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Transitioning from a Rainmaker to an Architect of Your Business with Bradley Hamner, BlueprintOS: Show Notes & Transcript

Post | Sep 10, 2024

Welcome back to Marketing Smarts! From brand-building and marketing veterans Anne Candido and April Martini (that’s us) comes a podcast committed to cutting through all the confusing marketing BS so you can actually understand how to take action and change your business today. We deep-dive into topics most would gloss-over, infusing real-world examples from our combined 35+ years of corporate and agency experience. We tell it how it is so whether you are just starting out or have been in business awhile, you have the Marketing Smarts to immediately impact your business.

In this episode, we’re talking transitioning from a rainmaker to an architect of your business with Bradley Hamner. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re exercising your Marketing Smarts!

  • Episode Summary & Player
  • Show Notes
  • Marketing Smarts Summary
  • Transcript

Marketing Smarts: Transitioning from a Rainmaker to an Architect of Your Business with Bradley Hamner, BlueprintOS

Going from the doer to the orchestrator can take your business to the next level. But it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do. It involves putting the right systems and processes in place, creating your vision, building your team, and performing a mindset shift. We wanted you to learn from one of our favorite business architects, so we welcomed on Bradley Hamner. He’s the Founder of BlueprintOS, a Keynote Speaker, and the Host of the Above The Business podcast. This episode covers everything from your vision to execution. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

  • How do you stay ahead of issues with your business?
  • What’s the difference between working in your business, on your business, and above your business?
  • How do you make time for thinking time as an entrepreneur?
  • When is it time to hire employees?
  • What should your 3-year vision look like?
  • How do you document systems & processes?
  • Should you have an EA as a business owner?
  • What’s the best place Bradley’s ever visited?

And as always, if you need help in building your Marketing Smarts, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

  • Transitioning from a Rainmaker to an Architect of Your Business with Bradley Hamner, BlueprintOS
    • [0:00] Welcome to Marketing Smarts
    • [0:22] Anne Candido, April Martini
    • [1:43] Connect with Bradley on LinkedIn, at BlueprintOS.com/Assets, and his Above The Business podcast
    • [2:00] What is his background?
    • [2:52] Why does he do what he does?
    • [6:05] How do you stay ahead of issues with your business?
    • [9:33] What’s the difference between working in your business, on your business, and above your business?
    • [16:08] How do you make time for thinking time as an entrepreneur?
    • [20:54] Traction by Gino Wickman
    • [24:55] How do you implement ideas?
    • [30:19] When is it time to hire employees?
    • [37:03] What should your 3-year vision look like?
    • [38:49] We’d like to invite you to join ForthRight Women: The Cohort. This community is for females who are ambitious in their careers, but want an equally fulfilling personal life. For more information and to join the group, check out ForthRight-Women.com
    • [39:42] What is Bradley’s entrepreneurship story?
    • [48:50] How do you document systems & processes?
    • [52:42] How do you start documenting as an entrepreneur?
    • [57:45] The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
    • [1:05:04] Should you have an EA (Executive Assistant) as a business owner?
    • Quick-Fire Questions

What is Marketing Smarts?

From brand-building and marketing veterans Anne Candido and April Martini comes a podcast committed to cutting through all the confusing marketing BS so you can actually understand how to take action and change your business today. They deep-dive into topics most would gloss-over, infusing real-world examples from their combined 35+ years of corporate and agency experience. They tell it how it is so whether you are just starting out or have been in business awhile, you have the Marketing Smarts to immediately impact your business.

How do I exercise my Marketing Smarts?

Thanks for listening to Marketing Smarts. Get in touch here to become a savvier marketer. 

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Anne Candido 0:00
Tis is Marketing Smarts – a podcast committed to helping you become a savvier marketing leader, no matter your level. And each episode will dive into a relevant topic or challenge that marketing leaders are currently facing. We’ll also give you practical tools and applications that will help you put what you learn into practice today. Now let’s get to it. Welcome to Marketing Smarts. I am Anne Candido and I am April martini, and today we’re going to talk about the mindset shift and actions needed to move from being a doer in the business to the orchestrator of the business. So I was just recently listening to an Alex Hormozi YouTube clip. So everybody knows I’m a big Alex Hormozi fan. It’s not Adam Grant this time. It’s Alex from the two it usually is. But he has this clip about the four problems every business has to solve, and he makes this distinction that many of us will call ourselves business owners, that really the business owns us, and this is really the reality for a very, very long time. But there comes a point in time when we must find a way to extract ourselves from the day to day, so that we can work more intently on the growth and scale of the business. We’ve talked about this topic before in a different context around transitioning from a doer to a manager within businesses, but we think it’s important to contextualize this for business owners specifically, because this does look really different for you, it can be a really difficult decision to make this transition, because it usually involves building infrastructure, and also the one that we get pushed back on when we give people advice about this, is making a financial investment, and with that comes additional complexity and risk. Honestly, and we know this can be really scary, so today, we want to give you clear actions and resources to leverage to help guide this process and make you more comfortable within it. Yes, and to help us with this topic, we have a very special guest. It’s Bradley Hamner of blueprint OS. He’s also a keynote speaker. He’s a podcast host himself, of the above, the business podcast, and a business coach, so a perfect person to have on for this discussion. So Bradley, thanks for joining us. Would you like to introduce yourself

Bradley Hamner 2:01
and in April, it’s a pleasure to be on the podcast with both of you. Thank you so much. Yeah, so I am founder and CEO of BlueprintOS, but also have a holding company that does around 10 million in top line combined annual revenue that we’re building to 30 million by 2030 but that is the nice, fancy way of saying that I’ve gotten this way, got to this place, but it took me a long time to get here. As matter of fact, I was really close to walking away from entrepreneurship just about nine years ago or so, and I’m glad that I didn’t. So maybe I’ll share a little bit around kind of my journey of how I got here, but grateful for the opportunity.

Anne Candido 2:40
Yeah, thanks. And but definitely going to get to that, and actually going to get to that in the first question. So we’re just going to, let’s jump into transitioning from a rainmaker to an architect of your business and for and really rather, those are your words. So you that was the that’s way that you contextualize it. So I’d love if you could share a little bit more about what is behind that. Your Story, I think, leads really nicely into that and kind of give the listener some context for what you do and why you do it.

Bradley Hamner 3:04
I think a lot of times things are called they’re not taught, and that was the case with my dad. My dad is, you know, one of my biggest heroes. He’s a farmer. We live in North Alabama, and so northwest part of the state, they farm now probably around four to 5000 acres, and they have a seed conditioning business. And so when you’re in that, in that world, I saw from my dad what it actually takes and what it really means to be able to work hard. I mean, my dad didn’t teach me that, but it came at a lot of sacrifice, and you missed a lot of my games whenever I was growing up, baseball games and basketball games. He sure as heck was not my coach growing up. You stay in the field till two, three in the morning, whenever a storm system is coming in, in the spring, you’re planting. In the fall, you’re harvesting, and it’s just what it takes. And I’m so grateful for that. Well, I took that skill and then before I started my business, I was in sales, and so I felt like that. Luckily, I had some really good training. I sold Yellow Page ads right out of college. Years ago. Of course, a lot of people mainly listening that, thinking like, Was that an actual thing? Well, back in 2004 it was, you know, or at least for a couple more years before iPhone and Google came out, and then it pretty much crushed that business. But for that period of time it was, and it was a definitely way that businesses got their their name out there, and how they were ever able to advertise, because people had these big, big yellow books in their offices. And so I knew how to sell, and I knew how to work hard, and that’s exactly what was needed to get that business off the ground at that time. But eventually things work until they don’t work anymore, and that is a big part of my journey. And so you’re right, I didn’t have the language of that, but I was really the rainmaker of my business. Matter of fact, I even use that term now because I used to say that I was the rainmaker of my business, in a way that it was an identity that I. I thought that I looked at it with a lot of pride. I looked at it with a lot of pride that I was the one pushing that business forward. I could go and make it rain in the business, and I could, well, eventually that stopped working. The business began to plateau. And so the things that I’d done for years were no longer working anymore. And so of course, that leads to my transformation, but that’s what I mean by being the rainmaker of the business, and I think a lot of business owners can certainly relate to that.

April Martini 5:29
Yeah, I love what you said just right at the end there about things worked until they didn’t. I was actually in a coaching session this morning with someone that is deciding whether or not to go on his own and be an entrepreneur. And I gave him that exact piece of insight, I guess, for what it means to run your own business. And I said specifically. I said, you know, if you really think this is something you want to do, the one thing about it that no one told me before I started was that piece about, you know, you can be going along, going along, going along, and it doesn’t take much to all of a sudden. It feels like you wake up one day, but it’s been sliding for a while because you’re not keeping your eye on what has changed, and so constantly being in front of that curve and being able to start to see or anticipate when changes need to be made, or when you need to learn new things, or what that kind of stuff looks like in order to keep the business going. I mean, it’s a constant thing. And you know, there’s that expression that the only thing constant is change, right? And it’s very true when you own your own business and those plateaus start to happen.

Bradley Hamner 6:43
Yeah, so true. In fact, let me double tap on that over a second. The thing that I believe in, and what you were speaking into him now, is something that I did not do back then, that I think, had I been able to do it? Had I had a structure of doing what I’m about to share. I think it my story would have been different in that business, at least. And that is, you know, Gerber introduced us to the idea of working on not in the business, and his famous book, e Beth. And I think if you’ve been in business for a minute, you’ve heard of that book and heard of that concept, oh yes. And I agree with that. That’s why the name of my podcast is above the business. Is because I think there’s just a third dimension, which is on in and above. And had I spent a little bit of time weekly, an hour, hour and a half, to get above my business and actually be able to see it look around the corner to of like, Wait a minute. Let me actually what am I doing? And I was never doing that. I was always in the business, maybe occasionally on it, but I was just in it all the time. I was deep in the weeds. And so the harder I worked, the deeper I was just in the business. And what happens is you just don’t have any perspective. You just don’t have any context whatsoever, and so you just keep working harder, harder, harder, harder, harder. Had I just stepped away, gotten a little perspective, gotten above the business, I think I could have been able to foresee some of the things. I think I could have simplified the business. And matter of fact, over time, I was just making it more complex. I was just adding things. And you know, here’s what that looks like. I was switching compensation plans all the time. I was switching sales strategies. I was, you know, randomly changing marketing efforts. We it was just spaghetti on the wall, and it wasn’t from lack of effort. Heck, I was working harder than I could possibly, you know, work, you know. And it just nothing seemed to be working. I was changing everything, and I was just in it all the time. So I think the advice you shared with that budding entrepreneur was certainly sage advice. Yeah,

Anne Candido 8:49
I think, I mean, obviously E Myth was a transformational book for me as well. And I talk all the time about working in a business and working on your business, and I like even the context of breaking above your business, as well as the third dimension of it, because I think people, they get their heads down into a goal and they just kind of churn, churn, churn, churn, churn, without, like, just kind of taking a second to kind of rise above and like, am I even doing the right thing? But it can be so hard, especially if you’re an n of one to to do that, because you’re trying to make revenue for your business in order to generate more business. And so kind of pulling yourself or extracting yourself from the weeds takes a lot of effort. So I love if you could talk a little bit about what’s the difference between being in your business, on your business, above your business. How does that look from the different levels of that? And it helped kind of dimensionalize that for people.

Bradley Hamner 9:47
Yeah, great. Okay, so I won’t go through every single bullet point that we have of what falls under on in and above, but I’ll give a couple summaries, and I think people will be like, Okay, I can kind of maybe figure out what the rest of them are. So in the business is one. Whenever you’re doing delivery so that could look like you’re actually doing a client session. Also, I would say that any of your delivery efforts whenever you’re doing sales calls, that is all in the business stuff. So my Tuesday now with our company, blueprint OS, that is an in the business day. I do blueprint 10am on Central Time, and then I do boardroom at 12. Like those are absolutely 100% in the business activities. Okay, sales calls that you have in the business activities. Okay, on the business activities, my weekly one to ones, your weekly team meetings, we call them weekly business reviews, but weekly team meetings and your one to ones are examples of working on the business. Another is what we call jam sessions. And so we’re going to jam it really was just a casual terminology that we said, hey, we’ve got like, a retreat coming up, right? So we do retreats twice a year with the members, and so every month we’ll do a jam session for an hour working on that retreat. Okay, that’s an on the business activity. We’re working we’re planning, thinking ahead of like, okay, who’s going to do this presentation, and then where are we having dinner, etc. We’re working on the business Okay, fantastic. So that’s in the business activities. There’s on the business activities. What are examples of above the business? I’m going to give you one for weekly. I’ll give you one for quarterly, and then one annually. I think that the most important thing we can do for our businesses is to spend time thinking about the business. This is example of what I was saying earlier, like I didn’t do so a 60 to 90 minute session once per week can be transformational for your business. You We all hear things like small hinges swing big doors, but sometimes we don’t ever know, like, okay, I get that but, like, I get that quip. But what’s an example of that? To me, a once a week 60 minute thinking time session for your business is a huge that is a small hinge that swings a big door. So that’s what I would do. Encourage you to do once a week that is absolutely working above your business. Get away from the digital go in with a notebook. Go to a Starbucks or whatever your favorite coffee shop is. Get away from all of that, listen to some music and spend time thinking about the business. The second is quarterly. So I encourage our business owners to spend at least a half of a day. And a lot of them will spend an entire day week 13 of a quarter, they get away. Some of them will go rent an Airbnb. Some of them will just go and spend a go to a coffee shop, but get away from your office, reflect back on what went well, and plan for the next quarter. You will get above the business. And I’ll give you even a couple other things. When I’m in my own with my coaches, the people that I work with whenever I’ll do like when we get together annually, that is almost always above the business activities, because I’m around other entrepreneurs that are doing bigger things than what we are. And that helps get me out of the environment of even working on or in and I start seeing what’s possible. So when I’m having a coaching session with my coach and we start thinking bigger, challenging me almost all the time. Sure, there are occasions where he’s helping me with my presentation deck and how to structure that and so that’s in the business activities, but for the most part, when we’re doing the most of the sessions I’m thinking bigger that’s above the business. And so I would say weekly, your thinking time sessions, your quarterly planning sessions. And then when you put yourself in an environment with other entrepreneurs that allow you to be able to think bigger on an annual basis, that’s above the business, yeah,

April Martini 13:59
I think that is really well, well said. And I love the examples. That’s one thing we always pride ourselves on, on the show, is making sure that we’re making it tangible for people. So I hope that everybody heard that outline, took some notes on the theory of it, but also how you actually go and do it. And I will just say that Anne and I are the exact same way. I mean, what we just outlined is literally the same practice that we have. So we use wine, except we use wine. Yeah, for

Bradley Hamner 14:29
I think, no, actually, I think that’s great. Yeah, helps

Anne Candido 14:31
facilitate the same

April Martini 14:34
thing. But I, for me, it’s, it’s maybe closer to 30 minutes a week, I guess I should say maybe not a full hour, but just, you know, sitting in my office quietly with music is one way that I do it. Absolutely no computer whatsoever. A lot of my thinking time happens walking the dog, and I actually am typically listening to stuff. But if I’m using that time for this, it’s silent. There’s no There’s no. No book, no music, no anything. And then Ann and I do half day sessions once a quarter, we try to go somewhere that’s not our Well, we’re never in our office spaces. Yes, we are typically drinking wine when we are chatting, but someplace that we really love. And then we’re on walks around, walks, yep, yep. And then we also do a two to three day planning at the end of every single year. And I will say that that practice, you’re absolutely right. And you know, there’s semantics there. We use that as an on reference. But now I feel like above is going to be in my vernacular from now on, because it’s more it makes more sense. But what comes out of those sessions, and when we go back quarterly, the one build, I will say, is we’re bringing out the plan that we did at the end of the year before, and seeing how, how we did one thing, I think entrepreneurs in general, but certainly it’s true for Anne and me. We are very bad at celebrating our successes. It’s just like, you know, something good happens, and we’re like, great, great. Okay, on to the next thing you know. And we’re always, we’re both problem solvers, and so we’re looking into the things that maybe aren’t working all the time, but it allows us the opportunity to prove out that the effort’s worth it, one but also to take time and celebrate at those quarterly moments the things that we’ve done really well and the progress that we’ve made against that plan. So total agreement on everything you said, and just some builds from my end. Yeah, I

Bradley Hamner 16:23
actually want to share with people to kind of go deeper on that. And so one of our maxims so things like we believe is environment dictates performance, and there’s a lot of different ways to look at that, the environment of your you know, the environment within your team and the culture and things like that, I’m sure. But really, I would even share, like, on the things that you’re talking about, whenever you said, like, Yeah, I mean, I have to do it with music. I really love coffee, and so once a week with coffee and a certain music playlist, it puts me in the right environment. If I tried to do it right here in my studio, forget it. It’s not going to happen. The kid, well, depending on the time of day it is, or whatever, kids are running around, there’s activities. It just will not work. I’ve tried it. It doesn’t happen. The other thing is, like, quarterly, when you said, hey, you know, we do it with one No joke, actually, we will encourage people to do it and architect it scores our language in a way that it’s actually something you look forward to. So what if? Or as an example, like, we’ve got a couple of our members that will plan maybe a date night, and then they’ll say, like, let’s go to this really nice restaurant in town. But I’m going to spend the entire day planning for the business. I’m going to be working above the business, and they’ll actually call in above the business day, and they’ll, you know, they wake up, they don’t have any appointments on the schedule. The team knows that they’re in above the business day. No slack messages, no emails. Don’t text me, don’t Voxer me, don’t send me anything. I’m above the business today. I’m offline. I might as well be in, you know, wherever, and don’t have internet that day. And so what they do is they get themselves in the right environment, if they have a leadership team, or they have a partner that’s a part of the business, then they will go off site to do that. And then they will some of them, a couple founders, I can think about like they’ll go play golf in the morning. They’ll play golf early in the morning, and then they will get be at the golf course, and they’ll spend the next three hours or so doing their quarterly planning that they have. Why? Because they love that. They look forward to it. They get to go play golf. The weather is great. They have the right environment. Maybe they have a couple beers. Maybe they don’t. Maybe that’s later on. But there’s a reason, like if, depending on what you like, okay to put yourself in that environment, because otherwise, if we’re just jamming home in front of my computer, I can’t, I just can’t get above the thing I’m I’m looking at, you know, our sales numbers, and I’m looking at lead numbers, and I’m looking at all these different things, and it’s hard for me to separate myself emotionally from the things that are happening day To day in the business. But if you architect in a certain way, it can be something you really, you really enjoy. And so I think all of those elements that you mentioned for you saying it was transformational for you, I think a lot of people can take away tips for that, for it to be something that you shouldn’t here’s the difference. The difference is I need to do that. Somebody may be listening to this and say, Oh, that’s right, you know, they have a good point. I probably need to do that. Was it something you need to do? Or you want to do it? There’s a big difference between the like, Oh, my goodness, I actually want to do that. And if you can get to that place where you can design it in a way, to where it’s like, man, that actually would be fantastic for me to do a few times. You know, once a quarter I’m want to do that, you’re going to be a lot more propelled to do it than us convincing you that it’s something you need to do.

Anne Candido 19:51
Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. And I’ll, I’ll tell you, for one April loves it when I have above the business time. No,

April Martini 19:58
I don’t. I. Uh,

Anne Candido 20:02
because I’m usually come back, I’m like, I had an idea, and she just is like, Oh God, because it usually costs money, it usually involves some sort of shift. It usually is like, there’s usually something that’s just kind of like, oh for love, what is she gonna come up with now? Well,

April Martini 20:17
you’re seeing the dynamic now come to life in the partnership where I am the more conservative one, and Anne sees opportunity literally everywhere. Yes,

Anne Candido 20:26
there’s opportunity everywhere. What about this? What about this? So now I just use the maxim. My maxim is, I’m just being curious. So we’re like, oh, that’s what we’re calling it now. But okay,

Bradley Hamner 20:36
yeah, well, okay, so let me give me my thoughts on that. A lot of times people will this will get couched as somebody’s being the visionary. I think that that’s accurate. I mean, obviously that came from, you know, Gina Wickman’s book Traction. He really kind of popularized that idea, right? So I think it’s great. I think that from my own journey, if I say this somewhat jokingly, half but somewhat serious too, is like, you know, I read that book years ago, and I was like, Oh, that’s great. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m just going to be visioning. I’m just going to go vision eight, all over the place. It’s like, well, Bradley, there’s still work that needs to get done, right? You can’t just have a bunch of ideas. I think having a partnership, having someone who can honestly check that at those things and say that’s great, but where does that line up? You know? Because I will tell you some of the biggest pivots in the businesses I’ve been a part of have come from a thinking time session. Have absolutely come from on paper. And I can tell you even even Ray Mert architect like I can remember the moment I was out where I wrote that down, and was like, that’s the journey. And it just kind of came out of me, because I was in the right space to write that down. I was like, Yeah, that’s actually what it is. And then what architects use they, you know, anyway, they just all kind of came, came out of me, from that, in that perspective. And that was a significant pivot for that, for that company, of like, well, what is it that we do? What was my own journey? How would I even like say that at the same time, there had been things and ideas, especially years ago, that I didn’t have a have something to check me, because then everybody was just like, well, we’re going to do do it, because that’s what Bradley says. And so now having either a person or some sort of a process in place to not just constantly be changing ideas. I think that’s actually why partnerships can work so well, if you can get the right dynamic, because someone says, I hear you, I love that idea, but what about this? Oh, I didn’t consider that aspect of it. And so if you don’t have that, at least have a coach or someone who can speak into these ideas. Because there’s a few times like Mike, my coach, you know, will say, I love it, okay, but what about this? Well, I haven’t thought about that Mike, right? And he’ll at times, poke holes in my and bust my balloon, so to speak, and then there’s other times where he says, I think you’ve nailed it. I think you’ve I think that’s exactly what it needs to be. And that gives me a lot of confidence to move forward, because there’s somebody checking my assumptions and my ideas.

April Martini 23:14
Well, first of all, I’ve, I’m glad you validate my role in this partnership, but I validate

Anne Candido 23:19
your role in this partnership too. Um, keep me on the track.

April Martini 23:23
But I do think, you know, one of the things actually, that Anne and I both share is idea through to execution. And so as you were talking, and you were, you know, you tongue in cheek, said, You know, I could just visionate all over the place. But, I mean, it is really true, right?

Anne Candido 23:41
And I remark

April Martini 23:43
there there’s a certain amount of discipline, and I think that it’s great, you know, I’ve worked with a lot of visionaries. I come from the creative field, so it’s just, you know, ripe with that kind of personality, big personality, big ideas, throwing stuff on the wall, coming at you know, and people want to follow them because they’re charismatic and they’ve got a lot of energy, and they’re people that you want to be around. But on the other side of that, it’s doing the things we’re talking about here, to do the big picture thinking and being above your business, but then also making the plans and decisions for how to go and make things happen. And that is one of the things that I’ve seen with entrepreneurs, or, you know, business owners in general, where they fall down is when they don’t have either the ability within themselves or the counterpoint of someone else to check them, or their coach, like you said, or whatever. And they just get out in front of their skis all the time, and then all of a sudden the business completely loses focus, and the ideas are executed, kind of the way you were saying before, where it’s like the spaghetti against the law, because there’s no way of working to bring any of those ideas to life.

Bradley Hamner 24:56
Yeah, it’s true. So we another one of our maxims. I said one of. Earlier, but environment dictates performance. But to your point, we say ideas are everywhere. Implementation is everything. Implementation, execution, same kind of thing like I now fully believe that ideas are worthless. I just think ideas are worthless. It’s never the idea. It’s what you do with it that can potentially change your business, change your life, change the world, even, I mean, like if Elon Musk just had the idea of Tesla but never did anything with it, like it doesn’t come to life. And so it is though, however, the problem becomes that there are too many good ideas to execute on. Yes, marketing, what marketing tactic? What should we use? What marketing channels should we use? Well, the reality is, paid ads work, paid ads on metal work, paid ads on tic tac, tic tac, tick tock work, paid ads on challenges, webinars, challenges, VSLs. I mean, I could keep going right billboards work. I mean, they all work. What’s the right one that’s going to work for you? You can’t do all of them. You mentioned hormozi earlier, and like I like hermosi too. Well. Look at what hermosi was doing for a period of time. They’re putting bazillion pieces of content out on every platform imaginable. Yeah, do you know how much money he has to be able to afford a team to do all of that kind of thing? So if you looked at what he was doing and just did that, well, I hope you got deep pockets, because, like, he’s got a huge following, and he can do that. Okay, I can’t do that, and I don’t have that kind of, those kind of deep pockets to be able to make that happen. And so then you have to get to a place to where you make a level of commitment. And I think, as an entrepreneur, that’s a thing that we don’t like, because the reality is, unless you have a business partner, there’s just not many people that are speaking into that says, I don’t think you should spend that money there. I don’t think you should do that. I think that if you’re going to do that, what about this, if you’re going to spend money over here, what about this? And then, honestly, sometimes we commit to something for 30 days, and it’s just not enough time to decide whether or not it was going to work or not. So one of the things that has been incredibly helpful to me is we just do most things now on a 90 day basis. We will at least give it 90 days. I will allocate my time to a certain point, which is discussed on the front end. And we will discuss a predetermined amount of money that we will spend, so resource allocation, so Tom 90 days minimum money. I don’t think there’s a money amount that makes sense for me to throw out there. Just you got to decide how much you want. Yeah, you know, maybe 3000 a month. So okay, we’re going to spend $9,000 on this, possibly, or whatever that may be. And then how much of your time are you going to invest? And then at the end, we will commit to that 90 days. And what’s great about it is because maybe 30 days in 45 days, in 60 days in Bradley starts to get a little like, I don’t think this is working, and then I want to change it, okay, but no, it’s on paper. Doggone it that I said that I was going to give this until September the first, and so we’ll do it till September 1. And a lot of times, it’s amazing how that last few weeks, that last 30 days, is when all the gains start to happen. You start to see the compounding effort, and things start to get better. And it’s like, oh, man, I’m so glad I didn’t give up on that. And then conversely, this last thing I’ll say on this one, is Conversely, there have been times where it’s like, hey, we gave it 90 days. We invested the time. Bradley, you allocated your time. That experiment did not work. Okay, now we know, and we can iterate and improve upon it. So that’s been a helpful construct for me as the visionary entrepreneur for my businesses, and maybe that’s helpful for somebody else,

Anne Candido 29:10
yeah, we call that testing and learning, so we’re a big proponent of that, and we follow that process as well. And I think that really led itself nicely to the next area I really want to move into, which is a lot of people who are solopreneurs, for example, are kind of hearing that they’re like, You keep talking about this team and these people. You know, how am I supposed to afford these team or these people? It’s just me, or how do I go about, kind of getting this team and this people? And this is what we alluded to at the intro, which is there comes to a point in time where you have to look at your business and you have to determine, do you want to scale? Do you want to get bigger? Do you want to stay and this is actually a conversation April and I have all the time, and as part of our quarterly planning, as part of our yearly planning, it’s like, are we going to get bigger? Because if we’re going to get bigger, a lot of stuff has to to look different. If we want to go after these new clients, a lot of stuff might have to look different. And so you start putting that those processes in places. What Ifs in place, and what must be trues in place in order to determine whether or not you can indeed scale. But it does make people very, very nervous, because, like we said in the beginning, there’s usually an infrastructure shift. There’s usually an investment shift. There’s usually you know, adding more people to the mix and kind of figuring who those right people are. So I love if you could talk a little bit Riley about, like, when is that time like, and how should people think about that time? And how do people decide, hey, I’m in a time frame that I really need to consider whether or not I’m going to get bigger, whether or not I’m going to stay and then how do I go about, kind of taking those initial steps? So

Bradley Hamner 30:44
like we said earlier, we kind of try to go high level to high level. So I’m going to give some people, some specific things that I felt like that I’ve seen either through my own journey or with working with other people in my own journey. You, I think you can possibly get your business to about a half a million dollars in top line revenue, just based off you being the Rainmaker. For some businesses, it might be 300,000 I’ve seen maybe one that I could say legitimately, they got that business to a million on their back. But for the most part, that pain line, Dan Martell calls it that that pain line happens at three to $500,000 so then you have to decide, what is the vision? What do you actually want? We believe business is a team sport. We believe business is a team sport. We believe in the value of team. We understand that it’s not easy to learn how to build a team, how to create culture, how to hire people. We just believe that you build the people and the people build the business. That’s what we believe. And at the end of the day, if some people don’t believe that, then that’s totally fine. I just don’t believe with the one small caveat that we don’t, none of us know yet that maybe somebody can do more than that because of the future of AI. But we’re not there. Okay, we’re not there yet. I don’t know what that’s going to be. That being said, though, even with AI as a component of somebody or or something that you look at as a part of your team that you use, and I use, try to use AI every day to get accustomed to it, and so I can try to stay on the cutting edge of it. I think it just accelerates what you have within yourself, but also within your team. So we fundamentally believe that roughly, you can get your business to about 300,000 maybe a half a million off your back. But if you have a bigger vision to get it to 1,000,002 million, $3 million then the big thing that you have to look at and to conquer is, how do I build a team? How do I drive results through other people? And whenever I came to the realization that I don’t know how to do that, I only know how to drive results through me being the Rainmaker, then it was finally, and it wasn’t a place of shame. It was just a place of like, I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep doing this. I’m going to leave. I’m just going to walk away. I can go to corporate America. I can get a couple $100,000 base salary, company, car four and 1k, benefits, the whole nine yards I can go just work up the corporate ladder, or I’ve got to do something different. But for me, I didn’t know what the different was. I mean, the only lever you have is just to do the what you’ve been doing. Fortunately, if you want to get into that, can tell you, kind of my story and like, what happened for me to kind of figure that out. But ultimately, you build the team, and the team builds the business. So if you want to have, if you have a big vision for what you want to accomplish, and by the way, we contextualize that over three years. We think a three year vision is as far out as you need to plan for your business. Now, if you’ve got big things that you want to do for your personal life, great, but we have not been able to specifically, I can’t get around 25 year business visions, and maybe you guys can’t I, I’ve never been able to understand that what’s going

Anne Candido 34:19
to be like In 25 years. No, it’s just,

Bradley Hamner 34:21
it’s just so much, so much changes. But I can think back to what we were doing in 2021 I can remember that. I can remember August of 2021 I can remember September 2021 roughly what was going on then. And so it’s easier for me to forecast to 2027 not that it’s perfect, but we believe in a big three year vision of what it is that you want to accomplish, and if that vision is big enough, then you got to build a team to make that happen. You said

April Martini 34:53
so many things there that I agree with. I feel like my neck is going to hurt from nodding a lock. But I mean. And so. So, first of all, I will say I am a case study in exactly what you said. So in between meeting Anne and my last agency job, I built my own business. Top line revenue was $600,000 and that that was all I could do. There was there was nothing. There was no way I could take on anything else. That’s number one. Number two, I think the piece about building the people. We kind of talk about this in two ways. One is, you need the bench, and we said Doer to manager here, but you know, the people that are going to actually do the work so that you can get above, you know, wherever you want to be, but then surrounding yourself with the people that are going to be instrumental in the business growing so kind of like the two segments of people, and that you need both, and then it looks very different. And then the other thing that I was going to say is around the vision planning us too. I mean, we said, Yeah, 25 years you heard Anne say, like, what is the world even going to be like? But across the board. I mean, we hold that philosophy too. Because I think what happens, and we see this with coaching clients, is they might have an idea, you know, if they’re a director, that they want to be a C-level someday, right? But that’s not a plan, right? Like, that’s like, Okay, I want to get to that. And so we hold two first. I mean, it’s a one year plan for a lot of folks, because they haven’t done a planning exercise, but I do agree with what you said about that three year mark, where you can look back and know where you were. And I just want people to hear that like, I think that is 1,000% true, and then you can think forward enough where it’s more tangible in nature, and you can start to map out how you’re going to get there. And we always say, like, you know, the first six months and year, they’re more solid, right? Like, you have the, okay, I’m going to do this, and I’m going to do this, and I’m going to do this, and then when you get to years two and three, it’s a little more gray or muddy or, you know, you can’t quite see it, but you at least know what you’re shooting for. Yep. So, again, very philosophically aligned, but I just as you were talking, those were the things kind of coming into my head.

Bradley Hamner 37:04
I know a lot of people, we use the term goal. We specifically don’t use the term goal, and it was probably in my own journey. So if somebody wants to insert the word goals here, that’s totally fine for me. A lot of the times, goals have become synonymous with wishes, and so we use other terms, like three year vision, one year OKRs, quarterly targets, okay? And so if you want to use goals, that’s that’s totally fine, but we believe that your business blueprint is those three things like, so we actually work with our clients to build out their business blueprint. Where are you trying to go in three years? Where are you trying to go in one year? What are you trying to do in 90 days? So there’s three things, three or one year in 90 days. And then that gives us a really clear picture. And the closer you get to where you are today, the more granular and detailed that should be, right? So clearly, we’re in q3 as an example right now. So when you set that out in July, that should be pretty tangible. You can look out to July, August and September, and for the most part, be able to predict pretty well. When you were in December or January, and you were predicting for 2024 you can get a pretty good idea of what that was going to be. But the further you go out, it just it does get fuzzier. It does get fuzzier. As a matter of fact, I’ll share with people that, if you can reverse engineer, to me specifically how you’re going to get there and what’s going to look like in three years, and like, well, what it’s going to look like, but how you’re going to get there, I would tell you’re not thinking big enough. Like, if you if it’s that you can just reverse engineer the thing so perfectly. I think you need to stretch that a little bit, because you just got too clear of a plan we want it to be. You can kind of see that there’s buildings in the future, but it’s not sharp, and as we get closer to it, it becomes more into focus.

Anne Candido 38:48
I think we did a really good job kind of mapping out what’s in the business that may trigger a rethink here. But I love for you to take people through your personal story, because there’s also the emotional, personal, physical side of it. And April and I have told our own personal stories about when we knew it was time to pivot, or when it was time to scale, or when it was time to get a partner, when it was time to kind of take it to the next level. But I’d love if you could share your story as well.

Bradley Hamner 39:16
It’s funny. I’ve got a social media post that I found about a year ago. That was in 2011 it was the weekend of Memorial Day, and I posted and it said, I gotta learn to shut my mind off on a weekend too much work on my mind. And it was like, boy. That was super foreshadowing, because I was only a year and a half into business. So fast forward to 2015 it’s like June of 2015 so there’s a picture that I have, that I took. I’ve got two laptops up. We’re at Disney, the Disney Yacht Club specifically, and I’m running a weekly team meeting with the worst part of business. In that caption, it says, better never stops, even on vacation. And it was like, wow, okay, I was so just delusional of like, what I thought it actually took in the business. And in that moment. But the reason I was working from Disney is because the business had plateaued. Like the business was totally plateaued. So it was like, I have to work all of the time, so somebody else’s story is going to be probably look different. But that’s kind of where I was right. And so I was really holding it proudly that I needed to be in Disney. I guess it was a Monday morning, like, I gotta be a Disney running a weekly team meeting. Like, come on now. Why should I be doing that? And about a month later, I ended up having some I was doing, like a little CrossFit workout, and started feeling some pains in my chest, and kind of freaked me out a little bit. So I left that gym and caught a physician friend of mine and went saw him, and he puts me in the EKG machine, and he’s like, You know what, Bradley, I actually do see some stuff on here that are a little concerning. We need to get you and see a cardiologist. I’m 34 at the time, and I was like, wait, what? You know that that’s not what I expected. And at the end of the day, I went to our cardiologist. He said, Look, I was like, the next day, he said, Look, everything is fine with your heart, but I don’t know what you’ve got going on in your life at 34 but you might want to change it. He just walked out and out and, like, I was like, Okay, well, I don’t know what I need to change. So it wasn’t, you know, it was not like at all that I had this epiphany that I got in my truck and then all of a sudden, like, it was just like, you know, came down to me, this is what I’m going to change, and I’m going to go back. And I sat in a dark room for seven days and rebuilt my business. None of that happened, okay, like it wasn’t that at all. I didn’t know what to do. I just knew something needed to change. Well, specifically, it was after that that I genuinely thought about, like, actually looked at leaving entrepreneurship, like leaving my business, and throwing in the pulling out the white flag and saying sorry, Nara, to the point I even, you know, had some discussions, which is why I knew, like, Okay, I could actually go do this. And so there was a part of me that said I felt like it was gonna be signaling failure, and I just am so competitive and hard on myself that I just did not want to do that yet. But at the same time, I didn’t know what the right answer was. Fortunately, I joined about a year prior Strategic Coach, and so I’m in late fall of that year, they couldn’t find a date that worked, and so they put me in the wrong class. In fact, in the higher level class, like the 10x class, or something like that is what it’s called. Now it was only because the dates didn’t work out. They said, hey, look, we’ll do this for you one time. So I’m sitting next to a guy and never met, and I’ll never forget he literally had his hat backwards, and he’s got like, a sweatshirt on. He’s totally laid back guy. He’s a financial advisor. And so in my head, when he introduced himself, I had in my head. And I thought I knew what he did, half 1,750,000 in revenue, something like that, right? So we are doing the 10x is easier than 2x exercise, which is now popularized in the book that came out last year, as a matter of fact. So we’re doing that exercise. And he says, Well, last year we did 40 million. Top line, I made 5 million personally. Here’s what 400,000,050 would look like. I was like, wait, what? How much money did you make last year? It’s like, Yeah, I mean, made 5 million personally. Okay, few things here. Number one, I had never been in an environment where anybody talked about revenue and profitability or personal income, like I was in a bubble, nobody talked about that. We could talk about sales numbers, we could talk about other things. Nobody was willing to talk about revenue and profitability, let alone personal income. Secondly, I had it in my mind. I thought I knew what he did, and when he said they did 40 million revenue, I was like, wait, what? How much did you do? And then he said something I’d heard for years, and everybody’s heard it too. He goes, Man, it’s just systems and processes. I was like, Oh my gosh, if I hear that one more time, so sick of hearing systems and processes. I won’t cuss because I won’t cuss much, but that’s a moment where I probably did cuss and say something like, Man, I’m so sick of hearing it, because I was frustrated, right? I was frustrated about it, but then it was, he said, Look, well, I’ll just show you. At lunch, I’ll just show you. We went and got, you know, lunch, and we come back. And that moment changed me, because then he showed me, showed me the documents, he showed me the things, and I was like, oh, that’s what it takes. And it was one of those moments because of the journey I’d been on a couple months prior. Thought about leaving. Here he is. I think he’s doing probably one thing. He’s doing something totally different, way more than I ever think possible. I think maybe it was his demeanor. He used to play Major League Baseball. It was just something about it that connected with me, and it wasn’t that he shared, these are my principles. He didn’t have any of that. Okay, I don’t remember anything that was on the documents. I just remember seeing how beautiful they were. And he said, Bradley, I got my business. Inside my head. I just documented what I was doing, and I built the company off this. And that was the thing that I finally said, Okay, I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to hear this anymore. I’m actually going to go do it. And on the plane ride back, I’m like, okay, Word document. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m going to start actually trying to document some stuff. And that was the thing that ultimately took me a while to do, because nobody was teaching me how to do it, but I had a vision of, like, okay, that’s what he’s built. I’m going to go do that. I’m actually going to learn how to do this. And that’s the thing that changed. I

April Martini 45:33
mean, first of all, I think the serendipity is that the word of being in the wrong class, right, and then having that work out for you. I mean, you know, we don’t have to get into the philosophy of, like, you can call it universe manifesting, like, whatever you want to call it, but being placed in the right place at the right time, I think, is huge. But I also think, you know, you said it a different way. I’ll just kind of paraphrase like we’re all sitting here talking about our journeys, going back to what you said about spending the time each week and building that discipline and all of that, it’s clear to us now, because we can look backward on it, but so much of what we’re talking about here today is building the infrastructure, the process or the whatever you you know, words you use, or anyone that’s listening uses, in order to be able to get to those moments of clarity and being in those right situations. Because it doesn’t happen. It’s seemingly by accident, right? But I think that that is not the way that it actually is happening. It’s like you made all those things led up to that moment, but you reached the turning point and then went and did the next thing about it. And I think it’s, you know, discipline has been on my mind so much lately, but just, you know, the keeping at it, keeping at it, but keeping at it with intention, and then when the next thing opens up, leaning into that and using those muscles you built, but in a different way to take the next step.

Bradley Hamner 47:08
I’ll share with you. I came back and I even, we can even get into, like, okay, what are some of the things that I was actually doing and trying to, like, organize some stuff, etc. But then and I continued to make some mistakes around. Like, it took me a while to even to really get it, because I thought I was doing it, but then I kind of wasn’t doing it, etc. But to your point, like, I mean, I finally had at least a picture of what could be, and I will say I didn’t, then set a goal, so to speak, of building a $40 million company. I didn’t, never had that specific target to do it, but he at least shared with me what was what was possible. Okay? And there was something about he like, let me peek behind the curtain, so to speak, and see, like, oh, that’s actually fundamentally what it takes to do what it is I’m trying to do. And so I came back and I started to document stuff, but one of the things I ran into was I already had a lot of documents, already had a lot of stuff. We now call those remembrance in the attic. I actually these are pretty good, I mean, but I didn’t have an organizing way. Okay, maybe this analogy is probably not the best analogy, but I think it will at least make sense. You know, when you do your laundry and you get the clothes out of the dryer, and you take the clothes, you don’t just start randomly throwing stuff places, right? You don’t put your socks under the kitchen sink. You don’t put jeans in this you know,

April Martini 48:31
my husband, he

Anne Candido 48:34
doesn’t even fold it. He just puts it in one big basket, right? Well, I

Bradley Hamner 48:37
don’t want to get him in trouble on the podcast.

April Martini 48:39
This is a different topic for a different day. Go back, spread right? And just

Anne Candido 48:45
continue, please. Okay, well,

Bradley Hamner 48:47
we don’t want to get anybody in trouble on here. Okay, so for the most part, you probably most people, don’t do it that way. And the reason is, is because we we do it based off retrieval, not speed. In other words, why do we not do it? We don’t consciously think this. We do it because, well, the next time I go and I’m looking for socks, I’m going to go and look in the sock drawer. And I think for for me, the digital assets needed to be the same. So I had all these things, but they were just there was no organizing structure to them. So I couldn’t find documents. My team couldn’t find documents. We had no naming convention standards of how we needed to do it. There was no structure for the document. None of that stuff was in place. It was just all at random, okay? And we now call that like it was just default, not design. Well, it wasn’t designed to be a certain way, and so I had to kind of work through all of that stuff in my own journey. But then also I hired my first ea a couple months after that. So he had shared with me he had an EA, and I was like, Okay, I’ve heard that before. I probably should do that. So as an example, I hire my EA. We’re documenting some stuff. And so one of the things she’s having me do, she was setting appointments for me. Well, we started. Moving the process. I say, hey, next time I want you to do this, and next time text them, and the next time call them, and next time, after a call, after I have a meeting, then you do this, and then do this, and we then we started to have a pretty good system, right? And again, that’s what happens. 11 months later, she walks out the door, she leaves, she has another opportunity. And I immediately, as soon as she left, I walked back to my office, and I was wanting to, like, slam my fist on the table. Yes, I hated to lose her, but I was like, I did it again. I did it again. All that intellectual property. Just walked right out the door, all that stuff. I didn’t document what we were doing. So now, the next time somebody comes in, I gotta train them all over again. So even in that, in my own journey, it took me a couple years to kind of get to where it’s like, okay, we’re building assets. We’re actually doing this. So I’m not repeating myself over and over and over and over again. Assets and things are actually getting better. Because I actually believe systems get better over time, because they become living documents, and you’re always adding to them. They’re always improving, etc, versus only transferring knowledge to our teams. And then what happens if your team member leaves within all that intellectual property, walks right out the door, you know, with them. So I know, I’m sure some business owners can certainly relate to that part of it, too, but a lot

Anne Candido 51:20
of people probably had a very similar experience in your storytelling, when people say systems and processes and start rolling their eyes, because it seems like everything is built off of that, and there’s a huge resistance to it, because usually it takes effort, and it usually takes that time to be thinking about your business, or on your business and above your business. So I was wondering if you would you alluded to. You might share some of the things that you were doing, and maybe you did in that, in the discussion we just had, but if I was, like, a new entrepreneur, well, new thinking about how I want to kind of go take this to the next level. And I’m like, I’m hearing this. I’m like, okay, yeah, you got me. I know I need to kind of go to that next level. I need to start kind of thinking about this. I need to start implementing processes and systems. Please don’t, like, totally blow me like to smithereens, but like, overloading me with a bunch of them. What are like, some of the like, key ones? Or where should people start, as you’re kind of thinking about implementing these processes and systems, and feel free to leverage and talk about what you guys do at blueprint OS too, if it helps to kind of contextualize and helps to make this really tangible for folks.

Bradley Hamner 52:24
Okay, yeah. And before we do that, first, I want to share a philosophy, like a mindset, as to why I think it’s hard for entrepreneurs to do this. Okay, so I there’s one element of this I wanted to share, is when we hear, when I used to hear, systems, processes, structure, routine, those sort of things. It subconsciously flies in the face of why I started my business. Yes, feels very quiet. I started my business for freedom and flexibility. I wanted to do what I want to do with who I want to do it and have the money to do so I don’t want to be told what to do. I started my business to not be told what to do. So when I hear process, structure routine, it makes me get feel like it gives me the heebie jeebies, because it doesn’t anymore, but like for me, but it used to make me go like you’re boxing me in a corner. I don’t want structure process in my in my life, okay, I don’t want that yet. What I needed to get to is go Bradley, everything you want is on the other side of that. That’s the thing. Everything you want is on the other side of structure, process and routine. And whenever I finally, you know, again, I luckily had kind of an example to go to. It was like, wait a minute, freedom and flexibility. Do what I want to do, go play golf. Like yesterday afternoon, I went play golf. We had our, you know, session days that I did, I did a podcast. I was going to the golf course. I went and played golf with some really good buddies for four hours. It was a beautiful day in North Alabama. That was a great day, right? Because I didn’t have to answer to anybody to do that. Okay, great. But everything that I want is gotta first start with structure, process and routine. The business and the team is desperately saying, they don’t know how to say this, but they’re saying, Give us routine, give us structure, give us something to run off of, and we’ll go build that business so you can get what you want. Okay, so now that I’ve said that, it does bring up a good question for me. I have to kind of figure it out. I didn’t have a God, I didn’t have a roadmap. I didn’t have anything of like, what? What am I going to do? So I’m going to share with people some kind of, like, an identity shift aspect of it, and then specifically, what do you actually do? Okay, I think the first thing that has to happen is an identity shift. That’s the first thing that happened to me on the plane ride back from Toronto. I started to see myself differently. I started to see myself first where I was the rain mayor. Career where, like, I was doing everything, if I thought I need to do it then, or if it needs to get done, I’m going to do it. That’s how I saw things previously. So that, more than anything else, yes, I said earlier, I flipped open my laptop on the plane ride home and started to put stuff down. Yes, I remember that. But more importantly was the thing that was happening inside of me, and it was an identity shift. I saw myself as the architect. I saw myself as the builder, the designer of certain things, and the builder of it, as opposed to the one that was doing it. Okay? So I think when you start to see yourself as the architect, I’m going to architect this business, to work for me, as opposed to me working for it. I’m going to design this thing. I’m not going to default anymore. I’m going to design what it is I want. Okay, when you start doing that, you’ll start seeing things in the business differently. Earlier, we’re sharing like as an example of we had a thing yesterday with our team. We misspelled somebody’s name right on a slide deck. And immediately My mind goes, What is the process we put in place? So this doesn’t happen again? I’m not sure, sure, but I’m thinking as an architect, right? So seeing yourself as identity shift. You’ll start to view everything in the business differently if nobody, if somebody doesn’t, take anything away from this podcast. More than that, see yourself as the architect of your business. Okay, now what do I actually do? I think the first thing before you go and learn how to create any new documents is believe that you already have some Rembrandts in the attic. Believe that you’ve already done so much of the heavy lifting creating Google Sheets or Excel, whatever you’ve used. You’ve created Google Documents, you’ve created PDFs, you’ve created brochures in the business, and those hold a tremendous amount of value. And the way that we encourage people to do this is, Are you guys familiar with Marie Kondo, of course. Okay, the Magic Art of tidying up. I may have this a slightly off, but I think the analogy will make sense. She’ll go into a to a house, and the one of the first places she’ll go, she’ll go to the bedroom, she’ll go to the bedroom closet. And what does she do? She takes it all out. She takes it all out, and she goes piece by piece. If it’s a piece that she wants to keep, it goes in the closet and goes into a specific place. If it’s a piece you don’t want, they get rid of it, give it away, sell it, whatever they do with it, right? Okay, in our business world, the equivalent of that would be, if you don’t need it anymore, you create an archive folder. Put it in the archive folder. You don’t have to delete it, right? Just have a folder that’s called archive and put it in there. Okay, so if you ever need to possibly retrieve it, put it there. That alone, that alone, will get rid of probably 50% of the files that you’ve spun up over the years. Okay, just do that. It’s kind of like a spring cleaning, so to speak, of your digital files. Okay? And the reason this matters is because you can’t create an operating system if all the pieces aren’t working together. Okay, we can’t go about actually creating an operating system until we start to organize some stuff. So first of is, let’s get a bunch of the stuff into our some archive folders we don’t use anymore. That’s an old brochure. That’s an old slide deck. We don’t use that anymore. Let’s put it in archive folder. Cool. All right. Then, the question is, was, well, how do we structure it? Well, in my own journey, I started to Google. You can even do this today. What’s a system, what’s a process, what’s a playbook, what’s this? Well, the more I did, the more confused I got, okay, the more I was like, Wait a minute. This person calls this a process, this person calls this a playbook. This person calls it this. I have no idea anymore what to use. So for today on the podcast, I’m only going to share two levels with your audience, because I want to keep it really simple. Number one, we have seen ourselves as the architect of our business. That’s our that’s our identity shift. Secondly, we create an archive folder so we can start dumping and stuff in, the stuff that we don’t use. Number three is now we actually need to create the containers, right? Just kind of a lock our laundry analogy, earlier, we got to create the containers of where things are actually going to go. And we believe that the business runs on five principles. It runs on five key principles, and those five are, lead yourself first. Clarity alignment, team and execution, lead yourself first. Clarity alignment, team and execution. And so those five folders you go and create, whether it’s in Google Drive or Dropbox or whatever you’re. Shared drive is that you use go create those five folders, and then in each one of those, each principle has three playbooks. So simply put, the entire business runs on 15 playbooks, not 72 not 27 not an infinite number. It’s 15, five principles. Each one of those has three playbooks. Now some people are going to want to know what those are. Obviously, that would be too much to share on a podcast. So we’ll give people a resource of where they can just go and get our, what we call our hierarchy, that they can just say, like, Okay, I’m just going to go create this and create this, the structure. Some of them are like the marketing playbook, the sales playbook, the cash playbook as an example. So we will just give people that so they can go and do it. So for right now, first of all, you see yourself as the architect of your business. That’s an identity shift. Let’s create an archive folder so we can dump in the ones that we don’t need anymore. And then let’s actually go create some structure in our business of where to actually put things.

April Martini 1:01:07
Yeah, I think that’s great. I mean, this happens on the podcast every once in a while where I tell people to Rewind a few times, yeah, take notes and re listen to those things. Because I think the whole point of this episode, right is to lead people the right way and then give them the ability to go and do and so I think, you know, all the things you just said, I would just encourage people to go back and listen again, and then, you know, use the we appreciate you giving the additional resource to the audience, but being able to have that as a tool to go through that, but as it pertains specifically to that shift of mindset. I mean, one of the things that we talk about Coach through, get asked a lot, is the Okay, like, I take all this stuff off my plate, but now I feel uncomfortable because I don’t know what to go and do, right? So we’ve given you the playbook, which, again, I’m confusing terminology, but we’ve given you the roadmap. How about that for what to go to go and do. But I think that mindset shift in the space to go and do that is so important, and I think sometimes people miss that, and especially for me and in my business, you know, when I said I got to this threshold we’re talking about here, I didn’t have any sort of clarity because I was just running and going and doing but I certainly didn’t know what it looked like on the other side. And so I would just say it’s so important to give yourself the time to be able to make the shift. It’s not infinite. You know you shouldn’t sit in in the inactivity forever, but being able to recognize it and then start to take time to see the difference that’s happening. So one of the things that we talk about, just to give an example, is when people go, and we said this at the beginning, from Doer to manager, right? And so they were usually the person doing the things all the time. When they get to manager, they’re like, but now I feel like I don’t have any worth or value, or I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing, and so I’m uncomfortable. And so they spend time in that swirl of like, this is uncomfortable, instead of embracing it for what it is, which is to pull back out and up and be able to be present from that perspective, so that they’re kind of, you know, sitting in that room, but not thinking about the execution of the things that need to be done. And it takes a while and a practice to get yourself to start doing that, but if you take that time, I can promise you that your brain starts to fire in a different way, which is what you’re talking about. You’re seeing yourself more as the architect that we’re talking about here, and it creates a very different filter for how things come in and come out and what your role becomes. So, I mean, I would just sort of build on that, that it’s, you know, yes, we all are looking back again and saying we had these moments, but it does take some time, and you need to have some grace and patience with yourself as you’re going through that process.

Bradley Hamner 1:04:03
Yeah, we can even dive into one aspect of that, but we have five milestones of what it means to actually become the architect of your business. And so it’s, you know, it is an identity shift. But then there’s also a specific five milestones to know. Well, how do I know if I’ve actually arrived at becoming the architect of my business? Like, is it just this theoretical concept? And if it is, that’s fine, but there’s actually something that specifically lets me know if I’ve become the architect my business. And so one of them is that we fundamentally believe that as a business owner, having an EA is not a luxury, it’s a necessity, and the reason is, is because it allows you to buy back your time. And so to your point, what happens is, okay, I know I probably should not be doing certain things in my business. I should. Not be doing these 15 or $20 an hour task, but then that begs the question, okay, well, then if I get these off of my plate, I delegate them as an example, which we’ve heard before, what then am I going to do? What do I do with my time? Right? And I would say the value is, and I want to certainly let people know, like Dan martells book, buy back your time is absolutely fantastic book to kind of get the formula coming around this. Dan’s been one of my coaches over the years, and so he really helped solidify this for me, and he’s got a formula for that, but when you get off of your plate $20 an hour task. Let’s just use that one as an example, and then you replace it with $200 an hour task. That business will grow. Yes, and I will give an example to something we talked about closer to the beginning, which is that is a great thinking time exercise. What is the $200 an hour task in my business. Well, go ask yourself that right for different people, it’s going to be slightly different. Maybe you don’t know how to build and train a sales team. Doing that is a big lever in the business. If you can learn how to do that. That’s a big one. Okay, I don’t know how to hire an EA. Maybe I should learn how to be able to do that. I would just say, simply having a thinking time session that says, Well, what are the high value tasks in my business? That is a incredible thinking time exercise, specifically that people can take away to go, do, go to Starbucks, get a coffee, and think through what is a $250 an hour task in my business? What is a $500 an hour task in my business? Like, as an example, if you said, hey, we’d love to come and on your podcast and talk about this. But then I said, Great. Why am I going to come on? My EA is going to come on? You would be like, hey, no offense, but like, that’s not going to really work. And so this is, you know, seriously, like, I love my Yeah, she’s been with me for a really, really long time, but that’s not going to work, right? So this going on other people’s podcast selectively, and telling my story and evangelizing the message that we have. That’s a high value use of my time as an example, right? And so for different business owners, it’s going to be slightly different things, but checking my email is not a $250 an hour task in the business. It just doesn’t work that way. So there’s an example. Yeah, I think

Anne Candido 1:07:35
that’s fabulous. And for anybody who’s kind of still wondering, EA is executive assistant, just in case people are like, I need one of those. What is it? Yeah, in all the box, yeah. I mean, Bradley, this has been, like, hack, hack pack full of just like, really fantastic, tangible, like, mind and business blowing opportunity here. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing all of this with everybody before we let you go though, we have some rapid fire questions for you, just so people can get another purview of you, if you will.

Bradley Hamner 1:08:09
Oh, I love it. That’s fantastic. Let’s do it. All right, all right.

Anne Candido 1:08:12
So if you could have any superpower in the world, right, or adopt a superpower. What

Bradley Hamner 1:08:21
would it be, read people’s minds,

Anne Candido 1:08:24
me too. No, all that all the time. I feel like that’s a little dangerous. I’d rather be Oh, it would be dangerous,

Bradley Hamner 1:08:32
sure, but it’d be great superpower. Yeah, yeah, it

Anne Candido 1:08:35
would be a great superpower. What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever gotten? Well,

Bradley Hamner 1:08:39
I said it earlier. Ideas are everywhere. Implementation is everything. I

Anne Candido 1:08:43
like that. And then what’s one place that you’ve visited that people may not have known of, but you would like people to know about,

Bradley Hamner 1:08:51
four seasons, Saint Kitts. Nevis. Saint Kitts. Four Seasons there. It’s

Anne Candido 1:08:56
amazing. What’s about it? That’s amazing. Oh, well, I

Bradley Hamner 1:08:59
mean, just the way the pool sits at the same level with the beach. It’s also fairly remote, like, I think you fly to St Kitts, and then you have to take a boat to get to the Nevis land right there. Also, there’s a golf course, and the spa is really great. So, yeah, that’s an amazing place.

Anne Candido 1:09:15
Oh, wonderful. We always love to share this. Put them on our own list. Yeah, sometimes we ask these questions for our own benefit. Frankly,

Bradley Hamner 1:09:23
that is great.

Anne Candido 1:09:27
This has been fantastic. Just to kind of wrap us up, let us know a little bit more about like, where people can find you, if there’s anything else that you want to mention that we didn’t have a chance to cover all that great stuff. The

Bradley Hamner 1:09:39
best social place to connect with me is going to be on LinkedIn, like as an example, where I’m not personally super active on social yet that defies every logical thing to do. But the reality is, that’s an example of, there’s too many good ideas, right? So we’re really doing and focusing on. On certain channels for growth. Our podcast has been a huge part of that. Going on another amazing podcast, like your podcast as an example. Eventually, I’ll spin up the social media game down the road and when we’re whenever we feel that’s the right thing. But connect with me on LinkedIn. So that’s a great place to connect with me personally. They can check out my podcast above the business, it’s on all the podcast platforms, so they can check out my podcast. We do some interviews on Monday, and then I do a solo episodes that drop on Friday, and then we’ve got people want to go deeper. I mentioned this earlier, and they want to kind of get started on their own journey of becoming the architect of their business, if they go to blueprint OS com forward slash assets. Blueprint OS com forward slash assets, we’ve got a starter kit there. It’s the Rainmaker to architect starter kit. And it’s a mini course. And in that mini course, we give some tools, some actual downloads that they can have, as well as 10, 15, 20-minute videos from me actually going over those assets. Sometimes, you know, you get downloads, but you don’t have the training that goes along with it. So in that mini course that they get access to, they get both. They get a training from me going over it of exactly what that means. So going back to what I was sharing earlier, if somebody forgets those principles and the playbooks that is all in there, we literally have the hierarchy and the roadmap that you can use, that we actually use with our clients, and so they can get access to

Anne Candido 1:11:36
that awesome well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate all of the wisdom that you’ve shared, and I know April does as well. She’s still not acting the stories and what that will say, go and exercise your Marketing Smarts!

April Martini 1:11:51
Still need help in growing your Marketing Smarts? Contact us through our website: ForthRight-People.com We can help you become a savvier marketer through coaching or training you and your team or doing the work on your behalf. Please also help us grow the podcast by rating and reviewing on your player of choice and sharing with at least one person. Now, go show off your Marketing Smarts!