Cara Harvey (00:00.142)

Welcome to the Purpose Driven Mom Show, episode 526. Today I am giving you a sneak peek into one of our coaching calls and we talked about my dream learn plan do framework. Quick caveat: if the sound is off and my picture is off, it was because a few weeks ago I was in a really bad car accident. My computer was trash, I am on a loner, I don’t have any of my software or any of the things I typically use, but I didn’t want to let it get in my way of getting an episode out. So here we are. While the quality isn’t what I would like it to be, I hope the content is.

Inside the Perpetual Mom Club, what I do every Friday is I teach live and I teach a concept from one of my frameworks so people can apply it to their goals. This one is called Dream, Learn, Plan, Do. And in it, I talk about how you can use this for when you have those goals where you’re like, I don’t know what to do next. As we’re gearing up for September and things are happening and new goals are coming and you’re thinking about the end of the year, I want you to think about the goals you might have where you’re like, I just don’t know what to do next. I feel like I’m stuck because I’m not sure the next step. This is the framework to use.

Okay. A lot of the frameworks I teach, they are your toolkit. They’re in the toolbox. You pull them out when you need them. I hope that this one helps you. And again, super informal call because this is what I teach inside my program. If you want, you can go to a purposedriven mom.com slash club, get on the wait list, learn about the purpose driven mom club, and join us if you would like some group coaching. I would love to be your cheerleader through your goals for the rest of the year. for now, enjoy this episode. Today’s teaching is on the dream learn plan do framework and how we can incorporate that.

Into our goals. So I’m going to give you an overview of that. If you’ve not watched the original videos, highly recommend them, but I’m going to teach a little bit on this today. One of the things I’ve noticed is that many of us get stuck when we’re like, let me just jump to do. I’ve got to get this thing done. So I’m just going to jump all the way there. And the problem is when we skip these steps, even if it’s just spending 15 minutes on each one or longer if needed, we jump to do and then we’re like,

What am I actually supposed to do? Anytime you hear yourself saying, I don’t know what the next step is, this is the framework you use. Do I feel like you need to use this framework for every goal? No, it’s not always needed. But when you have those goals, like I said, that have you pausing and being like, I just don’t know what to do next, I want you to think dream learn, plan dip, right? I want you to say, okay, this is the framework. And one of the things that’s cool about the stuff we teach in the club and all the different frameworks is that.

Cara Harvey (02:29.354)

Not every goal needs all of the steps. Not every goal needs this. Not every goal needs a full five-step breakdown, right? Not every goal needs to create a full plan. So you get to customize it. You don’t always need to use good, better, best unless it’s a specific goal where you’re struggling. So this is just another tool in your toolbox. The example I’m gonna use today is like when I wrote my book, right? Like I completely used this entire framework because I was like, I’m gonna write a book. And then I sat down and like, what am I supposed to be doing right now? Right. So

If you have a project, another example I’ll give for the house is painting my kids’ rooms, which, you know, ironically, I’m was planning on working on it this August. I still might. Last year, that was my goal. Last August we moved my kids’ rooms. They shared a room and now they don’t. It has been a full year now since that, and we still have not painted. There’s so many reasons why, but one of the things with that was I sat down and I was like, I don’t even know what to do, right? I’ve never painted a room. I’m not sure how it’s supposed to look and things like that. Right. So we’re gonna talk about how and when to use this.

Think of a goal right now if you’re thinking like, yes, I have this thing I want to do, but I don’t know where to start. When I had my garden, I didn’t know where to start. It was like, where do I go? And if we don’t give ourselves the time to sit in the dream, learn and plan, you’re gonna find that you get to do and you’re like, I’m stuck. Okay. So I came up with this framework and it used to just be learn, plan, do for I don’t know, maybe two years. And then I realized the missing piece, and that was the dream piece.

Inside this framework, what you do is you gift your goals time to make a plan and time to think about the steps. The reason this works is because when you get to the do, you’re not wasting time figuring it out. I have sat down with so many goals where I just sit there and I’m like, I just don’t know what to do. So now I have to go back and I have to research and I have to look at things and stuff like that. Whereas if I give myself structured dream, learn, and plan time.

Then it is easier for me to get started on the do. So we’re gonna go into the different phases. And I want to say something real quick about the phases. There is no amount of time required for any of the phases. It is specifically up to you, your goal, and the plan. So, for example, with the garden goal, right? I gave myself maybe like one week where I was like just gonna dream about what I wanted the garden to look like. I maybe spent 15 minutes just thinking about it. I then spent

Cara Harvey (04:49.762)

Three weeks taking a course to learn the basics. I then spent two weeks maybe making a plan for what I was gonna do. And then I spent the rest of the time in do. For my book, I spent a good month in dream because I was like, wait, what does this look like? What is it gonna be? I then spent almost four months learning what I was supposed to be doing. Then I spent a shorter period of time planning, because as you’ll see when I get to more examples, a lot of times learning and planning happens simultaneously.

And then I was in the do portion for the next five months as I wrote it out. So you don’t have to spend a certain amount of time on any of these. It’s just dependent on what you need. When you’re in the dream phase, this is where you just think, what do I want this to look like? What would make this season and this goal and this thing feel meaningful? This is the step most people skip because they don’t want to do it. They just want to do.

But even if you have a goal and you’re not exactly sure what it looks like, and you just take 15 minutes to take a walk and pause. Ask yourself, what could this look like? There’s a couple of benefits here. One is it gives you time to define success on your own terms. It gives you time to see, hey, this is the thing I want to do. I want to create new chore charts for my kids, right? What would that look like? It lets you start to think of a plan so that when it is time to plan,

You’re not taking in all these outside influences of what other people are suggesting. Instead, you’re like, I’m feel solid on it and you can explain it easier. The other benefit of this dream phase specifically is that we don’t often allow ourselves to stop and pause and think. And it just gives you that time. I also get stuck in like, I gotta go to the next and I gotta go to the next and I gotta go to the next. Because as we know, the things never stop. You know, I feel like I learned that a lot. This like this past

Kika, like I wish that life could just pause for a little bit so I could get a handle on everything going on personally in my life, but it doesn’t. So if I don’t gift myself space to dream, I could either never work on the goal, never think about it, or never define it on my own terms. So by saying I’m just gonna do one 15-minute block that speaks to dream. Now, I suggest like you pick your goals. We’re gonna talk about mapping them out. You do them that way. But something I give myself.

Cara Harvey (07:10.002)

for work in particular. I don’t do it as much in my personal. My personal, I’ll pick a goal and I’ll do it that way. But for work, in my CEO work block every week, and it tends to get pushed off. It tends to be the one that I don’t do as often as I’d like. But when I’m in my CEO block at least twice a month, I give myself time to just dream. And if I don’t do that, I find that I’m always working in the nitty-gritty of my business, not on my business, not on the big picture, not thinking like what do I want this to look like? So

Whether you’re going to proactively give yourself 15 minutes, and I obviously use the 15-minute example because it’s the formula, but you know, you can give yourself more time than that, or you’re gonna say, I’m gonna do it for each goal. I recommend you add it in because it allows you to stop, pause, reflect, like, I’ll pray on it. I’m like, let me download. Like, what do I need right now? And think. What do I want? It gives you the clarity. So when you’re in the dream phase, no matter how short or long it is, that’s what you’re doing. Now the learn phase.

The reason learn comes next. And also, like I said, and I’ll talk about this in a second, but how learn and plan sometimes happen together is because oftentimes when there’s a goal and you don’t know the next step, we don’t know what we don’t know until we do it. And so there is a benefit of giving yourself a learn phase. But I’m gonna caution you because I know you. We love to learn. We love to spend time doing all these things, right? But you can’t get stuck in.

over learning until you take action. Oftentimes we want to know everything. You’re like, well, I can’t move forward until I’m a complete expert. That is also going to hold you back. So if you know that that’s how you learn and you’re like, I’m just going to read every book on this topic and listen to every podcast episode before I take action, you have to make sure you’re checking yourself that way. So before you actually dive in to your do, do you know your next step? And if you don’t ask yourself, where can I learn this thing?

And it doesn’t have to be I take a full course. For my book, The Learn, I went to a book writing workshop, like a conference for a couple of days. I immersed myself and I had three days just like learning about the process. I then came home and then I bought an intensive coaching course program to help me through writing the book. Right. Or it could be if I just listen to like one podcast on like how to make an Instagram reel, I think I can figure it out and I’ll learn as I go. Both things can be correct. It just depends on the depth of the goal.

Cara Harvey (09:35.158)

And how much you want to spend on it. If you’re trying to learn a new budgeting system, you might want to read a finance book. If you’re the gardening, like I mentioned, I took a course, right? But the thing with learn is you just need to learn enough to move, not to be the expert, not to know how to do all of it. It’s just learning the next step. Now, when you get to learn, plan, do this piece, you can do them simultaneously, right? Where you’re like, let me learn a bit.

Then I’ll plan what I’m gonna do and then I’m gonna do it. Then I’m gonna go back and learn the next step. Then plan, then do. So I wanna be clear about that. It doesn’t have to be that you learn it all. Now, there’s certain things for me, for example, the gardening. I didn’t know what I was doing. So I was like, I want to go through this whole course to get context on all the things I don’t know. Then I’ll do. For the book, I would learn a section of there was like a course that I took, right? And it had a a coach that came with it. So I would learn this section on I don’t know, designing your cover.

And then I would plan what I was gonna do and then implement and then go back. So it just totally depends on your type of learning style, the type of goal and what you want. But you wanna make sure there’s a learn component in it. We are constantly growing. That’s one of the things I love about this community is that it’s a bunch of learners. You’re always trying to learn, even if you’ve heard it before, to get better at it, to learn something new. And that’s what’s gonna keep you moving forward. All right. So it’s learn enough to move, not to be an expert. Then you’re going to plan. Now.

While you’re in the learn phase, this is where I sometimes will plan while I’m learning. So the gardening course. As I was going through, I was like taking notes and then I was starting to backwards plan some things. I was like, all right, if I’m gonna plant my stuff here, this is when my first frost or last frost is, this is this sort of thing. These are the things I need to build to get to the next step. So I was doing them simultaneously. Again, some goals you might want to watch all the way through and then plan. But in the plan phase is where you take your dream and you make it actionable, you pick your milestones.

You use the 15-minute formula. You use the five-step process. You pick your good, better, best, right? And then you ask yourself, like, what is the thing I’m gonna do and when is it gonna happen? So for some goals, maybe you’re decluttering. You might dream like what a decluttered house looks like and feels like for you. And you could do that in one session. Then you’re like, I’m gonna take this decluttering course and then I’m gonna map out my 12 weeks of decluttering. So the planning phase is important, but it doesn’t have to be super long. I think I spent, like I said, two weeks on the book just planning out.

Cara Harvey (12:00.438)

Everything like what I was going to do. Plan and learn also can sometimes be switched, but you only want to switch plan and learn when you kind of don’t need to learn that much. If you have a goal you’re going after and you’re like, I pretty much know what I’m doing, but maybe I just want to refresh your podcast to get me back on track. Cause like, you know, I always say if you’re decluttering, listen to a decluttering podcast while you do it. It keeps you motivated, right? You can swap them or they can be happening in conjunction. They can be parallel.

Then the due phase is where you’re moving. It’s where you’re getting started on it, right? Because we know that moving forward will create the momentum to get you going. We’re not perfect. We’re not trying to get it all done beautifully. It’s like I want to finish this small step. So in the due phase is where you’re taking action on everything you’ve learned and the plan that you’ve crafted. The due phase is when you’re like immersed in it. So when I have a goal that is in my due phase.

It’s that is when it’s like now it’s my tier one, right? Like now it’s my top of mind goal, it’s my primary focus, and I’m anchored into it. Now, this is an example of how do I set up a plan for specific goals over the time when I’m doing quarterly planning. Okay. I like to set up like, hey, here are the months I have going on and here are the sections. Now, a couple things. It doesn’t have to look like I’m dreaming in one month, I’m learning in the next month, I’m planning and then doing.

It could look like dream, learn in one month, plan, do in the next. It could look like dream in one month, learn, plan in one, do in the next. You could say, I’m gonna do all four in the month. But the point here is I want you to think about the goal and map it out how it’s gonna look for you. So I just want to show you here’s an example of what it could like if you were party planning, right? So my son’s birthday is in a couple weeks. So let’s pretend this is a situation. So I’m hosting and throwing the party here. That’s where it’s happening.

If I was to quarterly plan, I would be like, all right, if the party’s happening in June, in May, I’m gonna learn and plan. And then he would be like, What do you have to learn about throwing a birthday party? That’s up to what you need to know. Like my son, we’ve gone back and forth about his birthday so many times. And when what it came back to is he just really wants to spend time with this one friend. It doesn’t really care what he’s doing, but he wants to go to IFLY, which is like indoor skydiving. So for me, like I need to learn a little bit about that before we made the plan because I’m like, are you tall enough? Would you be too scared? Like, you don’t know.

Cara Harvey (14:22.26)

It’s like the, you know, like all those things. What is the cost? So for party planning, there isn’t much I need to learn. But say you’re like, I’m throwing a party where I’m making a bunch of the material, like the crafts, or I’m making the food and I need to learn. Maybe you have some learning. So I put those two together and then I’m gonna dream about it a couple months in advance. The benefit of breaking your plan down like this is that you’re not trying to cram it all in one month.

And then it feels scattered, then it feels unattainable, then it feels overwhelming. When I don’t gift myself space to dream about something, I find that I skip the step and then I’m just in the motions and I’m less connected. So I’m gonna give you another work example. Right now I’m planning out the 2027 summit. It is our 10th event. Very excited about it. And I wanted to start planning early because I know that if I don’t give myself enough time in these phases, all of a sudden it’s October. I gotta lock my speakers down and I’m feeling rushed. So I feel like

maybe I don’t put as much effort into certain areas. So I was like, all right, t I have plenty of time. I have nine months to plan this event and I wanted to look like knock it out the park and I’m so excited because I already have so much of it ready to go. So in July and August, I am currently in the dream phase of the summit.

So I’ve been brainstorm. I’ve been thinking. I’ve been coming up with our theme and our colors and the type of event we want to have and our speakers. And I’ll tell y’all because y’all are on our theme is your next chapter. And it’s going to be broken into five days where we talk about how you can go through and really figure out like what the next chapter of your current phase is and how do you anchor into it? I’m so excited about the whole thing. Because I spent the time dreaming, now I’m excited. Now I’m ready to jump in. So

July, actually June. I started it in June. Like I really did just one small session a week, starting in June when summer hit. I just started brainstorming and thinking. And now I’m like so enrolled in this vision. So now that we’re in August, I’m in a little bit of still finishing a dream and I’m learning and I’m planning. So for me, I’ve run summits multiple times before, but there’s still stuff that I can learn. So what I’m choosing to do for my learning is to go back into I bought a summit course.

Cara Harvey (16:35.212)

Eight years ago. I’m gonna go back into that and just like rewatch a couple of things. Just because you’ve learned something once or gone through a course once. How many of you can say, like, Carrie, you’ve talked about dream learn plan to 800 times, but today you said something that clicked differently, right? You’re in a different spot. You can learn it differently. And so I’m gonna go back and do that. I’m gonna find a couple of podcasts that maybe I need to learn about things like that. I’m just gonna immerse myself back in the world and I’m making my plan. So when I’m gonna start pitching speakers next month, what it’s going to look like, things like that.

And then I’m jumping right into my due for September, where I’m actively getting there. Other things I’m doing in the plan is we have a massive dock, you know, for our SOP, our operating procedure for this event. So I’m breaking it down, I’m creating all the milestones, I’m backwards planning the whole thing. I’m spending a lot of time getting it organized so that me and the rest of the team can jump into this. So whether you have a huge goal that you’re working on or something is one and done, like a birthday party.

You can use this to just give yourself a little bit of time so that it doesn’t feel stressful, so that it doesn’t feel insurmountable. And then instead of really thinking about it, you’re just jumping in. And what happens when we just jump in, right? When things go from Q two to Q one and all of a sudden we’re frantic is that jolts our nervous system. We feel super frantic. We’re like, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where I’m going. We, you know, halfway do things, we don’t put our full efforts in and we get overwhelmed. And a lot of times.

Because of that overwhelm, we might then quit on the goal. You might say, I want to start a garden, but now it feels like it’s too late because it’s too late in the season. So I’m just not going to do it. Right. So I want you to think about the goals that you have for yourself and one of the ones that you think would be good for this framework. Because again, it’s not every single goal that needs this type of a framework. So think of one right now in your head. And I want you to just in one sentence ask yourself or gift yourself some time later today.

Like what is my dream for this goal? Like what does this goal feel like? What does it look like? Ask yourself what you need to learn in order to be able to move forward. You don’t have to start learning, but what is the thing holding you back that maybe you need to spend some time on or interviewing somebody or talking to someone who’s done it before? What I don’t want for you is that thought of I don’t know how to do something. Therefore, I’m just not gonna do something that could potentially be really awesome for you. Right. I want you to understand that even if you don’t know the next step, you can

Cara Harvey (19:01.163)

learn the next step. Okay. And then pick your next step.