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One Shark Missed Billions… Another Saw This Coming
Imagine turning down Uber at a valuation of $10 million only to watch them go public at over $80 billion.
That’s exactly what happened to Mark Cuban… a 799,900% return, gone.
But Kevin Harrington, another shark from Shark Tank, built his reputation by spotting these opportunities early and didn’t make this same mistake.
Like Uber turned vehicles into income-generating assets, there’s a tech startup right now turning smartphones into the easiest passive income source imaginable.
They were named the #1 fastest growing software company by Deloitte and have already helped their users earn and save over $1B.
Kevin Harrington invested early in this mobile disruptor, and now you can too.
At just $0.52/share, you can become a shareholder in Mode Mobile before their potential IPO.
Potential Uber return for Marc Cuban does not take into account dilution.
The Deloitte rankings are based on submitted applications and public company database research, with winners selected based on their fiscal-year revenue growth percentage over a three-year period in 2023.
Please read the offering circular at invest.modemobile.com. This is a paid advertisement for Mode Mobile’s Regulation A Offering.
There is a particular flavor of regret I have seen on the faces of business owners more times than I can count. It usually shows up around mid February, when the bold goals they set on January 1 are no longer touching reality. They look at the plan they wrote six weeks ago and feel something close to embarrassment.
The plan was not stupid. The execution was not lazy. The problem was that the plan was written for a fantasy version of themselves. The version that goes to the gym every morning, never gets sick, never has a family emergency, never has a client emergency, and definitely never has a Tuesday where everything inexplicably falls apart.
That version of you does not exist. So the plan was destined to fail before the ink was dry.
Today I am going to walk you through the planning method I use myself and install with clients. It is built around the version of you that actually exists. Imperfect. Distracted. Occasionally tired. Sometimes brilliant. The plan that survives contact with reality is the plan that accounts for reality from the start.
This is a Sunday article. Save it. Use it. The next 90 days of your business depend on the next two hours of clear thinking.
Why Most Plans Break
Before we build the planning method, let us look at why traditional planning fails.
Traditional plans are built around outcomes. "Hit $50K in monthly revenue by end of Q2." That is an outcome. It is a fine outcome. It is also a useless plan.
The reason it is useless is that you cannot directly control outcomes. You can only control inputs. The plan tells you where you want to end up but does not tell you what to do tomorrow morning. So Tuesday comes, you sit down to work, and you have to invent your own activity from scratch. Most owners default to whatever feels urgent, which is rarely what actually moves the needle on the outcome.
Traditional plans also tend to be too dense. They contain 8 or 10 major goals across multiple areas of the business. By the time you have read the third goal, you have forgotten the first one. Goals you cannot remember are goals you cannot execute.
The planning method I use solves both problems. It is built around inputs you can control, not outcomes you can only hope for. And it is constrained to the smallest number of priorities you can actually hold in your head.
Let us build it.
Step One: The 90 Day Outcome
You still need an outcome. The outcome is the destination. Without it, you are just doing activities.
The trick is to have exactly one. Not three. Not five. One.
Sit down with a blank page and ask yourself this question. "If I could only achieve one business outcome in the next 90 days, and achieving it would make everything else easier, what would it be?"
The answer is your outcome. It might be hitting a specific revenue number. It might be launching a specific product. It might be hiring a specific role. It might be acquiring a specific number of customers. It does not matter what it is. What matters is that there is exactly one of them.
Write it down at the top of a clean document. Make it specific and measurable. "Hit $30,000 in monthly recurring revenue by August 17, 2026." Not "grow revenue." Specific number. Specific date.
This single outcome is the lens through which every other decision in the next 90 days gets evaluated. If a task moves you toward the outcome, it gets done. If it does not, it gets deferred. The clarity is the entire point.
Step Two: The Three Levers
Now we move from outcome to inputs. The question becomes, "What are the three things I can directly control that will move me toward this outcome?"
Three is the magic number. Not two, not four. Three. With two, you get bored and add a fourth without realizing it. With four, you get scattered and lose focus on at least one. Three is the number that fits in your head and survives a difficult Tuesday.
Examples to make this concrete. If your outcome is hitting $30,000 in MRR, your three levers might be. Lever one. Increase qualified leads by 50 percent. Lever two. Improve sales call close rate from 25 percent to 35 percent. Lever three. Reduce churn from 8 percent to 4 percent. Each lever is something you can directly control. Each lever moves you toward the outcome.
If your outcome is launching a new product, your three levers might be. Lever one. Complete product development. Lever two. Build a launch list of 1,000 qualified prospects. Lever three. Develop and test the launch sequence. Three levers. Three controllable activities. One outcome.
The discipline of choosing only three is harder than it sounds. You will be tempted to add a fourth. Resist it. The fourth lever will dilute the first three. Better to do three things well than five things badly.
Step Three: The Weekly Cadence
Most plans break in the gap between strategy and weekly execution. You set the outcome. You define the levers. Then Monday morning comes and you have no idea what to actually do.
The weekly cadence solves this. Every week, you make exactly three commitments. One for each lever. The commitment must be small enough to complete inside the week and concrete enough that you know whether you did it or not.
If lever one is "increase qualified leads by 50 percent," your week one commitment might be "publish three lead magnets and integrate them into the homepage." Specific. Concrete. Doable in a week.
If lever two is "improve close rate to 35 percent," your week one commitment might be "record and review three sales calls using Fathom and identify the most common objection." Specific. Concrete. Doable.
The weekly commitments are the bridge between the 90 day plan and what you actually do on Tuesday morning.
Step Four: The Daily Execution
Once you have weekly commitments, daily execution becomes simple. Every Sunday evening, you look at the three weekly commitments. You break them into roughly five daily tasks distributed across Monday through Friday. You write those tasks on your calendar.
Monday through Friday, you execute the daily tasks. Nothing else gets priority. Email gets handled in time blocks. Slack gets handled in time blocks. Meetings get scheduled around the daily tasks, not vice versa. The daily tasks are the only thing that matters.
If a daily task does not get done, it does not roll over. It gets either reabsorbed into the weekly commitment or dropped if it is not actually critical. The system is built to forgive imperfection but not to accumulate debt.
This sounds rigid. It is. The rigidity is the point. Most plans fail because they are too flexible. You skip a day, then a week, then a month, and the plan dissolves into "I am too busy." This system makes that drift visible early enough to correct it.
Step Five: The Weekly Review
Every Friday afternoon, you spend 30 minutes reviewing the week.
You look at the three commitments. Did you complete each one? If yes, great. If no, why not? Was it a capacity issue? An execution issue? A planning issue? Be honest with yourself.
Then you set the three commitments for next week. Each one tied to a lever. Each one specific and doable.
This Friday review is the single most important habit in the whole system. It is what keeps the plan alive across 12 weeks of inevitable distractions. Without it, the plan dies somewhere in week three. With it, the plan stays in motion all the way to day 90.
I run my own Friday review using the prompt I shared in Thursday's article, the weekly reset prompt. I run it through Claude and let it surface patterns I would otherwise miss. The compounding effect over 12 weeks is enormous.
Step Six: The Quarterly Reset
At the end of 90 days, you stop. You do not roll into the next quarter on momentum. You stop, you review, and you reset.
The quarterly review is a 90 minute session. You answer three questions.
Question one. Did I hit the outcome? If yes, what worked? If no, what got in the way?
Question two. Of the three levers, which moved the most? Which moved the least? What does that tell me about where leverage actually lives in my business?
Question three. What do I need to do differently for the next 90 days?
Then you set the next 90 day outcome and start again. Each quarter builds on the lessons of the previous one. The compounding effect over four quarters is what separates owners who scale from owners who plateau.
What This System Actually Does
The reason this method works is that it eliminates almost every decision point that creates friction.
You do not have to decide what to focus on. The outcome already decided.
You do not have to decide what activities matter. The three levers already decided.
You do not have to decide what to do this week. The weekly commitments already decided.
You do not have to decide what to do today. The daily tasks already decided.
All you have to do is execute. The decision making was done in advance, on a Sunday, when you had clarity. The execution happens on a Tuesday, when you do not need clarity, only follow through.
That is the unlock. Not motivation. Not willpower. Not discipline in the abstract. Pre committed structure that removes decision fatigue from the work week.
The Tools That Help
If you want to install this system in your business, here is the stack I recommend.
For the planning document itself, I use Notion because it lets me link weekly commitments back to the parent levers and outcome. A Google Doc works fine if you prefer simpler tools.
For the weekly review, I use Claude with the weekly reset prompt I shared on Thursday. The reflection it produces is sharper than what I write on my own.
For the daily task execution, I use a combination of my calendar and a simple task list. Nothing fancy. Time blocks for the daily tasks. Clear start and end times. No multitasking.
For automation of the weekly cadence, I have a Make.com workflow that triggers reminders at the right intervals and prompts me with the right questions at the right times. The whole system runs without me having to remember to run it.
The total cost of the planning stack is roughly $30 per month. Compared to the value of executing 12 quarters in a row with this kind of clarity, the cost is invisible.
Your Move This Week
Before you close this email, here is what I want you to do.
Block 90 minutes on your calendar this week. Tuesday morning works well. Sit down with a blank document and answer three questions. What is my one outcome for the next 90 days? What are the three levers I can directly control to move toward it? What are the three commitments I will make for next week?
That is the entire planning session. 90 minutes. Three questions. The clarity that comes out the other side will change how you spend the next 12 weeks.
If you want the full template, including the weekly review questions, the daily task structure, and the Make.com automation that runs the cadence, that is part of the AI Workflow Blueprint. Reply to this email with the word BLUEPRINT and I will get it to you.
If you want me to walk you through installing this in your business with implementation calls and ongoing accountability, the AI Business Accelerator is where that lives. Reply with ACCELERATOR.
The plan is not the point. The execution is the point. But the plan is what makes the execution possible.
Have a good week. See you Monday on The AI Audit.
Jordan Hale
The AI Newsroom
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