Most founders set annual goals, but few go deep enough to connect those goals to an identity.
Fourteen years ago, my annual planning process was a list of resolutions. The typical kind:
Read more books.
Work out consistently.
Be more present.
It never stuck.
Today, that process has evolved into a complete personal operating system - the same structure I use to run my business, my family life, and my spiritual life with clarity and intention.
In this edition, I want to walk you through the six layers of that system. Not as a motivational exercise, but as a repeatable framework you can adapt for your own life and leadership.
Who I am becoming matters more than what I accomplish.
Before I set a single goal, I define the six identities I’m trying to grow into long-term:
Each identity has Guiding Principles and Lifelong Commitments - habits I want to keep until I’m 90.
Example commitments: Exercise 4x/wk, control my tech, etc.
Starting with identity anchors your commitments to something deeper than outcomes - it defines not just what you'll do, but why it matters and who you're becoming in the process.
Decades > years.
If identities are the “who,” then long-term goals are the measurable proof.
Examples from my own OS:
These are decade-long targets. They make an abstract identity real.
My annual goals are simply the “next step” of the decade-long ones.
What habits do I need to cultivate this year to have abs at 40?
Goals get set as annual derivatives of the long-term goals, which are derivatives of who I want to become.
90 days is where transformation actually happens.
Each quarter, I pick 1 - 3 focused goals.
Just the highest-leverage outcomes that move the annual goals forward.
I believe so much in the power of 90-day cycles that I built a full program around it: 90 Days of Action.
The rule:
Every quarter is a sprint.
Sprints create momentum.
Momentum compounds.
Ambition becomes math.
Based on my quarterly goals, I create a list of daily & weekly commitment for that quarter.
Here’s an example of how a big, long-term target collapses into something actionable:
$10M net worth at 50
→ requires $2M ARR this year
→ requires 30 more active clients
→ requires 8 new clients this quarter
→ requires 10 hours/week of sales activity
→ requires 2 hours/day
At this point, the goal isn’t emotional anymore.
It’s math. And math is motivating.
You either did the inputs or you didn’t.
Where systems meet reality.
Every commitment needs a trigger - something that forces the behavior to happen automatically.
Example trigger:
“At the start of each workday, I set a 25-minute timer and do nothing but sales activity until it ends.”
This is where most founders break down. Not because their goals are wrong, but because their days have no architecture to support them.
Build the trigger, and the habit builds itself.
At some point, goals stop being the point.
Systems become the point.
Systems that connect who you want to become with what you do every day.
This makes progress inevitable.
Week to week the changes are small, but year-to-year, they’re massive.
This is how leverage works. Consistency and compounding over intensity.
If you want more deep-dive systems like this - templates, playbooks, and step-by-step frameworks—make sure you’re subscribed.