LS 100 - Gary Keller's The ONE Thing with Geoff Woods

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Our great podcasts, visit hartmanmedia.com welcome to the Longevity Show, Informing listeners on the important aspects of health, wealth and happiness to ensure you live life to its fullest. With fascinating interviews with top authors and gurus in the field, along with the latest news in the science and technology of longevity, we're going to reveal expert advice and amazing secrets of living a longer. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman.

Welcome to the show. This is Jason Hartman, your host. And every 10th episode we do something kind of special, kind of different. What we do is we go off topic. So regardless of which show it is on the Hartman Media Network, whether it be one of the financial shows, economics, real estate, investing, travel, longevity, all of the other topics that we have, every 10th episode we go off topic and we explore something of general interest, something of general life, success, value. And so many of our listeners around the world in 164 countries have absolutely loved our 10th episode shows. So that's what we're gonna do today. And let's go ahead and get to our guest with a special 10th episode show. And of course, on the next episode, we'll be back to our regular programming. Here we go. It's my pleasure to welcome Jeff woods to the show. He is the vice president of the One Thing. Now, this was a book published a few years ago by Gary Keller, one of the founders of Keller Williams Real Estate, a very successful real estate company. And I had the opportunity to spend an entire day with Gary Keller in Austin, Texas several years ago. And he is really an amazing business success. He's written several books. But the One Thing is his book that's on, I'd say General Life Success. It's not really about real estate or about franchising or anything like that. It's just about success and can apply to anybody. And we're going to share some surprisingly simple techniques that can help us in all of our lives. Jeff, welcome. How are you?

Awesome, Jason. Thanks so much for having me.

Good. And you're coming to us from Austin, Texas as well, right?

Yes, sir.

Fantastic. Distill the idea behind the one Thing. And I guess that's sort of a pun there. Distill the idea behind One Thing.

Sure.

Maybe it's already distilled. What is the One Thing?

Well, on the COVID it says the surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results. And you and I were just debating, you said, hey, when I read this, it wasn't like it was anything revolutionary to me. And I said, well, that's because it's the simple truth. Everybody knows that if you narrow your focus down to the most important thing and just focus on doing that, you're going to have better results. The problem is with today, with the Internet, our attention is more divided than ever before, and we feel like there's all these things that we need to be doing. And very few of us have a habit of narrowing it down and clearly identifying what's the one thing that I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary.

Oh, Jeff, come on. Nobody's distracted nowadays.

Oh, wait, wait. There's something happening outside my window.

Yeah, and there's a bunch of browser windows that are vying for your attention as well. Okay, so narrowing one's focus, certainly a very simple idea, right? I guess some of the questions we need to cover here is how do you decide on your focus? There are so many opportunities coming at all of us nowadays that we want to pursue this idea, that idea we should exercise this way, that way, we should eat this way, that way. We should do this in our business, that in our business. Here's all this stuff in our career. I mean, it's just overwhelming. We are hit with more messages today in one day. You know, in terms of, like, advertising messages. I've heard the stats, and probably everybody has, that a typical person is hit with more advertising messages in one day than our ancestors, maybe two generations ago saw it an entire lifetime. That's crazy. Our brains just aren't built for this kind of overstimulation. And then you add social media to that and wow, it's just crazy.

Yeah, absolutely. I think this is part of the misconception about the one thing everybody has, more than one thing. Gary and Jay broke down all the most important areas of your life in the book. It's on page 114, and they call it the seven circles. The seven most important areas of your life. It's spirituality, your physical health, your personal life, your relationships, your job, your business, and your finances. Those are the seven most important areas of your life. And there is always one thing that you can do in each of those areas that would make that area of your life a 10 out of 10. The challenge is, and I personally struggled with this for probably the last four to five years where I knew I needed to be better in multiple areas of my life. I tried to make meaningful change there all at the same time. I focused on all of them. The problem was I mastered none of them. And it wasn't Until I moved to Austin to partner with Gary and Jay. And Jay looked at me and said, pick one. Prove to yourself that you can choose one area of your life that you want to become masterful. Prove to yourself that you can develop a power habit that will make everything else easier or unnecessary in that one area of your life. And when I narrowed my focus down to just one area, I first focused on my business. And I identified the one specific measurable action that I could do every single day that would make everything else in my business easier or unnecessary. And I did it consistently to the point where it was a habit, meaning it required. The very first thing I do when I get into the office is I, for 15 minutes, do my most important work. I have a time block to do my most important work. I do not check email. I do not go say hi to anybody. I don't do anything other than immediately get into the zone and knock out my most important work right off the bat. It is a habit.

Okay, but give us an example of that most important. I mean, I know it's different for everybody probably, but share some examples.

Sure. So at one point in time, it was lead generation, so reaching out to other influencers to get booked on podcasts or to line up JV promotions or affiliate deals. Now it's shifted to engaging with the community. My one thing that I can do to scale our business is to build deep, meaningful relationships with our community. So that means engaging with people one on one over social media. It's going to shift on a day to day. But the idea is that I have a time block that I do not violate. When somebody walks up to me in that first 15 minutes and says, hey, do you got a minute? My answer is no. If my phone rings, I don't answer it. I've just developed that muscle where I do not allow that bunker to be penetrated.

Okay. Okay, good. Tell us more.

So, just to recap, we all have more than one thing that we could be doing, but it's about proving to yourself that you can choose one area and make a meaningful change. And that happens by narrowing your focus. And this really hit home for me early on in working with Gary and Jay, where it was our monthly state of the company meeting, kind of our board meeting, and it was my. I had to go present our business plan. And I'm presenting the plan to Gary and Jay, showing them, hey, this is where I want to take the company over the next three to five years. And it was just three simple bullet points. These were my priorities for the Year. We started talking about number one, and Gary asked me a bunch of questions about it. I answered them. I said, are we good? He goes, yeah. And I started talking about my second priority. About halfway through, he stops and starts asking questions about number one. I answer him, I say, we good? He goes, yeah. I get into number two. I finish it up. I start talking about number three. Gary starts asking more questions about number one. I answer him, I say, we good? He goes, yeah. And I get back into number three, and I'm probably talking about it for no more than 10 seconds until he stops me a final time, right? And he says, quick question. Do you need to accomplish number three to accomplish number two? I said, no. He said, do you need to accomplish number two to accomplish number one? I said, no. He said, then do me a favor. Put a line between number one and number two. Or even better, just cross out number two and number three. Don't even think about them again until you've mastered number one. This is where living the one thing is so different. When you get so clear on what your biggest priority is, people oftentimes don't hold themselves accountable to executing and mastering that one thing because it's hard.

Are you willing to share what that example of that one thing was? Is that reaching out to people or engaging what you talked about earlier, or is it something else?

No. At the time, we were creating a course on the back end of the one thing called time blocking mastery. Because that 4,000 people on our list said, hey, that's the one area we need help most. It's called time blocking. I had created this course and I was starting to sell it, but we didn't have profitable funnels up and running yet. Here I am saying, hey, my one thing is to get Time Blocking Mastery to convert profitably off of Facebook traffic on an Evergreen webinar. That was my number one priority for the business. Then I was talking about building a podcast. Then I was talking about hiring my team. Those were the other two priorities. And I was talking about the meaningful progress I was making in number two and number three. And Gary said, why are you even thinking about launching the One Thing podcast when you haven't mastered number one? Why are you even thinking about hiring your team when you haven't mastered number one? In that moment, I just got it. If I were to look at my calendar and ask, how much of my time was I actually investing in mastering my number one priority for my business? It was not enough. And so I wiped the slate clean. And literally, for the last eight Months I have done nothing but focus on that one thing. And now that I've mastered it, I've earned the right to to launch the One Thing podcast. I've earned the right to build my team.

Okay, so let's talk about Gary Keller, for example, since you know, he's the primary author of the book. He's got a real estate company and there's a million one things competing for attention there. But he's also quite a publisher. I mean, you know, he's authored several books and he's got a lot of publishing projects. Wouldn't it be fair to say that he's doing more than one thing? I mean, he's gotta be. I'm sure he's got other stuff going on. Is he practicing what he preaches, so to speak?

Sure, yeah. And I think this is where you also have to understand what the day of Gary actually looks like. The reason I keep saying the name Jay. Jay Papistan's his co author and his partner. Jay was brought on to be the empire builder for the publishing division. Jay was a former senior editor at HarperCollins, had worked on some many really large books like Me and Go for the Gold. Is it Bill Wilson's Body for Life, Bill Phillips. So Jay spearheads a lot of those. Gary's the lead author. It's a lot of his ideas, but Jay's the one running the team behind it. That doesn't require a tremendous amount of Gary's time. But if you ask Gary what his one thing is, he says it is to pour in and support the top agents inside of Keller Williams. And he point blank told me, anything that threatens my focus from these people in this room. We had a small mastermind for some of the top agents in the world. He said that's a legitimate threat. So that's why he doesn't do speaking gigs. You don't see him out widely promoting himself. His one thing is to pour into the top agents and that's where the majority of his time goes. Okay, he does that first and until he executes on that, he doesn't earn the right to focus on anything else.

What else is there to the one thing? Or have we pretty much just covered the book and nobody listening needs to read it?

No, I mean living a life of focus, living a life of priority to the point where you are always operating on your highest leverage activities first. It's hard, it takes time. And there are so many things that pop up, like how do you craft the right environment, how do you store the necessary supplies how do you enlist the support of the people around you who are likely to steal your attention? You and I could go for hours, Jason. And that's why the book sold over 900,000 copies in three years, which is extraordinary.

Good. So what are you doing with it? You're turning this into a business, right?

Sure. And true to the message of the book, Gary's one thing is being chairman of Keller Williams, pouring into the top agents. Jay's one thing is writing books with Gary. They looked up though the book has done extraordinarily well. They know there's a business opportunity there, but they're not going to be the ones to do it. And that's where I got recruited into the fold to say, let's use the book as a springboard to turn it into a productivity empire. So that's going to start by creating training and educational products to show people how to live a life of focus. But the long term play is to create a technology platform that we own and control.

So what will the technology platform be for the one thing. A software that helps keep people focused.

I'm not sure yet. And this is where I'm really focusing on building the community. That's why that's my one thing. I want to build an army of raving fans that I can interact with and say, what's your biggest problem when it comes to focus? What's your biggest problem when it comes to living a productive life and then allowing us to develop the platform around those problems?

Good, good. Tell us more about how to implement the one thing in our lives.

So here is what I would suggest it comes down to. If you were to make a to do list all the things that you need to do. Often when we do these, we do the thing that is easiest to do first because it feels good. Literally in your brain you get a dopamine release. When you cross something off the chemically in your brain, it feels good. But if you were to look at all the things that you could do and say, if I literally gun to my head, could only do one thing, what's the one thing on this list that would make everything else easier or unnecessary? And you put a number one next to that and then you say, great, I knocked that out, what would the next be? And you actually number all of them and apply priority to it, and then open up your calendar and look at it and say, okay, what is the time? What's the appointment that I'm going to schedule with myself to make sure that I am doing my most important work? If you were to do that, you would see meaningful changes in how much you got done.

Do we just keep with one thing until we consider it mastered? And then we go into, I mean, can one thing be a daily thing? Like, this is my one thing today, or is it the one thing for the next year or the one thing for the next month?

The answer is yes, it can be for whatever is relevant to you at the time. What I have found to be the most powerful is to identify the one habit that you want to form that will make everything else easier or unnecessary. And I'll use myself as the guinea pig here. I mentioned that for years I had tried to make meaningful improvements in certain areas of my life, but I failed because I tried to do them all at once. I needed to make a shift in my business. I needed to make a shift in my marriage. I needed to make a shift in my mental health and my physical health. When I came here to Austin, I first focused on business. I said, for the first 15 minutes of the day, I will do my most important work. I will not do anything else other than the thing that's going to give me the most leverage in my business. Once I did that for about 70 days consistently, it became a habit to the point where I don't even have to think about it. When I walk into the office, boom, doing my most important work, that's a habit. Then I got to focus on my marriage because here I am, I'm running two businesses, the business for the one thing. And then I also have a company called the Mentee, where I started a podcast called the Mentee Podcast. There's a six figure business on the back end of it. So I'm literally running two companies and my marriage is suffering. And so I know now I've got a habit for my business. I need to form a habit that will make everything with my wife better, because if she ain't happy, I ain't happy. And the one thing that I could do to transform our marriage was for 15 minutes a day, to put my cell phone in my office and to just be present with the family. It sounds sad that I had to boil it down to that level.

Well, I think a lot of people are in that situation. Yeah.

But I literally focused and tracked that for 66 days, because we know on average it takes 66 days to form a habit. And when I did that, when I was present every day, Even for just 15 minutes, suddenly the connection was rekindled.

Where did the 61 days come from? You know, it's always. I've always heard it's 21 days. That's what Maxwell Maltz and the psycho cybernetics kind of popularized that idea of three weeks. If you do it for three weeks, it'll become a habit. Yeah, I haven't heard the 61 or 66 days or whatever you said.

So Gary and Jay and the research team spent five years researching what was going to go into the one thing. And in all the research that there is out there, it actually shows that on average it takes 66 full days to form a habit. Sometimes it's faster, sometimes it's longer. But when you look at that point where it no longer requires much effort to continue doing it, it's 66 days. And that's partially why so many people fail to form habits that stick. They just don't do it long enough.

People give up too early. That's a sad state of affairs. It certainly is.

Yeah. So that was the marriage one and then there was meditation after. That was a habit. And then after. Now I'm focusing on my personal health, which frankly, it's not a habit yet. I was 45 days into a 66 day challenge. Thanksgiving hit and I've been off the bandwagon for a month and now I have to start over. But the whole idea here is that I've narrowed my focus to one thing and just said let me plant a flag in the ground and prove to myself that I can make meaningful change in this one area of my life to the point where it's a habit. And then I will earn the right to focus on stacking another habit.

Habit stacking. A lot of my friends are into that idea of habit stacking. Does that play into the one thing? Because when you were talking about how Gary was questioning you, he'd let you talk about the second thing and the third thing. And then he kept bringing you back very quickly to the first thing, the one thing. Does habit stacking apply to this?

Absolutely. Because when you can get clear on what your one thing is and make it a habit, then it no longer requires much effort or focus to continue doing it. And over the years, I mean, gosh, you look at Gary, he's been living this for 35 plus years. The only way you scale the largest real estate empire in the world is if you're very intentional about what you're doing every day. He has stacked so many habits over his lifetime. He's just an extraordinary human being. His results support that.

Very interesting. Very good, Jeff. Give out your website and tell people where they can find out more about this?

Sure. So our website's theonething.com and that's with the number one. Depending on when this is airing, there's going to be the One Thing podcast. So we're going to be launching that probably around the second week of January, where my whole goal is to document what it means to actually live the book, the real experiences I'm having with Gary and Jay, and then talking to other influencers who play in the productivity space.

Yeah, fantastic. Really interesting stuff. Any closing thoughts? Any questions I didn't ask you or just wrap this up for us.

Here's what I'd say. You follow Jason for a reason. He gives great content. I've followed his podcast for quite some time now. Consuming content is great. It goes ahead and it affects your psychology. It's seeps into your subconscious mind to affect your beliefs. But you get the real results when you back it with action. And so I would simply ask you this. What's one thing that you got from this episode that you can actually put into action and do it? Because if you do, that's when you get the meaningful results in your life.

Just to still that one thing out there and just do it and then move on. You know, everything comes from action. It sure does. Jeff woods, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thanks, Jason.

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