INTRODUCTION
A few years ago I started on a journey in my life. A journey to discover myself, and to become the best version of me I could be. Maybe, just maybe, it’s possible to truly live your best life, and what I discovered was an operating system that might now be what you think.
I have a tendency to see the big picture. As a visionary, I’m always watching what people are doing, what my mentors and coaches are creating as experiences, what works in the digital content space and what doesn’t work. What gets people results and why so many people waste so much time, effort, energy and money on content that they never actually do anything with.
Over the years, I’ve spent a small fortune on content only to achieve lackluster results. It’s my own fault. The courses are fantastic (for the most part) on their own but when it comes to actually doing the work, I just wasn’t willing to do what was required to get the results so many of these programs offered.
I’d go to a conference and leave with all sorts of ideas, new content, new information. I’d buy something that was a guarantee of results but of course, the fine print would say something along the lines of ‘you have to do the work’, and usually I wasn’t willing to.
I was running a digital marketing agency, growing, going to all sorts of conferences and learning anything and everything I could get my hands on about the field. So much content and information.
I love learning! It’s one of my favorite things to do but as I sit here and type these pages, all of that learning has led me to a place where I’m still not in the place of financial abundance I’d like to be.
It drives me crazy to know that there are so many people out there with less ‘information’ than I have achieving massive results. What are they doing differently? Why do some people seem to get results and others don’t?
You see, we all have these dreams of grandeur, the things that we want to create or money that we want to make. But we rarely stop to ask ourselves if we want the lifestyle at the end of the yellow brick road.
We go to college for years, only to graduate in a recession where the jobs are scarce, and even if you get one, you are then working a 9-5 for a salary looking forward to getting out of work every day and the next ‘vacation’ that you get to take.
I see so many people unfulfilled with their lives, with their careers, with their relationships, their bodies. Depression is at an all time high and the pharmaceutical companies are making a killing prescribing drugs for conditions that never used to exist.
We’re taught all of our lives to work and strive and build and build to eventually get to a place where we will ‘be enough’. Where we will ‘have enough’. Where we have the house of our dreams, the car, the boat, insert your blank here.
All the while we work and work and watch as life flies by, not even noticing the day. Wake up, work, get home, eat, go to the gym if you’re lucky, spend time with your kids or family if you have them, all while constantly being barraged with social media, email, movies, television, sports, politics.
A few years ago, shortly after I had started my company, I sat in a room at a conference where they ran a visualization exercise. In this exercise we were supposed to write down on a piece of paper the amount of money that we wanted to make. As the naive business owner I was, I wrote down the typical number without much meaning behind it. $83,333. Why? Because that was 1MM a year and my dream was to make a million dollars every year in my company.
The problem was two fold.
I didn’t consider the lifestyle that I wanted to have while I earned that million dollars.
I didn’t align the goal to something that was meaningful to me.
We love to set these lofty goals, like I want to be a millionaire investment banker, or want to be a businessman, or executive. But do we ever really take the time to look at what the life of one of those people looks like? Constant meetings, working 12 hour days, never being home, vacation time that we don’t take.
You see, if we don’t look at the lifestyle that we want, then were never going to get it. We will be tossed to and fro climbing the corporate ladder, or the business ladder only to end up at a destination that we never wanted to get to in the first place.
"If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster."
The second thing is meaning. For me, I didn’t get a lot of fulfillment or meaning out of running a digital marketing agency. It wasn’t aligned with my core talents, required me to work endless hours doing things I didn’t even want to do. That may be different for you, but I believe everyone has different core skills and talents and that we will find fulfillment in doing things that we excel at, and delegating or utilizing other people to do the rest.
My uncle once joked to me several years ago that the meaning of life was to find something you love to do and someone crazy enough to pay you to do it.
I’d change that around a little to say find a way to package it that brings a massive amount of value to the marketplace, but it’s basically the same thing.
It wasn’t until the shutdown of COVID-19 that I wasn’t able to bring myself to do the work anymore. I couldn’t bring myself to continue doing what was required to grow a marketing company because I was not fulfilled, my marriage was crumbling, and I was showing up everywhere in life like a cranky asshole because I thought I was a failure.
I spent the next few years on a journey to discover myself and the lifestyle that I longed for and desired. I didn’t desire to have a million dollars, and quite frankly nobody really cares if they are rich. They just want to have the things and the lifestyle that being rich buys them. They want to be able to do what they want, where they want, when they want, with who they want. They want Freedom. And that’s what I wanted, I just didn’t know how to get there.
So I watched and watched as money was drained from the bank account and the savings. Invested into more and more personal development programs, tried a lot of things, failed at a lot of things. Through the journey I was able to pick up quite a lot of information that is now very useful, but I didn’t see it then.
In this book, I’m going to talk to you about an operating system that I discovered through endless hours of coaching and training. I call it the META frameworks. Meta because it’s kinda like the view from above and frameworks because a framework is like a simplified version of a complex idea that makes sense and my brain can actually understand. It’s what is at the core of the things I’ve seen work in almost every coaching program, every book that I’ve read, even the Bible, and most religions have some version of these things and I believe that people that get real results in their lives follow them diligently.
I’m not going to get too in the details about any tactical fixes for different issues, but I’ll point you in the right direction. I’ll give you resources and books but what you’ll take away from this book is the ability to create your own personal operating system for life. A way to identify everything that is important to you and start taking meaningful steps towards living the ideal lifestyle of your dreams. How to have the health you’ve always wanted. How to have the wealth you’ve always wanted. How to have the relationships you’ve always dreamed of. It’s all on the other side of implementing this simple system, customized to you and your life.
The META FRAMEWORKS OVERVIEW
What is a Framework at all?
A framework is defined as, “A basic conceptual structure (as of ideas)” and they are literally everywhere around us. Think of any alluring alliteration of a complex idea that makes it simple and easy to understand.
Here is my 3 step process to achieve ______.
Here are the 5 C’s of ________.
It’s a bunch of words thrown together that make something seemingly complex, very simple. Kinda like an equation with words.
In marketing and in my coaching I suggest companies I work with create frameworks around the things that they do. It helps clarify ideas for their customers because evolutionary biology has shown that despite the amount of information our brains can process, they don’t like to actually think, and when things do start getting too complicated, they check out.
So the #1 thing we can do is simplify the complex ideas into an alliteration of terms that makes it seem easy.
What are the Meta Frameworks?
The idea of frameworks has been around since language was created, but the meta frameworks are the ones that I see above almost any of the others, that serve as a guidepost for getting real results in your life.
One of my zones of genius is noticing patterns, and there is a pattern towards getting anything you want in life. Everyone I know who has created real success (not monetary, but love, joy, happiness, fulfillment, etc) typically has some combination of the things I’m going to talk about.
Think of these as the core ingredients of a recipe that will bring you endless amounts of joy, happiness, fulfillment, and success. Of course there is still suffering in the world, don’t get me wrong, but this is an operating system that you get to create for your life so you can start working toward the version of you that you long for. The version of you that is free. The version of you that truly has it all in life.
So what exactly does that journey look like? This can be both a complicated and a simple question depending on how you look at it but we’ve found that the majority of success comes from a few core principles or frameworks.
We named them the META frameworks because they are the frameworks above all the frameworks that I’ve seen in countless books and behind the scenes/secrets of almost any guru you’ve seen. When you go through enough of these programs and think like an engineer, you can start to notice similarities. Things they all have in common.
There are 4 Meta-frameworks that I’ve found so far.
1. Mindset –
The first thing you have to do is get your mind in the right place to accept the call, accept the journey and gain leverage on yourself so that you can and will actually do it. After all, your current job might be super comfortable. The higher your current salary the harder it is going to be to make a leap and jump into your own thing. They don’t call them ‘Golden Handcuffs’ for no reason.
You have to figure out a few things. What am I called to do? What makes me unique? Why is it important? Who am I called to serve? Does it align with the lifestyle that I want?
In the mindset stage of the journey you have to get clear about all these things, and this content is here to guide you through that.
2. Vision/Journey –
The second thing is looking at what the path looks like. Let’s say you’ve decided with full certainty that doing this is the right thing for you to do! Congratulations. What is next? What do I actually do with that now?
This is where it’s really important to set up a personal journey for yourself in all key areas of your life. It’s never just about work but about your overall lifestyle and wellbeing. After all, what’s the point of making a ton of money if you die 20 years earlier from a heart attack or if you have no meaningful relationships because you work too much. We will look at key areas such as Spirituality, Health (physical and emotional), Wealth (Work & Money), Relationships, and Lifestyle. To live a great life you need to be centered with God, have enough money to have the freedom you want, do it with cool people, and live a lifestyle that you actually want to live.
In the vision process we determine exactly where you want to go in these key areas, and get clear about where you are right now, so we can determine the path to get from point A to point B. Sounds simple right? It kinda is.
I believe most people don’t take action not because they don’t know what to do, but because they don’t have the push they need to do the thing they know they need to do. Their vision isn’t a strong enough pull to go through the work required.
So it’s important to set a strong vision, a big vision, a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) that actually motivates you to take action. But more important that a goal, is a strong WHY for the vision.
3. Disciplines/Habits
Having a strong enough vision doesn’t work by itself. You need to live with discipline to become the person who can achieve the things you’ve set out to achieve. A core question I ask myself all the time when I look at my goals is, “Who do I have to become to make that easy and effortless?”, “What does the future version of me that has that lifestyle think, feel, see, know that I don’t”.
I need to set these habits in place now. If the future version of me is fit and has a six pack then he probably goes to the gym 5-6 times a week. That means this version of me needs to do that to become that version. On a long enough timeline, it will work. It always does.
We need to set strict habits and disciplines into our current lifestyle so that over a long enough time period we will become the person capable of making what seemed impossible before possible.
There is a simple framework I use for this.
- You have to DISCIPLINE yourself to do it.
- And eventually it becomes HABIT
- That turns into a ROUTINE you feel weird if you don’t do
- Until its simply part of WHO YOU ARE
DISCIPLINE → HABIT → ROUTINE → NEW YOU
Have you ever met that guy that just has to go to the gym every day? Or someone who doesn’t feel right if they don’t wake up and meditate or pray in the morning? It’s built into their identity and that’s the secret to success.
4. FOCUS
The final one is focus. Too often I’ve seen people read a book like Habit Stacking and take it all to heart thinking the disciplines or routines are all important and all need to be done right away. They live in guilt or shame if they didn’t’ do their journaling that the miracle morning recommended or the second workout for their 75HARD program and they have to start over. I’m not giving you an out on this, but I am giving you a pass to create your own focused discipline based on what I call your BIG 4.
There is a great statement that I use for this and it comes from one of the greats, Gary Keller, in his book, the ONE THING.
What is the ONE THING I can do right now that makes everything else easier or unnecessary?
He calls this the ‘focusing statement’ and it’s something I ask people to do for every category of their life. Pick one or two habits/disciplines you will do every day for a period of 30-75 days and stick to it, in each category. But it has to be something that actually matters. That will actually move the needle.
This is your life and you get to design what these things are. There are tons of programs out there that have ‘the perfect morning routine’ or the ‘75 hard’ program, and they are great, but only you know what is best for you.
If you want to start a business, you might need to read a book on how to start a business. If you want to start a coaching company, this might be the right place for you, if you want to sell more you need to create leads or make phone calls. If you want to get fit, you probably either need to move your body or eat less.
It’s not complicated, it’s actually simple.
But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s actually pretty hard to pull off.
Most people sacrifice the medium to long term gain for the short term pleasure or comfort and give themselves excuses as to why it’s ‘ok’, and then wonder why they don’t get results.
In Conclusion
A few things are probably showing up for you right now. Throughout my content (and coaching) I’m going to guide you through these frameworks, and if you choose to do the work for yourself, and you’re someone who wants to start or run a coaching business of your own, a few things may also be showing up for you.
This make total sense?
When all these things are added together it’s a success formula or recipe.
The crazy thing is that like a recipe, if you take out an ingredient it won’t work. A journey without a mindset is something that will never get done, and without discipline will be inconsistent at best. Focus without a plan gives you shiny object syndrome and a plan without focus is like driving on a map without knowing where you are.
A few rules I will leave you with that you MUST live by in order to get results in any area of life.
TELL THE TRUTH
Be honest about where you’re at, regardless of the consequences. The consequences of lying usually hurt you the most in the long run. Lying is a short term strategy but yields terrible mid to long term results.
TRUST THE PROCESS
These processes and frameworks have been extracted from the best of the best. Really any coaching or training program is teaching the same general principles with new wrapping paper, all the way back to the original source of wisdom, the Bible (and other holy texts). Trust the process. Follow it.
YOUR GOING TO PAY EITHER WAY
We pay for everything we have in life in one way or another. When people say that shortcuts don’t exist they are incorrect. You can buy shortcuts by hiring mentors, coaches, accountability partners, information, etc. This is why you can buy a book for $10 or invest in a $10,000 coaching program that has the same exact information in it. One promises to yield greater results in less time because you have accountability to do the work, access to the right people and partners, and the coaching to know what to do and when.
ABUNDANCE VS SCARCITY
You can choose to pay with time or with money, but don’t just count the time as a cost, there is an opportunity cost as well. If you invest time, you are allowing the most precious resource you have to waste, which is your time. I’m not saying reading books isn’t a good idea, nor am I saying investing is the right thing to do, but I am saying that we live in an abundant world where more money can always be made. More time can only be made by investing in things now that will multiply your time later and set you free. (More on that in my TIME MULTIPLICATION article)