Bradley Hamner: How to Go From Rainmaker to Architect of Your Business

Full Episode Page: Bradley Hamner: How to Go From Rainmaker to Architect of Your Business

Episode Summary:
What if the business operating system you're building is the very thing holding you back? In this episode of The Business Owner’s Journey, Nick Berry is joined by Bradley Hamner, founder of BlueprintOS and host of the Above the Business podcast. Bradley works with business owners doing $300K to $3M in annual revenue and helps them make the critical shift from being the overworked Rainmaker to becoming the Architect of a business that runs on systems instead of stress.

Bradley shares how a health scare at age 34 pushed him to reimagine everything—leading to the creation of the BlueprintOS and a powerful new identity as a designer, not just a doer. This episode is packed with insight for entrepreneurs who feel stuck in operator mode and are ready to take real control of their growth trajectory.

Takeaways

• Know your business stage to unlock the right tools and strategy
• EOS isn't built for early-stage entrepreneurs—here’s what to use instead
• Identity shapes behavior—redefine who you are as a business owner
• Build by design, not by default, for lasting business clarity
• Systematize routine tasks and let people shine where it counts

Links

• Bradley on LinkedIn
• BlueprintOS on LinkedIn
• BlueprintOS on Facebook

Chapters

00:00 From Startup to Growth
07:07 Building a Team to go from Doer to Leader
13:06 Business as a Lego Set 
18:50 Lessons from a Cardiologist Visit
29:15 Identity Shift From Operator to Owner
38:49 Creating a Playbook 
43:58 Intentionality in Business 
52:05 The Business Owner's Roadmap to Success

🔗 Redesigned.Business    
If you have a business that's not hitting the next revenue tier like it should... You might have a design problem.  
Your business was originally designed to survive, not scale.  
Now it needs a redesign, to break free of the operational inertia and finally scale.  
So the next revenue tier feels intentional and repeatable, instead of... unreachable.

The Business Owner's Journey podcast is where entrepreneurs, leaders, and innovators to share their personal stories, challenges, leadership, and strategies from their own journeys as business owners.

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Transcript

00:00 From Startup to Growth
07:07 Building a Team to go from Doer to Leader
13:06 Business as a Lego Set 
18:50 Lessons from a Cardiologist Visit
29:15 Identity Shift From Operator to Owner
38:49 Creating a Playbook 
43:58 Intentionality in Business 
52:05 The Business Owner's Roadmap to Success


Bradley Hamner (00:00)
I said, I'm really sorry. I had to go see a cardiologist today because the stress has just been too much, you know? but.

two months before that, so in June, there's a foreshadowing to this. We're in Disney and the kids are five, almost five and one at the time. And there's a picture that I took.

And it was of two computer screens. it's on a Monday and I was running a Monday team meeting from Disney.

If that's not enough, the caption says, better never stops, even on vacation.

Two months later, I'm seeing a cardiologist. Something's got to change.

Nick Berry (00:48)
Bradley Hamner is the founder and CEO of Blueprint OS and he hosts the Above the Business podcast. And Bradley works with small business owners who are doing between $300,000 and $3 million in revenue and helping them move from what he calls the rainmaker, where everything depends on them, to becoming the architect of their scalable and self-sustaining business. We talked about how him burning out at 34 led him to build his business operating system that he wished that he'd had.

Why knowing what stage your business  is in what's going to change everything for owners. How EOS misses the mark for early stage businesses. Why designing your business beats defaulting your way through it and what should be systems driven versus people driven. Bradley is a sharp thinker and a straight shooter. I love the architect, the systems thinking, the playbook organization.

He's got something special going with Blueprint OS and his Above the Business podcast. Enjoy the episode.

Bradley Hamner (01:43)
mean, everybody we work with is doing at least $300,000 in annual revenue up to $3 million. really good entrepreneurs. They work hard. They're going to be successful.

Nick Berry (01:56)
Dude, they're serious about it, like it's not a hobby.

Bradley Hamner (01:59)
No, it's definitely not a hobby. mean, this is, this is what they do. I mean, they may have, you know, they, they willingly chose to go be a business owner and an entrepreneur. And so, uh, that's, that's an important distinction and they've gotten a little bit of lift in the business. so the reason I specifically call that out, because a lot of the stuff that we talk about, mean, maybe some of it sure. A lot of stuff we talk about just won't work whenever you're trying to go from zero to,

to 300,000, you know, so that's why there's a, there's a whole different conversation that can be had about, what is somebody's in a, a, you know, a full start, you know, they're just getting started, getting off the ground, you know, how do you, what, how do you test ideas? How do you begin to get your first paying client? I've started a lot of companies and in fact, majority of the company and pretty much all of them have been.

You know, have been where I've started them from scratch, but that's a whole nother conversation to have and tools and mindset and skills that you need and thought process that you need them when somebody's trying to go from 300,000 to a million. And then that conversation changes from when you're at a million, what do you need to do from a million to three?

some really fundamental business principles that once you kind of understand them, it's like, well that does make sense. Why there's things begin to change whenever you approach a million. And then you start dealing with all of these other opportunities and challenges. mean, some of them are challenges, but also there's some opportunities to do.

Nick Berry (03:40)
Mm-hmm.

Bradley Hamner (03:42)
And so that's why, you know, listening to somebody that's got a hundred million dollar portfolio, fantastic. I'm at 300,000. Okay. And so how does that help me go from 300 to a million? Totally different. You know, it's just totally different.

Nick Berry (03:53)
We've got to map it from here to there somehow.

Let's talk about that. What is it about the game that changes at that, whatever that 300, that threshold that you're talking about where like, okay, what got you here is not the thing that's going to get us there.

Bradley Hamner (04:08)
Okay.

So first of all, at $300,000, you're averaging $25,000 a month. The reason that's important is because depending on where you came from, you at least now are paying yourself a salary of maybe 50, $60, $75,000. All right. Let's just say $5,000 a month. Okay. So you're paying yourself a salary and you also have a team.

So you have a team. you've got, whether it's a handful of contractors, et cetera. So you're starting to learn how to build, build a team. And so now you're having to go through, how do all of the learning pains of, how do I recruit? How do I post a job? How do I put somebody on payroll? What does, what does payroll look like? And so do I use ADP? Do I use Sure? Do I use a Gusto to run my payroll?

How do I pay if I've got an international contractor? How do I pay an international contract? I all these little, little things, but more importantly, now you gotta, you gotta train people. You gotta train people. You gotta actually take it out of your head and say, well, this is what I'm really good at. How do I then teach other people how to do it? And so that is a tremendous

skill to learn if you really want to continue to grow and get to a million dollars because you can't do it off your back. mean, at the end of the day, in my own story, I had been in business for five years and in 2015, I mean, we were doing half a million, 600,000. And I found that period between half a million, maybe 750,000.

where a business can really just be ran off the founder. Okay. It's just a founder led business. The founder is driving the majority of the sales. They're doing all the things, but at some point in that half million to maybe million, depending on the business, you're going to run out of time. You're going to run out of time. You're going to get exhausted and the business feels much more like a, like a hand crank. And so the thing that you have to be able to learn is unpack your head of

Nick Berry (06:15)
Mm-hmm.

Bradley Hamner (06:27)
What do I actually do? How do I take and break this down into skills that I can actually teach and train and then coach and hold you accountable to the things I want you to be able to do? Does that make sense? Okay.

Nick Berry (06:41)
Yeah. Yeah. mean, you start

out, you're the producer, right? Because you have to eat, so you have to go kill to eat. And then you have to evolve into getting results through other people. So you figured out like, you're the things that need to be done and how do I get those accomplished through other people? Like the production gets passed down, then it's probably going to evolve into how do do those things well? Right? There's a method behind.

Bradley Hamner (06:49)
100 %

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nick Berry (07:07)
doing

these things. It's not just checking a box. You're listing off like, do I run payroll or how do I do this and how to do that? And there's the, that's the like, that's the what we've got to do. But then there's also like, well, how do I start doing those things? Well, how do I do all of these things well together? So it's like coherent.

Bradley Hamner (07:19)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. In fact, and I'm going to, I'll say this just because it's relevant. Cause yesterday in our, in our community, we were going over what we call the attract a player's playbook. Okay. And so that's one of the handful of playbooks that we give as a template, but we also coach.

How do you build an attract a player's playbook? so attract a player's playbook has three elements. And I'm just using this as an example, since we happen to be talking about this one, it starts off with, well, what does an A player even look like? So we call that an A player profile. So what's an A player look like? Just give me, in fact, this would be interesting for a salesperson. If you work for a small business and I go hire a salesperson, what are one or two?

of the characteristics that you would say are qualities of an A player salesperson. What do you think is one or two of them?

Nick Berry (08:16)
self-starter, personable, goal-oriented, solutions-driven.

Bradley Hamner (08:19)
Yep. Yep.

Yeah, that makes sense. That's all correct. They're a hunter, right? I mean, they got high energy, they're a go-getter. Would you say that a player salesperson is detail oriented? Probably not. Probably not. Okay, now let's go the other side. You're hiring a client success person. You're hiring somebody on your customer service, customer care side, whatever you want to call it, account manager side.

Nick Berry (08:42)
Generally not.

Bradley Hamner (08:56)
Would you want that person to be detailed oriented and organized? Are those two of the things that you would say? Absolutely. Okay. So just that in and of itself is like, we're on the same page. All we say is like, Hey, let's just detail that. Let's just lay that down on an asset and say, this is what an A player looks like in a sales role. This is what a player looks like in a customer care role. Okay. So that's one number two is you've got to create a job description. You got to have a job description that you, that you post.

Nick Berry (09:01)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Bradley Hamner (09:24)
I don't know about you, but if you look at some of these job descriptions people put out, it's full of a bunch of words that mean nothing. And people are like, my gosh, just a bunch of fluff. I'm not even going to riff off that. It's like, be honest about what it is you actually are looking for somebody to do. You can have so much cut through if you don't use words that people don't understand what that means. You clearly use chat GPT to put together that job description thing, which listen, I'm good with using AI to...

Nick Berry (09:30)
I mean, they're as bad as resumes that are out there.

Bradley Hamner (09:52)
have some inspiration to help organize some things, but like it's obvious chat. GPT just wrote that and it's full of a bunch of crap. Nobody's going to really under nobody's going to read that, pay attention to it. We actually teach have a job description that literally becomes something that you can even hold them accountable to not just a one time in recruiting, but it's actually something that we pull up and we make sure like, Hey, this is still your role. So those are two things I'll go into the attract a player's playbook also includes a recruiting system.

It also includes team member onboarding. What's that first 90 days look like? Okay. So here's the deal. Depending on where somebody is listening to this podcast, that may in and of itself just overwhelm them over the last five minutes of like, my God, there is a lot of stuff. Yes. Welcome to small business. Welcome to small business and welcome to entrepreneurship. It's why it's the ultimate self-development course there is, is because it's the combination of so many different skills that you have.

and learnings and mindset and tools and all these different things. But here's the good news. I think business can be a lot more like, Legos than puzzle. Cause right now, when I just mentioned, I took one playbook, one of the handful of playbooks that combine to really run the business on an operating system. And I started to break that into pieces and that can be like a little overwhelming, like, wow, there really is a lot to learn to run this business. Yes, there is.

But you can find it to be much more like a puzzle, excuse me, like a Lego than puzzles. In puzzles, you just dump all the pieces out on the table, don't you? You know, have a weekend at the lake, you dump all the pieces out there, and everybody's kind of like, wow, where's this piece? Where does it go? I'm not really sure. it doesn't fit there, it doesn't fit there. But what are Legos? Legos are, you pull it out, you dump the pieces out,

And even sometimes in Legos, it comes in the little bags, doesn't it? It's like these go together and then these go together and then these go together. And you pull out the instruction manual and it has the instructions and it says, step number one, do this, put these two together. Step number three, put these together. I think business leaves clues. Success leaves clues in business and business can be a lot more like Legos if you can get yourself access to the right people.

Nick Berry (11:59)
Bye.

Bradley Hamner (12:10)
Get yourself around the right community, get access to the right tools, and then also make sure you're getting the information relevant for where you are in the journey. And we talked about this before we hit record, but what somebody is doing at $3 million is not the thing you should be doing at 300,000. I mean, it's good to have the inspiration for that and like, Oh man, that's inspiring. That shows me what is actually possible for my business.

But what do I need to do to go from 300,000 to 500, then 500 to a million and actually start to see it more as a roadmap that I'm going to follow. Then it is about like, I'm just going to go emulate somebody at, $3 million. And I've got so many stories around people that have tried to do that have gone into debt, like a lot of debt, trying to do something that's out of order. And that's why I like the Lego analogy.

and metaphor, guess, to be able to help somebody to understand where they are and where they want to go.

Nick Berry (13:11)
Yeah. Well, so I, that resonates with me too. Like the Legos it's modular. So there might be a thousand Legos there, but there are only like, you know, X number of unique pieces. Let's say you need to know, I need one of these little two by twos or I need a two by six. I need a tall one or a thin one, like a little, but with a puzzle piece, they're all unique. And the thing is you mentioned like, well, that feels, that seems like a lot. It is a lot, but you're

you're going to have to figure all that stuff out anyway. So you're already figuring it out. You just might be doing a really shitty job figuring it out. And so if you can go from looking at everything, like it's this one-off unique snowflake thing that you're trying to cobble together to this like modular Lego-esque building blocks that we can like, you just have to, you don't have to know everything about all 1000 pieces of Legos. You just need to know how to use these like core.

Bradley Hamner (13:44)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Berry (14:07)
pieces and you can build just about anything. It's way less daunting like that. So.

Bradley Hamner (14:09)
Yep. Yep.

Yeah, it is.

And, you know, I think you're, you're right in the sense that there's the different pieces that fit for that particular season that you're, that you're in, in business. And so sometimes when you read a book or something else, it can kind of gloss over some of the details. mean, that was big in my own story that I was like, I would read a book and then I would like,

Okay, this makes sense. But where do I put this information? And then I'd read another book and it was almost like I was gathering through reading the books, conversations, podcast, conferences I would go to, programs I was in. I was like gathering the puzzle pieces. Do see what I'm saying? I was gathering the puzzle pieces and then I would look at it and think, okay, I feel like I have a lot of, we use the word asset a lot.

I have assets here. It's not like I'm starting from, you know, I don't have anything, but I don't know how to put all this together in a way that it makes sense. It just felt like it was almost like a Frankenstein business in a way.

Nick Berry (15:23)
Like, you know a lot of stuff.

You know more than you used to know, but not sure how this becomes coherent.

Bradley Hamner (15:28)
I don't know how to put it all together. don't know if you've ever, I'm a watch guy, so I like watches. If you've ever seen a video where a watchmaker has taken the back of a Rolex off or whatever, just take, but let's say it's a mechanical watch for sure, not a quartz watch with a battery, but so it's a mechanical watch. If you've ever seen a watch, it blows your mind.

about how many different things are actually in the back of a watch. It's unbelievable how many pieces. I I watched this guy. It was, it was really a fascinating video to watch this guy take the back of this 1950 something Rolex GMT watch off and took the back off and, and he restored it. And I mean, this watch is like worth $150,000 because it's so old, but he had done a beautiful job. And I thought, Oh my gosh, look how many little tiny pieces.

are in there and he did the video was fascinating. My point is, is all of that had a purpose. All of that had a purpose. But when you see all of these pieces like taken out and laid out, if you did not know how to put that back, now he's an expert at doing this, but if you did not know how to put that back, that would get overwhelming. But he knows exactly this piece goes here. Then I take this gear and then it attaches to this gear.

Then it attaches to this gear and all the pieces work together. And then whenever he puts the back of it on, you have this beautiful working Rolex watch or whatever. Right. And so I think a lot of times business owners are incredibly driven. They don't need to be told that they need to work hard. Okay. They just don't need, don't need that at all. Matter of fact, I think for the met, that's majority of the people that we work with.

The problem is not whether or not we can get them to go. It's the fact that they're burnt out. That was my story. That was my story. I was, I was completely burnt out. Um, it was August the fourth, 2015. I went and saw a cardiologist at 34 years old because I was working my ass off.

Well, that's exactly what I needed in the early days to do, but that's not the thing that was sustainable. It wasn't sustainable, Nick. Like that, you can't keep that up for a long period of time. What's interesting about this is I'm coming off of right now, I feel like even just in the last 24 hours, the last two weeks, I have been working so hard on a particular project.

but it's been two weeks. And I know I'm coming out of it where I'm like, okay, it's, I'm past that. We're leading up to a launch. It was a season, but if that two...

Nick Berry (18:15)
A sprint is very different

from running a sprint pace through a marathon, right?

Bradley Hamner (18:19)
Correct. I was running a sprint pace for five years. January of 10 through August of 15, it finally broke. don't know if it's the, if you've ever, everybody has seen the Top Gun Maverick. And you know when he's in the video where he's in the really fast, new, cool plane and he's going Mach 10 and then he pushes it a little bit further.

What happens?

Now, it's a movie, it's ridiculous. He survives, come on, he didn't survive. You wouldn't survive that. You wouldn't survive a plane blowing up going Mach 11 or whatever it was. There's no chance. Only Tom Cruise could survive that, right? But that's metaphor.

Nick Berry (18:58)
Right.

Only Tom Cruise.

Yeah. So do you mind, do

you mind sharing a little bit more about your story that those first five years, like how did it get to that place?

Bradley Hamner (19:16)
my gosh, I could literally show you, mean, honest to goodness, it's on my phone. I show this, in, in, the web class that I, that I do, I literally share the screenshots of the text messages, that I sent to friends on August the 4th, cause I had some, you know, I had breakfast schedule and I had some things that day and I had to reschedule some meetings. And I said, I'm really sorry. I had to go see a cardiologist today because the stress has just been too much, you know? So, but.

two months before that, so in June, there's a foreshadowing to this. We're in Disney and the kids are five, almost five and one at the time. And as I told you before, they're now 14 and 10, but at the time they were five and one. And there's a picture that I took.

I'm not super active on social media, but I did take this picture and posted on social media. And it was of two computer screens. If you look at the day and look it up, it's on a Monday and I was running a Monday team meeting from Disney.

If that's not enough, the caption says, better never stops, even on vacation.

Two months later, I'm seeing a cardiologist. Something's got to change.

Something's got to change. I think all of our members have had some story of that. It may not be a cardiologist visit, but it's something. It's something that says, yeah, whatever. right? I just hope that for people that they...

Nick Berry (20:36)
It's a conversation with a spouse or a kid or an accident. Yeah.

Bradley Hamner (20:45)
For business owners, they don't have to get to that point to where they realize they have to make it may they have to make a change now This is where okay. Well, what'd I do? Well, it's not it wasn't like obvious. I didn't walk out of I didn't walk out of the cardiologist Nick and go Epiphany like God has just given it to me. I know exactly what I need to do. No, I mean when you've done something for five years

And I want to be clear, it had worked. Okay. It's not like what I was doing was not working. It actually is the fact that it was working. And so I just continue to do more of it. Okay. Let's work it. It's working. Keep doing, keep doing, keep doing, keep doing. Tom Cruise in the, in the movie Maverick push on, push on the gas a little bit more, a little bit more. If I can just get, let's get another 10,000 month. If we can just do this, if we can just, just qualify for this thing, if we can just make it over this.

this last one more little hill will be okay. That's a fallacy. That's a fallacy. No. fortunately, I went to Toronto and I mean, we can get into this however you want to, but ultimately I met an entrepreneur and it was really that interaction with him that really changed everything. And it was the flight back home from Toronto that really made me say like, I actually think, I think I get it now.

I think I understand it. I think I understand what the changes are that I need to, I need to make. Like I've really got to get out of being the operator of my business. I've got to step into being the owner of my business. We refer to that as becoming the architect of your business. I saw myself no longer as the doer of the thing, but the designer of it. And so like I always saw my role as like push, push, do, do, do, do, do. And I was like, wait a minute, I think I'm doing this all wrong. And you know,

I haven't mentioned this, like all of this really came from my dad. I was modeling my father. He's in farming, agriculture. And so, you you just...

Nick Berry (22:39)
and relate.

Bradley Hamner (22:40)
You just bust your ass. mean, you know, that's, that's what it is. And I saw how hard he worked and I'm so grateful for that. My dad and I have a great relationship now. but that, that does not come without some downsides as well of I am, I I'm modeling exactly what my father did, which was just work all the time workaholic. And that

is one of those addictions that people tend to not look at the same as alcohol, drugs, shopping, whatever it may be. There's so many other things. Well, also, you can become addicted to work as well. And we tend to like laud that, you know? And so I'm not saying you're not going to have to work hard for sure, but there has to be some level of guidelines and parameters.

in a way to approach it and some specific things to do to get yourself out of that.

Nick Berry (23:36)
Going back to the conversation with the entrepreneur you said in Toronto, do you remember what it was that made it click for you? What were the words or the phrases or the slap in the face?

Bradley Hamner (23:43)
Yeah. Yeah. I take exactly what

it was for sure. So I'm in strategic coach, a great entrepreneurial, coaching program, Dan Sullivan. And so this is now portrayed in the book. So they've, he's written a book with Dr. Benjamin Hart, Benjamin Hardy on this. It's called 10 X is easier than two X. So great book. I recommend people go get it. But in, late 2015, that was not a book. That was a concept. That was a, that was a tool.

that they used. And it was a one pager. And so, we're doing this exercise and I'm sitting next to a guy I've never met before. And I'll never forget, we briefly introduced ourselves. He was in an adjacent industry, meaning like it wasn't too far different from the industry that I was in, which was in insurance and financial services. And he was a financial advisor. And so, nice to meet you. He had a backpack on.

I was like in a sport coat, jeans, I was all dressed up, you know, and he's like got a hat backwards. And so we do this exercise, they teach it to us. And then you always have a little bit of individual thinking time and then you partner up. And so I partnered up, he was on my right. And so he goes first, he goes, all right, so last year we did 40 million. I made 5 million personally. So here's what 400 million and 50 million would look like. I was like, wait, wait.

Say that again. You did $40 million last year and you made $5 million personally. Now remember what I said earlier. My business was doing like five, $600,000 in revenue for the year. I was like, you make as much in a month personally as my business does in a year in revenue.

And was like, what? That may, I mean, it was just, I was so mind blown by the whole, just like, that is not what I expected. Okay. And so he goes, oh, now you go. I was like, I'm literally not going to go. Okay. I am so embarrassed. And he was so nice about it. He was so nice about it. was so cool. He ended up being an athlete. He played professional baseball for a period of time.

Nick Berry (25:50)
can't help you.

Bradley Hamner (26:02)
He was Canadian. was, he was super cool. Um, I've actually tried to connect with him, uh, cause I wanted to, to, cause to him, it was probably just another day. Like he don't remember this moment. Um, but for me, I was like, I don't remember anything we did the rest of the day because I was like, wow. But I did ask him, I was like, dude, what in the world? He said, look, man, it's just systems and processes, just systems and process and you gotta have a good team. And I said something smart ass back, but remember.

Remember this is important. What has just happened to me? Okay. I just have gone to the cardiologist a few months prior. So I'm in a state of frustration. Quite frankly, I'm in a state of considering leaving entrepreneurship. I'm at that point to where I'm actually was looking to go back into pharmaceuticals, a $200,000 base salary, company car for one K benefits. Well, it sounded good at the time. I was going to be making more money than I was then.

And so I thought, you know what? I think I might just go back. You know, I think I might just quit. I can't tell you how many of the entrepreneurs I work with that have said that exact same thing. They said, you know what? think, I think I've gotten to a point to think I'm going to quit. I don't enjoy what I do anymore. I got into this for fun, and flexibility. I don't love this job. I'm not making any money. I work my ass off. I don't play golf anymore.

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There was this dream of being a multi-million dollar business. It's not, it doesn't look anything like that. I think I'm just gonna go work for somebody else. I mean, almost every entrepreneur has had some version of that story. But to his credit, he said, look man, I'll just show you. And so he did. And so at lunch, he was like, look man, this is how we do this. This is how we do this. This is how we do this.

And like, I don't remember anything that was on the page. It wasn't like he sent me the documents. It wasn't that, but it was literally what he said was, I just got the business out of my head. I just got the business out of my head. See, he was an individual financial advisor working for a company like a Merrill Lynch. I don't know who it was, but let's just say it was Merrill Lynch. He was really good. And then he built the team and then he went out on his own. And then he just started to duplicate. He learned.

Why am I so good? Why am I so good at being a good financial advisor? He didn't just say, you know what? I just have these unique skills. He literally just unpacked his head and said, this is how we get clients. This is how we serve them. This is how we do this. This is how I recruit other financial advisors. And he just had a team of financial advisors. He just kept building. Did he go hire a hundred of them at a time? No, he built one. He built another one. He built another one.

He built another one, so on and so forth. And at the time I think he had a team of like, you know, a hundred people or so, a staff of a hundred people, 40 million top line, $5 million to him personally. I mean, you know, just like it built over time, it didn't happen in two years. And on that flight back home, as I tell people, did I pull up word? Yes, I did. I really was like, okay, we have nothing documented, nothing. I might need to start there.

But I think more, more so Nick, the thing that was way more like the change in me happened whenever I like it was an identity shift. Like I was like, okay, I can't be the operator anymore. I've got to go be the owner. I've got to make the move from operator to owner. We call that transformation internally, rainmaker to architect. Like I saw myself as going in like, all right, I got to go build. I got to go design this thing and then go build it.

I'm just running around like a chicken with my haircut off and I've got to stop doing that.

Nick Berry (29:48)
Isn't it so crazy that that's such an enormous unlock. In your case, was just the thinking about leverage differently, how to leverage yourself differently and how pretty quickly you were able to shift and then build this beautiful system that you have, the operating system.

so far from that until you had that shift appear about your identity. But then once, I would say, I don't know how long it took you, the process of building that, of recognizing the operating system began almost immediately when you had that epiphany. And certainly like so many entrepreneurs, you're that close, but that far away. If you're not putting yourself in a situation where you're going to have the epiphany.

Bradley Hamner (30:33)
Yeah, I think that...

It wasn't the look, I read E-Myth before that met that guy. Okay. I mean, it's why the name of my podcast is above the business is because it's a nod to the E-Myth work on it, not in it. I agree. I just think there's a third dimension, which is above. It wasn't that I had not heard that before. The difference was because I was in so much pain.

Pain as in I don't literally mean pain, but I mean frustration. I was pissed off I Was just pissed off honestly, and I was like no more never again. I'm not doing this anymore It's either going this way or I'm out like I'd really gotten to that point. Okay, and so The difference was is instead of like just being on the plane and I was like motivated in that moment

to start like, what do we actually do? Who do we serve? How do we serve them? How do we sell customers? I kept doing it. Like I just kept on because I just had this, it was almost like I had this place I've never actually thought about this way. I think it was because, and I haven't built a $40 million company and honestly I don't have the desire to go build a $40 million company like he did, but it was almost like because I saw a picture of what could be one.

And I also had this place of like where I was that I was like, I'm never going back here and I'm going towards this. That it just kept me on the path that this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to figure this shit out. If it's okay for me to that, I don't cuss much, but like I'm going to figure this out. And so when I got back, I kept working on it. Well, then what do I do with this?

Nick Berry (32:17)
Excellent.

Bradley Hamner (32:27)
People talk about recruiting. I don't have a recruiting system. my gosh, I gotta go build that one. And I literally just kept a list in an Excel spreadsheet of like, I gotta go build that, I gotta go build that, I gotta go build that, I gotta go build that. And I didn't have the model. I didn't have the model, I didn't have templates, I didn't know how to organize it, I didn't know where to put it, I didn't know how to document it. I started to even get into stuff like, we teach even the basics, like all your documents need to look the same. People are like, well gosh, I hadn't even thought about that.

Nick Berry (32:56)
Your folder system, that's what got my attention.

Bradley Hamner (32:58)
Yeah, literally.

mean, people, this actually came up yesterday, you know, and I showed people, mean, could show you the literal on the slide. I was like, this is the structure. This is the folder structure. This is where these things go. And what that does, creates organization. It creates structure. But see, people would say that, but I was like, how do you do that? What does that look like? You know, you read Traction as an example, great book.

but it doesn't get down into these details that the business owners at that 300,000 and three million range need to understand. Look, if you're at 10 million above listening to this and you've got a leadership team, EOS is awesome. I think EOS can take you from 10 million to a hundred million, but I'm gonna be very real. I read Traction and I was at $600,000 in revenue.

I don't have a leadership team.

I don't run an L10 meeting. I don't do quarterly leadership retreats. It's comical, okay? We had a member, Nick, that just joined. He's doing $400,000. And he made a comment whenever he was going through his onboarding with us about his office manager. And I said, Jared, I'm gonna be honest with you, You don't have an office manager. You are the office manager right now. Go get the thing to a million and we're gonna talk about it. Stop trying to big time and act like

Like, and I didn't say it this direct to him, but like, basically I was like, no, you don't stop with that. You don't have an office manager. Like you are the office manager right now. This is how we're going to build that to ultimately, whenever you literally then have six, 7 team members and of million. Okay. Now we start talking about actually getting your first level of management. said, now if you need an EA to help you to create leverage, let's go get yourself an EA, but let's not try to act like you've got three team members and one of them is an office manager.

You see what I'm saying? Like, let's just be real about it. And he was like, you know what? I appreciate you being so direct. Yeah, you're kind of right. He goes, I think I just want to act like I'm, you know, like I have this, but I'd never really thought about it. And nobody's ever really kind of called me on the carpet about this. So I was like, cool. All right, let's go do that. Does that make sense?

Nick Berry (35:11)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I mean, even, even if with the best of intentions, right? Like they're trying to anticipate things for the future, but you don't want to blur the lines. Like there's anticipation and then there's trying to skip a level and you don't get to skip levels.

Bradley Hamner (35:26)
Yeah.

Yeah. So to that point, it's actually a good point that let the business dictate them what happens, like grow into things, grow into it and then go, okay, now we got to need to do this. So often this happens with salespeople. People are like, okay, all right, I'm going to go hire two sales reps. I cannot afford them right now, but I'm just going to go do it and then hope that it works. Okay. Well, I'll just tell you.

Nick Berry (35:51)
them.

Bradley Hamner (35:55)
client I'd worked with for a year and a half, was doing great, construction business. We stopped working together last June, about six months ago. He calls me in December and says, Bradley, I don't have anybody else to talk to about this. I'm really in a bad spot. Can we talk? I was like, yeah, man, let's go get coffee tomorrow. So we did. I was like, all right, man, tell me what's going on, buddy. I was like, ask me. I said, tell me about so and so. He was like, they're gone. I was like, okay. Tell me about so and so. They're gone. Tell me about so and so. They're gone. I was like, wait.

What has happened in five months? He got into a quarter of a million dollars of debt because he was just like, all these hired, all these people paid them all this money, had all this stuff. And it was like, the only way that that would have worked is if everything would have happened perfectly. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. would have like, literally everything had to go great. So he spent the money on the front side and was like,

this has got to work versus being to a point to where, there's just, there's so much business that literally I've got to hire some other people to then come in and actually not take this over. And the business then dictates and pulls him forward versus he was kind of pushing a rope.

Nick Berry (37:12)
Yeah. Yeah. There are some things where it might feel a little bit reactive, but you've got to let the demand accrue before you tool up for it. Especially if you're going into debt to do it.

Bradley Hamner (37:22)
100%.

Yes, yes.

Nick Berry (37:28)
Yeah. So what does it look like with the operating system? Because so I've, gone through some of your materials and the quick start course and it's funny. The, the folder system really did get my attention because I built an operating system in my previous company that we did niche business coaching programs and got pretty big

But the folder system like that was one of the pieces that we gave everybody from the beginning because if you can't keep up with stuff that you're going to be drinking from a fire hose. Like this matters. Okay. It is a Google drive folder system, but it's important because if you don't have this, you're going to be lost in two months. So let's not waste our time here. Do things like this.

Bradley Hamner (37:57)
Mm-hmm.

Sure.

Nick Berry (38:11)
And you've gone beyond what we did as far as some of the detail with the documents. And I love it because it all really does matter. It is hard for somebody who's been in that startup phase to recognize why it matters because it wouldn't have mattered to them before that. But that's part of the evolution that you described. And I think that's, it really appeals to me.

where your perspective and why it's so important to them. Talk about what does it look like for a new client for you to come in from coming out of that first startup phase, going into this phase and trying to adopt this new way of being.

Bradley Hamner (38:49)
yeah, that's what I was referring to earlier about some of the, some of the details that when sometimes you read a book or whatever, gives you these high level concepts, but then people are like, what do I actually do? What do I name the folder? And you're like, okay, this is what you name the folder.

I have a playbook. I have playbooks. Will you just start calling everything a playbook? Like we actually literally have naming conventions where we say, this is a principle. This is a playbook. This is a system. This is a process. That is what we call our hierarchy.

And the reason they're important for these two reasons. One is because people talk about structure. They talk about routine. They talk about this kind of things that they want, but that nobody ever gives them the detail of what they need. And so it literally helps you to be able to not use words interchangeably. Like in our program, we don't just throw around words and be like, well, it can be this or it could be that. It could be this or it could be that. It's like, no, no, no.

This means this, this means this. Like I remember there was a period of time, this was years ago, like everybody, you get to a client and they're calling everything a playbook. You're like, how many playbooks do you have? Like 72? When our model, there's 15. 15. The business runs on 15 playbooks. Okay. Well, what's inside of a playbook? Systems. Well, what's inside of a system? Process. Now I promise you, I did the research on this.

You can, you can go start Googling this. One person calls it a process. Another person calls it a system. Another person calls it a checklist. Another person calls it a procedure. The more you do the research, more confused you get. So I finally just said, what is the hierarchy here? Like, how does this actually work? And so then I was like, all right, no, no, no, this is what we've got to be. And I did all of that to try to then be like, call it this, call it this and put it here. So here's the.

Kind of a quick analogy and then also why the final thing a reason why it's When you do laundry and you wash your clothes you put them in the dryer You take them out of the dryer put them in a basket most people go dump it out on the bed or maybe a laundry room if you have that and Then they what do they start to do? They start to fold the clothes. This is important

Where do they do that? Well, they put the socks in the sock drawer. They put the shirts in the t-shirt drawer. They hang up their golf shirts. They put the jeans where the jeans go. They put the kids clothes in the kids room in the kids drawer. They put things where they go. Why? Why don't we just take them out of the laundry room and just start throwing shit everywhere? Nick?

Nick Berry (41:47)
Or just leave them in the laundry room and go in there and get dressed.

Bradley Hamner (41:49)
I mean,

whatever, you know, why don't we just put the jeans underneath the kitchen sink? Why don't we just put the socks in the playroom? Why don't we just put t-shirts in the, in the garage? What's a ridiculous analogy, but you get the point though. It's because when we go to look for those things, we want to things go where they're supposed to go. Why would your digital assets in the business not be any different? That recruiting system that you have, that's an eight step recruiting system.

that says, this, ask these questions, do this, ask these questions, do this, ask these questions. That is valuable. That is an asset to the business. It's no good if nobody knows where to find the thing. Like where do we actually go? well you go to team. Okay, that makes sense. Attract, yeah, let's go to the attract a players playbook. there's a folder right there that says recruiting system. I'm gonna pull up that folder.

click there. There it is. There's all of our assets. Okay. I think that makes sense. You follow what I'm saying? Like it matters because then people aren't certain, aren't going on a scavenger hunt looking for everything. And so if you really want to scale, these are the things that help you to be able to scale. And if you ever want to exit the company one day, some people do, some people don't, but thinking that way is very valuable.

Because if you can go to a potential acquirer of your business and say, Nick, let me show you our assets. literally show you every one of them. So when you buy the company, these are all the assets you're going to get. You want to know how we market? Here it is. You want to know how we sell? Here it is. You want to know how we recruit team members? Here it is. You want to know everything about the business? It's all right here. We give you access to the Google Drive folder or whatever you use, Dropbox, it doesn't matter, Microsoft SharePoint.

Here it is, here's all the assets to the business that you're now buying. That becomes incredibly important in an acquisition.

Nick Berry (43:49)
And everybody

here that works here right now knows how to do those things. They've been trained on them. They know, you know, that's, is our way of being.

Bradley Hamner (43:58)
That's great. Well, that

all started with you. That all started with you because then that then permeates. And it's actually a good segue to where I was going is it permeates the culture. We do things by design, not by default. That's what you've done. We do things by design. We don't just randomly do things. There's a purpose and a reason for why we do it. So that is very much reflected in who you are.

as the leader of that company. That's why you guys have been so incredibly successful because it permeates down. Because I've gotten this question before. Yeah, I mean, I hear you, but why does it matter that all of our documents look the same? Okay. Two reasons. One, it creates uniformity. Every time you pull up a document, looks the same. Every time you pull up document, it looks the same. Okay. I have nothing against Ariel Font. I have nothing against Times New Roman.

But the reason why we don't use aerial, you know why?

Nick Berry (44:56)
I do, yeah.

Bradley Hamner (44:57)
It's the default in Google Docs. Okay.

It's the default font. And so literally we choose anything but aerial. And so of course this hasn't happened years, but I would lose my mind if my team sent me a document in aerial. We literally have it as maximum. Do not never send a document in aerial. And the reason is, is because we do things on purpose. Everything we do is by design. And so the purpose is not whether or not you're going to sell more clients, scale your business.

or it's gonna become more valuable to an acquire because you used, you know, times new Roman instead of Ariel. No, it's not that. But what becomes very important is that the team has bought into the culture of we do things a certain way. We don't just randomly do things. We do it a certain way. This is why this matters. Does that make sense?

Nick Berry (45:48)
You don't want to have a culture of that includes being willy nilly about things. Right. And so it starts with some of the smaller things to, to help that like culture shift in the direction that you want to, but like everything matters in some way, or form.

And I love being what you said about putting intention to everything. Even the small things like a font indicate that that's we're toeing the line in that area. we are.

Bradley Hamner (46:15)
It's intentionality.

It's intentionality. Customers are never going to see it. Um, um, but that's not the point. What they will see is that you do things in a certain way. You do things in a certain way. mean, you know, now we, uh, like, I mean, even this morning before I hopped on five, uh, let me 10 minutes before I got on this call, uh, I recorded a minute loom video.

Nick Berry (46:27)
Mm-hmm.

Bradley Hamner (46:45)
to my EA and I said, we are adding a step to when we run our, weekly coaching calls on Tuesdays. We added a step that is a kind of a post production thing, where we're using some AI, tool so that records all of the stuff and we want to add that summary to a certain place. And so.

What did I do? I shot a one video and I said, hey, I think this is how this needs to go. It took me 45 seconds.

important. I shot the limb video one time.

I transferred it from like how this is how I've envisioned this is how I want this. I gave her a five second why. Hey, this is why this important. Why I think it'd be valuable for our members. She now has it, but here's what's important. It did not go from her head, from my head to her head. It's not like something she's got to remember. It now has gotten added to our weekly process.

So in the future, I don't have to worry about, Courtney do that or Courtney not do that? No, it's added as checklist. She does this, she uploads it, she sends it to the Google Drive folder, she uploads it to Circle, then she does this, then she takes Firefly's AI, she copies the summary, she adds it underneath this, she does that, she checks the box.

Nick Berry (48:04)
It removes the burden of you having to re-figure that out or monitor it. You know, as long as she's doing her job, her job includes that thing.

Bradley Hamner (48:05)
Because what happens?

This may be controversial. I don't want a people dependent business. I don't want a people dependent business. I want to process dependent business and then I'm going to overlay that with A players.

Nick Berry (48:23)
I like to look at it as I want to take all of the things that can be routinized and put them into process and compartmentalize that, then lay the A players over that and leaving them enough room to bring their magic to life.

Bradley Hamner (48:39)
Correct, mean,

there are still so many things that are uniquely human. I just want to, like you said, routinize. I want it to be a process-driven, the things that just need to happen on regular basis.

Nick Berry (48:56)
Mm-hmm.

Bradley Hamner (48:57)
And then allow the uniqueness of the people to come out because all of the other things are taken care of. do this, we do this, we do this, we do this, we do this. So what we want to do. The other thing is like, you know, we've produced my podcast now for five years, over five years. I mean, the reality is the team really works like a well-oiled machine. I do this, I record this, I sent it to them. I do, I do my part. It's done. Well.

Nick Berry (49:09)
with it.

Bradley Hamner (49:27)
The problem with that is, is as we grow, what if we want to hand that process off? What if we want to hand it off? If none of that's documented, then what are you handing off? You're just taking it from one person's head to another person's head. And then from that person's head to another person's head, well, what happens if that person leaves? I've had that happen before. As a matter of fact, in 2016, after I was on this big kick and we started documenting stuff,

Sometimes it takes a long time to really learn the lesson. You're going to keep making the mistakes until you learn the lesson that it's trying to teach you. So in 2016, I hired my first EA. Hiring the EA was not the problem. She was full-time. I didn't need a full-time EA at the time. was way overpaid. But I will say this, it was working. We had a really good process for something we were doing in the office. It got better. It got better. It got better. It got better.

We were documenting things. were creating assets. I was on this path. 12 months later, I hired her in January. She left in December. I remember her walking out the door and I was like, I cannot believe it. I did it again. I did it again, Nick. I did it again. Sure. I hated losing her. She had, she got a great opportunity. she, she got an awesome opportunity, but as she walked out the door, thought,

There goes all that intellectual property. I'm starting all over again. And so what's funny is she was helping me document all the other things, but she didn't document what she was doing. And it's not her fault, it's my fault, I mean. But I just thought, good gracious, I did it again. I don't have it now. If I go hire somebody, I got to train them up again because I didn't have anything to hand off. didn't have a document. It was literally like we approve.

We improve, we improve. didn't have anything else. heard somebody in and go, Hey, so this is, these are the five things that she was doing. Here's one of the things she was doing. Here's three pages on it. We're going to do this. We're going to walk through every single step. I'll make sure I train you on it. Okay. Step one, go up, pull the customer information up. Step two, do this. Step three, do this. I didn't document any of that stuff.

Nick Berry (51:35)
It's like putting in the work to build out a, well, to use a foot, like a sports analogy, to build out a playbook. Then not having any idea how to coach a quarterback on it. And you just, your quarterback just left. So it's like, Hey, we've got a pretty awesome offense here. I hope you can figure out how to run it.

Bradley Hamner (51:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, yep, yep, exactly.

Nick Berry (51:55)
so I really like your podcast, the Above the Business podcast. That's where I originally have found you. Tell me about your programs. What else are you offering?

Bradley Hamner (52:05)
Yeah. So our core offer is is blueprint. that's our, that's our core program. we help small business owners doing 300,000 to 3 million. We helped them transition from being the operator in the day to day to becoming the owner of a business. again, we call that transformation internally, the rain

of your business to really step into what it means to become a true business owner. We think there are two main things that are two main problems that business owners at that level face. Number one, that they have no systems. We spent a tremendous amount of time talking about lack of systems today and the importance of an operating system. then number two, the other problem that they face is they really have no direction.

So they have an idea of what it is that they want in the business, but it's not documented. So they don't have, we call that your point B. but also they don't have a point A, they really don't understand where they are currently in business. That gets into a lot of metrics, like knowing your numbers, understanding culture, but really truly understanding where you are today. And ultimately.

That helps us to build what we call a roadmap. So we help people understand where they are today, point A, where they want to go, point B, and build a plan to get there. And those three things make up a roadmap. so those are the two things that we really give our business owners. We give them a roadmap and we give them an operating system. So if you've got a map for where you want to go and you've got the system to be able to build it, we think ultimately you can be really successful.

and ultimately you can scale your business.

Nick Berry (53:53)
So what you just described there, like that is, that's where the name, the business owner's journey came from is knowing that like there's, there is kind of a predictable path. There's a finite set of, of things that you're, that have to occur. There's a set of lessons that are probably going to occur that we can kind of, anticipate and prepare for. and

You have to have some awareness as to where you're at on the journey and be able to, and, and a vision of some sort of where you want to be. Like you have to aspire to be somewhere. yeah, I love the, the perspective that you're bringing to it and the operating system. that's after my heart right there. Anybody who, any of audience who, is familiar with me at all knows how I feel about this. So, I think it's fantastic what you're doing. I really liked the system.

Well, thank you very much for jumping on. This has been fantastic. This is something that any small business owner who is trying to grow, if you're trying to like bust through that ceiling, you're at, this is the thing that you need to be aware of. This is the thing that doesn't get enough attention. I don't believe that perspective shift.

Bradley, thank you so much.

Bradley Hamner (54:56)
Appreciate you. Thanks for the opportunity.