[00:00] Brian Moran: If you want to know what your future holds, look to your daily actions. You want to know what your health is going to be like three years from today, look to your actions. You want to know what your relationships are going to be, look to your actions. You want to know what your income, your career is going to be like, your business, look to your daily actions.

[00:17] And so we track the lead and lags, we score the execution and The key there, Jim, is in those two sets of measures, you have everything you need to know to understand where the breakdown is.

[00:28] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic Minded Man. Real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business, in life.

[00:38] This is your host, Jim Harshaw, and today I bring you Brian. Moran, coauthor of the New York times bestselling book, 12 week year. A lot of what you’re going to hear today is going to be reminiscent of the things that I talk a lot about on this podcast. And you’re going to hear an expert. We just have a great conversation here.

[00:56] Who’s implemented his system, his framework. With individuals and companies, he’s tested it and he’s applied it with thousands of individuals and also companies like Allstate and MassMutual and Medtronic, Merrill Lynch, Nationwide, Papa John’s, on and on. He’s implemented it with these companies as well.

[01:14] And it’s this idea of periodization, which comes through, you know, it’s a concept used in sports that if you really focus on these short term. Goals in this short term plan through his framework, you can get more done in 12 weeks than most people get done in most organizations get done in a full year.

[01:33] There’s a lot of great actionable stuff that Brian shares here. And he has this offer for how to get started in his program. And while it’s different, you know, significantly different from reveal your path, there is, if you’ve valued and enjoyed this concept, this kind of thing, we start with the same thing.

[01:51] Vision, vision and core values. And so you can go, you can get our free seven day course as well on this same starting point. So go to JimHarshawJr.com/free, and you’ll get access to the seven days to clarity course. You’re going to really like what you’re about to hear. You’re going to like the twist on this framework that is going to really help you bring urgency to what you do.

[02:12] So here we go. My interview. with Brian Moran, co author of The 12 Week Year. Where did the concept of The 12 Week Year originate from?

[02:24] Brian Moran: You know, that’s an interesting question because there’s two pieces to that. And the first is, my wife went through breast cancer. And when she was diagnosed with that, you know, we were confronted with the fact that we didn’t know.

[02:36] We didn’t know how many days or years, if we were going to get a few months or a few years. And so all the plans we had as a couple, all the plans we had for our family, all the places we wanted to go, The travel, the businesses we wanted to create, the impact we wanted to have, all of that was at risk. And that platitude of every day is a gift became more than a platitude for us.

[02:57] And so we came through that, uh, about seven years later, I got cancer, went through the whole thing again. And through that, we really made a decision that, look, we’re not willing to wait to live the life we want to live anymore. We’re not willing to have all this stuff be in the distant future. We’ve got to find a way.

[03:13] to accelerate the things we want to have in life. And that was really the seed for the 12 week year. So fast forward, Michael and I are working with businesses. We’re getting good results, but we’re doing what everybody does, right? We’re working in the context of an annual environment. And so we came across a concept called periodization from athletics.

[03:31] And so some of your listeners may know that concept. And we looked at that, and we realized that that had some applicability for what we were doing, and we took that concept And move beyond athletics to work in a business setting, work in a personal setting. And so the 12 week year was born. We work in the context of every 12 weeks as a year.

[03:48] Where there’s clarity, and focus on what matters most, and then this healthy sense of urgency. Because in the annual environment, there’s just too much time. It fosters procrastination, it creates overwhelm, it creates diffusion. And so we realized we had to get out of that environment and, in fact, our first book was called Periodization, but no one could pronounce the word.

[04:10] Uh, one lady said, isn’t that a gum disease? So we thought, let’s name it what it really is, which is the 12 week

[04:16] Jim Harshaw Jr.: year. So, Brian, what is the difference between the 12 week year and just setting quarterly goals or having quarterly benchmarks and metrics?

[04:27] Brian Moran: What’s the difference? First thing there’s with the 12 week year is a different mindset and you know, 90 percent of life is between your ears.

[04:32] And so how you think about what you’re capable of, how you think about the timeframes, how you think about how you go at it really makes a difference. And so a quarter The 12 week year is the fourth of a whole. The 12 week year is the whole. And candidly, there aren’t 4 of those in the year. There’s just this 12 week year followed by the next and so on.

[04:47] And when you embrace that in your thinking, it has a huge impact on your actions. It has a tremendous impact on the results. So first and foremost, it’s a different way of thinking and a different way of operating, which creates very dramatically different results.

[05:02] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. So are you working four times harder?

[05:04] Do you just like, you work four times the number of hours? I mean, how?

[05:07] Brian Moran: Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. There you go. Yeah. It’s not about taking everything you do in 12 months and cram it into 12 weeks. It’s really about focusing on what matters most. Most people are trying to do too much. That’s why they’re overwhelmed.

[05:19] That’s why they’re diffused. And so we’re really about the concept less is more Jim. I mean, the first time I ever said that I went, no, it’s not more is more. But the fact of the matter is, is we all have limited capacity. Right. Limited intellect, limited energy, limited resources, limited time. And every time we take on one more thing, the probability of us being great at any of it diminishes significantly.

[05:42] So one of the keys to the 12 week year is really focusing in. on one or two areas and moving the needle in a significant way. So, when we do that, what happens is, it actually creates better results and lowers the stress, because we’re not trying to do everything. You know, you’re not the hamster on the wheel anymore.

[06:00] We’re focused on a few things, and we’re going after those consistently, not perfectly, but consistently, and that’s what drives the higher results at simultaneously lowering the stress.

[06:12] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I think the initial when, when you hear the title of the book or the concept, you go, okay, well, I just have to work four times harder, but it’s really about working more effectively.

[06:22] Right? We, we can’t do more like agree. Everybody. We’re trying to do more. And there’s so many things. And especially on social media, we, whether personally or professionally, we see that we can just We can just do more. I should be doing what this person’s doing and this person and this person, this person.

[06:34] I had Tim Ferriss on the podcast and he said, if you look at all the gurus out there and all the podcasts you listen to, and you hear about all these morning routines, if you did all the things that you’re supposed to do in the morning routine, you’d be doing your morning routine until three o’clock in the afternoon.

[06:50] And it’s true, right? You can’t do it all. And so you have to identify what are the right levers. And so how do you do that? How do you help an individual or a business identify the right levers to pull in their 12 week year?

[07:06] Brian Moran: Well, the 12 week year is more than just a different way of thinking about time.

[07:10] It’s also, we bundled it with the fundamentals that drive execution, high performance, because everything we do. It’s designed to accelerate your success to more effective execution. We learned a long time ago it’s not enough to know. People chase ideas. They buy ideas. They buy techniques. The fact of the matter is it’s worthless unless it’s implemented.

[07:29] Same in your personal life as it is your business. And so there’s a set of disciplines, five disciplines that really drive high performance and execution. And the first one is around vision. Now look, I know when I say that your listening audience goes, well, I’ve heard that before. Well, yeah, because it’s the starting point.

[07:45] Right? It’s the first place we engage our thinking about what’s possible, but it’s also, we do vision different. We don’t start with your business. We start with your life. What do you want your life to look like? Then what does your business need to look like or your career to align and enable that? So one thing that happens with that, Jim, is there’s an emotional connection now to what I do Monday through Friday and the life I want to live, which is powerful.

[08:05] But the other thing it helps us do is sort out, how do I narrow it down to one or two goals? Right? There’s 10 or 15 things I want to achieve. And when you’re used to working in an annual environment. You know, in, in January, December looks a long way off. So you fill that plan full of all kinds of stuff and the 12 year is different.

[08:24] But the way we sort down to focusing on a, on a few areas is based on that vision. And what you’ll see is that oftentimes you can find a goal that affects a number of aspects in your long term vision. For instance, my business affects a lot of things in my vision because a lot of things in my vision take resources.

[08:44] They take some money. I want to take the family traveling. I want to be generous. I want to tithe. I want to, right? All that. So my, a business goal facilitates a lot of those things in my personal life as well. And then, you know, with businesses, we’ll list all the things we might pursue as goals. Then the discussion begins, right?

[09:01] If we could only do one of these, which one are we going to do? Because if we chase them all, we’re going to be ineffective. We started with a company. This is a big multi billion dollar company. 27 different metrics they were trying to drive. We’re like, you’re toast. Well, when we really dug into it, there were three of them.

[09:15] If we focused on these three, the rest came along in the wake. And this company has, you know, 70, 000 people in it, but it’s, it’s the same situation, whether you’re a solopreneur, you got a company of five or 5, 000 or 50, 000, it’s all about focus.

[09:30] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You know, none of this happened, like you said at the beginning, none of this happens unless you actually execute, unless you actually implement it.

[09:36] And that’s the challenge, right? There’s the knowing versus doing gap. This idea that we know what we’re supposed to do, but we don’t actually do it, right? Whether that’s. The fitness or what I’m supposed to eat or the sales calls I’m supposed to make every day or whatever it might be in, in the listener’s lives.

[09:55] How does the 12 week year help bridge that knowing doing gap?

[09:59] Brian Moran:
[10:00] That’s the whole thing. That’s the system. That’s what the system does because. You know, if people did just more, more of what they already know, right, they’re busy chasing new ideas. They’re building new potential when they haven’t actualized the potential they have, right?

[10:11] If they did more of what they know, they’d be healthier. They’d have better relationships. They’d be making a lot more money. And so it’s a systems approach. I mean, I wish, Jim, it were one thing. Hey, do this one thing and it closes that gap. It’s not. It’s about applying the disciplines as a system. And just learning how to build that as your routine.

[10:28] And when you do that, and we’ve worked in just about every industry, we’ve worked in every walk of life. And when you apply it as a system, you get better. We’ve never had anyone not get better applying it as a system. So the second discipline is planning. Everyone plans, but traditional plans are different than the way we plan.

[10:44] We plan tactically. Most plan, conceptually, which masks the amount of work, and there’s no breadcrumb trail in that. And if you’re on a team, you know, one of the things you need to be effective is you need clarity around expectation, around the vision, around the goals, most importantly around behavior. So you got to get tactical to get there.

[11:05] So each one of these disciplines, there’s a level that we go to that really enables you and supports you in taking action more consistently. But, like, for instance, if we didn’t do the vision, right, even though you know what you need to do, how do you get yourself to do it on a daily, weekly basis? Look, if you’re going to create a better result in any area of your life, there’s some discomfort in that.

[11:27] There’s some uncertainty. There’s some anxiety, right? How do you get yourself to enter into that? There has to be something in the future that’s pulling you forward. There has to be a compelling vision of the future that’s bigger than the present, but that’s not enough. You need a tactical plan. You need peer support.

[11:42] You need process control. You need to measure things. So those are the disciplines of the system and we can get into them, but I don’t know if you want to dig that deep into all of these things or not.

[11:51] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I think we should hit on all of these. And for the listeners, you’ve heard me talk. I mean, this is the vernacular that we’re using and I have a program.

[11:58] Different type of system, same ingredients applied in different ways. This is all really helpful for the listeners to understand that there are concepts out there that you’ve heard before. You’re learning them in different ways. Like when I was a wrestler, I might learn a double leg takedown from 10 different coaches and they all teach it a little bit differently.

[12:16] And then there’s one that really clicks. And that’s the one that works for me. I want people to really understand your system and how it could work for them. And so the compelling vision, like you have to do that work. You have to figure out what the compelling vision is. Otherwise you’re setting your goals based upon what’s parked in your neighbor’s driveway.

[12:31] Based on what you’re seeing on social media based on what the latest trend or fad is But no, it’s got to be this compelling vision that is pulling you that you align everything else with so and by the way I’m gonna make this a quick comment that the listeners will get this that have been listening for any length of time This is all based off of one concept.

[12:50] Do you have to stop and do the work? You can’t just run headlong into tomorrow into the Next year and just being busy, you have to pause, you have to stop, pull back. I went to Brian’s workshop earlier in the week on this, and it was a pause for me. And this concept, Brian, that we talk about on the show is, uh, and my coaching is, is called the productive pause.

[13:12] It’s a short period of focused reflection around specific questions that leads to clarity of action and peace of mind. There’s this productive pause is required in order to implement. This concept of the 12 week year. So starts with vision, moves to the tactical plan, right?

[13:31] Brian Moran: So there are five disciplines.

[13:32] Vision’s the first. And as I mentioned, you know, we start with your life and we take two cuts at it. First is long term aspirational, 10 or more years into the future. Then we bring it near term to 36 months, and then we align our 12 week goals with that. But the key is not creating that, the key is staying connected to it, because the way your brain is wired, you need to stay connected to it.

[13:53] So we teach people how to do that, how to make it real, so that it has power in your life. So that on a Tuesday when you’re supposed to pick up the phone, you pick up the phone on Tuesday. You don’t put it off to Wednesday or next week. The other thing about it is, Knowing that you have 12 weeks to hit your goal, there’s a healthy sense of urgency that exists in that year, doesn’t exist in the annual environment.

[14:14] I mean, everybody right now is fired up. Everybody’s thinking best year ever. We’re going to get to the end of the month and most people are going to be behind. But no one’s worried. Yeah, we got 11 months to go. 11 months, and that mindset permeates the year till later in the year, and then they wake up and they go, oh crap, right, and things change.

[14:32] And so with the 12 week year, 12 weeks is a long enough time to make profound progress, but near enough where there’s this sense of urgency. And not the stressed out urgency. People feel in November and December, but just a healthy sense of urgency, which is critical. That’s the fuel to these disciplines, if you will, the rocket fuel, is that notion of working in 12 weeks as the year, where there’s a hard line in the sand.

[14:56] At the end of 12 weeks, we’re going to measure a success or failure. It makes it really, really difficult to put things off. So then we move from vision to, to planning. As I said, the planning’s tactical, it’s focused. It has the critical few. Not everything you can think of. The least amount to accomplish the goal.

[15:14] And it may be a handful, it may be a couple dozen. It depends. But it’s the least amount of tactics, the least amount of actions to accomplish the goal so that, again, we have a focused, granular plan. Without that, you’re never gonna execute at a high level. And that’s true as an individual, it’s true for an organization.

[15:33] From there then, so we’ve got a vision, we’ve got a plan, I mean, your listeners have probably heard the Mike Tyson quote, right? It only has a plan, do they get hit in the mouth?

[15:41] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Punch in the mouth, that’s right.

[15:42] Brian Moran: Yeah, so, so that’s where process control comes in. That’s our term for tools and events that help you work the plan, even when you don’t feel like it.

[15:49] Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but some days you’re more disciplined than others. And what we don’t want to do is rely solely on self discipline. We want to insert some things into the environment that you can lean on. So that even on the days you don’t feel like doing it, it gets done. And so I’ll share two aspects of that.

[16:05] The first is we call a weekly plan. So if you’re track, we start with this longer term vision. We put together a 12 week tactical plan. Every one of those actions has a due date and it comes due a certain week, weeks 1 through 12. Some of them are one time actions, some are recurring actions. But what that does then is it feeds a weekly plan.

[16:26] And the weekly plan, Jim, doesn’t have everything you do in your job or your life. It doesn’t even have everything due in the 12 week plan. It’s just what’s due this particular week. It’s like a one twelfth slice. But by default, it has what matters most. So everything else becomes secondary. This is how we accomplish more in less time and lower the stress.

[16:48] The person that’s 10 times as successful as you, however you measure success, isn’t working 10 times as hard or 10 times as long. They’re working different. And so this weekly plan is what defines how you win the week. That’s what you calendarize. 20 minutes opens up on my calendar. I’m not checking my email.

[17:05] I’m not checking my voicemail. I’m going to my weekly plan because if that gets done, I had a great week. If all the other crap gets done, and that doesn’t, all bets are off. So I have a separate to do list. I don’t care if my to do list gets done. If my weekly plan gets done, I’ll be where I want to be at the end of 12 weeks.

[17:22] I’ll be living the life I want to live.

[17:25] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I hope that listeners, I, I just want to talk to you for a second. Like, I hope you’re getting this concept. Like, you know, if you were athletic, if you ever competed in athletics, you know, what this looks like, you know, what this feels like, you know, that there’s off season, in season, post season, like there’s different training periods.

[17:41] It has to go from the vision. Where are we going this season to the tactical plan? And then we have to put specific things in place to make us execute. And the example I use is when I talk about this, this type of thing is. You know, when I was wrestling, if I lost a wrestling match on a Friday night and I’m sitting in the corner feeling sorry for myself, and I don’t feel like working out the next day, I would just want to sit there and feel bad for myself.

[18:04] Coach comes over. It’s like, Hey, Jim, I’ll see you tomorrow morning in the weight room. You know, 7 a. m. Be there. It’s like there’s a plan to follow through to continue to execute even when you don’t want to. There has to be this infrastructure and we can very easily see that in sport. And we’re all just out here in the game of life trying to win here as well.

[18:24] Brian Moran: Well, that’s a key point. That’s part of process control. The second element of process control is peer support. In sports, it’s built in, right? The teams have practices. You show up or blah, blah, blah. It’s built in. When you’re on your own, you got to build it. And so study after study has shown you’re going it alone.

[18:39] You’re stacking the odds against yourself. There’s one study done with heart patients that had bypass surgery that were told if you don’t change the way you’re living, right? The way you’re exercising, the way you’re eating. Two or three years, you won’t be here. So, all of them changed initially, but the sad part, Jim, is when they went back and resurveyed them a year later, 90 percent had reverted back to the old lifestyle habits.

[19:00] In a situation that’s literally life and death. Now, when they started involving them in peer support, meaning they met with a coach, met with a couple other people, talked about how they were doing, a year later, 80 percent were still successful. 10 percent without it, 80 percent with it, it’s the same in life, it’s the same in business.

[19:17] And so that’s part of process control. So we’ve got vision, planning, process control. The fourth one is scorekeeping. Measurement drives the process. It is the anchor of reality, right? It’s where we go out to the physical universe and get feedback on our actions. Are the actions we’re taking creating what we thought they would?

[19:34] And your listeners may be familiar with lead and lag indicators if they’re in business at all. So we track those, but there’s one lead indicator that’s the most powerful lead indicator you have. And most people don’t even know what that is. And that ultimately is a measure of their execution because what we control are the actions, not the outcomes.

[19:53] In fact, lots of research shows if we get too fixated on the outcome, it’s paralyzing.

[19:58] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Oh, absolutely. This is, yes,
[20:00] that’s performance psychology 101 is, and you know, there’s a book behind me on my shelf. Brian, you know the book well, seven habits of highly effective people begin with the end in mind. You’re right.

[20:10] We have the vision and that now we let go of that. You’ll reverse engineer the process, focus on this process. And, and listen, I, I’m just going to go on a little tangent here, Brian, because we get so caught up in the end goal that we have fear, we have hesitation, we have doubt that comes into play, but when you let go of that and just do the best you can, and like I said, this is performance psychology.

[20:32] One on one, uh, we’ve had plenty of psych sports psychologists on here. And Brian and I have both lived in the athletics world in the past. It’s like. You have to let go of the outcome, although we all want it, you have to focus on the process and truly, I mean, you know, I know the platitudes like enjoy the journey.

[20:48] So go ahead, Brian.

[20:50] Brian Moran: Well, there’s a great article by Jim Collins called Leadership Lessons of a Rock Climber. I don’t know if you’ve seen that, but he talks about this concept of failure versus failure and that you may only get to the same spot, but with failure you quit, with failure you fall off the rock.

[21:03] But he said very different takeaways. In folio you come away with excitement, learning, self esteem, confidence, right? All this stuff. In failure, it’s just the opposite. And so one of the things that happens with the 12 week year, and this is unique to the 12 week year, Is we track the lead and lags you score your execution and that’s the most powerful lead indicator you have In fact, that’s the greatest predictor of your future think about that If you want to know what your future holds look to daily actions You want to know what your health is going to be like three years from today look to your actions You want to know what your relationships are going to be look to your actions You want to know what your income your career is going to be like your business?

[21:41] Look to your daily actions. And so we track the lead and lags, we score the execution. And the key there, Jim, is in those two sets of measures, you have everything you need to know to understand where the breakdown is. Because if there’s a breakdown, you’re not hitting the goal. It’s one of two areas. It can’t be anywhere else.

[21:59] It’s either in the plan. You don’t have the right tactical plan. And by the way, there is no perfect plan. Or it’s in the execution. You’re not doing it. Or you’re not doing it consistently enough. Where do you think it is most of the time? Execution.

[22:12] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Not being consistent.

[22:13] Brian Moran: 80, 90 percent of the time. But what do most people do when they’re not hitting the goal?

[22:17] Change the plan. They change the plan. Because it’s easier. And in fairness, they don’t have a way to pinpoint it. With the 12 week year, you’ll know. And that’s how we’re able to, the 12 week year is kind of this concept of, because there’s no perfect plan, we go out and we succeed or fail as fast as we can in the marketplace, and then we come back and we adjust.

[22:35] And most of those failures are going to be around execution. Why didn’t I do this last week? So this is where the weekly plan comes in. So we score the execution.

[22:43] Jim Harshaw Jr.: How do you do that? Is there a process that you do, whether it’s maybe Maybe give an example with a company and then maybe an example personally, how like, how actually do you score?

[22:52] Brian Moran: So here’s what happens. We have software to support it, but the software takes the the 12 week plan and translates it to a weekly plan. Because when I say weekly plan, people think you’re sitting down with a blank sheet of paper. You’re not. It’s just transferring what’s due in the 12 week plan for this particular week.

[23:07] Well, the system does that. Then you go in at the end of the week, you check off what got done. So for instance, in a business setting, if it said, schedule 10 appointments. And you scheduled nine, you don’t check it off. Okay. And it’ll calculate a score between zero, a hundred percent. And the cool thing is if you’re North of 80%, having tens of thousands of people on the system, in most cases, you hit the goal.

[23:32] It’s not about being perfect. And you might argue, well, I, so I was, I was working with an advisor from Merrill Lynch. She had some business goals. She had this personal goal about running this marathon and she got on a coach call with us and she said, you know, Brian, I’m really struggling. I’ve got a tactic in my plan to run 25 miles a week.

[23:49] And I’m running like between 21 and 23 and I can’t check it off and it feels like shit. And I said, great, it should feel that way. Because I said to her, why do you need to run 25 miles? And she said, well, I’ve done marathons before, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And as she was talking through it, the light bulb clicked for her that the reason she needs to, if she doesn’t run 25, she’s not going to run the marathon in the time she wants.

[24:14] And I said, well, why would you settle then for 21? And it was like, boom, that week she ran 25. That’s the case. So you score it. You’re looking at what didn’t get done. Why didn’t I do that? What did I choose to do instead of that? And I’m not worried about the next six or seven weeks. I’m just, what’s it going to take for me to do that this week?

[24:34] And that’s where breakthrough comes from.

[24:35] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. Yeah. And, and again, again, based on the pause, ideally you’re working with, with Brian or a coach or like, so you’re working with somebody who’s going to help you do this and be that, uh, sounding board that you need to do. Cause we all need that person. So.

[24:49] Brian Moran: And then the fifth and final discipline is time use.

[24:51] Everything happens in the context of time. If you’re not intentional about how you’re using your time, what you’re saying yes to what you’re saying no to. Then you’re not in control of your results. So I asked people, it’s really interesting if we were live, I’d ask your audience. So what’s the first thing you need to know to be effective with your time?

[25:08] And people will say things like how much you have, which we all have the same in a day. People will say things like. What matters most that’s important. It’s not the first thing how I’m spending it important Not the first thing the first thing you need to know is what do you want? That’s back to the vision question, isn’t it?

[25:25] The next thing you need to know is what matters most That’s the planning question. The next thing you need to know is how you’re doing it. That’s the process control execution question The next thing you know, is it producing that’s the measurement question the scorekeeping. So there’s a sequencing to the disciplines even You know, Michael and I, my business partner, didn’t invent these things, we just packaged them in a system that makes it easier to apply them.

[25:46] But when you apply the five disciplines in the context of every 12 weeks as a year, there’s clarity and focus on what matters most, and then this healthy sense of urgency. And more of the important stuff gets done day in, day out, week in, week out. Again, it’s not perfect. You don’t need it to be, but in a few short weeks, you know, week after week, after week, after week, after week into 12 weeks, you can be in a very, very different position.

[26:09] And it becomes a closed learning system. Meaning when you apply it, you get better. It has everything you need. To get better every week, every 12 weeks. That’s what makes it so powerful.

[26:20] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What are the characteristics of the individuals who have the most success with this framework?

[26:27] Brian Moran: It’s all over the board, to be honest with you.

[26:29] From soccer moms to CEOs of Fortune 100 companies to everyone in between, solopreneurs. It’s really about the desire to get better. If I want to be at my best, we talk about living your best life 12 weeks at a time. If that’s meaningful to you, you know, you’ll have great success with it. But it’s not, again, you know, you don’t have to be perfect in any one of these disciplines.

[26:50] But the thing that is a tendency for people is they want to pick the pieces they like. And so the analogy I use, and your audience will understand this, but imagine the average person sitting on their couch. They got their bag of Doritos, they got their soda, their beer, whatever their favorite beverage is.

[27:05] And they say to themselves, you know what? I think I’m going to run a marathon. Everybody’s doing it, sounds great. They wouldn’t go out the very next weekend and run a marathon. Now your audience may be different because there are a lot of fitness, but for the average person, if they were to go do that, they might die, right?

[27:19] They certainly wouldn’t finish, they wouldn’t be very successful. But, but if they were serious about it, they wouldn’t immediately go out and run a marathon. They’d train for it. Because through training, you can accomplish things you can’t, you can prepare yourself for those things. The 12 week year is a training system.

[27:37] And just like if I went online and found a training system to run a marathon, there’s probably aspects of that system I like. The carb loading. Come on, man, I love pasta. I’m all in. I’m all in on the carb load. But that getting up, or that running 25 miles a week? That’s not so fun. But I can’t just pick the pieces I like.

[27:55] Same thing here with the 12 week year. You know, some of your listeners are going, Oh, that vision stuff’s fluff. It’s not. It’s the cornerstone of everything great you’re ever going to achieve. Others will say, well, that metric stuff, I don’t like that stuff. Well, it’s a piece you need if you want to perform at your best.

[28:10] And so really applying it as a system is the key to that.

[28:15] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And you’ve applied this to your own life, to your own business, and you found tremendous success over the years. And it’s easy for, for us to look at your life and your business and your world, Brian, and say, boy, things are just easy for Brian.

[28:31] Everything’s been success the whole way along. Has there been a failure or setback that you’ve experienced in your career somewhere along the way? That was valuable for you that you’ve learned from, that you’ve been able to apply lessons from and find success, not maybe despite it, but possibly despite it, or maybe because of it.

[28:51] Brian Moran: Not at all. It’s been clear sailing. Yeah. You’re the first person I’ve asked. There have been lots of them. So 2009, 2010, when that big recession hit, that they were talking about depression, Michael and I were working with large companies. And because they were big projects, we had a handful of them, we had a couple in the hopper.

[29:13] Well, if you remember, the whole banking system was on the verge of collapsing. People were talking about the banking system collapsing and all these major companies going out of business. So the companies we were working with put everything on hold. They stopped spending any money outside with folks like us.

[29:30] And that was our whole business. And so we literally lost everything. I lost everything. Burned through my savings. A friend of mine came over and wrote a check for my health care so my family would have health care. But I lost my car, I lost my home. Now think about this, Jim. Given what I do, I help people succeed.

[29:45] This is like an Olympic swimmer. This is like Michael Phelps drowning in his bathtub. I mean, there was shame. It was embarrassing. But you know what? We talked a lot, and some of my friends were saying, look, you just need to go out and get an executive position. Well, first
[30:00] off, those weren’t plentiful, right?

[30:01] We’re in a major recession. It’d probably take a year to get that job. It’d probably mean moving the family. And so, talked a lot with my wife, prayed about it, and both Michael and I felt like our best bet is to just, Re engineer how we’re doing our business and so we decided to move forward with the business But we had to completely pivot and re engineer it and so I had no assets I had lost everything and I owe the IRS 120 grand This is at the point where we said let’s re engineer this thing because working with large companies the selling cycle was 18 months So that wasn’t going to help us and they had everything on hold And so what I’ll tell you though is that having done that we did it 12 weeks at a time within 18 months My personal income was higher than it had ever been And so we use the 12 week year in a very difficult situation to pull us out of that.

[30:52] Jim Harshaw Jr.: This stuff works. You’ve applied it. You’ve found success with it. For the listener who’s sitting there saying, I’m in, I love it. I want to learn more. Can you recommend one or two action items that they can do? Let’s say in the next 24 to 48 hours, how can they start implementing? Like what’s step one, step two for them to start implementing what they’ve, they’ve learned from you here today, Brian.

[31:13] Brian Moran: Yeah. So if you go to 12weekyear. com forward slash getting started, there’s a getting started course and it’ll walk you through, it’ll get you started with it. So 12weekyear. com forward slash getting started and it’ll start with division. That’s the first place you got to start. You got to start with what do you want your life to look like?

[31:28] You got to challenge yourself. You got to get down to that stuff that maybe you’re uncomfortable, even verbalizing because that’s the stuff that excites you, but also makes you a little nervous. Um, that’s where you got to get and that’s the starting point before you build a plan before you start to execute, you know, your productive pause there, you need to take some time and do that.

[31:49] That’s the first step.

[31:50] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And by the way, for the listener, I know what you’re thinking right now is like, I already know what my vision is. I kind of want this and I want that. You got to do the work. This is critical, critical, life changing, life pivot kind of work.

[32:04] Brian Moran: Yeah. Yeah. And then it’s really learning how to create a 12 week tactical plan.

[32:09] But the, the easiest thing to do is look, take your annual plan and goals and throw them out, set a 12 week goal, maybe one business, one personal start there, right? Just start there, get rid of the annual stuff, get your mind around. You know, the end of March or middle of April is the end of your year, not December.

[32:28] And whether you’re in business or whether you’re doing it in their personal life, that’s when you’re going to, that’s going to cause you to act with a healthy sense of urgency. That’s just not going to happen with that annual environment.

[32:40] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And for the listener who wants to buy your books, find you, follow you, where can they find you?

[32:45] Brian Moran: Yeah. So our books everywhere. It’s, uh, Amazon, all those places you can find it, 12weekyear. com is where you can find us. We run a workshop every month, you can get the book and the workshop for like 20 bucks. So great way to really get started on it.

[32:59] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Excellent. Excellent. For the listener. I’ll have those links in the action plan.

[33:04] I also have a link to that Jim Collins article that Brian mentioned as well. Brian, thank you so much for making time to come on the show. Yeah. Great being with you. I love it. Likewise. Yeah. Likewise. Thank you.

Note: This text was automatically generated.