How to Achieve Your Dreams Faster

There's only five moves in anything we ever want to do. I think when you think there's more than that, you're not chunking and breaking down a project appropriately. Any project, any program. It doesn't matter if I'm rolling out a program to a Fortune 500 company. I'm building a leadership development program right now for a Fortune 500 company. They're going to roll that sucker out over the next 24 months. It's a two year global rollout. Guess what? There's only five moves. I'm going to write a book. There's only five moves to launching a book. There's only five Moves in anything we ever want to do. I think when you think there's more than that, you're not chunking and breaking down a project appropriately. There's a lot of steps within each move, perhaps. But in general, I always want you to think at a high level. If you only had five moves, five major steps, if you will, or five major chunks to make that happen, how would you do it? I'm going to break down how I think through that and hopefully it will spur ideas in your mind about your project. My first move was, well, you know, what I'm going to do is I'm going to have to go out there and I'm going to have to compare other programs to what I want to create. I need to go out there and do my market research, if you will. You might call this market research. I was just like, I need to compare what else is out there and I need to understand what else is out there. Now a lot of people know that, right? Maybe you're doing some research right now. You're like, wow, I'm doing some market research myself, Brendon. I'm trying to figure this out. Here's the difference between me and a lot of other people. A lot of people say, ooh, I'm going to do some research here. They get super excited. And then they go down the wormhole and they research for nine years and they don't do anything. Cause they didn't fill in this project management approach. And so they got distracted. They studied too long. They researched and got down a wormhole and didn't make decisions afterwards. And that's why, my friends, project planning is so incredibly important. Project planning prevents you from spinning your wheels. It prevents you from getting in a loop of uncertainty, getting confused, getting lost. So here's what I do for each of these things. I take my mind through a process of asking myself several questions to complete this move. So first I'm going to begin by let me compare myself to other programs. So let me teach you what I do specifically to compare myself to other programs. Number one, the first thing that I do is I set a target. Set your targets. This might mean goals or metrics, things you're going to measure. It's some kind of numeric measurement of this. So what I said is I'm going to compare multiple other life coach and executive coach certification programs. I'm going to compare them and see what they are like. And what I want to do is I want to target the top five other certifications in the world. I want to know these other top five. And I didn't know what the five were. I said, this is the goal, this is the target. Compare five. Here's what I want to do. I want to understand what are they? Who built them? Have they been academically validated? How many people have they coached and trained? What do they charge? How do they sell it? What's the website look like? What's the application process look like? What's the actual training like? Who is the person who follows up with them after the certification? What additional training they get after the certification? Are they being taught to build a business or not? Are they just being certified on a process? Are there role plays? Are there people who support their growth afterwards? What online curriculum? I mean, like, I had literally this huge list of things that I wanted to learn about these five other programs. But notice I didn't say I need to know what all of them are doing in the world. No, I said five. Find out top five, Dig down deep. Understand top five, period. Number two, I said, what's the timing of this? Now, I know you project planners, like, no, duh, but like real project planners, you know how insanely important this is, right? There are five other programs. Guess what I could do with these five? I could make excuses for how long this was going to go on, right? I said, I have, for this project, 120 days. That's it. I said I got four months, four months and four months total to figure this sucker out. That's all I got. Four months. Four months total. What did that mean? Well, guess what? Some of these organizations, their programs were months or years away. So we said, I have 120 days. That's four months to dive deep into, into this research project. Now, some of these certifications might be six, seven months out. So guess what? I couldn't wait to attend all of them. So I had to find another way. So what Did I do? I messaged the people who claimed to be certified by that. I went on a LinkedIn, I messaged them, I said, hey, you've been there before. Could I give you a call and try to understand what they're doing there? Could you walk me through, is this a worthwhile program? Is it great? Is it awesome? What did you love about it? What did you hate about it? What are you supported? Are you not love to learn about it? I'd love to share what I've learned in my coaching career. So you share yours, I'll share mine. We'll be a happy family. That's what I said. So instead of saying, well, I guess I'll have to wait till next year, no, I only had 120 days. Third, I had to ask the question, is their team or should there be team engaged? What I'm doing meaning is there a way to speed up the accomplishment of this or take it off of my plate, Right? So back then when I was the team, I was the only person. I wouldn't have anything here. There'd be a scratch today. If I wanted to compare things, what I would do is I would go out and I would say, you know what, I'm going to get one va that's virtual assistant. I'm going to hire a virtual assistant, put them on a four month contract with clear outcomes for these. That's what I'm going to do. That way this can be going on without me slowing the revenue producing activities of my current company. You all follow that I did the same thing with high performance habits. There are parts of that research project that literally either didn't have the competency to do like I just didn't know how to do it or, or two, I didn't have the time to do it. So I hired some researchers, some postdocs, some PhDs to help me compile some things that would speed up my research. Does that make sense? So this question is the critical one. The problem that you might face in your career is you go, oh, but Brendon, I don't have any team. And here's where I tell you, listen, we live in an outsourced world, right? We live in an outsourced world. And what's important is you don't stop asking this question because you don't have a sufficient team. Like I've got four or five projects. Last night on a piece of paper I said I don't even know, like I literally don't know how I'm going to do this and what I had to do is go, well, my team's maxed in this capacity here and here and here. I guess in the short term we're gonna outsource here and here and here. Does that make sense? It's really important to not, not fail to consider this. Is that a double negative feels like a double negative. Make sure you think about this. That's the way Montana would say, make sure you think about this. This is very important, you know what I'm saying? So really think about, could you bring on team to make this whole thing happen? Number four, the big thing I think about is training. What training am I going to need or is the team going to need to achieve big move? Right. What's the training I'm going to need or team is going to need to accomplish big move? So for me, what I was thinking about this is I was going to work, as I was doing the work myself, I was going to say, okay, whatever I see these other big programs doing, where I go, I don't know how to do that, or I don't have any curriculum around that, or I've never learned that. I'm going to have to get my training in that aspect of coaching where myself or my process is weak, right? This is the most important thing. When you are building out your major moves, it is absolutely frigging critical that you figure out what is the training you or your team is going to need along the path. And everyone forgets this. They just think, well, we'll just get in there and we'll brunt force SWAT team this. And I'm like, oh no, you must always be in personal development again. That's why I honor you guys for being here. You've got to always be growing, always be learning. A lot of the times people go and they achieve things, but they didn't learn the knowledge, skills or abilities that would make the things better. More well rounded, more excellent, more distinct because they failed to get training as they went. You know, it's like, you know what I love about music? As an example, if you're learning guitar or you're learning piano, you know that as you're doing that process, at the same time, you've got to be learning about musical notes, you gotta be learning about beats. You have to learn about how music is produced. Like, you teach yourself these other aspects, not just the thing to strum the guitar or to pound the keys, you learn a broader skill set of music. Does that make sense? So I literally worked with a researcher who became one of the world's most famous researchers about the highest level musicians. And what he was doing is he was interviewing the highest level musicians. And, and in that process, what he always found out is they had what you would consider sort of congruent and very well timed processes for understanding what am I studying over here? What am I studying over here? In other words, they were always studying two or three things at the same time. They were training, not just doing one thing. They were training what are called adjacencies, the things that went around it. As an example, if I'm going to study how to, let's say, launch a book, I'm going to study the things around launching a book. I won't just study email marketing. Launch a book. I'll be like, oh, what are other people doing in social media? Launch a book. I don't know how to do social media video like that. I better train on how to do social media video like that. Like this training row is going to be critical to our success long term. As you will see us Break this down. I hope you guys are enjoying this. And writing down number five. What tools are we going to need to develop or deploy to accomplish this move? What tools do we need to develop, use or deploy? So sometimes the tools mean this is the deliverable you might be. You need to create things for each of these major moves. Sometimes that's what that is. It's a deliverable. Sometimes the tools are things that you're going to utilize. Oh, you know what? I don't have a scheduling system. These guys will have scheduling systems I need to develop. Like, okay, I'd better develop a scheduling or acquire a scheduling system. I didn't know I had to do that. Calendars are a real big part of coaching. I didn't know that was a thing. I'm going to have to develop that specific tool in my company. Or you know what? I see that these guys are creating, you know, other deployable tools for their customers. Let me create something like that. So that's critical to me. So I hope that this is all coming together for you a little bit here of how deep I go into each move. And by doing this, here's the thing, I know right now you might be like, this is overwhelming already, Brenda. That's five levels deep. I'm like, well, it's five moves five levels deep. And yes, I do this for each project. What it does is it makes me more strategically minded. And being strategically minded is what makes me successful in my own project management, if that makes sense. But this is five moves Five levels deep. For every project I'm thinking about what are my targets here, what are the goals, how much timing do I have, when does things happen, when do things deploy, when are things launching, how much, what's my deadline that goes here? Team, who needs to be involved, what are their roles, what are their responsibilities, what are their objectives and how does that align with the timing training? What do I or my team need to learn in this move in order to master it or move forward on it Tools, what do I need to use, deploy, acquire, create to make this move happen? Right. That is the summary of five moves, five levels deep. Now I'm going to continue breaking down each of the five moves so you can see how an entire program that's literally like probably one of my most game changing programs worldwide. Because all these certified high performance coaches now as they're out in the world doing their work, guess what, they're following the same process that I use. And so as I do my daily work as a certified high performance coach and they're doing their daily work as certified high performance coach, they're like an unbelievable army that's creating this ripple effect out there for me. So this is huge program that began literally on a sheet of paper drawing this out. I'm going to break down the five moves next and five levels deep. But now you get the framework. I want you to have a little bit of time to start working through your five moves. So in a minute we're going to play a video for you on the bigger picture of project management. So you see where some of this is going to fit in. And then what I'm going to do is come back, I'm going to break down the deployment of an actual program. So you can see how do I like step the whole thing through. But before I step through my entire thing in this moment, while you have freedom to brainstorm, we'll play an archive video for you so you can see how I think about project management in general. And then we're going to come down. Busted, all the way down. And these are great times. I play these videos for you guys in these often so that you can watch and learn something at a bigger perspective. But you can also, if you want, this is a great time for you to workshop, right? Maybe you draw this out for one of your projects. Maybe you've already done that while we're watching, do it for the next 2, 3, 4, 5 projects while we're doing this. And then I'll be right back after the video and we're Going to break this all down and I'll show you how to tie it all together. So. So you SWAT team and move really fast in this next couple months and the next decade, too. Hey, everybody, it's Brendan. I love this question. How do you manage projects so that you're happy with the outcome at the end? You know, maybe you're a leader of an organization and you're managing big projects all the time and you're trying to usher them forward so that you can not only make a great contribution, but you can get a promotion and move up. Or maybe you're an individual contributor, creator, artist, and you have your own passionate projects that are commerce or not commerce, and you're just trying to make them rockin'. Or maybe you're just somebody who struggles to keep to a deadline, struggle with being effective as a human being in almost every area of your life. What do you do in all of those circumstances? I'm happy to take that question. I think the first thing before you do any project is a very, very simple question, and that is, do you truly have the desire to do it and you feel like you can effectively do it well, and I'll share this with you because here's the deal. I think most people are doing projects they shouldn't be doing. You know, as a high performance coach, I've spent so much time consulting, advising, coaching Fortune 50 CEOs, extraordinary, successful people from hundreds of industries around the world, multi millionaires, people who are in the media all the time, people who have major responsibilities, their shoulders. And half the time I work with them. It's about clearing the decks. It's about, why did you even commit to doing this project? It's not something you truly even care about. Well, I felt obligated. I'm doing it as a favor. Well, I'm doing it because I think it might pay off one day and there's no real passion there. And the best way to do a project well is to not do it. If it doesn't matter to you, just stop. Just say no. Reject the projects that come your way, that don't really engage you. Because, look, life is too short for you to be spending your time doing things you don't care about. I mean, I think one of the number one reasons people get so frustrated with their lives and feel a lack of engagement is because they're doing a lot of busy work. But that busy work is not their life's work. And so they're off path, they're off purpose. And no wonder they can't complete projects. And because those projects that they're doing, they really cultivate no passion, no creativity. There's no real deep desire there. And because that's not there, they don't do them. And now you feel guilty because you're not effective. No, it's not that you're not effective. It's that you're being ineffective at doing the wrong things. Once you're doing the right things, it's much easier to be effective. Passionate, engaged, enthusiastic, excellent, those things. So, number one, is it a project that you even give a damn about? If not, get out or give somebody else the opportunity to manage it. Which brings me really to my second point. Should you be the person? Even if you are passionate about it and you do love and you want to be involved, should you be the person managing the project? See, there's a big difference between being an individual contributor to a project and being the person who. Who's responsible for it, who manages it. See, I've learned a lot of ways in my life. I shouldn't be the manager. I don't like doing all that big coordination. I don't like the details, the tasks, the work plans. I want to be engaged, I want to contribute, but I don't want to manage the whole enterprise. So I find people to do those things. Even if I'm advising a startup. Let me come in there, add my unique values and contributions. Kick butt for you. But I don't want to be the person who's the COO of that startup. Does that make sense? So you got to be honest with yourself. Are you good at managing projects? Do you draw joy from it? Is it your natural ability, your talent? Have you developed those skills? Is that something you want? And if not, learn to be a key contributor, not the person who must manage it. Totally vital, absolutely important. The third thing I'd say to do well in projects is if you are managing or you are contributing. The third thing is absolute clarity on what is the real outcome of this project? I mean, what's the end game at the very. If this was done completely and perfectly, how would we know it was a success? What elements would be there? What impact would it make? What metrics would be measuring success? Like you really need to have a vision for the project complete. How do you know when you cross the finish line? How do you know when you pass that part where it feels like a struggle and it sucks to hitting your first milestone and you're really on your way? If you don't have a vision for the project, it's pretty likely you're going to get distracted and derailed. Next piece is to. As you're thinking about this project and you want to do it well, you gotta have the calendar in place. You have to have real deadlines, real steps, real completion dates, real people managing the parts of the project that matter. I mean, it's that detailed stuff that most people forget. And I know you're probably better than that. And you go, yeah, I got it, Brenda. I've got a schedule. When I work with people, it's like, no, you really need to plan things out to a very finite detail. Not to be a perfectionist, but to be able to kind of know all the moving parts, who's involved and when, who owns what piece, is contributing, what thing, who is ultimately responsible to keep this thing on track. What has to happen by what date, or everybody dies. You have to have real clarity into that. And most people don't. So they're kind of moving towards something, but there's no real milestone, there's no real things that they're trying to accomplish. And that's why they keep feeling like they're distracted all the time. Because it's easy to be distracted when you don't have clear purpose and deadlines. Last piece gonna do a project well. Focus on these three things. Number one is distinction. How can you do that project different than anybody else in the world would? What's that? Unique strength, talent, ability, team perspective, system, tool thing that you will bring to the project that makes it different, fun, unique, significant. Because if you're just going through the same motions you did, you're going to do this project Exactly. You've done 100 projects before. Guess what? You're going to be bored with it. You're not going to bring any magic to it. It's not going to make a difference or really grow. It's just going to be another thing. You are ultimately being a cog, not a creator, not a contributor. And so you gotta get outta that idea that you're doing everything exactly the same and find what's unique that we could do here to make this thing magic. Second, how do we do it with excellence? I mean, how do we wow people with this thing? How do we bring a degree of excellence, keeping everything tight and pristine and perfect, like the things we actually like. How do we make. Make it really, truly stand out with excellence, where people are impressed with the quality of it, the quality of the thinking, the quality of the experience, quality of the interaction. And then third, how do we do it at the highest level of service so that the people that the project is intended to help or support or benefit, that they really are served that every interaction point they have with it, they're like, wow, I feel like I've been taken care of. That. You're thinking through their emotions, their feelings, their impressions all along the way of this project as it's delivered or ultimately completed. Because at the end of the day, every project has a purpose, and that purpose always involves people to help people, support people, serve people, impress people, deliver some kind of service or promise to the people. So be thinking about the people. Think about the service. Not just in terms of customer service, but service, humanity, heart, purpose, reason. The stuff that we all get engaged in. The things, the intangible things that make projects worthwhile in the first place. If you can look at projects through these lenses and do a greater job in all these areas in one way or another, you'll start to have this feeling that, you know, I've got to manage on this now. I've got to control on this. These things are turning out much better than they have before, frankly. You'll enjoy doing the projects more often. They'll engage you, they'll serve people better. You'll start to have more effect and impact. You'll start to inspire people more. You'll start to experience what we call the charge life.