History and background

The problem
20 years in the making
Synthesis over invention
By the numbers

Full circle framework

Tootsie Pop analogy
Being + Doing + Going = You
Constant to changing
1 page and 1 word

6 essential questions

Who are you?
Why do you wake up?
Where should you focus?
What are you doing?
How do you work best?
When will you reassess?

Your starting point

We could begin our story in lots of places, but it’s probably best to start at the beginning.

As much as we believe that other purpose-seeking efforts can be helpful, the problem with most of them is that they encourage you to start searching externally for what must first be found internally. If you spend your time looking outwardly for what begins inwardly, how is it you’re supposed to find what you’re looking for? Short answer: You can’t.

Just as problematic is the fact that many frameworks and methods rely upon a single source of truth rather than many. They are so singular and limited in their approach that they end up forcing people down a narrow path that leads to less possibilities than that which a multitude of other approaches might offer. There is no silver bullet, yet many people keep trying to find one.

Be Do Go You resolutely addresses these two problems and provides a proven purpose-finding (and fulfilling) framework for intentional people just like you.

Be Do Go You and our premier purpose-finding course is the result of 20 years of amalgamation, experimentation, and iteration. It all started when our founder, Jonathan Cottrell, began crafting his personal mission statement at the age of 19. He wouldn’t rest until he had a purpose that he felt he could pursue for the rest of his life.

Though he derived an initial statement after a month of contemplation, journaling, and discussing it with others, he wasn’t satisfied with the first draft. So, he continued to hone it, leveraging the wisdom offered by spiritual, familial, professional, and other experts, strategists, and texts to keep improving it over months, even years. Eventually, he crafted a clear purpose that he knew he could wake up to pursue each day—but he realized he needed more than that, too. He needed ways to keep living on purpose, staying focused on the ultimate vision of his life and legacy.

After 15 years, he finally synthesized his constant iteration to create a reliable framework, offering all who tried it a proven method to better understanding themselves and fulfilling their unique purposes. In testing it with a diverse group of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances over the next 5 years, he discovered that, regardless of their age, gender, race, marital status, income, profession, or previous purpose-defining work, they all experienced similar results. This was something that could help change more lives than just his, and it needed to be unleashed in the world.

Fortunately, you don’t have to spend the next two decades going through the trial and error that Jonathan did. It’s here, ready for you now.

Once again, it’s important to reinforce that this framework isn’t a wholly new invention. Instead, it’s the synthesis of countless other studies, observations, methodologies, best practices, tips, and life hacks, orchestrated and simplified in such a way that anybody can approach them. As Einstein once said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.”

Rather than be forced to understand the theory behind each and every one of the principles baked into, hinted at, or called out in the Be Do Go You framework, all you need to do is complete the focused exercises that help you answer 6 essential questions. As a result, purpose-seekers who trust Be Do Go You gain far more than just a purpose that they can pursue. Our graduates are equipped with practical, lifelong tools that they can apply to stay on track, sustainably improving every area of their life.

Also, unlike other popular books and methodologies, Be Do Go You is not a rinse-and-repeat formula that just exchanges language from one audience to another, tweaking very little from course to course. Instead, this framework provides building blocks that continue growing with each stage of application that people use it for.

For example, if you take our discover your purpose course and answer the 6 essential questions for yourself, none of those exercises are then repeated in courses like love on purpose, parent on purpose, and so on. Instead, we use the same structure to keep building on the answers you arrived at in the first course, but giving you new tools to apply in these other life contexts. The concepts will feel similar from course to course, yes, but the questions, exercises, and answers you gain will help you to continue honing your vision and improving your life in wholly new ways.

All of our numbers are still evolving, but it can be helpful to understand just how robust the Be Do Go You framework is today. It’s also helpful to understand the vision that’s in mind for it down the road.

Just with our title course alone, the numbers below represent where we’re at today. Meanwhile, other courses and course bundles are on the horizon, which will expand the scope and depth of our framework to impact even more lives in the future.

Now that you have an understanding of our history and background, let’s dissect the framework itself.

Analogies, pictures, quotes, stories, acronyms, and the like are all very helpful mnemonics when applied properly, helping us recall and retrieve information when we need it later. But the human brain rarely grasps onto mnemonics like that, asking, “What’s that mnemonic I need, again?” Instead, people just remember.

At Be Do Go You, that’s exactly why we refer to Tootsie Pops so often. They’re something that most people remember from their childhood and connote with positive feelings. More importantly, Tootsie Roll Inc. provided us with an analogy so perfect that we decided to incorporate it into how we explain our framework from the very get-go.

Regardless of when you were born, you have probably seen (or heard about) the 1982 commercial where a young boy comes up to a sophisticated-looking owl to ask, “How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?”

Taking the lollipop from the boy’s hands, Mr. Owl responds, “Let’s find out. One,” he licks. “Two,” he licks again. ”Three,” he licks once more before—CRUNCH—he bites it. Handing the devoured lollipop back to a disappointed boy, Mr. Owl gives his final answer, “Three.”

Frankly, we’re an awful lot like Mr. Owl when it comes to discovering our purpose. Rather than put in the necessary work, we would much rather believe that there’s a shortcut—a crunch—to the very core of who we are.

In our on-demand, instant gratification culture, that makes sense. We suffer from Tootsie Pop syndrome. Unfortunately, however, there’s no fast forward button when it comes to discovering our purpose. It takes more than three licks and some teeth (or a beak) to arrive at clarifying the unique complexity about somebody. About you. It takes work.

The work isn’t hard, necessarily, but you do need to know how to calculate an answer. You must start with small questions—the licks—to eventually reach your big answer—the Tootsie Roll center. Mr. Owl doesn’t have the answer you’re looking for, but finally, there is an equation to discovering your purpose. It’s:

Don’t worry, you don’t need to be a math wiz to arrive at an answer. In a sense, though, this is kind of like human algebra. You need to figure out who you’re meant to be, what you’re meant to do, and where you want to go before adding things up. Your final answer comes at the end.

Inspired by the old Tootsie Pop commercial, engineers from Purdue University created a licking machine, modeled after a human tongue. After rigorous testing, they reported that it took an average of 364 licks to reach the center. Other volunteers assumed the licking challenge unassisted by machinery and averaged 252 licks to the delicious Tootsie Roll chocolate.

However many licks it takes you, it’s worth it. Even though you can’t just crunch your way to the good stuff, discovering your purpose is far tastier than a Tootsie Roll.

Here’s another way to look at it. Just as every Tootsie Pop has a delicious center, you also have a core—an essence. These are the things about you that remain nearly constant, fluctuating very little over the course of your life.

While the jobs you work (What), the places you live (Where), the ways you work (How), and the stages of life you live (When) are all things that will experience regular change over your lifetime, the more central elements like your personal identity (Who), the reason you wake up each morning (Why), and how you choose where to focus (Where) should experience much less change. In our full circle framework, it looks like this…

Put another way, these core elements operate much like your shadow, sticking with you wherever you go. You simply can’t get away from those things. They’re what make you a human being rather than a human doing. And that is a foundational principle of the Be Do Go You framework. Starting from the center, we work outward, helping you begin where you absolutely must—in answering who you truly are.

This all may seem quite overwhelming. Certainly, reading it like this very much can be—it’s a lot to take in at once.

But again, Be Do Go You’s only real “invention” is the simplification, distillation, and synthesis of all these concepts, placed into a pattern of learning that anybody can engage with and enjoy. Middle schoolers and up have employed the techniques provided in our courses to start answering questions that most senior citizens only wished they answered when they were younger. Of course, it’s never too late to start answering these questions. But the main point is this: Anybody can do this.

Rather than long pages of text (like this one), books collecting dust on your shelf, or endless ideas and worksheets that you have to try and puzzle fit together, at the end of each course in the Be Do Go You catalog, we help you summarize everything you’ve learned into a single page. While you’re far more complex than a single sheet of paper can communicate, that one page is a simple way to express who you are to others and stay focused on your purpose, day in and day out.

Were that not enough, we even help people summarize themselves into one word, too. That word becomes a focal point for many—a center—that gives them the confidence they need in moving forward, pursuing their purpose with passion.

What might your page—and word—say about you? Today is the day to find out.

Inside every one of our courses, there are at least 8 main learning modules, plus a comprehensive collection of resources and bonuses to help you develop the mindset and skills to start—and stay—living on purpose. Our course tour provides a prime example of all that’s included.

At the center of our framework is, most importantly, a repetition of 6 essential questions:

• Who are you?

• Why do you wake up?

• Where will you focus?

• What are you doing?

• How do you work best?

• When will you reassess?

More simply, the questions can each be represented by a single word:

This pattern carries through to each of our courses. For example, once you’ve discovered purpose for yourself, our love on purpose course offers a slight tweak or addition to those questions, helping intentional couples build upon what they’ve already answered before:

• Who are you together?

• Why do you wake up next to one another?

• Where should you both focus?

• What are you each doing?

• How do you work best as partners?

• When will you mutually reassess?

If we were to equate each one of our questions with a single concept, it would look something like…

• Who = Identity

• Why = Vision

• Where = Focus

• What = Choices

• How = Methods

• When = Timing

You get the idea. Now it’s time to dig in a little further and understand why these seemingly simple questions and concepts will help you discover—and pursue—a purpose that’s uniquely yours.

Maybe it was at a work function, a wedding, a friend’s birthday party, or somewhere on a plane when the world still traveled pre-COVID. Wherever it was, you’ve been asked by someone to introduce yourself, share your story, and summarize who you are in an introductory conversation. But where do you even begin?

If you’re like most people, you probably start with what you do. Or, if you’ve trusted the wisdom of certain gurus, you start with why you exist. Or perhaps you resort to sharing the cursory knowledge about you that even you don’t care about.

Here’s the truth, though: You are not what you do. You are not why you exist. You are not a label. You are you. Better yet, you have been fearfully and wonderfully made.

The real reason you share those other tidbits and factoids isn’t because you don’t know where to begin—it’s because you don’t fully know yourself. It feels impossible to summarize the uniqueness of who you are in a few words or ideas, so you don’t even bother trying.

Distilling who you are is the most difficult part of gaining clarity about your purpose, but it’s also the most important part. The exercises compiled in this portion of our Who framework empowers people to look inward and find a solid path forward. This is all about identity.

In teaching this concept, we help purpose-seekers answer questions like:

• Where do you come from?

• What life events have shaped you?

• What is your personality type?

• What are your personality traits?

• How do other people see you?

• How will you now describe yourself?

• And more

At the end of Who, you will have looked inward, reflected, answered some tough questions, and gained greater confidence in your true identity. You are more than you say—and think—you are.

Unless you spent the last decade living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of Simon Sinek’s widely adopted advice to “Start with Why.” He gave a Ted Talk about the concept in 2009, the same year he published a best-selling book of the same name. The video alone has been watched over 50 million times and he has become well known for his counsel.

While there’s plenty of wisdom in the concept, the challenge with this principle being universally applied is that it’s more oriented to organizations than individuals. Answering why you do something is important, of course, but if you don’t start with who you are and who you serve, it’s hard to land on a Why that works well. As a result, this has left many people searching for the holy grail of a Why, disappointed when they can’t find one that resonates with them at their very core.

The other challenge with this advice is that it often leads people to conforming their personal purposes to that of their current work environment. While that may seem to make sense, what happens then when you change jobs, companies, or even retire? Should your purpose cease to exist as a result of a job change that nearly everyone eventually experiences?

No. Discovering a purpose is not about why you do what you do right now, it’s about knowing why you wake up every morning. A solid Why should be something you could chase if you were 9 years old or 90 years old. Best of all, it’s something you can start pursuing now.

In teaching this concept, we help people answer perspective-shifting questions to arrive at a lasting Why. Questions like:

• Who do you admire most, and why do you admire them?

• What would you be thinking, feeling, seeing, hearing, and doing if you were 9 again?

• What do you imagine you will be thinking, feeling, seeing, hearing, and doing at age 90?

• What do you expect will be your final thoughts?

• What do you want your headstone to say?

• And finally, why do you wake up every morning?

• And more

Every morning is a gift of full of new mercies—and frankly, it’s a gift that isn’t guaranteed. Yet another reason to discover your Why and make everyday count.

When using a map, whether printed or digital, routing your path forward requires you first identify where you are currently. Even GPS-enabled mapping solutions follow the same rules. In John Steinbeck’s time-tested words, “To find where you are going, you must know where you are.”

Your purpose is no different. To determine your next steps forward, it requires you know where you are now. Whether that’s where you live, what stage of life you’re in, what you’ll have unique opportunity to do now versus later, or other factors, it’s imperative to get your bearings before moving forward.

Just as importantly, it’s helpful take stock of what you’ve done in the past so that you know what to do in the future. Every successful person knows that focus is essential to making a more significant impact—and for the record, success has nothing to do with fame or fortune. It was Bruce Lee who said, “The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.”

To focus, it requires your continual and mutually exclusive choice. But with so much vying for your attention and energy, the question is where you should place your focus. In teaching people Where, we help purpose-seekers answer key questions like:

• Where do you live?

• What stage of life are you in?

• What will you have time to do later?

• What makes you feel the spectrum of emotions?

• What stage of projects do you typically contribute to?

• What are your life’s themes?

• And more

The intended outcome in answering these questions, once again, is not to create a rigid plan for the rest of your life. Instead, it’s to help you filter through what you should—and shouldn’t—do next. It’s time to get your bearings, because every choice you make makes you.

What have you been up to, lately? What are you doing this weekend? What do you do? Questions about what you do and what you plan on doing are ever frequent. Also, they’re important. But as people who go through our courses learn, these questions just shouldn’t come first.

Once you know your Who, Why, and Where, then it’s time to dig into What. Without having a clear answer to these former questions, though, it’s nearly impossible to make the right choices about what you should be doing next.

Answering What isn’t just about work, either. It’s about what you should spend your time doing, what you plan on achieving, and even what you should sacrificially invest time and money into now so that you achieve your future goals and never stop pursuing your purpose.

Perhaps you’ve followed your gut most of your life and learned to settle into whatever you’re working on now well enough. Perhaps you’ve been more analytical, letting pragmatism drive your decisions. But either extremes could lead to you making decisions that don’t necessarily align well with you and your vision.

While there’s an aspect of what you’re doing currently being the obvious answer to this question, answering What is as much about what you should do next as it is what you’re doing now. As a result, the questions we ask purpose-seekers in this phase of the process include:

• What type or work would make you exclaim “Heck yeah”?

• What goals are worth pursuing over the rest of your life?

• What do you want to be doing 1, 3, and 7 years from now?

• What will you invest now into your future self?

• What’s the main thing you’re focused on?

• What should your schedule look like as a result?

• What are you doing in this season of life?

• And more

One of the world’s wealthiest men, Warren Buffett, puts it quite simply: “Without passion, you don't have energy. Without energy, you have nothing.” Regardless of how much you like or dislike what you’re doing now, like Buffett, you too can passionately invest your energy now into pursuits that move you toward fulfilling your lifelong potential and purpose. Imagine a world in which that’s what everyone did.

Energy is finite, so it’s imperative you optimize where you place yours.

As much as most people like to focus on what they do, the fact is you’re a human being, not a human doing. Your worth as a person has nothing to do with where you work, how much money you make, or even the motivation behind what you do.

In our framework, we teach that what you’re doing should be the byproduct of your being, not what precedes it. And it’s not only what you’re doing that matters—how you do it matters, too. That’s why it’s important to refine not only your What but your How. How you do something can have a profound multiplying effect on what you set your mind and hand to achieving.

If you asked any expert in their field, they could teach you how to do something. That said, they could also share many ways not to do something. This shouldn’t be overlooked, either. Learning how not to do something is sometimes just as helpful as learning how to do it. That’s why so many instruction manuals include “Important” labels and bold text to warn people away from making mistakes that vary in consequence.

American author and purveyor of literary wisdom, Mark Twain, said, “Improvement is better than delayed perfection.” Improvement today is certainly better than perfection tomorrow. To realize this way of living, though, requires a growth-oriented mindset that appreciates experimentation, failure, and learning over consistency, success, and knowing.

In short, the way you do things is just as essential as why you do them. As you work through identifying your How, we help purpose-seekers think through questions such as:

• What are the routines and habits you intend to implement in your life?

• How are you most effectively motivated?

• How will you design your environment to foster how you intend to live?

• How will you implement cycles for personal learning and improvement?

• How should you work best based on your Who, Why, Where, and What?

• Distilling it all, how do you work best to fulfill your purpose?

• And more

In the words of James Clear, best-selling author of Atomic Habits, “Be the designer of your world and not merely the consumer of it.” Not everyone lives this way, but you can. Improvement awaits you.

Timing is everything—or so the saying goes. In fact, Daniel Pink wrote an exceptional book about it, simply titled When. According to the researcher and author, there are myriad scientific secrets to perfect timing.

Most comedians would agree that timing is key. But it’s not just them that benefit from good timing. Your life is made up of rhythms that you may not even be aware of. Regardless of your awareness, though, it’s a fact. Whether you subscribe to the belief that time is an illusion or not, it presses on—or rather, you press on through it.

Often referenced by poets, playwrights, and philosophers, one of the most famous passages of Hebrew scripture is found in Ecclesiastes 3. It begins, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” The writer continues the passage by juxtaposing all the types of seasons you, society, and nature must encounter, wisely concluding, “I perceived that there is nothing better for [people] than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all [their] work—this is God's gift to [us].”

Knowing that life comes in seasons can be incredibly beneficial. Everybody has reached crossroads in their lives at which point they must ask themselves, “What next?” Perhaps you’re at one of those spots now, even.

In this final essential question, we help purpose-seekers practice how to go about assessing their seasons by asking pointed questions like:

• Do you have the clarity you need right now?

• What are you committed to finishing over the next 90 days?

• What do you need to stop, keep, and start doing?

• What rhythms should be in place during this season?

• What season are you currently in or entering?

• What are your priorities for this season?

• What’s your primary focus or theme for this season?

• And more

Taking stock of when things are changing isn’t the end all be all solution to living the rest of your life on purpose—but it absolutely helps. Learn the techniques to keep reassessing.

For everyone who’s employed our framework and taken our courses, they come full circle to knowing who they’re meant to Be, what they’re meant to Do, and where they’re meant to Go. You can join those who have gone before you, too, helping you:

• Reflect on what has brought you to this point in history

• Gain clarity about your ultimate identity and purpose

• Pick up tools to get unstuck when you need new direction

• Commit to replacing what conflicts with how you’re made

• Practice how to seek out continuous improvement

• Learn new ways to live out the rest of your life on purpose

Of course, we know that we can’t serve everyone. Perhaps this framework feels like something that you would benefit from, perhaps not. More than anything else, though, we simply want you to pursue your purpose and discover everything you were made for. If we’ve inspired you even one bit to take an intentional step forward, we’ve succeeded.

In the wise words of Oscar Wilde, “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.” We concur. The world needs what only you can give it. Do yourself—and everyone around you—a favor. Pursue your purpose, starting today.

After all, who doesn’t like a Tootsie Pop?

Or, explore all our courses