In this solo episode of the Above the Business podcast, Bradley Hamner reflects on the recently concluded 2026 Annual Planning Workshop, noting over 100 registrants and directing listeners to the replay and toolkit at blueprintandwest.com/assets. He announces an expanded schedule of 12 monthly workshops for 2026, up from six in prior years, and teases upcoming high‑profile speakers. Hamner explains that the episode’s inspiration came from MrBeast’s “Me in 10 Years” video, using the creator’s decade‑long growth story to illustrate the power of self‑belief, grit (citing Angela Duckworth’s book), and long‑term focus. He introduces the concept of a personal “me in 10 years” artifact—recording a video or email to oneself to be opened a decade later—and encourages entrepreneurs to adopt this practice for both personal and business futures. Hamner connects this exercise to his 3‑1‑90 strategic framework (3‑year vision, 1‑year objectives, 90‑day targets), arguing that thinking in decades complements shorter planning cycles. He expresses gratitude for the podcast’s six‑year anniversary, acknowledges listener loyalty over metrics, and outlines plans to optimize YouTube content in 2026 while continuing to serve small‑business owners. The episode closes with a call to action to like, subscribe, and share, and a final invitation for listeners to imagine their own “me in 10 years.”
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Hey everyone. Well, at the time of this recording, we just finished up the 2026 Annual Planning Workshop. It was fantastic to have. We had well over 100 people register for that workshop. And I'm so excited about the feedback that we had gotten from that. If you've not planned for 2026 and you would love to be able to catch the replay of that event, you can go to blueprintandwest.com/assets. You get into the bottom, you'll be able to see where you can find the toolkit. And there you'll also get access to our 2025 Above the Business events. We have got, we are doing 12 events in 2026. We're doing monthly workshops, more on those workshops to come. We're expanding it. We did 6 in 2024, 6 workshops in 2023. 2025, and we're doing 12 in 2026. And we're going to bring in some of the very best speakers, thought leaders around, specifically not just on a podcast, but actually at some of these events to be able to help our members. And again, more on what some of those events are going to be like in the coming weeks on the podcast. But the reason I bring this up and the reason I wanted to have this— I actually had this podcast kind of in the back burner for quite some time, one that I knew we were going to do. But I was waiting for the right time. And ultimately, I knew I wanted to release it towards the end of the year. And the inspiration of this came from MrBeast. MrBeast released a YouTube video that he had recorded to himself, me in 10 years. So I think it was sometime maybe around October or so when this was released, October, November 2025. He recorded it October, November 2015. And at the time, I mean, I, I haven't watched the video in a little bit, but unbelievable meteoric rise that he has had since 2015. What is so interesting is not just the views and the stats and the subscribers and people have you know, being able to see how many he went, you know, from 100,000 to 500,000, a million. And, you know, it's just been an incredible upward trajectory. There's a few things though, that I think is pretty fascinating. Number one is how much he believed in himself and how much he was going to go all in. This is way before all the fame, before Beast Games. He bet on himself. He really did speak it into existence. And whether you believe into affirmations or whatever. The bottom line is, he was going to stick around long enough to get noticed. And he did. And I think the same thing can be true for us in our business— businesses. You don't have to be a creator. But if you stick with something long enough, and you work hard at it, you obsess over it. It really reminds me of a book that I read years ago, and I'm honestly thinking about considering rereading it. It's called Grit by Angela Duckworth. He had grit to do it. The second point in this, and by the way, I do recommend going and watching this 10-minute or so video from MrBeast. Number 2 point, the reason I'm bringing this up is look at who he has become. Look at who he has become over time. He has continued to level himself up. What would your equivalent be of me me in 10 years? I don't know. I actually thought about doing this. I actually thought about recording a video that says me in 10 years, and maybe this would be the video that we, we pre-schedule for, for 2000— and what would that be, 2035? I hope I'm still around by 2035. I'll be nearly 55 at that point, but it's amazing. We tend to underestimate what we can get done over a long period of time. And we tend to overestimate what we can get done in a short period of time. And so this is why this was brought up with me thinking about 2026. And listen, 12 months is still a long time. It certainly is, but it will go fast. And we can tend to think that we're going to do all of these things. In a week, in a month, in a year. But if we combine and stack all the things that we can learn over a 10-year period of time, there is value in thinking in decades. Now specifically, we adapt, we adopt a 3-1-90, 3-year vision, 1-year objectives, 90-day targets, I think from a business perspective. But if we zoom out and think about like who we become as business owners, entrepreneurs, leaders within our organizations over a long period of time. I think that that is absolutely incredibly healthy, healthy to be able to think not just over 3 months, a week, a month, but over a decade-long period of time. So my thinking time prompt for you would be, what would your me in 10 years video look like? If you did a video, a podcast recording on your phone right now, and maybe you just pre-scheduled it in your email— may not have a YouTube channel, may not want to have a YouTube channel— but if you recorded on your phone and you took that video and you sent yourself that email, and you pre-scheduled it to be sent 10 years from now, what would you say? I have not done the exercises of like what I would want people to say at my funeral. I've not done that. Maybe I will one day. But I think that this is kind of an equivalent. And maybe for us as business owners, we would do it not just personally, but also for our businesses. I mean, goodness, I would love for XYZ to have happened, for my family to be here, so-and-so, my kids would be this age, whatever that may be, you know, for you. But what would your business look like too? And I think it could be kind of like an artifact of some sort. We all have personal email addresses. I think email is going to be around in 10 years. You know, we have our email addresses. We get that email from ourselves and go back and watch, you know, probably gonna look a lot different in 10 years from now for sure. But what would that be for you? What are some of the things if you kind of lean out 10 years? I'm a big believer in leaning out in the business 3 years. But personally for you, what would your me in 10 years look like? I love to be able to serve small business owners and entrepreneurs. I'm— we are— me personally, but my entire team, we are passionate about small business and what the impact it can have to your team, to your community, et cetera. Who knows where AI is going to go with this? I think it's going to allow us to do a lot more faster in our organizations than we've ever been able to do. But who knows where it's going to be in 10 years? And I just want you to know I'm grateful. I'm grateful for these 5 to 10 minutes that you spend. Every Friday with me. We are coming up on the 6-year anniversary of having the Above the Business podcast. And I know you have a lot of choices of what you watch and what you listen to. And it means a lot for you to spend this time. We just had somebody that joined us, said, you know, he's listened to me for on the podcast for 3 years. And of course, I don't get those analytics. I don't know exactly who those, who those people are for. So as I told him, every download— and we used to, I used to pay a lot more attention to downloads and stats. And but to be honest with you, I don't pay as much attention to that anymore. Because you can get caught up almost a little bit into the, into, you know, like, oh, it's X number of thousand or whatever, but like, each one of you matter. And I hope that this podcast this year has been, has been a blessing to you, to you personally and into your business. We are going to continue to level up. We're going to take the things that we think that we did well with this podcast and YouTube in 2025. We're going to expand on that and build on that in 2026. And there were some things that we tried that obviously didn't work as well. and we're going to ditch some of those and we're going to continue to try to get better in 2026. So thank you. If you've not subscribed to my YouTube channel, do that. We've got some pretty big plans of some things that we're going to do on YouTube, putting content out that's really optimized specifically for YouTube, not just, not just specifically on the podcast itself. So thank you. Thank you for being a part of that. And I would love to know, what is your me? In 10 years. Arigato gozaimasu. Until next episode, lead well and go be great. Hey, if you like videos like this, click below. We'd love to have your support. Like and subscribe so we can begin to grow this channel. We have big plans going into 2026 to do more things specifically for our audience on YouTube. Would love if you would like and subscribe and maybe even share this with one other person.
