You make more money personally than my business did in the entire year.

Like, no, I'm not what this is crazy anyway.

He said what I'd heard for years, for years.

He said, look, man, it's just systems and processes.

And I basically, at this point had said, I smarted off to him and said, man,

I'm so sick and tired of hearing that.

Everybody talks about it.

Everybody talks about that and not a dang person shows me

what it actually looks like.

And he said, I'll show you.

He said, I'll show you at lunch.

Well, he did.

Um, uh,

How do you transition from being a constant rainmaker To an architect of

your own business, meet Bradley Hamner, a business growth coach and the creator of

Blueprint who began his entrepreneurial journey in 2009 with just a burning

desire to succeed, but soon faced the grueling realities of overwork and stress.

After a health scare at 34, Bradley pivoted his approach.

Focusing on becoming a leader and restructuring his business to work

for him, not the other way around.

Now he's the host of above the business podcast.

I listened to some episodes over the last few days.

Great podcast.

Bradley now empowers other business owners with the systems.

Processes and routines needed to scale effectively.

Bradley, welcome to SeatGoCreate.

Tim, thanks so much for the opportunity to be with you.

good to have you too here.

And I think we established as we first got on the line here,

you're coming to us from Alabama.

What part of Alabama are you in?

Yeah.

Huntsville specifically.

Huntsville.

What a cool area.

Pretty.

I noticed we're recording this in December.

People might be listening to it in early 2025, but you got

the sweatshirts and all on.

Is it chilly weather in Alabama?

It is interesting that we don't usually get down to this, this low, but it's

going to be in the low forties today.

And tonight, it's going to be down to, the low teens, which is really odd for us.

We never are down that low.

And so, yeah, we've got some basketball games to go to, this evening.

And so we're going to be out and about, and it's going to be a little chilly.

I'm not used to this as a Bama boy.

Well, as a Georgia boy who's got family and just got offline with a client there

and they were dealing with it, in Arizona and I'm in shorts and a t shirt right now.

So not to just rub it in, but that's me rubbing it in right there.

So, um,

I'm jealous.

I wish I was out there playing.

I wish I was out there playing golf.

Hey, Bradley, first question.

And, I'm going to give you a choice.

This is kind of new for what I've been doing over the last few episodes.

Would you rather answer the question?

What do you do or who are you?

Which question you want to answer?

Just go ahead and pick it and start answering.

Yeah.

Who am I?

Because I think who I am is what I do as an entrepreneur.

So yes, I have a coaching consulting company, but I actually

still own other companies.

I think it's important because I'm a serial entrepreneur myself currently

have equity in five different companies.

So I don't just talk about doing business, but actually do business

and own, several companies.

I started my entrepreneurial career in 2009, started my very first

business in late 2009, early 2010.

And I really started it off the back of, hard work and I knew how to sell

and, hence where Rainmaker came in.

In fact, I affectionately used to refer to myself as the Rainmaker of that business.

To get the business off the ground.

And it worked up until the point that it didn't work.

My dad's an entrepreneur.

He's a farmer.

I feel like I picked up from my dad, the work ethic of a farmer.

still to this day, he's about to turn 70.

He's one of the hardest working people that I know.

He runs circles around most people, half his age.

and I'm so grateful for that lesson that I learned from him.

The business began to plateau about four to five years into the business.

We'd gotten it to, you know, half a million, 600, 000 in top line

revenue, basically off my back.

And I simply started to run out of time.

I couldn't respond to the emails, the calls and all those

kinds of things fast enough.

Sure.

I had a team around me.

But for all practical purposes, and other entrepreneurs can certainly relate to

this, that thing was dependent upon me.

It was running off my personality.

It was running off my network.

Everything was running through me in that business and it got exhausting.

And ultimately I had a burnout truly.

And I probably had hit burnout a lot sooner, but I started to feel some.

pains in my chest.

Legitimately.

I didn't know that that was panic attacks.

I ended up going to see a doctor and he ended up sending me

into a car to the cardiologist.

And so I knew I needed to make a change, but truthfully I didn't

know what that change needed to be.

And so ultimately we can get in down the road to some of the things that

happened and some of the changes that started to happen inside of me.

But at its core, I'm an entrepreneur.

I love business.

I love talking about small business.

it really is in my DNA.

And I think it came from hardwired in me, but it also through the

experiences, especially through my dad.

Well, one of the things we love to do here.

I'm an industrial and systems engineer process systems guy.

So we're going to, we're going to get the blueprint and things

like that here in just a minute.

But actually am one.

I love hearing the journey that people have been on.

And something that I don't get very often here where, gosh, we may be at

our 300th episode, on SeatGoCrate.

Something I don't get often someone who comes from the family of farmers.

And both my parents grew up in Mississippi, and I'm from Georgia, but

you know, there were some families.

Farming around, but I'm always intrigued by that.

So let's find a little bit more about what it was like growing up as a farmer.

You said your dad still does it.

Is that, are y'all in Alabama?

Is that where his farm is?

Yep, it is.

he has two aspects to his business.

It's Clemson hammer seed family business.

There's the farming operation side of it.

So traditional, they've at one time farmed, close to 10, 000

acres to give people a perspective.

I mean, it's a big operation.

And then there's this, what we call the seed cleaning or

the seed conditioning side.

So for other farmers in the area that they bring their, You know,

once their soybeans, their wheat, et cetera, to his business.

And then my dad cleans it and bags it, for people.

And so there's kind of two sides to that business, but yeah, you're right.

It had a very big imprint on my life.

I think there's a lot of people in the current culture when, especially

where we're moving into digital age, where I don't want to say people are

making money from not creating anything they're creating, but maybe it's just.

Different.

And I mean, in farming, you've got actually the dirt,

the land, everything there.

do you think that our culture is currently missing that we could

learn from that farming industry?

Well, there's a lot to that.

I think that, and even for myself, there's so much now that I do that is working with

my head and not working with my hands.

I could simply put it to that.

Right.

there is so much value in dealing with the land and there's so many like analogies

you could use about you plant the seed, you, you have to work the land, you spray

it for, pesticides and other things.

there's things out of your control, majorly rain being the biggest and

weather being the biggest, but there's other ones, there's political changes.

regardless of your political beliefs, it doesn't matter when

presidents change or policies change, it affects commodity prices.

And then when.

You know, if you're a farmer in China will bought a lot of, soybeans and

wheat from the United States and those things start to get changed.

It like it there, there's so much that's out of your control.

I mean, just to give you perspective, I hope my dad doesn't mind me saying this

on a podcast, but this year because of the drought in Northwest Alabama, it's a 1.

2 million impact.

Like they're losing out a 1.

2 million in revenue that they otherwise planned because they basically lost

all of their wheat crop this year because they didn't have enough

rain in July, August, and September.

And so the reason I say that is because when we think about challenges and we

think about we lose a client and it can hurt at times and we think about,

you know, all these different things.

It's like, yeah, I've watched my dad deal with it.

All of those things that are completely out of his control.

He can plant the seed at the right time.

He can do everything right.

And none of it come to fruition.

And yet I've seen him year after year after year, never.

Ever completely lose hope.

Well, next year will be the year next year.

It'd be the year.

And he just.

is amazing to me how he's been able to show up year after year after year

in spite of all of those challenges.

And sure, is there crop insurance?

Yeah, but I can promise you it's not 1.

2 million.

And you know, so, you know, my dad actually talked he, in addition to owning

the business, my dad taught, agriculture and FFA, at my high school growing up.

So I remember literally he would, we'd go to school with him, go to school

at eight o'clock, eight o'clock in the morning, be at school until three.

He would be in his duckhead khakis and he'd change into his Carhartt overalls,

go to the seed plant, work from three 30 till nine, nine 30, 10 o'clock at night.

Now you don't have to be taught what it means to To work your butt off.

You just see what your dad did.

Now, listen, that came at a big sacrifice.

Did he miss my games, my basketball games, my baseball games, golf?

Yeah, he did.

Was he coaching my teams?

No.

we'd go to church on Sunday morning.

We'd go eat lunch.

He's back to the seed plant.

did we watch Auburn football games on Saturdays?

Not much.

He's at the seed plant.

And so it came at a sacrifice, but I'm so grateful for that because

of what it really taught me about what it actually takes to work hard.

My experience just happened to be, I took it.

I took it a little too far for myself.

And I think that, you know, for me, I literally just hit burnout in 2014, 2015.

we're going to hit that, but there's two more things I want to bring up.

And you brought up that y'all are churchgoers, so then that opens up the

door for me to ask this next question.

because when you talk about the process of farming, you mentioned the word

hope, but to me it takes a lot of faith.

believe you have to have a faith component of, I'm going to do what I can do,

but there's a bigger picture than me.

This is going to come in when we talk about the control aspect of

Entrepreneurship in a little while.

and I think I was the same way.

I don't think I grasped that I couldn't control my entire world or my universe.

And I think there has to be this thought of there's a bigger picture out there

than just Tim or Bradley, you know, and I think we start thinking we can mold

or make our own control everything, and we're going to talk more about that later,

as we discuss like the blueprints and what we can and what we can't control.

would you, I mean, think you've got to have some degree of faith and I'm not,

we can go into what your faith is and all that, but I think there's got to

be a component of faith within a family that's in the farming industry, correct?

Yeah, absolutely.

Faith is a huge part of, my life growing up with the extended

Hamter family still is obviously.

It is still is.

I'm a believer.

our family is a believer.

And so it is a big part of kind of what we do.

And there's a big part of certainly in farming because there is so

much that's out of your control.

You know, there really is.

And yet at the end of the day, you end up like, well, what are you going to rely on?

We can rely on your hard work, but you also, end up leaning on your faith.

And there's been so many times that my dad has been able to, you know,

at a place to where, you know what, if this doesn't work out with the

bank, he's going to lose everything.

And he said, well, you know, son, God has always been able to provide.

And so I think that's, you're wise to pull the thread on that.

And I totally agree.

Did you ever consider going into that business or that industry yourself?

I think God had other plans for me because of my allergies and asthma.

Actually, it was specifically that.

And so I still, to this day have really bad allergies.

And so, and have asthma.

I mean, you can imagine whenever they're processing things,

there's dust everywhere.

And so, no, I was never able to do that.

Matter of fact, a couple of times I went over to the seed plant, when I

was really young, I'm talking about five or six and I actually ended

up in the hospital having to be in, breathing tense and things like that.

So, no, I think God had other plans, for me.

I was never able to be in the business and my dad knew that now I'm involved in the

business now, but from a very young age.

businessy perspective.

Okay.

We're, we're working to actually figure out, it'd be the biggest

success story I'll ever have.

If we can transition my dad out of his own business.

over the next three to five years.

so I'm involved in it now from that perspective, but very much from

the business side of it, not from the farming operations side of it.

I have.

No idea what that is.

but I am now involved in that company from a much more of a strategic

business move of like, what does it look like to now start removing a

Greg Hamner front from that business?

Which again, that will be the biggest success story of my life

if I can help pull that one off.

Well, if you're able to circle back, we'll have a conversation about that.

Maybe even pull him on because that would be a great story.

So, so you go to Auburn.

So what were you studying there?

Did you have your mind focused on business, entrepreneurship?

Did you know you were an entrepreneur at that stage?

No, I never, I don't even know when the, the word entrepreneur,

came into, to, to picture.

I initially, Went pre-law my first two years.

I think that that was just, 'cause I thought attorneys made a lot of

money and, and, I never really had an interest in law, but I did think

I had an interest in business.

I ended up getting my degree in finance.

and so thought about kind of going the Goldman Sachs, corporate finance route.

I mean, when you get your degree in finance.

At least back then it wasn't in entrepreneurship.

It was not in small business finance.

It was in corporate finance, net present value of the Harley

Davidson stock, like that kind of finance, which was interesting.

And, I certainly considered that, but my early offers were to companies

like you know, in sales, Northwestern mutual and things of that nature.

whenever I first started out and so actually my very first job had a family

member that was in pharmaceuticals.

And so I tried to get into pharma, right off the bat, ended up actually taking my

very first job that was in sales, selling yellow page ads, as a matter of fact,

This is exactly what I needed my first year and a half out of college.

I was knocking on doors, cutting my teeth, going door to door.

That was honestly perfect for me.

You know, I was making 50 grand.

I thought I had all the money in the world, you know, back then.

And so then I was able to parlay that and got into the corporate world of,

pharmaceuticals and kind of thought I was going to make my way up that way.

But I always felt like I had this nagging desire to own a business.

Again, I think it was somewhere in there that I realized I did not like

the direction corporate pharma was going because I envisioned myself ironically

about the age I'm at now, I for some reason was able to have this picture

that I was going to be 45 Making a half a million dollars, and all of

a sudden a drug's not going to get launched, and I'm going to get laid off.

And I did not like that lack of being able to carve my own path.

I wanted to do what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it.

With who I wanted to do it and have the money to do so.

And so it became this natural idea of owning my own business, but I wasn't

going to own a restaurant and I knew I wasn't going to go into farming.

I never grew up really involved in the farming business.

So I didn't know really what that was going to be.

And then ultimately a position in insurance and financial services kind

of, prompted it and it was right when we were going to move to Chicago,

I had an opportunity to move to Chicago and work in the corporate,

marketing department up there.

And I just decided, you know what, I think I'm going to

carve my own path and do this.

And if anybody can do it, I'm going to bet on myself.

And, that's what led me.

So that was 2009, 2010.

So a formula, and I picked it up a couple of times with things you've said, and also

I know a little bit of your background.

A formula that can be a challenge when someone has that hardworking gene.

They also have a bit of a, I'll call it control, but they do want to carve

their own path that can real easily be a control and I've heard people refer to it.

I'm going to mention a sentence and then let you respond to it.

The it is to be, it's up to me.

And that is a recipe for success, Bradley, but it can also be

a recipe for other things.

And I think if I remember correctly around that age or shortly after

that, were kind of coming to a head.

Take me back to 2009 and then with what I just said, if you want to respond to

any of that or whatever, mix it into the formula of where the story goes,

because then it, then it's going to lead us to fixing those issues later.

Well, your was to see that because you're exactly right, that ultimately

that desire to have control to do what I wanted to do to knock off on a Friday

afternoon at 12 and go up and play golf.

I played golf in college, and so that's an example of something I wanted to do.

I didn't want to ask off.

I want to go play golf.

I wanted to be able to make the money that I felt like I could

make and not feel like that.

I was beholden to some performance review.

I still cringe at that.

I was like, why am I doing this stuff on performance review?

I'll give you a really specific one.

There was one, I'm even looking at it right now.

It's actually an award from years ago that I won when I was

back in the corporate world.

I'm one rep of the year, number one in the company.

The very next year, the calendar year flips, targets change.

I went from number one to basically dead last, and my manager is all over me.

And people listen to this and can say, yeah, that's, that's the corporate world.

But that pissed me off.

If I'm being honest with you, I still remember the feeling of like, I just won

rep of the year now I'm at the bottom of the barrel just because you guys changed

the targets based on my own performance.

This makes no sense to me, none.

And that, I think those kinds of things started to kind of, I was like, you know

what, I'm going to carve my own path.

I'm going to do my own thing and I'm going to have control.

And you're exactly right.

That ultimately came back to bite me in the butt because.

That got the business off the ground.

I had the work ethic.

I had the ability to sell from years and I was going to control it.

So 10, 11, 12, 13, things are going well.

We're hitting numbers.

We're succeeding.

my first few years financially were difficult, but that's what

you expect in a small business.

So I don't look at that negatively.

I started to turn around a little bit And the business was growing,

making a little bit more money.

So what do I keep doing?

gas pedal down a little bit more, gas pedal down a little bit more.

And since I'm in Huntsville, we, have NASA.

And so we know that in space, small things rotate around big things.

And the way that I'd kind of give people the analogy is that I was the big thing

and that business rotated around me early.

And then what happened?

The business grew, and then it started to sling me around.

the business grew past me, and I could not handle all of it anymore.

And so with that started me working all the Fridays, all

the Saturdays, all the Sundays.

I'm basically repeating exactly what I saw from my dad.

So every time people would ask, how you doing?

Working hard, working hard.

I wore it as a badge of honor.

I wore it as like, this is what I need to do.

I wanted you, Tim, to look at me and go, he is the hardest worker That I know,

I did not recognize that actually in business what really matters is just

the results in your effectiveness, not necessarily, you know, I'm not, the IRS

is not giving me an extra a hundred grand.

Cause they say, Oh, you worked, you worked 60 hours a week.

We're going to give you an extra a hundred grand.

They didn't work that way.

What mattered was the results.

And so you're right.

It ultimately came to a head.

It, I burnt, I hit burnout.

I couldn't I couldn't do it anymore.

I remember that day very, very vividly.

the night before I had come home, I immediately flew up on my laptop, went,

had dinner with the family, came right back, started working, worked till till

midnight, woke up the next morning.

I need to get to the gym, get to the gym.

And, I'm, I'm thinking about all the things we got to,

I got to get done that day.

It's funny cause I only had, you know, I had one company at that time and

ironically looking at how little that company was in comparison to then like

now all the things that kind of swirl around, but neither here nor there.

I started to feel as we were running around the parking lot.

I started to feel these pains in my chest and I was like, Oh my

gosh, I don't know what this is.

Immediately leave, call a physician friend of mine.

He says, well, you know, come over here.

I immediately go over there.

he puts me on an EKG machine that he had in the office and I remember

him saying, Bradley, you know what?

I actually see some stuff on here that concerns me.

Well, now I'm in a full blown panic, right?

I'm in a full plate panic.

He says, we need to get you in to see a cardiologist like today.

And how

They don't get me in this.

old you at that point?

34 34.

years old.

I'm young.

I'm super young.

Had more hair than I do now.

Certainly didn't have gray hair, didn't have beard back then anyway.

And I see a cardiologist next day.

They do the stress test.

You know, I've never done that before.

I'd heard about it.

You know, I'm on a treadmill.

look, I'm in pretty good shape and I, you know, I'm doing the thing.

And, cardiologist walks in terrible bedside manners.

He said, look, I don't know what you've got going on in your life and

nothing wrong with your heart, but whatever it is, you need to fix it.

He walks out the door.

I was like, great.

And so my story from this point forward is not, I walk into, I

walk into my, you know, my vehicle, leave and say, Oh, I know exactly

what changes I'm going to make.

I know exactly what I'm going to do.

No.

If the thing you have done, you have watched your dad do your entire life,

somebody you look up to and the thing that you've done to get that business

off the ground, to get it to where it is.

Now no longer is working.

It was not obvious what I needed to do.

So, you know what I did?

One of the things that I did is I actually considered going

back into the corporate world.

I actually thought I'm gonna raise the white flag and quit.

Well, you don't know much about me.

I'm a competitive son of a gun and everything I do.

If you and I play pickleball, then I'm not as good as you, but I'm gonna do

everything I can to try to beat you.

And so there was something about that, that just, I could

not stomach being a failure.

And so I felt that I could always go back to that, but I'll be honest, 200, 000

base salary, company car 401k benefits.

At that point, I actually felt like I'd have more freedom and flexibility

than I did in that business.

So I considered it.

I considered it.

In fact, I ended up, I haven't actually told this on podcast.

I had that opportunity and then four years later, like 2008, maybe three, 18, 19.

I had another one.

With even a better financial opportunity.

And I turned that one down.

Now, at this point, I've made the changes we're going to end up talking about.

And so it was easier to turn that one down, to stick with entrepreneurial,

but I actually ended up doing it twice.

And so, fast forward a few months.

I try to make some changes to my schedule.

I mean, I'm doing the best I can, but not really much had changed.

I mean, I committed to leaving my computer at home and just

doing some basic stuff like that.

I probably cut back on the caffeine a little bit, you know, things of

that nature just to try to get myself a little bit of a Breathing room.

But the real turning point came in the fall, about three to four or

five months later after that event.

I'm in Toronto.

I'm at strategic coach.

And, so we're doing the exercise that is now portrayed in the book.

10 X is easier than 2 X.

Okay.

The book has now come out, but we're doing that exercise.

I'm in the wrong class because, the dates and they kind of work with

me to put me in a different class.

So I'm sitting next to a guy and he's got, workout shorts on, he's

got a hat backwards and he's in kind of a similar industry as me.

And we had just kind of briefly met.

I'm in like a sport coat and he's like super casual.

And so we do this exercise and he says, well, I'll go first.

So he says, well, last year, we did 40 million top line.

I made 5 million personally.

I was like, he was on my right.

I was like, wait, what, what, how much did you do?

I thought you did like.

750, 000 or a million, 40 million.

Are you kidding me?

He's like, no, I mean, well, here's what 400 million and 50 would look like.

And he just basically lays it out.

And then he says, will you go?

I was like, I'm not about to go.

You make more money personally than my business did in the entire year.

Like, no, I'm not what this is crazy anyway.

He said what I'd heard for years, for years.

He said, look, man, it's just systems and processes.

And I basically, at this point had said, I smarted off to him and said, man,

I'm so sick and tired of hearing that.

Everybody talks about it.

Everybody talks about that and not a dang person shows me

what it actually looks like.

And he said, I'll show you.

He said, I'll show you at lunch.

Well, he did.

And it was that moment where you actually see, he starts

just pulling up Word documents.

He's like, This is how we do this.

This is how we do this.

This is how we do this.

And there was nothing on the Word documents that I specifically remember.

It's not like I took his Word documents and mimicked them.

It was on the plane ride, outside of, yes, I did pull up a Word

document on the plane ride home.

I did do that.

It was way more.

Something changed inside of me.

I finally said, I'm going to stop being the doer of all this stuff.

And I'm going to be the designer.

Ultimately.

Now we use the language.

I got to stop being the Rainmaker.

I became the architect of my business.

I said, I'm going to design this stuff.

And so that's what I did.

that ended up down a path of for years, trying to figure out,

okay, how do you document things?

What do you document?

Where do I put all of this stuff?

And that created an obsession in me.

there was something about in that moment in my life, I was in so much pain.

I was so frustrated.

I'm ready to leave.

I've experienced panic attacks.

it finally hit me.

And I think seeing someone's example and him saying, I just

got the business out of my head.

I realized that that business lived in my head.

That's why it was dependent upon me.

It was always in my head.

And furthermore, if I trained my team and truthfully, I kind of halfway

trained the team, I didn't do a really good job of that, but let's just say I

did and they left, you know, what left with them, all that IP, all that IP.

And so it was felt like groundhog day.

I got to get somebody again.

I had to train them up again, only for them to leave again, and

we were never building assets.

We were never building documents.

We were never building playbooks.

Ultimately now, I call all of that, the combination of all that, an operating

system, and that's what we refer to it as.

And yes, we can certainly get into some of those details, but way more if anybody

takes anything from this, the single thing that we share with business owners is to

become the architect of your business.

it's both an identity shift.

And now we've actually laid out five milestones of what it means to become

the architect of your business again.

None of that existed for me, But, you know, from then I was able to

start really making the changes and actually scaling that company.

Yeah, I wanna, I want to maybe define rainmaker and architect in just

a bit and get into some of those foundational principles of the system.

But the question that comes to mind when I hear stories like that,

Bradley, and this is one of these, that there may not be an answer to it,

but I like to think about it anyway.

And it's something to the effect of had that event.

Not occurred.

Do you think you would have eventually landed into the chain?

Would you have even gone to Toronto?

Is that one of the catalysts for you to go to strategic coach and Dan Sullivan?

You probably started picking up some of his stuff.

So how important not fun, but how important was that catalytic event?

Well, it was everything.

I don't think if that had not happened, you and I wouldn't be talking.

I mean, as simple as that, we would not be talking.

I would have continued to push harder and do something to ultimately,

I would have hit burnout again.

And, I don't know what I would have done because again, you learn the

lessons from your father of like, well, you just, you know, Work harder.

Work harder.

Work harder.

That's what I thought.

And so I, no, I, I don't know.

It's, it's, it's one of those things where, you know, I remember you

don't, you're not in the moment in that doctor's office or in the

cardiologist office or the feeling.

When I was driving home, like you're not in that moment thinking, boy,

I can't wait until, you know, years from now, I'm going to be talking to

Tim about this and telling the story.

Like I can't wait to do this.

No, you're not thinking that in the moment, right?

Like, Oh, this is gonna be a great story.

One day I can promise you that is the furthest thing from, where I, where

I thought, I mean, it was something did have to give at some point either.

and I'll say this too.

As an entrepreneur, there's such an ambition.

There's such a drive that you have to hit goals, to hit revenue targets.

especially if you came from a sports background and you're competitive,

it just matches up so well.

I wasn't going to do it.

I was like, well, I'm not going to just start, setting

low goals, It's not who I am.

if it had kept on and I hadn't started to make the change,

I probably would have quit.

The reason that's critical for me, I I'm wired to coach.

Coaching is kind of what's in my DNA and I work with leaders

and leadership teams now.

The thing that bothers me, and I know you work now with people that run

businesses, you've got organizations and teams, you've got, organization's got a

lot of people that run businesses there.

I do the same.

I want to be able to say something or do something to people to get

that attention that unfortunately I know you and I only had when we had a

catalytic event and I don't want people to go through that catalytic event.

If at all possible, is there anything in working with some of the leaders and all

that you work with that you've observed that we could tell people to get their

attention before this next 20 minute conversation we have about getting this

stuff that could get their attention so they don't have to be sitting there with

the cardiologist or, you know, 000 square foot home because of financial collapse.

Have you come up with anything?

Because I haven't.

Yeah.

I think that you read, we read books.

And we listen to podcasts because it shortens, we can absorb

and learn the lessons without having to experience the pain.

And so my hope is, is through your story, and then maybe me sharing my story,

while the details for somebody else listening to this are going to be very

different in their story than it is mine.

they didn't live my life, but they have their own.

And so many of our members have expressed similar things, What they have expressed

is other things when I also tell some stories I have a picture that I had

posted on social media in June of 2015 one month prior to the event There's a

picture, that I share with people that is a screenshot at Disney with two computer

screens in the Disney, Yacht Club.

And there's a picture of me running, about to run a weekly team meeting.

Kids are young at that point.

And we're at Disney as a family.

And I think I have to run a weekly team meeting.

The caption of that post.

Says better never stops even on vacation.

Like, that is how far messed up I was in the head.

better never stops even on vacation.

And I post that in a way for people to go, man, look at him.

Look at that guy.

Workin from Disney.

Say a word has a badge of honor.

So yes, do I believe I did not know how.

What I didn't,

was that I could hit all of the financial and business goals while not completely

wrecking my life in the process.

I do not have to sacrifice all of the other things that I value.

Family, playing golf, going to Auburn football games.

I can have all of that And The business success, but I don't want to sacrifice all

of this at the altar of business success.

What I did not know was how to do it.

Now I wish I would have just been able to get to a place

to ask myself that question.

Does this make sense?

But I didn't even know how to formulate that question.

And so my opinion is, look, we do this, but regardless if it's ours, whether

it's yours or others, I was not in a community of other business owners.

I thought my problems were super unique.

I thought I was the only one that experienced this.

Nobody else is dealing with this because you know what every conference I went

to, every conference I'd go to, every meeting I'd go to, what do they do?

They trot somebody up on stage and they talk about how great they are.

And at the end of the year, everybody's posting all their wins,

you know, and everybody looks like they're succeeding and kicking butt.

And here I am, you know.

Like even, even us, we were up there on all these awards at PowerPoint slides and

we're winning this and we're number one in that we're doing this and I'm dying

inside You get yourself in a community of a business owners doing, you know, We,

we work with businesses doing 3 million.

Like we really know that space pretty well.

you get yourself in a community of people doing 750, 000 million, 1.

2 million, 1.

2, 1.

5 million.

You find it real quick.

They all experienced the same stuff.

They experienced the exact same stuff.

Oh, you dealt with that too?

I mean, I get Voxers this today from a business owner, super successful, probably

doing about 2 million in top line revenue.

He's got an issue with his team.

And you think it's unique to him.

It ain't unique to him.

There's somebody last week I was talking to the exact same thing.

And so you start to kind of realize, Oh, okay.

I'm not alone in this.

I can actually share and open up, but I wasn't in a community

of those kinds of people.

And listen, I love strategic coach.

I do.

I'm not in it now.

I haven't been in a long time, but that's a great program.

The problem with that.

in my opinion, is that you're only with those people four times a year.

and so it's hard in a day to kind of go deep, right.

With some of those people.

So you don't really necessarily build community with them.

So even though I was going to that, I was there more for the tools and the concepts

and the principles, not necessarily.

Like, I didn't feel like I was building community, if that makes sense.

And I don't mean that to be derogatory towards strategic coach.

I mean, Dan's got amazing content for sure.

but more so just, I didn't feel like I was a part of a community within

those people and almost felt like I was constantly like, Posturing

to be more successful than I was.

Cause I was like, Oh my gosh, why am I in here with these people doing 8 million, 10

million, 25 million in top line revenue?

I'm not even, I'm not even in that ball game, you know?

And so at that point I wasn't.

How are you defining success right now?

Well, that's a really great question.

So I define success as being able to do the things that I love to do, spend

time with my family, and at the same time, be able to hit the business goals

and targets that we have across the different brands that I'm a part of,

but I will not sacrifice time with.

our kids and their activities and things that we want to do, And so

look across the brands, we have very specific targets that we have for 2024.

We'll have some for 2025, obviously.

And, we want to hit those.

We still obviously want to grow the companies for sure.

We don't.

I'm not checking those companies into neutral by no means, but at

the same time, we've been able to figure out a way to do it and still

take off, 12 weeks off in a year.

Do you think it's possible for someone who's in the rainmaker role?

This is kind of us moving into defining maybe the difference

between rainmaker and architect.

Is it possible for someone in that rainmaker?

Roll to balance those two that you just said, which is family.

I'm going to be doing these things.

I'm not going to take my laptop to Disney, but I'm also still

going to be hitting all my goals.

I've got thoughts on that, but what's your thoughts?

Can, can a Rainmaker.

Achieve that balance

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think you can.

I think you can.

I never did the math, but I didn't also write down.

I didn't know what my revenue producing activities were.

What were the things that actually really do grow the business and

accelerate the growth of the company?

So I didn't do that.

I didn't have an EA to buy that in my time.

so I didn't have some of those things in place.

I never had actually looked at the business from the perspective

of, so we call it the path.

So if you're less than a million, what is your business look like in a million?

Like I never actually did that and said, what does my business

look like in a million dollars?

And if you're at a million, what does your business look like at three million?

And then if you're a three, what does it look like at 10?

So I never did that number one.

And then once I saw it from that perspective, I could

actually simplify the business.

I was so deep in the weeds that I was just looking from day to day, tactically,

like dealing with the customers.

And I ever never looked at it like from a, True 30, 000 foot view,

hence why the name of my podcast is called above the business.

I never actually got above the business to really look down on

it and see it for what it is.

and then from there, I never really had a vision for the company.

So I believe everything is downstream from, having a really clear vision.

and we call that your business blueprint.

And so your business blueprint is made up of three things, your

three year vision, your one year OKRs and your quarterly targets.

so I didn't have any of those things in place.

So to recap, I didn't have any aid to buy back my time.

I didn't really know what were the things in the business that actually

accelerated the business growth forward.

In other words, what was my role as the CEO?

I had no idea.

Basically run around like a chicken with my head cut off is

what I, what I thought it was.

And that's what it did.

I did not have a path to a million or a path to three.

I did not have a vision, what we call a business blueprint in place.

And I'm sure as heck had no game plan in order to make that happen.

The answer was just, I don't know, do more.

that's what the answer was.

And so, yes, I do believe that you can begin to make the change from

being the Rainmaker to the Architect.

I think first it's an identity shift.

You start seeing things differently.

You start thinking, how can I design this?

So not everyone understands the term architect and that's

where we're migrating here.

We're trying to move from the rainmaker to The architect give me your definition or

if you want to give any contrast between the rainmaker architect However, you want

to discuss it because I do agree with you.

I think that mindset Of where am I going with my role is important.

So talk either about architect or contrast Rainmaker and architect.

And then we're going to get into some of your blueprint

items here before we finish up.

So I'll take you back.

So this would have been some period of time between 2010 and 2013.

you ever heard of a organization called B and a,

Yes, I have.

It's been a while since I've heard that name though.

business networking international or something like that.

It's like a networking thing.

You go once a week and everybody kind of, you have breakfast or lunch.

The one I went to was at breakfast and

Yeah, they're local.

They're usually in local areas.

you are, and even in Huntsville, there's a bunch, I mean, there's

like probably 12 different B and I's or at least back then it was.

And so you're in, there's only one.

Person per industry in your group.

And so some of the groups, you know, maybe 25 people.

And so every week you go around and you had like two minutes to

like pitch, you know, what you do.

But then once or twice a year, you had an opportunity to like, do a

full on 10 or 15 minute presentation.

Well, I did.

You know what mine was called?

Being the Rainmaker.

And so, I say that, this is why I use this language now, okay?

Which is ironic, because I did this presentation.

Nobody probably remembers it, but I did it because I was like,

That's what your job is to do.

Go be the rainmaker of the business.

That's what my job is to do.

In that business, I had two phones, two phones.

And I was like, you see this?

I got, this is my personal phone, but you see this phone, this is the bat phone.

You need me.

You call this phone anytime, 24 hours.

Well, let me tell you, you know what they did to them.

They called it.

They called it.

I literally, I'm dead serious.

This is why I'm saying, I'm trying to get people into why I use this language is

because like, that is what I would do.

So being the Rainmaker.

is, was again, kind of one of these identity things that you take on that

from the outside looking in, somebody would look at is not a bad thing.

What I look at is not just that you're involved in

business development and sales.

The way I view and currently share with people is being the rainmaker is

that everything is dependent upon you.

The whole company is sitting on your shoulders.

Every decision flows through you.

You have Uber control over everything, every hire, Every interaction with

clients, every customers, whatever, like everything is flowing through you.

If you're there, you feel like the business is moving forward.

You take a day off.

You feel like the business regresses.

Hence, why do you think I'm running a team meeting from Disney?

By the way, Does anybody think that that's the only time I interacted with

the office during that time at Disney?

Heck no!

I'm on my phone the whole time.

Sending emails, texting to the team.

Where y'all at with this?

Send me your daily numbers, send me your daily numbers.

where we at, where we at?

I was a hard, hard driver.

Well, When you make the transition to becoming the architect, you see

yourself, what do architects use?

They use blueprints.

They design things, nothing.

Nothing I was doing was by design.

Nothing was by design.

It was just a day at a time.

If you had asked me back then during any of that time, what's the

vision you have for that company?

What are you trying to do in revenue?

How many customers do you have?

I'd make it up.

I'd make it up.

I had no vision, no direction.

I could probably try to tell you what our goals were for the year.

Sure.

I had some of that, but like really, truly where the direction

of that company was going.

I don't, I have no idea.

I don't know more.

I don't know.

We got to do more.

I got to make more money, Tim, you know, I mean, that's all it was.

yes, I believe you absolutely can start to make, if you start to identify in

some way, shape, form or fashion as being the Rainmaker, you can start

to make the transition and have the both identity shift of becoming

the architect of your business.

And we've actually defined using the word scale now for our members.

Because what business owner doesn't want to scale.

We use the word scale as an acronym to define certain milestones

that you can use to check off.

When do I know that I've actually become the architect of my business?

I get it conceptually Bradley, but is there a point that I know that

I have actually become that person?

Okay.

I want to make the shift and I'm ready to jump into that journey.

When do I know I've arrived?

can you hit those scale can you hit that real quick for us

yeah.

Sustainable revenue, get your business to a million dollars in top line revenue.

If you're at a million, get it to three.

I recognize some of your listeners are already well above that.

91 percent of small businesses never crossed a million a top line revenue.

96 percent don't see their 10th birthday.

So if you're above a million in your past 10 years,

congratulations, you beat the odds.

That's number one.

Number two, it's not enough to have a business doing over a

million or on its way to three.

You want it to also be growing and profitable.

We call that consistent growth and profitability.

We use a term called the rule of 40.

So you look at your year over year growth.

Plus your profitability percentage.

We want that to be 40 or above.

So that could look like 20 and 20, 20 percent growth, 20 percent

profit or 15 percent growth, 25 percent profit, something like that.

So we've got a business doing over a million.

It's growing and it's profitable.

The A in scale is time away.

I actually alluded to this earlier, specifically take 12 weeks off in a year.

For some people listening to this, they go, my gosh, I have no idea.

How much time I took off, let alone 12 weeks.

I don't know if I want to take 12 weeks off, but we walk our

members through how to do that.

And then the a L in scale is also what I mentioned earlier.

it's called leverage.

So you have leverage with an EA.

I think it's not a luxury to have an executive assistant.

I think it's a necessity as a small business owner.

That's what I believe.

And then lastly, number E is where the OS comes in.

So we also want the thing to be efficient, so efficient operations.

And you do that by actually designing.

building and installing an operating system for the business to run on.

So it's not running off of you.

So at the end of the day, what we do is help business owners to become the

architect, architect of their business through scale, get the business to a

million, have it growing and profitable.

Take 12 weeks off in a year, have leverage with an EA and run the thing on an OS.

One of the I love all of that the it's so fascinating though that you tied in

something I believe is very practical which is the hiring of an ea And but

because that to me has become an indicator of the type leader I'm interacting with

if they have an EA or not and it may not be 100%, but that tells me many times

if I'm dealing probably with a rainmaker or an architect, because architect is

someone who's gonna say, you know what?

I don't need to keep up with my calendar.

I can, I can have my person get with Bradley's person.

We could book things, et cetera.

So.

I love that.

Let's take a couple minutes.

We're almost about to wrap here.

me, I mean, being, you know, industrial and systems guy from

Georgia Tech, I am extremely intrigued.

I know we can't dive deep into it, give me a high level of the Blueprint OS.

Tell me a little bit more about that.

What are people talking about?

Let's assume right now that someone listened this far

and they're interested in.

learning more.

Let's don't tell them where to get that.

We'll do that in just a second, but just give a little bit of an overview for

that blueprint for that operating system.

So in my own journey, whenever I came back and I was on that plane ride and

I actually started to pull up, you know, Word documents, we use Google

documents now, but it's irrelevant.

You actually started to document things.

Some of the things that I ran into, which was, you know, Okay.

Wait a minute.

Now we're actually starting to document it and everybody's formatting

these documents totally differently.

And people come into our world.

They don't think that that matters.

Here's why it matters.

We literally standardize exactly the way our documents look.

You may say, well, that is ridiculous, Bradley.

Why in the world do I care about that?

Here's why.

It's a mindset.

It embeds into the culture.

We do things by design, not by default.

So we literally have a maxim that we have, and then we share with our members and

they start to adopt it is that it is, it's called never sent a document in aerial.

Well, why aerial?

Is it that I have a, an issue with aerial?

Well, I do.

It's because it's the default in Google documents.

You pull up any Google document from the beginning.

Was it default to the font?

Arial, we don't do things by default.

We do things by design.

And so all of our documents, if I create one or my EA creates one

or anybody on our team creates one, they look the exact same way.

Now, look, I don't care what font you use, pick one and have everybody stick with it.

Don't send somebody uses red, somebody uses navy blue font,

somebody uses black, and you end up in this hodgepodge Frankenstein

looking thing of your documents.

No.

We don't do that.

So the most tactical thing you can do is standardize the way your assets look.

Yes, your customers probably won't notice it, but I can promise you, our

members literally just start adopting our templates because they're like, you know

what, I actually like the way these look.

Ours is going to look the exact same way.

Fine.

I don't care what, what you use.

That's number one.

Two is you have to be able to point to the OS.

In other words, the operating system is not a concept.

It's a thing.

Where does your OS live?

Where does it live?

I want you to choose one digital place that you can point to and say,

our Google drive right there, that's where my OS is, or we love notion.

We're not a notion training company.

So if I, if you bought my company, I'd say right there.

There you go.

I'll just give you access to notion.

It's got everything you could possibly need about how this

company runs is right there.

So you can point to it.

That's where the operating system is in.

People are not on scavenger hunts looking for documents.

Okay.

Hey Tim, where did you put X, Y, Z document?

See, these are all things I ran into whenever I started to try

like I saw the guy in Toronto do, I ran into all these issues.

How do I create the documents?

What do I document?

And then where do I put all of this stuff?

And so I had to create like a foldering system, basically a

structure into the organization.

We call it the organizational infrastructure so that people are

like, Oh, okay, That's where that goes.

What's a business playbook?

What's a business system?

What's the difference in a process and a system you see?

And I got confused.

I'd read one article, read one blog, read one book.

And I was like, I don't know.

I'm so confused by all of this.

And so ultimately I ended up having to create all of that, simplify the language.

So it's like, this is what this means.

So for instance, we don't use the word SOP.

We don't call something an SOP.

We call it certain things.

So for people listening, one, standardize your documents.

Okay?

Have a way that all of your documents look the exact same.

That's number one.

Number two, have an organizing place that you can point to and say that's

where our operating system lives.

That's how we're all of our standardized documents are.

That way your team is not going on scavenger hunts trying to

look for stuff all the time.

So there's, that's my bit of advice.

So some people look at systems like EOS.

I'm not against it.

I'm not a huge fan necessarily, but can you just do a quick, you know, a

couple sentence comparison and then I'm going to ask a couple more things

and then we're going to wrap up here.

100%.

if you've got roughly, if you're doing over 10 million in top line

revenue, I think EOS is fantastic.

The problem with EOS specifically, if you're doing a million dollars,

you do not have a leadership team.

Get out of town with that.

Stop.

You have six people on your team.

you don't have a leadership team.

You can't run EOS.

You can run concepts of EOS.

I love EOS.

I've had one of the co founders of EOS on the podcast.

I love some of the stuff that they do, but trying to implement self

implement EOS, and you're doing 500, 000 to top line revenue.

Come on now.

No, that's not going to work.

That's why our operating system specifically business

owners doing 3 million.

It's because we know that space.

We know how many team members you have.

We know you've got your first level of management.

Look, if you're doing 10 million, 20 million, 25 million top line, EOS can

be great because you actually have a chief operating officer, a CFO, a

COO, maybe you're running as the CEO.

EOS can be great for that.

It's just, but for a business doing, you know, 750, 000, 1.

2 million, 1.

5 million.

Yeah, sometimes there's a bit of layered complexity to it that I've seen

with some of the clients I've worked with also that have attempted it.

Second thing, is it ever too late or too early to implement the Blueprint OS?

Yes.

I think it is too early if you're doing less than 300, 000.

I mean, the other day I jumped on the phone with a guy.

he's got a business doing a hundred thousand and I congratulated him.

he's really excited.

And I said, dude, go sell, go be the rainmaker of your business.

Go get that thing to 25, 000 a month and contact me.

The reality is he didn't have a team.

He was a solo.

We don't work with solopreneurs.

We work with business owners that have a team.

we just know what that looks like.

You're just not going to get that business to a million dollars by yourself.

I mean, look, maybe down the road with AI, maybe you can.

that's a different deal.

that's a whole nother conversation, but for right now, if you, I

believe business is a team sport.

Maybe that comes from a team sport backgrounds, but I fundamentally

believe you can go further with a team.

So number one, I think if you're doing less than 300, 000, just go sell, just

go sell, go get, go get lift into that company, go get it to 25, 000 a month.

you don't need an operating system if you're doing less than that.

There you go.

I mean, I may, you know, I mean, that's just my opinion.

but where we really shine is companies doing half a million to 1.

5 million, they get into this level of complexity where the

first thing that they have to do.

Hence why I said earlier, I'd gotten it to about five, 600, 000 and

I was really tapped out on about that's about as far as I can go.

Okay.

And for the most part, we've seen business owners through their

personality, not process, but their personality, get it to that 600, 700, 000.

And then it like really levels off.

So the first challenge in that 300 to a million, is actually documenting

your systems and processes.

It really gives that.

Okay.

And that's a skill to learn of how to do that, where to put it.

All the things I said earlier at about a million, just by your revenue per

person average, you're probably in that six to 10 team members range,

which means you've now found for the first time you're hiring a manager.

You've got your first level of management.

And so the skills and the challenges, you have an entrepreneur founder who is

now for the first time hiring leaders that they've never done that before.

They have some documentation.

Maybe it's not perfectly organized, but now they're having to face.

Oh, wait a minute.

Now, how do I put an office manager in place?

How do I put a sales manager in place?

How do I put a service lever, manager in place to manage my service team?

Those types of things is what's typically happening in that million to two.

And so we just know those two things.

We call that actually three to one and one to three is like, these are

the challenges you're going to face.

And so like if you're at 300, 000, you're not, you don't have managers,

but at a million, Yeah, you're starting to actually think about that.

you're starting to put some things in place for the team.

And so those are some tips and maybe some helpful things for people, depending

on kind of where their revenue level, is we do have, we've helped scale

some companies, I've got a number of companies that started with us in that

four or 500 range, 400, 500, 000 range.

And they're now they're North of 3 million.

and so they're in the now, you know, one company's close to

5 million in top line revenue.

And so they're obviously now experiencing the other challenges of

three to 10, but that's kind of out.

I mean, they're looking to exit and sell.

And so that starts changing the conversation a bit.

That's some of the leadership teams that I end up working with.

They're in that 5 million plus and I think we've shared some things here.

There's so many things we can go into.

I know that probably has impacted some listeners and they would probably

like to get in touch with you.

Where do you want someone to go if they feel like they're a fit or they just

want more info or more, they want more.

From Bradley.

Where do you want to send them?

I've got one more question.

We'll wrap up.

Super simple.

Go to blueprintos.

com.

If you go into the homepage, they can book in a call.

They can book in a scale game plan, call, with me directly.

They can navigate through there.

They can see some of our events that we have for our members.

They can check out my podcast.

and, we've got some free assets that they can get a hold of

too, but just go to blueprintos.

com.

Very good then.

Bradley, we're seek, go create.

Those three words.

going to allow you to choose one of those that just resonates

more with you, means more.

Seek, go, or create.

Which one do you choose and why?

seek the vision that you want to design for your company and for your life.

Bradley Hamner.

Thanks for joining us.

If you've been listening in, I highly recommend you reach out to Bradley.

And if you're in your podcast player, go ahead right now and jump over to above

the business and subscribe and listen in.

One thing I love about it, Bradley, is you got some good short episodes.

You know, we do 60 minute conversations here.

Somebody could jump over there and get some good 10, 15 minute, good

snippets and tips, and would be awesome.

So anyway, thanks for joining us here.

I appreciate all of you.

We've got new episodes every Monday, YouTube, all your podcast players.

Keep listening, keep commenting, keep sharing.

We appreciate it until next time continue being all that you were created to be.