Lately, I’ve become obsessed with the science of motivation… both for myself, and for my clients & customers too.

What is it that really allows some people to succeed and causes others to struggle?

I’m convinced that the right habits, tools & mindset can overcome almost any lack of smarts, talent or opportunity.

As a child, one of my students, Matthew Turton, couldn’t even write his own name. As a 13-year old it took him hours to write a single sentence. But his parents never stopped believing in him and spent years scouring the earth for tools and solutions to help Matthew develop the parts of his brain that didn’t seem to work. It worked. Today he’s overcome it all, become the CEO of a successful educational company, and I’m honored that he’s a coach for Live Your Message.

No matter who you are or what inherent capacity you believe you have (or don’t), you can do extraordinary things when you develop the habits, tools & mindset you need to succeed.

One of those habits is goal setting, but with an important twist that people often miss.

You see, most people set themselves up for failure when they set goals.

They set incredibly vague New Year’s resolutions like “this year will be better”, or they set incredibly huge 12-month plans with a laundry list of goals…

For most people, 365 days is too much to comprehend, and when you’re planning from vague intentions or extended timeframes, it’s it’s hard to imagine exactly what you’ll be doing a year from now, or even tomorrow for that matter.

It’s obviously a lot easier to imagine what you’ll be doing 4-5 weeks from now on February 17, 2017

That’s why I want to introduce you to the Power of 90.

Most people can easily hold 90-day periods in their thoughts and intentions. They can plan for 90-days and hold their vision and commitment solid.

Even you’re not sure the best way to get started, you can make a 90-day choice to try something new out and see how it goes.

It’s what I call a “get started” choice, and here’s how it works…

First, simply choose to focus on something or a handful of smaller goals that are achievable in a 90-day window and see how much progress you can make.  90-days gives you the opportunity to try something on for size before your commit to a particular path.

Or, if you’ve already made a commitment, a 90-day timeframe allows you to build momentum around specific, challenging-yet-achievable goals that you can fully realize in that timeframe.

That allows you to feel like you’re winning and making forward progress…

Then 90-days later, guess what? You get to create a new set of goals to focus on….

That’s how you can change your life 90-days at a time… and actually see the results of your efforts (an essential part of sustaining motivation over a long period of time).

This process is commonly known as setting your big “quarterly rocks” and it’s a great way to break down your bigger vision and goals for the year into things you can realize in 90-day chunks.

You can do this process for the entire year at once or simply focus on the next 90-days.

Here’s how I did this process at the end of 2016 for 2017. As you’ll see each of my 5-7 quarterly rocks is measurable and specific.

QUARTERLY ROCKS (5-7 goals per quarter)
Q1 (JANUARY – MARCH)	Q2 (APRIL-JUNE)
–       Bring Mentorship to a successful close (get 80% to mission accomplished: make back their investment or even double their investment) –       Get 250 or more people in the room at M2M Live (400-500 ticket sales) –       Relaunch Mentorship (100+ students) & Mastery programs (20-30 students) –       Get new team members and management systems up and running powerfully (Danielle, Christine & Alex) –       Launch Call to Adventure 2.0 (100 students) while creating the marketing materials for future evergreen campaigns –       Line up partners for November Experience Product Masterclass launch (min: 40, target: 50, stretch: 60) –       Get Heroik platform launch-ready (beta test platform, establish pricing models and build strategic partnerships)	–       create evergreen version of CTA & get evergreen marketing funnel and experiencified fulfillment working –       experiencify Mentorship & Mastery – powerfully set the container for how to be in the program and do the program –       launch Heroik to the world to 1000+ members –       create management and support teams around Heroik –       refresh marketing & sales materials for agency: website, presentation & proposal –       bring the agency to $250K in sales per quarter –       hire: Agency Manager, Customer Service Manager & Marketing Manager
Q3 (JULY – SEPTEMBER)	Q4 (OCTOBER – DECEMBER)
–       do some kind of list-build event (giveaway, summit or challenge) to grow list by 10-20K leading into launch –       get new managers and management systems up and running (Agency Manager, Customer Service Manager, Marketing Manager) –       prepare all marketing and partner materials for the EPM launch –       relaunch the LYM agency (new website, proposal and grow sales to $250K per quarter) –       grow Heroik membership to 1500+ –       Move into or buy a new office space –       Begin rolling enrollments for Mastery program	–       First multi-7-figure launch (EPM) –       Sell first 300+ tickets to M2M Live –       Upgrade EPM and dial-in coaching systems –       Sell out 2 Experience Product Labs –       Write book? –       Strategic planning and partnering for 2018 –       Grow Heroik membership to 2000+

Now, it’s your turn. How can you take your big vision and strategic plan for the year and break it into challenging-yet-achievable quarterly rocks.

And once you start to grow your team, you can set quarterly rocks for your business as a whole, then ask each team member to create their own quarterly rocks around the company goals for that quarter… that way, the entire team can mobilize beyond the everyday tasks and commitments we have and support the bigger vision.

Tell me, what are your 5-7 quarterly rocks for January-March?

Does it help you to fous on smaller chunks of time and smaller-yet-stretch commitments?