What if you could build an agency that ran smoothly without your constant involvement? This week on the Conquer Local podcast, we’re diving deep into agency growth and scaling with Bradley Hamner, the mastermind behind BlueprintOS.

Bradley shares how to transform your one-person operation into a well-oiled machine, creating a sustainable and profitable business. Learn to build systems, delegate tasks, and achieve the freedom you crave.

Plus, get free resources! Head to Bradley’s website, blueprintos.com/assets, and grab his starter kit to jumpstart your journey.

Tune in now to discover the secrets to scaling your agency!

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Create Systems to Automate and Scale Your Agency

Introduction

Jeff Tomlin: I’m Jeff Tomlin and on this episode, we’re pleased to welcome Bradley Hamner.

Bradley is a business growth coach and the creator of BlueprintOS. After overcoming his own entrepreneurial challenges, he developed a proven system to help business owners transition from “rainmaker” to “architect.” 

As the host of the Above The Business Podcast, Bradley empowers entrepreneurs to build scalable and sustainable businesses.

Get ready Conquerors for Bradley Hamner coming up next on this week’s episode of the Conquer Local Podcast.

Systems and Processes are Crucial for Business Growth.

Jeff Tomlin: Bradley Hamner, founder of BlueprintOS. Welcome to the Conquer Local podcast. How are you doing today?

Bradley Hamner: I’m doing great, Jeff. Thank you so much for having me on.

Jeff Tomlin: Hey, I’m pumped about the discussion today because in the pre-show we were talking about today, these are some of the topics that are at the top of mind and discussions around our office on a regular basis lately. We’re talking about all things going from chaos to control as you build a business. When you get a business to a certain size like we are right now, if you have areas of your business where you don’t have systems in place, it is impossible to scale. So this is one of your specialties and what you talk about a lot, and I want to dig into a little bit about the businesses that you see struggle with building systems and putting processes in place. How do they start to build scalable foundations in their business? Where does that process start in your thinking?

Bradley Hamner: I want to share with you that I first believe that what’s interesting about our journey as the entrepreneur is that we got into business, whether you left the corporate world like I did, or however you got into your business, that you got into it for some level of freedom, flexibility, and to have complete control of your ability to earn an income. Then anything that starts to look like structure, process, routine, systems, can feel very restricting. It did for me. What I did not realize and had to go through my own journey and had to have some burnout and some really difficult times, is that everything that I did want freedom and flexibility and the income potential was on the other side of having systems and processes in the business. But Jeff, I heard that for years. In fact, I heard it for really my first five years of business. You don’t have to be in business very long to start reading books, listening to podcasts, going to conferences. They parade somebody up on stage, they won an industry award, and they say something to the effect, systems and processes. You got to have systems and processes and not a doggone person would ever share with me what that actually look like. What does these systems actually look like? Can somebody show me what one of them is? And every time I would try to find someone to give me a copy of a document that they would have, number one, they wouldn’t give it to me. Or number two, when I did get it, I thought, there’s got to be more to it than this. This can’t be it. But ultimately, I did find someone who, in Toronto, as a matter of fact, I was excuse, act strategic coach, and he had built a 40 million company. He had made 5 million personally, and we were doing the 10x exercise. Dan Sullivan’s 10x is easier than  2x exercise actually, of course, it’s now portrayed in the book. He goes through that and he shares it with me, and I was blown away. He was actually a financial services advisor, and so I thought he made, I don’t know, $750,000 in revenue or something to that effect. When he shared that they did 40 million and he made 5 million personally the previous year, and then he said, “Look, it’s just systems and processes.” And I sent something smart back to him and said, “I’m so tired of hearing that. Everybody says it and nobody ever shares with me what it actually looks like.” And he did, and it changed my life. I finally was able to start to see, oh, okay, that’s actually what it looked like, and everything was forever changed in my mind of what it actually takes to be able to get there. Not that you have to build a 40 million company by no stretch of imagination, but he finally almost let me behind the curtain a little bit. Like I saw the wizard of the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain there. That forever changed my life. Now it wasn’t an easy road. I went back and had to stumble through it, but I really finally started to intentionally build systems in the business versus everything reliant upon me. Let me give you the first step though, to answer your question directly. Where to begin. So where to begin is actually, I want to share with you that I believe that you do have Rembrandt’s in the attic, meaning you have valuable assets in your business already. The very first tactical place to start, I don’t know if you’ve read the book, The Magic Art of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, but she talks about literally she would go into homes, go into the master bedroom closet, she takes everything out and then begins to put it back very precisely where it has a place. And that’s actually before you go in creating new systems, I encourage you to actually go and start cleaning up the assets that you already have. They just need to be organized in a way that the team, and quite frankly, you can find where they are. Then we can begin to talk about what it actually looks like to create new assets, new documentation of how you do things in the business.

Overcoming the Rainmaker Trap through Systems.

Jeff Tomlin: What a great way of think about a starting point as you were telling your story. I was trying to think about the first time when we realized that we really need to focus on systems and processes. I think it’s probably really early in our business when a couple of the founders, we were the primary salespeople in the company, and we found success, but we had a really hard time letting go and letting other people go out into the wild because they wouldn’t come back with the same results. We started thinking, how do we deconstruct what we think was our magic formula or why we were successful out in the space? It is hard to let go control, but then it’s liberating to put something in place and see somebody go out and then start doing things the way that you think that they should be done, at least it creates this consistency.

Bradley Hamner: That is so true. That paradox that you just portrayed right there, that is absolutely the journey that I personally went on for years in the business is that I was sacrificing short-term pain of actually building a sales system. Let’s just go through that. What is the way that we sell? I used to, I think this was short-sighted, I think it was arrogant, and then simply, it was a false belief that nobody can sell as good as I can in the business. That is absolutely not the case. So I wore it as some badge of honour, some pride that I was the rainmaker of the business. I was the rainmaker of the business, and that’s actually why we now call it from rainmaker to becoming the architect of your business to where everything rolls through you, not just sales, but really everything was dependent upon me. If I was there, cranking the handle of that business, it moved forward and then it worked up until the point it doesn’t work anymore, and you run out of time and then you get wore out of cranking the handle and you can’t take vacations. When you do take vacations, you bring work with you on Disney vacations with your family, and you end up working all the time until eventually you’re going to burn out, and that’s when that’s really what happened to me. I had to decide I got to do something different. But truthfully, I didn’t know what the different was. When you know only one way work hard and do everything yourself, for the most part, that’s the only way that you know, and so you have to go through this. I had to go through this pain of figuring out, well, what is the other thing to do? Fortunately, I met that guy in Toronto and actually saw what it took. But my hope is that a lot of other people don’t have to go through that level of pain to get to a place to say, you can learn the skills of creating systems and processes in your business. Of  , we refer to that as an operating system. So a collection of all of those things into the business. So it’s less dependent upon you.

Defining the Role of a Business Architect.

Jeff Tomlin: So you touched on the role of architect. This is something that you talk about and I want to unpack that a little bit. What specifically is your definition of the architect role and who should it be in the organization?

Bradley Hamner: That’s fantastic. All right, for a long time, we had been talking about Rainmaker to Architect, but we never actually defined what does it mean? What does it look like that you’ve actually become the architect of your business? So Jeff, I’m going to give you five things. I’ll go through those and then if you want to, we can unpack whichever ones you would like to. So we actually have five specific things that define that you’ve actually become the architect of your business. Number one, you have a business that is grossing over a million dollars in top line revenue. Now for some of your listeners, they’re already over a million dollars. They can check that box. But for some of our business owners, and for me for a long time, that was a huge milestone to get to think about having a business that does a million dollars in top line revenue was literally a dream that I had in the business. So first of all, if you can get there, you’re beating the odds. 91% don’t cross a million dollars in top line revenue. So number one, you have a business doing over a million, but it’s not enough to do a million alone. Number two is you need it to be both growing and profitable. We use a ratio called the Rule of 40, and that means your year-over-year growth plus your profitability exceeds 40. So that may look like 20% profit from the year prior plus 20% year-over-year growth, or it could look like 10% profit in 30% growth. Whatever that mix looks like, you’re at least over 40. So number one, you’ve got a business doing over a million. Number two, you have a rule of 40 of 40 or above. Number three, you may have a business that’s doing that, it may be growing a profitable, but if you are burning it seven days a week, 2,500 plus hours a year in your burnout, it’s not worth it. So we actually say for our members that they need to take 12 weeks off in a year. The first two things most people think is, oh my gosh, 12 weeks off, I have no idea how I would do that. Or number two, I actually don’t know how much time I take off. That’s the more common one as they think, I don’t know actually how much time I take off because I never track it. So number one, you’ve got a business doing over a million. Number two, it’s growing at profitable. Number three, you’ve taken 12 weeks off in the year. Number four, you actually have an EA in place to help you buy back your time, which we picked up from Dan Martell, incredible entrepreneur. We love his thoughts around buying back your time. We specifically say for an entrepreneur, it is not a luxury to have an EA. We actually think it’s a necessity to have an EA so that you can focus on the things that actually truly help you to grow and scale the business. And then lastly, we say, show me, don’t tell me. Show us your operating system that you’ve built specifically. We have a number of playbooks that we work with our members to build specifically. They show us the actual operating system, whether that is on their Google Drive or whether that’s on Notion, wherever their OS lives. We say, show me, don’t tell me. So if you have those five things in place, you have actually become the architect of your business business doing over a million. It’s growing and profitable. You’ve taken 12 weeks off, you have an EA to buy back your time, and you’ve built an operating system so the business is not dependent upon you.

Growth and Profitability are Linked, not Equal.

Jeff Tomlin: Well, I love that. That’s a great mental way of thinking about, hey, are you the person that’s growing your business or are you working in the business rather than on the business? By the way, as a side note, I completely agree with living and breathing the Rule of 40. Our newest board member is Brad Feld, who coined the term and the way of thinking around the Rule of 40. It’s something that we’ve been thinking top of mind over the last little while.

Bradley Hamner: Oh, fantastic.

Jeff Tomlin: It’s a high bar, but you’re winning if you’re achieving the Rule of 40, no doubt.

Bradley Hamner: No question about it. Absolutely. Learning and coming across that model was absolutely something that really helped propel my business forward because I had the fallacy that growth equaled profit. I really did. I just thought, well, if we grow, we’ll be more profitable. I didn’t realize that actually growth eats profit. Understanding that and seeing where we are is really helped me to have an understanding of those numbers. Of course, in the early days, whenever you’re, you say less than a million, it’s easy to have growth numbers of 60%, 70% when you’re at 200,000, 400,000, 500. Well, when you start getting to 1 million, 2 million, 3 million, that growth can, unless you’re… We don’t work with business owners that take outside investment. We only work with bootstrapped entrepreneurs. They really are growing organically in their business, not taking outside investment. So it’s really been a helpful number for me and for our members.

Jeff Tomlin: Especially if you’re an organic business, and not taking money. You’ve got a really good business if you’re achieving the Rule of 40 and you’re bootstrapped.

Bradley Hamner: No question. Absolutely.

Playbooks for Every Business Function.

Jeff Tomlin: At the end of your list, you mentioned playbooks.I find that playbooks are common when you’re thinking about sales organizations. But in your way of thinking, are playbooks something that should be widely used across all the different divisions and aspects of your business outside of sales?

Bradley Hamner: Yes.

Jeff Tomlin: Yeah.

Bradley Hamner: Yes. No question about it. Specifically, so in my own journey that I went on, I started to research, well, what is the difference between a system and a process and a playbook and an SOP and a checklist and a procedure? There’s probably some other ones I forgot about. But the more I googled that, the more I got confused. The more one person would say, this is a process, and then another person would say, that was a system. I was like, oh my gosh, there’s no hierarchy here. I needed to solve that problem for myself. So specifically, what we refer to as the hierarchy of… There’s five principles, there is 15 playbooks, then there are systems, then there are processes. For instance, we don’t use the term and we don’t teach to use the term SOPs. People can use that term if they want to. That’s just not language that we use in the business. I come from a sports background, so I like using the term playbooks and I like using game plan and things of that nature. But specifically, we believe there are 15 playbooks that run the entire business. I’ll give you an example of one, the Attract A player’s playbook, the keeping score playbook, the communication rhythms playbook, et cetera. I could go on through that, but those are just a handful of the playbooks that we recommend that businesses actually design, build and install in their business.

ROI of Systems Varies by Business Goals.

Jeff Tomlin: There’s a metric that I was working on and discussing with some leaders in our company called The Cost of Surf, and it was something that we didn’t necessarily track for quite a while. We started tracking and it said one SaaS unit economic that, I think, is sometimes overlooked by companies, at least in my discussion with my circle of colleagues that I work with. I wanted to ask you about measuring the ROI of the systems that you have in place. Oftentimes, if you’re having a discussion, whether you’re selling a piece of software that solves a certain internal process or you’re buying one, something that comes up is, hey, well what is this problem that you have right now? What does it costing you? Not everyone can always answer that question. I wanted to ask you. Do you have a standard way or a way of thinking about measuring the ROI of the processes and systems that you put in place?

Bradley Hamner: It’s a really great question. I want to answer it by saying that what it looks like to become the architect of your business looks slightly different for everyone. So for instance, I just got a message from one of our members just a few minutes ago, and he is looking to go and acquire three or four different other agencies specifically. In fact, he had some conversations in the last 24 hours. What he is architecting in his business, he literally is probably in the next three months going to double, if not triple the size of his company through some acquisition. What he’s architecting for is going to be very, very different than some other people that I know. What they are architeting for is to take their business from half a million dollars to a million dollars, and then I have another client that’s looking to architect. They’re at 3.5 million in top line revenue. We did a vision day. They’re going to scale to five, and they’re looking to exit. They know exactly what the multiples are probably going to be. They’re a digital marketing agency in Minnesota specifically to be able to do that. They think they know exactly who the acquirer is. I’m getting to the answer which is, it depends what it is that you’re architecting for. While I gave out the five things that we believe define what the architect is, the only one that is a very specific one of revenue numbers is around having a million dollar or more a year business, and so it becomes, for some of our clients, the ROI is the fact that they’ve actually gone from taking basically no days off to now they’re taking 12 weeks off in a year. Even if the revenue and profitability numbers didn’t change, Jeff, that is a significant return on investment. How can you measure the fact that you start taking Friday afternoons off to go fishing or go play golf with your friends and you’ve never done that before, that you leave the office at 3:30 to go make all your sons and daughters dance recitals, basketball games, baseball games, you go play golf. Those are significant things. But to also say that you can have those things or you want those things, but the business isn’t also doing well, is a fallacy. As an entrepreneur, you really want both. I want to be very clear that we do not over index specifically just for growth. We’re not just a growth agency. Most of our business owners absolutely do want to do that. There’s no doubt about it. They do want revenue to continue to grow. They do want it to be profitable and they want to make more money personally. It’s almost like taboo to say that now, unless you’re in other entrepreneurial circles to say no, they want to make more money themselves. That’s why we have all five of those things is because, Jeff, what you may be architecting for in your business in this season of your life is going to be a little bit different than what I’m going to be architecting for. But still, we’re both becoming the architect of our business.

Balance Automation with Human Touch.

Jeff Tomlin: There’s one thing I wanted to get your take on. Oftentimes, when you’re trying to optimize a business and you’re putting systems in place that involves automation of certain practices or things. Clearly, right now, people are automating all sorts of things, and especially with the use of AI, the possibilities have expanded greatly. How do you think about maintaining the human connection in businesses when so many things are automated?

Bradley Hamner: I think that’s such a great question. So we do have a number of things, whether it’s through Zapier, whether it’s through our CRMs that we’re automating. I think that that is fantastic. We automate some things. For instance, I’m doing a web class later on today, and so when people register for that web class, it automatically puts them on a Google sheet so the sales team can reach out to them and it puts them in a format to where it automatically has got their name, their phone number there. Well, that helps the sales team, but the customer or the prospect doesn’t see any of that. So especially when we can automate certain things on the backside that help the business to run a well-oiled machine. Fantastic. Yes. Do we use email automators, autoresponders to respond when people opt in, say, to some of our assets, to send some of those emails out so we’re not manually doing that 25 times a day, as an example? Yes, absolutely. But I also think it can go too far. I think it can go too far with that. I really do. First and foremost, I’ll give you a very specific example. First thing I want to try to do is optimize something before I automate it because in the past, what I’ve tried to do is automate an unoptimized process. You start adding Zapier or other type of things to automate it or AI, and it’s like, oh, this is not what I was looking for at all because it wasn’t optimized. So with our onboarding process, sure, we tag them the CRM and they get a number of welcome emails. They automatically get added to our community where all of our course content learning management system is. But you know what, the majority of that stuff, the rest of the steps, the other 10 steps that are on there, there is a human client success manager that is picking up the phone and calling Jeff and saying, “Jeff, heard you just joined Blueprint. We’re so excited to have you. I want to introduce myself. My name’s Courtney. I’ve been with Bradley for five years. Let me tell you a little bit about my role.” Well, we could put that all in an email. Sure. But we want the human-to-human contact, especially at certain critical points. So I believe that it’s not one or the other, And I know some people would probably argue with me, oh, automate everything. I don’t know about that. I think it’s a tool. I think it can give you leverage, but there are certain critical steps that, you know what, the more things are going towards with AI, and I’m no AI expert by no stretch of the imagination, but with things of that nature, I think people are craving much more of the human to human contact. Before you and I hit record, there’s no optimizing or automating any of that connection that we have before we hit record. We’re humans making connection with one another. I think that where you can sure use it, but I don’t think it should be to where you try to automate everything. I think people want the human connection.

Get Free Agency Resources at blueprintos.com/assets.

Jeff Tomlin: Bradley, I love your insights. I always am very appreciative of the time that our guests give us always really busy people, and I appreciate that you taking time out of your very busy schedule to join us in the Conquer Local podcast. If people wanted to continue the conversation with you, how do they reach out to you?

Bradley Hamner: We’ve got some free assets that we’d love to give your listeners. If they go to our website, go to blueprintos.com/assets, and we’ve got a starter kit on there. So if they want to begin their journey and pick up where I started on the process of talking about how to organize some of their assets. We have the roadmap, the hierarchy that I mentioned, and we even have a tool called the Playbook for Creating Playbooks. I have an entire training that goes along with each one of those assets that we actually use with our members, blueprintos.com/assets. They can get access to our starter kit.

Jeff Tomlin: That’s fantastic. Thank you so much for your time, Sir. I bid you the best and hope that you come back and join us again on the podcast in the future.

Bradley Hamner: Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate you.

Conclusion

Jeff Tomlin: What a great talk! The first takeaway I have is about Freedom Through Systems. You might crave freedom and flexibility in your business, but achieving that requires strong systems and processes. Don’t be afraid to invest in building these structures, even if it feels counterintuitive at the time.

Next, Architect Your Business: There’s a difference between being a “rainmaker” and an “architect.” The architect builds a business that can run without them, allowing for vacations, growth, and a life outside of work. This involves building systems, having help so you can focus, and specifically, focusing on strategic growth. 

If you’ve enjoyed Bradley’s’ episode Building a Sustainable Business Through Systems and Structure, keep the conversation going and revisit some of our older episodes from the archives: Check out Episode 706: Transforming Your Business in the Hyper-Digital Era with John Rossman or Episode 705: Driving Business Success through Digital Evolution with Jen Swanson.

Until next time, I’m Jeff Tomlin. Get out there and be awesome!