For 40 years the Franklin Planner has helped more than 15 million people organize their days around what matters most. But a planner on the desk is only part of what its most committed users have been asking for. On this episode of The Franklin Planner Podcast, co-hosts George Wright III and John Harding, board member and owner at Franklin Planner, announce the Lead Your Life membership, a community and resource hub built to extend the planner system into the rest of your life.
The episode is unusually product-focused, and the hosts say so. But underneath the announcement is a clear argument about why a principles-based system matters more in a digitally distracted world, and what it takes to move from good intentions to consistent execution.
Why Franklin Planner Is Launching the Lead Your Life Membership
Harding describes the request that kept coming from customers: "What more can you do for us in the way we live our life?" Franklin Planner sees 85 percent of its customers return every year, and these are people who care deeply about their time and the people they spend it with. Yet many describe themselves as busy but unfulfilled, organized but not aligned with their values. They want momentum, and they want to connect with other intentional people.
There's a leader in every one of us. There's greatness in us and actually brilliance.
Harding tells a story about riding in the car with his dad as a teenager, listening to Paul Harvey and Earl Nightingale and paging through his father's executive summaries. He started to identify with those voices. The membership is meant to give planner users that same identity and community. Wright adds that even Grant Cardone, whom he interviewed a month earlier, told him he's a big Franklin Planner user. The mission hasn't changed: inspire people to create their best life, and lead their life, their families, their teams, and their organizations.
What's Included in the Lead Your Life Membership
Wright lays out the core benefits: monthly guidance and planning frameworks, exclusive content and training, member-only offers and discounts, early access to new and exclusive products, community support with ongoing accountability and structure, a private Facebook group, and initial affiliate partnerships with exclusive member perks. Members also get podcast extras, the behind-the-scenes material guests share beyond the interview. Misty Howard, the show's resident history expert, contributes research on figures like Ben Franklin and George Washington.
There's a live event every month. Guests lined up include Stephen M.R. Covey, Bill Danko, author of The Millionaire Next Door, and Olympic silver medalist Noelle Pikus-Pace, along with bestselling authors and speakers, in fireside chats and round tables with Q&A. A 64-page digital Lead Your Life magazine is launching alongside the membership, with interviews built around leading your life and leading your team, plus digital downloads, a newsletter, articles, and research. Wright notes the price is less than a movie ticket.
How Quadrant II Thinking Fights the Productivity Avalanche
Harding points to research from Microsoft, HubSpot, and others showing people get only about five minutes before an interruption, at home as much as at work. He calls it a productivity avalanche, and it keeps people from the deeper work that matters. Writing by hand has been shown to activate broader neural networks and improve memory.
It's almost like the planner slows you down enough to do what matters, to do deeper work.
That's where the time management matrix comes in. Urgent things demand attention whether they matter or not. Your mission, vision, values, and the people who matter to you are important but rarely urgent. Quadrant II, important and not urgent, is the space the membership is built to protect. Drawing on Stephen R. Covey's Seven Habits, Harding frames the objective as leading your life from a center of sound principles, guided by a clear personal mission, while balancing production with production capability. Do that and you avoid burnout, broken relationships, declining health, and diminished creativity.
Who the Membership Is For, and Where to Start
Harding's answer is anyone who wants to create their best life and lead it. You don't need a planner or a purchase history. The member area includes training that walks you through the planner at a deeper level, and the hosts argue it's essential for leaders, professionals, and retirees alike. Founding members will get extras and a direct voice in shaping what comes next, because the program will be guided by customer feedback and, in Harding's words, compound in value over time.
The challenge Harding offers is simple: revisit your mission. Sit down, write out who matters to you, what matters to you, and the values behind those answers, then look ahead to the goals you'd like to accomplish.
If you map that and then you align to that every day, you don't get everything done, but what you do get done and where you're heading is a place that is an incredible life and you're leading.
Action Steps
- Write down your mission: who matters to you, what matters to you, and the values behind both.
- Pick one Quadrant II activity, important but not urgent, and block time for it this week.
- Plan your day by hand to slow down enough for deeper work.
- Test the membership resources, then join the community and share what you learn.
Wright describes the Franklin Planner community as one of the largest in the world of people living with intention, and the membership as a way to finally interact with it at scale. The tools have always been there. What's new is the community and the accountability. You don't just manage time. You lead your life.
