It was December 7th, 2017 — the scariest day of my adult life.
I was pacing around my living room, staring at my phone, praying it would buzz with some kind of lifeline. I’d been grinding for months — six, sometimes seven days a week — giving everything I had to a new path I thought would lead me somewhere.
But the truth was brutal: I had earned $1,500 that entire year. Credit card minimums were stacking up. And tomorrow — finally — a deal was supposed to close. It was just enough money to buy me time. To let me continue playing the game.
And then I got the call.
My client had prayed about it… and decided not to buy.
My stomach dropped through the floor. And that’s when I came face to face with the real enemy — not poverty, not failure, not rejection.
Directionlessness.
No clear path. No next step. Just that sinking feeling that maybe I couldn’t figure it out.
And I know a lot of people are stuck in that place right now. Maybe you feel it every time you wake up. Or maybe you’re just starting to realize you’ve been drifting for a long time in the wrong direction.
That’s what this newsletter is about.
Not motivational fluff. Not “follow your passion.”
This is about what to actually do when you feel stuck — and why making a bad plan might be the smartest, most life-changing decision you could make.
A Bad Plan is Better than No Plan
That night, I felt like I was drowning. I wasn’t even sure what to pray for. Clarity? A miracle?
Had I invested a year of my life into a venture I couldn’t figure out?
And then I remembered something I’d heard once: “When you can’t find the way forward — write your way forward.”
I had been journaling for years, so I went looking for something — anything — that might help. That’s when I stumbled on a tool called the Future Authoring Program.
It was simple. Two parts.
First, write a vision for your life. Broad strokes. Your career. Your relationships. Your character.
Second, break it into goals. Six to eight steps that bring that vision to life.
So I sat down, opened my laptop, and started writing…
And what I made was terrible.
A bloated, janky, fragile, 10-year plan that had almost no chance of working out exactly as I wrote it. I was going to continue pouring all my energy into this real estate business until I made enough money to move into my own place in the city. Then I was going to quit real estate, get a job at the local university, and go back to school to be a clinical psychologist.
Like I said, it was terrible plan.
But here’s the thing: It gave me a target. I gave me confidence.
A sense of direction. A reason to move.
And in the weeks that followed — everything changed.
In January, I made $3,500.
In February, I made more than $14,000, which seemed to me at the time a staggering sum. I knew there were people in the world who made that much in a month, but I didn’t know any of them personally. I felt rich!
And I learned a lesson I’ll never forget:
A bad plan is better than no plan.
Outcomes in Your Life Reflect the Quality of Your Plan
And here’s the part no one tells you:
Once I had a plan, even a bad one, something surprising started to happen.
Just three months after writing it, I had made over $25,000. That was more than I had made in the previous 18 months combined. And something clicked.
I realized I was no longer clinging to the idea of becoming a clinical psychologist. That dream had done its job — it had pulled me forward. It gave me something to aim at when I was drowning. But now, it didn’t fit anymore.
So I did something I’d never done before.
I went back to the plan… and updated it.
I stripped out the pieces that didn’t fit. I filled in the gaps with what I had learned. And I rewrote the whole thing — version 2.0. This time, it was better. Cleaner. More real.
And that better plan led to better outcomes. By the end of 2018, I had earned over $130,000. That was more than five times my previous best year. And the craziest part?
It still wasn’t a perfect plan. It just wasn’t bad anymore.
Because that is the secret:
Outcomes in your life reflect the quality of your plan.
Most people walk around without a plan. Or worse — with no understanding whatsoever about where they want to go and what they want to do with their life. They’re waiting for clarity to fall out of the sky. But clarity comes from commitment.
And once you muster the courage to make a bad plan — just one — you earn the right to iterate, to make it better.
That’s when the flywheel starts turning.
Bad plan → Better outcomes than no plan → Gives you insights for how to improve the plan
And it never really stops.
Because every bad plan reveals its own flaws. You don’t have to guess what’s wrong — you feel it. You see it in the results. And those signals? They’re gold.
That’s how bad plans become better plans.
And better plans create better lives.
Spin the Flywheel
Since 2018, I redid the Future Authoring Program 13 times.
Every time my vision started to become blurry or I started feeling confused about what I needed to do to move forward, I would sit down and update my plan.
Eventually, I built a couple of real estate companies where I was responsible for hiring.
During that season, I integrated the Future Authoring Program into my hiring process and personally walked more than 40 people through creating their own bad plans.
Through that experience, I learned that most people have never taken a step back and asked themselves seriously what they wanted out of their life. It also gave me a chance to hone the plan I created with the Future Authoring Program into my own far more extensive system.
I have since come to call the primary framework I learned through these years the Bad Plan Flywheel.
First, you create a bad written plan for your life.
Second, you execute that plan by implementing it in the real world.
Third, you iterate that plan into a better plan by integrating everything you learn from direct feedback, stripping away what isn’t working or no longer resonating and filling those gaps with new theories and new systems.
This is the cure for feeling stuck.
This is the secret behind setting your life on an inevitable upward spiral.
And it all starts with making your first bad plan.
So here’s your challenge:
Before the day ends, open a blank page and write your first bad plan.
You don’t need to get it right. You just need to get it down.
Because everything changes when you aim at something.
If you’re feeling inspired to take action today, here are two ways I can help you move forward:
1. The Big Bad Plan Program
The Big Bad Plan Program is the culmination of everything I have learned about how to develop a written system that connects your ideal vision of the future to daily action. This is the system I wish I had when I started this journey because the primary deliverable is not a static PDF to be reviewed periodically but rather an evolving Notion Template designed for you to live inside of every single day.
If you’re ready to stop drifting and start moving, the Big Bad Plan Program is the next step.
This is the final week for the subscribers of this newsletter (you) to get a discount that takes the program down to the lowest price it will ever be again. The discount code will stop working on April 4th, since the official, public launch is that day.
If that sounds up your alley, go to www.bigbadplan.com to learn more. Use code FINDPURPOSE for $50 off.
2. If You Need Immediate Guidance — Text Me
If you’re facing something heavy and don’t know what to do — or if you feel like God is stirring something in you and you want someone to talk to — text me.
I read and respond to every message. The number is 205–435–1343. You don’t have to figure it out alone.