In this solo podcast, Bradley Hamner explores a core entrepreneurial mindset shift: the belief that a "perfect" business does not exist and that the only truly perfect business is one that is closed. He argues that businesses are inherently "broken" and that this brokenness is a catalyst for growth, requiring owners to transition from being the rainmaker (the primary revenue generator) to the architect (the system designer). Hamner emphasizes that as a company scales, new problems emerge—more customers bring more challenges—and the CEO’s role is to quickly identify these issues and build adaptable systems to resolve them. He reinforces his points with statistics about small‑business failure rates, analogies (e.g., “mo money, mo problems”), and a call to embrace resilience rather than perfection. Throughout, he promotes practical resources from his Blueprint OS platform, including a free Rainmaker‑to‑Architect scorecard and downloadable templates, and includes a sponsor segment for Club Capital, an accounting advisory firm for agency owners. The episode concludes with encouragement to adopt the broken‑business mindset and leverage the provided tools to build a sustainable, adaptable enterprise.
And our ability as the CEO, as the visionary entrepreneur, is to find those problems and to work to create systems to fix those as quickly as possible. And then we're gonna grow again and we're going to have and encounter more problems along the way. And that's okay. The business is not perfect and it never will be.
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Hey everyone. There are times on episodes, whether it's a Monday interview or one of these solo Friday podcasts, that I will touch on or discuss mindset. In fact, we often will say mindset. Skillset and toolset. And we, with our Blueprint members, or if it's something that we're doing with an event for Above the Business, we think about what's the tool, the template, the thing that you can actually use in your business to wield, whether that's a Google document, a PDF, a workbook, maybe it's a tracker, maybe it's some sort of Excel spreadsheet that you may use. Maybe it's just a link to a Notion page, potentially. Maybe it's a team member recruiting job description template that you have. Some sort of tool. Secondly, then there's the skill set. How do you actually acquire the skills necessary? And then also there's the mindset. So like, what do we need to believe? What do we need to acquire? And what is the tool that we need to use? Well, I will tell you that in today's episode, it is fully around mindset. And I will share a mindset that for me was a big shift. Now, primarily, I talk about first making the shift about you going from being the rainmaker to becoming the architect of your business. That's a philosophical mindset shift that I believe in that you need to make as the owner of the business. Well, another one is really around this idea of the perfect business. Many of you know, I love to read books. I love to be a part of programs myself. I make the necessary investments. I watch YouTube videos. I listen to other people's podcasts. I listen to audiobooks. I don't read nearly as many books today as I used to. I'm more selective in the books that I'm actually acquiring to make sure it's helping me in the things that I'm trying to improve upon. But specifically when it comes to business in general, I kind of become obsessed with looking at how do you build a business through an operating system so the business is less dependent upon you. And in my search of that, you start to get this idea of trying to build the perfect business. And I didn't have that necessary language initially, but in my quest, I began to kind of see that I was looking to try to have everything to be perfect. And the good news is I actually found it. I actually found what the perfect business is. This business has no customer issues. This business is a business that has no team member issues. There's no turnover in this business. There's no issues around performance. There's no issues around compensation and bonus plans. There's no issues regarding your time. By spending the right amount of time in my allocating my time appropriately. There are no financial issues in this business. There is no revenue issues. There's no cash flow issues. There's zero profitability issues. This business is perfect. And that business is one that is closed. It is a business that's out of business. And so the mindset shift that I began to adopt, and it's helped me so much is my business is broken. And if everything goes well, it always will be. My business is broken. And if everything goes well, it always would be. One of our maxims, and I really believe in, is business is hard and it gets harder. And you know what? As a visionary entrepreneur, if it were easy, we would not care. If it were easy, we would not care. Reality is, is that the odds are already stacked highly against us. 96% of small businesses never see their 10th birthday. I mean, the failure rates of small business— this is hard what we are doing. And so the mindset shift is that absolutely there is no perfect business. In fact, the only perfect business is the one that is out of business. And so seeing my business as broken, And seeing that if everything goes well, it always will be, has helped reduce the pressure, yet still striving. Because see, as the business grows and you begin to grow, let alone begin to actually scale, the problems that we face change. I think Biggie Smalls had it set up as mo money, mo problems. Well, more customers, more problems that you're going to have. And our ability as the CEO, as the visionary entrepreneur, is to find those problems and to work to create systems to fix those as quickly as possible. And then we're gonna grow again and we're going to have and encounter more problems along the way. And that's okay. The business is not perfect and it never will be. We don't want a perfect business, but we do want one that is adaptable no matter what is happening economically, no matter who is going to be president, no matter who your political beliefs lean, right or left, no matter what happens in rate changes, no matter what happens with inflation, our business will survive. No matter whether AI becomes and disrupts our industry or not, we will be adaptable because the business won't be perfect. The only business that is perfect is the one that's out of business. I don't want that. And I know you don't want that. See, we signed up for this voluntarily. We gave up the cushy 9 to 5, 5 days a week to trade in the 7 to 7, 7 days a week. We're one of the few small percentage of crazy people out there that are willing to do it, to willing to risk it all. And I think that that mindset, Chef, that my business is not perfect and it never will be. And if everything goes well, it always will be broken, has helped me so much because there are times that I think I'm dealing with another issue. And yes, I don't want to constantly be dealing with issues. But I do want to build a resiliency and adaptability that as we grow, we can face those obstacles, face those challenges, we'll overcome them, we'll fix them, we'll create an asset, we'll document a system, we'll build something to be able to fix that. But then the business is gonna grow. We're gonna unlock that growth. We're gonna grow to the next level. And then guess what? We're probably going to have more problems then. When you go from your first 100 customers to your first 200 to your first 1,000 to your— then you're at 5,000 or whatever the numbers look like for you. There's always gonna be different challenges at different levels. So therefore, there is no perfect business. I hope that mindset helped you. I don't do a lot of podcasts just around mindset, but But that is one that personally I learned or a lesson I learned, and I shared that recently with some business owners. It just kind of came up organically. And I thought, you know what? I think I'm actually gonna do Friday Solo Podcast on that. So I hope that served you. If you would like to know and have kind of some diagnostic insight into your business and maybe have a score around 5 key principles That's our model is the 5 principles of lead yourself first: clarity, alignment, team, and execution. If you go to blueprintos.com/assets, you'll see different downloads and templates that we have. You can opt into weekly team meetings, perfect repeatable week, et cetera. Those can help you. But also on there is a link to our Rainmaker to Architect score. In that free assessment, it will take you less than 5 minutes. Most of the time, most people take 2 to 3 minutes or so. And often just the value of the questions themselves and then the score that you get can really help you to see what are the areas that I'm strong and what are the areas that maybe I have some opportunities to improve. And so go to blueprintos.com/asset. You can take the scorecard, get that free score. We'll send you over kind of a customized results to let you know via email, hey, here's some areas that you can look at, and where appropriate, we'll send you over some of the tools that we use with our clients to be able to help them in those specific areas. Blueprintos.com/assets. Till next episode, lead well.
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