Bradley Hamner With BlueprintOS

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Bradley Hamner and he is with Blueprint OS. Welcome.

Bradley Hamner: Lee. Thanks for the opportunity to be with you.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about blueprint OS. How are you serving folks?

Bradley Hamner: So we help business owners and entrepreneurs go from being the rainmaker of their business to where everything is dependent upon them, to help them to become the architect of their business. And we can get into the five milestones of what that specifically means to become the architect of your business. Obviously, that’s been my own journey. I was the rainmaker. I became the architect of my business, and that’s what we help entrepreneurs to be able to do today.

Lee Kantor: So what is your backstory How did you get involved in this line of work?

Bradley Hamner: My dad is a farmer, a small business owner himself still to this day, and I picked up from my dad. Really, I caught it. I wasn’t taught it, per se, from my dad. Um, just the value of hard work. And so I brought that in. I had a couple of corporate jobs, um, out of school from Auburn University and then ventured into entrepreneurship in 2010. And I brought in sales skills and the value of what it means to actually work hard that I picked up from my dad. And that’s exactly what I needed initially to get lift in the business. I think a lot of your listeners can understand that. I mean, you just it’s just embedded in who I am to be able to work hard. And it worked up until the point that it didn’t. In 2015, I burned out and thought I was having some heart issues. I wasn’t having heart issues, I was just having panic attacks. But I didn’t recognize that at the time and knew I needed to make a change. And it wasn’t really until a few months later, I was in Toronto, actually at a program called Strategic Coach. And there’s a book now out about this exercise that we were doing called Ten-x is Easier Than two X. And the guy that I met was a financial advisor.

Bradley Hamner: And so I guess I had it in my mind that he was probably doing half 1 million to $750,000 in top line revenue. And so when we do this exercise, he said, well, last year I did 40 million top line and made 5 million personally. And I was like, wait, what? That’s not what I expected. And he said something I’d heard for years, which was, you know, look at systems and processes and you’ve got to have a good team. And I said something smart back to him, uh, to the, to the tune of like, I’ve heard that so many times before and nobody ever shows me what that actually is. And so he said, I’ll show you at lunch. And he did. And that that changed everything. And so I finally went back and for the first time, instead of hearing a good idea about actually building that, I started to do it. And so ultimately, instead of everything being dependent upon me, I became the architect of my business. Of course, I didn’t realize that that’s what I was doing at the time. Um, and so turned the business around. And that business has been growing and profitable, um, ever since. And that’s what we share with other business owners to be able to do today.

Lee Kantor: So what were you doing prior to what you’re doing now?

Bradley Hamner: I was doing everything. I was doing everything in the business. I mean, everything was really dependent upon me. The business was really hand-crank, I think.

Lee Kantor: But what was the what was the business?

Bradley Hamner: It was an insurance agency.

Lee Kantor: So you you were an insurance person. So you were, you know, the face of the insurance agent. You were meeting with people. You’re trying to sell people. If they have a problem, you’re trying to fix the problem. You’re it. You’re kind of the, you know, wearing all the hats.

Bradley Hamner: I was wearing all the hats. Air traffic control emails would come in to me. I would respond to them. Sure. I had a team, but at the end of the day, the business had grown, had outgrown me. And that’s why I say that it was successful and it worked up until the point that it didn’t. And so as the business was growing, I just expanded my time. And so it went from five days to six days to seven days to, you know, effectively around the clock, you know, rushing home to eat dinner, immediately, flipping open the laptop to be able to respond to emails, waking up early the next morning to try to be able to do the exact same thing. And, you know, a few months, even prior to me having those panic attacks for the first time, I was in Disney and I was responding to customer emails, and I was running a team meeting from Disney. Uh, the Disney Yacht Club even have a picture of that. I had two laptops up because that’s that’s what I thought I needed to be doing. And, you know, I kind of wore that as a badge of honor as well is that, you know, this is just what what it takes. This is what I’m supposed to be doing. Well, you know, I burned out and it was just too much. And so I needed to make a change. But it wasn’t immediately. It wasn’t immediately evident to me what I needed to do to make the change until I made my way to Toronto.

Lee Kantor: So you go and you talk to this person who obviously is walking the walk. Um, and he shares with you a way to build processes and kind of let go of some of the things that you had taken ownership within your organization.

Bradley Hamner: Yeah. I want to be clear. He actually what he did do is he actually at lunch shared with me, I don’t know, it was maybe 5 or 6 documents that he had built. And he said, Bradley, I got my business out of my head. And there’s a few things, Lee that stood out to me about that time. I think it was also just kind of where I was. You know, I thought about leaving entrepreneurship and going back into the corporate world. I’d even explored what that would possibly look like. So I really was considering leaving entrepreneurship because I was so frustrated with kind of where things were. But I remember specifically the the documents that he shared with me, just how well organized they were, how beautiful they were, how easy to understand they were, how well structured they were. And he said, look, this is what it looks like. And there was something about that in that moment for me. Maybe it was also that I had in my head what I thought he was doing, revenue, etcetera. Um, and then for him to say, you know, we were doing 40 million. It just it was such a, such a day for me. I don’t really remember anything else about that day except for that. And so it was really on the plane ride home that I said, okay, I got I got to start to, to do this. I’ve actually got to start to put pen to paper. And I mean, specifically what it means is, you know, actually go to a Google document and write down, okay, what do we actually do? How do we onboard customers? How do we onboard a team member? I didn’t have I didn’t have anything documented.

Bradley Hamner: I’d been in business successful successfully for, you know, five and a half years up to that point, we didn’t have a document for our sales process. What was our marketing strategy? How we onboarded customers, how we handled in that business at the time, how we handled claims nothing was documented, nothing how we ran appointments, and we were just winging it. And ultimately it was all in my head. And, you know, I know business owners can relate to this. You, you know, you you train. I mean, I certainly would train my team members, but I was training them different every single time. I didn’t I didn’t go off of a document and say, okay, now let’s next time I forgot to do this. And so next time we’ll do this for the next for the next person that we bring on board. We didn’t do any of that. It was just it was just day to day, day to day, day to day. We were not building any assets into the business. And so what was happening is, you know, you bring on a team member and they get up to speed. And it took them longer to get up to speed than it should have. Um, but eventually they do. And then guess what happens? They leave. And then what happens then? You got to do it all again, because all that intellectual property walked out the door and I just was getting tired of it. And so there was something about just seeing that documentation, the way he laid it out that I finally said, okay, I’m actually going to do this instead of hearing it, I’m going to do it.

Lee Kantor: So then did you just take his five pillars and just say, okay, these are now my five pillars, and I’m just going to kind of work through each one of them and build out processes and systems for each pillar.

Bradley Hamner: No, not at all. He didn’t he didn’t share with me five pillars. I mean, he just that’s why I said he shared with me roughly like five or 6 or 7. I don’t actually know how many documents. He didn’t have any principles. He didn’t have any. He just was pulling up word documents and kind of showing them to me and like, look here, this is how we onboard customers. This is how this is our sales process. This is this. And he was just flipping through them, you know, and I was like, oh, okay. That’s actually what it looks like. I’ll give you an analogy. Like I play golf in college and played at UGA for two years, University of North Alabama. And then I transferred to Auburn, and I lived with a couple of guys on the team, and there was a, um, Lee Williams, who was a two time Walker Cup, um, golfer at Auburn University. He ended up playing on the PGA tour for a period of time, and I played with some really good players over the years, even in just junior tournaments and amateur tournaments, and Lee was on such a different stratosphere in terms of quality of player.

Bradley Hamner: He was an All-American, I think, even a multi-time All-American. And but the thing that I would notice about Lee was the amount of time he practiced and whenever it would be on a Saturday before a college football game at Auburn, which is obviously a big deal, he was on the range, you know, uh, hitting balls. And then he would go work out, then he would come to the game, and then Sunday morning he would go work out. Then he would go to church, and then he’d go back out and hit balls again. And it was like this idea of like, oh that’s what it actually takes. I mean, you hear stories you know about Steph Curry Kobe Bryant LeBron and and their incredible work ethic. I think there was something about that moment for me that nobody had ever seen for the five years prior to that. People had talked about that. You need to have systems and processes, but nobody ever showed me what it looks like. And he did. And that was a forever changed moment for me because the bar was raised just like it was whenever I was watching Lee Williams become an All American in golf.

Lee Kantor: So it wasn’t necessarily what was on the paper. It was the fact that there was paper and there was a playbook and there was detail. That was really the epiphany moment for you that says, okay, this is what I have to do in order to raise my game. I have to get this kind of granular and this precise when it comes to messaging and mission and training and all the different aspects of running a business.

Bradley Hamner: Yeah, 100%. There was nothing. I don’t recall even a specific thing on any of the pages, but I remember how beautifully documented that they were and how easy they were as he was like, look, this is this is how we do this, and this is how we do this, and this is how we do this. And I don’t remember anything that was on the document, but I remember saying like, oh, that’s actually what it takes. I mean, his sales, his sales process document was, you know, 25 pages. And I was like, oh, okay, that’s what it takes. Whereas before I was, I thought it was like a, you know, maybe a page or page and a half type thing. And he was like, no, this is everything that we do of how we sell it. These are the scripts. This is the process. This is the visual aspect of it. I was like, wow, okay, that that makes more sense to me about how you actually get a company from him being an individual, um, you know, financial advisor to 40 million and and look, I’ve, I’ve never set the goal of getting a company to 40 million. I think that’s, you know, beside the point. But that actually shared with me. That’s what it takes. That’s what it takes. If you actually want to want to scale a company.

Lee Kantor: So then let’s talk a little bit about your, um, blueprint operating system. What are the tenets of that. Yeah.

Bradley Hamner: So there’s really five milestones that it means to become the architect. And so both when you become the architect of your business, it is first and foremost an identity shift. You start to see yourself differently. See, that was the journey that I went on. Yes. I ended up sitting in front of my computer and actually typing out what our process was like, what our marketing process was like, how we got leads, etc. yes, I did that. But the bigger thing was first how I saw myself instead of seeing myself as the doer of all the things, or the person who’s all knowing of all of it. My job was to be the architect, to first design it, build it, and then install it in the business. So that’s the first thing is it’s an identity shift. You see yourself differently and you start to see things in the business differently. Some of our members, they start to consider and they’ll even have the vernacular to them, themselves and the team of how can we go about architecting this? Okay, what if we were going to build it? What would it look like? And so that’s the first thing. But the five milestones are this. And I’ll go over them kind of super high level quickly and then leave. You want to ask me about any of the five. We can certainly do that. So number one you got a business doing over $1 million top line revenue. 91% of small businesses never cross a million and top line. And so for a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners, it is a huge goal of theirs. It’s aspirational to get their business to a million or more in annual revenue. Number two, it’s not enough to just be over a million.

Bradley Hamner: But you want the thing to be growing and profitable. And so as a bootstrapped entrepreneur, we have to balance both growth and profitability. If you take on outside investment, Um, then it’s different. They look at they look at growth beyond anything else because the reality is they can they can fuel that business with with more cash as long as it’s growing. But for a bootstrapped entrepreneur, they need it to be both growing and profitable. And we call that the rule of 40. So number one, you got a business doing over a million. Number two, it’s growing and profitable. Number three, if you’re doing that and burning yourself out, what good is it worth? So we encourage our entrepreneurs to take 12 weeks off in a year so you can rest and recharge and actually be better in the 40 weeks during the year than if you’re trying to work around the clock. Number four, you have an executive assistant or E to help you buy back your time so that you can focus on the things that actually accelerate the growth in the business and do more of the things that you love and less of the things that you don’t and probably aren’t good at. And then number five, you actually have upgraded your operating system. You’ve actually installed an OS, what we call blueprint OS. So the business is not running on you. It’s actually running on something independent of you. So there’s five again. Ah, got a business doing over a million. It’s growing profitable. You’re taking off adequate time. You’ve got an E to help buy back your time. And you actually the business is running in an operating system outside of you.

Lee Kantor: Now in your. Are you do you still have the insurance business or are you now just doing the blueprint OS.

Bradley Hamner: Yeah, I do have I do have it. It’s actually one of the five companies that that I still own to this day inside of a portfolio.

Lee Kantor: So um, and for the blueprint OS, who is that ideal um, member for you?

Bradley Hamner: Yeah. Great question. Half a million in revenue to 3 million in top line 2 to 2010 members. And someone who really wants to grow and wants to grow can look like a lot of different things. A lot of business owners will say things like, you know, I just want to grow I want a thriving business. Some of them. It’s growing top line. Some of them it’s become more profitable. Some of them is being able to take more time home, uh, take more money, uh, home themselves. And some of it is, uh, to be able to spend more time with their family and doing things that things that they love. So if you’re doing, you know, half 1 million to 3 million. Top line, I really know that space. We really know that space really, really well. 2 to 20 team members and and you know, Aspirationally really want to grow.

Lee Kantor: And then um, are they in any type of industry or are they anywhere in the world, like how do you deliver the learning.

Bradley Hamner: Yeah. So first of all, we’re agnostic to the to the industries. And that’s by design. So certainly we have people that are in uh, the insurance agency space. But we think and maybe it was my experience in other programs I’ve been a part of that has been really helpful to that. I think industry specific programs are great. Um, but getting around other people who can hear a concept and thinking about it differently in a different industry than you. I think is incredibly valuable. So we’re not niche down into a specific industry. And then secondly, we are together 38 out of 52 weeks in a year, 36 of those weeks are on zoom. Um, so we do 30, uh, what we call implementation sessions weekly on Tuesdays. And then we do some spotlight events where we bring in guest speakers. We just had Dan Martell speak at our event a couple of weeks ago. Um, and he he was fantastic. So we do some quarterly events for our members, and then we get together twice, twice a year in person in the spring and in the fall. We’re actually going to, uh, Big Cedar Lodge in Missouri, uh, coming up in about eight weeks. We’ve been to Destin, Kiawah Island, Scottsdale, um, things like that. So yeah, we’d love to be able to get together at least twice a year with our members.

Lee Kantor: So when somebody begins like, what does that look like? Is there some one on one coaching or training or is there you just give them information and Go read up here. Here’s your pre homework before we get started. And then you just start going to the the zoom calls.

Bradley Hamner: No we we we onboard people pretty intentionally. We don’t just throw them into there’s so much content in our learning management system that if we just opened up all of our content. Um, I know business owners at that level. They’re they’re hungry, ready to grow. And so there’s a balance that you have with giving them enough content but also not giving them too much. So we we think we have a really first class experience in the way we onboard people so we can take them through a really small, uh, small group cohort on a monthly basis. All the new members that, that, that come on board, they all go together in a, in a small group cohort and we take them through a four step growth track. And then once they’ve gone through that, then we get them access to our weekly, uh, our weekly implementation sessions, and then they start to unlock more of the online content that we have as they’ve completed some of the other ones. So it’s a both a combination. And we think the combination of it works the best. It is absolutely not just a digital course, the digital course component. A lot of people want access to our playbooks. I mean, the way that we have our operating system set up is that they just want access to our playbook templates. And so, um, they obviously have access to that at all, all, all the time. And then we just go through all the playbooks throughout the year. And so it’s a combination of our community being live on Tuesdays as well as online content.

Lee Kantor: And is there any type of support outside of those weekly calls like if they have a question or something comes up, or do you rely kind of on your cohort in the other community members for help or its combination?

Bradley Hamner: Yeah. So in addition to me, we have a couple other associate coaches that are blueprint OS certified coaches. We obviously have our community, so our community lives in the same place that our content lives. And so we’re, you know, people are active in there on a weekly basis asking questions. Somebody just asked a question earlier today, as a matter of fact, about kind of the recruiting system. They wanted to get some feedback on their, um, system that they have for recruiting. So I’ll chime in there and give them feedback. Our coaches are available. They have some open call time. Some like office hours, so to speak, and then and then sometimes people connect with me. Our members connect with me one on one. Uh, via voxer.

Lee Kantor: So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Bradley Hamner: You know, I my job here is just to be able to get the message out of going from being the rainmaker to becoming the architect of your business. I mean, if people get nothing more out of this, my hope is, is that they start to see, you know, the movement that we’re on is to help more people become the architect of their business. And if they start? First, start with that identity shift to me. Then that’s that’s my mission is to. Help more people to become instead of having a business that’s suffocating and. You know, just solely reliant upon them. I think at the end of the day. Business owners got into this for some level of freedom and flexibility. And my. My belief, my, our, our kind of core belief is to be able to get that that you started your business for freedom, flexibility, income, potential is I think you need to become the architect.

Lee Kantor: And then is there a way for listeners to kind of sample this before kind of going all in? Is there some resources or anything you have that a person can kind of get an idea of, you know, the look and feel before they commit?

Bradley Hamner: Yeah. For sure. Um, you know, you understand, you hear somebody on a, on a podcast and for the first time and it’s like, yeah, I kind of conceptually get that. But you know, where where do I start? So we’ve put together a starter kit. We call it the Rainmaker Architect Starter Kit. So they can go and check that out. Go to blueprint os.com/assets, blueprint os com forward slash assets. And then they can opt in and get access to our starter kit, which is actually on the same platform as the rest of our content and our community. And so yeah, they can go and check that out. And I’ve got a bunch of different downloads inside that mini course, as well as a little over an hour of content from me walking people through that.

Lee Kantor: And you have a podcast too?

Bradley Hamner: I do, yeah. Um, so I have a podcast we’ve had for, gosh, about four and a half years. It’s called Above the Business. We think that sessions like this, um, are whenever people are able to get above the business. We love what Gerber has done, where he’s shared with us in the book E-myth about don’t just work in it, work on it. I agree, I think there’s a third dimension as well and that’s to be able to get above the business. And so that’s the name of my podcast is above the business.

Lee Kantor: And then what kind of content can people find there.

Bradley Hamner: Yeah. So I do interviews like this on Mondays. And those are 30 to 45 minute interviews with, gosh, we’ve had some incredible guests that have been able to come on. General Stanley McChrystal has come on. Cameron Herold has been on the podcast we just recorded, obviously, with Dan Martell has been on there. So we’ve got about 250 or so interviews, maybe 300 actually at this point. And then on Fridays, I drop a 5 to 15 minute solo episode with kind of a mindset, a skill or a tool, um, that people can take away.

Lee Kantor: And can you share for our listeners, maybe a story of somebody who’s gone through the program and maybe you don’t have to name what their business is or who they are, but just the challenge they were facing when they came into the program and how you helped them get to a new level.

Bradley Hamner: Three female founders that were just excellent at what they do. They own a behavioral therapy company their very first year 2019. They had a had a dream and had a vision. They all kind of collectively left where they were working at the time. In their first year in business, they did cumulatively $90,000. And they, as they have admitted to, they really knew nothing about business. And over the last several years and working with them of can I helping them go from being the rainmaker to the architect of their business, they’re doing over 100 and 110,000 a month now. They’ve been able to, you know, impact the lives of, you know, just ten times, maybe more than that, and the lives of families around the, the Huntsville area and school, school kids to be able to be more successful and just to see their own success of them transferring from, you know, what, they knew that they were really good at, but then actually being able to build a true scalable business around that has been awesome to work with them and and to see their growth and the impact that they’ve been able to make because they’ve all become the architect of their business.

Lee Kantor: Well, Bradley, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work. Um, we really appreciate you. What? One more time before we wrap the website to learn more or to connect with you.

Bradley Hamner: Yeah. Blueprint os.com/assets. Blueprint os com forward slash assets. They can get access to the Rainmaker Architect starter kit. And yeah, we’d love to connect with people.

Lee Kantor: All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.