Five Year Life™
Chart Your Five Year Future™

A Calm, Structured Way Forward — When Life No Longer Fits

There are moments when life changes so decisively that the path you were walking simply stops making sense. Sometimes it happens slowly — a growing dissatisfaction you can’t quite name, a quiet resistance to routines that once felt right, a sense that something important has drifted out of alignment. Other times it happens all at once: a job loss, a forced career pivot, a relationship rupture, a health scare, or the sudden realization that the world you prepared for no longer exists in the same form.

When that happens, most people don’t need hype or pressure. They need a calm, reliable structure that helps them regain clarity, stabilize their footing, and make grounded decisions without panic. The Five Year Life™ series exists for exactly that moment — not to “pump you up,” but to help you think clearly again, then move forward with quiet confidence and a plan that actually fits who you are.

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What Five Year Life™ Is Really About

Over the past several years, something shifted — quietly at first, then unmistakably. Messages began arriving from people I had worked with decades earlier: founders, executives, professionals, and people who had done everything “right” according to the old rules. They weren’t asking for motivation. They were asking for a way to think again, because the world that made their plan feel safe had changed underneath them.

They all said some version of the same thing: their job was gone, their industry was shrinking, AI had erased roles that once felt stable, and the future no longer resembled the plan they built their lives around. These weren’t isolated stories. They were early warning signals of a much larger disruption — one touching every age group, every pay band, and nearly every profession. When enough people experience that kind of instability at the same time, “just be positive” stops being advice and starts sounding like an insult.

For more than forty-five years, I’ve had more than 33,000 deeply candid, one-on-one relationships — with startup founders and CEOs navigating business crises, and with tens of thousands of people navigating the most personal decisions of their lives. In every single one, someone was looking to me to help them find the path they couldn’t see from where they were standing. I call the accumulated wisdom from those relationships Compound Knowledge™ — and it is the foundation of every book in this series.

→ Learn more about Compound Knowledge™ and where these frameworks come from

But never — not once across forty-five years and seven prior major economic disruptions — had I seen this many people needing clarity at the same time. And this is not only an American story. Europe is experiencing the same upheaval more acutely. Asia is restructuring under the same forces. Economies once thought insulated are not insulated anymore. The reset is global. That wave of disruption is what gave birth to the Five Year Life™ series: practical frameworks that help you replace fear and confusion with structure, perspective, and grounded decision-making.

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Start Where You Are — This Series Was Built for Real Life

Five Year Life™ is a series of books designed to be used, not admired. Each title meets you where you are — whether you’re in crisis, transition, or quiet reevaluation — and helps you move forward without rushing, spiraling, or pretending. You will not be pushed into “burn it all down” thinking here. The goal is alignment: getting honest about what’s true, deciding what matters most, and taking steps that you can actually sustain. This applies across work, identity, relationships, and the practical realities of money and uncertainty.

Each book stands on its own. Together, they form a complete operating system for the moment we’re all in — financial stabilization, strategic clarity, and tactical implementation, working as one. If you only read one book, you’ll still get value. If you move through multiple titles, you’ll start to see how the same decision architecture applies to every challenge worth taking seriously. Every nonfiction book in this series is also built for entry at the point of greatest urgency rather than the first page — meaning you open to wherever your biggest urgency lives right now, start there, and gain clarity immediately. No beginning required. Whatever is at the top of today’s agenda is where you begin.

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The Books

Your Last Paycheck™

First, Financial Triage After the Layoff to Prepare You for the Job Search. Second, Mapping Your New Personalized Career Path in the Age of AI.

Your Last Paycheck™ is the financial stabilization and career-repositioning layer of the Five Year Life™ operating system — and the right book for everyone in the formal layoff cohort, the forced-exit cohort, anyone whose role is being restructured underneath them, and anyone still employed who sees the writing on the wall and wants to get ahead of it while the paycheck is still coming.

Bureau of Labor Statistics JOLTS reports document more than 40 million Americans laid off or terminated in the last 24 months — and another 80 million more who departed through what BLS calls “quits” over the same period.

The word “quits” sounds voluntary. Sometimes it is. But buried inside that 80 million are tens of millions of people who resigned under pressure, accepted quiet exits, left before a formal layoff arrived, or were pushed into so-called “voluntary” departures that never appear in headline layoff counts — forced exits dressed up as resignations, where the alternative was being formally fired or laid off.

And this is not only an American story. Europe is experiencing this more acutely than the United States by several measures. Asia is restructuring under the same forces. Economies once thought insulated are not insulated anymore.

The household math makes the urgency concrete. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey, the average American household spent $78,535 in 2024 — about $6,545 per month. That means a six-month disruption in income can require almost $40,000 just to keep an average household intact. And six months is not an extreme scenario. The most recent BLS unemployment-duration data places the average duration of unemployment at roughly twenty-six weeks — considerably longer for older workers and higher-paid positions.

The Federal Reserve adds the final warning: the median family transaction-account balance is nowhere near that $40,000 runway. Most households are not sitting on six months of liquid reserves. Many are barely sitting on one. That is why job loss is not merely an employment problem. It is a runway crisis.

Job loss is also never just a financial event. It’s an identity shock, a loss of stability, and a rupture in how you understand your own value. And in today’s economy, finding stable work often takes far longer than people expect — especially as AI continues to reshape entire professions. Your Last Paycheck™ was written to prevent panic-driven decisions during one of the most vulnerable periods of a person’s life.

The first half of the book is your financial triage after the layoff — a calm, step-by-step stabilization plan for the critical early weeks: what to secure, what to protect, how to preserve both finances and emotional footing. The second half maps your new personalized career path in the Age of AI. Chapter 20 — the heart of Part Two and roughly thirty percent of the entire book — names 100 AI job and career titles you’ve probably never heard of, spanning the corporate ladder from immediate income lanes at $25,000 up to the Chief AI Officer tier at $600,000. Each entry comes with 2026 compensation ranges, the specific AI skills to build on top of the Compound Knowledge™ you already carry, and the exact first step to take this week. You are not starting over. You are leveling up. And none of the 100 requires you to write a single line of code. A bonus appendix — the Upwork Exposé — is included at the back of the book, sourced entirely from Upwork’s own SEC filings, with every claim independently verifiable. 23 self-contained Action Plans. Open to the one that matches your biggest urgency today and start there. No beginning required.

Coming Soon — in Kindle, paperback, hardcover, and Audiobook formats!

For more information: FiveYearLife.com/YourLastPaycheck

Reset Protocol™

Beyond the Road Less Traveled: The Road Most Desired™

Reset Protocol™ is the strategic clarity layer of the Five Year Life™ operating system — and the book that addresses a third cohort most transition programs never reach: the tens of millions still employed who privately know they are no longer on the right road.

There comes a point in nearly every life when the internal alignment that once held everything together begins to fracture. You feel it before you can explain it — a heaviness, a resistance, a sense that you are living slightly out of phase with yourself. Reset Protocol™ exists for that moment.

The methodology is deliberately non-prescriptive. Reset Protocol™ does not tell you what to change. Drawn from 33,000 candid one-on-one relationships across four and a half decades, its 108 carefully crafted questions surface what your heart and mind have been trying to tell you for years — starting with an honest assessment of your Current Point A™, exactly where you are right now, and defining with unmistakable clarity what your Most Desired Point B™ actually looks like. Nobody tells you what your Road Most Desired™ should look like. The questions simply make it impossible to keep pretending you do not already know.

The questions are organized not by topic but by how you feel right now — through a 10-bucket emotional navigation system called The Question Picker™ — so you can open to the section that matches today’s emotional state and gain traction immediately. You’ll also encounter the Five-Year Lens™ — a future-focused way to evaluate decisions based on who you are becoming, not just what you’re trying to escape. Reset Protocol™ is not about blowing up your life. It’s about realignment — done deliberately, honestly, and with realistic compassion.

Coming Soon — in Kindle, paperback, hardcover, and Audiobook formats!

For more information: FiveYearLife.com/ResetProtocol

Reset Protocol™ Workbook

Beyond the Road Less Traveled: The Road Most Desired™

Reset Protocol™ Workbook is the tactical implementation layer of the Five Year Life™ operating system.

Reset Protocol™ Workbook is built for the moment when reading a powerful framework is not enough. Some people absorb insight by reading. Other people need a structured place to apply it immediately — to write, reflect, decide, and turn clarity into a next step they can actually take. This workbook is the write-in companion to Reset Protocol™, designed to help you make the 108 questions personal, practical, and real — in your own words.

For each of the 108 questions, the workbook gives you guided space to think more clearly than you can in your head, plus additional angles to consider so you do not accidentally answer in the easiest or most socially acceptable way. Every question also carries the Stop Signal™ — the workbook’s built-in permission to stop after one honest answer and one 24-hour action. That single completed question is a complete win. It is not therapy, and it is not busywork. It is decision architecture in workbook form: honest reflection that leads to a grounded 24-hour action, so you build momentum without overwhelm.

The Workbook also stands completely alone — you do not need to read Reset Protocol™ first. Open to the question that fits today, write the honest answer, choose one small action, and stop. That is a complete win. And over time, those wins become a reset you can actually sustain.

Coming Soon — in Kindle, paperback, hardcover, and Audiobook formats!

For more information: FiveYearLife.com/ResetProtocolWorkbook

Efficient Love™

I Had 1,200 First Dates So You Don’t Have To™

“I had 1,200 first dates” sounds like a gimmick. It wasn’t. It was the byproduct of an accidental experiment that started with a simple website: NovelistSeeksHeroine.com.

That page described the 28 traits I believed mattered most for long-term compatibility. More than 2 million visitors found their way to it. 30,000+ genuine relationships developed from those visits. 15,000 serious candidates responded, convinced they matched. What followed was a decade-long journey — 1,200+ first dates, 300+ second dates, and a hard-earned education in the difference between attraction, projection, and true alignment.

From 2 million visitors. From 30,000+ relationships. From 15,000 serious candidates. From 1,200 first dates. There was one — and only one — woman I asked to marry me. She said yes. That was more than two decades ago and we’re still happily counting. She’s not one in a million. She’s one in 2 million.

But this book isn’t about my story. It’s about yours.

Efficient Love™ shows you how to avoid years of unnecessary detours, identify real compatibility earlier, and find the person who is right for you — where you also happen to be right for them. It distills everything learned from that journey — including the Three Lists — into a practical, repeatable approach you can apply immediately to your own search.

Coming Soon — in Kindle, paperback, hardcover, and Audiobook formats!

For more information: FiveYearLife.com/EfficientLove

Stark Naked Startup™

Stark Naked Startup™: A Novel — Loneliness Epidemic, Solved By An AI Startup. Sexual Intimacy and Desire, Uncontrollably Addictive. Unintended Consequences, Their Truth Algorithm Weaponized — And Every Government on Earth Their Enemy.™

Stark Naked Startup™ Book 1 — the first of a planned four-novel series (also Book 5 of the Five Year Life™ Series) — a look through the keyhole

Stark Naked Startup™ is set in Florence, Italy, and blends intense romance, entrepreneurship, reinvention, ethics, and human connection inside a rapidly changing technological world.

Four Millennial founders. Florence, Italy. Forbidden code. An AI startup that accidentally solves humanity’s deepest need — and a Truth Algorithm so powerful it draws the attention of every government on Earth. While it shares the same DNA as the nonfiction books in this series — identity, disruption, alignment, and the cost of getting success right and the future wrong — this is where those themes are explored through the lens of fiction: character-driven erotic romance threaded with rising suspense and a techno-thriller arc that asks what happens when someone actually solves humanity’s deepest need at scale. Maybe even dead wrong.

Coming Soon — in Kindle, paperback, hardcover, and Audiobook formats!

For more information: FiveYearLife.com/StarkNakedStartup

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Advance Reader Team Openings For Each Book

An Advance Reader Team is a small, intentionally selected group of early readers who receive an Advance Reader Copy (ARC) of each book in this series before publication and offer honest, real-world feedback on clarity, pacing, tone, and practical usefulness. The goal is to make each book as genuinely helpful as possible for the people who will rely on it most.

ARC Team Members receive a free advance copy of the manuscript before publication. If you choose to leave an honest review around launch, it is greatly appreciated — especially near launch day — but it is never required. You can remain completely anonymous, or you can be among the first names acknowledged in a book that may reach hundreds of thousands of readers. Your call either way.

You do not need to read the entire manuscript. Even your reaction to a single chapter, a single question, or a single idea you actually tried is enough to matter.

Questions about ARC Teams? FiveYearLife.com/ARC

Just want updates on all Five Year Life™ releases, ARC Team openings, and major milestones? Please complete the following form:

If at any point you prefer to follow only one specific book, you can visit that book’s page and join its individual list instead.

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Chart Your Five Year Future™

Reinvention is no longer optional for many people — it is required. But reinvention does not have to be chaotic, and it does not require burning everything down. With the right structure, the next five years of your life can be approached calmly, intentionally, and with a deeper sense of ownership than you’ve ever had before.

That is the promise of Five Year Life™: a warm, seasoned guide and a practical system that helps you move forward with clarity, dignity, and a plan you can actually live.

Thanks,

Robert

Robert Lee Goodman, MBA
CEO and Publisher, Good-Man LLC
Founder and Author, Five Year Life™ Series
44X Founder · Rocket Scientist ·
33K Compound Knowledgist™ ·
Chief Dragonslayer™ – Business & Love ·
Novelist Who Successfully Found His Heroine™

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P.S. — If you’ve ever wondered what 1,200 first dates, 15,000 serious candidates, and a decade-long personal quest actually produce — there’s a page on this site you probably shouldn’t miss. It’s the real backstory behind Efficient Love™ and the decade that made it possible. Some of it is embarrassing. All of it is true. And somewhere inside it is the methodology that led me to the one woman in 2 million who became my wife.

→ The Story Behind Novelist Seeks Heroine™

P.P.S. — The frameworks in these books didn’t come from research or theory. They came from something far harder to replicate: 33,000 deeply candid, one-on-one relationships — across business and love — with people who couldn’t see their own best path forward and were looking to me to help them find it. If you want to understand why these books are different from anything else you’ll find, that’s where the answer lives.

→ Compound Knowledge™ — What It Is and Why It Matters to You

P.P.P.S. — If you are a corporate buyer, HR leader, coach, or program director interested in bulk purchase or organizational use, contact: SpecialSales@FiveYearLife.com