In this 8‑15 minute "Thinking Time" episode, Bradley Hamner shares a personal story that illustrates the shift from being an industry‑specific operator to adopting a true business‑owner mindset. He begins by describing a recent roadmap session with a Minnesota business owner who felt shame over not knowing basic financial metrics such as monthly run rate, ARR, and average customer value. Bradley then recounts his own experience from the mid‑2010s when he joined a Chamber‑of‑Commerce CEO roundtable. Paired with Keith, an experienced HVAC entrepreneur, Bradley realized he lacked fundamental financial knowledge—he didn’t know his own ARR, MRR, expense ratios, or profit margins. Keith’s candid admission that he also didn’t understand Bradley’s numbers forced Bradley to admit his ignorance, which opened a peer‑to‑peer learning relationship. Keith guided Bradley to focus on a handful of core metrics (monthly run rate, expense ratio, customer acquisition cost, average customer value) and emphasized that understanding the business model is essential regardless of industry. Bradley extrapolates this lesson, arguing that wearing the "business owner hat"—learning financial fundamentals, measuring performance, and making data‑driven decisions—is a skill any entrepreneur can acquire. He differentiates peer mentorship from formal coaching, encourages listeners to adopt the business‑owner perspective, and concludes with a call to grow profitably, take more time off, and lead well.
Chapters
Hey everyone, so often these Friday Thinking Time episodes that I do, 8 to 15 minute long episodes, really kind of come from the conversations that I will have with people on a day-to-day basis. And I'll think, you know, I've never actually shared that, I've never kind of let people know maybe where that information came from, etc. So on this one, I'm going to share a story I don't think I've actually shared before, but let me give you first the context, and then of course I'm going to tie it back to your business to hopefully give you some perspective and something that will help you on your journey as well. So today I was having a conversation with a business owner in Minnesota, and we were starting to put together effectively kind of a roadmap for his business. And I did a podcast on that just a couple weeks ago, so you can go back and listen to Business Roadmaps and get kind of somewhat of the context there. And so we were doing our first session, and he shared with me, you know, I've just— nobody's ever asked me these questions. And I could see for a moment this brief place of maybe shame that kind of came over him, of this feeling of, I should know this stuff, what you're asking. I should know these, but I just don't. And I said, you know, does it feel like there's like a rubber band and I've like just pulled on the rubber band for the this past hour and created tension for you? And he said, yeah, it does feel that way. And I just feel like I should really know some of these things. And I'll just tell you some of the numbers where, you know, what was his monthly run rate for his revenue? What does he think he's going to do revenue-wise year to date? How many customers does he currently have? How much are the customer— his average customer worth, etc.? Some of those things and we were taking some educated guesses that would help us kind of move the conversation forward. And he has some homework to come back to, to have more of those numbers dialed in, and that will help us to inform what his, you know, business roadmap is going to be. So I said, let me tell you a story that I don't know that you probably have some context, because he made a comment, which I appreciated the comment, But he said, you know, I just— this stuff doesn't come as naturally to me as it does you. And I said, wait a second, hold the phones just a second. No, no, no, let me tell you a story. Because that— this understanding this, or asking these questions, etc., has only come from the place of I had no idea what I was doing. And look, I don't want to pretend like I'm the world's business expert by no stretch of imagination. I hope I never come across that way. But I do feel like that for me and myself and the businesses that I've been able to learn a few things, and hopefully those have been helpful to other business owners. So I said, let me tell you a story that wasn't around a business coaching, but it was actually— I think I was maybe 4 years into business, roughly something like that, that 4 to 5 year range. So I wasn't new, but I certainly at this point I was just trying to— I was just trying to rein back. I mean, that's really what it was. Built the business off my network and, and people that I knew. And so anyway, it was about in that 4 to 5 year mark. So this would have been circa 2014, '15-ish, something like that. And so the Chamber of Commerce had put together these CEO roundtables. And so you would get placed in a small group with other CEO Roundtables, and then your group would meet monthly. You would go around to the different locations, uh, of the people in your group. And our group was pretty small. I think it had 5 or 6, but it had for sure 3, 4 of us— myself plus 3 others— stayed together actually for a pretty good amount of time, for about a year and a half or so. We met up every month pretty consistently. Well, really early on— well, let me actually share with you that one of the business owners was an incredibly successful, and still is, probably arguably the most successful, successful real estate agent in Huntsville, one of the more successful ones in Alabama. The other one was, or is, an HVAC business owner. They also do plumbing and electrical as well, but HVAC is their primary business. They at the time were around $10 million or so. Uh, the real estate agent, collectively, she owned the brokerage, then they were probably doing a couple million, I would guess, if I recall. And then the other one actually was long ago was the weatherman when I was growing up. And then he had left being, um, the weatherman and actually had started a weather company. And they were doing, uh, at the time, well north of $25 million in revenue. So I'm way out over my skis and being in this, in this, uh, group at that stage. I mean, like, way, way, way over my skis. And so as we were going through, and each time there was always a little bit of, uh, there was always a prompt or there was something that we were going to specifically talk about in our session. So the one coming up was around managing business financials. And I had a lot of shame. I didn't know what the heck to do with all this. And I've shared that on the podcast before. It's like, I didn't know these numbers at all. And so in that session, we had broken into even like, uh, had buddies basically, kind of accountability partners. And so I'm paired with Keith. Keith is a really sharp, shrewd business owner. He's the one that owns the, um, HVAC business and still owns it to this day. And he said, we're asking questions. And so he's going over his numbers and I can tell He knows what he's talking about. He knows his annual recurring revenue number. He knows his monthly recurring revenue number. He knows his expense ratios. He knows his profit margins. He knew how much him and his, his business partners were taking in distributions. He was talking at a level that was just so far over my head. And he says, okay, let's talk about yours. And so I start kind of skirting around it and Eventually, I'm super uncomfortable. I remember kind of sweating. Back then I wore suits all the time, but I remember sweating in that meeting. And then he said, Bradley, I just don't understand. I don't understand. And I said, well, Team, I'm gonna go back. I'm gonna go back. There's a part where I need to say— okay, so cut all this out. It's part that I'm gonna say that— go back. I'm gonna start over the buddy groups. Okay, and then we'll cut this part out. Okay, because I missed that. Okay. So we get paired into these buddy accountability groups, and I'm paired with Keith, who is the HVAC, uh, business owner, and still to this day is. And so he goes first and he's sharing his numbers and he's talking at above, at a level that I just don't know what he's talking about. He's talking about distributions, he's talking about expense ratios, he's talking about his annual recurring revenue numbers, his monthly recurring revenue numbers, etc. And it is just whizzing over my head. So he says, okay, it's your turn. Let's go over some of your numbers. So I start trying to kind of weasel my way through it, but the reality was I didn't know, I didn't know anything. I didn't know any of my numbers. He had talked about his average customer values, etc., and other things inside his financials, and I was like, oh my gosh, I don't know any of this stuff. So I start trying to kind of like fake it till you make it. I mean, you've maybe been there before. And so as I'm going through that, I finally kind of get frustrated and I said, Keith, you just don't understand. And this is a pivotal point. He leans in and he says, you're right, Bradley, I don't understand. Help me understand. And I remember that moment. Where I don't know if I metaphorically took a sigh, but I just was like, you know what, I think I just need to say I don't know. So finally I just said, Keith, I don't know, man. I don't know these numbers. To his credit, he said, now we're getting somewhere. Now we're getting somewhere. He said, okay, I'm gonna help you. He said, what you need to do is between now and our next meeting, you need to know a handful of these numbers. You need to know how much money do you bring in on a monthly basis? What is your monthly recurring revenue number? Because if you don't know that number, you can't make decisions. And look, this is not a pitch for Club Capital or anything. But I really did not know those numbers, because if I didn't know those numbers, then I can't make decisions on employees, on marketing, on any of that stuff. Every decision I made unfortunately was based on emotions. So he said, you need to know your monthly run rate, you know, need to know your expense ratio. And so I was like, okay, well, what do I need to find? And so I start going down that path. Now, it was just a couple years prior— I mean, maybe even a year and a half prior— that I had that moment with my accountant. So I thought I had made some progress. I started— felt like I started to understand business financials, etc. But this episode is not really around business financials as much, as much as it is around something that ended up kind of asking him, uh, the next time we got together. And I just said, Keith, you know what you were doing. Will you help me? Will you help me to understand this? And so what he ended up doing was beginning to help me to understand just the business model and to start understanding things from the perspective of a business owner, regardless of the industry that you're in. If you are— happen to be an insurance agency owner, you're a real estate agent, you are a behavioral therapy company, or you're a recruiting company, or you're a CPA accounting company like Club Capital, or you have a business coaching business fundamentally understanding how the business operates is key, and I did not. And so having his outside perspective was incredibly helpful to me. Now, in the end, it was just a couple years later that I ended up having kind of my situation where I was just, you know, working harder, because I think actually part of it is because I started to understand a little bit more about how the business operated And so I started to kind of work a little bit harder, but in the end, that really helped me to really see it as a business and not specifically in the business that I was in. And so I think that's really key, is there's one thing to put on the hat of whatever industry that you're in. Let's say it's insurance. We have a lot of people that are insurance agency owners. One thing to be an insurance agency owner It's another thing to be a business owner. I believe that if you become a business owner, you'll get the other. But if you become— if you're just one, it doesn't mean you're going to become a great business owner. And so I think that that moment stood out to me, that Keith was a business owner that happened to run an HVAC company. And so regardless of the business that you're in, if it happens to be insurance, if you're an insurance agency owner, learning to become a business owner is a skill that you can absolutely learn and acquire. You can begin to learn and understand your business financials. You can begin to learn your customer acquisition cost. You can begin to start to learn to understand, you know, what does a million-dollar business look like? And all of these things start to come together to help shape your business roadmap so that you can go from where you are to ultimately wherever you want to go, regardless of what that is. If it's a million-dollar business, $2 million business, $3 million business, you want to qualify for the different incentives that are out there, etc., or you just want a growing and profitable business that allows you to take plenty of time off to spend time with the people that you want to. And so I think putting the business owner hat on was something that I just I didn't learn. My dad's a small business owner. He's a farmer. But, you know, and I didn't learn those things. I didn't learn how to be a business owner. And being a business owner, an entrepreneur, is really just a collection of a lot of different skills along the way. And so that was such a powerful moment for me when he said, you're right, Bradley, I don't understand. Help me understand. And then when I finally said, I just don't know, he said, okay, we're finally getting somewhere. It was almost this place of like I needed to surrender because I think he could tell that I was putting on a front. I was putting on a front that I just didn't know, and he knew that. He could see through that because he had been in business for so much longer than I had. Furthermore, the next time we got together and I said, Keith, will you help me? And he said yes. And it wasn't a coaching relationship, it was just a peer-to-peer relationship. So my hope is, is that this serves you today and helps you to think about putting on the business owner hat for your business. Hopefully you learned a little bit today that will help you to be able to go and grow your company. And become more profitable, make more money so you can take more home and do the things that you love to do. I hope this served you well today. Until next time, go be great and lead well.
