In this solo podcast episode, Bradley Hamner contrasts "just‑in‑case" learning—collecting and reading books broadly for future reference—with "just‑in‑time" learning, a focused, problem‑driven approach that targets immediate business needs. He reflects on his own reading habits, noting how many books sit unfinished on his shelves, and explains how shifting to a rifle‑like, targeted strategy can dramatically improve efficiency. Hamner advises listeners to identify the current constraint in their business (e.g., marketing, sales, culture, vision) and then search their existing library or purchase new resources that directly address that issue. He recommends organizing future‑reading ideas in tools like Notion or Apple Notes, categorizing them by functional area. The episode also promotes his Blueprint OS offering, which helps business owners become "architects" of their companies by designing and installing a systematic operating blueprint, and includes a plug for the Ray Mecca Architect Starter Kit. A brief sponsor segment highlights Club Capital’s financial advisory services for insurance agency owners. Hamner closes by thanking listeners, mentioning upcoming episode series, and wishing the audience a successful fourth quarter.
Chapters
The key difference between just-in-case learning versus just-in-time learning is that the latter is just much more efficient. Sometimes I've read books because I wanted to be a good student, I wanted to be well-rounded, so to speak, but I really spent too much time on books that were just not relevant to my immediate needs. And while, look, I think it's beneficial to save books to your Kindle on a wishlist that you can refer back to in the future for future reference, I think it's essential to consider whether that book is truly what you need to read at that moment.
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Hey everyone. So this week I want to delve into a topic that's been on my mind lately quite a bit, and it's called just in case versus just in time learning. As someone who likes to read, I've really began to notice a pattern in my approach to consuming books and other educational content that is really different than it was previously. When I look around at the various books on my coffee table, in my library, on my Kindle, I realize that there's a lot of books that have really positively changed my life. Just books in general have made such a tremendous impact into my life, and I'm sure they have for you as well. However, I also see a lot of books that I started but really haven't finished as well as some obviously that I've really completed all the way through, or some that I've kind of started and then put up halfway through, or maybe even a quarter of the way through. And so I don't know about you, but I've found other people to kind of relate to this idea that when people recommend books, whether that's on a podcast, a YouTube video, or I go to a conference, I'm around other people, I'll often find myself just immediately searching for those books on Amazon on the app and adding them to my cart and then really purchasing them right away. I might even buy them on my Kindle for quicker access, or might even really do both, maybe add them to Kindle and Audible and even get the physical book if I'm really intrigued by it. And I really now refer to a lot of those books and look back on my time on a lot of those books as just-in-case learning. In other words, I'm going to read this book, I'm going to listen to this topic just in case I might need this information down the road. Most of the time when someone recommends a book, it sounds really interesting to me. I think I might need help in that area. I've never considered that. For example, I might need to learn more about Radical Candor, which is Kim Scott's book, or Building a Story Brand, as Donald Miller suggests, or Expert Secrets from Russell Brunson, etc. Like, Some of them have such good catchy titles that I want to learn more into that. And while that breadth of learning has absolutely been really valuable, I've now began to really focus a lot more of reading books and really just consuming content in general. But in the context of this podcast, we'll talk about reading books based on my current needs in the business. And so what I would call just-in-time learning. So instead of taking a shotgun approach, I'm trying to aim to solve a specific problem in the business. Maybe, for instance, marketing as an example is an incredibly broad topic with a lot of different sub-niches, including paid ads and branding and personal branding and webinars and email marketing, lead generation, and on and on and on. And if I'm trying to address constraint in my business, and maybe marketing is that constraint, I'm now going to take a much more targeted approach, similar to using a rifle rather than a shotgun. So maybe then I can filter through the books I've purchased on— through Amazon in the past, or look at my existing books, or go to my existing Kindle, etc., to try to help me. What books do I have maybe haven't completed, or maybe often it's books I have. I just need to kind of revisit a lot of those concepts that can help me with that. So specifically, we're— I'm looking at paid ads, specifically that version of marketing. What content have I taken on in the past or read, books I've read in the past that are helping me in that specific area? But it could be so many different areas for you. Maybe it's around building a culture. Maybe it's around creating a vision for your business. What is the thing that you need to be able to focus on? So if it's maybe you heard me talk about the power of creating 3-year vision in your business, well, you might want to look for Michael Hyatt's book, The Vision-Driven Leader, or maybe Vivid Vision by Cameron Herald. If you want to learn about building sales teams, I would search for relevant books on that topic. And there's such numerous books available and content out there, such as Jeremy Minor or or Jeb Blount, Fanatical Prospecting. Many of these books I'm sure you've heard about before, maybe even, even have in your own library. So the key difference between just-in-case learning versus just-in-time learning is that the latter is just much more efficient. Sometimes I've read books because I wanted to be a good student. I wanted to be well-rounded, so to speak, but I really spent too much time on books that were just not relevant to my immediate needs. While, look, I think it's beneficial to save books to your Kindle on a wishlist that you can refer back to in the future for future reference, I think it's essential to consider whether that book is truly what you need to read at that moment. I believe it's helpful to maintain a list, put it in your Notion, put it in your Apple Notes of books that you want to consider reading in the future. Maybe organize those topics by broader— or organize those books by broader topics, sales and marketing and customer success, culture building, general business principles, vision, etc. So look, in the end, I think just-in-case learning absolutely has its merits, for sure. But also, I think consuming content to help you to be able to be much more specific, just-in-time learning can be a much more focused, an efficient approach. So think about what is the thing that's holding you back in the business right now. What is the constraint of that business? And go about searching for and looking for a book that can really help you, and, or book or content or a podcast that can really help you in that particular area. Blueprint OS, what we do is we specifically help business owners to become the architect of their business, to get away from being able to— them being the rainmaker, from everything to being dependent upon them. If you go from being the rainmaker to become the architect of your business, architects design, build, and install a business operating system. Now What architects use, they use a blueprint, right? So specifically, we help people to be able to become the architect of their business by designing and installing a blueprint operating system. That's what we do as a very specific example. So if you'd like to learn more about that, you can go check out my starter kit. It's called the Ray Mecca Architect Starter Kit. Go check it out at blueprintos.com/assets. Blueprintos.com/assets. Got a lot of different video training in there and some assets you can pick up if that's of interest to you. Grateful we're barreling towards 400 episodes. I'm going to do a special Reflections on 400 episodes coming up really soon. And I've got a series that's going to come out in November where I'm going to be stitching together several Friday solo episodes in a row that are going to kind of build one to the next to the next. So I'm really excited to kind of share that podcast series with you. Thank you so much for those of you that reach out to me, give me encouragement for episodes, whether it's a text, an email that you send to me. It's incredibly— at times, and I'll talk about this in the 400th episode, is that I'm recording this, I'm just talking often to a mic and to myself, but I do try to think about one person. And if this has positively impacted one person's life, to be at least today's topic to be more efficient in how you're consuming content, reading books, et cetera, then it was obviously well worth it. Hope you all have a great rest of the quarter. Hope you finish out— hope Q3 was great. We had many of you to be able to join us at our quarterly that just happened, our Above the Business quarterly event. It was really well received, helped people to be able to plan for Q4 to finish out. 2024, which is hard to believe we're already at the end of the year. All right, everyone, have a great rest of your week and hope you have a great fourth quarter. Till next time, lead well.
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