In this episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, host Bradley Hamner examines the common entrepreneurial belief that strong desire and motivation are enough to build and scale a business. He argues that while desire is a necessary ingredient, it is not sufficient for sustainable success. Instead, he emphasizes the importance of intentional design—creating playbooks, processes, teams, and assets that systematically drive growth. Hamner critiques the overreliance on vision boards, dream boards, and motivational content, noting that many failed entrepreneurs possess the same level of desire as celebrated founders. He suggests that businesses should focus on building repeatable systems and leveraging structured energy checks, win reviews, and weekly lessons to translate desire into measurable results. The episode also includes sponsor messages for Club Capital’s accounting and advisory services and Coach P Consulting’s insurance agency coaching program.
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So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Welcome to The Bottom Line, a new weekly podcast series that we drop every Thursday to complement our weekly Monday podcast interviews with the industry leaders. These podcasts are gonna be designed to give you short, impactful, and value-driven information that you can start using right away in your business. I value your time and attention and will do my very best not to waste it.
Just get what you need and go.
So with that, let's get into today's episode.
Hey everyone, hope you're having a great day. Hope you've had a great week. So I was just, uh, sharing this with somebody else today. As a matter of fact, I was sharing it with Micah, and it was what one of my mentors shared with me, and I thought I would share it with all of you. You know, like when you go— I'm not against dream boards, vision boards. I've done them myself, and I actually remember one in particular that I did and had thought about bringing it back this year and doing it. You know, goal-setting workshops I think are awesome. Um, you know, I love to be able to set more targets and have vision than setting goals, as I've mentioned many times on here. But like visualization and pep talks and speakers and gurus, and maybe even this podcast at times, like, they seem to be like the staple diet, uh, of the ambitious person, especially ambitious entrepreneurs. Well, the underlying message is that humans seem to lack this motivation to succeed, and at least they need reminding for what they're striving for. And listen, I've said many times, I mean, in, in my program with business owners, one of the second things we do after we— or third thing, I guess— we check energy, we talk about wins, and we share what, what were a lesson that you learned or were reminded of this past week. But, you know, it's— you don't have to go on social media very much or listen to very many podcasts and see that there's this idea of like, you know, just motivating people to kind of get started. Well, if these things are valuable, it's because that desire is a key ingredient in success and it must be enhanced and like recreated as often as possible is what they basically say, right? And so every top entrepreneur in any magazine or digital magazine that you talk about will discuss their desire to succeed. I was so driven, and I was just sharing this with somebody today. I said, I've actually— I don't think I've ever been more driven than I am right now. Have you ever thought about this? Very few almost no failed entrepreneurs getting interviewed for magazines. Yes, I know Sam Bankman-Fried, you know, that guy with, um, FTX, if you know that story, you know. Okay, somebody like him notwithstanding, but the everyday entrepreneur, they don't get interviewed to be on maybe even a podcast, or they don't get interviewed to be in Forbes, do they? And yet maybe they had a business and they raised $5 million, a million, or put their own money into it and it didn't work out. I mean, how many times have we talked about, you know, business is really hard? 96% of small businesses fail. But if you did interview those same entrepreneurs and business owners, you would discover that they want it just as badly, if not more, than some of those top entrepreneurs. You ever thought about that? So is it desire that really is that important to success? I mean, like, it is vital that you really want something in order to get it. Yes, I get it. And it is necessary to visualize success and have a vision. I've mentioned that about how important that has been on my own journey. And, you know, sometimes you can kind of like conjure up this emotional storm in some ways, right? So to a degree, desire is indeed important, yes. And it's easy to make the argument that, you know, you must know what you want if you're going to get it. But it's not very profound, right? Is it? I mean, like, if that's what this message was, you would kind of roll your eyes and say Come on, Bradley, like, we, we, we don't listen to this 10-minute podcast for that message only.
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But far more valuable than design— or excuse me, than desire— is design. Look, you live in a world, we live in a world where successful outcomes are designed to occur far more than they are desired into existence. Let me say it again. We live in a world where successful outcomes are designed to occur far more than they are desired into existence. A 200-ton plane takes off in flight because it was designed to do so. The pilot doesn't need a pep talk to get it airborne. A Porsche 911 accelerates to 0 to 60 to whatever it is because of its— engineered to do that way. It's not the passenger who sits there and then is the guru to the driver to get the driver stirred up and fired up and motivated. No, the car was designed to do it. The 100-story building stays upright in a hurricane or in a storm not because the engineers or the builders were motivated through motivational quotes to reinforce its structure. It stays upright because of its architecture, its construction, and its engineering, because it was built to do that. It was designed to do that. And I think the exact same thing for our businesses. Our businesses succeed, grow, and scale because they were designed to do it, not because you were fired up It means it may be that motivation. This podcast may be the initial spark, the catalyst for you to go and say, you know what, I'm going to go create the playbooks that I know that the business needs. I know I have all of this intellectual capital in my head. I'm going to get it out and I'm going to build it. I'm going to build the company. I'm going to design it. I'm not going to desire it into existence. Those things initially can get you going, but it really is ultimately, at the end of the day, it becomes an ecosystem of assets, as Daniel Priestley says, that have been developed and utilized efficiently. It's just this blend of intellectual property and capital and equipment and team and leadership and innovation and all the things together. And each component is thought through, it's improved, it's refined, it's enhanced, and every little insight is processed and measured against some new level of output. And that's how business succeeds. And that's also why business is really hard, because it takes all of those things. And I think it's very helpful for me to realize that business is hard. And so kudos to my mentors and my coaches, Mike and Daniel, for the ones of painting that towards me, ones for them to be able to say, Bradley, the business is not, uh, you don't desire it, you don't even vision it. It can be there. That's what, you know, even the engineers and architects do for the buildings. They have the blueprints of what it's going to look like. But then they put together a plan and they have playbooks to make that happen. I hope this helps. Till next episode, lead well.
