1790: 12 Week Year by Brian Moran- Achieve More in 12 Weeks Than Others Do In 12 months

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Hello everyone. Welcome to the Creating wealth show, episode 1790. This is Ashley in for Jason and today we've got a 10th episode show for you on a topic of general interest. It's the story start of a new year and it's a great time to set new intentions. So Jason sat down with his friend Brian Moran to discuss his book, the 12 week year. This book will walk you through the proven step by step system for achieving more in 12 weeks than others do in 12 months. So enjoy this episode with Jason Hartman and Brian Moran, co author of the New York times bestseller the 12 week year.

It's my pleasure to welcome an old buddy of mine, Brian Moran, to the show. He is the Author of the 12 Week Get More Done in 12 Weeks Than Others do in 12 Months. Brian, welcome. How are you?

I'm great. Jason, good to see you again, man.

It's good to see you after so many years. It's been decades actually.

Yeah, yeah, it's been a while. I was saying, you know, last time I think we talked I was a young man, so. Yeah, no gray.

No. A lot has happened since then and the. You know what's really interesting about this story folks? This is what a small world it is. I came across Brian's book. The 12 week year interested me. I checked it out and I'm thinking, is this the same Brian Moran that I sold a house to him and his wife back in Orange county when I was a realtor.

This can't be that same schlep.

And it is, it's the same guy about that. It's just great to get reacquainted in this kind of unusual circumstance, by the way. Yeah, yeah, really is, really is. But yeah, it was great being friends with you and your wife Judy back in the day and just great to reconnect with you. So really fun stuff. But Brian, I gotta, I gotta ask you, you know, this book has just been a stunning success. New York Times bestseller. Congratulations. And you've built a whole business around this whole concept which is very intriguing of the 12 week year. And in reading through the book, I couldn't agree more with the philosophy, you know, just the base idea that a year is too long. Yeah, it's too long. You can, you can really manage 12 weeks. And I remember reading the Rockefeller Habits years ago, which you're probably familiar with. And you know, it's like have a weekly theme or a quarterly theme, I think you said, you know, just talk to us about the book and how it came about. It's a, it's a fascinating story.

Yeah, yeah, happy to. So, you know, when we, when I went out on my own, I started thinking about, you know, what's the value I'm going to bring to entrepreneurs, to business owners, to leaders, to individuals. You know, my, my, my goal has always been to have an impact our miss to change lives. And so initially I thought, well, I'm going to bring them techniques, I'm going to bring them ideas. And as I started to do that, I realized that there's never a shortage of those. You know, that wasn't the issue for most people, that the breakdown wasn't. They didn't know the breakdown was they didn't execute. And so started working with the fundamentals that drive execution. And everything we do to this day is really geared around that because, you know, it's not enough to know you can be really smart, you can have great ideas, you can be well connected, it doesn't matter unless you implement. So started to work with the fundamentals and along the way bumped up against an athletic training process called periodization. And my business partner Michael and I looked at that and we said, you know what? That can be the accelerant for what we were doing because of the annual environment, because everybody worked in this annual environment. And it was never questioned. You might break it down quarterly, but quarter still one fourth of a whole. And so there was this mindset that went along with that. And as we were working with our clients. You know, that's the way we started. We started out doing annual goals and annual plans and breaking on the quarterly and monthly and weekly. But we still felt like we weren't getting what they were capable of. And so when we came across periodization, that's where the 12 week year was born. We took that concept, moved it beyond athletics to work, you know, in a business setting, in a personal setting. And so our clients work in the context of every 12 weeks as a year where there's, you know, this, this healthy sense of urgency and, and, and more. The important stuff gets done day in, day out, week in and week out. And it just, in a very short period of time that can have a profound effect on the outcomes, on the results.

What, what is puritization? And this is used in athletics? Yeah, yeah, tell us about that.

Yeah, so it began in the seventies in Eastern Europe with Olympic athletes. It was designed to create breakthrough performance. And so the way that's used is to really focus in on one particular discipline and raise the baseline. So we first got exposed to, because one of our clients was into cycling, and the U.S. postal team used periodization. And so in cycling, you know, back in the day, cycling used to be on a Monday, you do a light ride, On a Tuesday, you do road. On a Wednesday, you do sprints. You know, that kind of stuff. With periodization, you take one discipline like climbing or sprinting, and you'd work on it for a period of six weeks every day. And so you raise the baseline. Right. So it was this, the principles were this focus and intensity around something singular. And so Michael and I came across that and we said, you know what, that, that's really interesting. And honestly, periodization is used in almost every sport today, whether you know it or not. And that's where we adapted it. We took it beyond athletics, we moved it to 12 weeks. You know, in athletics, the one thing about athletics is typically there's training and there's perform, and they're separate in life. They're not. You know, I mean, in life there's certain activities that you're, you're doing to develop yourself, but it's still in the context of living your life, working your business. And so, you know, we had to, we had to accommodate that and account for that. And so that's, that's where that came out of, was that athletic training process that really has had a big effect on people athletically, not only physically, but also emotionally, to handle a higher level of performance.

Okay, so break down the 12 week year for us, if you would, is it like, you know, you do one thing for each week or how does it work? Like what are the mechanics of it? How does it sort of fall together?

So the first thing to understand is, you know, we're driven by our mindset, our thinking drives everything. And so the, the first thing you have to get away from is this notion that I need to know something I don't know, right. It's okay learning, but people are chasing new ideas, thinking that's going to make the difference, when if they just did more of what they know, they'd be healthier, they'd be happier, they'd make a lot more money. And then the next thing is. The 12 week year is first and foremost a thinking shift. It's getting out of that annual environment to the point where there aren't four of those in the year. There's just this 12 week year followed by the next. And then within that 12 week year we apply a set of fundamental disciplines and principles that drive execution, that drive high performance. And so the, you know, fundamentals, vision. Starting with if you don't know what you want, the rest of the stuff doesn't matter. So really helping people create a compelling vision. And what's different with the 12 week year is we don't start with your business or career or your income. We start with your life because business is part of life. What do you want your life to look like three, four, five years from now? And by the way, what would great look like? Not good. God willing, you're going to be here, let's make it great. And then we bring that more near term. And ultimately we align our 12 week goals with that vision. Because that's the why, that's the reason you're willing to step out and do things differently. It's the reason why you're willing to go through the discomfort of what it takes to achieve what you're capable of. So that is kind of the cornerstone of everything you're going to accomplish in life. Then we build a plan. Now listen, everybody plans. Most people don't execute. And so 12 week planning is very different. It's more focused, it's more predictable, it's more granular, it's tactical versus conceptual. So in a 12 week year, you have a set of 12 week goals with a tactical plan. And a thing we talk a ton about, Jason, is less is more. And it's not that we're killjoys. The fact is we all have limited capacity though. Limited time capacity, limited energy. Limited intellectual, it's not a slam, it just is. And so the more you spread yourself, the greater the probability that you're going to be great at none of it. So with the 12 week year, you know, our approach is always let's be great at a few things versus mediocre at many. And part of the reason we can do that is because we're, we're planning for 12 weeks. You know, we're not trying to plan for 12 months.

Right.

So you're going to have a compelling vision of the future. We're going to bring that near term and set one or two meaningful goals and build out a tactical plan, which we call the critical few. Not everything you can stuff in there, but the things that really matter.

Okay, okay.

Once you do that, you're locked and loaded for 12 weeks on a 12 week basis. We're applying on the other disciplines, the process control, the scorekeeping, the time use to make certain that the activities in the plan are what's getting done. So with a 12 week plan, every tactic has a due date and those due dates are weekly. So you'll know in week one what's due, you'll know in week five what's due. And so what it does is that defines how you win your week, whether you're, whether you're a solopreneur, whether you're working on something individually or whether you're part of a team, which is really powerful. And then another key to what we do that's different is that we have our clients track their lead and lag indicators. But ultimately our clients, and we do this as well, we score our execution. And the reason that's so important is because that score, that weekly execution score is probably the most powerful lead indicator you have. It's the greatest predictor of your future. Because we control the actions, not the outcome. So the goals are the outcomes, we're tracking those, we're scoring our execution. And in those two sets of numbers now you have everything you need to make adjustments. And so the 12 week year is about, really about making smaller adjustments more frequently. That's how we're able to accomplish more and less time. It's not about trying to cram more in. It's not about working harder, working longer. It's about making those adjustments. And most of those adjustments honestly are on the execution side. Everybody thinks the plan's flawed, Every plan is flawed. There is no perfect plan.

All right.

Bigger flaw though is we're not doing it the way we need to do it or it's A degree we need to do it to drive the outcomes we're after.

So the execution, I love that so many of us are attached to the outcome. And really the outcome is not always, but almost always, I'd venture to say a result of just a bunch of small actions, whether they're completed or not, or how well they're completed or not. And, you know, it's just a matter of doing these steps. Right? And then the outcome usually happens out of those steps. But I don't know, you know, it's tough because the dreamers in life, they kind of have these like, big goals, but they're just unrealistic and there's no actual plan to get there. And it's like, okay, here's this big outcome, big vision, you know, great, okay, but what are you going to do this week?

Right?

You know, Right.

So you get all excited about that, but then you don't act on it, and then you got to go off to another workshop to get all excited again about that.

Right.

I mean, it's all. That's the heavy lifting. And for most of us, the heavy lifting isn't physical, it's emotional. How do I get myself to do the things I need to do to live the life I want to live? And one of the positives about the 12 week year, but it's also challenging about it, is there's no way to hide from that. When you're on the 12 week year, it confronts you with that every day, every week.

Right.

You don't have to do this stuff. You only have to do this stuff if you want to live this life. The alternative is I can settle for less in life. And so the system will confront that for you time and time again because we've got the outcomes, but we're really focused on the actions. And to what degree are we doing. The cool thing is, Jason, as you know from the success you've had, you don't have to be perfect with the execution, you just gotta be consistent with it.

Right.

And so, you know, with tens of thousands of people on the system, I mean, if you're typically executing at 80% or higher, in most cases you're gonna accomplish 12 week goals. And we have all kinds of data on that. So you don't have to get hung up on, oh, I gotta be perfect, because you're not going to be.

Right.

Beauty is. You don't have to be.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, what do they say? Perfect is the enemy of done. You know, just do things imperfectly and then you'll learn how to do them better the next time.

That's right, that's right.

Yeah.

That's the only way you learn.

Yeah, absolutely. What are some of the mechanics of it though in terms of like, do we use a workbook, a time planner, a piece of software, all of the above? You know, some of these systems, you get sort of like bogged down in the system sometimes. Right. And that is probably not a good thing. Right?

Yeah, yep. So it really depends on your personality and to what degree you want to embrace it.

Right.

Everyone could just start by setting 12 week goals instead of annual goals, you know, just narrowing that focus and picking one or two things. Maybe one in your career, your business, one in your personal life. That would kind of be 12 week year light, if you will. Right. Just from there though, you know, we have a physical planner for people that like paper, but we have a software system. But, but both of those just support the process, if you understand the process, which says in, in a sense, the five disciplines that we work around, the vision, the plan, the process control, the scorpion time use, when applied as a system, are a self correcting system. Meaning I don't care how good you are. I mean, we've worked with everybody in just about every industry, Jason, at every level.

Yeah.

And when people apply it as a system, they get better because it, it has the fundamentals. You know, if you're thinking, hey, I'm going to be more effective with a plan that's not written, that's bull. It's not going to happen. You're not going to be the exception.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Or I'm going to, I'm going to be more effective with a conceptual plan versus a tactical plan. It's not going to happen. Or without a weekly plan or without blocking my time. And so it's really about understanding those, those core concepts and applying them on a daily, weekly basis. Again, not perfect. So you know, whether you're using the paper tool, whether you're using our software, whether you're doing on a legal path, you know, the key is that the 12 week plan isn't something you create every week and your weekly plan isn't something you create every week. The weekly plan is determined by the 12 week plan. So my weekly plan doesn't have everything I do, it just has what's due for my 12 week plan this particular week.

Why?

Because that's what's most important and that's a game changer because that allows me to then let go of everything else. Because everything else is secondary. Because Think about this. I set these goals based on my longer term vision. I said this is the most important thing I can accomplish this 12 weeks. And then I built out this plan that said these are the most important steps or actions, we call them tactics, to hitting that goal. So by default, and they have due dates. So by default, that's the most important stuff over the next 12 weeks. And when that translates out to a weekly plan, now we know how we win the week and where we should spend our time. And I mean, there is just so much stuff coming at you and it's constant.

I think this gives people a real sense of much more immediate feedback. Whereas when you look at a whole year, you just kind of get lost in this. It's too big a thing, you know, it's just too big. Yeah, yeah. Amazing. What do you mean when you say accountability as ownership? What does that mean?

Yeah, love that question. Because that's our next book. We just submitted it to the publisher last week.

I did not know this.

Yeah, no, I know, I know. It's good to you, man. So here's the thing. Most people experience accountability as consequences. Think about in society, when someone says, hey, we're going to hold this person accountable, it's always for something that someone did that they weren't supposed to do, whether it's an athlete or whatever. And then someone in authority comes in and they punish the person. And that's the way we experience accountability. You look it up in the dictionary, that's the way it defines it. But I think intuitively we know that successful people are accountable. And so how do you reconcile that? Well, the truth is accountability isn't consequences, it's ownership. And at the heart of accountability is free will, choice. You always have choice. It doesn't matter what your situation is, you always have choice. You might not like the choices you have, but you have choice. And that's where accountability resides. It's the recognition they have choice and then taking ownership of those choices. And in the end, I would argue we choose our consequences.

Right.

You either choose to be successful and have the things you want in life, health, love, relationships, material things, whatever it is, or not based on the choices you make every day. And then there's a whole nother level of that. Jason, when you talk about leadership, because every organization we worked in, people talk about holding their people accountable, which is really, if you think about that and you dig into that, what they're saying is, hey, when they don't do what they're supposed to do, I'm going To come in with a negative consequence.

Yeah. They're going to get in trouble. Right.

That's not accountability. And you'll never get discretionary effort with that. You get just enough effort to stop the consequences. And so you create this mediocre level of performance in an environment where people dread interacting with their boss and give them just the bare minimum to get by.

Right, right. You know, it's like communism. They pay us enough so we don't.

Quit, we don't revolt, but it's not enough to really do anything with.

Yeah, yeah. Right, right. And so they pretend they're working. Right. Yeah, yeah. Are most of your clients and trainings, are they business to business, like corporate type stuff or business to consumer where you're, you're training people directly?

It's a bit of both. You know, we started out, we started mainly in the corporate space because from my consulting background I was used to selling big projects so I could meet with like the president of Allstate. And they buy for 12,000 people. Sure. What we experience with that is kind of feast or famine. One year they buy, the next year they don't.

Right.

So, so we moved more consumer and basically in the end our training was to the individual anyways.

Right.

Because performance is a personal thing and most people engage with us for the 12 week year to drive income, to build their career, to build a business. But I would say probably 60 plus percent of them use it in their personal life as well. And in some ways it almost works faster there because think about if I want to get in shape, I don't need to get a bunch of other people in on that.

Right.

I don't have to convince anyone to buy anything or anything.

Sure. Yeah.

And so it's more in my direct control. So I can sometimes experience some of the benefits of it faster on the personal side than I do on the career or business side.

Yeah, that makes sense because you're the whole committee right there. Right, right.

I'm the problem and the solution.

Yeah, it's always the way it is. Sometimes we don't like that. But it's just life, you know, some the of, of the common pitfalls and any tips for success? You know, just anything you see with your students. You've of course mentioned some, Brian, but I'm sure there's a lot more. So just want to, you know, I.

I think the biggest thing I run into is I think you have to sacrifice to be great. I think the fallacy though is I sacrifice my integrity, my values or my family or things like that. I don't think you have to sacrifice that stuff, but you're going to have to sacrifice your comfort. Because if you're going to continue to grow and continue to create results you haven't created before, you're going to have to do things you've never done before.

Yeah.

And every time you step out into that area, there's discomfort, there's uncertainty. And so getting used to getting the mindset around that, that's how you grow. That's part of the, that's part of the process. And being willing to lean into that versus shy away from it is the key to succeeding and creating what you're really capable of.

Yeah. So being willing to be uncomfortable if you, if you want to break new ground, right?

Yep. Being comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Going back to the big part of this, just kind of as we wrap up here, just kind of going back to the beginning. But you know, vision, it's hard for some people. You know, they don't know where to go with that. Like, what's my vision? What should it be? You know, how do I figure out my vision? Right. I'm sure there are many people that follow this and they think, you know, I could achieve a lot with this, but I'm not sure what I want to achieve. Any advice on that in the 12 week year or is that not an area that you, you play?

No, that's absolutely area working. And you're absolutely right. I see two schools, one group, and it's a small group, really love to do vision work. And some of them, as you pointed out earlier, that's all they do. They never act on it.

It's just vision and no action.

Vision, vision, vision. And then there's this group that really kind of shies away from it because they're, I don't know, it's like they're worried about this. You know, the one thing I don't want to screw up is my vision for my life.

Right? Yeah.

But in our book and our workbooks and our trainings, we have some different exercises for people to start thinking about. I mean, you've probably done the have, do, be exercise, right. What are all the things you'd like to have in life? Material, non material things. What do you want to do? Who do you want to be? And so you start thinking about that stuff and, and realize there's no right or wrong. The key with a vision is that it's yours. You're not creating it on what society says or your spouse says or what your boss says or Something and that it taps into your greatness. A real compelling vision has to make you a little uncomfortable. You got to have some of that. Oh, man. But you got to want it too. So many of the visions I see are people put stuff down that's nice to have, but if they don't have it, they don't care. It's not like they're going to go, you know, do everything they can to make it happen. That's not a vision. Yeah, that's a pipe dream. A vision has something that as you sit down and you think about. So I start with, you know, just think about different areas of your life. What, what do you want your health to be like five years from now? 10 years from now?

15 years.

Right.

What do you want your relationships to be like? What do you want? You know, business. So much of business, there's two aspects to that. One is getting fulfillment from the work I do day in and day out. And then the other aspect of business is it funds a lot of other things, right? So making those two connections. And I see too many people don't enjoy what they're doing, but it funds the other stuff. And I'm like, you can't spend your life doing this.

Right?

So I think the key with vision is you just, there's no right or wrong. Just start thinking about what would a compelling future look like, right. Start three years, start five years. What would a great life live look like? And then just add detail to it. The more, the more detail you can add, the more impactful it is because our brains don't. You know, the more you engage with that, your brain starts to believe it and that's how you begin to act on it.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. You know that compelling vision not being a pipe dream, right. Being something that you actually want and could actually work toward. Right. And making it sensory specific like that so that it starts to become something we internalize. That's, that's great advice. Yeah. Really good stuff, Brian. Where can people find out more?

12Weekyear.Com is where you can find us the number 1, 2.

If you go to TwelvethGear.com getting started and just fill in your email and your name, I'll send you three emails that'll walk you through, give you some vision exercises and help you with the planning and the five disciplines. So get you going on that if that's of interest to your folks. But 12WeekGear.com we have everything from those that free stuff to online courses to performance coaching.

Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, Brian Moran Dan, it's so great to connect with you again and thanks for sharing this wisdom with us on the 12 week year. Really glad to have you.

Yeah, my pleasure.

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