Episode 319: PersonalOS Part 1
In this episode of the Above the Business podcast, host SPEAKER A and guest Bradley Hamner discuss the importance of forward momentum for small business owners and entrepreneurs. They argue that true progress starts with a personal operating system—leading yourself first—before building a business operating system. Hamner critiques unintentional consumption of content (books, podcasts, YouTube) that does not serve clear goals, urging listeners to be intentional about the business material they ingest in 2024. He references common goal‑setting frameworks like OKRs, shares his own experience of vague planning, and introduces practical tools such as the BlueprintOS "perfect repeatable week" available at blueprintos.com/assets. The conversation also outlines the upcoming Above the Business Kickoff—a 90‑minute, one‑day deep‑dive session focused on mindset, skillset, and toolset—and promotes Club Capital’s financial advisory services for insurance agency owners. Throughout, Hamner emphasizes aligning personal habits, intentional learning, and structured time‑allocation to achieve the objectives set for the new year.
Sometimes the forward progress is meaningful forward progress. We begin to see connections with our team. We begin to see aha moments. We begin to even make the amount of sales necessary for us to hit the objectives that we set out at the beginning of the year. But sometimes that forward progress could come in some unintended places.
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Hey everyone. One of the things that I really love about working with other small business owners and entrepreneurs is the different skill sets that each person brings to the table. Some people are incredibly gifted whenever it comes to their organizational skills. Some of them are great leaders. Some people, just because of their background or maybe their education, are really great when it comes to the financial component. They understand how to read the financial statements. They know how to use those. Other people are just really great salespeople. They're persuasive, they're energetic. Some people are not persuasive, but they're incredible marketers and able to see things from a positioning. And I just love being able to see the different skill sets. And with that being said, there are though some fundamental truths that I believe, some principles or some skills and some things that seem to be universal for all of us as a small business owner and entrepreneur, and that is our desire, our almost requirement to always be moving forward. And I'm going to call that forward momentum, to be able to be in a state to where we are constantly making progress. And at the time of when this podcast is being dropped, we're at the beginning of the year. And whether you joined us at our annual event a few weeks ago, my guess is at this point you have done some level of planning, some level of projecting out what do you want to accomplish in 2024. You've laid out, we follow the OKR framework, objectives and key results. And so whether you follow that framework or use another goal-setting framework for your business, you've done some level of planning, whether you've been taught that or you just, as I did for many years, was making it up as I go. I didn't know what frameworks looked like. I didn't even know, quite frankly, what the word framework really truly was. Well, we're getting to the first of the year and My guess is, is if you did some sort of planning at the beginning of the December, hopefully you were able to take some time off. And so how do we connect the planning that we did in December to the execution that we want to have in January, the beginning of the new year, so that we are actually making forward progress? What's my— opinion that that forward progress has to start with us individually first. It has to start not just with the business having an operating system, but it has to start with our personal operating system. In fact, of the 5 key principles that I believe in, the very first one is to lead yourself first. You've heard, if you've been on airplanes at any point in your life, which I'm sure pretty much all of you have, they will go through the normal safety briefings and they'll say that in the event of a loss of cabin pressure, oxygen mask will drop down. Put your oxygen mask on first before attempting to help other people. And I think the same thing is true in our businesses. We want to be able to see tangible, specific forward progress, and that means that we can even begin to look towards different areas to try to get that progress. What are some of those different areas? Well, sometimes the forward progress is meaningful forward progress. We begin to see connections with our team. We begin to see aha moments. We begin to even make the amount of sales necessary for us to hit the objectives that we set out at the beginning of the year. But sometimes that forward progress can come in some unintended places. In our desire and our need to find momentum, no matter where it comes from, we can begin unintentional consumption. And what I mean by that is unintentional consumption of things that don't actually help us to solve the obstacles that are standing in the way. So we just begin to binge listen to podcasts. And admittedly, I'm saying this on a podcast that you may be unintentionally consuming. It may be a YouTube personality. And look, I'm not referring to podcasts or books or YouTube videos that may be something that is allowing you to decompress. For me, there is— me and my son are big Auburn fans. Many of you know that at this point. Well, we'll listen to a Locked On Auburn YouTube, and it'll be almost a daily 15 to 20 minute episode. And it has nothing to do with business. It has everything to do with Auburn sports, Auburn basketball. We're coming off of recruiting season at the time I'm recording this. So that was certainly exciting for us. And then the attention begins to turn to basketball and then it will turn to baseball and I probably won't consume much of that. That's not the consumption I'm talking about. I'm talking about the other consumption, which is unintended, unintentional consumption. We begin to look for anything. And here's the thing, what that looks like, and as I've shared before, is this idea of, I'm going to consume books. It may not just be other podcasts, but it may be books. And I'm going to read 36 books. You can even go back into this podcast and hear me talking about that very thing, that I was going to read 36 books in a year. Well, then the target became just consuming books as opposed to, did I curate 36 specific books that were going to help me to be able to solve whatever problem was that was in front of me? The answer is emphatically no, not at all. It was unintentional. It was all over the board. And then I was consuming simply to consume, as opposed to consuming content, books, podcasts, YouTube videos, even other coaching programs, simply for the act of consuming. Now here's the problem. The problem is that we're seeking forward momentum anywhere that we can find it. In fact, we're going to find some of that forward momentum from the fact that we're just consuming. And so that starts to make us feel. And so many of you may be saying, yeah, but Bradley, when I'm listening, even maybe possibly to this podcast or to other things, I feel like I'm starting to make connections. And yes, I would agree with that. But I think the problem for me personally has come from whenever I have not clearly identified what is it I'm trying to achieve, and then being very intentional about going about trying to achieve or trying to consume content. This is not a put your Netflix down. That's not at all for me to be the one to share that. But what it is here to share is to be intentional with the content in 2024. Specifically the business content that is going to help you make and achieve forward progress, or what I'm calling momentum. If we want to begin to make forward progress, we want to begin to have momentum to achieving the objectives or the goals, if you want to use that, that we have for 2024, it starts with us and it starts with us being intentional with some of the content that we're taking in. It begins with us leading ourselves first. It's not just about intentional or unintentional consumption, although that's part of it. Part of it is allocating and preloading our year. I mentioned this previously. If you want to go check out the tool that I have for the preloaded year, you can go to blueprintos.com/assets and get that. But it's allocating my time for the entire year. It's allocating my time on a weekly basis and creating what we call a perfect repeatable week. And there's many other things that we can do specifically to help put ourselves in the best possible place so we show up a certain way for our business, for our families, for our teams. And so in a couple weeks, I'm going to be hosting just a 1-day, 90-minute session. We call it the Kickoff, and we're gonna be talking about this and going a lot deeper. I'd love for you to join us. If you go to abovethebusiness.co, you'll find the link on the page and you can find the Kickoff event. And we're gonna give you access. And at every one of the Above the Business events, we're gonna talk about mindset, skillset, toolset. What's the mindset we can adopt? What's the skillset we can acquire? And what's the tool that we can begin to use, implement, wield, so to speak, into our business. And so mindset, skillset, toolset. And so this idea, if this resonates with you and you want to begin to try to get some personal momentum so that you can show up a certain way for your business and get momentum in your business to start actually achieving the things that you set out and you said that you wanted to achieve in the business. I'd love to help you. Go to abovethebusiness.co and we can learn more about that. But if nothing else, I hope today's session has helped you to think about, if nothing else, just one thing. And that is, what is the content that I want to begin to consume intentionally in 2024? And I hope that this podcast is a part of that. I hope that these little small 5 to 10 minute episodes serve you to give you bite-size, in addition to our Monday interviews, bite-size things that you can take from a high-level idea down to a ground level or an eye level that you can begin to implement. I'd love to work with you one-on-one at our event and give you access to more of the tools and more of the strategies to help begin to lead yourself first and create really not just an operating system for the business, but a personal operating system so that you show up the very best that you can in 2024. Hope to see you there. Till next episode, lead well.
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