In this solo episode, Bradley Hamner shares three leadership insights he received during a coaching call with Daniel Priestley (and mentions coach Mike Reed). The first insight is that assuming a task will be easy sets unrealistic expectations; when turbulence occurs, disappointment follows. He illustrates this with a plane‑flight analogy and ties it to business setbacks. The second insight is the “broad shoulders” mindset: leaders should invite honest, even uncomfortable feedback because they can handle it without taking offense. Bradley recounts a recent retreat‑planning hiccup where this mindset helped him stay calm. The third insight is to expect things to fail, which makes any success feel like a pleasant surprise; this aligns with the Stockdale Paradox—maintaining a big vision while confronting harsh current realities. He weaves personal anecdotes, references to Denmark’s low‑expectation happiness story, and a brief promotion for a free quarterly planning session at abovethebusiness.co. The episode aims to help entrepreneurs adopt realistic expectations, emotional resilience, and open communication within teams.
Chapters
Hey everyone. Well, I had a different plan for today's episode, but I had a session yesterday with one of my coaches that I just— honestly, the things, the two things that he shared yesterday, I thought were so relevant for myself that I wanted to go and pass it along to all of you. So one of my coaches has been Mike Reed, but also his, one of his business partners is Daniel Priestley. So we did— myself and I think there was maybe 13 others on a call yesterday. Daniel is best-selling author of several books: Oversubscribed, Key Person of Influence, more recently Scorecard Marketing, etc. He's been on Stephen Bartlett's podcast, Diary of a CEO. You can check that out. He has been on Ali Abdaal's podcast twice. He's Ali Abdaal's, one of Ali Abdaal's coaches. So it was amazing to actually be on this call directly with Dan and with a small group of other people yesterday. And, you know, Dan is really unique in the way that he approaches business in general. And if you read any of his books, you'll certainly see some elements of things that we've picked up and I've picked up over the last several years of working with him and his team. But there were two specific things that were on this call that I really felt like would be relevant for me to pass along to all of you. And so again, passing this to say, these are things that I got and picked up personally from Dan's session yesterday. Number 1 is he said, thinking is it's going to be easy is what makes it hard. He said, if you think the plane ride is going to be bumpy, then Your expectations are changed when it's smooth. Thinking that it's going to be smooth and then it's bumpy, it resets the wrong expectations and you're disappointed. And so if you think about that in a logical sense, that, hey, this flight's going to go great, it's not going to be bumpy, that when you inevitably hit turbulence in a plane, it's like, oh no, wait a minute, I wasn't expecting that. Furthermore, thinking that actually this plane ride, we're gonna go through some storms. I can see the path that we're gonna fly, we're gonna have some bumpy roads along the way, or bumpy flight along the way, part of our route. Maybe it's a short flight or a longer flight, kind of expect some turbulence, sure. But then when you get through and you're like, oh, it's actually not that bad, it resets expectations. And so it was a good reminder for me that when I oftentimes think that, hey, this is going to go off without a hitch, this is going to be great, and then when I'm met with resistance inevitably in business, I start to get frustrated or start to get upset around something. And that leads me into kind of the next part that Daniel shared, which I thought was absolutely fantastic. And he said, you You know, I tell my team all of the time is that you cannot offend me. You cannot stress me out. You cannot make me upset. And he was on the Zoom and he was sharing. He's like, you know, you see these broad shoulders? I can handle it. I can take on the stress. You cannot offend me. I would rather my team to be honest with me about the challenges that they're facing and their frustrations and the things that they're concerned about. Because I'm in a place that I can handle that. And it was such a great reminder and it was such a good shift because just a few hours later, we're getting ready for our in-person retreat. We're going to Big Cedar in Missouri. And I got a message. It was maybe 2 hours after this call and it was kind of negative news. It was around an activity and It's not going to play out exactly the way that we wanted it to. And my first inclination was kind of frustration and like, oh, that stinks. Versus just because of that message from Daniel, I've got broad shoulders, I can handle this. It made me go, okay, all right, we can handle that. We can work through that. It's kind of Jocko Willink's way of saying good, right? When I think he had a building burn down, if I'm not mistaken, a year ago or so, and his, his His mindset was, good, good, we'll handle it. And I think that that is so difficult to adopt that approach or mindset. But the way that we adopted is to hear some of those messages from other people in the way that they approach things, the way that they see business, that the fact is that they, they can handle it. They want the team to share with them And unfortunately, I look back years ago and I had surrounded— because I was in a place to where I didn't want to hear negative news, I didn't want the team to tell me about a customer canceled or a customer left because I honestly, emotionally, I wasn't ready for it. And I look back on that, that there were times that I handled those situations really poorly. So guess what the team did? They don't share with you, they don't share with you things that you would normally want them to because they think It's just not worth it. Let's just keep that from him or her. Let's not share that. It's going to make him or her upset. It's going to make Bradley upset. We don't want to share that. The reality is, is that what— is that— is that the culture? Is that the way that I want the team to approach it? No, it's definitely not. I want them to share openly their frustrations, but also maybe even the things they're excited about. But I have broad shoulders. I can handle it. I'm not easily offended. Such a great reminder from Daniel and his approach. So number 1, expecting it to be easy is what makes it hard. And number 2, I have broad shoulders that I can handle it. And then number 3, this one was fascinating. I've heard Daniel on a lot of podcasts. I've been on some other calls with him, listened to him on some of his YouTube channels, etc. I'd never heard him say this before, so it's pretty interesting to me. He said You know, I just typically walk around and everything we do, I expect it to go to crap. Now, he said another word, I won't say it on the podcast, but he was like, I just expect things not to work. I expect it all to completely fail. I said, really? Do you really actually believe that? Do you really have that approach? I actually asked him that question. I was like, can you expound upon that? Because that's, that's not the approach that I tend to see you kind of walking around with. That's not the general demeanor that I see. He said, yeah, because I don't have that demeanor, because I'm all— a lot of times I'm pleasantly surprised when things actually go well. And I thought, well, that's interesting, because as an entrepreneur, we by nature have this enduring optimism and perseverance and resilience that things are going to go well. And so I was almost like trying to reconcile in my own head having a big vision for the future, being excited about that vision for the future, and yet at the same time having expectations that it's probably not going to play out that way. And I think the three of these messages for today do really begin to come together with that. Yes, have the big vision for the future and really have what is called the Stockdale Paradox, is that no, in the end you will prevail, you will get to that big vision. And at the same time, be willing to face the harsh realities of today. We have some things we got to work through. This is not working. The team comes to us from a place of authenticity. We're frustrated with this. This didn't work. This customer left. This thing just broke. That activity that we thought we were going to get to do got canceled. But number one, I expect it to be bumpy. I expect the road to be bumpy. I knew that it was going to be that way. Number two is that I have broad shoulders, that I can handle it. And number three that if I have unreasonable expectations that everything is going to go perfectly, it's kind of a little bit of a— like point number 1 is that ultimately I expect it to actually— there's going to be problems. I expect that all of this is going to go to crap. I expect that it's not going to work out. And so therefore, whenever it does, then I'm pleasantly surprised. And I'll kind of leave you with this. I thought it was a kind of a good— it's a funny saying— is that years ago, and I don't remember the country, I don't remember where I picked this up from, but I understand it was a true story. I think it was maybe Denmark. We'll go with Denmark. Might not have been, but we'll go with it for conversation purposes. Is that they interviewed someone on the street and they said, well, congratulations, Denmark has just been named the happiest country in the world. What do you attribute that to? And this old man, he said, low expectations. And I've always thought that that was so funny. But I think oftentimes that we can actually hold two things in business to be true at the same time. We can absolutely still have an enduring big vision of where we want the business and ultimately what we want to try to accomplish in our, in our personal life. And at the same time, we can also have and expect turbulence along the way. We can expect things to break. We can expect things to not work. We can expect that marketing plan to go down the gutter. We can expect the sales team person we just hired who we're really excited about— we can, you know, absolutely be optimistic, but whenever it doesn't happen, we have broad shoulders because we can be able to handle it. Those things really resonated with me. And 2 hours later after that call, I had a situation that normally would have kind of ruffled my feathers a little bit. But because of that message, I said, you know what, I've got broad shoulders, I can handle this. I should have expected us to— things not to go well. And that's okay. We'll handle it. We'll put together a game plan. We'll just get on with solving what the problem is. And we can remove the emotions from it. It is absolutely easier said than done. But I thought I would share kind of real time with all of you something that was impactful for me. I hope that was impactful for you. Alright everyone, till next episode, lead well. And by the way, next week we're running the quarterly. So if you want to put together a plan for the Q4, so you can easily have a vision of what you want to accomplish in your business for Q4. Go to abovethebusiness.co and you can register for the quarterly next week. Free to register. I'll see you there. All right, everyone.
