something that you lean on that makes you more effective and efficient?

Mark Anderson 09:58

Probably what I lean on most is I don't wanna ever think that I've got a corner on the market of what needs to be provided.

So I spend a lot of time reviewing research and scientific studies and other people's work in this regard to make sure that number one, everything I have is current.

Everything I have is research and scientifically based and everything I have, I can communicate in a way that it is practical and useful.

So I want to be paying attention to other people in that regard. I want to be paying attention to the research that's currently going on.

And I want to continue to challenge my view of these things. I think some of that stuff, I was probably much more sure about 40 years ago than I am now.

I'm probably sure about it out of my own ignorance more than anything else. So I want to challenge myself on those issues all the time.

And I have people around me that I ask to challenge me along the way. If there's somebody in the class, I do some training for the Association of Inspector Generals.

I do it a couple times a year, and people sit in that class that have heard me before, people that know me, and I expect them to challenge me if I say something that's not clear, something that isn't scientifically based, something that could cause confusion.

And I need to be willing to hear that and respond effectively to that too, which means what do I have to do again? I have to listen to it, even if it doesn't make me feel good.

So I would say that's probably the key to this from my standpoint in order to stay relevant and stay useful and practical to the people that do business with me.

Gresham Harkless 11:46

Yeah, that ends up being such a huge thing. So what would you consider to be a little bit more CEO nugget?

So this could be like a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client, or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Mark Anderson 12:01

I think that we have to be very understanding of where other people are at. I think we have to be very understanding of where we're at.

I think that we get so caught up in the role, the title maybe it is that arrogant or pride thing of being the business owner.

And we lose sight of those around us. And what's going on around us can change us remarkably for the rest of our lives.

And we need to be attuned to that. And I think that if we're attuned to that, then we're going to much better serve those that we have a responsibility for serving.

Because we're going to hear needs, wants, desires in those individuals' lives better if there isn't so much noise in our own lives, just directing us to be focused on the business, the business, the business, the business. Focus on the people.

And I think that that will make a huge difference in the long run and certainly give you, well, certainly gives me, I can't tell you what it would do you.

It certainly gives me more joy and more feelings of accomplishment than focusing on the business by itself.

Gresham Harkless 13:17

Yeah. So I want to ask you now one of my absolute favorite questions with the definition of what it means to be a CEO or goes to have different quote unquote CEOs on the show. So Mark, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Mark Anderson 13:28

What it means to me is having a unique opportunity to serve individuals that are out there in a community, serve them with materials and training and interactions to hopefully improve the quality of their lives.

Both from a work standpoint and from a personal standpoint, not only professional, but a personal standpoint with regard to how they communicate with others.

And if I can make a difference in that in people's lives, that's going to improve their interactions at work.

With coworkers, that's going to improve their interaction with suspects. If it happens to be an investigator, it's going to improve their interactions with their spouses and their children.

Because we're talking about being able to communicate more effectively and getting rid of stuff that are obstacles to that communication.

So to me, having the opportunity to serve in that regard is probably the most valuable aspect of being a CEO.

But I think that's because I'm older and I'm not focused on maybe some of the things from a business perspective.

But to me, that's what the difference is. That's what brings me joy and that's what I hope brings people more contentment and success in their lives. And if I'm doing that, then I think I'm being very successful.

Gresham Harkless 14:57

Well, Mark, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more.

So what I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know.

And of course, how best people can get out of view, find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

Mark Anderson 15:12

You can reach me on my website. If you enter information in there, it'll come directly to my email.

So that's www.andersoninvestigative.com. Connect with me on Facebook or on LinkedIn, either on my personal side of it or the business side of it.

If there's something I can provide for you, if there's something that you need help on in a certain area of this communication or interviewing, just drop me a line. I will be glad to share with you whatever I have that would be beneficial to you.

And I'm always here if you are working for a company or working in an organization, you're having some difficulties with communication or interviewing, reach out.

We'll see if we can come to find something that would be beneficial or I'll find you somebody that will come up with something that will be beneficial.

So that would be my last words for today. Be safe out there and take care of those that mean a lot to you.

Gresham Harkless 16:08</strong

I appreciate you so much again, Mark. And of course, we're going to have the links and information in the show notes as well too.

So that everybody can find out those blogs, the website and of course all the awesome things you've been posting as well on LinkedIn. Of course, I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Outro 16:21

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue16 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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The post IAM2299 – Director Trains Organizations and Individuals on Rapport-Based Interviewing appeared first on I AM CEO Podcast.

IAM2298 – Self-Made Millionaire, Podcast Host and Lifestyle Entrepreneur Helps Women Pursue Their Passion

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 06:16:40 -0500

Cayla Craft, the host of the Mommy Millionaire Podcast, is a self-made millionaire, bestselling author, and lifestyle entrepreneur.

Cayla discovered network marketing and fell in love with health and wellness supplements.

By age 31, she had four companies and had shifted from nursing to entrepreneurship, with three kids at the time.

She emphasized that “you get what you tolerate,” which motivated her to pursue a new career path and build her own business.

In 2019, she launched a mastermind group for ambitious women, which, despite the name “Mommy Millionaire,” also includes women without children.

Cayla emphasizes the importance of collaboration and being part of a strong network in accelerating business growth.

Kayla highlights the importance of consistency in business – small, everyday actions add up over time and lead to long-term success.

Website: Cayla Craft

Instagram: cayla.craft

YouTube: Cayla Craft

Check out our CEO Hack Buzz Newsletter–our premium newsletter with hacks and nuggets to level up your organization. Sign up HERE.

Transcription:

The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!

Cayla Craft Teaser 00:00

What I found is you cannot do it alone. You might be an entrepreneur and you feel alone. And when you're trying to do it alone, it's a much harder process and it takes you longer.

So when you team up with people and get people's help, it happens to get you to your goal a lot quicker.

Intro 00:17

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:43

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Cayla Craft of Mommy Millionaire Podcast. Cayla, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Cayla Craft 00:53

Hi, I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Gresham Harkless 00:56

No problem. I'm super excited to have you on. And what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Cayla so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing.

And Cayla is the host of the Mommy Millionaire Podcast and bestselling author of The Habit of Leading Yourself.

She is a mama of 3, a self-made millionaire and a lifestyle entrepreneur. As a California native, she went from saving lives as a nurse in the ER working from 9 to 5 to helping women pursue a passion for owning their own business.

Her first taste of success began when she created an organization of 60,000 people for Isagenix, a company that sells health and wellness supplements.

And using that business building knowledge as a foundation, she branched out as a business strategist and found incomparable satisfaction from helping others achieve success.

Cayla has inspired thousands of women to believe in themselves as entrepreneurs and business women.

Her main goal is to help women shamelessly pursue their ambitions and grow their business to 7 figures. Cayla, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Cayla Craft 01:53

I am so excited to talk to everybody. Thanks for having me again.

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Gresham Harkless 01:57

No problem. I appreciate having you on and appreciate all the awesome things that you're doing.

The way I wanted to start out was to hear a little bit more about your CEO's story and what led you to start your business.

Cayla Craft 02:05

Awesome. Okay. So when I found myself at 23 years old, I was working as an ER nurse and I had one kid at the time and I was working shift work, and I just felt kind of unappreciated and overworked.

And I found network marketing just a perfect time in my life. I fell in love with these health and wellness supplements and decided to build a business from it.

And in 3 years, I made my first million dollars and that kind of just like gave me the entrepreneur bug and so now I'm 31 years old and now I have 4 different companies and we're just like love and life I no longer work as a nurse obviously and I have 3 kids now.

But it all kind of started because I just wasn't happy with my current circumstances and I know that in life you get what you tolerate.

Gresham Harkless 02:53

That's absolutely awesome to hear that obviously, you did some awesome things and like you said you get what you tolerate I love that kind of nugget because a lot of times, you don't realize that there is an alternative.

But you've been able to build that alternative, but you're doing something even greater than that because you're also helping out other people as far as doing it.

Cayla Craft 03:10

Exactly.

Gresham Harkless 03:12

Awesome. And I know we touched a little bit upon it in the vital, but I wanted to hear a little bit more about like what you're doing to kind of help support the clients that you work with. How are you help build these women that are building businesses as well?

Cayla Craft 03:21

Yeah, so I do a lot of business consulting for people. And so I go in and I look at their processes and help them come up with better strategies and processes to scale their business to 7 figures.

And I also do live events to help people get in a room full of ambitious women and network together, see how everybody could help each other, plus also bring in some of the best trainers in different types of industries so people can learn.

So we do live events and then in 2019, we'll also have a mastermind for the mommy millionaires.

And it's actually full of a lot of people that aren't moms, but then it's, I'm naming it the number one mastermind for ambitious women to be a part of.

And so it's really just all about getting together, collaborating and committing to growing each other's business.

Because what I found is you cannot do it alone. You might be an entrepreneur and you feel alone.

And when you're trying to do it alone, it's a much harder process and it takes you longer. So when you team up with people and get people's help, it happens to get you to your goal a lot quicker.

Gresham Harkless 04:20

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And a lot of times, you don't realize that your environment kind of determines how far you go or how high you fly, so to speak.

So sometimes when you're able to get yourself in those mastermind groups that you're creating and things like that.

It helps to kind of increase your likelihood of being successful and probably even your speed as far as doing it too.

Cayla Craft 04:37

Yes, exactly. Awesome. I always say if you want to soar with the Eagles, you got to find the Eagles nest. And that's what the mastermind is.

Gresham Harkless 04:44

I love that. I might be stealing that from you. I love that. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce.

And this is kind of like your differentiator. What you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique.

Cayla Craft 04:56

Oh, I think that what sets me apart from a lot of the female entrepreneurs out there kind of doing what I do is, or trying to do what I do.

I'm not a coach, and so I think I, coaches have to hold space for people, and I, a strategist, so I come and I'm just like, I don't sugar coat it. I'm like, this is what you need to do, X, Y, and Z, and go do it, pretty much.

And so I'm like all about not sugarcoating things and telling people like it is, even if it kind of hurts and it stings at first, it's really what's best for my clients and what's gonna help them go where they wanna go.

strong>Gresham Harkless 05:31

Exactly, exactly. That makes perfect sense and understanding like when you need that because a lot of times, sometimes people aren't struggling with the ability to work.

Sometimes they just don't have the right playbook, so to speak, so they need somebody to kind of help them figure out exactly what steps to take in order to reach those goals.

And do you find that you you focus on a certain type of business owner? Can any type of business owner come in and get your services and work with you?

Cayla Craft 05:53

Anyone anyone I actually was just meeting with a person who owns a boxing gym. And then yesterday I was talking to somebody who owns a facial bar.

So, and then I help online entrepreneurs as well. So it's really anybody because that's my super powers, just strategy and sales.

Gresham Harkless 06:12

So, yeah. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And oftentimes when you peel back the onion, you can realize that businesses are not necessarily the same on the outside, but when you look at it, they have the same kind of principles and strategies. So if you can help out one, you can help out most of them.

Cayla Craft 06:24

Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 06:25

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack.

And this might be an app, a book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

Cayla Craft 06:38

Okay. Something that makes me more effective is having a team. Does that make sense? So having just the right people in place and so we have a marketing director a manage an operations manager an executive assistant and then a CEO.

So what's funny is that a lot of people think I'm the CEO of my companies and I'm actually not I am basically the I'm just the owner and founder because I like to have somebody else in place that's making sure that things are happening on a day-to-day basis because I'm the creative and I'm kind of like the talent in the group.

And so I need to focus on my zone of genius. And I think that's where a lot of entrepreneurs go wrong, they want to be the CEO.

And they want to like be in charge of everything and that micromanage every little thing that's going on when you need to bring in the right team so you can focus on what your zone of genius is.

And most of the time that's you creating content and speaking and all of that, engaging and growing the network and all that kind of stuff.

And so when you're focused on the day-to-day stuff, sometimes it bogs you down and you can't be as creative. So I like to call myself the chief creative officer.

Gresham Harkless 07:41

I love that, I love that. I might borrow that one as well too, because a lot of times, like you said, being in your zone of geniuses is very huge.

And sometimes, if you have that creative gene and been able to build a business or create these marketing strategies or all these things that you're doing, when you're in that quote, unquote CEO role, you have to work and focus on other strengths that may not be your best strengths.

So being able to kind of identify and bring people in is definitely, a phenomenal talent and thing to be able to do. Yes.

And do you find that it's very easy to… I know that's one of the biggest kind of struggles and things that entrepreneurs and business owners deal with is finding talent, attracting talent and keeping talent. So how have you been able to kind of do that yourself?

Cayla Craft 08:19

Okay, this is such an amazing question because it's funny, I have the most amazing team and I love them to death.

And one of my executive assistants just gave me her 2 weeks notice because she got her dream job and it was like these are a lot of things that most people don't see behind the scenes stuff.

And I love to talk about stuff that nobody else talks about because I know it's actually gonna help people grow their business and so my process is always first of all looking for referrals so any business owners I know asking them who do you know that has executive assistant experience?

And just by me doing that in 2 days, I already have interviews set up this weekend with people that have experience.

So getting referrals, if you're like, I don't know anybody that would know that. Another great thing to do is get very, very specific on what you want your team's member to be taking care of.

And so knowing their KPIs, which are key performance indicators. So knowing exactly what you want somebody to do and giving out those details on a job site.

And so I like to use indeed.com. I don't know if you've ever used that, but we use indeed.com and put it out there.

And I always do like, so let's say I'm looking for an assistant. Well an assistant needs to be very detail oriented.

So in the job description, first of all, I make it super long, put in all the details of what I'm looking for and I put little hidden questions in there that they need to answer and send over with their resume and if they don't answer those questions I know that they're not a detailed person.

Because they just blindly sent their resume and so it weeds out people very very quickly and it gives me okay this is exactly who I'm looking for.

Or if you're looking for more of creative talent to come and join your team. Okay. Ask them certain questions inside of the job description that they have to answer creatively.

And if they don't, then again, don't even look at the resume because it's a waste of your time.

So, it kind of gives you a chance to look inside their mind right away and see how they answer things and if they really are creative, what you're looking for.

Gresham Harkless 10:22

Yeah, absolutely. And I love that. And again, like once you have an idea of exactly what you're looking for, you're able to tailor the KPI as a job description and everything that you're doing to find that person.

You're able to kind of find that person that fulfills that gap as much as possible. Yes. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget.

And you might have already touched on this, but this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Cayla Craft 10:46

Oh my gosh, you have such good questions.

Gresham Harkless 10:48

I just love them. Thank you.

Cayla Craft 10:49

They're getting me fired up. Okay. So I think for me, what I would have told myself, 7 and a half years ago when I first started in business is think bigger.

And What I mean by that is like, you know, when I first started my business and I imagined myself making millions of dollars, I thought, oh, I'm going to live on a yacht and we're going to have a trampoline on this yacht.

Like so stupid, but it's also what motivated me at the time. I had no idea that one day I'd be an owner of companies that were worth millions.

And if I would have thought way big like that, I would be much further along now, because it's kind of like playing catch up with my drains now.

And so take the time to think massively big, because seriously, manifestation is a real thing, and you can really create any type of life that you want as long as you believe it. That's the most important part.

Gresham Harkless 11:39

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I know you probably have experienced this and have seen it in people that you worked with as well too. Sometimes that fear bug or that fear word kind of creeps in.

So you sometimes are afraid to think big, but you're saying you still have to be able to kind of have that vision because that's going to propel you towards all the actions that take you there.

Cayla Craft 11:56

Yes, exactly.

Gresham Harkless 11:57

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, cool. Well, now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question. I know we touched on it a little bit. It's basically the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

And we're hoping to have different quote unquote CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners on this show. But I wanted to ask you, Cayla, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Cayla Craft 12:12

So I guess because I do look at it like as a chief executive officer, what do they do? They're making sure everybody on the team is doing their job. Right.

And I think that they're making sure that all of the running parts are working. And like I think of business sometimes as a hose, right.

And the water is trying to get through the hose to get out and like water everything and make everything beautiful. Make your business rain money down, right?

And if there's a kink in that hose, there's a problem. And it's the CEO's job to always be looking for kinks and making sure the hose is straight and getting the water out smoothly, right?

And just as hard and making sure that the water pressure is good, all that kind of stuff. That's what a CEO does.

Gresham Harkless 12:50

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Cayla, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out.

What I wanted to do was pass you the mic just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know about you, your background, your business or any advice that you have and also how best they can get a hold of you, subscribe to your podcast and find out about all the awesome things that you're doing.

Cayla Craft 13:07

Oh my gosh, okay. So I love free-form. So for me, you guys can find me over at Cayla.Craft and C-A-Y-L-A.C-R-A-F-T on Instagram. That's my favorite place to hang out. I'm always on my Insta store showing you guys my life and my YouTube channel is going to be revamped.

So I also have a lot of training on there and I have a podcast called Mommy Millionaire where I have mommy millionaire minutes where I shoot it to you guys straight.

And I also bring on women all over the world. They're making over a million dollars a year to show you guys that there's not one way to do it. That there's so many ways that you guys can be building your business.

And that's, I love my podcast so much because it's helping so many, so many people. And I think one thing that I would leave everybody with is consistency is everything in your business.

It matters what you do every single day when nobody's looking. And as an entrepreneur, as a CEO, a lot of people, they don't know exactly what you do.

And so sometimes you can get away with putting things off, procrastinating and not doing the thing that you need to do every single day to grow your business.

And I would say you have to commit to the small mundane things in your business because it all adds up and it all matters. It's the compound effect is at play all day long, every day.

And one more thing I'll add is, every entrepreneur I know, if you're going to be an average entrepreneur that makes average money, you're going to take average action.

But if you want to freaking shine and you want to have the most impact in this world, you have got to be

IAM2297 – CEO Helps Entrepreneurs Create Strong Personal Presence Online

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 06:16:29 -0500

Judy Schramm founded ProResource, a social media agency dedicated to helping CEOs enhance their online presence and achieve their business goals through effective personal branding.

Judy discusses how ProResource is her fourth business and how it evolved from a marketing and PR firm.

ProResource helps CEOs establish a strong personal presence on social media, particularly LinkedIn.

Judy emphasizes that LinkedIn is a vital tool for executives that helps CEOs streamline their social media activity to achieve a valuable impact with minimal time spent.

She shares that worrying about potential problems wastes energy and that it’s important to trust the process and enjoy the entrepreneurship journey.

Moreover, Judy advocates following key individuals, companies, and topics on LinkedIn to ensure your news feed is filled with relevant updates.

Website: ProResource

LinkedIn: Judy Schramm

Previous Episode: iam178-ceo-helps-entrepreneurs-create-strong-personal-presence-online

Check out our CEO Hack Buzz Newsletter–our premium newsletter with hacks and nuggets to level up your organization. Sign up HERE.

Transcription:

The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!

Judy Schramm Teaser 00:00

And what we found out was that the companies that did the best job with relationship were much more successful than the others.

And so what we tried to do is understand how that worked, right? What was it about the relationships?

And we discovered that it was the companies that found the right people and then did the best job of staying in touch with them that got the best result.

Intro 00:30

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:55

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Judy Schramm of ProResource. Judy, it is awesome to have you on the show.

Judy Schramm 01:04

It's a pleasure to be here.

Gresham Harkless 01:05

Yeah, definitely. It's a pleasure to have you on. And what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Judy so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing.

And Judy is the CEO of ProResource, a social media agency that helps CEOs create a strong personal presence online and use social media to advance their business goals.

The company has a unique methodology for personal branding that focuses on sharing thought leadership, building an audience, and moving people to action so clients can grow their businesses faster and make a bigger dent in the universe.

Judy's network includes more than 15,000 followers on LinkedIn and 4,000 on Twitter. She blogs, speaks often at industry events and has written an e-book and many articles. So Judy, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Judy Schramm 01:48

Yes, I am excited.

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Gresham Harkless 01:50

Awesome. Let's do it. So the first question I had was to hear a little bit more about your CEO story. What led you to start your business?

Judy Schramm 01:57

Well, this business is actually my fourth and it grew out of the third business, which was a full service marketing and PR firm. And what we noticed is that some of our clients were more successful than others.

And we took a look at that trying to figure out what made the difference. Was it the budget? Did companies that spent more on marketing get better results?

Was it people who targeted different markets? Was it B2B instead of B2C? And what we found out was that the companies that did the best job with relationship were much more successful than the others.

And so what we tried to do is understand how that worked, right? What was it about the relationships?

And we discovered that it was the companies that found the right people and then did the best job of staying in touch with them that got the best results.

And so what we decided to do was start a business that focused on helping people build the right business relationships and stay in touch with people effectively. And that ended up growing into ProResource.

Gresham Harkless 03:08

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, I love that concept and that ideal because I have to say a lot of times that if you can use kind of like the digital, all these kind of technological tools.

But you can build relationships, you can have that personal relationship and have those connections. If you can find that sweet spot, then you can kind of, I always say, that's kind of the holy grail.

So it's great that you've been able to kind of see that, but also see how you can help out and build a business around helping others to do that.

Judy Schramm 03:32

Exactly. Yeah. And we started it before social media really took off. But once social media took off, we realized that was the perfect way to build relationships.

And we fell madly in love with LinkedIn. And we've been very LinkedIn centric ever since.

Gresham Harkless 03:48

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, you guys are definitely innovators. So I wanted to hear, I guess, a little bit more on how you're helping your clients to do that.

So what are you doing to help support the clients? What kind of things do you do to help them on LinkedIn?

Judy Schramm 03:58

Well, first of all, we help them create a strong personal presence. So we focus on branding, individual branding, and how can you create a brand for yourself in social media that gives people the information you want them to have so that they're comfortable with you, impressed by you, and then ready to take that next step.

And the services that we offer include things like LinkedIn profile makeovers, and then blog writing.

We help people with video because both blogging and video are really good ways to tell your story.

And then we also do social media coaching so that executives can appreciate once they look good, how do they use this to achieve their business goals faster?

Gresham Harkless 04:45

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And it's great that you touch on all those different aspects of LinkedIn because LinkedIn, like most social media networks, there's just so much there and so much to do that sometimes people I find it.

Maybe you can let us know if you find the same thing, that people get overwhelmed with all the different opportunities there are. So it's great to have, kind of like you mentioned, a methodology or a plan by which you can do that.

Judy Schramm 05:05

That's exactly right. And especially because we work mostly with CEOs, and CEOs have so little time they're typically wearing a dozen hats, and there's just no margin.

And a lot of them come to social media with the idea that it's going to be very time consuming, that they're supposed to tweet 20 times a day, and spend hours in social media, and that's what it takes to be successful.

And that's not right. And so what we do is we help them understand that for someone with very limited time, how they can leverage social media to accomplish what they want to.

Gresham Harkless 05:42

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And like you mentioned it, because there's only so many hours in a day and any CEOs juggling so many different things to be able to do that and do that efficiently is definitely of great importance, I imagine, to all the CEOs out there.

And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this is what you feel kind of distinguishes you or sets you apart. So do you have a secret sauce for yourself or your organization?

Judy Schramm 06:03

So yes, yeah, we do. So first of all, our focus is very different from most agencies in that we work with individual executives. We don't focus on building the company brand.

We work what the specific individual needs to do to create their own brand and build the relationships that they need to build.

And so we have a process for doing that, that is extremely lightweight for the executive, because we know the people who work with us are very time pressed and we want them to spend as little time as possible and get the absolute maximum results.

And we have developed a whole methodology around how to do that, how to make that happen. Yeah. And I'll just share It's something I use. Yeah, absolutely. Because I'm a CEO too.

Gresham Harkless 06:49

Yeah, I was gonna ask you, could you tell us a little bit more about that methodology?

Judy Schramm 06:51

Yeah, sure. So one of the things that I do is I take advantage of our own services to build my own brand and to create my own presence on LinkedIn.

And so all of these time-saving hacks and the efficiency tricks, we not only deliver them to clients, but I use them myself.

Gresham Harkless 07:11

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And now I was gonna ask you for what I call a CEO hack, and this might be an Apple book or maybe it's one of the habits that you have, but it's something that you feel makes you more effective and efficient.

Judy Schramm 07:22

So it will not surprise you to know that my hack involves LinkedIn.

Gresham Harkless 07:27

I figured that.

Judy Schramm 07:30

And so one of the things that is really critical for you as a CEO is to stay on top of what's going on with your clients your prospects your partners your employees and and media right.

And so what we encourage people to do and what I do is follow all of those people, companies, and topics in your LinkedIn profile.

And then what you'll find is that when you go to the homepage of your LinkedIn profile or when you log in in the app, your news feed is filled with the news that you need about all of the people who matter to you.

And it makes it very easy for you to stay on top of changes in your network and changes in business, business announcements, good news, milestones, awards, but it's also very easy then to reach out to people and congratulate them and stay in touch with them.

Gresham Harkless 08:30

Awesome, awesome, I love that hack. And especially because at the heart of what you were saying, you've consistently said is that it's about building relationships.

So you have the opportunity to kind of curate it sounds like your own feed so that it can be everything that you're looking for, whether it be industry or, like you said, influencers or media people or connections or friends or just people you want to know what's going on and you're able to kind of build those relationships through that.

Judy Schramm 08:52

Exactly. Because one of the greatest gifts you can give somebody is paying attention to them, the gift of your time.

And so when you show people that you're paying attention to them, that really makes them feel good about you and about the relationship.

And when you use your LinkedIn News feed to do this, you're doing it with very little time and effort, but people feel like you're paying attention to them.

And that supports your business relationships and everything you get comes from business relationships.

Gresham Harkless 09:22

Exactly. It's often said and always said in business your network is your net worth and being able to build those relationships and connections and build that network and using LinkedIn as a resource to do that definitely seems like a great way to do that.

Judy Schramm 09:36

That is absolutely the case.

Gresham Harkless 09:38

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice, or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Judy Schramm 09:48

I would tell myself to stop worrying, especially when I was younger. I was a big warrior. It was I thought of all the things that could possibly go wrong and all the things that could possibly would go right.

And I had plans for everything. And it just wasted a whole lot of energy that I didn't need to spend.

And I think that's true of a lot of CEOs. Have a plan, do the work, and trust the process. Just go for it with gusto and enjoy the trip.

Gresham Harkless 10:17

Yeah, definitely. I think a lot of times, like, because there's so many things to kind of worry about, and sometimes even when you're building something completely from scratch, there's so many things you can worry about.

But you can spend so much energy there where you could be spending much more of your time on other opportunities or places, or maybe even LinkedIn, for example, and then you would have a lot more opportunity to take advantage of.

Judy Schramm 10:38

Yes, that's true.

Gresham Harkless 10:42

Awesome, awesome. That's exactly the case. Well, perfect. Well, now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Judy, I want to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Judy Schramm 10:54

So to me, CEO means you're driving a car and that's the biggest difference between being a one person business and a one person business.

You are the car, you're the one who does all the work and you make the sales and you do the marketing and you provide the customer support and you deal with the bookkeeping and all of those things.

And when you become the CEO, all of a sudden you're orchestrating what everybody else does.

And you're responsible for it, you're setting the direction, but other people are doing the work.

And so to me, it's somebody who's coordinating everything and leading the company where it needs to go.

Gresham Harkless 11:34

Absolutely. That makes perfect sense. And I love that keyword, that buzzword orchestrating, because a lot of times you are in front of the symphony and you're telling the people that are really good at all the different instruments how exactly they can use them and make one beautiful harmonious sound.

Judy Schramm 11:46

Exactly.

Gresham Harkless 11:48

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Judy, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there is anything additional you wanted to tell us about ProResource or LinkedIn.

And of course, how best people can get a hold of you, get in touch with you, and find out about your e-books and all the awesome things you're doing.

Judy Schramm 12:04

Oh, wonderful. Well, we have a lot of free information on the website, ebook, checklists, examples of strong LinkedIn profiles, and people who are doing a great job with Twitter.

And so that's all at ProResource.com. And I am happy to answer questions. Just reach out to me on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com/in/Judy Schramm. And and of course on Twitter @ProResource.

Gresham Harkless 12:34

Awesome, awesome, awesome. We'll make sure to have those links in the show notes just so that anybody can click through and follow up with you, Judy, and contact you.

But again, I truly appreciate you for all the awesome things that you're doing and spending some time with us today. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Judy Schramm 12:47

It's my pleasure, Gresh. Thanks for the opportunity.

Outro 12:50

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.

Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a 5 star rating. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

IAM2296 – Gresh’s Shares About the Importance of Harnessing Collaboration in Business

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 06:16:39 -0500

Gresham discusses how stepping away from your business—whether for vacation or other reasons—can be a sign of a healthy business.

He shares his experiences shaped his entrepreneurial spirit and desire to connect with others.

Gresham discusses the importance of building a media presence in today’s business world, stating that every entrepreneur is essentially in the media business.

He emphasizes that entrepreneurs should not try to be everywhere, but focus on strategic, targeted approaches that help them connect with their ideal clients.

The conversation highlights the value of joining groups like the I AM The Brand Business Accelerator to learn from others, ask questions, and find mentorship and accountability.

Podcast Link: WellNest Global

Check out our CEO Hack Buzz Newsletter–our premium newsletter with hacks and nuggets to level up your organization. Sign up HERE.

Transcription:

The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!

Intro 00:00

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I wanted to share with you one of the episodes that I was a guest on for someone else's podcast.

I always talk about how important it is to build a media company. One of the next best things you can do is be on somebody else's media company.

So I had the pleasure of being a guest on this podcast and I wanted to share a little snippet with you because it would help support the 8 business pillars. We've really been trying to focus on with a lot more of our content, a lot more of the solo episodes that I'm doing.

So make sure of course that you subscribe to our podcast, but of course you take some time out, check out the show notes and subscribe to the podcast that I've been featured on as well too.

And get to learn about some of those 8 business pillars and how you can continue to kind of leverage and build that up. So you can go from builder to architect to a course at Rockstar and Luminary. So this is Gresh signing out. I hope you enjoyed this I AM CEO special episode.

Valarie Angle Roberts 00:53

I love that you brought up the collaborative aspect because for me, like that's the most fun part of business is being able to collaborate.

And there was like the aha moment for me when I realized like, oh, like, I don't have to do everything myself.

I can actually outsource delegate or whatever to other people who love doing certain aspects because there's certain things that I don't love doing that still need to get done.

And, it's like, oh, it's okay to partner with experts and let them take that load off my plate. It doesn't mean I'm lesser of an entrepreneur. Actually, it means I'm smarter at that, right, for delegating?

Gresham Harkless 01:35

Yeah, absolutely. It's so funny you said that. I remember listening to, I think I was talking with a coach or something.

And they said that a lot of times when we go on vacations, or we're able to step away from the business while we can kind of sometimes feel guilty and feel like, we're not doing everything. It's actually a really big sign of having a healthy business.

And I think probably even being a healthy person because once you start to understand who you are, your superpowers, you start to realize you don't fight all the crimes, you don't do all the things, you try to collaborate with people so you can have the super friends and you can, take on the world, not because you're doing everything.

[restrict paid=”true”]

But because you know who you are and you're able to find the people that can do the things that you may not be as strong with or don't really like to do.

Valarie Angle Roberts 02:16

Right. For sure. My background is education. And I started out teaching, then went into coaching and administration and all that stuff.

But I can remember in my very early days, one of the strong things that stood out in my mind was, my instructors would say, you'll know you're a good teacher when you can walk away from your classroom and, or take a vacation and your room runs itself. That's when you know you've made it.

And it's so much like that in business when you know that you have figured out like systems, marketing, collaboration, teamwork, and you don't just crash and burn if you wanna walk away for a week or 2, it's still going.

Gresham Harkless 03:05

Yeah, it's a powerful place to be.

Valarie Angle Roberts 03:06

It is, it's a wonderful place. And you talked a little bit about that. You have all the education, you have all the letters behind your name and the degrees and things like that.

And you still weren't necessarily locked in on like, I'm gonna be an entrepreneur. When, how did when did that creative spark?

Cause I think that's what it is for an entrepreneur. It's like, it's not enough for me just to go do what you want me to do, I need to like do some of the things that are in my heart to do and follow my creative website. When did you kind of know that that was what was for you?

Gresham Harkless 03:42

Yeah, I think that's a really great question. It's always like difficult to know exactly when but I know when I entered into undergrad, I feel like everything happened too fast before I knew I was graduating and I didn't go far, but I feel like I still wasn't home.

And we were talking a little bit before about getting away from the nest. So getting away from the nest was definitely a transition.

But I came into undergrad and I came in as an undecided major because I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do, who I wanted to be, just all those things and the heaviness of trying to make a decision on your major to decide what were you going to do for the rest of your life, like really weighed on me.

And I know there's a lot more more difficult decisions you have to make on a daily basis now, but then that's what I really felt.

But for me, I actually went back to like who and what I did when I was a kid. So I mentioned a little bit about being like the military Brad and not moving around a tremendous amount.

But one of the pivotal moments I remember in my life is my dad was in the military. So he's in the Air Force and he got restation when I was 10 years old.

So he went to an entirely different country and I honestly boohoo cried like a baby because that was my partner in crime. That was my basketball buddy, just all the things.

And when that happened, it of course changed our lives a lot. And we couldn't and didn't have like all these things that we have instantly at our fingertips of being able to FaceTime, Zoom, Skype, all those things.

So at that time, we used to send emails to my dad and just let him know what was going on in the family.

But I also had this idea of starting a family newspaper. In that family newspaper, I started to collect a lot of the stories that were going on in our family.

So everything from a squirrel that got into my grandma's house to a wedding that was planned but didn't necessarily happen. I left that as a cliffhanger, of course, but I did and collected like all these stories and we used to send that Medicare package to go over to my dad and he would put honey buns and all his favorite sweets and all those things.

But when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do who I was frankly, I went back to that story now don't get me wrong I did other things like I sold potato chips on the playground and got my parents to go to MJ Designs and get beads so I can make necklaces and sell those and did all those things.

But I felt like that story was a little bit more unique than the rest. I didn't know a lot of people that had family newspapers that they did for 2 years, and let alone my mom kept them all as well.

So I was able to kind of go through and was like, where did I come up with this? And of course, if my mom's listening to this, she gets all the credit.

I'm supposed to give her all the credit, but in reality, I felt like that was a little bit more of me hearing who I was. So, fast forward a lot of years, I decided to make decisions a little bit more in align with what I felt like was my calling, the thing that I should be doing.

Not that I decided it, but frankly, I felt like it decided me was chosen for me. And I started started to make decisions based off of that.

So I definitely feel like I'm a lot more aware of who I am. And I'm constantly like always trying to understand more and more and more about what that entrepreneurship looks like.

But I always put that through a filter of like, what would a 10 year old Gresh journalism media company magnet that's creating the family newspaper do? And that's a lot of like high filter everything through.

Valarie Angle Roberts 06:58

Super cool. That's a great story. I love it. And kudos to your moms for cheering you on, supporting you and giving you all the tools that you needed to do that.

Because I think when we're doing work that resonates with our soul and our vibes with our life and it's just in alignment with who we are as a person, it just feels so good and like, that's the sweet spot of life.

Like not only do I love what I'm doing, doesn't mean it's not hard sometimes or stressful or you know, all of that, but when I'm doing what I love and I'm having fun doing it and I'm being fully myself, like that just, it's like, ah, that's what I'm here for.

So it sounds like that's the path you're on. And that's what we want to do for so many people, especially in the holistic entrepreneurship realm, is give them the tools and the beliefs.

Let them have that belief to hang on to that, you know what? Yeah, you can have this life that you dream of.

You can do what it is that's in your heart that you're passionate about, that you love. There's so many people out here to support you and here's your toolbox. Like here's how to get started. Here are the people who are going to help you on your way.

So that's what we're doing in I Am The Brand. But tell us more about your business, what you're doing now, who you help, and how you do that.

Gresham Harkless 08:14

Yeah, absolutely. So I kind of have 2 things that keep me busy. So I have Blue 16 Media. We provide a lot of website design support, SEO services for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners, really creating that foundational aspect to make sure that you are able to get your name out there.

You're able to talk about the things that you do. But a lot of, I think, what is setting us apart is my marketing philosophy, I always say, is everybody's in the media business, whether they know it or not, you are a media company.

And so our media company is CB Nation. And to kind of give you a little bit more insight, I love that you said that so many times that we think that we need things externally to be great.

And don't get me wrong, we can always improve and we could take steps forward. But even these holistic entrepreneurs, like you often are looking externally to say, I need XYZ, and A, B, and C.

And don't get me wrong, that can help amplify you. But don't forget about the things that you have.

So for me and for us, a lot of what we kind of talk about and recommend the clients and preach is really around understanding that you can build that media company.

And the media company we look at is a lot maybe broader than sometimes people give credit to.

So we have things like blogs, podcasts, video content. We have social media platforms, all these things that are at our fingertips that give us the opportunity to be able to connect with our ideal clients.

But you just have to be, and want to be a lot more strategic about it, because as much as we want to do all the things and be everywhere, it's really challenging, and it's also very expensive to be able to do that.

And I think there's even a saying that if you're, if everybody is your client, then nobody is your client.

So you want to try to hone in as much as possible to do that. So what we really do is we help people to build their media companies, CB Nation is our media company.

So we have a daily podcast that have done over 1,600 episodes, blog posts, video content, all to help CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners to succeed.

And that's a lot of what we kind of recommend the clients, maybe not that much to an extreme, but really to understand that you have this media, these opportunities that are literally at your fingertips to be able to help change and impact the lives of the people you wanna serve the most.

So how can you strategically do that? And that's where we try to help people navigate that question and answers.

Valarie Angle Roberts 10:34

Amazing. And so how can people find out more? Of course, if you guys are in the accelerator, you're going to be able to find Gresham's guide and find how to connect with him inside there.

But for those of you who are just tuning in and seeing this maybe on YouTube, how can they find you and learn more about what you do?

Gresham Harkless 10:51

Yeah, absolutely. Like you said, the best place, if you are in this group, I definitely would love to see you there. I think it'll be phenomenal just myself and so many other phenomenal people that are doing awesome things.

But you can, of course, go over to my site, iamgresh.com. I have lots of different resources as well there. Also say a link to get back to the Accelerate as well.

So really trying to make sure that you get to learn from myself, but so many other phenomenal people.

But that's where I have links to kind of everything that I've been working on, but really, helping you to kind of hone in on what can help you to make the impact that you were really called to do.

Valarie Angle Roberts 11:23

Perfect. That's awesome. But what are you excited about, Gresham? What are you looking forward to sharing?

And I know you're enjoying getting to know the other experts in there already, but what else are you looking forward to?

Gresham Harkless 11:35

Yeah, I think that one of the beautiful things about getting the opportunity to collaborate is you get, of course, to have those ideas. You get to learn from each other, which I think is really beautiful.

But I think so many times we can get locked in on the things that we know. And when you see people doing their, I always say if you run your own race, you can't lose.

But when you start to see people running their race and you start to say, that looks really creative, it starts to, I think, help to amplify who you are.

Not necessarily you copy them, but you get the opportunity to see those creative juices going.

You're like, that's really cool. Maybe I can create something that's different or unique or some aspect of that.

And I think that's really where it gets really, it goes to an entirely different level is to be able to kind of see those things.

And of course, be able to collaborate in so many different things. But I think, what's the phrase is, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

And I think when you start to see yourself win, but you also get to see other people win, that's when it's just like a phenomenal environment.

So I love everything you're doing. And I think everybody will have a phenomenal time there.

Valarie Angle Roberts 12:39

Thank you so much. Yeah, so many, you said so many keywords there that like ring my bell, right?

So like that, I feel like you have done the groundwork to contribute to this for sure. But like this, our generations here, this group of people, doing business online in the world right now, we're really creating a powerful shift toward collaboration, win-win scenarios, empowerment, inspiration.

And just like you said, it's not about, oh, you're doing this and it's working, so I'm gonna copy that, because that doesn't work.

But it's like, you're doing this and it's working, so I'm inspired to now do what I is in my heart to do and now I'm motivated, empowered and inspired to do that.

So that's what it's all about like finding those people who want to help you light that fire and take you to the next level.

And I promise when you find the community that you vibe with and you're willing to learn from, put your pride aside, bring a little humility to the table, be like, I really am not good at that, or I don't know that, or I'd rather delegate that, whatever it might be.

That's when you're really gonna elevate and accelerate your business. I love everything you said there. Thank you so much.

Gresham Harkless 14:00

Absolutely.

Valarie Angle Roberts 14:01

Well, we are open for business in the I AM The Brand Business Accelerator. If you are in there, hop over there now.

Jump in and introduce yourself if you haven't already. If you haven't joined yet, go ahead and do that today. iamthebrand.info. It's $111. More than worth the investment. You're going to get so much more return back on that than you're putting in financially.

And we promise that we're going to deliver the motivation and the inspiration. So jump on in there and join us. And Gresh, I want to give you the last word here before we wrap it up. Any last thoughts or words that you want to share?

Gresham Harkless 14:40

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's an incredible opportunity, so I love and I appreciate you again, being able to provide that.

But one of the things that I always kind of keep in mind that and I told myself, especially in the beginning days, and I still tell myself to this day is, don't tell me the sky is the limit when there's footprints on the moon.

And it's one of my favorite quotes, because I think so many times we don't realize what's possible until we start taking those steps.

And we also don't realize that when we take those steps, we don't have to take them by ourselves.

So being able to kind of see like the possibilities are infinite and what you can create. And if you just take those steps, maybe not be comfortable and take those steps, then that's only going to give you the opportunity to make an impact and do what you were ultimately called and created to do.

So don't allow the noise to affect you in such a way where you don't take that step. Just could take that step. Do it scared. We all have done it scared.

We still are probably scared in some ways, but just remember to keep taking steps and continue to try to go forward. And at the end of the day, I look forward to seeing you there.

Valarie Angle Roberts 15:43

Amazing, I couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you so much, Gresh. You have a wonderful day.

Outro

Understanding Your Target Market and Setting Goals for Your Content Marketing Efforts

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 04:58:49 -0500

On this episode, Gresh discusses the importance of building a media company and how to leverage content to grow your business. He shares valuable insights on understanding your target market and setting goals for your content marketing efforts.

Gresh emphasizes the importance of understanding your target market and their pain points.

He highlights the significance of setting clear goals for your content marketing strategy.

Additionally, Gresh explains the concept of the long tail in content marketing and how it can be used to target niche searches and drive more traffic to your website.

Business Pillar: Visibility

Episode Link: Relate Studios

Check out our CEO Hack Buzz Newsletter–our premium newsletter with hacks and nuggets to level up your organization. Sign up HERE.

Full Interview:

Transcription:

The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!

Gresham Harkless Intro 00:01

Hello, Hello, Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I wanted to share with you one of the episodes that I was a guest on for someone else's podcast. I always talk about how important it is to build a media company. One of the next best things you can do is be on somebody else's media company. So I had the pleasure of being a guest on this podcast and I wanted to share a little snippet with you because it would help support the eight business pillars we've really been trying to focus on with a lot more of our content, a lot more of the solo episodes that I'm doing.

So make sure of course that you subscribe to our podcast, but of course you take some time out. Check out the show notes to subscribe to the podcast that I've been featured on as well too, and get to learn about some of those eight business pillars and how you can continue to leverage and build that up. So you can go from builder to architect to a chorus at Rockstar and Luminary. So this is Gresh signing out. I hope you enjoyed this I AM CEO special episode.

Juma Bannister 00:54

So tell us a little bit about what you do and how you help your clients make useful content.

Gresham Harkless 01:00

Yeah, absolutely. So we're all in the media business as I usually say. I say you are a media company. That's my whole kind of marketing philosophy. A lot of what we do is around like website design, support and SEO services. So we try to provide that foundational level. But as really well, SEO is very all encompassing of most things that you do in marketing, but I'm going back to that being a media company having that mentality, that mindset, it's all around understanding how you can create content for the people that you're trying to target.

[restrict paid=”true”]

So way back when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, how I would build out the business, how I would try to distinguish myself. I'd already been building some things around CBNation, which is the content and information for entrepreneurs and business owners. And so I decided to just marry those two because I knew that entrepreneurs, CEOs, business owners are always trying to get their name and information out there. So I try to use content in terms of building that media company to try to connect, build relationships with the people that we're ultimately trying to serve.

Juma Bannister 02:01

Do people give you push back about the concept of being a media company?

Gresham Harkless 02:05

I think so in the sense of understanding like media in what that looks like. I think that's where the push back comes in, because automatically, whenever we hear the word media, we're thinking of something. The way that I really look at media is simply the creation of content. That content can be very broad. If you really think about it offline, when you're handing out your business card or you're talking with somebody, a networking event, to some degree, you're creating content. If you're online, obviously you can create blogs, podcasts, social media content. All those things are content.

So when I look at it, and as I've started to even evolve at how I looked at it, it's a lot broader than sometimes people think. And I think when people like redefine it and look at it from that perspective, they start to see that, hey, I am actually talking about my business, talking about my organization, talking about the things that I do on a regular basis. So if I started to look at that a little bit more with a broader scope, maybe then maybe I will understand that, hey, I am in the media business, whether I like social media or I don't like social media, I have a podcast or I have a blog or whatever that is, I'm always creating that content.

Juma Bannister 03:13

Yeah, so you create stuff for small to medium businesses And what you say to them is that whether you like it or not, you are a media company. It's something that you're just gonna have to accept and you have to put your content out there in order to market your business. And so this is something that you tell them. And is that something that they eventually get a hold of, or is it something that takes a while for people to understand how it will work for them?

Gresham Harkless 03:42

Yeah. Funny enough, Juma is different for everybody, but I feel like as we're moving more and more and more to the importance of content and as we're a lot of people call this the content golden age where because there's so many different ways you can create content. I think when we were talking about 10, 20 years ago, we didn't have the technology that we have in our back pocket right now, which is the smartphone. And now the ability to create content is so much easier. I think people have so much more comfortability, if that's even a word, at being able to do that.

So I think that along with people being a little bit more open to it and having the technology and having different tools, we talk about AI and things like that make it a little bit easier. I think it's becoming something more and more and more where you don't get as much push back, you don't get as much hesitation is something that needs to be done. And I think many more business owners and entrepreneurs and CEOs are stepping into that.

Juma Bannister 04:39

Yeah. And I think that's true. How do you explain how people can use their time efficiently in order to create that content?

Gresham Harkless 04:45

Yeah. I think speaking directly to what you said as well, too. I think what we're seeing is as people are able to create more and more content, it's also getting noisier. So I think also what's happening is there's a huge burgeoning of and growing of the personal brand, so to speak, where people don't want to just hear the content. They want to hear who's behind the content. They want to hear why you created it and so many things like that.

So to really answer your question, I think it's marrying those two parts and especially going into understanding exactly like who's going to be creating this content if you're going to be creating it or you're potentially having an agency or some somewhere in between you doing that. I think you really start out with just understanding like what are your superpowers? What are you comfortable with? What do you do sometimes naturally? If you prefer to speak and talk, maybe you're doing a podcast, maybe that's going to be like your foundational piece of content.

If you enjoy writing, maybe you're going to do a blog. If you enjoy being a little bit of both, maybe you're going to be on camera. So I think it's really understanding when you're thinking about time, you're honest about your time, but you're honest about what might be a quote unquote easier way to create at least that first piece of content. And if you're thinking about doing it yourself, think about what is coming a little bit more naturally and you can use that as a easier way to create content, spend less time and spend less of those resources.

Juma Bannister 06:03

So you're saying that everyone is different, not everyone will double down on the same type of content. And it's not a case of doing everything, it's a case of choosing something that works for you, yeah?

Gresham Harkless 06:14

Yeah, absolutely, play to your superpowers.

Juma Bannister 06:17

All right, that's a really great opening. I'm talking about becoming a media company. Let's move on to some of the more specific things about becoming a media company. And there's something that you see that you need to ask before you start with your marketing. There, I think there are three things, your goals, your target market and your resources. So tell us how those three things work in planning your marketing.

Gresham Harkless 06:41

Yeah, I think to start everything off is I think so many times we hear about all these different ways that we can create content that we can be our own media companies. I like to call them ingredients. So when you're going to the grocery store, you figure out what ingredients you're going to put into your cart, what are you going to use? And I think we can always rush into that. There's a new platform that we need to jump on. Do all the things and be active.

And while there's a space for that to be able to create, to test out and do those things, I think those three foundational questions are so huge because it's going to allow you to understand what ingredients you're going to use, why you're going to use them, and be a lot more strategic in your marketing, which I think doesn't happen a lot for people in general, but definitely even for us marketers as well too, is that we wanna try to test out those things.

We wanna try to be in those places, but are we really being strategic with how we're doing it? And really understanding first and foremost, as you said, who are you targeting? And there's a word avatar, and that's literally just painting the picture of the people that you're trying to target. You're talking about age, you're talking about gender, you're talking about location. All those things are gonna be important for your avatar, but really understand and try to delve down a little bit deeper into the things that keep them might be their goals and might be the things that like all those questions ask.

And I think that that first question is huge because you want to paint that picture of who you're targeting, not just the age and demographics and all those things, but also the intentions of what they have, what keeps them up at night, how and where is there essentially a gap in their life that they want to accomplish? Because when you start creating content and thinking about what ingredients, what platforms you're going to use, it's going to help you to make sure that you're drilling down on those people that you're targeting.

After that, you really wanna be clear on the goals that you have. If you have an e-commerce business versus you being a speaker versus you being an author, you're gonna have different goals for your marketing initiatives and what you're doing. Essentially, you're trying to sell an e-book because the e-book is going to give people an opportunity to join your your email list, because on your blog, you're sending out emails that are going to have affiliate links. That's going to be completely different from somebody that might have a new t-shirt line.

And is it trying to sell t-shirts and they want people to go to their website and actually buy those t-shirts or hats or whatever it might be. So it's just understanding what success means because the way that you focus on your marketing, the way you put that blend together is going to be different depending on that goals. And then we already touched on the most powerful question, which I think sometimes we're not as honest about how to answer that and what that looks like, which is the resources. And we're automatically thinking resources. It's all about money. How much money are we spending? What's the budget and all those things? But it's time and money as well too. If you're bootstrapping it, maybe you have more time than you have money.

And if you're a little bit further along on the journey, maybe you have more money than you have time or maybe that starts to transition as you grow get clients and customers and so on and so forth so you just want to be really clear on the resources where you are along that journey because when we're figuring out what ingredients we're gonna use whether we're figuring out we're gonna do a podcast versus having a blog, if you're going to be DIY in it, you're going to put a lot more sweat equity into it. So you don't want to start something that you're not going to be consistent with because at the end of the day, that's going to be 1 of the most powerful and big things that you want to make sure that you stay with.

Juma Bannister 10:16

Okay, great. That's a really great overview of target market goals and resources. Let's dive a little deeper into each of those areas. And I want to first start, I want to talk about goals, but I want to first start with target market, because I think that is something that people really struggle with. It's something that they don't know how to determine. They might say, who am I talking to really? And they don't know how they're gonna figure that out. The first question I wanna ask you is, how do you find out what keeps people up at night? What is, is there a method that you can use to discover that?

Gresham Harkless 10:50

Yeah, I think the best thing I usually say when you're thinking about target market, especially if you've been in business for a while, and let's just say you have one or even a handful of clients is really trying to understand from them what keeps them up at night. And I think the best way you can do that is figure out like how your solution probably helps that. Why do they become your client or customer?

So I think whenever you're trying to figure out your ideal clients really start to look internally and start to say, okay, this is the client that I want to work with and I want to have that person come through the door literally or the door virtually over and over again. And those things that usually keep us up at night is another way of saying like, what problems are they having? So when you start to understand that if you have those clients, what solution are you providing to that problem? And when you start to think about that, then you start to close the gap a little bit on what those things are.

And maybe when you start to create content and information start to figure out how you're going to do that you're thinking more solution based you're thinking more how can I be of value even for us one of the big things that I know that we help out with is visibility by having a podcast a blog all those things that helps out with visibility for the people that we're trying to serve? So thinking strategically about what that is and what that looks like. If you have a t-shirt line, what exactly are you doing to help to support the clients that you work with? Are there going to be inspirational teas that is going to help them going through a bad day. Just really think strategically about what that is. Are you a real estate agent? Are people looking for a place to buy? Do they want to enjoy home ownership?

Just have those ideas and those questions so you can really not just say, hey, this is what I do, but this is how I'm going to make your life better. This is how I'm going to improve your day to day operation, the way that you're, you know, walking through life, the way that you look at yourself, just all those things start to really think to the human part of how you're providing those solutions and really start to understand that because that's how you're ultimately going to not just sell your widget or sell the thing that you're providing, but actually provide true transformation. And that's what you ultimately want to do with your product or service.

Juma Bannister 12:57

Well, that's great. So I know goals is 1 big thing when it comes to creating content and when it comes to setting, where is your marketing going to take you? Tell us how you help clients set those goals or how clients are able to set goals for themselves.

Gresham Harkless 13:11

Yeah, I think the biggest misconception around marketing is that you snap your fingers, you put up a Facebook Ad, you do some SEO, you create a blog post and clients run in after that. And I think that's really big misconception around marketing. So I think it's trying to understand from clients what success looks like, have them paint that picture as much as possible. And then you try to figure out what goals can make that happen.

Specifically, like we work a lot with CEOs. So a lot of it is, of course you want to show up if people are typing in that most competitive keyword, but how can you strategically start to move towards that? So it's understanding what might be the quote unquote minor goals that help you to create that domino effect towards the major goal. And I think that's where you start asking those questions. You start to say, okay, if you're a plumber and you want to show up when there's a leak, is there something else that might be an indicator that you can start to get clients or customers for that will potentially turn into those bigger opportunities? Or is there a certain city outside of where you're located that's less competitive, but you can start to rank there.

And it's really just understanding and looking at it for more of a long-term focus so that you can create goals so that you can get those quote-unquote smaller wins so that it can lead to the bigger wins. And I think one of the beautiful things about digital marketing is there's literally opportunities everywhere and online there's opportunities everywhere. There's this concept in SEO called the long tail and the idea of the long tail is that those quote unquote small wins actually end up being more than the big, when you were ultimately searching for. So I think when we were talking with clients, we're trying to understand, have that picture painted, but also try to see how that can translate to an overall strategy to ultimately get to where they want to be.

Juma Bannister 14:59

Let's talk a little bit about what you just said about the long tail, because I know there's a terminology called long tail keywords that you can use. Is that what you're referring to? What is that about?

Gresham Harkless 15:10

Yeah, absolutely. There's a book I think was written back in the 90s, I believe, by Chris Anderson, I beli

Understanding Human Behavior and Leveraging on Technology to Widen Business Visibility

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 04:55:51 -0500

On this episode, Gresh emphasizes the importance of asking the right questions when using AI tools for content creation. He recommends using AI content writers like ChatGPT and Google Bard to streamline the content creation process.

Gresh sees AI as a tool that can free up time for more creative pursuits, allowing for greater focus on creativity and innovation. Gresh believes that SEO will continue to evolve, with a focus on understanding human behavior and leveraging technology to enhance search experiences.

Gresh shares his journey of building a media company and leveraging different streams of revenue, including digital marketing, podcasting, and affiliate marketing.

He emphasizes the importance of creating valuable resources and supporting community initiatives to drive business growth and impact.

Business Pillar: Visibility & Technology

Episode Link: We Rock Digital Marketing Amplified Podcast

Check out our CEO Hack Buzz Newsletter–our premium newsletter with hacks and nuggets to level up your organization. Sign up HERE.

Full Interview:

Transcription:

The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!

Gresham Harkless Intro 00:00

Hello, Hello, Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. And I wanted to share with you one of the episodes that I was a guest on for someone else's podcast. I always talk about how important it is to build a media company. One of the next best things you can do is be on somebody else's media company. So I had the pleasure of being a guest on this podcast. And I wanted to share a little snippet with you because it would help support the Eight Business Pillars we've really been trying to focus on with a lot more of our content, a lot more of the solo episodes that I'm doing.

So make sure of course that you subscribe to our podcast, but of course you take some time out. Check out the show notes to subscribe to the podcast that I've been featured on as well, too, and get to learn about some of those Eight Business Pillars and how you can continue to leverage and build that up. So you can go from builder to architect to a course at Rockstar and Luminary. So this is Gresh signing out. I hope you enjoyed this I AM CEO special episode.

Daniel Bisset 00:53

Are you using AI, Gresh, in any of your content creation? If so, what tools and how?

Gresham Harkless 00:55

I think what will be the big opportunity for marketers will be for people that are creating content and even leaders in general is how to synthesize that AI information, whether to make sure that you're asking the right questions for which is like very underrated to be able to say, okay, the AI is not going to go inside your brain, at least not yet, to figure out exactly what it is that you're trying to ask. It's going to have to have that information asked in a certain type of way.

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So I think that's probably the big opportunity is to be able to use the strategy and to leverage that. And it's good at everything. So we use it in different tools. We use AI content writers, of course, chat GPT and Google Bard, or of course, the biggest ones, that everyone's talking about because they're pretty much free to use to some degree. So you tested out some of those using everything from ad copy to actually looking at how blog posts are created and things like that. But I think once, if you assume that everybody's going to use AI, then it's always like, how do you go to extra mile?

And I think that's your mile is going to be coming back to those people that are able to synthesize that information and go a step further to provide a quote from this respective person only whatever that might be or what that looks like for the content is really like how you're gonna be able to go that extra mile.

Tricia Ulberg 02:18

How do you see this affecting your ability to write creative content? Do you think, feel like this is going to be something that you are going to work in tandem with your own style? Is that how you see that working?

Gresham Harkless02:30

Yeah, I think it's basically like a cheat code. It's gonna allow you to get past some of the things so that you can work on more of the creative things. I think I have this quote that I always say, the systems will set you free. And I think AI is one of those systems because I think it will allow the opportunity to be more creative because a lot of the nuts and bolts and things that we had to take more time or spend more energy on are moved to the side. So now you have a starter as far as what you want to create and then you get to add more creativity, you get to spend more energy there. So I definitely foresee myself and I think many others being able to use the AI tools that get started get a baseline maybe even kick around ideas and then you can tap in to your creativity from there.

Tricia Ulberg 03:11

Okay like that.

Daniel Bisset 03:12

So I've been using AI since it came out. I totally geeked out on it. I've got GPT Pro. I'm not going to lie. Totally. OK, yeah. All right. $29 a month. Hell yeah. Let's just see what I can do with this. And I've tested AutoGPT to see if it can basically run itself. And it does. It's neat to some degree. With content creation and the fact that we can take somebody's voice and use a tool to learn their voice and then recreate it we can take a tool to take somebody's face and then manipulate it. Where do we go from here as content creators?

Like the OG content creators, what in your opinion and I know here's the crystal ball aggression. It's all on you. You've got to get this right. No pressure. But how do we protect our clients' best interest? Yes, we can use ChatGPT, just like you're saying, to initiate a good article or tweak it or mold it. That's all well and good, but that's total short term. What's the long term game that we need to get in on the mindset right now to start advising our clients for two years from now? What do you think?

Gresham Harkless 04:37

Great question. Yeah, that's an awesome question. I almost wanna put that question in ChatGPT, to see what answer it might give. That might be the best thing, but I think that's the big part. It is just like asking the question of how you can work in tandem with all this technology two years down the line, 10 years down the line, not ignore it. And I think that even if we go far back, so many people said the internet was a fad or it wasn't gonna be a thing that we weren't gonna be using cell phones.

So there's always these technology shifts that are happening. And as a leader, as a leader of an organization especially, I think the thing that you wanna be able to ask is, how can I really leverage the strengths of these tools but at the same time not lose the creativity and opportunity to create something new? And there's this book called Range, which has been one of my favorite reads, because a lot of what he talks about doing is that the opportunity is not in fighting a lot of the kind of specialization of technology or things, but really understanding how you can collectively put together 5, 10, 20 different things and create new solutions from that.

So I think if I'm talking with anybody, I'm saying I don't necessarily know the exact answer, but I do know that you want to be able to look at all the things that are happening, look at the strengths of the technology of ChatGPT’s of the world and other technology tools and not just say, hey, this is taking my content writing away, but instead ask a question of how can I leverage this so that I can use this ability to write a piece of content a lot quicker and couple it with other aspects that are also changing simultaneously?

And I think the gift and the curse is that it doesn't provide you an exact answer, but that's where the opportunity is in the same vein. So if you're able to be okay with not having the exact answer, but still wanting to be able to experiment and be in that spirit, I think that's really where we're going to be in two years and definitely farther beyond that because things are changing so rapidly and you're not going to know the exact answer and that's not okay for everybody. But I think for people that it might be okay with and there's a great opportunity from them.

Tricia Ulberg 06:54

I agree.

Gresham Harkless 06:54

I don't know that answer.

Tricia Ulberg 06:56

Yeah, no that makes sense to me because it is new and it's going to be interesting to see how it changes the creative world. I'll be honest, when this is gonna be interesting to see how we can leverage AI technology to help us still be creative and create bigger and better things, you're right, it's not going away. It's a technology that's here to stay. And it's going to be interesting to see how we can utilize that and still keep the creative spirit, if that makes sense. But I do think that it's possible. I think we're going to figure out how to do that.

Daniel Bisset 07:28

So my question then is with right now, our search engines work one way and tomorrow they're going to be very different. And people aren't going to be going to Google and then following through to our websites. They're going to be getting all of the answers from the AI that scraped our website. So I feel, and Gresh, I'm totally, if Tricia is saying for you, I want y'all's opinions, but I feel like I'm not gonna use the cliche SEO is dead, but the way that we've been playing the content game necessarily has to change.

And I feel that the hesitation that you can hear in my voice, yeah, that could probably be programmed in while I'm thinking that that could be faked. I'm sure. But platforms like TikTok say, or YouTube where there's a pretty good chance, probably like a 90% chance or even 80% chance that that's a real human that's speaking the content as opposed to an AI fabricated version of a real human that's providing the content. I feel like this video format is going to take on an entirely new role in all that we're doing for our clients. What do you think about that, Gresh? Concur or totally disagree.

Gresham Harkless 08:59

Yeah. I had this conversation too, and when we were having the exact same AI kind of conversation around SEO kind of being dead. And I think you're absolutely right where you hit the nail on the head, where I think the way that we look at SEO is going to be completely different. And I always go back and I try to remind myself, And I think even as we're having these chat GPT, these AI conversations where it seems like the technology is taking over, I always try to remind myself that a lot of the data, the information, the technology is trying to replicate human activity.

And anytime we think about that, we don't want to lose sight of it being the reason that SEO works the way that it does is because Google is trying to predict exactly what you're going to search for. ChatGPT, the reason that they're able to collate a lot of that information is because they looked at how we as humans are searching for certain things and they find that information. So I really say all that to say that I think SEO of course is going to be completely different.

Some would argue it's completely different every minute that we're thinking of what we're going to try to search for. But I think that the desire for people to search is not going to go away. What we're optimizing is probably going to be different. And so I think SEO, as far as making sure like your website, your title tag, meta description, all those aspects are in place, is going to be completely different. But people are searching on TikTok as the younger generations are more likely to search on TikTok. I think that there is going to be an S per se for optimizing things that from that standpoint.

So I think the big thing is just really paying attention as much as possible to like what we as humans desire and especially things that we need and then trying to work backwards from there and hopefully leverage the technology. Maybe I'm being too optimistic and the computers will take over, but that's just how I try to remind myself is that I guess I just believe that the computers are going to be behind in some form, shape or fashion if we do that deep work and understand that human part. But who knows? I might be completely different singing the Jetson song in a year or two.

Tricia Ulberg 11:03

I'm with you. I agree with you.

Daniel Bisset11:06

I love what you said. And I don't think I've heard it put to me that way. But all these tools are emulating humans. So You can't take the human. So I think we will not always, but we will continue to trump the AI that's available. So we've talked about AI and content. Have you started using AI or have you been using AI in paid ad strategy at all?

Gresham Harkless 11:35

I haven't. We don't do as much paid ads as organic. However, I have been looking at different tools. So I definitely will be. That's definitely the truth.

Daniel Bisset 11:45

Yeah, I'm the same. Our focus has not been in the paid space for well over a year, really. And so I feel like that territory is going to be totally different by the time we re-enter. So you've got a lot of different, it's a media group, right? You've got a lot of different pieces in your very large puzzle. I'm curious about the strategy behind the diversification. Is it to have different revenue streams coming in, some of them more passive than others? And I see that you do a lot of work for nonprofits.

So kudos to you. We also do a lot of nonprofit work, so we appreciate seeing it and others as well. Can you give us the top 5 pieces of your puzzle and from a digital marketing, digital agency perspective, what's working best for you so that we could learn from you in that regard and others who might who might have access to this at a later point can take some notes and get some tips tricks and ideas.

Gresham Harkless 12:58

Yeah no I definitely appreciate that and I'm definitely like I mentioned you know before very much so a busybody so I have so many different interests and things that I really try to focus on. I think when I started my business, and this was 10 years ago, I fell into the digital marketing and really it was just like building websites. It was SEO at that time. And I think that's what really ended up being like the foundation of the things that I was hoping to do.

And as kind of time progressed, I really started to ask myself if I had unlimited revenue or in time to invest in something like where would I do that and that's where something I was already working on came into play so that's where the interviews I used to interviews and I still do CEOs entrepreneurs and business owners to find out like why they started their business advice that they had and at that time a lot of it was just around hoping that I would learn about business because I didn't really have that background.

I didn't really have that environment at that time to know even what you should do or things that you should think about. So that's where the CB Nation part came alive and I really started to realize that, hey, I heard podcasting is a thing. I have all these recorded interviews that I was turning into blog posts, so let me start a podcast. And it just organically happened from there. So those are definitely the 2 biggest parts to answer your question, the blue 16 and then the CB nation. And when I was asking that question of if I had the unlimited time, unlimited resources, where would I invest?

A lot of it came to, I would probably just create a lot of information that would help to serve the people that I'm trying to work with. And I would say I would buy an entrepreneur magazine. I would buy like this resource that's very, very important. And when I started to realize is that I had planted some seeds that was doing that to some degree. So I knew that still the digital marketing was still my kind of bread and butter, what kept the lights on for lack of a better term. And that's where I started to say, okay, if I could take this and maybe rebrand it into a resource that doesn't steer people away. If you don't want to work with us, don't visit our site.

I didn't want that feeling there, but I wanted to be able to say that we're help supporting this program or this sites or these community of sites. And that's just where everything took out. So I would say after that, like it was really the podcast. I had a weekly podcast that I ended up deciding to launch a daily podcast called the I AM CEO Podcast. And yeah, so I hit 1600 episodes and I said that if I could use this to maybe generate some opportunities for my digital marketing, let me try to do that.

So I really thought about, okay, this whole process that I'm going through on how to get guests, maybe I can offer them an SEO audit. So that's where I started to add little things there that could hopefully feed the other, the most foundational side of the business. But now I'm at the point where I'm looking at other different streams, affiliate marketing, I've done sponsored content, just different ways that I can continue to drive different streams of revenue.

But I think I always, like I mentioned, very optimistic, so I always say, what can I do to quote unquote take over the world? And that's like how I try to approach it. I usually bite off more than I can chew and try to find a way to nibble it on or try to readjust it and try to fit in as much as possible. So hopefully that answered your questions.

Tricia Ulberg 16:20

You sound like an entrepreneur. That's what you sound like.

Gresham Harkless Outro 16:23

Hello, Hello, this is Gresh again and I hope you enjoyed that special episode of the I AM CEO Podcast. Just like I mentioned in the beginning, we're really trying to laser focus on these eight pillars and show you as a builder, how you can leverage these eight pillars and really level up there. So it helps you level up your business and organization.

So hope you enjoyed this episode and definitely please check out the show notes so you can learn more about the pillar, learn more about the person that I guess it on their episode and of course learn more a little bit more about us as well too this is Gresh signing out I'll be up a phenomenal rest of day.

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Leveraging on Technology to Enhance Productivity and Efficiency

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 04:51:45 -0500

In this special episode, Gresh is on Meet The Experts by Bruce Huwitz, where he shares the importance of building and leveraging media company appearances.

Gresh delves into the concept of ‘CEO hacks'—tools, apps, books, and habits that enhance productivity and efficiency without resorting to shortcuts. He also discusses how to distinguish between beneficial habits and those that need change, and how to leverage AI responsibly for better business outcomes.

The episode covers the practical implementation of CEO hacks to streamline workflows, save time, and focus on core business goals.

Tune in to learn more about these hacks and the eight business pillars they support.

Business Pillar: Operations & Technology

Check out our CEO Hack Buzz Newsletter–our premium newsletter with hacks and nuggets to level up your organization. Sign up HERE.

Full Interview:

Transcription:

The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!

Gresham Harkless 00:00

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. And I wanted to share with you one of the episodes that I was a guest on for someone else's podcast. I always talk about how important it is to build a media company. One of the next best things you can do is be on somebody else's media company.

So I had the pleasure of being a guest on this podcast, and I wanted to share a little snippet with you because it would help support the Eight business pillars. We've really been trying to focus on with a lot more of our content, a lot more of the solo episodes that I'm doing. So make sure of course, that you subscribe to our podcast, but of course you take some time out, check out the show notes and subscribe to the podcast that I've been featured on as well, too, and get to learn about some of those eight business. pillars and how you can continue to leverage and build that up.

So you can go from builder to architect to a course at rockstar and luminary. So this is Gresh signing out. I hope you enjoyed this I AM CEO special episode.

Bruce Hurwitz 00:53

Explain what you mean by hacks.

Gresham Harkless 00:56

Yes, absolutely. So CEO hacks comes a lot from the life hacks that people have used in their life to get further along on their journey to where they want to be. Hack is not in the sense of being a hacker. It's in the sense of like, how you can find and shortcut opportunities to be more effective and efficient.

So I define CEO hacks as apps, books, habits, software, they might even be organizations, but they're different things that help you get further along along the journey.

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Help you to be more effective and efficient, help you to maximize the time that you have in your day, because just like probably many of your listeners, I've tried to get 25 or more hours out of a day. It doesn't happen as well. So it all depends on how you're leveraging the time that you have. So the CEO hacks are those tangible things that allow you to be able to do that more effectively and efficiently.

Bruce Hurwitz 01:40

Would you accept. The use of the term shortcuts.

Gresham Harkless 01:45

To some degree shortcuts. I think that the only thing I would say about shortcuts is even though I even use it is, I think the whole idea of a hack is that it enhances some of the things that you're doing. It's not necessarily cutting short. It's just maximizing.

So I think sometimes when you hear shortcut, you think that I'm going to do it easier. I'm not going to do it all the way or do it as effectively or do it completely. But in reality, you are, you're just enhancing sometimes the things that you're already doing.

Bruce Hurwitz 02:10

I like to tell people that everyone is a CEO. You are the CEO of your domain, of your fife. Them, if you're a, an executive assistant. You're in charge of the of your desk if you are a marketing director, you're in charge of your desk. Is there anything that we are going to discuss today? That would be solely within the domain or purview of this of a CEO.

Gresham Harkless 02:37

No, I don't think so. Just as you said. So, I think we could really look at CEO being more of a perspective or more mentality or even aspirational as I like to define it. So, if you are within any role, even if you're a mom or your dad, or your brother or sister, whatever it is, I think to some degree, taking ownership of the things that you have in front of you is really what I think is at the core of being a CEO.

Bruce Hurwitz 03:00

For obvious reasons.

I'm going to start with the question about books. Years ago, when I was at a nonprofit, we had a board retreat. Now, usually with a retreat, you go someplace else. We went into the boardroom. So it wasn't that that much of a retreat and the keynote speaker was a futurist.

And 1 of the 1st things he said was, he doesn't like the word retreat because you're not retreating. You're advancing blah, blah, blah. Okay. Everybody says that, but he gave us a bibliography of books and I bought them all and I read them and I found valuable information. But 1 of the things that I read afterwards was an article.

I don't remember where. Where they said there's a problem with business books, because whatever is the. The book, the juror, everybody jumps on the bad way. We got to do this. It's got to be done this way. And then 3 months later, another book comes out. That's the number 1 bestseller. Now we're going to do things that how do you avoid that?

Gresham Harkless 04:04

I think 1 of the biggest things, and this kind of goes back to, the idea of the, the CEO hacks is it's very similarly where, especially now, as we're having this conversation is a really huge thing that people are talking about. They're talking about, all the things that you can do or can't do the same thing as you were talking about with the books.

I think the way to avoid that is really to leverage the books are leveraged the software, whatever it is that we're talking about to support the things that you're already doing. I think so many times we get shiny object syndrome because we see a new thing that we feel like we need to read. We need to listen to.

We need to install whatever it is. It's something new and it's sexy. It's it's popular. It's trending whatever it is. That's attracting us to it. To it, but we often forget about the quote, unquote race that we're running quote, unquote thing that we're trying to execute on and improving that. So, I think the best way to approach that is really our approach going into these things is saying, okay, if I'm doing X, Y, and Z, and A, B, and C, why am I worried about W, O, P, and all these other things that are, that are sexy, that are, that are exciting that I want to do.

When they're not core to the race that I'm running. So I think the very biggest, the most impactful thing we could do is ask ourself, like, how can I improve the things that I'm doing on a daily basis? Does this new book help me to do that? Does the strategies that are presented in this book help me to do that?

If it doesn't, then maybe that's something you can kick to, another year or something like that. But at the end of the day, try to enhance the things that you're doing.

Bruce Hurwitz 05:32

You mentioned AI. Now with AI, people ask me, because I'm a professional writer, if I was going to use AI, and I said, absolutely not. Because when you have a new software coming up, and this happened to everybody who has ever bought a computer, has purchased a brand new, fresh out of the box, now figuratively, but used to be literally, a piece of software, the first thing that happens is you have to upload updates.

And then, They make all the corrections and a year later, you've got the software that doesn't have the bugs. So that was the 1st reason why I said no day. I was also concerned about ethical problems, copyright issues. I said, I want to get into it now. I'll use what I call RHI, real human intelligence. And that way, there are some, you have lawyers now using AI to submit briefs in court and the cases that are cited are phony.

In AI, as I'm sure, it's called hallucinations. I've caught quotations that didn't make any sense to me. I did a search for the book. Book didn't exist. In one case, I had the book. I double checked that it was the right edition, but it wasn't there. It didn't, so I, so I explained that the AI lies.

It's called hallucinations. How do you recommend CEOs work with AI? In a way that they will invo avoid embarrassments and lawsuits.

Gresham Harkless 07:13

That's a great question. And if it's okay Bruce, I'm gonna borrow from you. It's not a hallucination or anything. I'm gonna say that if you have AI mixed with our ai, that's really the great way to, to try to leverage ai.

I think, and it goes back to what I talked about and why I was hesitant to say the CEO hacks. Or these things that are out there are shortcuts. And I think when you have the mentality that it is going to be a shortcut, you will start to upload a prompt or say, you want X, Y and Z or this specific thing, or you want this specific quote, or you want this brief and you won't go through and do the part, which is actually to understand that you.

Need to be the person, or you need to have a person that is actually looking through this information. So, to answer your question, I think, really, the best way to use a lot of these tools is is like an intern really? Because you may not get exactly what the things are that you're looking for, but before it goes live, or before you send it out, or before you stand in court and speak about it or speak to it, whatever it might be.

You have at least done that human intelligence part and start to understand exactly what it's saying and make sure that it, again, is in support of the things that you're trying to do. And I think what's happening with AI is that people are really excited because they can literally write in two sentences or less than two sentences, and they can get pages and pages of content and information, but they're not really understanding if that content and information is supporting what they're doing.

Or, like you said, it's going to leave you in a place where you become that laughing stock. So, I think the best way to do it is to approach it a lot like it's an intern or a really, really intelligent intern, but an intern that does make mistakes and is not imperfect so that you can, at the end of the day, start to enhance the things that you're doing, not replace or take that shortcut towards it.

Bruce Hurwitz 08:55

I like that analogy to an intern. You can use my and I will use your deal when you wrote in, you mentioned 1 as 1 of the hacks habits. Now, I'm a big believer in habits, because if you form, if you establish a habit. You're also creating neural pathways in your brains and that in your brain, and that's the way you're going to do it.

So expand on that a bit. How, that a habit is something you want to keep, that it's good. But how do you know, it's not something that needs to be changed.

Gresham Harkless: I think that's a great question. And I think. 1st, we have to sometimes remember that we all have habits, whether or not their habits that you want or their habits or not, that's a whole different conversation.

But I think so many times, we'll hear or we'll see people that are really, dedicated in the gym or they're dedicated at work, or they're doing all the things that maybe we aspire to do. And we say that they have something that we don't, but we all have habits. Even if the habit is to start something and not continue, that in and of itself can be a habit.

So I think the first thing is to accept that and to understand that. And then I think you answered the simple question of, are you doing the things that you want to do to get to whatever that goal is? So whatever your goal might be, whether it be going to the gym, whether it might be getting that promotion, or it might be having a seven figure business.

Are you doing the things on a regular basis that can lead you to that? And if you're not, or if you're not achieving that, or you're not seeing the things that you hope to see, that's when you want to start to look at your habits, look at the things not that you're doing. Once a year, you want to look at things that you're doing on a daily basis and seeing what they're doing to get you to that place.

And that's why I think there's really, exciting ways that you can hack yourself. And I mean that in a different way now so that you can get to where you want to be. But I think it's so important to understand that. You can make those changes and we all have those habits.

It's just a matter of reengineering yourself and working backwards so that you can reach the goal that you want to reach.

Bruce Hurwitz 11:01

Now, I used to have habits for setting up appointments and posting on social media, and then it became too much for me. So I use Bookify for as my scheduling app. Yeah. And so for my social media posting was, so I think it's 3 months.

You can schedule them 3 months in advance and then forget about it.

Is that a good example of a habit being transferred to me? To an app.

Gresham Harkless 11:36

I think that is a perfect example of that. And that's exactly what I call the CEO hacks. Like the idea of giving somebody a scheduling link that is maybe booking something from a different time zone and you don't have to do the back and forth and that allows you to take that time and put it into your zone of genius.

That's the definition of the CEO hack being able to schedule social media posts again. It doesn't have the same impact as a lot of times. If you're posting natively. On these platforms, but again, you start to weigh, okay, I only have this much time and I, I really want to get this done. And I believe that getting this done is going to be impactful.

So why don't I schedule it ahead? So, using Zoho, using HootSuite there's lots of different platforms out there. Even Meta has different ways that you can schedule within its own its own site as well too. But again, being able to leverage. And maximize your time because it allows you more time to spend, spend in your zone of genius so that you don't have to worry about things that I do, which is often did I book at the right time?

Because I'm really bad as my own assistant and I often will show up an hour later, an hour early. If I don't have that booking link, you don't have to worry about those things because you let the software take care of it.

Bruce Hurwitz 12:46

I was speaking to a. Lady who was trying to book to be on the podcast and I said, you just go to the website and just put it in and she did it.

She apologized. She said that it was a bad day and I said, don't worry. You have nothing to apologize for and then I told her that when I become king of the world, the 1st thing I'm going to do is make a book. Every get rid of all the time zones. Everybody will be on the same time.

Okay, let's move on. You wrote that business, so that the whole idea is to increase effectiveness and efficiency with CEO hacks.

How do you create a hack? You got to think you need a solution.

Gresham Harkless 13:32

I think that there is sometimes not a very long, very quick way to do that. Because I think the CEO hack truly become a CEO hack when it's implemented and executed and it works in terms of your workflow. So, honestly, a lot of what I've experience.

Like, I use a different scheduling software. So I use Acuity for my scheduling. I tested out. Calendly tested out many things. And sometimes when you start to use these softwares, you realize that it does 1 thing that you wish that it didn't do or vice versa. You wish that it do that.

Whatever it is, you start to test out these different softwares, these hacks, these different things to be more effective and efficient. So I think it really goes to another level. Not when it's just, I think that's 1 of the. The kind of bridges that people have to cross over is because when you see and read all the benefits you hear or see a commercial, you're like, I could really use that.

But when you get that in front of you, you're putting that into your workflow. You're trying to execute it on it. It doesn't quite do exactly what you thought it would do. And that's where I think that. We want to try to bridge that gap towards the teaching people how to actually leverage this on a way to be more effective and efficient because a hack is to me, not so much a hack.

If it's just saying, laying there as a software is a hack when it's implemented to your workflow and you're able to really use it to help you to save that time. So it's all in the execution. It's all in how you're going to implement this into your workflow. And for a lot of people and a lot of organizations and personal individuals, even.

That's going to depend. So you sometimes just have to try it, implement it, do it on a very low risk, low cost way. And a lot of times, and then you're able to see if it works or if it doesn't work. And it actually is, save you that time.

Bruce Hurwitz 15:11

You've been providing us with a wealth of content and I thank you for that.

Gresham Harkless 15:18

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is again, and I hope you enjoyed that special episode of the podcast. I'm just, like I mentioned in the beginning, we're really trying to. Laser focus on these eight pillars and show you as a builder how you can leverage these eight pillars and really level up there. So it helps you level up your business and organization.

So hope you enjoyed this episode. Definitely. Please check out the show notes. Learn more about the pillar. Learn more about the person that I guessed it on their episode. And of course, learn more a little bit more about us as well to this is Gresh signing out. Hope you'll have a phenomenal rest of the day.

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The post Leveraging on Technology to Enhance Productivity and Efficiency appeared first on CBNation TV - Entrepreneurship Videos, Steps to Start a Small Business.

IAM2295 – Gresh’s Highlights the Significance of Authenticity in Engaging with Your Audience

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 06:16:05 -0500

Gresham Harkless discusses the importance of knowing your target market, their evolving needs, and outlines key questions that define business success and resource allocation.

He emphasizes the importance of market research, understanding ideal clients, and explores strategies for creating content that resonates with your audience.

In addition, he highlights the importance of focusing on one or two platforms for effective content delivery and highlights the significance of authenticity in engaging with your audience.

Podcast Link: Mission Matters Marketing with Adam Torres

Check out our CEO Hack Buzz Newsletter–our premium newsletter with hacks and nuggets to level up your organization. Sign up HERE.

Transcription:

The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!

Gresham Harkless Teaser 00:00

So don't forget about like drilling down to the whole psychology of your avatar, of your target market, what's keeping them up at night, what transformation are you truly providing?

And the reason I bring that up is because the more information that you know about that, and you continue to learn that information, it's going to evolve and change.

Intro 00:18

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. And I wanted to share with you one of the episodes that I was a guest on for someone else's podcast.

I always talk about how important it is to build a media company. One of the next best things you can do is be on somebody else's media company.

So I had the pleasure of being a guest on this podcast and I want to share a little snippet with you because it would help support the 8 business pillars we've really been trying to focus on with a lot more of our content, a lot more of the solo episodes that I'm doing.

So make sure of course that you subscribe to our podcast, but of course you take some time out, check out the show notes to subscribe to the podcast that I've been featured on as well too.

And get to learn about some of those 8 business pillars and how you can continue to kind of leverage and build that up so you can go from builder to architect to a course at Rockstar and Luminary. So this is Gresh signing out. I hope you enjoyed this I AM CEO special episode.

Adam Torres 01:10

What are some of the foundational elements or as you call them ingredients that every business should integrate the function effectively as a media company. And how do these components change the way that you approach marketing?

Gresham Harkless 01:24

Yeah, I think before I usually say you even get started, you start to pop in and look at the ingredients. The first thing I say you want to do is answer 3 questions.

These 3 questions are impactful because they do help you as the quote unquote ingredients evolve, they change, they add additional things into what they're doing.

And those 3 foundational questions, I should say, really revolve around your target market. Your target market can be the age, the location, if they have 2 and a half dogs or 4 and a half kids or whatever that might be, painting the picture of who that is that you're trying to target, but understand that you can drill down a lot more.

At the heart of what we try to do as quote-unquote entrepreneurs and business owners is to try to provide transformation and support and solve a problem for the audience and the avatar of the people that you're trying to serve.

So don't forget about like drilling down to the whole psychology of your avatar, of your target market, what's keeping them up at night, what transformation are you truly providing?

And the reason I bring that up is because the more information that you know about that and continue to learn that information, it's gonna evolve and change.

Especially if you have an ideal client that you're working with, and as you're working with 10, 15 years sometimes, if you're a financial planner, for example, their needs are going to evolve and change.

[restrict paid=”true”]

So you wanna make sure that when you're creating media, creating content, you're using and leveraging the ingredients, you're really paying attention to that.

So that's why you wanna, of course, know that now as much as you can, but you wanna continue to know more and more about it because it can ultimately evolve and change.

The next question I would say, make sure you know ultimately what and how you define success.

If you're an e-commerce brand, you're gonna define success in a completely different way than if you have a home improvement company and you're trying to serve your local community.

So you might want people to continue to kind of come through your door virtually and buy your product or service and not necessarily have a conversation with you. Or you might have a chat bot or something like that where you're answering all those questions, that may not work for your local home improvement contractor.

That may not work for your local plumber where they have an emergency and they want to talk to somebody immediately.

So understanding like how you define success, what that looks like is going to evolve depending on how you structure your business, what you want to do, and ultimately what that looks like.

So make sure that you understand and are clear about how exactly you define that success. And then one of the other really big impactful things you want to know is the resources.

And so many times resources people flock to what's my budget, how much money am I spending and so on and so forth.

But also don't forget about how important time is. Time could be your most valuable resource.

So I use a time and money, and depending on where you are in the journey, you might be in more startup mode where you're doing more, you're using more quote unquote sweat equity to be able to get things going versus later on in the business.

So I think those 3 foundational questions are huge because even that question, as you answer it, as you start to get clients and customers, you might have more within your budget so you are able to hire an expert.

So it might determine what ingredients you end up choosing for that. So I think those are really impactful questions to ask and answer and to continue to kind of check it on.

Adam Torres 04:49

So what are some of the, are there some tools or some ways that we can uncover those 3 questions to help us with research? I mean, it's a lot easier to find out information about everyone. Privacy is out the window these days.

But there are some really great tools and strategies that you can use to mine that information to inform your decisions. What are some of those?

Gresham Harkless 05:14

Yeah, absolutely. And I often say, even on my show, I say, don't forget about the human part of business and the human part of life at that.

I think you made such a powerful point where sometimes we're looking for who's our ideal client or customer. Who do we want to work with? And if you have had that ideal client or customer, maybe you start there.

Maybe you start to mine the information and start to survey for lack of a better term and do research into understanding your ideal clients and who they are that you've already been working with because you may start to create that avatar specifically for the clients you worked with.

But I say, even if you're just getting started and you don't have a client, you don't have an idea of who exactly that is, maybe you have an idea of who you worked with well in the past or who you would want to work well with in the past.

I think one of the things about the journey that you go on for entrepreneurship and definitely in marketing is you start to refine exactly who you want to work with.

And it sometimes, unfortunately, happens by trial and error where you make those mistakes and you're like, I shouldn't have worked with that person. And sometimes you might've already known that, but you continue to refine that.

So you know exactly, you know what and who that work, who that looks like, but don't neglect the opportunity to be able to send out surveys to send out, get a net performance promoter score for your ideal clients and customers that you're working with or potentially want to work with.

Because the more information you have, the more information it's going to help out. But that market research is such a huge thing that you want to make sure you leverage.

But I think it becomes really difficult depending on where you are on the stage because when you say yes to something, you're automatically saying no to something else, as you said so well.

So you want to make sure that you are having your ideal clients and customers coming through as much as possible.

So you want to drill down and learn as much as you can about who they are, what makes them tick, what might be keeping them up at night so that you can ultimately provide those services for them.

Adam Torres 07:15

Right. And that leads me to the idea of content. So if you're going to create content, we talked about that. You had an ideal at 10, you had an idea, you had the ideal audience.

In fact, you knew everything about them because you were part of that family. And sometimes you are your ideal client, which is really, really handy.

But you are creating content that aligns well with what their interests were. So can you talk about some of the strategies that you would use for content creation that would help you stay in your lane and attract those ideal clients?

Gresham Harkless 07:51

Yeah, a lot of what you do kind of goes back to those 3 questions. So you've answered those questions.

And anytime I say you're trying to determine what platforms, what content you're trying to create.

Make sure you're going back to those 3 questions because you're always gonna be able to test and experiment with different options, but you wanna be really dialed in with your ideal client and customer.

If you know this keeps them up at night, then you know that providing a solution to that, even just in your content, it's going to help make their lives better.

So you want to make sure you gear on that. A lot of times I compare building your media company to figuring out whatever your favorite dish is.

And I always go to my mom's sweet potato pie, because it's one of my absolute favorites, but there's chocolate cake, there's pineapple cake, there's so many different things.

So kind of just envision what that is and what that looks like. And you go to the grocery store and you figure out what ingredients are going to help you to build that ultimate dessert that you want to have.

That's the way that you want to approach your marketing. You, when you want to approach your content you're thinking of, okay, everybody's listening to the same station, which is what's in it for me WI-FM.

So you want to make sure that you're coming into their lives so that you can provide value for them.

And the reason that you want to kind of go to the grocery store and get those ingredients and look at what they are.

And by ingredients, I mean, literally the platforms that you're using, to be able to get that content out there.

That there's pros and cons of each. Like we were just talking about if you're going to use a platform like TikTok, like as we're talking now, that may be a little bit more kind of risky to use versus using YouTube or using or optimizing your website with Google.

So you want to kind of understand like what all the ingredients are. And then you wanna kind of start to say, okay, I know this platform. I know it is its own kind of language.

So this is how I'm gonna communicate on that platform. But you never ever wanna lose sight of why you're doing that, which is to provide value for your ideal clients and customers.

So as you start to develop that content strategy and what that looks like, make sure that you're keeping top of mind exactly like what it is that is going to improve their lives.

For me at 10, it was like, how can I get the juiciest information about what's going on in the family so that I can get more subscriptions? So you want to approach it in the exact same way.

Adam Torres 10:09

Yeah. And you had me at pie. When you said sweet potato pie, I was going, huh? Yeah. So, I think another thing that I like to know a little bit more about is that when you create content.

You need to create it for people who are ready to buy, who don't even know you yet, and who are maybe deciding, or they might not even know that they have a problem yet.

And they might have sort of been searching out there. So you have to have a kind of a wide net.

And with all the options that are available, and you mentioned knowing the platform, isn't it smart to know to stick with one platform and get something that works and then expand from there with that content?

Gresham Harkless 10:56

Yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna continue with the pie analogy since you loved it. And I think if you're making sweet potato pie, I always say, you don't want to go to the grocery store and get ketchup at that time. At least not for that specific dish. I don't want ketchup in my sweet potato pie.

I don't know about you, but that's not necessarily going to be good for me. So I think it's so important to kind of have that understanding of what exactly you're trying to create because you are going to pick one, maybe 2 other platforms to own deeply, to know deeply and to make sure that you're always abreast of those changes, those opportunities.

And I feel like that's even the case if you do decide to hire an outside consultant or an agency or whatever that looks like, because it's going to give you that opportunity to go a little bit deeper, to make a little bit more of a transformation.

And as noisy as these platforms are, as noisy as it is in the world. To go further, a lot of times you go that extra mile and going that extra mile means you're not focusing on all the things, you're focusing on that one thing because you know it's gonna provide that transformation and opportunity for your clients and customers.

The reason I usually say 2 max 3 is because you never ever want to stop experimenting. Just because, just I'll go back to the catch up analogy, just because I say that I don't want to catch up.

It doesn't mean that there might be some type of catch up that might work well in that pie. So all that means is that, hey, this is a platform that your idea clients are not on, they're not using, but it doesn't mean that they won't be using it in a year.

It doesn't mean they won't be using it in 5 years. So as you start to kind of spend time there, you start to know it, experiment a little bit, not spend all your time, but some of your time.

You can be what they a lot of times call on social media platforms, first movers. And there's a lot of advantage to being the first mover on certain platforms because there's people that were on platforms like Vine that are still enjoying the fruits of those platforms.

Because they move first and they move to other platforms first and they built that community and that connection over time. So, don't hesitate or be a resistance to experimenting as well too.

Adam Torres 13:01

Yeah, and TikTok is one of those platforms that's really very popular with younger people. And I just had a guest on earlier that he's 51 and people were, the younger people who follow him and the companies that he is speaking with and teaching, they are saying, hey, you need to be on this platform.

And finally, after about a year and a half, he finally is out there and sharing content. And it's working. So that's important. Now, you mentioned the sweet potato pie. Let's go back to that.

When you're creating a sweet potato pie, I believe that the more fresh and authentic and maybe organic even clean foods that you use in that recipe make it so much better.

And so how is authenticity and transparency, is that important in your content creation these days or are we trying to trick our audience into becoming clients?

Gresham Harkless 14:05

No, and I think that you're right on. I love that. You know, I agree with you 110,000% that the more fresh and kind of you that you are within your content, the more you're going to be able to resonate with people.

And that's why I said, you never want to forget about the part that you're kind of just transferring content and information to somebody.

Ultimately, these all are conversational tools, the way that you can help to get that media out there, talk about what it is that you do.

So I feel like another great way, like you said, to know the platform is a really great opportunity, but to be yourself, I often say if you run your own race, you can't lose.

And that means you have to know what your race is. You have to know what is your secret sauce, what sets you apart, what is your superpower.

And the more you show up is that the less likely people are to try to emulate. They might try to, but they are not going to do it successfully because they're not yourself.

And I think that it wasn't so much the case, you know, in years prior, but it's becoming more and more evident where people are craving this opportunity for that human connection.

They're craving the content that can actually help them on a day-to-day basis. They want to know somebody, they want to know they're not the only person that's going through this issue or this problem.

So the more that we share that, the more that we share our journey and what that looks like, the opportunity for connection is going to be tremendous.

But I think you have to really do that from an authentic standpoint, because in this day and age, it's getting harder and harder to quote unquote, hide behind, facades or hide behind things that aren't real.

And people will find you out as we see that sometimes online, that authenticity is going to be such a huge thing.

And, it always goes back to the quote, it's like, be yourself because everybody else has already taken. So why not do that? Because everybody wants you to be who you are.

Adam Torres 15:50

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's super important. And after the, after the pandemic, when we started, we went to the remote work and, and having conversations like we're having, it's so much easier to connect with people.

And it's, and you, I might have a background behind me and so do you, but everything, the way we talk, the way we stutter, or we're not perfect.

And I think people, that curtain has been pulled back and I think people do crave it and they really do wanna have a human connection.

Outro 16:24

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh again and I hope you enjoyed that special episode of the I AM CEO Podcast. Just Like I mentioned in the beginning, we're really trying to laser focus on these 8 pillars and show you as a builder how you can leverage these 8 pillars and really level up there so it helps to level up your business and organization.

So hope you enjoyed this episode and definitely please check out the show notes so you can learn more about the pillar, learn more about the person that I guested on, their episode, and of course learn more, a little bit more about us as well too. This is Gresh signing out. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.<

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The post IAM2295 – Gresh’s Highlights the Significance of Authenticity in Engaging with Your Audience appeared first on I AM CEO Podcast.

IAM2294 – Gresh’s Emphasizes on Value-Driven Outreach for Business Success

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 06:16:31 -0500

In this special episode, Gresham Harkless emphasizes the importance of providing value in cold outreach, similar to a social media strategy.

Gresham discusses the need to understand the target audience deeply: “What keeps them up at night?” This understanding helps ensure that outreach is relevant and helpful, which leads to a win-win situation.

He highlights that businesses often resist change, sticking to what’s familiar, even when it’s clear that new methods can bring more success.

He also points out that many businesses fail because they focus too much on the “how” and not enough on the strategy behind their marketing.

Gresham emphasizes that it requires consistent strategy, quality content, and proper integration of branding and marketing tactics to be successful.

Gresham Harkless explains that SEO isn’t just about keywords and backlinks; it’s about user experience.

Furthermore, he highlights that businesses need to create a seamless, positive experience for users, as this is a fundamental part of SEO.

Podcast Link: The Lead Machine Growth Show

Check out our CEO Hack Buzz Newsletter–our premium newsletter with hacks and nuggets to level up your organization. Sign up HERE.

Transcription:

The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!

Gresham Harkless Teaser 00:00

You have to increase the value that you're providing. You're basically interrupting somebody in their day on what they're doing.

And you have to increase that value that you're trying to provide for them. As much as possible, of course, you want to, again, go back to that question, who am I targeting? Why am I targeting?

What's keeping them up at night and make sure that when you do provide value, it's value for them, not necessarily value for you.

Intro 00:26

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. And I wanted to share with you one of the episodes that I was a guest on for someone else's podcast.

I always talk about how important it is to build a media company. One of the next best things you can do is be on somebody else's media company.

So make sure of course that you subscribe to our podcast, but of course you take some time out, check out the show notes to subscribe to the podcast that I've been featured on as well too.

Paul Guyon 01:19

How can this media company help with with outreach? So we're doing cold outreach to people to bring them into the falls to try to get them into to get more customers.

There's a there's that need for outreach. I mean, obviously we've got the inbound methodology of creating content and things like that.

But there's also the need for, especially in certain kinds of businesses, there needs to be outreach.

Gresham Harkless 01:45

Yeah. I think a lot of times with code outreach and reaching out to people, we kind of have to approach it in very much the same way that you can approach a social media strategy.

The reason I say that is because a lot of times on social media, you're not necessarily searching for whatever it is you might be trying to provide to people.

So the way I see that is you have to increase the value that you're providing. You're basically interrupting somebody, in their day, what they're doing.

[restrict paid=”true”]

And you have to increase that value that you're trying to provide for them. As much as possible of course you want to again go back to that question who am I targeting why am I targeting what's keeping them up at night and make sure that when you do provide value it's value for them not necessarily value for you.

As much as possible, you want to try to create a win-win, but you really want to know the hearts and minds and the souls even to some degree of the people that you're trying to target.

Because when you do that, when you do pop up, when you do try to provide them an opportunity to sign up for your email or join your email list or set up a consultation, whatever it is, you want to make sure that you're providing value.

But keep in mind that, just like you understand all the pros and cons and ingredients, those strategies also may require you to do a lot more than you would if it was somebody coming through your door that was a little bit more of an inbound opportunity.

So know that the volume might have to be there versus the inbound, but you again, you understand that.

You understand what you're doing and that's so huge, but just don't forget like value, value, value and know that value could be many things. It could be saving somebody's time. It could be making somebody laugh.

It could be giving them a specific solution to help them increase their relationship with somebody or monopolize or maximize their time, whatever it might be, just don't forget about that human part because at the end of the day, people are trying to improve their lives in some form, shape or fashion.

And you want to send them, if you're coming to them completely cold, some type of transformation, how is this going to improve their lives?

And I think if you start to look at it from that perspective, it doesn't mean that everybody's going to say yes, everybody's going to become a client or customer.

But at the end of the day, I think at the heart of what we all try to do from an entrepreneurial perspective is provide change in value.

So I feel like even if you don't get the result that you want necessarily, from that specific outreach, you still can be in alignment with who you are and what you ultimately stand for.

Paul Guyon 04:14

Yeah. And when we think about content or rather content creation and outreach on top of delivering service and the day-to-day operations of a company, how can entrepreneurs, what kind of tools or what kinds of strategies can they do to make that maybe part of what they're already doing or how do they make time to do it?

There's gotta be some tips that we can have or tools that we can use to make things a little more effortless.

Gresham Harkless 04:45

Absolutely. For people that are creating content and information. Yeah. I mean, there's so many tools out there. And again, everything is like, it depends. There's a pros and cons for each.

Gresham Harkless 04:56

Of course, these social media platforms want you to spend as much time as possible on those platforms, posting everything natively, doing everything natively and realize that that has a higher organic reach.

But in reality, you're looking at your resources, you realize that you don't have all the time in the world.

So maybe you do start to use platforms like Hootsuite, for example, and that allows you to schedule out social media platforms.

Now, Meta has its own way to schedule out social media. You can definitely do that. But understand that there's pros and cons of each.

You can probably get a lot more things done, I should say, when you're using Hootsuite versus, posting natively on the site every single time.

But no, you'll probably get a better organic reach and better engagement potentially by posting natively.

So look at that, related to all platforms. But one of the big things that's happening, especially with AI, is there a smorgasbord of kind of tools that you can use to repurpose content.

So one of the big things that I think people sometimes don't realize when you create one piece of content, usually that piece of content is not one piece of content. Usually it could be 789, sometimes 10 pieces of content.

So taking a 30 minute long video or maybe it's a webinar that you did, or maybe it's a topic that you did to just your dog and your wife and your kids or something like that.

If you can record that, you can make that into a blog post. You can make that into a potentially a podcast or you can send it out on X and tweet it on X or X on tweet or whatever you call it.

You can do all of these things to get your information out there, but you really want to think about how do I take this pillar piece of content that's maybe a little bit more long form and be able to kind of repurpose it so it can reach more people.

So there's, there's platforms like Vizard.ai that you can use for that. Minova is another one as well too, that'll you, all you have to do is take a video and it will splice it up for you.

But there's so many different platforms that are out there, and there's an influx of these AI, I think, powered softwares that allow you to be able to take that pillar piece of content and repurpose it very efficiently.

Paul Guyon 07:10

Yeah, and I think you just kind of hit the nail on the head with content creation. We were talking about Hollywood with one of my previous guests, and they have trailers for their movies, and they have promotion plans that start way out, way in advance before their launches.

So you need to be thinking like a media company. And I think that I work with a client who's 15 million or so, and they were very, very hesitant to get into inbound marketing.

And right now they're working with print and they really need to branch out into using video and they aren't doing podcasts and interviews or anything like that.

And I think a pitfall of every company or every entrepreneur is like, it won't work for my company.

And that's just not true. And so what are some of the challenges and pitfalls that you've run into with your clients that you've had to maybe convince them or train them up and bring them up because this is not gonna go away. This is just getting faster and faster.

Gresham Harkless 08:16

Yeah, I think that I hear very similar things with clients that, we work with as well too. I always say, you don't want to get as attached to the how versus the why.

And the why is ultimately what's leading you to do the impactful things that you're doing. I think many times people get really attached to the how.

I can't say the number of times that I hear from clients that I need to do this because I heard that I need to do this.

And whatever this is, it could be TikTok, it could be print, it could be SEO, whatever it is, they're kind of stuck on that.

And I think if you start to drill down a little bit more, you start to realize that there are other opportunities there, but people get really attached to like the how versus the why.

Like the why is you ultimately want to make an impact. You want to reach more people so that you can have more impact and change more lives, have that transformation.

But if you get attached to that how, what it's going to do is it may not necessarily affect you negatively in the beginning, but if you get stuck to that how, it could leave your business behind because as you said, so well, things are changing and they're changing rapidly.

So that's one of the big things that I find. The other big thing is that I talk a lot again, around the ingredients is that people don't really have a true understanding of the pros and cons of different ingredients and what they look like.

They think that just because they post something and just because that they're going to be able to drive home those opportunities.

They don't realize it doesn't happen overnight. It does take a time, it does take strategy for those things to happen.

So I think so many times we see those commercials and it makes it look like it's so simple. But in reality, there is a strategy behind it.

There is the integration of who you are and who you're serving with being able to communicate on these platforms.

So I think there's just a lot of misinformation and not a great kind of understanding of what marketing and branding and all those aspects look like.

But I think as much as possible, we try to just set those expectations because at the end of the day, we want to make sure our clients are as successful as possible and have an understanding of what that looks like.

Paul Guyon 10:26

Yeah. And speaking of successful clients, what are some of the, can you share an example of one of your clients who maybe said, oh, I'm not a media company. But hey, Gresh, tell me how it's done because I need to be better.

Gresham Harkless 10:40

Yeah. I think a core of what we try to do is around SEO. And I feel like SEO, as much of it, it can be seen as an ingredient, I actually think it's a way to approach, it's kind of even a marketing philosophy to some degree.

Because the idea is that you're trying to be where people are. I always say, Wayne Gretzky says, don't skate to where the puck is, skate to where the puck's going to be.

And that's a lot of what SEO is all about. So for one of our clients, we had a plumbing company that was based out of Ohio that didn't really have a lot of success with SEO in the past.

And another big thing that happens is a lot of times people say that I tried that, it didn't work, so it doesn't work. Right.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that the agency, the company, the people that you work with necessarily did it the right way, or maybe there's a lot of factors around why that could be the case.

Specifically for her and their company, they had a person that wasn't doing quality SEO services.

So basically what they would do is they would take pages on the site, and they would just copy those pages over and over again and just change the city and state on the site.

So, there's not necessarily duplicate content per se, but it is duplicate content because you're copying the same content on your website.

And what you're starting to see is that even with AI, the influx of AI content and information, Google is prioritizing value content. It's no different than what I talked about.

Like how are you providing value for people's lives? So when you start to think about that media company working with them, the first thing we looked at was the content.

The first thing we looked at it was like, it's not just putting out things just for the sake of doing it to say, check, I have a page for this. I have a page for that. How are you providing value?

So a lot of what we were able to do is to kind of undo a lot of that bad SEO that wasn't going, that wasn't happening.

And being able to kind of take more of a value-based mindset asking, who are you trying to target? What are those ideal clients and customers looking like?

And what are they what's keeping them up at night? Or is it an emergency? Is it connections that you want to build?

So we started to build a lot of those things within that content and information. And you start to see that success with, traffic on the website of rankings, of course, which is of course important for SEO.

But you start to do that because you don't necessarily say all the time that, hey, I want you to be a media company, but you say that, hey, this is what's stopping you from getting you to where you are.

And 9 out of 10 times the media, the way you're approaching that, it could be the way that you're doing that. So that's just 1 of the clients that we kind of work with.

Paul Guyon 13:18

Right. So yeah, SEO, that surprised me. You really need to have that owned asset so that, like we were talking about earlier, like your email database and your website.

Those are 2 very, very critical things to have. I don't know where I was going with that, but the sandwiches that we got were great. I think you would have loved them, Gresh. It was a Italian zapper, it was an Italian sub that I got that was really, really good. So, anyway. That's one of my favorite sandwiches.

Gresham Harkless 13:46

So, wherever you're going is the right place. But I do want to say one thing and I love that you brought that up because at the heart of SEO, people forget about, it's about user experience.

When your wife clicked that link, she had a bad experience because she clicked and it didn't go to that own platform. It went to Facebook. It could have went to any other place that, that's a user experience.

And like people forget like before someone patronizes your business or your product or services, you're creating that experience before that happens.

And that's a lot of what SEO is about. It's not about just keywords and doing backlinks. It's about experience.

So when you don't have a good experience, people remember that and they won't patronize you.

And they may even say that this wasn't a great experience, so don't necessarily go and visit them.

So you want to make sure that you are looking holistically at what that experience looks like.

Paul Guyon 14:39

Yeah. And we did end up going to that restaurant because one of my clients, it's his brother who owns it.

So we know that we know that they have good food there. So we just disappointed that he didn't have a website. And I just I said, see, honey, this is exactly what I've been teaching people.

Gresham Harkless 14:55

Yeah, there's your opportunity.

Paul Guyon 14:57

Yeah, exactly. So I think we're about at the top of our time together as we wrap up with your final words, Gresh. What are 3 things that our listeners and our audience can do today to put these ideas into action?

Gresham Harkless 15:12

Yeah. I think one of the first things that you can do is definitely make sure that you're having a conversation with your ideal clients and customers. Really know exactly as much as possible what helps that user experience.

That sandwich shop should be having a conversation with Paul and his wife and understanding exactly what is part of that experience because you start to uncover those things that can create a better experience for people.

So make sure that you are painting that picture so you know who exactly, you are that you're, that you're targeting

Gresham Harkless 15:40

Depending on where you are in the journey, I say one of the best things that you can do to kind of learn as much as possible is to roll up your sleeves and just get started.

So whether that is spending time on one of the unowned platforms, make sure that you do that, but make sure you understand that you don't own that platform.

So whether it's LinkedIn or it's Facebook group or something along those lines, make sure that you're doing that.

And then the third thing I would say is once you have an idea of who you're targeting, once you have an idea of what platform you want to kind of play on, for lack of a better term, find out if there is potential groups.

Like I'm a big, huge proponent of building your media company, whether that's a blog, podcast, blog, whatever that might be. But I say the next best thing is being on somebody else's media company.

Outro 16:22

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh again, and I hope you enjoyed that special episode of the I AM CEO Podcast. Just like I mentioned in the beginning, we're really trying to laser focus on these 8 pillars and show you as a builder, how you can leverage these 8 pillars and really level up there so it helps to level up your business and organization

So hope you enjoyed this episode and definitely

IAM2294 – Gresh Emphasizes on Value-Driven Outreach for Business Success