In this Club Capital Leadership Podcast episode, host Bradley Hamner explores the dilemma of building a business based on passion versus building it to maximize profit. Citing a Twitter poll where roughly 70% of respondents favored passion, Hamner argues that his preferred strategy is to prioritize profit so he can "buy back" his time and invest that reclaimed time in the activities he truly loves—family travel, golf, and other hobbies. He emphasizes the importance of finding the intersection where a business both excites you and generates substantial revenue, but acknowledges that most entrepreneurs must choose one focus. Hamner introduces a practical "time and energy audit" framework, classifying daily tasks as either energy‑giving (green) or energy‑draining (red) and assigning them a monetary value ($1‑$4 signs). He advises entrepreneurs to concentrate on high‑energy, high‑value tasks and eliminate low‑value, energy‑draining activities, noting that a million‑dollar business isn’t built on $10 tasks. Throughout, he encourages listeners to reflect on their own priorities, consider the audit, and promises future episodes that will dive deeper into these concepts. The episode also contains sponsor messages for Club Capital and Coach P Consulting, which are promotional and not central to the core discussion.
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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.
Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation. Check them out at club.capital.
Hey everyone, so I was on Twitter a few weeks ago and I saw this Twitter— you know, there's the different ways to be able to view your Twitter feed. You can see where it's basically where Twitter is kind of curating the content for you, or only the people you follow. And I think this one was whenever it was Twitter was kind of curating, uh, who I follow, and I follow a lot of business people, obviously, uh, sports, NBA, golf, etc. is pretty much my feed. And so I saw this, uh, poll that came up is that if, if you had the choice, would you build a business based on your passion or on money? And overwhelmingly, the majority of the people, maybe 70%, said that they would build the business on their passion. I would not. If I had the choice, I would build the business that I felt like that I could be able to make the most money. You may say, well, why is that? And I'll share with you why. I fundamentally believe— I'm going to do a, another episode on this topic— but the best use of money is to be able to buy back your time. And so Ultimately, I have a lot of passion about business itself. It is absolutely one of the things that I truly do love. I love all things business. I'm a self-professed, uh, professed business geek. Uh, I love to read about business books. I love to read business podcasts. I love to be able to do this podcast and, and to share with all of you. But I think at the end of the day, if I had the choice, I would build the business that's going to be able to allow me to be able to make the most money, because then I would use that money to buy back my time to do the things I'm the most passionate about— travel experiences with my family and with my kids, to be able to go play golf at places I want to be able to play, experiences to be able to do the things that ultimately are not making me money and I don't really love to do. And if the business allowed me to have the income and the profitability and the distributions to be able to do that, then I could reinvest that money into the things that I was the most passionate about. And so maybe I'm contrary in, in the way that I approach that. But I would absolutely first start about, you know, the ideal, of course, is can you find the, the, the cross-section of where you have a business that you are both equally very passionate about? You're passionate about the purpose, you love the day-to-day, and at the same time that you are able to make the most money. Like, given the choice, we would be able to do both, but that was not the question. From the poll. So my question to you, which one would you choose? Would you choose passion or would you choose money? And I don't think that there's a right or wrong answer. I think there's just a different way. Interestingly, I shared this with a couple people, and even in my, uh, group I shared this with a few people to kind of see what their thoughts were, and it was fairly split 50/50. When I did share my thoughts about, well, I would choose the one that I knew would give me the best chance to be able to make money, then at the end of the day I would be able to use was Prophet Stabat my time, some people started to change some of their answers. And that's not necessarily to change your answer, but it is to get you to kind of think, what are you the most passionate about? What are the things that you really love to do? What do you love to do in your work, in your career? What are the parts of what you do on a day-to-day basis light you up and feel like you could just do for hours on end? Those are the things that kind of give me energy. And when I can find the ones that give me the most energy and make the most money, really accelerate business forward, I want to spend more of my time doing those things. There's simultaneously, there's items that take away my energy. They are red. And by the way, I do believe that this is binary. I think it's either things give you energy or they take energy. I think it's kind of a cop-out to say, well, it's neutral, I can kind of take it or leave it. I actually really do believe it's one or the other. It's either giving you energy or it's taking energy away. And then what is the value of the task to that business? Is it, you know, a $1 sign, $2 sign, $3 sign, $4 sign activity? And so I really encourage you to maybe consider doing a time and energy audit. I've shared this with, with other people, maybe I'll even do a full solo episode about this. But if you can begin to actually have an awareness and evaluation of the tasks that you are doing on a day-to-day basis based on these two things, is it giving you energy or is it taking you in or taking away energy for you? And what is the value of that task to the business? Is it actually moving it forward or is it actually not is it really a low-value task? A million-dollar business isn't built on a $10 task. Again, I'll do some more episodes on this kind of at a later time, but really, at the end of the day, if I can build a business based on, uh, that I know has the best chance to be able to make money, that's the business I'm going to choose, because then I can use the profits to be able to buy back my time and allow me to focus on the things I really love to do, whether it's business itself or whether it's my pastimes, hobbies, experiences, travel, things of that nature. So anyway, love to hear your thoughts. Let me know, uh, which one do you, uh, would you choose? Passion or money? Of course, we have the choice. We would be able to find both. But if you can't choose both, which one would you choose and why? All right, everyone, hope this made you think a little bit. Passion or money? Till next episode, lead well.
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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.
Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation? Check them out at club.capital.
