In this solo episode of the Above the Business podcast, host Bradley Hamner explores the common experience of small‑business owners juggling dozens of functional "hats"—from CEO and CFO to chief sales officer and problem‑solver. He argues that instead of switching among these roles, owners should adopt a single, unifying "architect" hat. The architect’s job is to design the business deliberately, rather than reacting to day‑to‑day demands. Hamner outlines a three‑step practical framework: (1) get above the business by stepping back regularly, (2) think like an architect, and (3) design a clear blueprint for the company. He recommends concrete reflection cadences—a 30‑to‑60‑minute Sunday‑night planning session each week and a quarterly review of what worked, what didn’t, and lessons learned. These rituals help owners gain the perspective needed to act as architects. The episode also promotes a free quarterly event hosted at blueprintos.com/assets where listeners can practice this process. Throughout, Hamner uses golf‑related hat metaphors, emphasizes intentionality, and ends with standard YouTube calls to like, subscribe, and share.
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Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast where we help you get above the business so you can think like an architect. And what architects use? They use blueprints, and that's what you need for your business. On today's episode, I want to talk about this thing that we say often, which is to always, you know, we're always wearing these different hats. You know, I've got to wear all, all of the different hats. Is there potentially one hat that can replace all the others. Now, let's just think about this kind of in a silly way. When you're wearing a hat, you're only going to wear one hat. So the reality is what we're referring to is in your closet. And I'm a hat guy. I have— every time I go play a golf course that certainly I've never played before, I'm either going to buy a golf shirt, a hat, or more often than not, probably both. So I have I don't even know how many hats at this point, way too many than I can wear. But if we look at all of those hats as the different like roles and responsibilities that we as the small business owner have to wear all the time, what we're actually talking about doing is we put a hat on as chief sales officer for a bit of time, we take that hat off, we put the CMO hat on, chief marketing officer. Then we put the hat, take that hat off, then we put on the Chief Problem Solver hat. Then we take that hat off and we put on the CEO hat, the Chief Everything Officer hat. Then we take that one off and we put the CFO hat on. And then we— I could keep going. You get my point. I mean, I, at the end of the day, I could end up talking about 57 different hats. And as a matter of fact, the place that actually saw this is somewhere online. I came across this, um, card game that is for business. Fairly ingenious. I don't even know what it works. I didn't buy it, but it was like 57 hats. So maybe they have identified all of these different hats that small business owners wear. Now, I just ended up having to go through some that are on the C-suite range. For most business owners, small business owners, we're not talking about a C-suite. You are the C-suite. Okay, maybe you have an EA and an office admin, an office manager, et cetera, but you don't have really a C-suite. You can, you can have that when you get north of $10 million or so. But the point is, whether it's 57 hats, 12, 72, or 100, it's irrelevant to the broader point. The point is, is that we can feel like we are wearing all of these different hats all the time. And so the question could be, well, what if I could just eliminate all of those and I could put one hat on? And is that hat the CEO hat? I think it's the architect hat. I think the architect is the one who goes about and designs what it is they want the thing to be, and then they can go about and make sure it gets in the proper hands of the team to go and build it. Architects do not build houses. In business, business owners, we do build businesses. But the hat that I think is the single most important hat is the hat of the architect. Because you do things by design. You don't do things by random or by default. You do it based on what it is you want to accomplish. And if you think about that, the point is it's not another hat for you to wear. I'm not saying here, put this hat in your closet and now have this to be— go through the Rolodex of different hats you decide to wear. I mean, I'm a golfer. People know that. I'd be looking at, okay, well, if I'm going to go play golf with some buddies, what hat am I going to wear? You know, golfers are famous for having logo bingo. You know, they're going to have like, all right, do I want to wear this hat from, you know, this golf course that I've played? And sometimes you won't even match it up with the shirt that we're wearing or whatever. But I'm not saying that this is now yet another hat for you to wear. I think that ultimately this is the hat that can begin to kind of replace all the others. But how do you do that in practical? You get the concept, sure. Is there quite literally a hat for you to wear? Well, maybe. But the point is, is what do you need to do in practice? If you're listening to this, sounds great, Bradley, get it, I need to become the architect, sounds great. And what do I actually do from high-level to eye level. And that's what I want to spend just a couple minutes to actually do. I think number one is to have a cadence of reflection. I just recorded a podcast where this guy was talking about this, but one of them is, as the architect, is you've got to be able to step back and get above the business. The name of the podcast is Get Above the Business. Well, how do you do that? Well, I think if you can step back away weekly and quarterly in particular, it can help you to get above the business. And whenever you are able to weekly— Sunday night planning is specifically when we refer, when we think is the best time to do that. If you do it Friday afternoon, you do it Saturday morning, fine, by all means. But typically most business owners, Sunday evening is the best time to spend 30 minutes to 1 hour reflecting on the previous week and planning for the week coming up. Number 2 is quarterly, is reflecting on the quarter, what went well, what didn't go well, what lessons do I learn, and how can I use that moving forward into the next quarter. Matter of fact, uh, a couple days from now we're actually running the quarterly for our members. If you would like to be able to come to our event, go to blueprintos.com/assets and you can attend our quarterly Totally for free. We'll help you to do that. Those to me are the two most important reflection points, weekly and quarterly for small business owners. That helps you to rise above it. Get out of the day-to-day. We're not even going to work on it. We're going to work above the business. And if you can begin to get above it, you can begin to kind of see it as the architect sees it. They can see, get out of all of the weeds, the day-to-day things and be able to actually see what is going on and how can we go about attacking this. It's why people, whenever they are in an airplane, they can have a level of perspective about life and business even. And, uh, I think that we have to be intentional about doing it, however. And so here's number one: we want to get above the business. And number two, we get above it, we can begin to think like an architect. We can begin to put the architect hat on, and then we can go about designing the blueprint. And if we can design the blueprint for our business, that's the thing that helps us go about building the business that we want. It's those three things. You got to get above it. You got to be able to think like an architect, put the architect hat on, It's the hat that can replace all the others. What architects use? They use a blueprint. Get above the business, think like an architect, design the blueprint. Those three things is the way to go about it. I'd love to see you at the quarterly coming up, uh, this dropping on Friday. It's coming up this upcoming Tuesday. Would love to be able to see you there. Blueprintos.com/assets. You can register for The quarterly, totally for free, replay, all the nine yards. I'd love to see there, help you get above the business, reflect on prior Q3, plan for Q4. I'll see you there. Hey, if you like videos like this, click below. We'd love to have your support. Like and subscribe so we can begin to grow this channel. We have big plans going into 2026 to do more things specifically for our audience on YouTube. Would love if you would like and subscribe and maybe even share this with one other person.
