A 5-Year Moonshot Planner

Doing anything big and bold in the world is hard.

It takes passion, grit, luck and sometimes a decade or more of hard work to see a moonshot materialize, much less succeed.

There’s no definite roadmap for a successful moonshot; the path is littered with obstacles and failure.

Yet, as my friend Tony Robbins says, success leaves clues.

That’s why, every year at Abundance 360, we do two things: First, everyone, including myself, completes a 5-year Moonshot Planner thinking tool. Second, we listen to incredibly inspiring stories and learn lessons.

If you’re like me, you probably do some end-of-year planning and envisioning. If so, you may want to try the 5-year Moonshot Planner exercise.

A 5-Year Moonshot Planner

Here’s what’s involved:

1. 5-Year Goal: Briefly describe your 5-year Moonshot goal in a clear, objective fashion using specific dates and numbers.
2. 1-Year Goal: What concrete, measurable milestones can you achieve in 12 months that will put you on track? Remember, your progress is exponential. You just need to hit 6.25% of the target.
3. 30-Day Goal: What can you do in the next 30 days to test and ‘de-risk’ your 1-year and 5-year objectives?
4. PROOF: What evidence can you provide to your team that this Moonshot is possible?
5. ACTION: What single action can you take right now to make immediate progress? (Do it in the next hour).

The next step in your transition from “success to significance” is immersion into the experiences of extraordinary leaders and operators, listening to their epic failures, hard-fought lessons, and pivotal moments that reinforced their vision.

In previous years at A360, we’ve had some incredible leaders share their stories:

• Entrepreneur Tom Bilyeu, who co-founded Quest Nutrition in pursuit of his moonshot to end metabolic disease;
• Philanthropist Whitney Williams, who is working to uplift African children through the Eastern Congo Initiative, which she co-founded with Ben Affleck;
• Rainn Wilson, who is empowering at-risk adolescent girls in Haiti through literacy and the arts through Lidè Haiti;
• Jeff Holden, past-Chief Product Officer of Uber, who unveiled a roadmap of the near future of transportation, including aerial transport and autonomous vehicles;
• Astro Teller, CEO of Alphabet’s moonshot factory X, who shared his key lessons on what it takes to run a business focused on both day-to-day deliverables and long-term moonshots.

Here are some other examples of incredible leaders that we've brought to A360 to take the conversation to stratospheric heights, figuratively and literally, with three Moonshot leaders:

Mary Lou Jepsen, Ph.D. is the CEO and co-founder of Openwater, which is developing next-gen imaging technologies to accelerate non-invasive healthcare treatments, and eventually to allow a future of brain-computer interfaces. Dr. Jepsen is no stranger to Moonshots: in the past, she was the co-founder, CTO and chief architect of One Laptop Per Child, which delivered the $100 laptop to mass production, and then led Virtual Reality at Google X and Facebook.

George T. Whitesides is the CEO of Virgin Galactic, and a friend I’ve known for decades. He’s been working tirelessly to make space tourism feasible, motivating his team to persevere through successes and tragedy. As a leader, Whitesides is known for his unwavering determination, compassion and calm.

Anousheh Ansari is the CEO of XPRIZE, and another friend I’ve known for decades. If you’ve followed XPRIZE, you know that Anousheh and the Ansari family funded the first $10M Ansari XPRIZE for suborbital spaceflight. In the years thereafter, she became the first self-funded woman to fly to the International Space Station, which also made her the first Iranian in space. Now at the helm of XPRIZE, Anousheh is in a unique position to share insights on how to achieve multiple moonshots.

A large part of Abundance 360 is data-driven optimism.

I share anticipated breakthroughs, their implications on our members' industries, as well as the latest technological tools that exponential entrepreneurs can leverage to create the future. An equally important component is our community’s 25-year journey of taking on moonshots and making extraordinary impacts that propel humanity forward.

INTERESTED IN JOINING ME? (TWO OPTIONS)

1. A360 Executive Mastermind: This is the sort of conversation I explore at my Executive Mastermind group called Abundance 360. The program is highly selective, for 360 abundance and exponentially minded CEOs (running $10M to $10B companies). If you’d like to be considered, apply here. Share this with your friends, especially if they are interested in any of the areas outlined above.
2. A360 Digital Mastermind: I’ve also created a Digital/Online community of bold, abundance-minded entrepreneurs called Abundance 360 Digital (A360D). A360D is my ‘onramp’ for exponential entrepreneurs – those who want to get involved and play at a higher level.

Know someone who would benefit from getting Abundance Insider? Send them to this link to sign up.

Head here for the full archive of my latest tech insights.