What Stops Entrepreneurs from Achieving Extraordinary Growth & Success w/ Geoff Woods #TheOnePercent

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Hey, 1 percenters. Welcome to capitalism.com. this is Ryan Daniel Moran, and today I'm going to be joined again by my buddy, advisor, confidant, colleague, Jeff woods, vice president of the one thing. I go back to Jeff over and over again because Jeff has, well, a perspective on empire building that I find very, very helpful and useful. And so today we talk about crafting the empire and recruiting people to build the empire on your behalf. What I have found in my own life and with the entrepreneurs that I work with is that a lot of us get to the million or sometimes even the 10 million by following a strategy, by pursuing the money. But we very rarely build a business, build an empire bigger than ourselves without graduating to a different level of thinking. And that level of thinking, as Jeff would put it, means succeeding through others. It means getting people to buy into something and build it on your behalf. Now, this is something that I've very openly struggled with of building and managing a team. I'm probably ahead of a lot of my peers, but I have not yet built the empire that I ultimately want. And it's even a struggle for me to learn how to cast the vision and bring the people on. And it's a skill set that I've really had to work hard at doing. And I learned by mistakes, and boy, have I made a lot of them. And Jeff and I have had many conversations at the gym or over wine or hanging out at each other's houses talking about this. And he has really helped to coach me to become a better leader and a better thinker, especially when it comes to casting a long term vision. You'll hear me kind of get uncomfortable and quiet on this conversation, as I do several times, because Jeff holds me accountable and challenges me and pushes me to do things that I don't necessarily want to do and do things that I'm not really excited about doing, but things that I know are really necessary. And I don't mean necessary because I have to do them because everybody else does them. I mean necessary if I want to graduate to the level of leader that I want to be. That's hard. It takes a lot of thought and it requires me and you to get very quiet and intentional about what we want, rather than just how much we want. So you'll hear me very humbly respond to some of the challenges that he makes on me. And I've invited Jeff to speak at the Capitalism Conference this January because I have found, again, that a lot of entrepreneurs struggle to make this transition. So Jeff thankfully has a presentation that simplifies it to casting the few key hires that you need to make in order to build the business that you want, getting clear on what the empire is and what you need your team to be able to accomplish in order for that to become a reality, which doesn't happen overnight. But the casting of the vision and the identifying of the key people and what they need to do in order for your business to be successful can be a process that is learned and implemented starting very quickly. So Jeff and I go through a quick overview of that process, and then he'll be delivering his full presentation at the capitalism conference this January 21st through the 23rd. We still do have some seats available. We are raising the price and ending early bird here shortly. But you can still grab tickets over at the Capitalism Conference. Com. If you can't wait until January 21st to get some help, you can subscribe to Jeff's podcast, which is called the One Thing Podcast, and. And you can hear his conversations, like this one on a weekly basis on his show. And then you can come to Dallas, Texas and get in person help with Jeff. All right, enjoy this chat with Jeff Woods.

Jeff woods, welcome back to the show. Well, I guess this is your first official time on the one percent, now that we've changed the name. So welcome to one percent, my friend.

It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Jeff.

I told you that there's a specific quote that you gave to me that I think you were quoting Gary Keller, you work with on a regular basis. That quote was, when you've hit a plateau, you're missing a person. And I want to dive into that with you here in a second. But in that context, I think it would be interesting if we recapped the story of how the heck we met, because you basically applied that principle to us meeting.

Yeah, well, I first came across you when I was in medical device sales and I remember driving through my territory in my scrubs with this intense desire to start a business. And one of the podcasts that I had come across was Freedom Fast Lane. And I remember hearing the voice of this 20 something year old who had already become a multimillionaire. And I'M just going to. The heck is this guy doing? And I remember pulling in to get my sandwich and just going, one of these days, I want to meet this guy. Well, you fast forward less than a year, the opportunity was presented for me to quit my medical sales job and move my family to Austin to start this company. And I remember that person saying that they lived in Austin, Texas, and I had surrounded myself with some really great, strong people. And I got on the phone very purposefully to share that I was moving to Austin. Who were the most stellar people that they knew that I had to know? My goal was to hit the ground with a powerful Rolodex and multiple people said, this guy, Ryan Moran. And lo and behold, my first week here.

Well, I know him, and I don't know if that was good advice, but anywho, one of the things that you have stretched me and helped me see is that really everything is about people. It comes down to people. It comes down to who you know, it comes down to who is on your team. And you made that a focus when you moved to Austin. But I've. I've kind of internalized that, you know, in. In a business context and how it applies to my business. And you have.

You.

You helped me see how empires are built. And it always starts with people. Would you comment on that?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I didn't realize it at the time, but when I was in medical sales, I just heard you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Jim Rohn. And I was at a ceiling of achievement in my life at the time, where I was in a career that I was no longer passionate about. And I was. I didn't know how to get to the next level. I didn't know how to, number one, start a business, number two, build a business that could scale to become an empire. I was missing a person or people. For me, I was missing mentors and coaches, which is why I went on that insane hunt to surround myself with the right people. Now that I'm here, and I've been in business with Gary, I've heard him very intentionally say, any time in your life, you are hitting a ceiling of achievement. You are missing a person. And it's either in the form of a mentor or coach or it's in the form of leverage. And so often as entrepreneurs, we are the. We have the personality type that if something needs to be done, we will be the one to do it. We will execute. We will run through walls. We say yes to the shiny object. The challenge is what we don't see is that by saying yes today, we are forcing ourself to say no to some bigger opportunities down the road because we've already made commitments.

You use the word leverage. Would you tell me why you use that word?

Yeah, sure. Because no one succeeds alone. The truth is, when you look up, if you want to make a big impact in this world through building a big business, it's not just going to be done by you. So instead of seeing something that needs to be done and asking, how can I do it? The question changes. It's who do I need to do that? How do I bring that person into my world, and what do I need to do so I can coach them to do that better than I could have?

So what? You, you made the point of entrepreneurs, and I so agree with this. I so get this. That desire, that internal desire of, I've got to go do this, I've got to go figure this out, is your thesis then, that the thing you ultimately figure out is who am I going to bring on board to build that piece of the empire?

Bingo. Bingo. I sat down with Gary about a month ago. There's a great quote in the one thing from F.M. alexander that people do not decide their futures. They decide their habits, and their habits decide their futures. I look at Gary as an example of what I want someday from now in terms of business growth, in terms of impact, in terms of the type of experiences he gets to share with his family. And I asked the question, what are the habits that he acquired that made Gary Keller. Gary Keller. One of them is that he is a magnet for talent. Top talent, flocks to him, wants to be in his world, and they don't leave. And when I ask, what's the habit that leads to that being the reality? It's the habit of building relationships with talent. So I sat down with him very specifically to ask, what am I not doing that if I started doing immediately? You fast forward over roughly 66 days of doing it consistently, and that becomes a habit. We fast forward a few decades. I'm in a completely different place. His answer was so much more simple than what I thought it would be, which it always is with him. He basically said, when it comes to, and this is the empire building model, you have to first and foremost have a vision of what you want your business to look like someday from now. Like for you, Ryan, with capitalism.com, like, what is that someday vision when it is fully built out, what's your Disney? And once you have that you get to ask the question, who are the five key empire builders that I would need to make that business a reality.

Then it's just a matter of waking up every single day and going and.

Finding those people.

In your own world.

Does that mean that you. Your primary focus when building a business or building it beyond yourself is getting into the rooms where those five people might exist?

I'll say it differently. It means that as the person who runs this organization, it's my responsibility to every single day understand what my ultimate org chart looks like, meaning the org chart, when it's fully built out, that I'm clear on who those five people are that I'm missing and that I'm clear on what I'm looking for. And I just look every day.

Where do you look?

It starts by, first and foremost, sharing. When I'm having conversations with people.

When they ask what they can do to support us being able just to say, you know, I know that we want to shift and become a technology company, and I'm looking for someone who's an emerging technologist who's destined to build something big to make a big impact in the world, and they have no clue how they're going to do it yet. If you know that type of person, I want an intro. I just did it right now. It comes down to when I'm attending events or if I'm having dinner with friends and family. If I just spot talent. I've got a talent radar at this point. When I see someone who strikes me as talent, I just want to go deeper. And we start going through a process of courting each other. They may not even realize that I'm possibly recruiting them.

Yeah, I actually, you hit a point with me there, and I'm curious about this. Selfishly, I'd like to know, how are you spotting talent? What do you recognize in people? As an entrepreneur, it's so easy to be attracted to people that we like or that we are like. Talent is a different set of eyes. How are you doing that?

Yeah, sure. Well, we have to define what talent means. People say talent. Everyone is talent for a specific role. It's a matter of, are they a fit for you. So I have started to learn that the people that I need in my world, first and foremost, they think really big. They're not thinking small. They've got a bigger vision when you ask them. One of the questions that I often ask is, you know, let's say you and I, even though we want to be BFFs and we want to Start doing monthly wine parties. Let's say we lose touch and fast forward five years, I run into you in the Austin airport and I see you, and I run up to you and ryan, how the heck are you? And you're like, jeff, you would not believe it. Life is extraordinary. What's happening in your life professionally that makes it extraordinary?

I'm listening. There's two things that's happening here. One, I'm trying to figure out, how big do they think.

Oh, you know.

I've gotten promoted. I'm not listening for that. I'm listening for, you know, I've started this company. I've completely disrupted an industry. I'm listening for the size of their answer. And I'm also asking the question.

Can.

They get what they want faster by being inside of our world?

Hmm, Interesting.

Gary, this applies to everyone. Think about a time that you have left, an opportunity, a job. It was because one day you waked up or you woke up and you realized you couldn't have everything you wanted by remaining inside the world of that organization. So you left. Gary has taught us to ask the question, how do we give ourselves permission to make our world so big that any talented individual could step inside our world, have everything they want, and never need to leave?

That is really. That's a really interesting point, Jeff. In. In order for that to be the case, and you mentioned this earlier, you have got to have a very, very clear vision of where you are going as a company, as a business person. And us crazy entrepreneurs like to change our minds and chase shiny objects.

Yeah.

So. So in your world, when you're building out the empire, how long do you take to get crystal clear? And what do you do when that changes?

Yeah, sure. So part of this comes down to how you manage your time and a thing called time blocking. Scheduling time with yourself for your most important work, not for checking email for your most important priorities. And in the book, in the one thing, Gary and Jay say there are three things you should time block, and they are listed in order of priority. Number one, your time off, because otherwise you're gonna burn out. Number two, you block time for your one thing. My partner, Jay, his one thing is writing. If I look at his planner, I will see days with just a W and a circle around it saying, this is a writing day. Nothing else matters. That's his one thing. And the third thing you block is your planning time. This is where we find most entrepreneurs. They just don't do it. They wake up every day and they run through walls reacting. But they don't have purposeful time protected for them to sit down and review their ultimate org chart. For them to ask the question, where is their leverage around me that I am currently not using to ask questions like if my business could talk, what would it say about me as a leader?

That's heavy. I'm actually playing with that right now.

It's that time. So for me it's Fridays. Fridays on my planner. If you look at my I have a one thing planner. Every Friday there's a P with a circle around it. And I know between the hours of 8 and 12 it is planning time. It's when I review my ultimate org chart. It's when I ask the question for the people who work in my world. I ask the question, what's required for the role that I'm currently not seeing? So that identifies how I need to coach them better. I am looking and doing my 411 for the next week, which is our tool for having absolute clarity on your priorities. So that I'm hyper clear that when Monday shows, my planner and my calendar matches the priorities that matter most, not all the noise.

How long does it take for you or people that you work with to achieve that level of clarity? Where we're moving forward is clear.

It's not an entirely fair question.

What I just laid out is what we'll call the 57th Domino. You ever played dominoes, Ryan?

Yep.

You ever lined dominoes up?

Yep.

Yeah. So if you lined them up and you knocked one over, what happened?

It hits the next one and then they all fall over.

They all fall over. Right. What we now know is that a 2 inch domino doesn't just knock down another domino of equal size. It can knock down 1 50% larger. So a 2 inch domino can knock over a 3. 3 can knock over 4 and a half. We know that 18 dominoes in that 2 inch domino could knock over the Leaning Tower of pisa. By the 23rd, it knocks over the Eiffel Tower 31st. It stands 3,000ft above Mount Everest. The 57th domino, that 2 inch domino can reach almost from the earth to the moon. What I just described is a 57th domino. So to think that somebody goes from zero to living that type of a lifestyle overnight is not realistic.

Back when Gary Keller and Jay Papizan were writing the one thing they asked a question. What do we stand for? What do we want the experience to be like? One of the standards that they put in place was that whatever they created the bar for quality would be exceptionally high and that it would also be an incredible value, meaning that when you invested in the book, you'd feel like you really got a great deal. It's part of the reason that we always look out in the world and ask who else is doing that? And we came across a company called Beckett Simonon, which is a direct to consumer brand, changing the way premium men's shoes, bags and belts are offered. What we loved about this company was that everything was handcrafted. It was made with quality, integrity and sold at a reasonable retail price. They were inspired by creating a smarter way to shop and manufacture. Their whole model is to sell online only. That way you cut out all the middlemen, which saves you a tremendous amount of cost in this case, when you're talking about men's shoes, talking about a savings of roughly $300. As a sponsor of the One Thing podcast, I went on their website and found the shoes that I really liked. I selected my size, submitted my order, and I had this amazing feeling knowing that they were going to be handcrafted in small batches for me. What'll be cool is to keep you guys updated as they get shipped to me and I get to try them on and wear them for the first time, which we'll cover in a future episode of the One Thing podcast. You can look smart for a great price with Beckett Simonon shoes and accessories. Today, all you have to do is go to becketshoes.com and type in the code TOT at checkout to get 20% off off your order. That's B E C K e t t shoes.com and use coupon code TOT for 20 off your order.

Well, actually, what I'm more specifically asking is I know within myself I, I could look be crystal clear on something for a year and then one day it changes.

Sure.

I could feel like I'm heading in the right direction and then I realize I'm not. And where, where I am right now is I have, you know, second guessed myself a hundred times, but I keep coming back to like the same key roles and people and things I need to be focused on right now. And so I'm all in on those things. And it's probably been a year or so that I like, I know those are the things that are going to move the dominoes for the next 10 years. And I'm just curious, from your world, what do you do when it changes and is there ever a point where I guess it stops changing?

It's a constant evolution. And this is part of, there's so much More simplicity in this. If you are the type of person who has time blocked every week for you to plan, for you to think, for you to cast a vision, for you ask, to ask questions like, what's changed? What assumptions am I making? What's missing? You're always looking at your models, you're always looking at your org chart and identifying what has changed. What tweaks do we need to be making? But it's very purposeful rather than what most people are doing, which is living in their inbox, going from meeting to meeting, getting distracted when people ask if they've got a minute.

And reacting to every fire that comes up or every.

Opportunity that comes up, waking up going, I know I've been so busy, but I haven't gotten anything done. And then they feel like they have to blow up the entire model and go chase the new shiny object because what they're doing isn't working. It's not that where they. It's not that the priorities that they established weren't the right priorities. It's that they weren't. They didn't actually execute fully enough on the priorities that they established to earn the right to say if it worked or not.

Jeff, I have nothing to add to that comment.

That's just so true. And I feel like I spent Most of my 20s doing that, almost succeeding in spite of all of that. And that amount of, or that amount of thinking time that I've started working in has given me the capacity to start building out something intentionally. I was inspired by the book Clockwork, which kind of describes the scene of entrepreneurship where we're constantly responding to every little thing, all the time. And his exercises carve out 1% of your week to think about, am I on the right direction? What do I need to do differently? Who do I need to bring on and then expand it from there? And even that is a good step in the right direction. I know you block it out as like intentional thinking time. It's like a.

Large piece of your week. Correct.

I've been in the middle of a 66 day challenge, which is take 66 days to form a habit. I want to form the habit of thinking time time every day where I purposefully sit down to think, to ask big questions, to get clear, so that I am moving through the day purposefully rather than reacting. Now that's fairly advanced for a lot of people. And we have this concept of thinking big, like, oh, this is where I want to go. And now let's go really small. The one thing that people can do such that by doing it makes everything else easier or unnecessary, is what we call a411. It's a tool that gives you absolute clarity on your priorities. You update it once a week, and when you update it, it shows your priorities for the year, professionally and personally, in order of priority. And then based on that, it shows what your priorities are for this month, to feel like you're on track for the year. And based on that, it shows what your priorities are this week, to feel like you're on track for the month. And then based on what you have for the week, you open up your planner or your calendar, and you time block those things. What's interesting about doing this, Ryan, is most people, the way they plan their week is they open their digital calendar, they see all the stuff that's already scheduled, and they fit things in the time that remains.

Mm.

And what they don't realize that they're doing is they're violating the number one lie of productivity, the lie that everything matters equally. What we teach people to do when you do a 411 is you actually declare to yourself, these are my priorities. Then when you open up your planner or your digital calendar, you block those things first. And anything that's there has to interview the keep its spot.

Jeff, I want to ask you about.

How you do this with other people and how you manage people.

Yeah.

And. And I know that I can do that for myself. And no one will tell me that I'm wrong, because I'm managing my own life and I'm managing my own business. But when it comes to other people, it's a completely different skill set. And it's one, to be honest with you, I would prefer not to have to learn. So I want you to tell me about that.

Yeah.

Well, the first thing I'll say is, and you and I have experienced this just from our time together. If you're just doing it by yourself and you're the only one on the front line of your business, you're missing a person.

Tell me about that.

You're missing a coach.

Who is there who's pressing their thumb on you every single week, who is holding you accountable when you are allowing yourself to fight for your limitations rather than fighting for your possibilities.

Does that mean someone internally, or does that just mean.

A mentor or something like that?

I see a difference between a mentor and a coach. A mentor is someone who is where you want to be, and they'll give you advice. A coach is somebody that you pay, and it is their job. You enter into a Commitment to establish a relationship with your goals. And when you fall behind, they are there to be the voice of reason saying, don't allow yourself to buy into your own verbal bs.

Okay, what, what, what does that have to do with managing others?

How can you manage others if you first and foremost, don't manage yourself?

Okay, so where I'm going with that is I'm not seeing the connection right now of someone else giving you feedback and how you are managing other people.

There is no way that I can hold productive 41 ones with my team if I first and foremost don't live the 411 at a high level myself.

I see. Yeah. And. And in order to hold yourself accountable, you need that outside coach.

And if you're interested in getting a copy of the 41 1, you can get the template@theonething.com that's with the number 1 in the URL and click on free stuff. You'll see it there. And let's talk about. We're going back to this idea of empire building. We're not having a conversation about how do we build a mediocre business. We're asking the question, how do we build an extraordinary business? Extraordinary. Building an extraordinary business requires that you have extraordinary talent. An extraordinary talent knows when you're talking one thing, but your actions do another. They don't stay inside the world of a hypocrite.

So this is part of it is if you want to attract top talent and actually be able to coach them, you got to, first and foremost, got to be exceed. You got to be growing faster than they are. That way they go, giddy up, let's go. I want to catch up.

That's why it starts first with you, then because you are living it at such a high level. When you sit down with your people, you're asking different questions because people are asking those questions of you.

You're not reinventing the wheel. Make sense?

Yeah, it actually totally does.

Hey, guys, this is Ryan and I wanted to take a quick second to talk to you because I know that you listen to the show because you're a different type of entrepreneur. You are building something. You probably run multiple projects. You are beyond the point of trying to make a little bit of side money. You are thinking about the long term and you are thinking about which of your projects is gonna be your empire. You're starting to think like a real business. And you're also looking for investment opportunities that are going to grow your wealth, are going to increase your cash flow and make you free for life. So that you can live life on your own terms. I know that's you because it's also me and that's why we hang out. And if I'm describing you, then I'm encouraging you, inviting you to grab your ticket to the Capitalism Conference. We've already announced a bunch of our celebrity keynotes who have built hundred million dollar and even billion dollar empires. We're bringing in a panel of investment experts that are going to talk about cryptocurrency and what's going on in the economy, as well as some marketing and sales experts which specialize in physical products and online brands. So that you can grow your business beyond seven figures, scale to eight figures.

And even plant the seeds for the.

Nine figure hundred million dollar empire. I know that you've got your sights set on something big and all of my big breakthroughs have come from events, but I was always frustrated with the types of events that I went to because I thought it was mostly small minded people and there wasn't the ability to pick the brains of the individuals who have really built something great. So if you want the playbook to building an eight or a nine figure business as well as the playbook to building a team that builds your business for you and grows your marketing and sales channels bigger than Amazon, and you want passive income and to pay less taxes and long term wealth from your investments, then this is a can't miss, must not miss event. These tickets will sell out. So go to TheCapitalismConference.com to grab your ticket and reserve your seat. This is the only place where you're going to be around big level entrepreneurs who have built something and are coming back to give you the playbook. And if you get one of our elite access passes, you'll actually get out of your seat and go with the speakers backstage and meet with them one on one. This level of access does not happen often. We do it once a year. And this year it's December 7th, 8th and 9th in Austin, Texas at the Capitalism Conference.

And where my brain is going next is this, this I work with, I work with a lot of entrepreneurs who bring this up and, but, but I noticed that I struggle with it just at a, at a higher level and it's attracting those type of people and paying them in a way that excites them and doesn't drain the business. Yeah, because that's, that's the immediate thing that comes up is like a top tier talent is going to suck out a large percentage of my profits and I'm, I'M you obviously dealt with this, so tell me about that.

Maybe, and transparently, I haven't had to deal with it to the extent in my business as Gary has with Keller Williams. But I've got the playbook and I know the model first and foremost. There's 11 different ways to compensate people. And one of the things that Gary does is he makes compensation a competitive weapon. When he finds one of his five empire builders, he creates a type of compensation structure that literally locks them down.

They can't go anywhere else because it's just too good. And that doesn't mean you're giving him this crazy salary yet. We're asking the question, how can they have everything they want and remain inside our world?

What is it that they want? Are they looking for equity? Are they looking for profits, interest? Do they want bonus? There's lots of ways that you can structure things. And for you, like Ryan, you've got an existing business. If you wanted to bring somebody in, the business already generates a certain amount of profit. Doesn't mean that they have to get a profit's interest on every single thing you've already done. But they could get a percentage of growth. Why wouldn't you do that deal? Because not only do they grow the business, they also become a protector of what has already been built.

And in that type of a structure, the people who are not a players kind of show themselves the door. I mean, in that sense, if they're as good as they say they are, they'll earn more by performing if you give them the right environment to do that.

Yeah.

And so of course it would be too good to leave. Well, that makes sense.

There's two things there also. One of the things when we talk about empire builders, they're always willing to take a step back, to take many steps forward. I took a meaningful step back leaving medical Sales to start this company. But it's because I know that the possibilities being inside of Gary and Jay's world, infinite compared to a W2 corporate sales guy.

Yeah, that makes sense.

The other thing that I'm going to say is this is again why it is so important that you show up as the highest version of yourself. If these people are stepping inside your world, you have to be at your absolute best to coach them so that they have every possibility to have everything they want. If you show up mediocre or only as a half version of yourself, they don't stick around no matter how good the comp is.

Yeah, I understand. That was my guilty voice. I understand.

It's the times that I have lost sight of myself and my own habits, that that has happened. I get it. Jeff, let's talk about networking your way into the world. Where that talent exists and where the people who stretch you exist. I mean, Jeff, in. In medical device sales a couple years ago to working with one of the biggest companies in the world and building out your own internal empire, that's a big jump in a couple of years. And so I'm. I'd like for you to comment on getting into the right room.

Yeah, sure. Well, for me, it started by first and foremost, here's that SeaWorld C word clarity. I knew that I wanted to wake up one day owning a big business that made a big impact in the world and delivered real security for my family. Then, based on that Jim Rohn quote, I asked if you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with, how many of my five are already living that life? The answer was zero. And for I think many of us, if we asked you, what is the life that you really want? Who are the five people you're currently spending the most time with and are they living that life, yes or no? For most people, the answer is no. So you're off the hook. But now the question is, what are you going to do about it? For me, it started by just talking about it.

When people ask, Jeff, what's up, what's new, what's going on? Instead of saying not much, I actually started saying, you know, I've realized I want to get into real estate investing, and I'm looking to surround myself with successful commercial real estate investors. That was my first answer and that started me down this mentor journey. So part of it was just talking about it, and then the other was realizing, wow, I'm not just going to go to any random meetup, I'm not just going to attend any random conference. I'm going to be very purposeful in where I invest my time because I believe the type of people that I want to surround myself with will be in that room. It's one of the things I love about your Capitalism conference is the average person that's in that room is a business owner. They have a certain size of business, they've got a certain net worth, they're focusing on certain things. So if you happen to be an entrepreneur who's looking to get to a certain level, it makes a lot of sense to go there. They're in the room, and that's just what it looked like.

Well, thank you for the endorsement, Jeff. And what I heard you just say is that.

The first stage of that was absolute clarity of where you wanted your life to be. And then looking at the circle of people and seeing who was actually living that. And it comes back to that idea of if you don't have that absolute clarity and certainty around where you're going, most of us are just reacting. And so the kind of the takeaway from that was we've always had this conversation in the context of business, but that started for you and what I want my life to look like and then changing that circle. Is that right?

It's not absolute clarity, because that's again, I think that's a 57th domino. We have a one thing couples goal setting retreat that we actually do an in person event and we have an online course for us. And part of it is establishing your someday goals, getting clarity on what you want for someday. I haven't been able to sit down with anybody who has absolute clarity on what they want someday. From now, what it's about is picking a general direction. I knew I wanted to be a business owner. Did I know exactly what kind of business? No. At the beginning, I thought it was real estate investing. I thought I wanted to be the guy that was syndicating a bunch of money and going down and taking and securing a bunch of buildings. That's what I thought I wanted. Until I started surrounding myself with those people and actually trying to raise money and doing due diligence on buildings and realizing I want to invest in real estate, but I have no business making that my business.

It was that that led me then into starting a podcast because I felt really lost. That led me to connecting with Jay Pappasan that led me to running the company behind the One Thing. So it was having a general sense of where I wanted to go and moving in that direction and continuing to look up and asking, am I still going in the right direction? It's kind of like if a plane flies from Los Angeles to New York. It's never perfectly on course. It always deviates off course a little bit, but it continues to correct, and it ends up at the destination it planned to.

In this episode, we're talking about how no one succeeds alone. Anytime you're hitting a ceiling of achievement in your life, you're missing a person, either in the form of leverage or a mentor or a coach. For me, mentorship was how I got into this opportunity. Yet coaching is what has helped me achieve far more than what I initially thought possible. Our question for you is, who's that person who's standing with you on the front line of your business, who's that person who is asking you big questions and is really pressing the thumb down on you, bringing some accountability to the table when you might be just fighting for your limitations, finding excuses when you really should be changing your activities and making up the gap on the goals that you've fallen behind on. This is why for years people have asked us, when will you have coaching for the One Thing? And we're excited to say it's here. All you have to do is go to the1thing.com/training. You'll see on our training page the opportunity to join One Thing Coaching and here's why you want to do it. Now. We have been very humbled by the demand for this so far and transparently your experience is our One thing. This is why we are onboarding people in groups to ensure that they get matched with the perfect coach who's going to help them in that exact area that they need help with most. So once you opt in, you will get an email letting you know what that timeframe is going to be. But we are literally onboarding people on a first come, first serve basis. So make sure you get on that list right now@the1thing.com training and while you're there, for those of you who missed the One Thing Couples Goal Setting Retreat, we do currently have the One Thing Couples Goal Setting Master course available to you for a short period of time. This will not not be available year round. So if you have not yet done your Goal Setting retreat for the upcoming year, go to theonething.com training and explore the one thing couples goal setting Master course and see if it's a fit for you. We think it will blow you away. That's the one thing.com training for both of these.

So when I'm actually curious about this, Jeff, and I don't know this part of the story. When you started the podcast back like four years ago or whatever it was, were you just looking to change the five people that you're spending time with so that you could find clarity on where you were going next?

Yes.

I had started down a journey of I got in relationship with a few mentors who were who were very interesting and very successful and I was attending an event and the night before the event somebody said to me, dude, look who you're running with. You should start a podcast and just record those conversations. And so I started the Mentee because I was the mentee and I was recording true private conversations with my mentors with the hope of being able to move from employee to entrepreneur. And it was the fact that I had the podcast that gave me a reason to approach people that I wouldn't have felt confident approaching otherwise. One of them being Jay Papasan, who wrote the One Thing with Gary Keller. And it was because of that podcast interview and me following up, just continuing to try to bring value to him, that after delivering value three or four times, he finally mentioned when I asked him, what are you focusing on? How can I help you? He said, we're looking for a CEO for a publishing company. And I said, well, that ain't me, but I knew three people that were. And I offered to make an introduction, but wanted to get the job description first, so I didn't waste Jay's time. And when we got on the phone, he didn't describe those three people, he described me.

So the podcast, I just realized I needed to continue moving in that direction. Even though I didn't have absolute clarity on how starting a podcast was going to help me go from employee to entrepreneur, I figured it was a good shot. It worked out.

I actually didn't know that piece of it. That's really cool, Jeff. And what I really want to echo here and what I really appreciate about this is the fact that I feel the pressure on myself often to feel like I have to have absolute clarity and certainty about where I'm going. And what I'm hearing you say is that it kind of starts with a general direction and you modify as necessary. Yeah. And I think a lot of people will enter into this conversation thinking about, I have to know exactly all of the kinks worked out along the way. But a lot of entrepreneurship.

Is failing at 80% of things and doubling down on the 20% of things that are course correcting because they're working. And then the vision.

Starts to evolve along the way. That's how I'm synthesizing what you're saying.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, we saw it. We had about 220 people in Austin a few weekends ago for our couples goal setting retreat. And when we asked them to set their someday goals, I mean the conversations that they're having, it's not absolute clarity, but how much wealth do you want to have? What do you want your family life to look like from them? What do you want your love life to look like someday from now, people can get a general sense if they're willing to search for the answer. And that's important. Here's what I mean by that. When you ask A bigger question. It requires that you search for a bigger answer. Most people ask really small questions. What can I do this next year? What are my goals for this next year? And they look at their skill set and their comfort zone and they set a goal that's doable. But when you ask the question, what do I want my life to look like someday from now? Within a few seconds of searching, you hit the wall that we call I don't know.

Yes.

And most people stop searching at that moment versus realizing that that's a sign that you have now hit your normal limitation in terms of how far you're search. Now push. Go past that and really think. Close your eyes. What does extraordinary physical health look like someday from now? What does an extraordinary relationship look like someday from now? What does an extraordinary business or finances look like someday from now? If you really take the time to think with a pen and paper and your job is just to brainstorm, you will get things written down and then you ask the question, great, which of all of this stuff, of all the things that I could do, what are the things I really should do? What are the things I really want to focus on that I want to bring focus and accountability to? And you work it backwards. Five year goals, one year goals that then drive your business plan, which drives your four 1, 1, which drives your yearly, your monthly, your weekly priorities, which drive your planner so that when you wake up, instead of checking email and checking everyone else's priorities, you're doing the one thing that you know absolutely connects you from where you are today to where you want to.

Beautiful. Uh, Jeff, I, I want to ask you about when you're kind of mid stage into this process. And here's what I mean. I work with a lot of entrepreneurs who run million dollar businesses and, and many of them have done that without having a clear vision. They just knew that they wanted a different life. And, and, and you're, you're, you're preaching to the choir here because so many of us react our way to modest success. We, we react to part way to the goal which is we have something working and our time is completely monopolized now. So like we, we took a couple steps, we knocked over some dominoes, we followed a plan and we've, we've had some modest success. It's now the process of the heck do I do now? Now that I've got a seven figure business, sometimes an eight figure business, but I have almost, I've kind of surpassed what my expectations were and anything that I do beyond here would be kind of a surprise. How do you communicate or what do you do with a person who's there?

I see it all the time because I sit inside the corporate headquarters for Keller Williams. And so I'll use real estate agents as an example, which is actually a perfect example because they're in a service business. These are people who know how to sell that are trying to become business owners. And they start hitting the streets, they start selling houses and one day they wake up and they're selling more homes than they ever thought they could sell. And they realize that they're at a ceiling of achievement. They don't know how to scale any further. For the people in your group, that's those people who got to seven or eight figures, they're going, it's all duct taped together and they're running around in the like a chicken with their head cut off. You're missing people.

There's this idea, it's one of the three commitments in the one thing. The commitments that you absolutely must make if you want to live a life of extraordinary results. And it's this idea of moving from E to P from being entrepreneurial to being purposeful. What most of the people that I have met through your community, Ryan, they're acting entrepreneurially, they wake up every day, they take massive action, they have failures, they make tweaks based on their failure, they take more action and they have muscled their way to building a seven or eight figure business fair.

Spot on.

And they are at a ceiling of achievement. They cannot step away from their business. It would crumble. It is all duct taped together and they really actually feel stuck.

Yes, 100% cool. They're acting entrepreneurially, relying on their natural abilities and they're hitting a ceiling of achievement. The only way you break through it is when you identify models and systems that if working, the system would just completely shatter the ceiling. Your system for attracting top talent, your system for qualifying talent, your system for onboarding them over 30, 69, 90 days, your system for lead generation, your system for budgets, your system for the organization, your system for accountability. These are all systems that are missing for most of the people that I have met in your audience.

They're just missing models and systems and people to run them.

What would you attack first in that case?

That's it's going to be on a case by case basis. And this is part of where I'm in the middle of transitioning coaches and the coaching company that we have, there's a certain business assessment that they go through and when they were asking the questions, literally yesterday, my new coach was taking me through this to get really clear on where I need to focus. For me, it's more of an accountability thing. First and foremost, I know that's where we're going to start. Before I earn the right to move.

To the next, I'm curious what questions.

Your coach asked some of the questions that could. And again, this is not a hard and fast rule. Part of it is just the coach being really good. But one of them, on a scale of 1 to 10 or 1 is no and 10 is absolutely, you have a system for continually recruiting talent, hiring talent, and leading talent. How would you rate yourself on that, Ryan?

Four.

Four. And here's what we know about that. One is the moment that you stop looking for top talent, you've turned the hourglass over on your business. And the date is literally scheduled for when your company will fall apart.

Because no one succeeds alone, and your company will continue to scale. And if you do not have the regular practice of attracting and retaining top talent, your business will eventually crumble.

To get my butt off the hot seat, I desperately want you to ask me the next question.

You have a system for tracking. Scale of 1 to 10. You have a system for tracking leads and a scorecard for knowing where you stand in relation to your goal.

For me, that's a six and a half.

Okay, there you go. You have a system for closing out the books each month.

I don't, but my team does. We're eight there.

Okay, so these are just certain questions.

That's interesting, that the first one was talent, and then the second one was leads and sales. That's really interesting, Jeff. I think you have really nailed.

The prototypical entrepreneur that hits a ceiling, which is almost all of them. And it's only a few of them, in my experience, that ever make the pivot beyond moderate success to building a real empire to building something that is really great.

Well, let me clarify one thing. You never stop hitting ceilings of achievement, because the moment you break through the one you're at, the ceiling just gets reset. It's just higher. It's like going from zero to a million is one level. Going from one to ten, from ten to 100, from 100 to a billion, from a billion to ten, ten to a hundred. They're just new ceilings. Gary Keller is still hitting ceilings of achievement. I'm watching it happen for 30 years. It was about, how do they take Keller Williams from Itty Bitty company in Austin to number one in the real estate space? They did it? They were number one. But then once they were number one, they looked up and realized that the competition was no longer other real estate companies. It was Facebook and Google and Amazon. And I've literally been watching him for the last three years blow the company up from the inside out, shifting it to become a technology company to the point that they're creating their own artificial intelligence, their own cloud. Like, the stuff that they have been doing is truly extraordinary. And his ceiling is just constantly raising. He's always fighting to get to that next level. It doesn't stop.

I think once you buy the Cleveland Indians and their perennial World Series winners, that's, that's when you're done.

For you.

Okay.

That's it for me personally.

Well, I, I just want to say thank you in advance for making sure that my family always has our names on our seats in your box.

You. You got it. But unfortunately, I now have agreed to that to about 44,000 people, which is the capacity of the stadium. So I'm going to go broke as the owner if I keep saying yes to that. Anywho, uh, Jeff, I agree with you. And. But the ceiling that I've seen so many entrepreneurs hit is that, you know that low seven figure business where they have to start learning this stuff like it can no longer be just you. Like I disagree with you in the sense of you can succeed alone. You're just going to hit a ceiling real fast. And I've worked with quite literally hundreds of entrepreneurs who built seven figure businesses in two years or less. A lot of them 12 months or less. And then they plateau because they, they have, they have built a life where they are stuck in the middle of it and they cannot grow alone.

Yeah.

So that's why I invited you to speak at the Capitalism conference this January. Tell me what you're going to be sharing with the crowd.

We're going to focus on empire building. We're going to talk a lot about how do you become the type of person who can build an empire. The purpose of a goal is not to achieve a result, it's to be appropriate in the moment. It's to inform the person you need to become. So if you have big ambitions for what you actually want out of your life, your business, the impact that you can make, it's going to require that you become a certain type of person. And we're going to talk about what that looks like.

I know you have had the benefit of.

Learning firsthand Gary's empire building model, which a lot of people say completely like Explodes their brain. I would like for you to comment shortly on that.

It's the surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results.

The ideas that we share. It's profound in its impact and it's also profound in its simplicity. Because the beauty of everything that we teach is it's not like we come on stage and share some ideas. You're like, oh, that's amazing. I can't do that. We think big and we go small. You leave with absolute clarity on this is that 2 inch domino that I can knock over and here's how I'm going to knock it over.

So often you go to an event and you get your brain filled up with ideas and then you go home and you're like, the hell do I do now?

Check email.

Right. So what I appreciate about this is after we have digested the habits of some of the world's most successful people for three days, you come in and swoop in with the clarity that someone needs of what they're going to do as the next stage in their business. That's really what we all need. What's the one thing that is going to change the year? And then we come back and we do it again. Yeah.

Let me ask a question to your people that I think would serve them over this next year. I want you to think about when the New England Patriots were playing the Falcons in the super bowl. And they were. The Falcons were just whooping the Patriots for the first half of the game. How ridiculous would it have been if Bill Belichick, the coach of the Patriots, walked over to Tom Brady, his star quarterback, and said, brady, you're screwing up, I'm benching you. And in fact, give me your pads, give me your helmet. I'm going to suit up and I'm going to start throwing TDs like it's my job. How ridiculous would that have been? Absurd. Yet that's what we do every single day in our business. We look at the people around us and when we see something that needs to get done, we are the ones to go and do it. We are the ones that go and execute. So here's the question. What would it look like over the next 12 months if you literally could not step on the field and play? All you could do was ask great questions of your people and succeed through them.

Is that how you are building the.

One thing question I'm asking myself this year? Absolutely. At the top of my 4, 1, 1, there is a question. It's big, it's bold, it's highlighted in yellow. Where is There currently leverage around me that I am not taking advantage of. And below that, it says a commitment to success through others is a commitment to continuously seek and attract talent. Stare at it every day.

Beautiful. Jeff, I'm, you know.

I'm selfishly excited to have you on stage. I know we spoke together when you came and kind of gave a cliff notes version of the empire building model at one of our Mastermind meetups. And the feedback was that pretty much everybody who was in the room felt like their overwhelm went down about 80% and they knew exactly what they needed to do moving forward. And what I really appreciate about this process is we all have so much to do, it feels like. And in reality, there's only a couple things that bring us to bring us to the end zone, or seven end zones, as it was with Tom Brady or whatever. However they did, over come the Falcons. So I'm stoked to have you and I'm. I'm proud to have you on my stage at the Capitalism Conference this January.

Appreciate it, brother.

All right, thanks, Jeff.

This all does not come naturally to me. The recruiting people, the managing people, the casting, clear expectations of people. This does not come in easy or quickly or naturally to me. So if this challenged you, you're not alone. This is a hard transition for a lot of entrepreneurs to make, and it's why I've invited Jeff to come speak at Capitalism Conference. Get this for a second, guys. You know how we just love to geek out about, like, what's working in Facebook ads right now or, like, what's working on Amazon right now? Doesn't it make a lot more sense to have a team member under you that is geeking out about what's working on Amazon or Facebook or Shopify or advertising right now? Doesn't that make more sense? Yeah, it would make a lot more sense in theory, but that's a really hard transition to make, and so most entrepreneurs never make it. I struggle with it. I've been. I have been slowly learning this skill of succeeding through others for the last several years.

And.

And if, honestly, if it wasn't for Jeff, I would still be floundering around, not making any progress. And Jeff has helped hone me in and give me a little bit of an edge and cut my learning curve a little bit. I could probably tap him as even more of a resource, but he has really helped me dial in my thinking around this. And so if this challenged you, I would encourage you to invite yourself to be challenged even more by hanging out with myself and Jeff. And the rest of the lineup over at the Capitalism Conference and the rest of your peers who are going through this transition as well. This is hard and it's also necessary if you want to build the empire. So I encourage you to join us@the capitalismconference.com by the way, Jeff runs his own podcast called the One Thing. It's fantastic. And he is the vice president of the One Thing, which is pretty much the most quoted and gifted book in my entrepreneurial circle. So he runs that company and his podcast is fantastic. So I'd highly encourage you to go subscribe to the One Thing podcast with Jeff woods and to come see him in Dallas, Texas at the Capitalism Conference. Thanks for listening. Share this with an entrepreneur who is going through this difficult transition and I will see see you all on the next episode and in Dallas this January 21st through the 23rd.

Quick plug.

Okay, see you later. Bye.

Hey, a quick note for you Amazon sellers and brands who want to be on Amazon and haven't made it a priority yet. I am often asked about changes with reviews or changes with Amazon Terms of service or changes with what's working with ranking and all of that kind of jazz. And I'm proud that I have partnered with one of our backroom members. His name is Jeff. He runs an agency that specializes specifically in optimizing your Amazon presence. So if you're a brand that is neglecting Amazon and you've heard me talking about it, and you're like, we know we got to get this together, or if you're an Amazon seller and you know you need to turn your attention to audience building and funnels and the stuff that is really going to grow your company, I would recommend that you give a quick shout to my boy Jeff at Turnkey Product management. They're@TurnKeyProductManagement.com and as I said, they're in the back room. They work with my team and the rest of the big companies and equity groups that are involved in our little circle. And they're usually ahead of everybody else in terms of what's working, what's compliant, what review strategies are cool and kosher and are actually effective. And they're not out there hawking a.

Bunch of info products.

They're out there actually doing it. So they're an implementation agency that just handles it for people and they run their own businesses, some of which they have built and sold, kind of like yours truly.

So I feel really good about partnering.

With them and recommending the big companies and the brands that I work with to outsource their Amazon management over to Jeff and his team. So if you're looking to add some automation into your arsenal, I would recommend the good folks@TurnKeyProductManagement.com and Jeff and I are on speed dial with each other and are collaborating on what's working. So you're always getting what's the latest and greatest in the Amazon world. So contact those guys if you're looking to outsource, automate and optimize your Amazon presence at turnkeyproductmanagement.

Com.