Today we’re sharing an exclusive Guild live with Jim, Tyson and author of the book, The 12 Week Year, Brian Moran.
The 12 Week Year teaches us how to Get More Done In 12 Weeks Than Others Do In 12 Months by substantially increasing your current results, lowering your stress, building confidence, and feeling better about yourself. Not by working harder, but by focusing on activities that matter most, maintaining a sense of urgency to get things done, and shedding the low-value activity that keeps you stuck.
2:35 vision
6:44 illusion of time
8:45 planning the same way we did years ago
10:30 a healthy sense of urgency
11:20 lag indicators vs lead indicators
15:45 the critical few
19:12 where to start
23:14 Brian’s 2 day planning sessions
30:41 it’s like investing
35:35 self-accountability
38:54 thinking you don’t have time to do this
40:50 fail faster
45:02 time blocks
48:40 the 13th week
Brian’s 12 Week Year virtual event January 14th & 15th 9 AM – 1 PM ET.
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Transcript: “The 12 Week Year” w/ Brian Moran
Speaker 1
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.
Jim Hacking
Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking
Tyson Mutrux
and anti symmetric. What’s up, Jimmy?
Jim Hacking
Oh, Tyson. I’m very excited. We have a guest today who has a book that was actually published by a publisher, not a self published book. I don’t know that we’ve ever had an an author who actually had a printing from Wiley, one of the real legit publishing houses. So I’m pretty excited about that.
Tyson Mutrux
Well, surely, Dean Jackson has been published by a legit publisher. I mean, I would hope so. At least, I’m sure I don’t think so. Well, let’s see. Well, let’s let’s introduce our guests. I’ve got a more detailed bio than what I normally do, Brian. So if he want me to shut up, just tell me but our guest is Brian Moran, who is the author of the 12 week year. He has over 30 years of experience as CEO, and corporate executive entrepreneur, consultant and coach Brian’s corporate experience includes management and executive positions with UPS PepsiCo in northern automotive. He has consulted for dozens of world class companies, including Coldwell Banker, MassMutual, Medtronic, New York Life and Tiffany and Company brands realization that most people don’t lack ideas, but struggle with effective implementation led him to what we’re going to talk about today, the development of the 12 a year, the 12 year is a process used by world class athletes and companies all over the world. This is not a book of theory, the 12 week year has been vetted by 1000s of clients and hundreds of companies and is backed by years of real life experience in this groundbreaking book by Brian Moran and Michael Eddington, they unlike the simple secret to help you accomplish more, Brian, thank you, and welcome to the show. Wow, what
Brian Moran
an intro. Thanks, man. It’s good to be with you guys.
Jim Hacking
Brian. So your book is one of the books that we refer to often on our podcast. It’s one of the books that we tell sort of new people or people who are looking for change what to look at, we put it up there with the Ultimate Sales Machine, the E Myth revisited. From Dan Kennedy books, it’s really I think it’s a formational book. And it’s something that you can really structure, not just your business or your life, but I wanted to start with a quote, and I’m sure authors hate it when people fill out a quote, but this is this is from early on in the book, and you say in order to achieve a level of performance that is greater than your current performance, you will need a vision of the future that is bigger than the President talk to us, if you will about vision.
Brian Moran
Yeah, that’s probably Mike’s, quote, not my nan Junkin. My Michaels fun is saying, hey, the stuff you liked in the book, he wrote the stuff you don’t I wrote, but I have a different opinion. Here’s the thing with vision, it’s the starting point of a live performance, it’s a cornerstone and, and people have heard that, but they still don’t do the work that’s required. And the reason that’s so important is that’s the why. I mean, if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna create a different level of results, you’re gonna have to do things you haven’t done before, which means there’s uncertainty, there’s discomfort, there’s anxiety. And so without this compelling vision, or a clear vision of the future, it’s too easy to do what we’ve always done. And that, honestly, Jim is how great performers become mediocre. It’s how great businesses go out of this isn’t necessarily we resist outwardly resist change, we resist it passively by just doing what we’ve always done. And, and it’s usually because we don’t have a vision for the future that’s bigger than the present that is compelling. That’s, that’s dragon a sport where there’s some fire in our belly and emotional connection to, to something that I don’t currently have. And so that I can connect the dots to be between taking actions today. So that a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, I’m living the life I want to live. And that’s really the power of vision, it’s, it’s one creating a vision like that. And then two, is staying connected to it. So that on a daily basis, when you’re faced with taking action you haven’t taken before, or entering into some stuff that’s uncomfortable or being willing to try some things that you’re not certain whether or not the work, there’s a reason for you to do that. And that’s why vision is so critical.
Tyson Mutrux
So, Brian, I’ve got a couple questions about vision. So a lot of people that we talked to you, they’ve, I mean, they’ve started their firm as a solo, and they’ve gotten a little bit of success out of it. And they’ve grown a little bit. They’ve never even given vision or thought, right? Like, like, what the hell’s a vision, like, and so we tried, we always tell people, Hey, we because we talked about 12, week, year all the time, you’ve got to have your vision. So I guess was, the first question is like, what is your advice to people to help them like break out of that funk as they’re sort of stuck in this rut, to get them out to focus on that vision? Because it’s a really, really big thing. But then also, we talked about the differences between cuz you talked about the aspirational vision, but also the three three year vision as well. So you kind of talked about I know it’s multiple questions, but you don’t mind just
Brian Moran
take it slow with
Tyson Mutrux
me one at a time it come up. Sure. Hey, man, sorry, I’m trying to get as many as I can.
Brian Moran
So here’s the thing when you think about, you know, solo practitioner, they had a vision at some point like you guys had a vision of becoming a lawyer, right? Going through law school, passing the bar, opening up their own practice, the problem for a lot of them is that kind of where the vision ended, right, or there might be an income goal, but there’s not really a vision. And it’s interesting, because we do a ton of this work, and most people are uncomfortable doing the work. So they tend to avoid it. But once you start working on it, it gets pretty exciting. Because it’s really, it’s really the first place where you bring the future into the present, it’s getting clear on what motivates you what excites you. And so, you know, there’s some exercises in our book, but just, this is one of those things that you should never stop working on. So it’s not like, Oh, I’ve created my vision, I’m done with that you’re always trying on your life bigger and bolder than what it is today, in all the areas that matter to you. So whether that’s relationally, whether it’s spiritually whether it’s physically the impact I have in the community, the friends, I have, you know, my business itself, but but the more you engage with that, the more powerful it is. And the more real it is. And because, you know, the brain has what’s called neuroplasticity, you’ve probably heard luminosity, advertise that and, and what that means is you can create new neural pathways in your brain, you can literally change the physiology of your brain by what you think about. That’s the power of vision. And they found that the very neurons that fire when you think about life arenas are the same neurons that fire when you act on. So. So vision isn’t one of these things. It’s something that really trains your brain to act on. And, and so really just encouraging your folks to just carve out some time and think about three years from now, what do I want my life to look like? And I like to say, by the way, what would great look like not good, God willing, you’re gonna be here, let’s make it great. And then we do that same exercise at different points in time. So when you talk about aspirational for us, that’s the 510 15 years in the future. And when you go out at a level like that, you can really think big, because you’ve got this luxury of time, and you have this illusion that Well, I got lots of time to create that I can be King of the Mountain in 10 years, no big deal, right. And so, so that’s a good exercise, but it’s still documenting that, and making certain that what you come up with is meaningful to you. It’s not what your spouse says or, or what society says, but really what’s in your heart, what’s meaningful to you. And then we bring that nearer term to three years, and it starts to get a little more uncomfortable, because that time horizon is not nearly as far. And so you start to realize, okay, this is getting real now. But we still want to encourage you to think about what is great look like, and align the three year with the longer term. So you say, Okay, this is where I want to be 10 years from now, this is where I need to be three years from now. And then in our process, then we said 12 week goals based off of that, so that I’ve got this, this long term living with long term vision, I’m acting with short term urgency. And that’s the key, and the two are connected. So the stuff I’m doing daily is driving a 12 week goal, which is connected to that longer term vision. So this, this thread to the whole thing that connects to my daily action. That’s when vision is really powerful, because now it’s influencing the things I do on a day to day basis. And so mindful of this is the activity that I said, it’s most important to me living the life I want to live in, and leaning into that. So what happens in that I do that more often. It’s not perfect, but I do that more often when I’m conscious of it.
Jim Hacking
So let’s get to the central premise of the book. Why does planning out a whole year not work? And how did you come upon the 12? Week year?
Brian Moran
Great question. So you know, it’s not that planning for a year doesn’t work, it’s just not as effective. I mean, planning for a year is better than not planning at all. The challenge is, though, it’s really difficult to predict the future, if we can predict the future, we wouldn’t be on this call. So the further you go out, the less predictable it is. And you know, when when planning first made way in the business 8090 years ago, whenever Did you know you could plan out for 567 years not not long was going to change. That’s not the environment we’re in today. And yet most people still operate the way they did 90 years ago, where Planning says one time, once a year thing, and we run with this annual plan and and so what happened for us, Jim, is we were working with our clients, doing that very thing, right, helping them set annual goals and build annual plans, breaking them out quarterly and monthly and even weekly, but we weren’t getting what we felt they were capable of in. And that’s when we realized that the annual environment was just too long a timeframe. It’s just too easy to put things off. January, everybody’s excited. But to get the end of January and most people are behind. And yet nobody’s worried. Well, why is that? Well, because your thinking says Well, I got 11 more months to catch up. And it’s that mindset that permeates the year that really gets in the way of people performing at their best day in and day out. So we had been working with kind of the fundamentals of execution, but we were bumping up against his barrier with the annual environment. And it was something that no one had ever questioned. And so we started a question and we said look, is there a different way to operate and we came across a concept athletics called periodization, which was began in the 70s in Houston, most sports today. And we adapted that. And that’s really where the 12 week year was born. And we found that 12 Weeks was a long enough timeframe to make profound progress, but near enough where you don’t lose sight of the deadline. So there’s, there’s a healthy sense of urgency that’s created in a 12 week year, that doesn’t exist in an annual cycle. Now, right now, I don’t know if this is Aaron life, but right now, early November, right at one level, everybody’s periodized, because they’re coming up in the last 12 weeks of their annual goals. But typically, what happens with that, Jim, is there’s a ton of stress with that. And so our clients operating in the context of every 12 weeks as a year, by the way, there are four of those in the year, that’s annualized thinking, there’s this, this total here, followed by the next and, and so what that does is it just creates a healthy sense of urgency around the things that matter most, you’re just more consistent with it, which, you know, a few days of that no big deal. But day after day after day, week, after week, after week after week. And the effect is like compound interest, it has a significant impact on the end result.
Tyson Mutrux
So Brian, I want to talk about the actual goal setting part of this for a second, we talked about the differences between the lag indicators and the Lean lead indicators, because I think a lot of people they tend to focus on okay, what’s the end result? And so, you know, I want I want 30 cases this month, or I want 30 cases over the next three months, but they don’t focus on lead indicators. So we talked about the differences between those two.
Brian Moran
Yeah, so there’s a couple a couple of things I want to speak to there. One is the lead and lag indicators. But that can be different than playing tactics to. Okay, so lag indicators are the end results. So if I have, if I have sales or revenue goal, then revenues lag. And it’s called lag, because there’s a time lag between when I set it and declare it and start to work on it when it comes to fruition, lead indicators that are measures that have a strong correlation to the end result that they happen earlier in the process, so that we have some predictability of probability of whether or not we’re going to hit them with the end result or not. So a great example of a lead indicator is online marketing, opt ins, right where you where you put your name and your email, and you get a video or you get a white paper or something like that every good marketer can tell you, the ratio of opt ins to sales might be 10, to one might be 1001, doesn’t matter, they know that so they’ll know much earlier in the cycle, whether or not what they’re doing is going to work to hit the goal. That’s a lead indicator. Now, when we talk about planning, you know, most plans are conceptual, most are directional. And everything we do is to drive higher performance through effective execution, because it’s not enough to know. And so conceptual plans don’t execute very well. What you’ve got to get is you gotta get tactical. So we’ll have we’ll have a very specific goal and outcome. Think of the goal as the outcome, the the tactics is the actions. And so one question is, what do you have greater control over the actions or the outcome? What would you say? Tyson?
Tyson Mutrux
Oh, definitely the actions? No question. Yeah,
Brian Moran
you don’t control the outcomes, the goals or the outcomes, the tactics or the actions, but we’re 12 week gear departs from traditional planning a big ways around those actions. Because what we’re looking for is really what we call tactics, which are statements in the plan that describe an action I can take. So if your goal is revenue, or cases in this case, right, what are the actions I need to take to drive more cases? Right, how do I get new business? How do I get referrals, things like that? How many times a day? Am I asking for referrals? That type of stuff? So just putting the plan and putting in the plan, get more referrals is conceptual, we’re going to break out? What are the things you actually do to get more referrals? What are the things you actually do to create more case, those are tactics, some of those you may track as lead indicators. Because a lead indicator might be how many people I talked to, about doing business together, or representing, right, and if I know my ratio, for every one, every time I talk to I get one key side of it, then then, you know, talking to people face to face meetings, or Zoom meetings, or whatever it is, appointments, whatever you call them, is a lead indicator. But I’m also going to need a tactic to drive those things. You know, what’s driving those meetings are those appointments? How many a week do I need to have that type of thing? So you know, there’s some overlap there. But the plan is one thing, the measurement of it’s another, and you need both. Does that does that help the dial? It’s absolutely perfect. Okay.
Jim Hacking
Brian talked to us a little bit about the importance of not trying to do too much. In other words, like really focusing on the things that are actually important versus just sort of taking a shotgun approach and doing whatever comes in your brain. Yeah, good
Brian Moran
stuff. My business partner, Michael and I were just talking about that today. Right, just the power of focus and how most people are diffused and part of that diffusion comes from the fact that you’re, you’re working off an annual plan. You’ve tried to plan for 12 months with low predictability and typically not tactical and so you look at 12 months you go I can take out a lot of stuff well The truth of the matter is, is we all have limited capacity. And doesn’t matter whether you’re a solopreneur, or you have 10 support staff or 10,000, we work with large companies, there’s still limited capacity. And so the more you take on, the greater the probability that you’re not going to be great at any of it. So with the 12, week year, we’re all about let’s be great at a few things versus mediocre at many. And it starts at the goal level. But you’ll hear us talk about one goals better than two twos better than three. Typically, when you start to get more than three goals in an area like your business, you’re probably setting yourself up to struggle, and then that carries through to the action level as well. You know, we call tactics I mean, you might think of 30 things that you couldn’t do, we’re looking for what are the critical few? What are the ones that are going to have the biggest impact? And so people will ask us how many tactics are the right number and a plan? And the answer is the least number. To accomplish the goal, not the least number, every goal would have one tactic, the least number of covered couples goal might be six, it might be 16, it might be 60. But but keep it to the to the minimum number, because you have limited capacity. And what we want to make sure is that we’ve identified the things that are going to have a greatest impact. And then we’re just more consistently, because if you want to, you know, the person making 10 times as much as you isn’t working 10 times as hard, they’re not working 10 times as long, probably working less, but they’re working differently. And so we’re looking for what are the high payoff activities that we can focus on and be consistent with, so that we do get that compounding effect in terms of the result. And that comes through focus. It’s the difference between a floodlight and a laser beam. They’re both lights, right? But the laser beam, same light just focused, you can cut through steel, same concept.
Tyson Mutrux
So Brian, a lot of people that I talked to you they they understand the idea of the 12 week year, they completely get it they get lead indicators, lag indicators, and they can they can apply that to themselves. But they really they struggle with applying that to their firms and like really getting their teams on board. So like what’s your advice for people like that are that are struggling getting their team to really adopt the 12 week year and stick to the plan?
Brian Moran
Yeah, good stuff, we start with doing the vision work with the team members first. And so our vision work is always first personally and then about the business. And that’s a piece that very few people do. But that again for for the team, right? It’s helping them connect the dots between what they do in the firm on a daily basis and the life they want to live. And, and your best performers will do that automatically. But the vast majority of people don’t. So taking the time to do that vision work to start with so that they know their why they know how to connect the dots, you know how to help them connect the dots, and then getting them involved in setting the goals and building the plan. I mean, we had we had one firm that they had read the book, she passed out the book to the team members. They read it they sat down to set the goals and build the plan. And they were setting a goal that she thought was kind of ridiculous. And she pushed back and pushed back and and the team though was really adamant. No, we can do this. So finally she acquiesced. But in the back of her mind, she thought to learn, you know, this isn’t going to happen. But okay. And what happened was they hit the goal in those 12 weeks, they ended up doing more in 12 weeks than they’ve done the prior nine months, you know, and that would not have happened had she not involved the team. Even if she had set that goal by herself, it wouldn’t happen. Because the buy in came as the team came together, talked it through, set the goal identify the tactics, and there was a level of commitment to it. That would have been nearly impossible to get had she’d done that and then tried to communicate it or sell it to them. So start with the vision involve the team and setting the goals building the plan, and then create transparency as you go from week to week so that the things that are supposed to get done are highlighted. We know who’s doing it we know who’s not. And we know where people need help. I mean, that’s cute.
Jim Hacking
That’s awesome. And so I was gonna ask you next about prioritizing and figuring out which goal to work on. But one of our viewers asked to do better than I did. Here’s what will Norman asks Brian, focusing on one goal is great. But how do you determine where to start when there are so many things that need to be
Brian Moran
done? Yeah, so So things to be done and goals may be two different things. Or they may not be in Will’s mind. I’m not sure on that. But when I think about things to get done, I think about tactics or projects. When I think about goals, I think about outcomes. So StateFarm Coronavirus, when we first started working with State Farm, they had about 27 different metrics they wanted to draw. And with the group we were working with who said that’s not going to work and they agreed because it wasn’t working for him. But but they still wanted all this stuff. And so what we did is we looked through it we said okay, what if you could only pick three, what would be the top three and they ended up focusing on three that kind of brought the others along in the wake, which is often the case. And and I think you know first separating actions from outcomes and then thinking about what are the top one or two outcomes that if you hit them this 12 weeks It would be great. Because those are the things that matter all that other stuff is, you know, it’s just interference, if you will, and noise. And it’s not easy. I’m not I’m not just saying cavalierly, hey, just pick two. I know it’s difficult. We struggle, every time we get to every 12 weeks, we have way more stuff on the board than we could possibly implement. And we’re forced to say, Okay, if we can only pick one of these goals, right, which one would have the biggest impact on the short term, long term? And do we need a second one, and we kind of go through that process, realizing that look, we every time we take on one for the probability of accomplish any of these diminishes exponentially. So we’re always it’s always this ying yang, this push pull between, we want to take out one more goal, but we really want to be successful. And so the first thing is, it’s a mindset shift, it’s back to the realization that you can’t do it all. Because if you’re under the illusion, you can, then you’re going to be, you’re gonna be one of those folks that just filled a plan with everything you can think of which is a disaster, the minute you realize you have limited capacity, and you have to choose, then you start to have the difficult conversations. And one of the things that when you form, when you flesh out a plan tactically to, you’ll see the work that’s involved, when you have conceptual plans, you can do, theoretically, you can do a lot more, because it masks the amount of work. So you think, Oh, we only have three tactics in that plan? Well, you really have 30 tactics, if you built it out where they’re, they’re truly tactics, and they’re not concepts. So So start with just the difficult conversation about love we the recognition that we can’t do it all. What are the one or two most important things that, that if we nail this 12 weeks, and so we’re not saying no to all the rest? We’re just saying no, for now. And at the end of 12 weeks, we’ll pick it back up and say, Okay, do those things still matter? Do they make the priority list now or not? But one of the things I’d say as a firm is, you know, if you had, if you had a revenue or key school, that’s probably going to bring a lot of the other important things along the way with it. You know, if that was if that was one of the goals, because for any business, you should always have a goal around the economic engine, what’s driving the economics of the business? And then how do we continue to drive that improve? So we’ll I hope that helps it it is, it is a challenging, part of being effective, though, is, if you? If you say yes to everything, then your yes is meaningless, you have to say no to some things. That’s the hard part. And it’s not just saying no to the bad things, you’re gonna say no to some really good things for the time. For a period of time, that’s all it’s not forever. It’s just for this next 12 weeks.
Tyson Mutrux
So Brian, you mentioned that, you know, whenever you’re meeting with your team, you’re throwing out goals and everything. I’m just so intrigued by that whenever you mentioned that, because like what what’s the process for you all, whenever you’re coming up with your your 12? Week, your goals? I? Can you walk us through that a little bit?
Brian Moran
Yeah, so we go off site for two days, every every 12 weeks. So we 13th week, and the first half day is just looking back, what worked, what didn’t work? What are we learning? What’s the trend, and then the next day and a half is really setting the goals building out the plan. And so when we start to look at the goals, you know, we always have, just like I suggested for your folks is we have a revenue or sales goal. And we have something that drives the economic engine. We’re also looking at some project based stuff for us. Because are there are there new deliverables we want to create? Because in order to market them next 12 weeks or 12 weeks after that, we’ve got to start creating them now. So there’s a portion of that. But what we’ll do is we’ll take we call them strategic considerations, every every possible area that we think we might want to focus on, and we’ll put them on a flip chart. And we sort through just like I said, Okay, if round the room, you know, if you can only do one, what is it? And we you know, they write it down and we go around the room and see what kind of consensus we have on it. Why did you pick that one? Why did you pick something different? And then we’ll kind of go that way, until we feel like, Hey, we’ve got with these two or three, we’ve got all we can handle? And then there’s some pretty tough discussions, because sometimes it’ll be like, what about this thing? What do we do with that? That really matters, because what we don’t do is we don’t build a plan around one thing, and then have kind of this side plan for the other stuff. If there’s time left over, you can go ahead and work on that. But this is the stuff that matters. And so we had those really difficult conversations about what do we do with that? And if we add to that plan, what do we pull it out of the plan, and sometimes you know, it comes together really easily. Sometimes it gets really messy. And when it gets really messy you just stay in the conversation and work through it. Knowing that if we’re going to err let’s err on less is more versus overloading us.
Tyson Mutrux
The Guild is an insanely productive community of lawyer entrepreneurs. Have a growth mindset who share their collective genius and hold each other accountable to take their careers and businesses to the next level. But in 2021, we are upping the game. In addition to exclusive access to the group FaceTime with the two of us discounted pricing for live events. In front seat exposure to live recording and podcasts and video, we’re mapping out for members, the exec growth playbook with our new program, maximum lawyer and minimum time.
Jim Hacking
As a guild member, you’ll build relationships and experience content specifically designed to complement your plan for growth. For a limited time, only the maximum lawyer and minimum time program will be offered for free to all new guild members. Join us by going to max law guild.com. We’re really lucky today to be speaking with Brian Moran, he’s been giving advice and spreading the love for 30 years. He’s the author of the 12 week year. Brian, my next question for you is about that 12th week of the year. I’m wondering if you’ve done any metrics or analyzing how much stuff gets done in the first four weeks, the second four weeks. And the third, I think part of the brilliance of your system is that it has those deadlines at 12 weeks. And I’m wondering, I know that I think you teach like to focus on getting a lot done in those first four weeks. But I know that a lot of people wait until the last four weeks to sort of get things done. Can you talk about that?
Brian Moran
Yeah, we don’t we don’t really have a lot of statistics on it. But but there is this this notion of look, as the deadline gets closer, the urgency goes higher. And so even in a 12 week, year, there’s enough time to put things off. The challenge with that is is is like in a sales environment. I’m just going to use this as an example. Because I think people can relate to it. Right? If I have to make, you know, five sales calls a week. And for the first of all, we say don’t make any, but it really takes five a week, it takes 60 sales calls over 12 weeks to hit my goal, then it’s really hard to make that up. Right, because all of a sudden, in some weeks now instead of five, I’ve got to have seven or eight. And and each week, I don’t have five, you know, then it bumps to eight. And each week, I don’t have eight now bumps to 10. And pretty sure even at a 12 week year I can get Perry. So you know, the real crux of the matter is, when we build a plan, we put due dates by week. And some some tactics are one time tactics to do it. Once it’s done. Others are recurring, like some of that sales activity we’re talking about or, or some of the delivery activity, if you will. And when that stuff gets pushed off, it can even in a 12 week year, it can become insurmountable in terms of getting the result. And so that’s why we want to be really clear on Look, what’s in the plan matters most the way you win the week is your work, the plan. Everything else is secondary. If you do all the other stuff, the plan doesn’t get done. Guess what we just lost a week. So as a team, we meet every week and we go through that what was what was doing the plan? What got done, what didn’t get done, why didn’t it get done? Why are we choosing to do other stuff over this stuff? What’s it going to take this week to do this stuff. Because if we do that, there’s a high probability we’re going to be we’re going to be at the end of 12 weeks. If we don’t do that, then all bets are off. So you know, the way we keep from stacking things to the very end is every week, we’re focused on the plan. And we’re focused on the actions in the plan, because that’s what we control the execution of the tactics. How well did we execute this week? And did it move the number, but all we really control are the actions or the tactics. So every week as a team, we’re talking about what got done, what didn’t get done? How are we getting back on track this week? Because, you know, if if we fall too many weeks behind, I mean, think about that, and it’s what we hear how many bad weeks Do you think you can have, and still hit your goal. So again, there’s a mindset around that that says, Look, we don’t have to do this, we only have to do this, if we want to hit the goal. We have a choice, right? We can dumb down our expectations in life. And so back to that vision, we can settle for less. Or we can figure out how we get the stuff done each week. And so we confront the breakdowns every week, so that it never gets out of hand. So Brian,
Tyson Mutrux
one of my favorite parts about what you recommend is time blocking. I never realized the importance of strategic blocks, like it just is one of the things we’re like, to me is like this makes no sense. It’s too much time out of my week. I can’t do this. And that’s usually the pushback that I get from other people. So we talked about the importance of time blocking and then also especially the strategic block.
Brian Moran
Yeah, you bet. I mean, think about this, if you’re not in control your time. You’re not in control of result. Like if the days controlling you, you are not in control of your destiny. You know, you’re gonna go wherever the day takes you. So time blocking is a way to take back control of your day and destiny. And it’s about carving out time for what matters is about carving out time to deal with the lower level activities that gotta get done. And it’s about carving out time to stay refreshed so you don’t burn out. Strategic blocks in particular, are blocks of time we’re working on the business. Everybody’s heard work on the business now. Just in the business, that’s a strategic blocks is a three hour block of time. And what’s happening in, in that block is I’m working on Plan items, I’m working on things that are building for the future. So there may be no tangible benefit today for me doing that activity. But if I don’t do it, there’s never a benefit. And so it’s like investing, think of strategic boxes in investment, if you don’t save the money and put it in investment is never returned. And same way here. These are the types of activities they’re not, they’re not the returning the phone calls and checking my email, and voicemail. These are the activities that are building the business. And if I don’t carve out time from they don’t happen, why? Because all the urgent, all the emergent floods me, people come in, in my office, my phone ring in my email filled up, right, and if that’s what gets the bulk of my attention, then I’m always going to be less than it could be. So strategic blocks is an intentional way of carving out time to make certain that each week I’m doing the things that are critical to me hitting my 12 week goals and building for the future. And it’s, you know, it’s it’s a different way of working. But if we don’t do that, what happens is, is you will never have time for it. It’s kind of like I use the investment analogy. It’s kind of like most Americans strategy for saving, right, if there’s any money left over at the end of the month, I’ll save it. And if that’s your strategy, there’s never any money left over. It’s the same thing here. If there’s any time left over, I’ll work on the input, there won’t be any time left over, you’ve got to carve it out first, and then let the rest of the day fill in around it. And you’re still not going to get everything. That’s the mindset shift, you can’t do it all, there will always be more to do than you have time to do it. So we have to, we have to make sure we’ve carved out time for the really critical stuff. And then and then we fill in with the other stuff. So that so that in the end when I go home, and the stuff that’s not done, really isn’t critical. It’s not the stuff that really matters.
Jim Hacking
One of my favorite passages in the book comes from the chapter greatness in the moment, hopefully it was written by you and I, but let me just read a little bit to our listeners. You can’t change the past or act in the future. The current moment, the eternal right now is all you have right now you can affect what happens to you for the rest of your life, the future is created. Now, our dreams are achieved in the moment, my wife Judy and I are both cancer survivors. For those of you who have dealt with cancer, either yourself or with a family member, you know firsthand how quickly you gain an appreciation for the present moment. Fact is that life happens in the moment life is lived in the moment. And ultimately greatness is created in the moment. Can you talk a little bit about that? Brian?
Brian Moran
Yeah, that that that is such a powerful concept. Because I think for most of us, right, we think if I’m ever going to be great at some time in the future, when my incomes at a certain level, my relationships look a certain way when I’m hitting my goals, or get this notoriety or whatever it is. And the truth of the matter is doing we’re either great in the moment, or we’re not. And either way that’s reflected in our results, because the results or outcomes there lay, I would argue Michael Phelps did become great when he won his 22nd gold medal or however, whatever the count is today. But it happened years before that, really in a moment, when he decided to do the things he needed to do and the medals and the victories were just the confirmation of it or the evidence of it. And it’s the same for all of us. Right? Because that’s all we have. All we have is right now the hourglass, great metaphor, I’ve got one in my office here. The sand at the bottom is the past, it’s one minute ago. It literally exists as a memory, sand at the tops the future God willing, we get to live at worst life lived. It’s one grain at a time, one moment at a time. And the more effective we can be in the moment, the more richer our life is in the future. Because what you’re doing right now is creating a future. And that when you really realize that and you grasp that, I think it brings into focus all the other things we talked about with the 12 week year from vision and planning and scorekeeping and all of that, so that you have the best chance of living your best life. And that’s really what the 12 week is about. So
Tyson Mutrux
Brian, the first time I ever did a 12 week year, I failed miserably awful because I didn’t hold myself accountable. I just didn’t I was bad about it. But the second one I did, I mean, I rallied and we it was, I like tell the story. Because we had a set we set a goal in the last quarter and this was about four or five years ago of settling 30 cases. And that’s all that was a lot for our for the 30 cases in the last quarter because we had them all queued up and everything. And we’ve really focused on we I think we hit 33 are in like right after the new year we get to like 35 It was incredible. It was but the first time I failed, it was awful. So I think to me, it was all about accountability. So all that to say we talked about the importance of accountability and how this just won’t work unless you hold yourself accountable.
Brian Moran
Yeah, that’s a fundamental concept for success in any endeavor. I mean, it’s a character trait really in and it’s it’s really is there is no other kind of bill Other than self accountability. So, you know, we have people that say, Hey, I’m looking for someone to hold me accountable. And we always smile, because it’s the least accountable thing you could say, it’s not their burden for you to perform, it’s your vote. And that’s why vision maps, because if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna be accountable, you have to, you have to have a connection to why you’re willing to go through the pain of change and do the activity. And why in the moment, you’re willing to choose that over, over instant gratification. But it’s really understanding that, you know, accountability is all about freewill choice. You always, always always have choice, even if you’re in an environment where there’s requirements of you. So, you know, if I heard I’m with you, and you had things I had to do still have choice in that I don’t have to work for you, I could work for somebody else. And if I choose not to do it, it doesn’t make me a bad person makes me a bad fit, though. But there’s a big difference, when I look at life as choose to versus have to, because when life is a habit, it’s very difficult. It’s very burdensome, at best I meet minimum standard, when when I really recognize that all life is choices, my energy shifts, and, and it doesn’t guarantee you’re gonna like the choices. I like the joke, April 15, rolls around in the US, right, you can pay your taxes go to prison, I don’t like either one of those choices, but you have choice. And that’s really, at the heart of accountability is this recognition that you have free will choice, and then taking ownership for that. So you know, we do a lot of work. In fact, our next book is just on accountability, it will be out mid year next year. And it’s all about this notion of accountability is ownership. You know, in every area of your life, from your health, your relationships to your business, your income, your impact your legacy, we always deliver on what we own. So if you’re struggling in an area, there’s probably a lack of ownership, you’re, you’re looking outside yourself, you’re waiting for someone or something, you know, so many people right now, I’ve kind of got that going on with COVID. Right? I’m waiting for this COVID stuff to go away? Well, you don’t control any of that. You’ve got to take ownership of your situation, your health, your your business, your impact all of that. And just go okay, that’s a dynamic that I don’t control in spite of that. How do I still live my best life? How do I still create the business I want to create? How do I still have the impact? I want to hear? That’s ownership.
Jim Hacking
I’m wondering when you go into organizations, and you present the 12, week year and all the concepts that we’ve talked about, do you see sort of themes or typical dysfunctions in organizations that come up time and time again? Or is each scenario different?
Brian Moran
Yeah, you know, there are, there’s some similarities, they’re all different at one level, they’re all the same at another. Right? Change is difficult and 12 week year, for most organizations have pretty significant change in how they operate. It changes the way the leadership engages, and changes the way that the team engages. And so yeah, they the, the notion of dealing with change, and the discomfort of change, is really the challenge. The 12 week year is pretty easy to apply in its process. What becomes challenging is if you’re taking new ground, the actions in the plan are things you haven’t done before. So there’s a level of discomfort with that. And oftentimes, what happens is the 12 week year gets blamed for that. And the 12 week year is not creating that. It’s just shining a light on it. But people go, Oh, I don’t I don’t have time for the 12 week, I went through this with a large company. We were working with their team. And they had some pretty significant changes. And they were like, well, I don’t have time to do the 12 week year. And I said, so. Tell me what, what you don’t have time for with a 12 year because I use it. I spent probably five minutes total using the 12 week year in terms of going online to the website, score in my execution poll my plan, right, what they were really saying was, I don’t have time to do the activities in my plan, which are the very activities that are aligned with the new role, which is all all discovered. I said, Okay. So what you’re telling me is you don’t have time to do the stuff that that matters, most of you to be successful in your role has nothing to do with the 12 week year. And, and that was pretty insightful for them. Because the thought was once a 12 week year, it’s not a 12 week year. But that is what people struggle with. They struggle with the pain of change, of taking their performance to another level. And the way they turn that pain off as they drop out of the 12 week year. It doesn’t, doesn’t help because now they’re not going to advance on their goals. And but in the moment, it feels better. So that that is kind of universal, that that we see, you know, when I say they’re all different, they’re all the same. That’s the piece that’s all the same that the real struggle is taking new ground. It’s embracing and leaning into changing your activity. So COVID comes along. And there’s a lot of people still out there with this mindset. I’m just going to hunker down, I’m going to tough it out till things go back to normal. Well, even once there’s a vaccine and all that stuff, it won’t be the same. Right? The normal will be different. And so that’s not an effective strategy, it’s really about looking at that and saying, okay, things have changed, I’ve got to be willing to change with it, I’ve got to be creative in terms of how I can get similar results or better results, even given the new dynamics in the marketplace. And the 12 week year, is really your friend and helping you do that. Because if you’ve got a tactical plan, you’ll know specifically what actions worked and which ones didn’t. So you can adjust quicker, because if you’re taking new ground, if you’re doing something you haven’t done before, the quickest way to accomplish it is to fail faster. But you have to know specifically what failed and what worked and that kind of
Jim Hacking
stuff, the discussion about people saying they need to get out of the 12 a year because they don’t really want to work on the things that they need to work on reminds me of a quote from a book that I just read called reboot by a guy named Jerry Kelowna. And his question is, how have I been complicit in creating the conditions that I say I don’t want? I just love that quote. And yeah, absolutely sums up for me. You’ve said,
Brian Moran
yeah, that ties back to accountability, too, doesn’t it? It’s instead of me looking outward, I’m looking inward and saying, okay, you know, what role have I played in creating this? So, Brian, Tom
Tyson Mutrux
Duffy wants you to answer the question of whether it’s necessary for you to score the activities that are included in your 12 week plan.
Brian Moran
Okay, good. Good question, Tom. Yeah, so, you know, we talked a little bit about leading lags with the 12 week gear, we track, the lead in legs, the results, we score, or execution. And the reason we do that is because that’s the most powerful lead indicator you have, because that’s what we can control. I like to talk about, look, if you want to predict the future look to daily actions, you want to know what your health is gonna be like three years from today and look at daily actions. You want to know what your relationships are gonna be like three years from today, look, your daily actions, you want to know what your firm and your incomes gonna be, like three years from today, look to daily actions. So with the 12 week gear, we score, the execution, we track the results in an in those two sets of numbers is everything you need to know on where to adjust and how to adjust. Because if there’s a breakdown, in other words, we’re not getting we’re not hitting a goal, we’re not hitting the outcome. It’s in one of two areas. It’s either in the plan, I don’t have the right tactical plan, or it’s in the execution. I’m just not doing it. Where do you think it is most of the time, the execution 80 plus percent of time, but what most people do, they go change the plan. And partly because it’s easier, but partly because they don’t, they don’t have a way to pinpoint the breakdown. With the 12 week year, if you’re scoring your execution and you got a tactical plan, again, conceptual plan that scoring is meaningless, got a tactical plan, and you’re scoring your execution, you’re measuring your results, you’ll know specifically where the breakdowns. And the cool thing about that is we found with literally 10s of 1000s people on system that you don’t have to be perfect if you’re typically scoring 80 plus percent, week in and week out, in most cases, you’ll hit the 12 week goals. So that score is absolutely critical. It is it is the most powerful indicator. Yeah, it’s it’s the measure that says how you performed as a CEO of your world last week, whether 90% or 30%. Down, we don’t ever beat ourselves up for it. Right, the tweakers a guilt free zone, you can’t change the history. But but if I, if I dropped the ball last week, I want to know that and I want to feel the sting of that. So that this week, I’d be performed differently. That’s the key to that.
Jim Hacking
Brian, I’m interested in how you plan your day and your commitments. I know that when we asked you to be on the show, you wanted to talk to us beforehand, which most people don’t do. I think you guard your time, wisely. And I’m wondering sort of if you have any advice or tips on the people are listening about how to structure their their day?
Brian Moran
Yeah, great question. So routines are really important. And how you structure that day, either set you up for success or failure. And so my day starts with that weekly plan. So I’ve got a larger vision, I got a 12 week plan, that translates to a weekly plan. And the only thing in that weekly plan is what’s doing the 12 week plan this week, it doesn’t have everything. So that really plans out my week and every day of my week, because that’s where I look at that. And I say Okay, where am I doing this? Well, that’s Tuesday, from 10 to noon, where am I doing this and so, so a lot of my day and week is planned out based off that weekly plan. And then I’ve also sat down and I’ve done a model workweek for me. And so in a perfect world, what would my week look like? That would be the most productive week I can have. And then I try and schedule my week that way. So I have time blocked out every week to work on content. So right now we’re writing another book I have time blocked out every week I’m gonna work on a book I have time blocked out every week that I’m doing some admin stuff. I have time blocked out every week that I’m doing, you know, times where I’m doing email and voicemail and things like that. I have time blocked out every week where I’m delivering things like this and and so from a from a broader perspective, I’m looking at, you know, here’s what would look like a really super productive week for me Not every week flows that way. But if I can’t make that work on paper, I can’t make it work in reality. So I start with looking at that. And then my day begins with my weekly plan. I start my day with my weekly plan, go, Okay, what was due yesterday? And did I get it all done? If not, right, that’s part of today. And then what do I have slated for today. And then I’ve got to make sure that I’ve got some margin in the day because there’s going to, stuff’s going to come up. But if I plan out every minute of the day, it’s going to be a disaster. Because there are there are things going to come into my day that I hadn’t planned on, and I’ve got to leave some margin for that. So winning the day is important. Winning the week matters more, you’re gonna have days of blow up. It doesn’t matter if you get the stuff done in your weekly plan that week, if you had to do it all on Friday, it really doesn’t matter. As long as you get it done. You win the week. And so that’s really what’s driving my daily activity. Jim, is that weekly plan, making sure I’ve got I got mine here. I’m checking stuff off. I’m looking at it gonna keep tomorrow’s Friday. I want to get out of here at noon. Okay, I gotta knock these two things out. You know. And so those, the, again, the plans the priority, if there’s emails or voicemails, I don’t get to I don’t get to.
Tyson Mutrux
I love that. We have more questions. But before we get to the last questions, Brian, we tell people how they can find your stuff, because you’ve got a lot of great resources. The most helpful thing for me has been the workbook, the that’s that comes along with or doesn’t come with the book, but you buy it separately. I think it’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah, it’s fantastic. But you have other things, too. So we talk about those and how people can find you.
Brian Moran
Yeah, 12, week your.com. So the number 12, week year.com. And we have a number of things. So we have a couple of freebies for you. short introductory video series, there’s a Getting Started course with your walk you through creating a vision, building a plan, some stuff like that, aside from that, you know, we have a an online package with some training videos and software are achieved software, then different things from there. And again, it’s just under $300 to have one on one performance coaching for 12 months, which is I think, 550 a month. So and there’s a bunch of stuff in between. And so depending on your your appetite and your budget, we’ve got something that can help you if you want to play the 12 week, year 12. Week year.com is the place to go.
Jim Hacking
Alright, Brian, so one of our members, Drew Hickey is asking, I’m in the middle of my first 12 week year love the book and concept. What do you do if you don’t hit a goal? Either because life happens? Or maybe you’re so successful at one area? You spend the whole 12 weeks on that? Do you tack on a few weeks to the end of the 12? Or just making a new goal in the next 12 weeks? What a great question.
Brian Moran
Yeah, good question. So you’re gonna, you’re gonna have times when you don’t hit the goal, keep in mind, you don’t control the outcomes. You only control the action. So so the question at the end of the 12 weeks is did I do everything I could to hit the goal or not. And either way, every 12 weeks is a new year, so you get a fresh start. So that 13 week, we really recommend you celebrate, you take some time off, you learn from the last 12 weeks, and you lock and load for the next 12 weeks. So in that scenario, you have a couple of choices. If that goal is still meaningful to you, then I set something fresh around that goal for the next 12 weeks might not be the same number. So again, I’m going to go to revenue, let’s say you had a revenue goal of 120,000. And you ended up at 60,000. Revenue still might be important, I’m not going to set the goal to just do the 60 amount of profit, I’m going to set a goal to do something in the next 12 weeks, I’m not going to add on weeks to my 12 week year, I’m not going to try and squeeze this in between 212 week years, I’m just going to set a new goal. And I’m going to learn from what happened in the first 12 weeks. So why did I not work on this goal? Was it too many things in my plan? And this one wasn’t really a priority? In which case I might not even include it in the plan. If it’s truly a priority that I’m going to challenge myself, Okay, what’s going to be different this 12 weeks what’s what’s it going to take for me to actually do the stuff in the plan. So I hit that goal, but every 12 weeks is a fresh start. So you can either set a new goal around that same area, or you can go in a completely different direction. But we wouldn’t we wouldn’t extend the year. The key is that there’s his hard
Tyson Mutrux
deadline. Brian will Norman has another question. And it’s it’s actually I’ve heard it before. And I’ve wondered the same thing. I mean, this is I guess more for you personally, but also whether it were your advice on this, do you have a personal 12 A year and a business 12 week year or just a business 12 week year? And if you do have both? How do those play together?
Brian Moran
Yeah, great question. So our business 12 week year we plan as a team. So in our software, you can do an individual plan, you can do a team plan, you can do both. And so I do both. I have a part of the company plan. So our leadership team has a set of goals, some of the tactics of my name, some of Michael some of Judy’s that type of thing, and then I have a separate individual plan that for me mostly has my personal goals but occasionally read some other some other business stuff in there. But it’s usually the business is a team based plan for us. And the individual plan has my personal goals. And then what happens on a weekly basis in the software that’s brought together and it shows the actions, the tactics that are doing each set of those. So where that comes together as on a weekly basis, whether using our software you’re doing on a legal pad, right? You don’t want to have really two different plans two different you I got 112 week year, I’m in week two, another one, I’m in week four, we’re in week two, I have some business goals, I have some personal goals. And look, if I were a solopreneur, I wouldn’t even separate those, it’d be all an individual plan because by default, everything in the plan has my name on it, you just have one or two business goals and maybe a personal goal.
Tyson Mutrux
We did want to be respectful of your time, Brian. So we are going to wrap things up. Thank you so much. This has been fantastic. One of actually probably my favorite, favorite interview we’ve had. So thank you. So
Brian Moran
anyways, right? Your favorite one today,
Tyson Mutrux
even now, it probably is my favorite one. We’re not just saying this. We talked about totally here all the time, it comes up on a regular basis. So I’m glad people actually were able to ask you questions. So thank you so much.
Brian Moran
We should organize a training or something for you guys. By the way, we’ll do a we’ll do a virtual live event in January. So if you’re interested in that, you know, get on our list somehow and we’ll let people know but you know, love to come back if you think I can add more value.
Jim Hacking
Thanks. That was great. Awesome. Well, thank
Tyson Mutrux
you, Brian. Have a great week. You too. See ya.
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