Jay Papason – Co-Author of The One Thing

Ep #425 – Jay Papason – Co-Author of The One Thing

Here is some of what you will learn:

• Wealth will not come from your W2 Job
• Principles from The One Thing
• Say YES when it matters
• The focusing question
• Having a relationship with your goals
• The Pareto Principle
• The myth of multitasking
• The true domino effect
• The six lies
• The habit building superpower
• Best time for decision making
• The lie of a balanced life
• Success is not complicated
• The halo effect of a single habit
• The concept of having agency in your life
• Growth vs Fixed mindset
• Your ‘think big’ muscle 

To find out more about our guest click here

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Full Transcript Below:

Ep #425 – Jay Papasan Co-author of The ONE Thing

Hi, my name is Rod Khleif and I’m the host of “Lifetime Cashflow through Real Estate Investing” Podcast and every week I interview multifamily rockstars. We talk about how they built incredible wealth for themselves and their families through multifamily properties. So hit the like and subscribe button to get notified every Monday when a new episode comes out. Let’s get to it

Rod: Welcome to another edition of How to Build Lifetime Cashflow through Real Estate Investing. I’m Rod Khleif and I’m absolutely thrilled that you’re here. And I know you’re gonna love the incredible guest we have on today. We’ve got Jay Papasan and Jay is the former, he’s the former editor HarperCollins and but he co-authored a book that I absolutely freakin love which is called “The One Thing” with Gary Keller. And Jay also handles you know is responsible for publishing at Keller Williams. He does event speaking maybe you’ve seen him speak. He does a lot of corporate training and we are blessed to have him on. Jay welcome to the show my friend

Jay: Thanks Rod and I’m happy to be here

Rod: Yeah so you know I know I’ve listened to the story. In fact, I just listened to Tim Ferriss interview Gary and heard the whole Keller Williams story which was just frankly fascinating and there goes my doorbell so hopefully my mate will take care of that anyway. But so you know well it’s not what let’s not waste any time on the story but maybe you can talk a little bit about how you and Gary got to together and you know maybe what your focus is now. I know you’ve written lots of best-selling books. If you, let’s go start there, talk about the best-selling books you’ve already authored

Jay: Sure I’ll just I’ll mix them together a little bit. So Gary and I started writing. I started working for Gary in 2000 and back then Keller Williams Realty had 6,700 agents. Today, we have a little over 180,000. We were not in all 50 states and today I think we’re in 46 countries. So it’s been a rocket ride. It’s been really fun to grow in the company. Our first book project was the “Millionaire Real Estate Agent” were we surveyed best practices among the very top realtors. That book went on to be a million copy long-running bestseller. We wrote “The Millionaire Investor”. We wrote with partners “Hold and Flip”. We did another book called “Shift” and those are the big ones that were all bestsellers and our most recent one obviously was “The One Thing”, the surprisingly simple truth find extraordinary results. I’ve had numerous jobs you know working for Gary and his multiple businesses. Today I’m VP of learning and I’m in charge of the publishing department, the Keller Williams University, and our video department.

Rod: Oh very cool. Wow that’s a lot. So you’re in charge of all the training for these 180,000 agents holy cow that’s a big

Jay: That’s a lot of our books right. I love writing books that help people do things better or give them the information they need to succeed. It’s just a different channel right. It’s just a different channel. You’re doing it to podcasts right?

Rod: Yeah no and I love what I do it’s obvious that you love what you do as well and that, when that’s the case, the work is play and so I guess let’s go ahead and drill down. Now you said “The Millionaire Real Estate Investor” would be a good book for my audience yes?

Jay: Yes that was life-changing for me. So in I’m gonna say 2004 we published that book maybe 2005 my memory escapes me. We interviewed a hundred and twenty investors that at that time had over a million dollars in equity in their rental properties.

Rod: Wow

Jay: That was the criteria. It wasn’t a million dollars in value right. Today, you could own one house in California you’re there right. They’ve built a million dollars in equity and their rental properties. We spent almost a year interviewing them and then we just asked what do they all have in common. And a lot of times, if you want to find out best practices, talk to the very best at something and it’s not what Rod does or Jay does what we both do is probably a good indicator of what you can do as well that’s our principle

Rod: Okay well you got to give us a couple now. So what were some of the, I can’t let that go by. I want to dig into the One Thing but I’ve got to hear what a couple these best it’s these things that you discovered are

Jay: Well a few of them right we just learned a lot about how money works in real estate investing and your audience may already know this but most people don’t realize it’s not just cash flow or appreciation. Those are the obvious benefits of owning rental properties. If you just let a renter pay off your 30-year mortgage, that’s a 3.3% rate of return. So you’re already doing better than inflation with no appreciation and no cash flow. So at least your principle has been protected and is growing at a reasonable rate. We also know that you can benefit from depreciation that can be taken away but the debt pay down factor is very real. It’s a lot of people underestimate it. So depending on what your goals are you can invest for cash flow, you can invest for appreciation, and you also get these other cool benefits and I love it because it’s very democratic. You don’t take a lot of wealth if I could go back in time knowing what I know from interviewing those investors, I’d be buying duplexes. I would have started in the duplex rented half moved out had two streams of income, done that three or four times and I would have been set for life. Nowadays, we talk about house hacking. When we were writing the book, my assistant got so inspired she bought her first home and she signed up three of her friends on leases to rent rooms in her house. I didn’t know to call it house hacking back then but we raised her qualifying income and her very first home ownership experience, she was paying far less than she was paying in rent and she was building equity and appreciation. So what I love about it is it taught me a different mindset and I’m, your audience may already be there. That my wealth won’t be built through my income from my job my wealth will be built with how I save money and invest it in vehicles I can control and that will grow

Rod: Yeah love it. Well let’s move over to the One Thing because

Jay: Sure fire away

Rod: as I was telling you before we started recording here, I’ve given away close to 400 copies. It’s in my student book list. Every one of them gets it and it’s the One Thing. And it’s been, it’s got numerous awards. It’s in at the time of this print, it had 12 book awards, 29 languages, 400 bestseller appearances I mean this thing is just a juggernaut and but it’s what’s incredible is its simplicity. And so maybe you know without me butchering a you know or asking the wrong question, maybe you could talk about the book how it came about, and really what it’s about, and then we’ll add some questions

Jay: Sure. This actually came out of the last financial crisis. We were I think around 2007-2008. I was running education at that time as well we were working on a course. Gary wrote a four or five page introduction to a course on building your service business to hire your first assistant right, earning your first employee basically. And he wrote a little essay called, “The Power of One” and some of the principles time blocking, some of those things that you know from the book we’re in there and I remember coming back on a Monday after reading essay and saying Gary this feels a lot like a book idea because I thought the same thing and that launched us on a five-year journey and I’ll just say this, I’m working I get the privilege the blessing to work for the self-made billionaire knew is passionate about teaching and coaching. So he’s always doing those activities and sharing the good and the bad on his journey. And the thing that really showed up is, as smart as he is as hard-working as he is the thing that distinguishes him is the principles in the book. He’s willing to work harder to figure out what his real priority is, the real priority, and he’ll give it more time and more resources than anyone else. And that is the secret of the book we don’t get to have one thing for the year. But there is probably one true priority today this week right now and if we just learn to shift our focus to our number one first and tackle that with all of our energy, your life changes. It’s just amazing how that little shift and the order that we tackle things and the focus and attention we give them changes so many other things. That’s kind of the big idea where it came from

Rod: Yeah no I love it. And guys you know the timing was just perfect for this because I just listened to, Gary doesn’t do very many interviews and I listened to him interviewed on Tim Ferriss you know I’m excited because we’re at 8 million downloads. Tim, I think it’s that a week or something right. But just to listen to the brilliance of this guy, that you get to bless to work with, it’s just what a gift that is. I mean the guy is just off the chain brilliant. You can see it and

Jay: He’s had two interviews since 2013, two

Rod: Wow. I did not know that. Wow that’s how selective he has been and

Jay: But that’s what his principles, that’s one of his principles. You’ve got to be able to say no, and yeah it’s

Rod: And he said yes when it mattered. Obviously, Tim Ferriss and I guess Tai Lopez who has one of the largest book clubs in the world are to trade yes’es yeah and I’m happy he did. I get the privilege, he actually has his own podcast now called “Think like a CEO” so I check that out. And it’s just seasonal. He does, we drop a few episodes every couple

Rod: oh you and Gary have one? It’s called “Think like a CEO”? I love it. That’s an awesome, that’s an awesome title too – love it. So let’s talk about the one thing and drill down just a little bit because it’s just so freakin powerful you know I teach my students to utilize the Pareto principle and I did and now it’s really to drill it down even more. So could you tell my listeners what the question is that you must ask yourself and why

Jay: So you’re diving in in a great place. The number one thing that messes people up is they think everything matters equally right. You got a to-do list and you’re tackling your to-do list and what we’re all guilty of every single day and I still am right, on my bad days. So I look at my list and instead of doing the thing that matters most I do all the stuff that I can cross off really quickly right because I want my list to be shorter and if you’re a real estate investor right you’re probably working a job and like just the task list you know you have to follow for rehab on your property there’s so many tasks involved. We can really neglect that most important thing for all the stuff and so we have a question it’s called the focusing question. It’s in the heart of the book and it’s called, it reads, what’s the one thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary? So to break that down, I know it’s a mouthful but if you want a big answer ask a big question, what’s the one thing I can do? not ten things, you’re asking what’s the one thing and it’s can do, not could, would, or should. You can already do it. So you can get into action and see what your results are such that by doing it, just says that, this is a leveraged item. You don’t get a one to one ratio right. It’s highly leveraged and the scale of that right is everything else is easier or unnecessary. And I was afraid when we were writing the book Rod, I was like oh my gosh what do people don’t know the answer, what if they just don’t know the answer? They asked the question, they have no clue and I was afraid that wasn’t gonna be enough and Gary assured me that it would be. And I can tell you after having taught this book to probably more than ten thousand students, I’m gonna tell you ninety-eight percent of the time people know the answer. They’re not asking the question and when you get him to ask the question they feel a little guilty right. We’re so busy. We’re just so busy it’s so easy to get caught up in a stream of your emails or your other people’s priorities and you’re just getting washed into all this stuff. And you look up and like you missed the things that matter the most. You’re not taking care of your health. You’re not spending time with your family. You’re not making those investments that you have to make to make sure that your whole person is happy and you’re prospering.

Rod: And that’s a key point that I want to mention is that it’s not just one thing globally. You can drill this down to one thing in your relationship, one thing in your business, one thing in your health, that you can ask that same question around different areas of your life. And it’s important to do so. Can you talk about why this works? I mean I know but I want you know my listeners are like you know why is this such a big deal.

Jay: I think that most people don’t have a problem setting goals. I think what most people have a challenge with is they don’t know how to have a relationship with their goals. So it’s great New Year’s comes around. I’m gonna buy three rental properties. That’s a big goal. Awesome. Well how does that mean you need to behave this week? How do you have to behave right now in order to know that you’re on that path? And I think the book she break down very simply like how do I take a big objective and then interpret it into what do I have to accomplish this year? What’s the one thing I have to accomplish this year to be on track to that and based on my 1 year, what do I have to do this month? And based on my month, what I have to do this week? and based on my week, what do I have to do today? You see, I’m moving backwards. I’m not saying based on my three year goal what do I have to do this week? That’s too much. It’s just a process of moving backwards till you get to today and you say wow my one thing today is I should look at 10 properties. I should go online and I should look at 10 and run the numbers on three. I’m just making those numbers up

Rod: Sure sure whatever it is but that’s an example right

Jay: Yeah I mean for most investors I’ve interviewed, they have to know their criteria and their terms and then they have to go out and learn the market. And the best way to learn the market is to look at properties and run the numbers.

Rod: That’s it Total Immersion

Jay: all day long and then you look up and well you go, wow something’s off here and that’s the one you want to go look at. So you just still it down and you focus on your activities that give you the outcome. Most people don’t even write their goals right. If you said, on in my world I want to buy three properties this year, I was like great. You can have that for an annual goal. I want to see your monthly goals what do you have to do this month to be on track for that? And that’s not buy one property. It’s gonna be some activity and you focus on those activities so that you can make the leap to the outcomes you want. You got to do the things that other people won’t do in order to have the things that other people don’t have

Rod: Yeah love it, love that line. So let me ask you this, could you take and explain the Pareto principle briefly? just because that’s one of the big dynamics at play here and I don’t want to assume everybody knows what it is like we do

Jay: Awesome. All right so there’s a guy named Vilfredo Pareto. He was an Italian economist. And he observed and I want to say like in the 1700s right or 1800s. I can’t remember the date that 80% of the wealth and Italy was held by 20% of the people. And he dug into that as an economist and he looked and some crops right 80% of the fruit came from 20% of the trees right. He just saw it, wow there may be something else here. A lot of people attribute that to him because of a guy named Joseph Jura and Juran and he was a quality control expert and he was actually working I want to believe that General Electric very near the Hawthorne factory where the Hawthorne concept came from. And he was told about this in terms of executive compensation and he’s the guy who really popularized the idea and the idea says 80% of your results will come from 20% of what you do. It’s crazy how often those numbers show up but I would tell you it’s probably healthier to say the majority of what you want will come from the minority of what you do. This book is about saying what’s the 20% of the 20% of the 20% into one.

Rod: Yeah taking it all the way to one. So it’s like the Pareto Principle on steroids.

Jay: Yeah we call it extreme Pareto

Rod: Extreme. I love it I love it extreme Pareto. And I’m pronouncing it wrong. I’m glad you corrected me

Jay: I come from the south. I don’t know that I pronounce anything wrong

Rod: Okay all right all right well I’ll have to research that now. So can you talk for a minute about the myth of multitasking?

Jay: Sure. I think that when people look at their lists, if they haven’t prioritized it, one of the first things they’re gonna do is well just do two things at once. The reality is, is that multitasking is just a giant fit that’s been perpetrated on America and the rest of the world. We can’t really do two things at once the way we think we can. We’re actually switching back and forth. When you look at the research, they call it switched tasking and you’re doing one thing and you’re just switching back and forth so fast you don’t realize it. But all of the research points to, if you’re doing two things at once and switching back and forth you’re not doing either of them as well as you would do by themselves. And in fact you’re increasing the amount of time that will take to do it. So when we talk to the researchers, if you do two things at once, at best it’ll cost you 25% more time, it can cost you double amount of time. And the average worker today that is bouncing between emails and Twitter and phone calls, 27% of their day is lost in multitasking inefficiency and it’s a weird concept. Have you ever been reading a book or watching TV and someone walks in the room maybe your spouse and they say, “Rod, dadada dada da” and like you know they’re talking to you but you’re not processing anything. Have you ever experienced that?

Rod: Sure

Jay: So that’s actually what happens in your brain. You’re focused on this thing and when you decide to switch. Your brain has to switch to the new rules. I’m watching a football game, I have to switch to my wife wants me to do a task right or my son wants me to help him with his homework or whatever that is and you actually don’t process anything in that period of time. That’s the time that we lose. Every time we switch and we don’t even account for it in our brain. So there’s this huge switching cost and I could go through research after research after research. The other one is your error rate goes through the roof. There is a reason that surgeons, they don’t get to pick up their own scalpel, someone hands it to them right. You’re not allowed to multi-task if you’re flying a plane, driving a bus, doing surgery, if why’s are at stake, they know that the cost is too high to multitask. Yet we do it all the time. So I would just say it’s a really hard because our biggest thing is our phones right. We’re walking around our phone. We’re doing something on our phone when we should be watching something else or just

Rod: Watching a movie and we’re on our phone scrolling.

Jay: I know I know. Anyway, you look up and there’s a cost to that. So here’s what I usually give people a break because there’s engineers working on Android and iOS that are paid gazillion of dollars to distract us. They’re very good at their job. When you’ve gone through Pareto Principle, you’ve done extreme, you figured out what’s your one thing for this week or today, you’ve identified it, you’ve asked the question, while you’re doing your number one, just don’t multitask it then. If you just start there, create that little window. I’m gonna work on my investment properties and I’m gonna just put my phone on Do Not Disturb for 30 minutes right. What I find is people get so much done in those small periods of time it becomes a little bit addictive and in the very least they insist on doing it when they know it matters and sometimes they start carrying that over into other periods time. So that’s kind of the baby step, the first domino as we would say in them in the book. Figure out you’re number one and don’t multitask when you’re doing it and see how that works for you

Rod: Talk about the, I’m glad you brought up the Domino’s. I love the examples in the book that giant example and not forgot what’s it was lay warden in Holland. I’m from Holland so I recognized a giant Domino example. Can you talk about the Domino component here?

Jay: Well the world doesn’t line up for us to do one thing right. But if you align your dominoes, we use that as a metaphor hopefully everybody was listening to this when they were a kid, they lined up their dominoes that if you knocked over one what happens? We all fall down right. So there’s a group in the Netherlands that the head is the last time I checked had the world record they lined up almost four and a half million dominoes by knocking over one, they got them all to knock over which is incredible to think about how hard that must have been right to set all this dominos up but it shows you if you line things up there’s all this potential energy that comes into play. While we were geeking out on this remember we spent four and a half years researching this. There’s a guy named Lauren Whitehead that wrote in the American Journal of physics back in 1984 or 1987, I think 1984, that a 2 inch domino can knock over a 3-inch Domino, can knock over four and a half inch domino. Basically, not only can’t get more things done, you can get bigger things done. It grows by 50% and the illustration we used in the book is if you start with a two-inch Domino and they grow at that same rate, by the 23rd Domino it would not cover one as tall as the Eiffel Tower. And by the way that’s within 100 feet or so as being as tall as the Empire State Building right. By the 57^th, they would knock over earth to the moon and if you graph that out, it looks like a hockey stick on its side right. It’s flat until it gets so steep you can’t even imagine it. And any investor should know this, compound interest works the same way right. Time is your friend. If you wake up every day and you focus on the essentials and then you keep relentlessly coming back, not only do you get more stuff done you get so effective at doing it, your results get magnified and its huge

Rod: Love it love it. Now, and one of the things another thing I love and book is these six lies and I heard Gary talk about it on his interview with Tim. The one that really got me was the balance but do you know them off the top of your head or shall I read them for you here?

Jay: Well there’s a lot to cover but we can try to dive in really quickly. First rule is everything doesn’t matter equally, figure out you’re number one right. Second one is multitasking is a lie. So at least when you’re doing you’re number one, don’t multitask. I believe the next in order is disciplined right. So people look up and go, you know what if I was just more disciplined like Rod I could get this done. And we found out most adults don’t know what discipline actually means. You ask a kid, they’re gonna tell you it’s punishment. Most adults think it’s the ability to physically, mentally focus on something and actually focus on it and get it done. Discipline is training yourself to do something until it’s a beach wall. And so we ask the question how long, if you knew what your one thing was, and you were willing to work to make your one thing a habit like brushing your teeth right. I’m a parent. It took years to get our kids to brush our teeth without being threatened with punishment right? But now it’s a habit. How do you build that around the things that are most important to you? And there’s a lot of crap out there that says it’s 21 days

Rod: oh I’ve heard 60 to 90 but I remember you I think you said 66 in the book yeah

Jay: It’s 66 that’s right. That’s the average which is dangerous as well but there was some Australian researchers that found that 95 percent of the effort goes away on average after 66 days. And we actually talked to them on the phone, some people had got there in 18 days really fast, most people right got there it took a lot longer some as long as 280 days. So it depends on what you’re trying to do but the point is if you can focus on repeating something every day, give it a couple of months. A lot longer than most people normally would, at some point it becomes automatic then you get to move to the next thing. Just give it all your energy that I’m gonna build this habit. That’s like a superpower that says

Rod: These are success habits guys we’re talking about. Now we all have habits that aren’t serving us. But to create a success habit requires that discipline for 66 days on average I love it. And then you know the next one was willpower is always on will call

Jay: Yeah that’s just an idea, it’s very true right. Well, if there’s a will, there’s a way is a very true statement. The problem is, we don’t have the mental ability to grit it out for very long. It’s incredibly fragile and we tend to have the most of it in the morning. So if we want a shortcut like I can do the research but basically memorizing a two-digit number versus a seven digit number, the whole difference five extra digits can under your diet. People who did that test in a psychological thing, where twice as likely to choose a bad dessert over a healthy one just because they were memorizing five extra numbers just crazy how fragile it is that they call it that it’s like a mental toll on decision-making. So the best thing to do this is the big outtake, if you really want to commit to building a habit or doing something do it in the morning when we have the most decision-making power because we’re hopefully really motivated. We want to build our wealth. But in the morning, we have the ability to say yes even when the things aren’t lining up for us right. It’s raining and we need to go jogging, our willpower will let us say yes when we don’t want to. So that’s just an important thing to understand

Rod: Yeah for sure yeah I find myself after a brutal day of 12 hours I’ll go and I’ll eat a bunch of candy or some you know crap I know I’m not supposed to eat

Jay: like ice cream

Rod: right there you go yeah exactly exactly

Jay: Our will power is gone

Rod: right right

Jay: We tend to fall on our default options. What’s the easy option becomes a lot more attractive to us. So that’s just a good thing to know in terms of building habits. The next one is a balanced life is a lie.

Rod: That’s the one that really hit me in Gary’s interview with Tim cuz I was a little surprised by it. So please take a minute on this one. So when I’m teaching this on a corporate seminar like I’ll get people to stand up and I’ll say if you can and you’re physically able to stand on one foot and I’ll just ask this question everybody’s balancing on one foot. I say are you balanced? Are you balancing? And everybody goes balancing and I said that’s it. Balance is a verb, it’s not a noun. You don’t get everything in your life lined up and then suddenly you’re in balance. It’s an activity you have to do all the time. So if you put in a long weekend right, take a day off and spend some time relaxing or with your kids. Counterbalance immediately. There are things that we can be out of balance and for a long time and work is usually one of them right. You can focus on the things that matter most in a work environment and you won’t be punished harshly for missing a meeting or doing some of the small things. But with our health, with our relationships right other things that are more important there’s no guarantee those people are waiting for us when we want to come back. So we have to actively balance these things. So that’s the big takeaway. Balance is a verb. It’s not a statement you get to achieve and if you focus on it, you will feel more balanced and I would also say in your work and in your financial world, it’s okay to feel unbalanced there right. It’s okay to go all in on the big thing says that’s where the big payoffs are and you aren’t punished as worse as financially and around work and job stuff as you would be relationships, spiritual, and health.

Rod: Nice nice so let me ask you a question you know if someone is thinking okay I want to try this and so they want to ask that question of them themselves you know what’s the one thing that by doing it everything else becomes easier and unnecessary, how long do you find that they sit and think about things, is there an average? Can you speak to that a little bit? Is it all over the board? I’m just curious

Jay: I’ve mentioned it earlier. I think most people know that the thing that’s most important that they’ve been neglecting and it shows up loud and clear. They’re just not stopping to ask. So the only book I had memorized, the only page in the book I had memorized this page 114 and it’s the seven areas of your life where you can apply the principle. And it’s your spiritual life, your physical health, your personal life, your key relationships, your job, your business, if you own one and your money. And I usually will ask people I want you to score yourself from one to ten where one is you’re an abject failure and ten is the world should be learning from you on each of those. You have 30 seconds. You don’t need to think about it. You don’t need a spreadsheet. How are you doing in your spiritual life? How are you doing in your personal life? Do you have any hobbies? Do you know how to relax? right each of those and then I just invite them pick one area of your life so that you can focus on that first and people will either choose a strengths because they want to make it stronger but in my experience they take the lowest number because that’s where the most pain is and they want to fix that thing. They want to turn a 3 into a 7 and then ask the question. So for your physical health Rod, what’s the one thing that you can do such that by doing it, everything else will be unnecessary? You ask that question and then I usually challenge people to get on that journey and build a habit around it. And the answer is like on health, you don’t have to research very long to figure out when the big levers are. Are you getting enough sleep? Is your diet even remotely healthy in terms of portion and what I’m putting in your body? Third would be exercise right. I mean there it’s not a whole lot of things and it’s not complicated you know that’s the challenge is I think we tend to complicate success because it justifies our failure. The reality is it’s not complicated it’s just not easy

Rod: Right I love it. I love it. I actually had that one page 114 flagged to talk about coz because that is such an important page with the seven areas and I drew some

Jay: There’s an aha there. That’s flagged for me too and the surprise I had if someone would go through that and they’ll realize that they don’t feel connected to their daughter and we’ll work on it in a workshop or whatever and I’m this has literally happened a guy said you know what I’m gonna start walking my daughter to school every morning. I can figure out how to protect that time and he sent me an email like three months later saying that his whole life had changed because he had found time to connect with the person he loved. That had renewed their relationship he wasn’t carrying the guilt around anymore and he was going into work energized and guilt-free and getting more done at work than he’d ever done before. And you’re like okay how does walking your daughter to school even matter? We are one person. All of these things matter right. Your job performance, maybe about your health or your sleep or your relationships, I mean if someone’s getting a divorce how do they show up at work?

Rod: Right it matters everything yeah

Jay: Yeah don’t judge the answer. Trust it, go fix it, go make it better and see how that doesn’t show up in the rest of your life

Rod: Yeah and then that’s not uncommon and I do an exercise in my live events where we do this Wheel of Life or a circle of success in the middle is zero the outside edge is ten and you do those areas around the edge like a pie and you do and you mark it in and sometimes one thing you know improving one area impacts everything like you just said. I say that exact same thing so this is all resonating

Jay: There’s research, it’s only one line in the book right but it’s right around forming a habit. One of the weird things they saw in the research when someone started a new habit and it could be anything like drinking eight glasses of water a day, they suddenly started having other positive impacts in their life. They had fewer dirty dishes right, they started making their bed, they started showing up to work on time, and here’s the theory, and they haven’t proven it that we talked to the researchers, when someone takes control of one aspect of their life and realizes they can make a difference, they suddenly feel agency in these other areas and start taking action whereas they might have just felt like they were caught in this stream. This raging torrent and just being swept past all the things that mattered. Now suddenly they have a foothold and they grab that and they just start taking action. It’s really fun to watch, the flow effect

Rod: I love that and it so resonates so let me off topic now for a minute. If you could teach schoolchildren one thing for an hour a week because you’re an educator I mean you’ve got a hundred and eighty thousand people that you’re training and educating what an incredible gift you have. If you could teach school children, what might you teach them that’s not being taught

Jay: How to teach themselves. In our organization, Thank you Gary, leadership is teaching people this is how we define it, it’s teaching people how to think so they can get what they need when they need it. And when I look at my children, I want them to be self-sufficient. So we’ve enrolled them in a local startup called Acton Academy. It’s a one-room schoolhouse very Montessori based but every day they have to write down their goals publicly and report back on how they did and they have to manage themselves. They have to manage all of their own schoolwork at early age which means they’re failing a lot. But think about it most of us didn’t have to manage our academic load till we got to college. So we delay building those skills on how do we allocate our time on a big something over time and we’ve got basically fourth and fifth graders learning how to self manage. So I want young children to learn how to think critically about their own lives and how to manage themselves towards what they want. I want to give them agency and I think that we would see a lot of change in this world if more people felt like they could control their own outcomes

Rod: Oh that’s beautiful and they’re in there basically realizing not to fear failure either. What an awesome school you just described holy cow

Jay: That’s one of the books if you’ve read mindset by Dr. Carol Dweck it’s a fabulous print on a fixed versus a growth mindset. It’s one of the main things that they teach at the school. If you have a fixed mindset, you think that failure says you’re not good. How do babies learn to walk? They learn by face-planting painfully over and over again. Failure is baked into learning and at some point we think that says something bad about us. So they’re trying to change that conversation and I’ll tell you some days I have a great growth mindset some days I have a fixed mindset right. It’s hard

Rod: Yeah that happens yeah you know I got to met Sara Blakely the owner of Spanx at a mastermind.

Jay: Wow man

Rod: She’s cool she’s really cool. But her dad used to ask her at the dinner table you know what have you failed that today? Isn’t that just an awesome question? So it’s not about, it’s okay to fail. We fail our way to success. Well listen, I’ve got one final question for you and I’m so grateful for your time. I just know how incredibly busy you are. Can you tell us about one or two you’ve got this incredible, sorry hit the mic, one incredible journey with Gary and this incredible team you guys have built, talk about a couple of aha moments or even just one if you’ve been only but some aha moments that were pivotal or maybe they were you know catalyst or anything come to mind with that question

Jay: The first thing that came to mind right there’s a lot. I’ve been working with them for 20 years now and it’s been a massive blessed. You came up with – every time my wife Wendy and I think we’re thinking big for our lives Gary will point to us that we could be thinking bigger right. You don’t need to activate you can start small but you have to is a muscle, how big can we think for ourselves and others? That’s a muscle we all need to be working on. No one succeeds alone right that’s a big book we’ve been working on and hopefully it will be out in the next few years. We take a long time but hopefully we do a good job right and – like if something is not working in your life, there’s a good chance you’re missing a relationship and that could be if you’re at a business, you’re missing a key employee it could be that you’re missing a mentor, it could be that you’re missing a coach or a consultant. But often the thing this idea that we can succeed through grit and determination by ourselves, it’s just not right. Most of the people I know who have accomplished the most have the most coaches and the most teachers in their life because they’ve embraced that they won’t know it all. They are going to invest in themselves regularly. So no one succeeds alone and the last one we talked about this in the book that it’s gonna be hard to accomplish anything right. We’ve talked about this idea of a growth mindset and thinking bigger for your life. We’ve talked about this idea of having a coach and some sort of accountability in your life like someone to lift you up or help you get there. The last big one is you’ve got to have an accountable mindset, meaning you can’t be a victim of your own life. If you find yourself, it was their fault or this happened to me, if you’re not always looking for your own DNA in the bad things that happens you you you’re not actually giving yourself the agency to find a path out. So those are three big ones like if

Rod: 100% responsibility

Jay: Yep he’ll call me out on it with, Jay, what was your DNA in this? And it’s amazing how empowering that is. It doesn’t always feel good but it is empowering. So that we can start changing our circumstances

Rod: Love it love it love it. Thank you so much for your valuable time my friend. It’s really been educational for me. I’ve been furiously taking notes. I really appreciate your wisdom today and it’s been a real real treat thank you so much

Jay: Thanks so much for sharing our book. It’s been a passion project

Rod: Oh yeah guys, guys get the freaking book just do it. The One Thing, just do it and I’m gonna be buying the other ones you mentioned but thank you my friend

Jay: Thank you