In this solo installment of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, host Bradley Hamner addresses small‑business owners and founders, asking how they can grow their leadership, develop teams, and scale profitably while delivering products and services. He frames the episode as a short, actionable guide that respects listeners’ time. Hamner then shares a social‑media post from a fellow podcaster named Brian, who claims his show reaches 50,000 listeners per month and aims for 1 million by 2024. Hamner breaks down Brian’s content output—271 episodes (≈250 hours), 750 pieces of content, five repurposed items per episode, and 46 guest appearances—to illustrate the massive, consistent effort required to achieve such growth. He emphasizes that big goals must be decomposed into small, controllable tasks and that shortcuts rarely work. The episode concludes with a sponsored segment promoting Club Capital, the nation’s largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agents, highlighting its financial dashboards, forecasting tools, and the scale of its tracked revenue and expenses, positioning the firm as a strategic partner for agency owners seeking to improve their bottom line.
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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 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.
Hey everyone. So in learning about, hey, how can I be better as a podcast host for all of you, I'm in. I don't get on social media very much, but I mean, um, I like social media, especially for some of the groups that I've been able to be a part of. And one of them is just for podcasters, and I don't go in— I certainly don't post in there very much, but I do occasionally see some of the posts that some people make. And so there's this guy named Brian, and he's, um, got a podcast. I actually don't know what podcast he does. Like, I don't even know what he— what, what he sells or what he talks about or whatever. Anyway, it doesn't matter. But he said, my podcast reaches 50,000 people per month. My goal is 1 million a month in 2024. That's a pretty big, uh, jump, to say the least, from 50,000 people a month to a million a month in 2024. I mean, what is that? That's, uh, let's say we'll give him to the end of 2024. It's a year and a half. That's a big, massive jump. How did I build this audience? Now let's just say 50,000 people, period, is a, is a nice audience, to say the least. He's at 271 podcast episodes, about 250 hours of content created. That alone, I was curious. I don't even know how much content we've actually created on the podcast. I haven't even considered that, but If you do roughly an hour, I can see how that would be 250 hours. 271 podcast posts on Facebook. And hang with me, I'm getting to a point here for all of you. It has nothing to do with podcasting. 750 pieces of content created, 5 pieces of content for the last 150 episodes. So for the last 150 episodes, he's taken that episode and he's created 5 different pieces of content. And he's been on personally 46 podcasts, guested on so far. Stop looking for shortcuts and hacks. This is what he's saying. Stop. Look, this is— I'm just literally reading this from his post. Stop looking for shortcuts and hacks. Do the damn work. This applies to everything big you take on. Every massive goal can be broken into small, controllable task, it's worth it. And I posted and said, what it actually takes is usually greater than what we initially think it takes. And that ties to— if some of you may have recalled where I had this log of lessons learned, and so I went back into it.
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And on November 22nd, 2022, I posted to myself, far too often I have dramatically underestimated the amount of effort it takes to be successful. And what's interesting about that is that it's not that I think, oh, this is going to be a cakewalk, this is going to be easy. I, I have enough experience in business now to realize that it's not going to be that. But historically, I've been able to kind of go back and say, man, I thought it was going to take a lot of work, but the level of, level of work it actually takes to get what I'm, what I'm wanting to try to accomplish. Not even close. I mean, absolutely not even close. I thought I knew what it was going to be. No, that's why I've shared, you know, business is hard. Business is really, really hard. And the further you want to go, if you've got it to where it is and it's not hard enough, then you don't have it. You don't have a big enough goal. That doesn't mean it can't be enjoyable. It can't be fun. In fact, as a matter of fact, I think it can be a tremendous amount of fun because you relish in the, relish in the, in the challenge of it. So it doesn't have to be a grind. I'm not saying that at all, but it's not going to be a cakewalk. It's not going to be easy. If it was, 97% of the businesses wouldn't fail. And only what, 1-2% of the global population are small business owners and entrepreneurs. If you're listening to this, are founders of companies. I mean, there's a reason why there's only a handful of people that do it. And a lot of times you get paid handsomely well. I mean, it's why NBA basketball players, NFL players, baseball players, uh, they make the kind of money. There's only a handful of people that can play at that, at that level. And so for me, this was something that I was reminded of, and I've shared with some people, and I just want to share it with all, all with you, is the what we actually think What it actually takes is almost always greater than what we initially think that it takes. And my ability to consistently and dramatically underestimate the amount of effort it's going to take to be successful at the level that I want to be successful at, it helps me whenever I'm planning for the year. And when I lay out that, that will say business plan, and it says, this is what we're going to do. You lay it out and you say, oh, we can just reverse engineer this bad boy. Here's how we're going to hit this revenue target. Here's how we're going to get this, is how we're going to make sales, man. Rinse and repeat. It's going to be easy. Well, there is, there is a plan. There can be a plan and we need to have a plan so we can know where we messed up, but it's not going to be easy. That mindset has really helped me to serve me because oftentimes I can default to thinking, oh yeah, this, this thing's going to go off without a hitch. And I hope it does. But the reality is the more that I plan and realize, okay, this can be a lot harder. They're going to be unknown unknowns along the way. That's helped me to be able to put some contingency plans in place and not get too woo-woo in my head thinking, things are just going to go off perfectly. I hope that serves you. It's a good thinking exercise for me, or whenever— maybe not, it's not even exercise. It's a— it's how I'm thinking about the goals for the year that we're going to try to do this quarter, what we're going to try to do this year. And especially when you start going out 3 years for the vision, it's really helpful for me to say, okay, This looks like it's going to play out perfectly on paper. It's not going to be. This is going to be a lot harder than what I'm initially thinking it's going to be. Hope that served you. Till next episode, lead well.
