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SHOW NOTES FOR EPISODE 124: WHAT’S YOUR “ONE THING?” WITH JAY PAPASAN
Achieving extraordinary things is just a matter of staying pinpoint focused on that “one thing” you are seeking to achieve! In today’s episode, Jay Papasan, successful entrepreneur, real estate investor and author of the book entitled The One Thing, shares how simplifying and focusing our efforts can quickly yield tremendous results.
What You Will Learn
- What is your “One Thing” and why it’s important to get and stay focused on it
- When we have a clarity of understanding of what our priority is, and give it the time it deserves, usually something really awesome happens
- How a newsletter writing “day gig” turned into international success and amazing financial reward
- The secret of how Keller Williams became the number one realty company in America
- What interviewing over 100 millionaire real estate investors taught Jay
- How most people almost always underestimate what they can accomplish in a year
- The importance of knowing and tracking your net worth
- How by breaking your “dream” down into bite-size pieces (5 year, 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, and 1 day) you can actually see your dreams become reality
About Our Guest
Jay Papasan
Jay Papasan is a bestselling author that serves as vice president and executive editor at Keller Williams Realty International, the world’s largest real estate company. He is also vice president of KellerINK, co-owner of Keller Capital, and co-owner, alongside his wife Wendy, of Papasan Properties Group with Keller Williams Realty in Austin, Texas.
He was born and raised in Memphis, TN. After attending the University of Memphis he spent several years working abroad in Paris before attending New York University’s graduate writing program. Upon graduating he found work at HarperCollins Publishers, where he helped piece together such bestselling books as Body-for-Life by Bill Phillips and Go for the Goal by Mia Hamm.
After moving to Austin, Jay joined Keller Williams Realty International, and in 2003 he co-authored The Millionaire Real Estate Agent alongside Gary Keller and Dave Jenks. The resounding success of the book, which focused on the systems, models and tactics used by the nation’s top real estate sales agents, brought him his first experience as an acclaimed author when the book became a national bestseller in 2004. Having landed on a formula for providing insight and easy to follow strategies for success, the group maintained their momentum and strung together a series of books that found their way on to bestselling lists, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The New York Times.
The books he’s helped craft have collectively sold over 8 million copies. His most recent work with Gary Keller on The ONE Thing has sold over a million copies worldwide and garnered more than 300 appearances on national bestseller lists, including #1 on The Wall Street Journal’s hardcover business list and has been translated into 27 different languages.
Jay was named recently named by the Huffington Post as one of The Top 5 Entrepreneurs to Watch in 2017.
More About Jay
Has been working with Gary Keller (a self-made billionaire) since 2000
- Gary’s influence and encouragement has been instrumental in Jay’s personal success
- Didn’t start off in real estate
- Loves books
- First jobs were working in a book store
- Thought he wanted to be an editor
- Moved to Austin
- No good editing jobs
- Decided to pursue being a professional writer
- Got a job as a newsletter writer for Keller Williams for his “day job”
- Connected with Gary Keller
First Book
- Wrote his first book in 90 days with Gary Keller and Dave Jenks (Millionaire Real Estate Agent)
- Interviewed over 120 real estate agents worth over $1 million each
- Jay didn’t want his name on the cover but Gary insisted
- Has sold over one million copies
- Trying to stay up to their speed, keep up with them, and working in a real estate environment was more interesting than he would have ever imagined
Second Book
2004 started researching for the Millionaire Real Estate Investor
- This book changed Jay’s mentality and how he envisioned success
- It was his “light bulb moment”
- He wanted to be an executive with a high salary
- After researching and interviewing with millionaire investors he saw that being an executive with a high salary was not the way to grow one’s net worth and that, in fact, it was a way to stifle that growth
- It’s not about your income it’s about your savings and your investments
His Light Bulb Moment
- He realized he wanted to be a real estate investor
- Shared with his wife what he was seeing
- She was immediately on board
- They made a commitment to live on 60% of their salary and invest the rest
- She later got her real estate license – now operates in Austin, St. Louis and Minneapolis
- She earned $1 million in income within 5 years
- His wife will sell 200 homes worth $60,000,000 this year
The Importance of Knowing Your Net Worth
- We should all be tracking our net worth
- Jay’s been tracking since 2004
- Took a class on how to read a balance and liability sheet
- Went home to do his own balance and liability sheets
- Saw that he was worth a negative amount
His First Property
- Bought worst house in a good neighborhood
- Bought for his family
- Paid $175,000 in 2001
- Less than 1,200 sq feet
- Was a 2 bedroom, 1 bath home. Added a ½ bath
- Worth over $600,000 today
- After he wrote Millionaire Real Estate Investor he realized this was not an investment, so they saved up for another down payment
- Bought another home and rented out their first home
- They now live in their third home
- Today, they own 9 properties
The Origin of The One Thing
- 2008, Jay was running Keller Williams University
- Was working on a course and gave it to Gary to review
- Gary wanted to take it home for the weekend and add a “forward” to it
- Gary came back with a 14-page essay called “The Power of One” that emphasized the importance of “lead generation” as THE ONE most important thing to get right for any agent to be successful
- Jay said “this is a book” and it really encapsulates great prioritization and Gary’s gift that has made him successful – It’s what has made Keller Williams successful
- On the surface it seemed like a simple idea that Made Keller Williams a success – a series of “one thing” stories
- Did we identify the “One Thing” that mattered and did we give it a 100% effort?
- It was all about the ideas and systems they were all living with
- This was a book that needed to be written
- So that sat down to write it but because it was not about real estate, it took 5 years to write before they published in 2013
- Did tons of research (stack of “white papers” 4 feet high)
- Hired two full-time researchers
- Went very deep on how people go about getting extraordinary results
Definition of The One Thing
- How, when you are making something your ultimate priority, how everything you do revolves around that priority
- When you do that, the results are very different than from other times in our life, when we did not have the same dedication
- The Big Idea Behind The One Thing: When we have a clarity of understanding of what our priority is, and give it the time it deserves, usually something really awesome happens
- It’s not a “new” idea but they brought a lot of practicality to the idea, and action plan and a focusing question – “What’s the ONE THING I can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” – that helps make a time process for making it happen
Potential Conflicts of Having Many “One Things” in Your Life
- Page 114 in the book addresses this area
- One Thing priorities in the book
- Spiritual
- Physical
- Personal
- Key Relationships
- Your Job
- Your Business
- Your Finances
Asking Important Questions
- What’s my One Thing this year
- What’s my One Thing this month
- What’s my One Thing this week
- What’s my One Thing this day
- What’s my One Thing this moment
Forming Positive Habits
Building positive habits is critical to our successful behavior
- There are key habits that you can adopt that will help in a number of life areas
- Prayer
- Exercise
- Diet
- Work style
- You have to do them one at a time but, once established, reaps positive results for the long term and it gets easier to add to “positive” habits
- Jay shared how Gary Keller overcame negative things in his life (being overweight, not handling stress well, etc.) by slowly introducing positive habits that helped bring him where he wanted to be – sequentially over time
- Figure out the priority, how you want to incorporate it into your life (the habit is great way to do this) and once you get that going, then you can go to the other priorities
- The early morning hours – waking early can be a habit that yields tremendous results
- Start your day with your most important thing
- And know that not making your goal is OK
Wealth Building Starts with Your Why
- Why do you want wealth?
- Jay’s definition of wealth: “Having the unearned income to finance your life mission without having to work”
- What will happen if you don’t accomplish that goal?
- The reason most people who want to be a millionaire don’t get there is because they don’t have the real motivation to do those things
Advice for Old Dawgs Seeking Their One Thing
- Working backwards from a goal
- The McKissicks co-authored the book “Hold” with Jay
- Late 40s, early 50s
- $100s of thousands in debt
- Needed a 10 year plan to change things
- Jay coached them: He said
- Pick a date
- How much cash flow will you need annually by that date?
- How long do you have
- How fast can you grow what you have and what will it yield?
- For example:
- If you are investing in residential real estate
- Expected growth rate: 4-6%
- Leverage can increase yield
- Make a plan to reach where you want to go
- The McKissiks decided they would educate themselves on the auction process
- Long-term play was not for them
- Too conservative to go “nothing down”
- Needed steep discount
- Bought properties to fix and rent out at auctions and the courthouse steps
- Used disposable income to buy properties
- Had to cash flow on 15-year notes – made extra payments to reduce term to 10 years
- Today, they are some of the wealthiest people he knows
- Jay’s recommendation of Old Dawgs
- Start with the cash flow question – what do you need?
- Give yourself a timeline
- Ask the question, “What investment vehicles can actually get me there?”
- Jay likes residential income and sees 18-25% return on a SFR
- A friend of Jay’s who comes from successful tech companies and is retiring early
- Jay asked, “How much of your retirement funds come from tech and how much from real estate?”
- He owns SFRs
- He said, “I wish it was the tech but it’s not. My real estate is completely providing for my retirement.”
What is Ahead in His Business?
- Loves educating his kids on real estate and entrepreneurialism
- Loves writing books and promoting his books
- Got a partner and has formed a platform and podcast on The One Thing
If You’re Thinking You Don’t Have the Time to Reach Your Goals…
- People almost always overestimate what they can accomplish in a year
- And they almost always underestimate what they can accomplish in 5 years
- 5 years is not that long a time
- He has seen people go from zero to millionaires just by doing the right things in that period of time and less
- It’s never out of reach – you just have to get focused and go after it!
How to Reach Jay and Find Out More About The One Thing
Where to Buy The One Thing
- The One Thing (Available on Amazon in hard cover, paperback, Kindle and Audible)
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