Exceptional
by Design
Building Your Dream Life. Chris Seegers and Tara Seegers on designing a life on purpose — eight pillars, four phases, and an assessment that tells you where you actually stand.
Most people design their business and improvise their life.
This book came out of a year Chris and Tara did not plan and would not repeat. What it produced was a framework: a way to look at a whole life the way an operator looks at a company — in pillars you can name, phases you can run, and disciplines you can measure.
Seventeen chapters across four phases. We wrote it to be worked, not read. The exercises are the book; the prose is there to get you into them.
Tara Seegers is co-author. The framework is the one the two of them used to move their family from Texas to Colorado, restructure the businesses, and build the life they had been describing to each other for a decade.
BY DESIGN
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Four phases.
Get clear. Define purpose, assess where you actually are, and write a vision in the present tense.
Weekly systems, daily disciplines, time mastery, financial freedom, and the team around you.
Navigate the obstacles, measure what matters, and iterate instead of restarting.
Gratitude, service, legacy. The part most plans never get to.
Eight pillars.
Every one of them is assessed, and every one of them is designed. A life that is exceptional in six and neglected in two is not exceptional.
Relationship with God. Daily practice, not a category.
Marriage first, then children, then the people you adopt in.
Physical and mental margin. Health as a discipline.
Freedom and stewardship, not accumulation for its own sake.
Purpose-driven work. Meaning and legacy.
Adventure, play, humor, the outdoors.
Time, relationships, purpose — freedom in all three.
Enterprise building. The Three P’s.
We don’t want you in the stands. We want you on the field. Your name on the jersey. Building your dream, not watching somebody else build theirs.Exceptional by Design
At twenty-four, Chris and his brothers built two miles of fence around a hundred and sixty acres outside Las Vegas, New Mexico, with hand tools, to pay for business school. The only way they survived it was to stop measuring the two miles.
Not two miles. Not until sundown. Just fence to the next support post. Then the next one. It is the method the whole book runs on, we still use it, and the fence is still standing.
The Exceptional Design Assessment maps you across seven dimensions and ten archetypes, then generates a report against the eight pillars. It is the diagnostic the book’s exercises are built on.
Seventeen chapters.
Four phases, and a chapter you can open on its own when that is the part of your life that needs work this month.
- How This Book Maps to Your Life OS — The Four Phases
- Introduction: The Day Everything Changed
- 1 · Getting Clear — You Must Be Clear to Get There
- 2 · Define Your Life Purpose
- 3 · Assess Your Current Reality
- 4 · Create Your Life Vision
- 5 · Set Your North Star Goals
- 6 · Turn Vision Into Strategy
- 7 · Design Your Weekly Success Systems
- 8 · Build Your Daily Disciplines
- 9 · Master Your Time
- 10 · Create Financial Freedom
- 11 · Build Your Dream Team
- 12 · Navigate Obstacles and Setbacks
- 13 · Measure What Matters
- 14 · The Art of Iteration
- 15 · Cultivate Gratitude and Presence
- 16 · Serve Something Bigger
- 17 · Leave a Legacy, the Right Way
- Conclusion: Your Exceptional Life Awaits
- Appendix: The Tools That Make It Real
- Appendix C: The 30-Day Kickstart Guide
Chapter four,
in full.
“Create Your Life Vision” is the chapter the rest of the book leans on — getting quiet enough to hear what you actually want, and then the ten-year exercise that puts it on paper in the present tense.
It is the exercise Chris and Tara ran on themselves, in a lonely spot in rural Colorado, with a journal and no phone. We put the whole chapter up rather than a teaser, because a sample that stops at the interesting part is not a sample.
The book is anticipated in the first quarter of 2027. This chapter is available now.
You can’t hear what you really want when there’s noise all around you. You can’t dream when you’re distracted. Chapter 4 · Create Your Life Vision
Buying it by the case
We ship Exceptional by Design in quantity for leadership teams, masterminds, conferences and client gifts, and we discount at volume. Tell us the count, the date you need them by, and where they are going.
We also license the frameworks for cohort and classroom use, and we will send an examination copy to anyone teaching from it.
Twenty-five copies or two thousand. Same address either way.
Start a bulk orderWriting about this book? The press kit for this title has descriptions at three lengths, the author bios, interview questions and asset requests.
Keep going
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