Ep. 30- Geoff Woods: The ONE Thing

This is the You Winning Life podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, trainer and certified entrepreneur coach, Jason Wasser.

Everybody, welcome back to the You Winning Life podcast. Today's guest is Jeff Woods, who's the vice president of The ONE Thing. And after hearing the Jim Rohn quote that you are the average of the 5 people you spend most of your time with, Jeff set out on a mission to surround himself with high-level CEOs and successful entrepreneurs. Fast forward 10 months from that time, he went from employee to entrepreneur. Launching a company with the co-authors of the bestselling book, The ONE Thing. And Jeff has been featured in entrepreneur.com and is on a mission to teach people how to live a life of focus so they can have more by doing less. Thanks for hanging out with us today.

Oh, my absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Cool. Cool. So right off the bat, what gave you the drive to go after this new set of goals once you heard that quote? And what was going on for you at that time in your life?

Yeah. So when I was— when I heard that Jim Rohn quote, I was in medical device sales, which was a great job. I got to wear scrubs every I ran through hospitals. I sold a device that actually saved lives. I was also in a place where I think a lot of people have been in their career, which is even though things were good, I was lacking fulfillment. I just, I couldn't see myself doing this forever. I also didn't have enough pain in my life to force me to make a change. Things were comfy. I know I've got a good work-life balance, if you will. I had a good income, plenty of time to do the things that mattered to me. 2 things happened that changed that. First, a colleague of mine, he had a stroke when he was 35 years old. Now, remember at the time, we had just bought a house in Orange County. My wife and I just had our first child. My wife decided to become a stay-at-home mom. I remember sitting in the kitchen thinking, "If what happened to my colleague had happened to me, what would happen to my family?" That was very unsettling. The next week, my company needed to make a change to our commission structure just to remain competitive in the marketplace. And as a result, 40% of my income evaporated. You take those two things back to back, things get ugly because month after month, we're hemorrhaging cash. My wife and I had made the mistake that I think a lot of us make, which is we allowed our lifestyle to rise to meet our level of income. And when the income dropped and the lifestyle remained stagnant, you're hemorrhaging. Before you know it, the bank account's almost at zero and the pain is very high now. And I hear that you're the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. I looked at my 5, just thought of them and said, "These are all amazing people, people I always want to be in my life." And I had an aha moment, which was I knew in my bones one day I wanted to own a business that made a big impact in the world and delivered real security for my family. The people that I was actually surrounding myself with weren't business owners. They didn't own businesses that made a big impact in the world and delivered real security for their family. And that led me just to asking, what are my odds of being successful achieving my goals if I don't have the mentors in my life to guide me there? That set me on a journey. And, you know, fast forward, I surrounded myself with an army of mentors. And before you know it, it's our national sales meeting and Jay Papasan, who co-authored The ONE Thing with Gary Keller, was our keynote speaker. I cornered him when he came off stage and the rest is history.

So at that point in your life, right, this risk of jumping in, doing something different, and maybe not having the stability in your life that you've had, even though you were doing a certain level of success, you had that taken away from you. One of the things I'm finding with a lot of people, especially my clients, is that there's so much more out there for them, but that drive of stability sometimes overpowers the ability to make a massive leap.

Correct. And that's where— that's actually what stopped me from pursuing my entrepreneurial passions was, I've got a good job, I make good money, I'm making an impact in the world, you know, things are good. You're going to quit that for what? It seemed very risky. But what happened was when a colleague has a stroke and I realized I'm in a job that requires me to trade hours for dollars, if I can no longer work, I can no longer provide for my family. That in itself made that "stable foundation" I had less stable. And then realizing that I actually have zero say in my comp structure. My company can make a little tweak and 40% goes away. All of a sudden, I no longer looked at my job as a stable job. And I remember my colleagues, when I told them I was leaving to start a company, they're like, "Are you crazy? That is so risky." And I remember thinking, number one, I'm not going out to just start some random thing. I'm literally partnering with the guy who's built the largest real estate company in the world, Keller Williams, and I'm getting to turn the highest-rated business book of all time into a training company. Like, nothing could seem more secure to me than that opportunity.

And the cool thing that I'm hearing from this, and having been following you for a little bit, is that your values and your passion align exactly with what you're talking about wanting to do. So for a lot of people out there, I know the whole thing is about how do I create something from scratch, how do I create something new, but you did something really unique. You found the people that were doing something already in an idea of what you wanted to do. Yeah. But at the beginning, right, you didn't even realize it was going to be you doing that, correct?

Correct. They see it as black and white. They see employee or entrepreneur. What they don't realize is there's a gray area called intrapreneur. And this is something that's going to be growing more and more, but having the opportunity to be an entrepreneur inside a larger existing system where you get some of the security of employment with the upside of entrepreneurship, and that became my opportunity.

And you're able to follow your passion and your purpose along the way with that.

I get to live my purpose every single day, which is incredible.

So let's go back a little bit because where you are now led you to the one thing that you wanted to be doing in your life, right, which is focusing on how to teach people live a life of focus.

Yeah.

So talk to us and for those out there who haven't heard of— I mean, people I'm sure have heard about Keller Williams, but not knowing that this thing, the one thing is part of their system, but also this really awesome, like you said, one of the top best-selling books in the business world and entrepreneurship world. So what is The ONE Thing?

The ONE Thing is the surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results. There's two words there that really matter, simple and extraordinary. When you hear these principles, you're gonna go, duh, that makes so much sense. It's so simple. And the thing is, it's simple truths that actually don't lead to just get you getting results or getting great results. They lead to to extraordinary results. And that is that it's all around time. You know, every day we wake up and we ask the question, "What are we going to do during our days?" And every year we set goals, but we struggle to have a relationship with them. And here's what I mean by that. While we have a sense of where we want to be at the end of the year, we don't actually know the handful of things that if I just did those this week would be absolutely the things that would ensure I'm on track for getting what I want this year, 5 years from now, someday from now. We don't know how to bridge that gap, which is why most people spend their days in their inbox, going to meetings, looking up at the end of the day thinking they were really busy, and sometimes questioning if they actually got anything done. The world does not need a new way to set goals. They need a way to have a relationship with them, to understand Just like when you met your significant other, you went on that first date and you're like, "Oh my gosh, this is awesome. Let's explore this." And so, you set another date. And between that time, you're probably texting each other and sending each other photos. And over time, it led to a deep, meaningful relationship. It's the same thing here, casting that vision for what you want out of your life and every single day understanding, "How do I behave today so that I am appropriate and am getting what I want and on track for that goal. That's what we do.

What it really sounds like to me is looking at the marathon instead of the 5K, which, like, right? And the idea of long-term momentum.

Mm, correct. And that idea of long-term momentum, people struggle with because getting something that's in a distant future, it's just disconnected from our real day-to-day lives. But being able to understand based on a future to understand what you need to do today. It's bridging that gap.

Do you find like me that people are so short-sighted, so nearsighted in their goals that they're not looking out 15, 20, 30 years? They're looking out the 90-day— Sure. —quarterly annual plans, but those quarterly annual plans have to be bigger and part of this long-term thing. You're also reminding me of the quote which one of my coaches, Rick Sappio, talks about is the Oliver Wendell Holmes quote. Is, "I wouldn't give a fig for this side of complexity, but I give my entire life for simplicity on the far side of complexity." Yeah.

Here's what I think. I don't think you have to do anything. I think, because you said, "Is this what people have to do?" I don't think you have to do anything. I think if you want to live a life of extraordinary results though, you have to really be clear what your priorities are and what the distractions are in your world that are disguised as priorities. And asking big questions like, where do I want to be someday from now? Like you alluded to, 15, 20, 30 years from now. Most people, if they were asked a question like that, they'd very quickly hit a wall of, I don't know. And when they hit that wall, they go, oh, well, I guess I just don't know. And so they go check email rather than actually going, okay, that's where my current mind stops. Now let me search. And I promise you, because we host a couple's goal-setting retreat every year, when you search for answers to big questions like that, you will find them when you create a space to do it. And once you have a sense of where you want to be someday from now, you can then imagine looking back on your life and asking, well, where would I need to be 5 years from now just to feel like I'm on track? Answering that question is not super easy anyways, but searching for the answer, coming up with it, because once Once you're at the 5 mark, you get to look back and say, "What do I have to do this year?" We're great at finding that answer. But all of a sudden, you're no longer looking at all the things you could pursue. You've really narrowed your focus down to the things that are going to help you intentionally get what you want out of life.

Casey Weade: Do you think that partially that starts off with the big ask? So, I have this new theory that I've been playing with the last year or so, especially as I've been engaging this really incredible community of guests, which is the big ask. And I have this belief that the worst thing that can happen if you make a big ask from somebody is not that that they're gonna say no, but quite the opposite, is that they're actually gonna say yes, and then you need to rise to the challenge to be able to be a receiver of that which you're asking and play now at that new level that you've never played at before.

Mm, yeah, it's almost a fear of success, right, in that way.

And I know one of the things that you love and that I love as well is this lifestyle by design, right? So now you have this big thing, right? Could you ask, can you do, can you plan for something even bigger than you even thought? Yes. Right? And then how do you reverse engineer that I know different people talk about lifestyle by design differently, and I know you've talked about that. Explain your perspective and approach.

Jason Wasser: Well, we call it goal setting to the now. It's the idea that the mistake most people make is they set their goals looking forward. They ask, "What do I want to achieve this year?" or "What matters to me this year?" and they make a list. The challenge is they don't know if that thing that might be attractive in the short run is actually a deviation from what they want in the long run. Here's a perfect example. If we asked you to think back to how you got here to this very moment in your life, you think, "Well, I just clicked play on the episode. And before that, I woke up this morning. And before that, I decided to do what I do professionally. And before that, I was in school. And before that, I did this." And when you imagine your life looking backwards, you see it as a straight line. But when we look forward in our life, we don't just see a straight path, we see a sea of opportunities, all these things we could do. And it would be like if we all hopped on a plane and said, "You know what? We're actually going to fly to pick your favorite destination that we could possibly go to, what would it be?

Right off the top of my head, um, Israel. It's been a couple years since I've been back there.

Awesome. So, so we're going to Israel and the pilot sets the— points the plane in the right direction, but somewhere along the path the winds shift and all of a sudden the plane is 10 degrees off course and it doesn't correct. Do we end up in Israel?

Not anywhere near it. You can end up in South Africa.

Right, exactly. That's what happens when we set our goals looking forward. And that's why I say we have to goal set to the now. We have to give ourselves the space to really sit down and ask, what do I want out of life someday from now? What are my someday goals for the areas of my life? And based on that, reverse engineer what would I have to do 5 years from now to feel like I'm on track? And it's not absolute clarity. It's a general direction. And once you have 5 years, you then get to say, "Where do I need to be by the end of this year to feel on track?" And all of a sudden, you can break a massive goal down for someday into something very specific you can accomplish this year, but then you go even further. And this is where the relationship happens. We use a tool called a 411. It stands for 4 weeks, 1 month, 1 year. It also stands for the relevant information or truth. It helps us break those 1-year goals. Down into milestones. What are the specific things I need to accomplish this month to be on track for my year? And what are the specific things I need to accomplish this week to be on track for my month? Those are the things that you time block. That way, when you open your calendar and you look and you see, make 10 phone calls, you understand that making those 10 phone calls actually puts you on track for making 200 phone calls for the month, which puts you on track for lead generating for 200 hours for the year, which gives you the income to hit your 5-year goals, your someday goals. You are goal setting to the now and truly understanding, if I just did this one thing today, I'd automatically be on track for what I want out of life.

So, in the long term, for people who have that motivation, for people who have that buy-in, for let's say half the population, they're going to find this process really easy. Talk to me from your perspective now as a coach of people who may be easily driven to distraction, the ADD adults.

Every entrepreneur ever. Yeah, we all— this is just human nature. I've heard my partner, Gary, say, "One of the reasons people fail to live The ONE Thing is they don't endure the monotony of success." Getting what you want out of life is actually not that exciting. It's not chasing the latest productivity trick. It's not the new diet fad. It's not the new tip to have intimacy with your partner. It's about having clarity on the handful of things that if you just did them day after day after day after day after day, over time lead to extraordinary results. The problem with that is after a few weeks or a few months, the novelty wears off and it gets boring. And then you start to realize that just because you have clarity on what your one thing is doesn't mean that people stop sending you emails, doesn't mean that people stop sending meeting invites, doesn't mean that people will stop swinging by your desk and saying, "Hey, do you got a minute?" The world does not stop spinning because you suddenly find your focus. So how you actually endure that monotony and form habits so that until your number one priority is done, everything else is a distraction.

And that's part of what Ivan Misner, the founder of BNI, and Rick wrote a book called Who's in Your Room, which is about the doorman principle, right? Who you let in and what you let in determines the outcome of your life. So I'm thinking like this is like as a one-two punch, right? If you know what you want, you game plan it, you lifestyle by design it, you action step it, you calendar, you rhythm, and you ritual it, and you're very clear about who and what you let in when, the likelihood of radical success is exponentially greater. Yes. I mean, let's give you a simple—

we're research-based. We found that when people set goals, if they want to actually go about achieving them, the simple action of doing a time block, identifying when you're going to do it, where you're going to do it, and how long you think it's going to take, makes you 3 times more likely to achieve it. Just simply doing a freaking calendar invite— what day, what time, what place— makes you 3 times more likely to be successful. You layer that in with what you just said, casting a vision for your life, reverse engineering it, breaking your annual priorities down to monthly, weekly actions you can do that you time block, oh, game changer. And then you start doing that with the people who have a stake in your success. It's why we do a couple's goal-setting retreat is because people, no one succeeds alone. No one succeeds alone. And every year, the majority of people try to. They cast a vision for what they want out of life without realizing they've got other people who are vital to their success and who are not aligned.

You just reminded me of a story that I had. I had a young couple that I started seeing, and they were coming in for some significant conflict. And I asked them right off the bat, "I know what your story is of why you're here, but I truly can't help you unless I know what your core values are for individually and your couple relationship core values and the priorities that the two of you have decided." to make as a vision for what you want out of this relationship. And then we can start talking about a problem. So that was between session 1 and 2. They came back in session 2, they shared their personal one. Session 3, they shared their couple ones. I haven't seen them since.

Huh. Can I show you— interesting, the timing of what you just said. Please. Hold on, let me grab something right behind me. So as we gear up for our couples retreat, you're talking about the importance of having clarity in your values. For the people who are listening on audio, I'm holding up a deck of cards that on one side looks like dominoes and on the back end, values. So that people can look at all— out of all the values they could have in their life, what are their top values in order of priority so that they can understand how does why they do what they do line up with what they do. Right.

And everything that I'm doing in my practice that I'm sharing with my clients, if you talk to any of my friends or anybody that I've given a workshop to or my clients, they're gonna be like, "Okay, what's the first thing Jason's most likely to talk about? Core values." And the example is, I'm meeting with a new potential associate this afternoon to see clients here, and we sat down and I, right off the bat, I'm like, "Here's the list and the definitions of my practice's core values." I'm like, "Ooh," and I want to know, "Who are your biggest referral resources?" Not because I want to know so I can benefit from it, but I want to see where their philosophy and their mind's at. So if they say, "Well, I have this psychiatrist that I send all my clients to as an integrative mind-body practice," that's not going to be in alignment with who I want to be bringing in my practice. Now, I'm not against psychiatry and I'm not against psychiatrists, but it's not going to be my first line of defense because I don't deal with chronically significantly unhealthy clients. I deal with those that are the worried well. So that's not going to be my first step for them. Yeah. Everything I'm doing is that, right? With couplehood, right? I know you're married with a family. How do you now apply this also to relationships? How do you apply this to your health? How do you apply this to spirituality? How do you apply this? Is it a wash and repeat process? Sure.

So from a really simple application, because everything we do is simple, the focusing question of the book is, what's the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else would be easier or unnecessary? Let's break that down so you understand, so that you'll understand how you can aim it at any area. It's not— it's what's the one thing, not what's everything. You get to pick one thing. It's got to be one, not two, one. It's got to be one thing that I can do, not I should, could, or would do it. I'll feel guilty if my wife says I don't do it. It actually has to be a 2-inch domino, so small that with the flick of a finger, effortlessly it falls. What's the one thing I can do? Essentially, by doing it, meaning you actually knock it down, because those dominoes are lined up, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary. It's about unleashing a domino effect in your life, not doing everything but doing everything that's on your plate as a series of dominoes that if you lined up and flicked the first one, they all fall. You then ask the question, which I did this year, out of all the areas of my life, if I could only focus on one area and really make an impact, whether it be my spirituality, my physical health, my personal life, my key relationships, my job, my business, my finances, if I could only meaningfully impact one. Which would it be? Now, immediately, let's, let's understand we all have more than one thing and we get to do more than one thing, but things happen at one at a time, not everything at the same time. And I chose key relationships. If I could only choose one relationship to focus on, what's the one that would make everything else easier or unnecessary? It'd be my marriage to Amy. Okay, well, what's the one thing I can do for my marriage We'd have to be deeply connected and growing together. Well, what's the one thing I can do to be deeply connected and growing together? Stay with me here, folks, because this is what it means to reverse engineer. Stay with it. Uh, we'd have to go on 3 date nights a month. Okay, so for the course of the year, that's 36. Well, what's the one thing I can do to ensure we go on 36 date nights, 3 a month? What's the one thing we can do to ensure we do 3 date nights a month? I'd have to plan them. What's the one thing I can do to plan them? The first Monday of every month, if I will do a 15-minute time block when I'm done with work, and I will whip out my planner, I'll write down the 3 dates and text the babysitters. That's the one thing. That's the lead domino, that it alone does not unleash extraordinary results in your life, but if you do it Over time, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary.

So for those who are listening, you can see the massive grin on my face as Jeff is, as you're talking about this, because it's literally as if I duplicated myself and stuck you on the other side of the screen. This is what I'm repeatedly sharing with my clients over and over again, right? The rhythms and the rituals, that one thing, right? If you, I love, I had a couple a long time ago, I saw And they were married for, I don't know, 12 years. And I asked them, "Before me, how many therapists have you seen for the stuff that's been going on in your relationship?" And they're like, "This is our first go." Okay. You know, so we're now in session 1 after X amount of hours of being married and 1 hour, right? The ratio of 1 hour to 422,000 hours of being married, right? So we have that momentum to break. All right. What books have you read on relationships? Me? No, no, meaning the clients, right? None. They haven't read any. YouTube videos? None. Talks with a spiritual advisor, other couples that you find are doing it the right way? Zero. So we're fighting that tide. We're fighting that challenge of pick that one thing that will— and a lot of times people don't even know what that is because they're so stuck in the convoluted life, they're still right in the negative pattern, the resistance to it all, or that negative space that they feel about themselves and their partner. What comes up for me about what you were saying is that how do you propose people can fight? Because I feel like maybe the one thing that would come up is that if someone decides to pick one thing, there's always people in context that it's going to have a ramification against. And it could be a negative ramification. So there could be some guilt and shame involved in putting their flag in the ground. Mm-hmm. How do you—

how would you suggest? Can you give me an example?

So if you're saying that this— you, right, wanted to niche it all the way down, distill it all the way down to 3 dates a month with your wife and the babysitter and all these other things, and you now know that you have other obligations, maybe with work or socially or your health, how do you go about it where there's no guilt in doing it, or even on some level, some shame of maybe disappointing somebody else that you're not making that or them a priority.

The number one lie of productivity is the lie that everything matters equally. When I hear a question like that, like, okay, you got clarity, you're going to do 3 date nights with your wife, but what about all the things with work? And what about all your friends and all that stuff? We have to— Instead of imagining all those things as everything that's on our plate, we have to imagine them as dominoes and start lining them up and ask, "If I only get to focus on one, what is it? Should I earn the right to focus on another? Which is it? Should I earn the right to focus on another? Which is it?" The truth is there's enough hours in the day to have an extraordinary life, but it's going to require that we start viewing working long hours as cheating because you can do the wrong activities and muscle your way to a result rather than hold yourself to a standard where you're going to be clear on your priorities and be as efficient and as effective as possible at those things. And at a prescribed time, you shut it down so you can go on a date night, you can go to the gym, you can be present and put the kids to bed. It is all possible. But you have to— once you're clear on what you're saying yes to, it becomes a lot easier on the things you need to say no to.

And I'm finding that there's a lot of false pride about people being hectic.

Yeah, I, I, um, It's one of the things that show up with big success. When you get clear on your priorities, you go deep into those time blocks. And like I said, the world doesn't stop spinning. The emails are going to pile up. The meeting requests are going to pile up. Chaos is bound to show up when you are striving for big success. It's people's inability or lack of creativity in dealing with the chaos that actually stops them.

Yeah. That reminds me of a story that I heard you talk about that when you first started working with your partners. I think it was one of them who said, "Do I need to do this in order to accomplish that?" I think it was within your first 90 days. If you can retell that story and how it ties into that.

Yeah, sure. Our definition of a job description is not everything they have to do for a job, but the 2 to 3 things they have to do exceptionally well, otherwise they get fired.. And I was being assessed on 3 things when I got this job. I had to prove that I could cast a vision for the business. I had to prove that I could drive revenue. And I had to prove that I could recruit and retain talent. They were listed in that order. So vision was most important. Gary and Jay started there. They needed to test my ability to cast a vision because if Gary's— Gary's one thing is running Keller Williams. Jay's one thing is education. If they had to stop doing their one thing to help me do my one thing, which is the one thing, then I'm not the fit. I had to create a one-page business plan. We call it a GPS because it gets you to where you want to go. And I walked into the boardroom and handed Gary and Jay each a copy of this one-page business plan. Literally, the entire vision of the company fit on one side of one page. We started talking about— there were three priorities on it. That's it. A goal and three priorities. We started talking about priority number one. Gary and Jay asked a bunch of questions about it. I answered them and said, "Are we good?" They said, "Yeah." And so I started talking about number 2 because it was next on the list. And pretty soon Gary went back and started asking more questions about number 1. I remember not thinking much of it, just answering the questions and going, "Okay, we good?" They said, "Yeah." So I went back to number 2, finished it up, started talking about number 3, and Gary went back to number 1. And in this moment, I felt like Ben Stiller in Meet the Parents because I was not in the circle of trust. Why did he keep going back to number 1? I answered the questions. So, are we good? Yep. I went back to number 3, and after about 10 seconds, Gary just stopped me. He asked, do you need to do number 3 in order to do number 2? I said no. So, do you need to do number 2 in order to do number 1? I said no. He said, do me a favor. Draw a line between number 1 and number 2, or even better, rip the page in half. He literally sat there and waited while I took my business plan and ripped it in half. Then he said something that has stayed with me every day since. He said, don't even think about number 2 or number 3 until you've earned the right to by mastering number 1. It was— and it was in that moment that I just realized my entire career, nobody taught me to do this, but I just I passively treated everything like it matters equally. I looked at everything on my plate and said, I've got to move the ball on all of it. And I divided my focus and didn't drive anything to the goal line. Here is the chairman of the largest real estate company in the world saying, dude, you haven't even knocked down number one yet. Why are you thinking about anything else? And let's be clear, in a vacuum That's how you would operate. In the real world where we work with teams and we have interdependencies, it doesn't always work that way. Yet the question is, can we at least have clarity on what the number one priority is and be the type of person who just whacks away at it first? Whether it falls down or not, I don't care, but can you at least make effort on the thing that matters most before you earn the right to move on to the second thing, before you earn the right to move on to the third thing, before you earn the right to go, "Okay, it's time to come up for air." handle the chaos. Let's go through the inbox for 10 minutes. Let me get with the team and see if they need anything. Okay, now I'm going back into my bunker and I'm doing my one thing. That's what it looks like.

And I know for years I used to take pride in being the master of all trades and the jack of none. Yeah, I mean, it's like, right, the jack of all trades and the master of none. Sorry. So, and I took really massive pride in that because I'm like, look at how many good things I'm decently competent at. So therefore, that makes me a Swiss Army knife of resource to people, and I saw myself getting burnt out. I saw myself not loving 50%, 60% of people that I might be working with in my practice until I realized that prioritization, those core values, the type of clients that I want to work with, putting my flag in the ground of if you're not interested in doing therapy that comes along with mind-body integrative health for your relationships, for your kid, for if you are the kid, right? If you're an entrepreneur, if you're not I'm not going to incorporate that into, then I'm probably not the right practitioner to be working with you. I can give you lots of value, but you're asking me to tie my hand behind my back and only give you 50% of what I'm capable of giving you.

Yeah. I remember hearing a buddy of mine, he— most people, when they look at trying to grow a business, they ask, how do I get people to do business with me? And they try to get as many people as possible to do business with them. Versus flipping it on its head and asking 80/20 rule. Who are the 20% clients that if I just focused on those people would generate 80% of my results? And going all in on those, you build a much bigger business and with a lot of simplicity when you become clear on what you're going to say yes to. Um, In a practical sense, not everybody earns the right to go there. Sometimes you just got to lead with revenue and get off the ground. But let's be clear when we're consciously choosing to act out of priority.

Yeah. And I get to look at my caseload now with my therapy and coaching clients and say, like, I truly adore every single person that I'm working with to the point where even though they're going through stressors and it could be relationship stuff or business stuff or a grief or loss thing or maybe even an addiction thing. That for 99% of the time, it doesn't even feel like I'm working.

Mm-hmm. That's cool. That's cool.

Right? And what I really want people out there to be empowered with is that they can have exactly what you and I have been talking about in their life, but they have to make that conscious decision. They have to put the line in the sand, their flag in the ground to do that and decide what their mission is, decide what their purpose is, and then build everything else out from there. I know one of the ways that you believe, similar to me, is that mentorship and coaching is a big part of this package.

I would agree.

Yeah. What's that like for you in your life? You are now working with people as a coach. I know when you were seeking out people before you started this journey, you were looking for those people who were radically successful so you can, so to speak, life hack what they were doing. In addition to who you're working with now, what else has led you as far as mentorship and coaching that has been influences on your life? What did you take away from them? And then how are you bringing that as a coach and a developer now to the people?

Sure. Well, first, I think we need to distinguish mentorship from coaching. A mentor is somebody who is where you want to be and is reaching back, grabbing your hand, and giving you advice. Maybe a paid relationship, but more often than not, at least in my experience, it's not. Then there's a coach. A coach is somebody that you hire to stand on the front line of your business or an area of your life and hold you accountable, hold your feet to the fire. They are not there always to give you advice. You can have a coach who can be a sounding board and help you with strategic things, but a lot of it comes down to accountability. I have both in my life. I always have mentors, people who are where I want to be, and I mentor other people as well. We have a coaching company. I got really clear. I started to have some coaching clients. It's not my one thing. My gift is being able to stand and deliver a message. My time is far more valuable doing what we're doing right now, having this conversation, or for me to go into companies and to be leading workshops and keynotes. Far more valuable there. And then we have people who just have a God-given gift as a coach, and they are completely different skill sets. So I just got clear, I'm not going to carry clients. We have a company that does that.

And I think that's so important because a lot of ways what you're talking about is from, you know, in alignment with that book, The E-Myth, right? You have the entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician. And you were briefly mentioning that before of trading time for money. And that goes hand in hand with what you were saying about, you know, working with someone one-to-one as a coach versus one-to-many. On a podcast and doing a workshop and a lecture and a retreat. And I love what you're saying about getting so crystal clear on knowing what you're truly passionate about, what your true capabilities are, that I want people to help themselves to figure out what that is for themselves. And if they're in the right path, that's amazing and how we can amplify it using the workshops and the work that you're doing and working with me. But if you're not there, to reach out to people who are mentors and coaches such as yourself in the programs and the books and all these things so you can get clear because you don't have to suffer with that.

Yeah. And let's put the one thing to work right now. This is real application. We've talked a lot about— we talked about a lot of things in this episode from this idea of goal setting to the now to the idea of— we talked about We've talked about marriage and those types of conversations and applying the one thing to a marriage. We've talked about— you just brought up so many different things. And the one thing for each of you who's listening may be different. So here it is. You know if this episode was a success for you based on your ability to do the following. Pause the episode and ask yourself the question, out of everything that we covered. If you could only put one thing into action, what's the one thing you can do such that by doing it, everything else would be easier or unnecessary? And you have to search for an answer until you get one. Hitting the wall of I don't know and giving up is not acceptable. You hold yourself to a standard that you search for an answer. Ask, what's the one thing on this episode I can do such that by doing it Everything else would be easier or unnecessary. You come up with an answer, you just got an ROI on your time. That's the measure of success.

So in addition to reading the book, in addition to listening to your podcast, in addition to those who are interested to be part of the coaching program that your company offers, how do they— because in theory, that sounds really simple and easy to sit there, pull off the side of the road, pause the MP3, pause this episode and do it. Is there a way that whether there's a worksheet or specific audio or episode that really can niche that down to make it really nitty-gritty?

Yeah, absolutely. If you go to theonething.com, and that's with the number 1 in the URL, and you click on free stuff, you'll see guides there to help you get started. But, you know, downloads are great and We don't even always need the PDF. Can you literally, before you press play on the next episode, before you walk into the office, before you clean that next dish, if you're doing dishes right now, really pause, ask the question, search for an answer, pass the wall of I don't know, and come up with an answer? If you can prove that you can ask a big question and find a big answer, it sets you back up to knock down the next domino. Domino, which is to ask the question again, "Well, what's the one thing I could do that would make that possible?" And then you ask it again and again and again until you arrive at a 2-inch domino that if I can just the first Monday of every month take 15 minutes to write down 3 dates and text 3 babysitters, I know I'm on path for having an extraordinary marriage. That's what it means to have a relationship with your goals.

The key component of relationships is so salient because as we talked about before, the four domains of my podcast, or at least the major domains of my podcast, is psychology, natural wellness, spirituality, and entrepreneurship. And I've had a few people ask me, like, those seem so— some of them kind of work together, but entrepreneurship, that's kind of the curveball. And I've adopted the definition of entrepreneurship as someone who seeks to find their purpose and their mission, identifies their core values, and then chooses to be held accountable to only that.

I love that. I love that.

That's awesome. And that's from my own journey, like I said, going from this, this world of chaos and taking all types of clients in and, uh, turning— agreeing to every speaking engagement and every workshop that someone asked me, as opposed to saying Does this align with my core values? And it wasn't until a few years ago I started doing that business program that I mentioned to you before, where I didn't even have the belief that I'm a therapist, I'm not an entrepreneur. I come from an entrepreneurial family. My family has now a third-generation furniture business, but I, you know, how am I going to help people in the world if I'm just selling furniture? And I'm a therapist, I'm a healer, I'm not a business guy, I'm not an entrepreneur, until I walked out of a weekend with Rick and got that definition from him. And that allowed me to be in complete agreement and alignment with everything you shared with us and the listeners this episode.

There you go. I thought a little bit more about what you asked. If you want to figure out how to get started with The ONE Thing, because there's a lot there, if you go to the training page on theonething.com, there's an actual free course called Get Started with The ONE Thing. I forgot about it because I was so present in what you were saying. So go there.

Please, please go there. And people block out a time on your schedule. Don't say, "Okay, that sounds really cool. I'm going to get to that." And then with all the chaos that's going on in our universe, that's only going to get potentially more hectic if we don't do this. So find a time, block it out. How long do you think it would take them on average so they can kind of have a ballpark?

To go through that course? Yeah. Less than 15 minutes. Okay, so everybody's got 15 minutes.

It reminds me of that story of the guy who goes to this great guru and the guy's like, "I wanna have more contemplation in my life, more peace in my life, less anxiety." And the guru goes to him, "Okay, well, you need to start meditating every day." And he's like, "I don't have hours to do that." He's like, "No, no, no, 5 minutes." And the guy's like, "5 minutes? Like, I thought you were gonna say hours, but 5 minutes, even 5 minutes is a lot." And the guru goes back to him, but you don't, you know, he's like, I don't have the time to do even 5 minutes. And the guru goes back to him, you don't have the time to not do the 5 minutes.

I will share, and this is another example of identifying the lead domino. I went on a 66-day challenge to making meditation a habit. And we call it a 66-day challenge because it takes on average 66 days to form a habit. And we have a challenge that people go on to form habits that stick, which you'll see there on that training page as well, video on how to do that. I wanted to make meditation a habit, and even 5 minutes seemed like, "Ugh, that's insignificant. That's not going to change everything." Here's what shocked me. I couldn't do even 5 minutes. My mind started racing that even 5 minutes was too much. And so I said, "Okay, well, what's the one thing I can do that would make ultimately doing 5 minutes easier or necessary?" I start with 1 minute. Okay, I was able to pretty consistently do 1 minute, but then I found that there were days I still slipped. I asked the question, what's the one thing I can do that would make doing one minute a day easier or unnecessary? And my answer will shock people. Every day I will consciously take one breath. And I remember it was so powerful when I got in the elevator one day, I was leaving work and I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't even do my one minute today. I went, oh, that's not the lead domino anymore, it's one breath. And I literally I literally stood there, I closed my eyes, and I went, "Ah." That single breath completely reset my energy. And most importantly, instead of feeling like a failure, I felt like I got a win. Here's what we know: people will only let themselves feel like a failure for so long long before they give up and say, that doesn't work for me. And it's not that it doesn't work for you, you just weren't willing to truly identify the one thing you could do that if you knock that down over time, everything else would be easier or unnecessary. Nobody keeps a calm mind by doing one meditative breath a day, yet forming the habit of doing one breath sets you up to do a minute, sets you up to do 5, sets you up to do 10. It's one thing at a time over time.

And the belief that we carry that it has to be changed right away really leads us to the difficulties of getting that which we want. And as you're talking about meditation, and one of the other episodes I have Dr. Andrew Newberg, who is a neurologist out of Penn Medical School— Jefferson Medical School, used to be at Penn Medical School— and he is not only one of the leading neurologists imaging specialist in the world, but he's also the creator of a field called neurotheology— what happens to your brain and body during meditative and spiritual experiences. And one of the studies that he did was that he took someone who was going through a significant amount of medical stress, cognitive decline, and put him on a meditation program called a kirtan kriya, which is a chanting and vision and mantra-based and movement-based meditation practice, scan the brain before they taught them that, taught it to them, scan the brain, and then 12 weeks later, I think, re-scan the brain after the person did the practice. And not only did the cognitive degeneration reverse itself, but the anxiety levels went radically down and all these other positive benefits. And it was really like a handful of minutes. And what they found is that But they also did this study of people who are brand new to meditation who have no background whatsoever with all these stressors, mapped them against people who've been meditating for years, and they found that it only takes, I think it was 12 to 15 weeks if I'm not mistaken, to actually match the same brainwave and brain patterns as someone who's been doing it for 20, 30 years. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. It's that one domino.

Yep.

So thank you for sharing all this incredible, incredible wisdom that you have distilled and stepped into in your life and are sharing back with our entrepreneurial community. And for everybody out there, please check out his podcast. It is Write the One Thing podcast available on all platforms. Please subscribe to that. I remember when I stumbled upon it, I was in the gym and I started listening to 3, 4 episodes while I was working out. And literally the second I got off the treadmill is when I messaged you on Instagram. And from there, it's been a really nice journey of getting into some of this information and then sharing it with my clients. Please subscribe to this podcast, the You Winning Life Podcast. You can follow me on Instagram, Jason Wasser LMFT. They can find you, Jeff, on Instagram at— The One Thing Book. There you go. So thanks again. And we'll talk to you guys in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life Podcast. If you are ready to minimize minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Jason Wasser LMFT 🎗️.