How To Design Your Dream Life (In Just 30 Days)

What if you could achieve your dream life by following a simple step-by-step system, checking off the boxes to organize strategic and fulfilling tasks designed to guide you on a path to make you realize your higher self? Yeah, right! If it was only that easy, that clear, that simple. No, the reality is many of us had no other choice but to learn the hard way. Make mistakes, learn, make mistakes, learn, make mistakes, learn.

The average person makes over 34,056 choices a day. By the time you're 79, that's over a billion decisions. And say 35% of those are mistakes; that's over 354 million mistakes. But you don't have to learn from your own 354 million mistakes because there's a shortcut. Listen to the people who have made the same mistakes; learn from them the easy way and avoid the hard way.

If you're ready to use a system to design your dream life, let's dive in, starting where it all begins: in the depths of burnout. When I graduated from business school, I felt completely hopeless. I realized the dreams I was working for weren't even my own. At first, it felt like I had already failed. I got a boring 9 to 5 at Kraft Foods, and I hated my life. I had no direction, no purpose, no vision.

So, I made a plan to learn as much as I could. I learned to code. I learned how to build websites. And by a stroke of luck, with the help of co-founders, I built my first business, Bitmaker. We agreed that coding was the language of the future, and we were helping millions get the skills to build online. This dream became a prison of my own making. Over the three years of running Bitmaker, I faded away. I smoked, I drank, and used unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with the stress and co-founder issues.

I sold Bitmaker at 24; it was a massive milestone in my life. From the outside, I looked successful, but inside, I felt completely lost. I knew I needed to find a new direction, a new reality. For the first time ever, I sat down and I asked myself, "What do I really want? What's my dream?" I realized what I truly wanted, more than anything, was to be unrushed so I could fully experience my life in this world. The freedom to control where I am, when I arrive, what I do, and with whom. This was the beginning, and that's where I want to start with you.

Mark Twain once said, "Most men die at 27; we just bury them at 72." I'm going to give you a harsh truth here: no one's going to live your life for you, and no one cares about living your life as much as you should. So what do you need to ask yourself? What really excites you? You know, what do you want your dream life to look like? What are things that you've been putting off that you've always wanted to do? Now is the time to go and get after those things. Stop putting off your biggest dreams and just telling yourself, "Well, maybe tomorrow."

That's a load of BS. Now is the time to go and get these things going. Now is the time to press play on your life.

Step two: Assume control. A mentor once told me, "Your life is a reflection of the standards that you set for yourself." I was stuck in a job I hated, doing things that felt completely out of alignment with who I was. Why? Because I wasn't taking control. I let life happen to me. You are 100% responsible for your experience of life. Frustrated with your job? Who's forcing you to stay? Disconnected from friends? Who's stopping you from opening up?

The moment you take ownership of how you feel and what you do, you become unstoppable. In his book, "The Score Takes Care of Itself," Bill Walsh offers insights into his innovative approach to coaching and leadership. A central theme of the book is Walsh's philosophy that focusing on the process, rather than the outcome, is the key to achieving excellence. The strategy that Walsh talks about revolves around the concept of controlling what is in your hands, which means concentrating on the preparation and execution of tasks rather than the end results.

He believed that if players and coaches committed to high standards in every aspect of their preparation and performance, the score would just take care of itself. This has rung true in my own life. By focusing on the controllable elements, I've created a culture in my company that is second to none. I've created a self-sustaining empire that runs itself. This approach has led me to building a team that's not just focused on winning games but on dominating their individual roles, which cumulatively have led us to insane success.

So, when faced with obstacles, ask yourself these three questions: Is this essential? Can I control this? And what are two actions I can take right now? You are the one in control of your actions. You're never powerless; you can change things. We hate assuming responsibility for how we feel. It may seem impossible sometimes, but taking small steps creates instant relief. You reassume control and learn that you can fix any problems that come up. You can't control the weather, you can't control the market, and you can't control the outcomes, but you can control the inputs. And at the end of the day, the score will take care of itself.

Step three: Build a habit of reflection. As Ray Dalio says, "Pain plus reflection equals progress." Ten years ago, I dreamt of living a life in nature, building an online business, going to national parks, exploring the beautiful sites of Joshua Tree, flying across the world to exotic locations like Bali and Thailand, balancing work, life, and play. I had recently sold my first business, Bitmaker, and I decided, "The hell with it!" Why was I quitting off living? It was time to sell everything I had, get on a plane, and that's exactly what I did.

Exploring some of the most majestic sites I've ever seen, I started my first business, Herb, which now was the largest and most engaged cannabis community in the world, with over 14 million people, doing eight figures and beyond a year. Then it hit me one day. I was reflecting, and I realized that there was something missing in my life. I was no longer passionate about the business of Herb. I was passionate about the mission and passionate about the team, but I realized I needed something more.

I started journaling. Journaling around what excites me, journaling around the things that were draining my energy. All of this gave me the realization that the business was no longer filling up my cup. I needed to discover what truly set my soul on fire. As I began writing, it was things like building systems, helping founders, traveling the world, taking care of my health. From all this reflection came the concept and the idea for Founder OS, a community of founders globally helping one another through proven systems to scale their audience, their brand, and their revenue.

I want you to think about doing the same. You know, reflection is one of the most powerful things that you can do in your life. It'll give you the ability to determine what habits give you the most energy and what memories you look back on in your life most fondly. What are the patterns of the things that drain my energy, and what are the patterns of the things that give me energy? And what are those things that are just bringing you down, whether it's people, experiences, or different tasks that you're working on?

From there, what you want to do is a bit of an audit and start to double down on the things that are bringing you joy and eliminate the things that are leading to a certain level of unhappiness in your life. How can you go and build a habit of reflection in your own life? First off, I think it involves tuning into your own body. You know, what are the things that you're working on that make you feel at ease? What are the things that you enjoy? What are those tasks that when you're doing them, you lose track of time?

And then, on the other side of things, what are those things that you work on that just drain you, that make you feel like garbage, that you just can't wait till they're over? I think it's a matter of having the courage to then double down and lean more into those things you love. Then, looking at your given day, whether it's the people, the experiences, the tasks that you're working on that you no longer enjoy, and just stopping those things.

That may mean eliminating certain friends from your life, not working with certain people, waking up a certain way, eliminating certain food from your diet—who knows? But the point is, to live a more intentional life, you need to take time to reflect on what's bringing you joy and the stuff that is draining you. When I started reflecting, I learned I was in a negative mood about 50% of the time. That completely shocked me! I made changes, and I started working on things that gave me energy.

I was free to move on to the next step in this dream life system.

Step four: Visualize. A couple of years ago, after an exploration through U1 week, I finally felt completely calm and unhurried like I was in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. I realized I had removed myself from the operations of my business. I was part of this amazing community of legends who had my back. I could take long breaks from my business to travel the world and go on epic adventures. My progress was undeniable; I felt amazing.

Nature is not only great for recharging; it's also super helpful for getting clear on your vision. Having a clear vision of where you're looking to go over the next 10 years and 3 years is essential for both your personal and professional success. I've gone and gotten clear on my vision to be able to go and architect four profitable companies over the last 12 years and it's really been a difference maker, not just for helping you be successful but for hiring amazing talent, for selling people, for inspiring people.

Your vision board is amazing for you to get clear on exactly where you're looking to go. Inside of your vision board, you want to have your 10-year goals, your 3-year goals, and then reverse engineer the success of those goals by getting clear on what you're going to do in the next 90 days and the next 30 days, and then incorporating that into your daily schedule. I'll go list my personal values as well as my professional values. These serve as a filter as to what I say yes to in my life and the things that I say no to.

As an example, my professional values are things like keeping things insanely simple, taking extreme ownership, and having an insanely high bar of quality. On the personal side, things like inner harmony, love, and freedom. Go and get clear on your vision; go and write down your 10-year goals, your 3-year goals, and then how you're going to go accomplish these things over the next one year, 90 days, 30 days, and then today.

Alright, on to the next one.

Step five: Here we go. Step five, set goals. When I was at Bitmaker, running a team of 20, training 2,000 software engineers, I felt something I hadn't felt before. I felt like I was creating something larger than myself, and it gave me purpose, and my days had meaning. I let it light the way as my mission to be a part of a team that helps people learn new skills and unlock new capabilities.

Today, I run two companies with a combined 60 people and a community of 16 million. I love helping founders leverage systems to create automated empires. This is my life's purpose. That's what setting goals is really about: figuring out how to do more of what you really want to do and less of the stuff you hate.

To figure out what these goals should be, you first need to determine your values, your mission, and your niche. Then set specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound SMART goals. Let's break all of it down, starting with part one: your values. Your personal values serve as a filter on what you're going to allow into your life and the stuff that you're just not going to accept.

One of the biggest mistakes I see founders making is they create a vision or set any goals for that matter that are completely contrary to their values. One of the best ways to stay motivated and show up, even when times get rough, is by setting goals that align with your values. Write down your six values. Here are some ideas: fun, joy, faith, family, health, peace, inner harmony. Pick six that are important to you and use them as a compass for navigating life.

Part two: your mission. When I first started building my habit of reflection, I learned that I needed to tap into my true calling in life—helping founders leverage proven systems to build their dreams. This was my reason for being. From this calling, Founder OS was born. I dove deep into documenting all of the systems around my business audience growth, content monetization, and structuring high-performance remote teams. We've grown it to over 4,000 founders and a team of 24 legends and an audience of over 2.7 million people.

Part three: your niche. In the same way that you need to find a niche for your brand and business, I think it's also important for us to have our own personal niche. Essentially, this is how you would want others to describe you over a dinner conversation. Here's what my personal niche looks like, and you can do this for your company too.

So at Founder OS, our niche is $5 million founder systems, and my personal niche is soulful entrepreneurship. Our mission is to make the founder journey magical, and our vision is to build the greatest founder community of the 21st century.

Now, how do you design your goals themselves? Well, remember the vision you created a little earlier for your life. It's time to start thinking about that big dream in terms of the goals you'll be achieving to make it a reality. Start with your 10-year goals—the biggest and the most intimidating. Here's what my 10-year goals look like for my personal life and Founder OS.

Now that you have your 10-year goals worked out, it's time to start making those more achievable. I know some people that make 5-year goals, but I prefer to focus three years out. It's still a ways out, but it feels close enough to serve as a good point to ensure I'm on track to hit my 10-year goals. Here's what my three-year goals look like: people overestimate what they can accomplish in a week but underestimate what they can accomplish in a year. That's the mindset I try to have when planning out my one-year goals.

Next, I take all my big needle mover tasks and plan to implement them as quickly as possible by creating 90-day goals. I can then spend the remaining portion of the year gathering data, optimizing, and launching new things based on what I've learned. Here's what my 90-day goals look like today. Now these are goals, not plans. You need deeper systems for those, and we'll cover those in other videos. The point is, you can't figure out a plan if you don't have a goal that makes sense and fits into the dream you have in mind.

Step six: Stay accountable to yourself. Creating your ideal future takes effort and action. There's a system I invented five years ago that has been of great use to me on my journey to doing what I needed to do to live the life that I had imagined. I call it my personal board meeting, and it's how I stay accountable to myself. Public company CEOs, you know, they report to a board, and this ensures that they're accountable and doing what they said they would do.

But what do we do as one-person businesses or as just one person trying to reach their own personal goals? Simple: you have a board meeting with yourself! Okay, not literally, but just hear me out for a sec.

Alright, so here's an example of my personal board meeting. This is from March 2024. Here you can see the mission of Founder OS this year: help a thousand founders in 2024 achieve a million dollar plus revenue through the proven systems that we have for growing their audience, their brand, and their monetization.

Our vision here: we want to create the greatest founder community of the 21st century. No small feat, I must say! Here you can see the core values of what we're building: quality, results, founder first. So every time I open up this board meeting, I am reminded of why I'm doing what I'm doing. It just gets me a bit fired!

So let's keep going here. The next area, like I've talked about, is really honing in on your calling in life. I talk a lot about, you know, having your ikigai—a reason for being. You know, I practice what I preach, and so here in the center, you can see my ikigai: right things like traveling, coaching founders, building proven systems, design, writing, art. These are the things that set my soul on fire.

Alright, next slide. Now you got to get clear on your personal 30-day goals. Back in March 2024, these are the things that I was focused on implementing: Brian Johnson's blueprint protocol flawlessly, getting one massage a week because you know, why not! Making sure I'm taking my girlfriend on a daily date because I love her, and hiking the Dolomites because what's more epic than the Italian Alps?

Now we got the business 30-day goals. On the revenue side, we've got certain goals in terms of setting different deals and closer calls, we're hitting a certain dollar amount—1.5 million in the portfolio—making sure that we host an epic Mexico City mastermind. I can report back now; that was an insane event!

On the operation side, setting up a team dashboard, you know, making sure the CRO is a killer, the chief of staff's a killer. This is what my 30-day business goals look like and these are things that I'm revisiting about three times a week just to make sure that every move I'm making is getting me one step closer to these goals that add up to my 10-year/3-year vision.

So I can design my dream life. We're not done yet! I actually go and take my 10-year vision and make sure that it's part of the board meeting so I can see, "What am I doing this all for?" I'm doing it, you know, to create the restaurant center I'm looking to in the Dolomites, make sure I'm creating this epic founder community, and doing all of this because my mission in life is to really help unlock founders' creative potential and help people build their dreams.

Here on the next part, you can see then how those 10-year and 3-year goals trickle down to my one-year plan, my 90-day goals, and I'll outline all of the different opportunities that exist across people, product, and the different systems across my business.

The next aspect here is I do the same thing on the business side. I have my personal vision, and I have the business vision. We trickle it down to one year, 90 days, and those people, product, and system opportunities.

We get to the reflection area of things. Reflection is all about understanding, first off, what went well in this month? After reflection, it was things like completing my 90-day goal, lifting daily, scheduling a writing week—which, you know, was great! That book is coming out very, very soon! You know, we onboarded our chief of staff and hit all of our cash flow goals.

In terms of what didn't go well, like many of you, I could have done a better job of delegating to my executive assistant, so I'm looking to continue to offload more of those tasks. I also need to take a little bit more time daily to be present, to meditate, to slow down.

The last part here is then what did I learn? You know, I really learned that taking time for myself in nature is really one of the best investments that I can make. I'm doing a great job overall and should be proud of myself. I ended up reading "Psychology of Money." I learned a lot and would highly recommend that all of you guys go check out that book.

That's it! Let's get it! I think that there's no room for compromising on the system; you have to do it. So step seven is take swift action. And so you've got clear on your goals, you're clear on your vision, and you're clear on your values, and so now it's just time to get your shit in gear.

One principle I found super useful for this is the 5-second rule by Mel Robbins. When you think of something that you know you should do, you count down from five: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then you just get that thing done. Procrastination is the biggest killer of your dreams. No more procrastinating! No more waiting till tomorrow. Now is the time to move towards your vision! Now!

Now we're going to go and we've got an adventure planned. I'll see you in the next one.

So step eight is to choose play, fun, and adventure. You know, building a business shouldn't be all about grinding, hustling, and scaling. Building a business should be fun! It should be adventurous! It should be, you know, just like this—out here in the middle of nowhere in Mexico, an erupting volcano behind me with my good friend Diego on an epic adventure.

How do you go and incorporate more play, fun, and adventure into your life? Let me give you some steps. Come along! Seek new experiences! Don't do the same old mundane stuff day after day. Mix it up! Embrace discomfort! You know, the recipe for burnout is doing the same thing day after day. Go on that road trip, go to a festival, go to a concert. Have some fun already! Embrace joy in life!

Life's not all about milestones; it's about moments. Get outside! Have some fun with friends! Go for a cold bath, sauna, meditate, whatever brings you joy. Think about it: when was the last time you did something just for fun? Not because it was productive or had some future payoff, but because it truly lit you up inside?

'Cause here's the kicker: when you make room for play, fun, and adventure, your work improves because people can feel your energy, and new ideas! It's contagious. So don't design a life you want to escape from. Design one that you never want to leave.

So choose road trips, choose nature, choose wild adventures, choose discomfort, choose living, choose to be a kid again. The freedom you want is closer than you think. Like and subscribe and welcome to the Founder Freedom Movement. [Music]