Episode 138: The Bottom Line - Blueprint & Plans
In this episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, host Bradley Hamner addresses small business and agency owners, focusing on how to grow leadership, develop teams, and scale profitably. The episode opens with a brief sponsor message highlighting Club Capital’s accounting, tax, and advisory services for insurance agencies, emphasizing data‑driven forecasting tools. Hamner then shares a personal story about renovating his kitchen, using the process of hiring an architect, reviewing blueprints, and coordinating with a builder as an analogy for business planning. He argues that a successful business requires both a clear "blueprint" (a vivid, multi‑year vision) and an executable "plan" (specific steps to achieve that vision). He recommends the books Vivid Vision by Cameron Herold and The Vision‑Driven Leader by Michael Hyatt, and suggests a three‑year horizon as a practical timeframe for a vivid vision. Hamner distinguishes vision from mission, and goals from plans, warning that goals are merely ideas that cannot be executed without concrete plans. He also promotes a simple daily journaling habit using the Levenger 5‑Year Journal to capture and revisit long‑term aspirations. The episode concludes with a reminder to adopt both a blueprint and a plan, encouraging listeners to lead well and grow their book of business.
Chapters
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 going to 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.
Are you an agency owner looking to grow your revenue, increase your bottom line, and better manage your taxes? Club Capital is here to help. Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agents in the country, providing monthly accounting, tax strategy, and CFO services. Way more than bookkeeping and your everyday run-of-the-mill tax prep, Club Capital is focused on providing financial and tax advisory services that help you plan and forecast your agency's performance. Their financial dashboards and agency forecasting tools help you better understand your agency's historical performance, create, measure future targets, and see how your agency compares to your peers around the country. Imagine what it would be like to understand the impact to your bottom line when deciding to hire a new employee, or forecast the impact rate changes or commission rates will have on your business. With over $200 million in tracked annual revenue and $140 million in tracked annual expenses, Club Capital has the data and the team to help you make better informed decisions for your agency. They will help you turn that back office stress into the backbone of your agency's success by giving you the tools to take your agency and your leadership to the next level. Visit club.capital today to book a solution overview with one of our business consultants. Club Capital, way more than a CPA firm. Are you an agency owner looking to grow your revenue, increase your bottom line, and better manage your taxes? Club Capital is here to help. Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agents in the country, providing monthly accounting, tax strategy, and CFO services. Way more than bookkeeping and your everyday run-of-the-mill tax prep, Club Capital is focused on providing financial and tax advisory services that help you plan and forecast your agency's performance. Their financial dashboards and agency forecasting tools help you better understand your agency's historical performance, create, measure future targets, and see how your agency compares to your peers around the country. Imagine what it would be like to understand the impact to your bottom line when deciding to hire a new employee. Or forecast the impact rate changes or commission rates will have on your business. With over $200 million in tracked annual revenue and $140 million in tracked annual expenses, Club Capital has the data and the team to help you make better informed decisions for your agency. They will help you turn that back office stress into the backbone of your agency's success by giving you the tools to take your agency and your leadership to the next level. Visit club.capital today to book a solution overview with one of our business consultants. Club Capital, way more than a CPA firm.
Hey everyone, it's Bradley. So it was, guess it was about a year and a half ago, my wife and I, maybe 2 years ago, we first started to have the conversation that we needed to actually move forward on a renovation in our house. And we wanted to redo the kitchen. And of course she had all kinds of things on her Pinterest board and visions of, you know, where she wanted the sink, what type of cabinets and what type of island, etc. So I'm sure I know many of you can relate. And so I was sharing this story with some other business owners. I said, who do you think the first person is we called after we both decided, yeah, that was— now's a good time? We had bought the house in November of 2016, and so we decided, uh, we had known for a long time that we wanted to do these renovations. Well, of course, the first person that we called— a lot of people, when I've asked this question too, they think we called the builder. You called the banker. Actually, the first person we called was an architect, and we had a guy who's very, uh, well known in the Huntsville area, Paul Matheny, and he lived one street up from us. And so we called him, he came over himself, and then he sent some of his team over, and they came over a couple times, got all kinds of different measurements, etc. And so with that Then that's when my wife and I would meet with the team and she would share all the images she had on her Pinterest board. And then they went back and they came and shared us 3 different blueprints. And a couple of them we rejected pretty quickly. And one of them we thought, wow, this is a really great layout. Started to make some adjustments and can you do this and can you do that? And can you make the island a little bit bigger? And what type of material would it be, et cetera. And so ultimately, when that is done, what did we do? We handed that over to our contractor, to the builder, and then the builder then laid out the plans. Now, how does this apply to us in business? I think at the end of the day, you need to be able to have both a blueprint and a plan for your business, because one without the other is just not going to suffice. So the blueprint is the vision of where we wanted to go. Because if we did just call it a builder, and let's say we called someone and we said, Sam, you come in and, uh, start to— would you like to, to do our renovation? He says, great, yes, I can start next week. And Sam comes in and he immediately starts knocking out walls. I'd say, whoa, what are you doing, Sam? He said, well, We're, we're renovating the house. Well, Sam, you don't even know what we're going to be doing. He said, yeah, but we're moving the ball forward. Well, at the end of the day, if he doesn't have— he may say, well, it's going to be great whenever it's, it's finished. Well, if he doesn't actually have the blueprint and the vision of what it is we're going to build, he's just going to be doing a lot of work sweating, but at the end of the day, we don't know what it's going to be. And I think that, that A lot of times is the exact same way in our businesses. We're sweating a lot, but we're actually not moving forward. And even if we are moving forward, maybe we are tearing, tearing walls out and we are starting to put in new cabinets. I don't know what the finished product is going to be. And so if I could give you some advice that's been really helpful to me, it was getting really clear on what the vision is. For my business. And, you know, books that have been very impactful to me— Vivid Vision by Cameron Herald is a great book. Um, The Vision-Driven Leader by Michael Hyatt is a, is a fantastic book. And specifically, we've settled on a 3-year vision. Where do you want your business to be 3 years from where it is today? And then begin to kind of reverse engineer off of that. But at the same time, I want to be clear that goals are simply ideas, and you cannot execute on ideas. You can only execute on plans. And so while you could take the time— and both of those books will share with you the importance of laying out in multi, multiple pages. This is not a pithy, you know, 4 or 5 sentences. And by the way, this is not for this podcast, but a vision and a mission are very different things. The impact that you want to have in the community, exactly how do you, uh, how do you go about serving, you know, uh, your customers, etc. That gets a lot into mission. But really, where is your business going? Like, where are we pointing the Titanic to go? So you really want to— it becomes multiple pages. I had a graphic designer to take what I had on a document and then to be able to add images and graphics and pictures and really bring it to life. And if you read the book from Cameron Herald, specifically Vivid Vision, he'll detail that out. Well, that's a— that takes a lot of work to do that. And many of you will have it all in your head of what you want the vision to be, but actually doing the work, it kind of goes back to the episode when I talked about ideas are everywhere, but implementation is everything. You're not going to get the value out of this unless you actually spend the thinking time to sit down and lay out really, where do I want the business to be 3 years from now? And to get as Cameron says, vivid, have a vivid vision of where you want the business to be. I know there's some other books that talk about having visions out there, 10 years, 25 years, et cetera. That's been hard for me. So much changes in 3 years, in a year, let alone, you know, 10 years. It's hard for me to think that far. But if I go back, I'm recording this first part of September, 2022. And if I go back 2021, 2020, 2019, I know where I was in August, September of 2019. I was on a guys' golf trip playing with a bunch of my really good friends, playing golf at Bandon Dunes. And it feels like it was just yesterday. And that was 3 years ago. That was 3 years ago. Think about where you were and where your business was 3 years ago. And if you had to set a 3-year vision at that time, how fast it's going. And so I think that that's helpful for me. To be able to kind of look back on how far or how fast 3 years will go. And I think it's a perfect amount of time to get something big and meaningful done. But at the same time, it's not so far out into the future that I just can't really reverse engineer off of that. If I think about 2032, it's like, I'll be 50 years old. I don't know. It's hard for me to get that down on paper of what that looks like. That's just my experience. Hopefully, maybe that serves you as well. But if you really lay that out, that is the blueprint. That's the blueprint of where you're taking this. That's the vision of where you're taking the business. But it is not a substitute for the plan to get there. One without the other is just incomplete. Really do need both. You need the plan that is building towards the blueprint, the vision of what you want to accomplish. But if you only have a plan that is executable, but you don't actually then lay out where are we going, what's this renovation going to look like, what's the business going to look like whenever we get there? And then of course, whenever it comes in 3 years, I wish so much. I really do. I— this— I don't want to say— I guess it is a regret in some respects, but I really do wish that I could go back and find the times that I laid out, you know, a business plan. But I really wish I had taken the time to journal out my thoughts about my dreams, where I wanted the businesses to be, so I could go back and, and, and read those things. There is a, uh, I won't spend too much time on this, but, um, there's a great journal, um, it's a 5-year journal and it's only 5 sentences by Um, for each day. So it's really easy to get through. So if you've tried to get in the habit of journaling, this is a great start. I think it's called a Levenger 5-Year Journal. And so I, I've been really consistent with that because again, it's 5 pages. So it's easy, easy to do. Easy to write down your day.
Think about that.
If you could go back and read that same day, uh, September the 8th, going back the last several years of what you were doing on September 8th. I think that's really, really cool. It was actually Craig Groeschel that mentioned that, uh, on one of his podcasts years ago, and I bought that journal and it's been, uh, it's been really cool to say I wish I'd had that. Um, I wish I'd had that for a lot of years. But anyway, I hope that serves you. So there's— point is, you want to have a blueprint. You need to have a blueprint, a vision of where you want to take your business. And at the same time You need to be able to have a plan to get there because plans are executable. You can execute on a plan. Goals, goals are ideas. Goals are ideas of what you want to do. And a lot of times we substitute thinking that a goal is the plan to actually make that happen. That's like vividly describing Oz, but not actually building the yellow brick road to get there. That's been helpful to me along my journey, and I hope that served you as well. Appreciate your time and attention. Hope you got a good return on it. Till next week, everyone. Lead well.
If you're listening to this podcast, I know you're someone who has a growth mindset.
You probably want to be able to grow your book of business as well.
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