Jay Papasan - The ONE Most Important Focus For Every Business

If you're the best ever at delivering this service or your product is better than anything else, if you don't have any customers, it doesn't matter. And so a lot of time people go, they're only good at marketing, but their stuff is crap. I would never want to be that person. And that might be true, but the reality is they're dismissing someone that probably has a lot to teach them. There are people that are not creating any value, that are becoming incredibly wealthy. And then we see people that they might posthumously win the Nobel Prize, but they weren't known in their lifetime because they couldn't do it. And so I look up and as a business person, I hope you got into this business not just to make money, but to make an impact.

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Float Shark with your boy, my boy, Matt Wolf and Joe Fit.

Hey, hey, hey. We are back for another episode. Today we're actually chatting with one of the co authors of the One Thing book. His name is Jay Papasan and he works right alongside with Gary Keller, who's the founder of Keller Williams Realty. So Jay actually serves as vice president of the learning of that company. He brings in all different perspectives from not only writing books, but lead generation to time blocking, goal design, all that stuff. Jay is amazing. He comes from a writing background, has traveled the world to do so, has worked with Bill Phillips in the health space to write some books, Body for Life. He has also worked with Mia Hamm to write her book Go for the Goal. But really, this is just going to be a fascinating conversation. Jay is an amazing guy and you're going to get a ton from this, so let's not waste any time. We're going to take a bunch of notes for you. We always do. They are the action guides for each episode, so you can get those by going to flowchart group.com we're making a little change. So when you join our Facebook group, you'll. You'll get the opportunity to get the notes for free. So just be quick, make sure it's two weeks from the time this episode goes live. If you go to Flowchart Group.com, you'll get the notes so you don't have to take them. They're all the action notes. And then lastly, we have Ahrefs. So Ahrefs is our go to SEO tool. Been using them for years, way before the sponsorship. And yeah, there's just so many ways to use Ahrefs. I love to dig in there and really look at the site audit. Actually was chatting with a friend the other day, a photographer, and I asked her, hey, how's business going? She's like, it's actually. I'm crushing it right now because I started focusing on my SEO. She's been around for 10 years and just didn't focus on SEO, wasn't showing up for anything. She started putting a little bit of time into her on page SEO and then all of a sudden started climbing the ranks. And I was on the first page for a lot of terms and I was like, you should check out Ahrefs. Do a site audit, look for the opportunities. And there's all these different strategies that Ahrefs actually teaches you on their blog and on YouTube. And she's starting to do that and she's already seen a ton of opportunities. And I was like, start plugging your competition in there. And she's like, oh my God, I could beat my competition. I'm like, well, yeah, because you could be smarter than your competition and just do tiny little tweaks to your existing website and you can actually get monumental improvements and targeted free traffic. So she's doing it and you can do that with Ahrefs because that's what she's using. That's what I suggested her to do and it's working. Go try it out for yourself. If you go to a hrefs.com, that's a h r e f s dot com, that's Ahrefs. They have a $7, seven day trial. You can actually within that seven days just try out that site audit. You can see what I'm talking about. Find some opportunities. You'll love it. Let's into this episode and start chatting with Jay Papasant. Hey, Jay, we're live. How you doing?

I'm doing great, Joe. Thanks for having me.

Yes, thanks for. I mean, we've had you on and just had Jeff woods on as well. Who I mean, you guys are just. I don't know how closely you guys work on the day to day, but brilliant guy and just opened our minds to so many that, you know, from the one thing, but just his perspective around, you know, goal setting and time blocking. And I know you have a whole, you know, I don't know how different your approach is, but it's going to be great to hear your approach and how that relates to the other amazing stuff you're up to. Kw Keller Williams.

Well, Jeff and I, we've gotten a chance to work together for a little, I guess a little over five years now. I hired him to help launch that business that he's currently running for Gary and I. And he literally works on the other side of that wall, except that he's moving to Colorado today.

So he'd mentioned that we discovered we.

Can all have a virtual business now. Right?

Yeah. Go figure.

I think a lot of companies are figuring that out right now.

Yes. Yeah. Well, I guess give us this because you have an interesting background and don't even know where to perfectly start here, but walk us through kind of briefly and then we'll kind of lead into these topics we were talking about that I think is going to be really good takeaways, different from to folks listening who've heard Jeff on here. It'll be slightly different and modified for, you know, for you, of course. So.

So the I bump into someone at a cocktail thing, like what? What do you do?

Question.

Is this like a little history?

Yeah.

All right.

I kind of got my professional start in book publishing. I went and was lucky I had some connections and I got a job at HarperCollins Publishers after a small publisher and got to work there for about six years and got to work on some big books. Mia Hamm, I got to work with her, got to work with Civil shepherd and got to work with this guy named Bill Phillips. He did a book called Body for the Light, Body for Life, which at the time I thought, oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm going to have to work on this kind of like a weightlifter book. But he was brilliant and a brilliant marketer too, by the way. So I learned a lot of great lessons and then met my wife, got married. We wanted to get out of the big city because that's a publishing. If you don't know this, it's a high prestige job that doesn't pay you very much. So you got to meet cool people, but they don't pay you a lot.

Right.

It's a bunch of English majors that are nerding out on words until you get to the top level. So we wanted to raise a family somewhere else. We moved to Austin, Texas. And after a brief stint as a freelance writer where I played a lot of Diablo on my computer, I got kicked out and got a job. And I was just really nice and fortunate to take a job in a very small at that time, almost a sleepy real estate company called Keller Williams. Back then in 2000 is when I started as a newsletter writer right after having worked on million copy bestsellers. But it's Austin. There was no publishing. I was going to Be a newsletter writer 2. Not even a newsletter writer.

1.

Right.

But it was only 27 employees in Keller Williams then, and there were 6,700 agents. And today, to give you perspective, we're number one by any measure in terms of like home sales and agent count. We have 175,000 thereabouts in 50 countries.

Wow. Okay.

So it's been kind of a rocket ride. And within about a year and a half, I found out that Gary wanted to write books. I got to let him know that that was my background. And so we partnered up and in 90 days, we wrote our first book, A Career Guide for Real Estate Agents that went on to be a million copy bestseller. And from that, there's been a lot of other things we can go down. Launched a publishing company, launched a training company, and am an executive at Keller Williams in charge of learning. So that's kind of the. Let's have a beer and I'll kind of tell you what.

Do you want to go deep down?

Yeah. Well, Matt was, because we mentioned one of your real estate books, the Millionaire Real Estate Agent, and we mentioned it to a guy in our podcast, Sam. I always butchers last name.

Sam Karamian.

There you go. Runs Big Block Realty in San Diego. And he basically is like, that's the bible for real estate. Everyone needs to read that thing. And even if you're not in real estate, it's for networking, it's for just collaborating with folks.

Well, the brilliance. And I'll say that I didn't get to. I was the writer on that project, right. Because I was less than two years in real estate, but I was working with Dave Jenks and Gary, who collectively had like 50 years of experience. Right. And so I look up, I get taken along for this ride. And essentially that book was, instead of being a salesperson, how do you become a business person?

Right.

And I'm sure it's a lot of the conversations that you and Matt have on your podcast, Growing a Business. What does that take? How do we responsibly have growth that leads to net profit? These are all discussions that people just weren't naturally having. So I was a career guy, so it was a great education for me. And I was like, whoa, my eyes are open to entrepreneurship, but what's great is in real estate, they just refer.

To it as the red Book.

And you talk about branding. It's like, if we just get to own Red Book, I'll take it.

It's a win. Then, of course, it led into. So the collaboration of you and Gary into the one thing I know came from, I think that was Gary, right? He, you guys had all these ideas and essentially what. He passed some of those ideas to you, and then that's when you said, hey, that's the book. That's the thing we got to write about.

It's a whole other podcast interview about how to poorly manage your career growth. But this is like my third stint running learning, right? So I think in my first or second stint, I was running the learning department. We'd written a course. I ran it by Gary, right? Because he always comes in and he's the trainer in chief. That's his hat.

He loves.

He loves to be a coach, he loves to be a teacher. And I said, what do you think of this course? And it was about, and this is probably interesting for a lot of your listeners, like, how do I grow my service business so that I've earned the right to make my first hire? And if you've ever had to hire an employee, not a contractor, like, I'm paying someone's salary, right? That's a lot of nights staring at the ceiling, right? Like, cause what if I screw up? What if I mess up? Now this person's unemployed. They depend on me. So it was that journey. And of course, this is what y' all do. Gary's like, well, the one thing is lead generation. But he wrote this little essay to go at the front called the Power of One. And you'll love this. It was all about, you've got to first be in the business of lead generation. How am I going to get new clients for my product or business? And if you don't do that, well, nothing else matters. And in order to do that, you've got a time block, which is a big part of the one thing. And I read that it's like 14 pages, right? Handwritten and notebook. And I was like, gary, this is a book, because I thought the same thing. So that started a five year journey where instead of it being Gary's idea, we'd already written a handful of national bestsellers. At that point, we wanted to make sure that it wasn't an idea book, it was a research models based book. So we spent almost five years researching and writing that book, which was a really, I mean, again, a great growth journey for me.

Right. Well, I'm just thinking of the opportunities and where you've placed yourself in this whole lineage of how you've written these books, collaborated with people like Gary and got all this knowledge. I mean, I'm just thinking all the Way back from the millionaire real estate investor book. Two years in, now you're dumped with all this 50 years of knowledge in real estate. Now you have Gary over here and you're condensing that into a book that's very actionable. It's. It's not like a bible. It's not a thick book. It's very easy to.

I don't know whose office is that?

Yalls office, or is that somebody who's like, I look at your bookshelf and I like, somebody's my kind of people. If I were to pan around.

I'm a learning junkie. Right. And one of Gary's core philosophies is about being a learning based individual. Right. And that really means that you're just trying to be the best version of yourself. And the best teachers are often available 24 hours a day on my Kindle or in the library or in a bookstore. Now on podcast, right. You can get access to amazing ideas. I got lucky enough to work for a self made billionaire, which is incredible. But we all have access to those conversations. And I'm a junkie. I'll just tell you, I'm a junkie at it. That's one of the reasons I never thought I'd work anywhere for 20 years.

And here I am.

Yeah.

No, I've always said that my ideal job, if there was a career where all I got to do was sit around and learn all day, read books, listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos on things that interested me, that's like my ideal career. I could do nothing but learn and be happy with my life.

We kind of engineered that with the podcast.

It sounds like it's a value y' all share and it's something that I share with Gary and Gary and I share with Jeff that we just are, I don't want to say like self improvement junkies because we're also not fad surfing, we're not always jumping on the latest, greatest, whatever, but we're model builders. We're looking for is there a timeless truth? Because a lot of times people say I've reinvented the wheel. They've just given a new spin to something that was classic and old.

Sure.

Right. Yeah.

It just go back in time and you'll find some hints.

Yeah, yeah. It doesn't mean there's nothing new created. It is truly rare though. And most innovations are incremental and not like super disruptive. So we can always be doing that to ourselves. And that's kind of the core of that whole journey. So Researching and writing books. Man. My poor kids, we were driving through. My wife's a real estate agent and she's got a huge business, like 300 homes a year. And we're driving through Yellowstone with a six year old and a seven year old and we're playing. Would you rather. Have y' all ever been to Yellowstone?

I have.

I have not.

It's hours and hours of driving. Like nothing is closer than like three hours away. It's such a huge part. So you have to play games in the car. We were playing. Would you rather. And my son Gus said, would you rather be trapped in an elevator with dad talking about his books or mom talking to her clients? And we just lost it. I was like, that sums us both up.

That's amazing. I mean that's. Yeah, I think that's probably similar conversations that they would find in cars that I would drive with my wife as well. I'm kind of curious, you being just reading and learning all the time. Do you have any strategies, best practices on how to consume? And this might be even getting into some of the one thing type stuff in goal setting. But any tips for people like us who are consuming all the time and you want to apply that knowledge and really apply it to something in your life that's relevant.

We actually, we wrote a course on this earlier this year, Gary and I, and it is partially from observation. So this is kind of a. I won't say this is like scientifically proven, right? Like there's some of the stuff that I can tell you from the one thing that we've literally gone to the researchers and validated and asked the hard questions. This is very much from modeling what he does. It's been my life. But recently I was interviewing Gary on some books he read in the late 70s and early 80s. And so I went back and read them and I can see the DNA of his leadership today. Like you find the paragraph and go, wow, he still talks like this. He still does this. So here's like the blueprint if you want to be the next Gary Keller in terms of growth.

You read books not for knowledge, you read books for doing. And so there are a lot of books that are great about creating ideas and changing your paradigm, which is also important. I think of Malcolm Gladwell has helped shape my view of the world. He hasn't shaped many of my actions.

So it's a perspective change, more or less.

It says perspective. And we endeavor and we value books that can change our perspective, but also give us a very pragmatic, practical approach to doing so. When you're reading a book, you always have to be asking, how does this line up with how I currently believe about X? So marketing, digital marketing, y' all probably read tons of books. So within a few pages you're like, all right, I've read 50 of these already. It seems like this lady or this guy is going in this direction. I can almost predict the end of the book. And what you're actually doing is looking for that one new nugget to add what most people like. You have this knowledge in your head. Most people haven't documented it. So if you look through the one thing, I think we have like 50 images in there. We call those models and they can be a checklist, they can be a diagram, like a flowchart. Like, this is the steps and this we try to take a whole book or an idea. How do you do a great job interview? How do you do great digital marketing campaign? Can we break it into discrete steps? Record it in a notebook? I'm sitting and my feet are on my stand up desk. I'm sitting for this. I've got a chest that's probably got 40 notebooks in it.

Wow.

Like handwritten, handwritten notes. If I could go back in time and invent Evernote when I started this journey, so I could just have it all digital, it would be great. Someday when I'm a billionaire, I'll just hire someone to transcribe everything for me.

Who knows?

But I look up and you're like, oh, so what is my belief system around this? And then you're building a model for it. And every time you read a book, you're asking, does this challenge my beliefs? Does this reinforce my beliefs? Does this change my beliefs? Do you hear that? Either challenges, Whoa, this seems really smart. And it's not what I currently do.

Wow, this is really smart. It is what I currently do. Now I've got better evidence, better facts to support it, or hey, this is really close. But it's an enhancement of some kind, right?

Yeah.

And you're looking for those three things. If it's just pure duplication and it's not as smart as the other stuff, you just move on.

Yeah, you're already doing it.

Most business books, you get 80% of the big ideas in the first 30 pages. They front load it. And then you go deep. Hopefully. Hopefully you go deep and it's not just a repetition of the same idea. So what Gary has systematically done with his life is he identified. And we have on the one thing on page 114. It's the only page number I have memorized. Like, if you're using the one thing approach of identifying your number one priority and then trying to live that priority regularly, make a habit of it. Like, what is my one thing for my spirituality, for my physical health, for my personal life, for my relationships, for my job, for my business and for my money? And those are just the buckets that we agreed on. And y' all are business owners, right? You are partners. So y' all have what's the one thing for the business we run, right? But what is the one thing for my job in this business? And y' all probably have overlapping but different job descriptions. So that's that distinction that a lot of people don't make between their job in the business and the business. So every time you read, do you have any buckets that you have a belief system around that you're going to try to follow, Right? You read Warren Buffett, like, do you need another money mentor? Maybe, maybe not, right? At some point, you look up and you've got your profits and you'll walk with them for a long time until you can find someone who's actually demonstrably better. And then you'll go into them. Like, for me, Trout and Reese, like, I'm going to struggle to find someone who's going to teach me more about the fundamentals of marketing and positioning than those two guys. Like, I recommend positioning in the 21 immutable laws more than any two marketing books ever, because everything feels like it lays on top of those.

Yeah, right.

And someday maybe I'll have a new name to spout out. But that is when we talk about a process for self improvement. You have to read, you have to reflect on what you read. And that reflection is where you're comparing your experience and your beliefs to what this person is telling you. And then you have to kind of codify it in your notebook, in your journal, and we try to distill it into a model based on this. What are the five things I should be doing differently? Or whatever. And then you have to be able to reference that the next time you read a book on that topic so that you can compare. And over time, I've been doing this for years and years. You just start to say, like, so talk to me about money. Jay well, we created a model in the Millionaire Real Estate Investor, and it's called the Path of Money. And nothing has explained it more simply than that. So I'll go back to that until something changes that perspective and I read probably five books on finances and money every year. Just as, hey, if you don't know about the laws of money, you won't hold on to it even if you make it. And I've seen that in real life. So that's one of the areas that I'm, as a business person, whether I'm an English French major, whether I enjoy it or not, I have to lean into it. So that's kind of a synopsis, right? We read with purpose. You're going to reflect, you're going to document, and then over time, you're going to trade or top grade those ideas. Does that make sense?

Totally.

Yeah. I love that.

I think one sort of additional thing that I know I do with all the content that I consume is for me, a big sort of important factor is to turn around and in some way reteach it, right? Either put it on a blog, put it on a podcast, get on a call with Joe and be like, hey, guess what? I just learned. I need to tell you something. And like, that sort of reteaching it is what makes it locked in for me.

I agree with that 100%. In my mind, I call that, like, the joke factor. If you hear a really great joke and you want to remember it, what do you have to do? You have to go tell it to, like, five people.

That's right. Start practicing. Yeah.

But nothing. And I love that because that's my passion, is the training room.

Right.

That's the group I'm privileged to lead at this time. For the third time in Keller Williams, I'm passionate about either being in front of it or in it. But if you become the teacher, it forces you to organize the information at a higher level than you might for yourself, which is one of the best ways to learn. They always say that. It sounds cliche, but it is so true. So I salute you on that, Matt. That is absolutely true.

And then combined with what you have, you've now distilled all this information into a simple model that's on one page, just very easy to, you know, that could be sprinkled in any content anywhere, given to someone as like a. Hey, need a little help with this thing? I created a model for you. Here you go. And it's just. It's easy to teach. You could break it down. Simple to remember for everyone. I mean, that's. Yeah. Combining both of those, it's kind of the perfect combination.

And it gets more and more nuanced in the beginning. It's really fundamental stuff. Like, do I understand in the terms of a diet, macros or calories or whatever that is. It can be really simple stuff. And people, they get intimidated when they talk to probably both of you about digital marketing because y' all been accumulating for so long, you have this amazing curse of knowledge. You don't even realize how sophisticated your thoughts appear.

Right?

Very true.

But that's what should be encouraging to people, is that just means that kind of like the tortoise and the hare, you didn't get there overnight. You just keep going back to the well and just making little steps and getting improving. And people would be amazed at how much they can amass over time.

That's true.

I just would encourage people. Everything doesn't matter equally. That's kind of why we created those buckets. I want to have a rich spiritual life. Right. I want to have good physical health. Because if I'm going to do really important stuff, I got to have energy to do it, right?

Yeah. It's not going to be willpower. Right. You can't keep pushing, pushing, pushing.

So you just look each of those buckets or whatever. They're meaningful. And maybe cat videos are really important to you. Fine. Then read methodically about that and learn methodically about whatever that placeholder is, film, whatever that can be your passion. But you just need to identify it because I think this year something like 650,000 business books will be written.

Wow. Really?

Just this year alone, minimum of 350. I haven't checked on the numbers in about four years, but it goes up exponentially because of self publishing. Right. There are fewer and fewer borders between someone having an idea and sharing that idea. And now there's factories to help people do it. So I look up and I'm a business author. I read about 45 books a year. I shoot for 50. I always fail. But the goal is one a week thereabouts, with a couple of weeks off. And that keeps me honest. And so I look up and I'm like.

I could spend my whole lifetime reading a hundred books a year and I couldn't even read all of the business books this year. So I have to choose. I want to be an expert about a handful of things that matter to me. And I can also be entertained. About half the books I read are novels because I just. That is my release. I just want to sure go imagine that I'm James Bond in my mind or whatever that adventure novel is, or the mystery. I get to be Sherlock Holmes. Like, yeah, you need that too. But like about 25 are really methodical. I want to be better person. Even if it's for a year. It would make a huge difference in your life. Just one. A quarter. It would make a huge difference.

I think if you tell.

I'm a little evangelistic now, like this is a passion thing a little bit.

If your kids listen to this interview, they would know they should probably be asking about James Bond style books that you read rather than all the business stuff that you do. Just note to them.

I went through a James Rollins phase and he writes these adventure books or whatever.

They sound good when you read them, but the first time I tried to listen to one on audiobook with my family, I started blushing. I was like, oh, this is really not good writing.

That's a good point.

You're probably picking it apart. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, you're passionate about it. And I don't know how deeper we want to go in this because now I'm curious because obviously you have your circles and whatever those circles are defined. And I know Jeff woods did go into the circle approach a little bit on his episode with us, but I'm assuming, yeah, you're kind of looking at those circles and seeing where you maybe need to shore up something, maybe challenge some beliefs that you currently hold. And you're reflecting a lot. It sounds like it's probably the bulk of your time.

Here's a question.

As you're documenting it, have y' all read Principles? Y' all read that huge seller? Yeah.

Yeah.

Like you look at, oh, there's a self made billionaire and he's doing the exact same thing that Gary does. He has organized the big ideas and he has real strong feelings about it and he was willing to put them on the line like he put it in a book. And so I have an Evernote and I started my own principles and I have my notebooks. I've started making it digital now. But like, hey, as a business person, I have to do contracts. And every time I'm signing a contract or negotiating a contract, why would I ever want to reinvent the wheel around something that important? So like, I've started collecting, like, what are the terms that matter to me? What are the best practices? Like, what about partnerships? What matters in a partnership? And so you just start to realize these are the. A lot of times, if you haven't figured this out already, they're pain points. I screwed up bad. It was really expensive or painful on some level. And therefore I have this strong motivation to get better. But I don't want to repeat the Same mistakes. So you just find some way, a notebook, whatever, and just kind of like, okay, hey, like yesterday I was doing a podcast with one of our employees and it was on values and she was really struggling with the opening and struggling with the closing. And I've done a lot of training and done a lot of studying on how to be a better presenter. And I just said, I think you have bookend anxiety.

I just made it up.

And she's like, what do you mean by that? And I was like, I just wanted your attention. I just said, it's your opening and your closing. Every time we do a podcast, you struggle. And I just said, here's a framework for you. Because I had a framework. Like, think about just doing these two things every time you start and these two things every time you open and make that your own. You can come up with your own twist. But if you're really struggling, just, I got to check these two boxes and you're going to be fine. And what most people don't have is a simple checklist for doing the most important things in their life or they deal with periodic regular anxiety because they just haven't documented it.

And just give me an idea. I'm like, man, there really should just be a list and referencing your thinking time, which you time block. It sounds like after certain things and not to give it away, but listeners, yes, thinking time. You have thinking time right after this episode, which I think is brilliant. We'll get into time blocking. But that's probably a perfect time to reflect and be like, okay, so what are the problems or pain points or things I might have screwed up on? Just some friction that comes up, create an ongoing list, and then those things are ways you can further reflect on and figure out solutions.

Most of us are so busy, especially for the self employed entrepreneur Keith Cunningham gets credit for the idea of thinking time. If you've read him or heard him, he's brilliant. But most entrepreneurs don't time block enough of it. Just an hour a week is a miracle worker. And it's like the E Myth. If you ever read that book you talked about, are you working on your business or in it?

That's right. Yeah.

And just stepping back, you know, getting, hey, Matt, what can I do better? You know, like just reflecting and asking for reflection. It's a miracle worker.

Yeah, true.

At what point do you decide, like, maybe this is a belief that I should start challenging? Because I think it's really easy to go pick up books that just kind of keep us in our own echo chamber and sort of reaffirm what we already believe. So I'm just curious, is there ever a point where you're like, okay, I've been kind of stuck on this mindset for so long. Let's try to find some alter to this way of thinking.

So I love the question, and you're making me laugh because we're on the edge of one of the biggest political elections of my lifetime and we talk about. I think one of the biggest culprits right now is that we all go to the same echo chamber that reinforces our ideas. And so the language that I've adopted around that, I'm from the south, so this is a joke that's usually told about me because my family's from Mississippi. But, like, if.

You start having a family within your family, you'll have inbred family.

Right.

That's the politest way I can say it. Right.

The same thing is true of ideas. If all your ideas are coming from the same four rooms that you live in, eventually dysfunction and they become inbred ideas. They're not powerful. It's not so much of creativity, evolution. Everything comes from the mingling of ideas. And so, absolutely, it's hard. So having said that, that we absolutely must do what you're saying. We must challenge our ideas regularly. You should not give up the models that you have a track record of achievement on lightly. So it's kind of like slow to hire, quick to fire in reverse. I am going to be slow and cautious in adopting a mental model for my life. Mental model is the word that Charlie Munger uses around this idea. Shane Parrish has written two volumes on mental models. Same thing. Right. We're talking about. I have a mental model for how this thing works. You should be slow to adopt it. Scientific method. Did that really work or am I fooling myself?

But then did I do that?

Right.

Slowed it up. And I actually think it might be actually slow to change. Like, if something challenges me, I'm going to lean into it, but I'm going to look for evidence before I give up that thing. So it might be slow.

Slow.

I'm evolving my thinking on this as you watch me, then I'll have to go reflect and write it down.

It makes perfect sense. Yeah. Be open to different perspectives and potentially change your belief or whatever your goal is that you're setting out for.

This political season. As an example, I made a commitment that I read the paper every morning. I skim through the headlines now on my phone. And I just went ahead and subscribed to the Wall Street Journal and the Times, and I just said, you know what? I'm going to read both. I'm going to skim through the headlines just so that I'm seeing both sides. And I can still reject some things, but now I have more perspective. Like, how do smart, reasonable people see things so fundamentally differently?

And it's true of money. It's true of so many things. There's a book, I think it's called How I Lost a Million Dollars.

And it's fabulous. I think Noah Kagan recommended it, and we'd have to go Google search, but the fundamental is like, the subtitle of the title is How I Lost a Million Dollars. And one of the great things he said is he walks through this history of all these people. You should only invest in mutual funds. You should be a stock picker. And there's examples of every single strategy hitting the highest levels of achievement.

Wow. Yeah. That's the thing. It leaves people going like, okay, so what's the next move?

What do I do? And then there's examples of all of them, of failure. And so it's like, it can be a little tough, but a lot of times it's not that this is the only truth, but it's the truth that you will follow. And that works for you. That's the point I'm trying to make. I'm an index fund investor. I could become a stock picker, I guess, but I don't really want to do it. I don't enjoy it. So I might as well just do index funds for the rest of my life and not screw it up by being mediocre at something that important. I can be really good at something really simple that I also know appeals to me intellectually, and I feel like it's fairly proven. And I know I'll keep doing it because it's easy to make automatic. Whereas the other behaviors may sound great and they work for Matt, but they wouldn't work for me. So that is part of that journey.

Right.

Is on. The adoption is like, okay, that sounds completely true. There's a lot of proof. But would I ever actually do that?

Yeah. No. It's easy to. Yeah. If you don't have these filters and you're not thinking a little bit further, maybe looking at your track record in your current frameworks. Yeah. It's easy to just jump into thinkorswim, like an app where you can start picking stuff or go to Wealthfront or whatever. Betterment. I'm not endorsing any but okay, maybe that's your one thing for funding, investing, and then, boom, let it do its work for you. Let science go.

Well, I feel like we went way down the wormhole on this 100%.

We did. We knew it.

We have a tendency to do that on this show.

These are my kind of people.

Well, let's shift topics a little bit and talk about the one thing a little bit. You mentioned that Gary sort of honed in on lead generation as the one thing for Keller Williams. Can you sort of walk us through.

Like any business for any business? Any business.

Okay, so can you sort of speak into that a little bit? Why would you say that's the one thing that every business should be focused on?

So if you're the best ever at delivering the service, or your product is better than anything else, if you don't have any customers, it doesn't matter. And so a lot of times, especially in service businesses, we look up and I see this actually in product and digital marketers too. People go, oh, that's so. And so they're making a mint and their stuff is crap.

Right?

Right.

They're only good at marketing, but their stuff is crap. I would never want to be that person. And that might be true, but the reality is they're dismissing someone that probably has a lot to teach them. So there are people that are not creating any value, that are becoming incredibly wealthy, which is not what I want to teach anyone to do, because they've learned how to lead generate. They know how to market or prospect to get customers and close them for their business. And then we see people that they might posthumously win the Nobel Prize, but they weren't known in their lifetime because they couldn't do it. And so I look up and as a business person, I hope you got into this business not just to make money, but to make an impact.

So whether it's money or impact, you gotta have customers. And so instead of spending all of this energy making sure that you're the absolute best product, that is a great thing to do. You've also got to spend a lot of energy. It's either you or someone you hire to make sure that you are great at marketing or prospecting. I think of those are two things. Right. I'm lead generating for this product. And it's like Gary would say, you're always in two businesses. Every business is lead generation. Business is number one. And then whatever it is you do with those leads, and the best to most timeless businesses are the ones that do both well, they know how to Capture customers and they keep delivering value and that becomes this virtuous loop where, Matt, did you hear about this amazing product? It was so great. It's the best hundred dollars I've ever spent. Now they got word of mouth and it just keeps going. But there are people, and we know them, that are really good at lead generating. Their product sucks. People say, you should never buy that. It'll rip it off. But the people are still buying it today because they're so good at marketing. So just realize that we've got to do both. And when you realize that, that's probably why people are listening to you. It is one of the most valuable skills in business. A lot of people are amazing technicians or artisans, and they've not been invested in learning this skill. So whether you're doing it for your business or someone else's, it is a highly valued skill.

Yeah. Is there a point where we're talking about those folks that are really good at lead gen? It's like they focused everything on that one thing in business. What's the point where. Because maybe they just didn't think of, okay, I'm going to create a really good product and maybe even follow up with those folks. Is there kind of like a turning point where you would suggest, like, hey, maybe we should lean in over there on that part?

Okay, so I address the reality. We all pictured some person when I kind of gave that example, right? The person who's great at lead generation that doesn't have any. Not creating any real value in the world. So we all know that person. Hopefully everyone who's listening to this. It starts with an idea, right? The reason you became an entrepreneur was I've got this idea to make the world better. I am solving a problem. And the people who make the most money are ultimately the people who solve the biggest problem. That's just it. And I've got Reed Hastings, and I always misquote it. That's why I've got it taped on my wall, which I should have it where I could read it.

Oh, yeah, I see it. I think it's sideways, but.

You always.

Want to be in the business of selling aspirin, not vitamins. I look at Matt's bookshelf and I know that he probably takes supplements, whether they're mental supplements or real supplements, because he's committed to being better. That is a very small minority of people that will buy something. Like, I look at, I take my thousand milligrams or whatever of vitamin C. The only thing I can demonstrate, tell you that's doing for me is making my pee really yellow.

We'll do that.

But I believe in the science. But if I have a headache, I take a Tylenol or an Aspirin, my headache goes away. Most of the world is driven by problem solving, the aspirin business. So whenever I'm coaching my team, I'm just like, I love what you're selling. I love what you're selling. What problem are you solving? If you're not solving a problem, you're going to be on this hamster wheel forever. So I actually think that's where you start. That's not what you go back to. It has to start with this hypothesis that you have a problem worth solving and now you have to go lead generate for it. And I'm sure you guys teach, right? And your model. I have a model for digital marketing in my mind. Right. You target your audience, you come up with your message. You're then going to ab test what messages work before you refine and augment. Like now I'm going to throw the money. I know it works. I'm going to throw the money at it. Then I've got to capture and convert. There's this process, whatever that is, we have to ab test our own products. That's why in tech they have a minimum viable product.

Eventually if you have those customers, you've solved some minimum viable problem. Not product your customers. And those conversations will help you evolve it and it'll become a journey. I don't think anybody is going to be well served to go out. I mean, people get venture capital to do it and they're going to gold plate their hypothesis through years of investment and then try to sell it.

That's right.

Well, what just happened with Quibi or whatever it was like that was a $1.8 billion short video idea. They just sank like a rock. And those are brilliant people.

Doing it right happens a lot. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. So it's working backwards really. And it's kind of like goal setting, right. You're kind of looking at the problem as a whole. And not only is that going to be in your messaging that attracts people, but it's fulfilling on that. What you're attracting them for is that solution, your product, service, whatever that is.

That's the cycle.

Right.

I mean, when we wrote the Millionaire, well, when we wrote the one thing with our publisher, when we got to a thousand reviews, I went on Mechanical Turk and I got someone to move every single review into a document so that we could analyze and I wanted to compare five star reviews, which is about 85% to the one star, which is like 5% or something. And it was so great. It's like this is the end of the chain. At the end of the chain, you've delivered the service. Part of what goes all the way back to the marketing funnel is what's working, what's not working, and you got to market both. Like, I actually respond better to Joe. This product is probably not for you if. Because when I'm looking at reviews online, I'm looking for the one star reviews because if they don't like it because the batteries don't last a long time, but I've got a lifetime supply to batteries, I'm like, that's not a problem for me.

I'll buy it. Good point. Yeah.

So both of those become rich fodder for how you then turn around and market the product. What are people loving about it and what do people just not like about it? And if you gloss over the latter part, you actually end up with those really weird, mixed reviews. I'd rather have a lot of five star and a few one star and nothing in between than all bunch of three star reviews that are muddled. There's no clarity there.

Good point. Yeah, it's clarity on one side or the other. And you can just refine and solve more of those problems down there. It's kind of like NPS scores. Whenever you have a product Net promoter score. I mean, same idea. Survey your folks and then start keep learning. Always be learning.

Yeah, that's a systematic way to always be learning. I love that you use that example. It's perfect because you're really getting the top people to just trump it. It's working for them. And then below a certain threshold, you're getting what you need to know to make it better.

That's it.

Yeah, we actually have a process. When somebody joins our email list after a certain amount of days, something like, I don't know, two weeks in or something, they actually get a survey emailed to them that asks them what they think about the podcast, what they don't like, what they do like, what we can do better. And that's just a constantly. Like everybody that goes through our system ends up seeing that survey. So there's just this constant feedback that we're getting on how to constantly improve the show, what kind of guests are working well, which kind of guests aren't working well, and we're just constantly course correcting. I like the analogy of the, you know, the ship, the Ship's never going in a straight line. You're kind of going this way and then you course correct to the straight line and it veers off this way. We're just constantly course correcting to get to where we're trying to go. And I think that's a really smart way to approach it.

I would agree. I love that y' all do that. Hopefully you don't get too many negative survey results from this podcast.

We'll let you know right away for your next podcast.

You're uninvited in the future.

Well, I think one of the sort of misconceptions around like the one thing concept is the one thing is the only thing, right? So we were talking about like lead generation, right? And then Joe was kind of alluding to like, but you need to have a good product and you need this. And you need this or lead generation doesn't matter. So let's, let's talk about that a little bit about like, lead generation is the one thing for every business, but it's not necessarily the only thing. So, you know.

I'm trying to form a question out of this statement here.

But how do we get beyond the reality as entrepreneurs and self employed people that the reality is to run any business you have to wear a lot of hats? And how do I reconcile all the stuff on my to do list with the handful and maybe one real priority, because there's still things that have to get done. But how do I allocate? It's really about how much time we allocate for them. And so the word priority, if you look at the Latin root, the word is first. And so it is a little worried. It's a little weird when we say priorities. Like, would you ever pluralize first? Well, I'm juggling a lot of firsts today. I can't even spit it out. But so I think that the first domino, right, if you line up all your dominoes, do you know what's the first thing? And that's where lead generation is for almost every business. Every day. You got to come back and ask the question every month, whatever your timeframe is, do we have enough leads?

Right?

If I have enough leads, I can sell enough product. If I sell enough product, I can pay my people. If I have a surplus, I can hire even higher quality or more people. And like, it becomes this amazing cycle. But it's the first step on the journey. But there are these other things and that's where you get into your philosophies and your models. I think that this juggling, like, what comes first, product or people? That is a chicken and egg question. And I've heard really great people kind of lean each way I lean towards people. If I have a great leader, like an artisan or whatever, like someone who's really good at what they do, those people can often make a defective product work. They'll find the duct tape and bailing wire to make it work for their customers. They'll provide enough service until you get it right.

So that's my sense. But I guarantee you there's someone listening to this going, that is so wrong. Okay, figure out yours and then go live that journey as a business person. You got to focus on the front end of the funnel. And then there's all these moments of truth, right? Can I convert those leads?

Right.

It's one thing to have a pile of emails. Are they any good? Are they true prospects? Right? Can I convert them now? What was their experience with the service or product? Do I have to fix that?

Right.

How do I follow up with them and get referrals for futures? You know, there's this chain of events and it's not a whole bunch of stuff. And there's people or categories of people that address each. And you can ask most great businesses, if you go to the top, the founder, the CEO, they don't have to have 5,000amazing people. They have to have a handful of really extraordinary people that then manage everything below them. And the more that you have those key positions surrounded by great talent, the more likely those people are to hire. I don't want to work for a schlump.

Right?

And so like, a talent attracts a talent, C talent never attracts or keeps a talent.

Right?

And so that's you hearing my bias towards it. But so there's milestones. And you just, as a business person have to ask, do I know what the milestones in my business are? What are the moments of truth?

Right.

And do I have a great approach to each of them? And in time, blocking which ones belong on my calendar this week or today? And then you just got to just live that calendar. About half of your day should be completely booked with those ongoing priorities. And because you're a business, if you book more than about 50%, you're going to be working all night or you're not going to see your family or your kids. There's a certain amount of energy we create, especially with lead generation that's going to create chaos and dictate your priorities for the rest of the day. And if you don't have space built in. That's when stress and blood pressure go up.

And this is perfect segue because this is where I wanted to end things is time blocking. Before we're out of time here, I think we could do this in about seven minutes is Jeff. He brought up time blocking and a big thing. He was analyzing me through me through a scenario. It was great. And he basically landed on. He's like, you know what, Joe, I think for you it's perfect to have a transition time in your day every single day. And he challenged me to do it for a year. Been working so far really well. 15 minute, just transition time right at the end, then family time. Whatever it looks, whatever time works for me, I guess. What are your principles when it comes to time blocking?

The one thing I know, those things should be done typically first thing in the day, right? Your energy is there, your willpower, you're not drained, I guess. Walk us through your principles of time blocking in general and how you apply that.

There's this idea of do I know.

What my priority is in this part of my life? Do I have a time block for it? Have I made a time commitment to do it, which makes you so much more likely to do it. And then the third step, which I try to live is can I make a habit of doing it, A ritual of doing it so it takes some of the work out, you know. And you know, I remember reading about writers and you know, the real thing about writing is just kind of got to show up every day. And over time, if you just commit to writing one page, the muscles get stronger and it comes a little faster. And there might be off days, but it happens more frequently. Right? It is that just that weird thing. So the more important the priority, I would tell you earlier in the day, you should probably do it because our lives don't get simpler as the day goes on and our energy doesn't get higher.

A lot of people, especially entrepreneurs, make the mistake of trying to do their most important work, like after 10 o' clock when their kids are in bed, because that is a quiet time in the house.

It's attractive, right?

Our energy is quite low and it's not healthy long term. When I study, really successful people, they get up early. They've made a habit of getting up early. And that morning time, which is equally tranquil, there's nobody calling you at 6:00am there's nothing. Well, unless you are news junkie, there's not much on TV that wasn't there last night. You can control that time and Do a lot of really important things for yourself. So I asked the question around the seven circles. So my wife and I kind of did it together. Because when we had kids, I can't remember what book I read said that if you make a habit of having dinner with your family without the TV on, like, there's all of these things. Like, your kids are less likely to do drugs because that little moment in time, they're gonna actually talk to you. Right. And so we just made a commitment. Hey, let's turn the TV off. She hates the tv. Now I've converted her a little bit. I'm a movie junkie. Except for Friday nights, which is movie night. We try to have at least two meals, breakfast and dinner with the family at the table. And we wanted to do a spiritual thing, which is all right. So what's one thing we're all grateful for today? That was like, our. You could pray for that, or you could just be grateful. That was like, what's our spiritual habit we want for ourselves and our kids? And we just went around those circles, and the exceptions are, like, that's dinner. We're much more likely to have dinner together than breakfast more nights. Because I have teenagers on the weekends. I don't see them till noon. Let's be honest.

They're sleeping.

I count on seeing them at dinner, not for breakfast. And my wife and I get up early. So, like, that's. We built it around the reality. Not just everything in the morning, but, like, we do date night. So my number one relationship is my wife. And when we had. We had kids 16 months apart, and we were struggling. One of them had colic. Our youngest daughter had colic. So it was really. If y' all have kids, you'll know that. It's like, it was tough on the marriage. Gary gave me advice. Y' all should start doing date night. So as soon as we felt comfortable. Comfortable leaving him with the stranger because we had no family in town, we started hiring a babysitter. In the beginning, we can only afford to do it a couple times a month, but we wanted to make it a ritual. It's date night. Well, for the last 10 years, I'm going to say maybe 11 or 12 now, I haven't actually done the math. We have date night on Wednesday nights because we couldn't get babysitters regularly. Right?

And I don't want to do date.

Night in the morning. It's really important. So that's going to be at night, because that's the nature of it. But other than those Two habits. All the other ones are in the morning.

We get a lot done.

We get up probably between 5 and 5:30 every day and it's not a hardship. We didn't start there. Kids started training us to get up.

Earlier because they're there right now and.

We just kept it. And that morning time is when we read. It's when we exercise together. It's when I journal. I look at my goals in the morning before I go to work. Jeff has taught me this. If you can look at your goals, we have a thing called a 41 1, which he probably talked about. If you can look at your priorities before you open up your email and you make a habit of doing that, you'd be amazed how much better your days will go. Because now you know what you're supposed to say yes to before you get into everybody else's offers and asks. Yep.

Someone else's agendas. Yep. It's emails basically.

So you just look up and you. You interview really successful people. Their mornings tend to have a lot of rituals baked in and they have some other regular rituals, habits. Sounds heavy and hard, but they just have a rhythm that they try to keep to and they'll break it when they go on vacation. We do too, but they've kind of developed a rhythm so that these important things just kind of happen. I could show you my week at a glance and you would see there's space that shows up almost every single day, week. We probably net 45 to 50 dates a year. There's travel, stuff happens. We're not there or we're just too tired. But for the most part that's a regular something we get to engage in. Our marriage. Can you build those habits for you and your business? That would be the end game for time blocking. It's not every single minute of every day. It's just a handful of hours each week that are really dedicated to things that you really value. The rest kind of falls in place.

Yeah. Yeah.

Joe and I got some advice from somebody else. Actually. It was somebody's show that we went on, but his advice was what you need to be focused on time blocking. This is probably very tailored to us, so it may not be universal advice, but he basically said time block all the stuff that you love doing and then figure out how to make work work around that stuff. So if you love going surfing, make sure that's on your calendar for as many times a week as you want to do surfing and then fit work around that stuff. If you really like playing guitar, which is My case, I like to spend a little time playing music all the time. Time block that into my day and then figure out how my business works around the time blocks. And it kind of sounds like you have some similar philosophies there.

Totally.

Like, it's a boulder in the stream, right?

In the beginning, you have to work.

But it then becomes a habit. And I remember I read a study, I used to be a smoker. And they said, you know, it'll take you like six months to fully kick the. The addiction, but it might take as long as a year for people to stop offering you cigarettes.

Oh, wow.

Because their habit is thinking of Matt. I'm sorry I'm picking on you because I'm just looking at you on the screen like, he's a smoker. Let's go have a smoke break. Even though that's no longer your identity. And so there's this thing. You train yourself and then you train the world. And by the time your kids and your coworkers understand that, oh, Joe's an early morning guy. And, hey, at 6, Matt plays his guitar. So let's. I'm gonna call him at 7. Or I'm gonna call him before the world starts to navigate that. Like most of the people who work with me for any amount of time, sometime back when we used to work together in the office, they just go, what are y' all doing for date night tonight? Because they just knew that, right? So, like, my boss, like, he's not gonna text me in the middle of Wednesday night. Cause he knows what I'm doing.

He respects that. You've conditioned me.

It's one of those things that happens. So whether it's surfing or whatever, go ahead and put that boulder in the stream. It is amazing how work will flow around it if you put it there in advance and you communicate it to people. I tell my employees at the beginning of the year, go ahead and block your vacations.

If you want to go to Austin.

City Limits concert, go ahead. Even if you don't have tickets, block it. And then we can be planning for you being gone then. But if you tell me three days before that, you walked into tickets, and.

Now you're giving me your job while.

You go to a concert, you're going to turn me into that boss and says, no frigging way.

That's right.

But if you put the boulder in the stream, it flows around it. When people don't do that, they end up with a laptop at beach, a guitar collecting dust in the corner. Those things you've Got to make time commitments, build habits, train yourself, and then train the world.

I love that boulder in the stream. The perfect analogy. It's like, apply to everything. All right, Jay. I think we are one minute over. Pretty much achieved that. Nailed it.

I know.

Thank you so much, man.

So I think where's the best way for folks to explore more with you? We've definitely with Jeff, we talked about the. Sorry. The retreat, the virtual retreat. I think by the time this goes airs, it might be a little after. So there's something else that's relevant.

I would just say if folks like.

What we were talking about, definitely go check out theonething.com with the number one. There's all kinds of free resources. If you missed the retreat. My wife and I have been doing it. That's one of the boulders we started putting in the stream 14 years ago, and we've done it every year for 14 years and love it because we both run businesses, and it's really hard to have a healthy relationship with all that chaos without making that investment. That said, my last name's Papazan. You know, J. Papazan, if you Google it, there's only one in the United States. They're going to find me on Facebook or Instagram or someplace, and that's really me.

And I don't block a lot of.

Time for those things, but I tend to play on Instagram when I'm bored because it's visual and I'm a word guy, so it feels like play. It doesn't feel like work. Whereas Facebook is a drag for me right now. Let's get at least through the political season before you ask me to meet you there. Connect, and if I can help, I will. I love connecting with our readers. I love serving our people. That's what I mean. In the business for. I want to create value in the world, and that's what the. That's the ultimate payoff.

Love it. Well, Jay, thank you very much, man. You gave us a lot to think about. So we think about that for a long time in our thinking.

I'll say the same to y'. All. Joe, Matt, thank you for having me. Thank you for sharing me and Jeff, previously with your audience. And thanks for doing what you do. I mean, for entrepreneurs, y' all are giving them wisdom around their number one thing in our belief system. So thank you.

You're welcome, man. All right, we'll talk soon.

All right?

Yes, sir. Dude, that was a fun interview. Yeah, I really conversation.

I really enjoyed that conversation. I was a little concerned going into it. That we would cover a lot of the same stuff that we talked about with Jeff Woods a couple weeks ago, but we took it in totally different areas than I think even he was anticipating taking it.

Jay did his research, which. Jay, if you're listening, thank you very much for doing your research. We prep our guests and tell a lot of these topics that our audience are looking after. So definitely. And then we had a little chat to hopefully avoid any overlap. But there was a little overlap, and I think it was great because it took in different directions. So there's just so much to apply from the one thing, but also just everything else that we were chatting about with Jay. So, man, where do we start? Matt, what do you got? Takeaways.

So, for me, you know, my. There's sort of two rabbit holes in my life right now that I've been going down, like, fairly heavily, right? Like. Like, when I have free time, this is the stuff I'm reading about, researching, listening to podcasts about, right? So one of them is, like, health and nutrition, right? I've been, like, really into it, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, going down that rabbit hole. But the other one for me is knowledge management. Like, how to. How to read better, how to be more effective with your reading, how to, like, regurgitate what you read, how to retain what you read, how to have actual digital systems to store the information that you're learning so that it's easily accessible later. Like, this whole knowledge management rabbit hole is something that I've been obsessed with for probably, like, at least a year now, maybe a little longer. And so when we started talking about, like, how he consumes books and his processes of. Of of reading and basically locking in the knowledge. That was when I was, like, really sort of nerding out. I was like. And we started talking about, like, okay, you can get into these. You can get into these, like, echo chambers, where it's like, this is my belief around how this thing should work. And all you're going to do is read books that continually revalidate the thing that you already thought would work, but you're never really looking at alternate points of view. And I think to be sort of well rounded as a. As a person and to be well rounded in your sort of knowledge base and the knowledge management that you're creating, you need to be pulling sources from all over the place, from all different backgrounds, from all different, you know, walks of life to hear the different perspectives. Otherwise, you're just going to live in that echo chamber. And I really. And I Know, that was like, actually quite a big discussion on this show, which none of us were anticipating actually having. But when we got into it, we're like, this is too good not to talk about.

And there was a little bit of overlap, and that's a great takeaway. And that was one of my biggest ones, too. Yeah. Is reading.

And then you're applying to the circles. Remember those circles he actually referenced? And this is the same exact thing that. Where Jeff referenced page 114 of the one thing. So check that out to get a deeper dive into the circles and stuff. But, yeah, you read for. That's where a lot of that stems from. What are your important things in life? The circles. And you can read for those. And I thought it was really cool with what you're talking about. Reading is everyone has beliefs, so.

You want to challenge those beliefs, and you're not always successful. A lot of these books and things that we read are just kind of saying the same things or in different words, and that's okay. It's always going to happen even more so now with more content out there. But, yeah, if you find something that challenges your beliefs, then you have something to reflect on and kind of go deeper on and possibly change your perception and your actions. Yeah, that was really cool. So I. Let's see here. On that point, we went down so many.

So one more thing on that same point, right? So when we. I can't remember if this was when we interviewed Marx on our show, one of the multiple times he was on our show, or when we went on Marx Acosta Ruba's podcast, but one of the things he asked of us was when we started talking about books, he posed the question to us, when you read that book, what did that book get out of you?

Right.

He didn't read what did you get out of that book? He said, what did that book get out of you? And I think the first time I answered the question, I'm like, oh, I learned a lot about this, this, and this. And he's like, no, that's.

I.

What you got out of the book? What did the book get out of you?

Action.

Right?

And what Jay was talking about on this episode was very much that when he was talking about, you need to read books for doing. Don't read books for the additional knowledge. Right. So read the books and figure out, like, okay, what changes in my life are to make? What things am I going to start doing on a daily basis? What new mental model am I going to employ as a result of this? Book. If you can't figure out some sort of action, something that this book can get out of you, is it really worthwhile? And yes, there is something to be said to just sort of growing your intellect and sort of having a better understanding of things. Like we're going to read for that as well.

Right.

But if, you know, if you're thinking a little more purposefully around your reading, I think there's a lot of benefits to that. And I think it's also very beneficial to sort of cut books that aren't serving you pretty quickly. Right. If you get a couple chapters in and you're like I'm not getting any value in the first few chapters, ditch it and move on to another one.

He just said, yeah, he was saying that most of it's in the first 30 pages, something like that. So if something catches you there, then keep going. But if you really don't have something new and novel that's going to challenge a belief or whatever you're setting out to get.

What that book is going to get from you, then maybe it's not worth reading. Or it could be a skimmer, I think is what he said. One of the big takeaways and this relates to the reading but also other things is reflection time and just that, thinking time. And I know he referenced Keith Cunningham as the guy that basically dubbed that and I think it was thinking time putting that in your calendar. And that's what Jay was going to do or probably is doing it currently, but after we were recording is having thinking time and similar to what Jeff was talking about transition time when he was referencing me.

So putting that on the calendar sounds like. And we didn't ask him that specifically on the thinking time, but I'm sure that is a daily thing that's probably maybe multiple times a day depending on what he's doing prior to that.

Well, even with Perry Marshall too, he talks about his renaissance time being a non negotiable in his day to days in the morning. He calls it renaissance time. And that's his thinking time, his reading time, his sort of like meditating, meditating.

That kind of thing, or moving your body. And that's similar to what Jay was saying. And that's kind of where I was leading to a little bit. It's like the high achievers are typically morning people, they're early morning people. And luckily I'm being forced, kicking and screaming into waking up at like 6 every morning. But I am liking it. I do feel more accomplished and I actually end up working a Little sooner, but not always doing work stuff. I feel like it is actually more the important stuff. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, like, it's. That's where the important stuff just really comes out. So, you know, time blocking that I think is. He's like, if it's not on the calendar, ain't going to happen. Yeah. And I think it was another something I read from Jay or heard on a podcast, but he kind of lightly mentioned it. But, you know, he even time blocked working out on his. At home when he had kids or has kids, but younger kids with his wife and like, actually brought the trainer to his house and that's the only way they were able to do that. Actually turned out to be good for the relationship. All that to say is time blocking things around fun. Which is something that Marks said and you referenced that for family thinking time. And really that's the most important stuff. And I feel like that's. We all have time in the days to do that. We have enough hours in the day to actually do it. Just time block it, put it on the calendar.

Totally. Yeah. This is just a random realization. Has nothing to do with Jay specifically, but this random realization that one of my favorite things to do in these outro portions is to interrelate various podcast episodes. Like, to. To. To look at like, what we just talked about. And. And in my brain go, okay, who else did we talk about similar things with? And how can we connect the dots between what we just learned from this person to things that other people talked about on the podcast? It's like, I don't know. I'm just. It's just a realization of like, my. This is how my brain works is like, what can I relate this discussion to through other things.

This is how this outro can go even longer because you and I both think that way. It's like we intercon all these things and people and topics and Yeah, I mean, there's a lot.

Which also allows listeners to go, oh, I want to go deeper down that rabbit hole. Maybe I should go listen to Jeff Woods. Maybe I should go listen to Marx Acosta Rubio. Maybe I should go listen to Perry Marshall.

Yeah, yeah, and you should.

Yeah.

And maybe they'll be linked in the show notes.

We'll see.

But either way, yeah, search them up because, yeah, Jay is absolutely amazing. I mean, the other one of my big takeaways, actually, and I. It's essentially to read Jay's other book with. With Gary Keller, the millionaire real estate agent. Yeah, I didn't think that was relevant.

Well, they also seem to have a book called the Real Estate the Millionaire Real Estate Investor, because I saw it in the background of his video.

Right.

But they also have the millionaire real estate agent.

Yeah. And I think Agent was the one specifically that was more like for networking, for scaling and growing a service. Like, really said at the end of the day, like, that's. It's people, it's collaboration, it's how to basically do that effectively.

Yeah. Brad Spencer recommended that book to me. He said. And he's not in the real estate world.

Right.

But he said that that was one of the best books on networking and connections and getting to know people. And then we mentioned that book when we had Sam Karamian on from the One Thing from Big Block. Big Block Realty. And he said, oh, that's the Bible. He said, if you're in real estate, you've read that book. Everybody in real estate's read that book.

And what's all real estate? It's. It's connections, it's people. You're doing deals, man. So, I mean, that's. That. That could get applied to everywhere. And I know for us, selfishly, it definitely applies doing affiliate marketing stuff. Collaborating. Partnering, yeah. Podcasting. So, yeah, that was one of my takeaways. Is the Millionaire Real Estate Agent actually read that book? Because it's not just for real estate agents.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that's a good takeaway. One thing that might be kind of cool is like, what's. Like something from the. What. What is this episode going to get out of you? Like, what's one thing? And I mean, for you, you just said you're gonna go pick up that book and start reading it.

I would say the bigger. Oh, maybe not bigger thing, but another thing is time blocking more. So. Yeah. And I have started that because of Jeff woods, and I do. So here's the thing. It's like. Is actually committing to what I put on the calendar, because I will be honest. Right now we have every Monday night, I have a date night on the calendar for my wife and I, Heather. We have not been doing them mainly because of. And this is an excuse I'm sure we can get around it is because of the COVID stuff, because that was going to. And we. Because we put it on the calendar before. Like, that's when we're going to go out to dinner and all that. Still can, by the way. And we can make that happen. But I will uphold that commitment. I'll start there.

Well, even if it's like giving the baby to the in laws and ordering in together, you know?

Yeah. Or like, like, hey, baby, go down the hill to the in laws for an hour or two. Yeah, yeah.

Get it on. I mean, we need to eat some food.

I mean, like, we'll see where that goes. But like, that's the thing is honoring what's on my calendar, because it is easy to just be, like, make excuses. Yeah. So I want to honor that because that is the most important thing, and apply those circles, like, kind of the whole 114, page 114. The one thing.

Yeah, I think for me it's really like the. The knowledge management stuff. Like, he was sort of reaffirming some of the changes that I've been making lately. Like, I have a lot of books. I mean, if you ever watched our videos, there's a big bookshelf behind me, and it's not even all my books. My other office has a shelf full of books, too. And I actually have my fitness books out in my garage. So I read a lot of books, but the way I've always read them is I actually feel guilty if I, like, stop a book halfway through. Like, I'll get like halfway through and never put it on the shelf and start another one, and I'll be like, I really should finish that one. But if I only got halfway through it and lost interest, then it wasn't providing very much for me.

Right.

So that sort of philosophy of, like, you know, just sort of give up on books a little bit quicker. Like, use it for. Is this book going to get something out of me? Yes or no? No. Okay. I've given enough of my head space.

Is that making the book sad? If it's not getting anything out of you, Is that what you're worried about?

I don't care about the book's feelings.

Oh, okay. I just didn't know that's why you feel bad stopping.

No, it's more my own mental thing. It's more of like a giving up kind of thing.

I get it. Well, maybe just do a skim. Just do a quick skim and see if, like. Just skim titles and headlines and stuff. Yeah. And maybe the little passage at the end that says, here's the. Here's the recap from the chapter and my favorite worries.

My favorite books are the one where at the end of each chapter, they're like, here's a recap of what we just said in this chapter. And I'm like, cool. You just saved me all the work of reading that chapter.

If those catch you, then Go deeper. But if they don't, then okay. Exactly. All right. Those are good takeaways. Yeah. Jay is amazing. Is amazing. Go to theonething.com it's the number one. And there's a lot of cool stuff on. There's a lot of freebies, a lot of events. They do virtual stuff. Go check it out. Jay's awesome. Yep.

And if you want to grab the notes from this episode, go over to our Facebook group over@flowchartgroup.com when you sign up for the group, that's how you get the notes. We'll give you the notes to the people who sign up to our Facebook group and join it.

So go say hi in the group.

Yeah. Request to join. Say hi. We interact with people. There's a lot of great members in there, a lot of great advice. We share a lot of cool videos. We do live streams to the group all the time. And you can get the companion notes to this episode by doing that.

And you might meet some guests that we've had on the podcast as well. So you can actually ask them questions directly. That's correct. So, yeah, go there. Flowchartgroup.com and also we have our sponsor as Easy Webinar. And if you're thinking about doing webinars or if you're doing webinars and you're, like, hacking it together with, like, Vimeo and, like, click funnels or like, landing pages, all these things, and just like, yep, I'm doing webinars, but you're not really doing webinars. Like, you might want to look into Easy Webinar because they make it easy and you can do any kind of webinar and essentially it builds those pages for you as well. So it's taking some steps out of your, you know, your process there and automating a lot more. Yep.

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He does. He's hooking me up. There's some pretty fat percentage points taken off the price point. So get. Check it out@easywebinar.com hustle. Easywebinar.com hustle. Go get it. Thank you, Kasey and team. And go share this episode with some folks, some people that you think will get something.

You know somebody, you're listening right now going, I know somebody that can use this episode.

Think about it.

So think about that person and send it to them.

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You'll be giving them a lot of value.

You do need some time blocking. Who needs a little bit of a who's a little scattered feeling but feels like they need to get a little further. That's the person.

Yeah. Or if they like going down the knowledge management rabbit hole like I do then this doom as well. Thanks everybody for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliff's notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com find this episode that you just listened to and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

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