John Jantsch (00:00.92)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jay, and my guest today is Jay Papasan. He’s a bestselling author and VP of strategic content for Keller Williams Realty International. He’s also the CEO of the One Thing Training Company, productive and co-owner of the Papasan Property Group in Austin, Texas. He’s co-authored several bestselling books, including one we’re going to talk a little bit about today, The One Thing.

Surprisingly simple truth about extraordinary results. So Jay, welcome to the show.

Jay Papasan (00:31.209)

Hey, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

John Jantsch (00:33.61)

So I do want to ask about your title. What does a VP of strategic content do?

Jay Papasan (00:40.412)

It’s not what you think. I actually transitioned roles. was running three big departments and then got to focus again around the things I love. And when I was running our big marketing team here for about three years, if you’ve ever run a marketing team, you get lots of cold DMS on LinkedIn and everywhere else. So I was like, okay, I’m going to come up with something that is anti-marketing. So I like strategy. I love creating content. So I just made up a title.

John Jantsch (00:41.987)

You

Jay Papasan (01:09.332)

It doesn’t really mean anything. I don’t think there’s a lot of them out there. So I don’t get many cold DMs, so I consider it a success.

John Jantsch (01:16.654)

Yeah, well, I just assumed that it meant you made up all the content ideas and then told other people to do them.

Jay Papasan (01:24.172)

That is some of what I do. So I’m a part of five podcasts. I help create them. And I do some editorial direction, which is in my past, I was an editor. But I also put my fingers on the keyboards for our books and newsletters.

John Jantsch (01:25.486)

Hahaha

John Jantsch (01:41.067)

So the one thing, book, I read, did come out 11 years ago, 12 years ago? I read it when it came out.

Jay Papasan (01:47.468)

It came out April 1st, 2013, so 11 years ago.

John Jantsch (01:50.22)

Yeah, okay. Still sells year in, year out tons, has sold millions, translated into many languages. Is there anything that you would put your finger on? I mean, it’s one thing for a book to be really popular, but to remain that popular. Is there anything that you’ve identified that you think keeps it in selling year in, out?

Jay Papasan (02:10.412)

I’m a book nerd and my publisher is an engineer. So we probably overthink this to be honest. So Gary was very clear he wanted to write a timeless book. And I’ve had writing professors point out like you can’t use words like Kleenex and Frisbee because nobody will know what they mean in a hundred years. That’s a tissue. That’s a throwing disc. And strangely this guy who started an upstart real estate company thought the same way. So we did set out to write

a book that was more timeless than timely, which is counterintuitive in publishing. It’s very accessible. I ran the whole book through a program called the Hemingway app, and it’s written at a fifth grade reading level. And I had read research that the bestselling authors of all time write at a very surprisingly low grade level, like Hemingway fourth grade. And I’ve trained myself, if I’m honest, I don’t publish anything that’s higher than a sixth grade reading level.

John Jantsch (02:51.182)

Yes.

Jay Papasan (03:08.544)

because we want the widest possible audience to find it accessible and it’s not work to read. And then I do think that we got a little bit of timing. That would be the other big one. We showed up, our book showed up right when smartphones were really everywhere. Our kids had them, they had them in schools and we had so many opportunities to connect and also obligations to do. People didn’t know how to sort through their priorities. And here we are with the book called The One Thing.

John Jantsch (03:13.827)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (03:37.613)

Yes.

Jay Papasan (03:37.76)

which kind of promised we can kind of help you simplify and focus.

John Jantsch (03:41.654)

Yeah. So a movie that shows up in the book early on of Jack Parlin’s kind of the famous Curly character, say, what’s the secret of life? One thing. What, if any, that impact?

Jay Papasan (03:55.98)

And I think about him on stage at the Oscars, like at age 85 doing one-handed pushups too. Like that’s my memory of that guy. He was legit.

John Jantsch (04:01.11)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What if any role or impact did that have in your thinking?

Jay Papasan (04:11.08)

It was a sideways thing. Gary and I had come up with the idea of the book in 2008. We spent about four and a half years researching and writing it with the team. And we had never actually threw that in, in the mix. But when we were starting to get clued to the finish line and teach it and socialize it, everybody kept coming up and going, well, it’s this all came from city slickers, right? And we’re like, no. So we actually went back and very late in the process added it to the book because

John Jantsch (04:12.781)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (04:33.614)

Yeah

Jay Papasan (04:39.966)

It was just an expectation. If the book is called The One Thing, that movie was so big, everyone expected it to be connected, so we did. And it’s perfect. I I can’t believe that wasn’t the connection.

John Jantsch (04:41.816)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (04:48.418)

Yeah.

Yeah, so surely somebody has stopped you at some point and said, but Jay, what’s the one thing?

Jay Papasan (04:59.148)

All the time, right? And that’s honestly what we do in our training company. We do try to help people figure out what matters most. a friend of ours, Sean Blanc, he was sharing with me, like lot of times he works with busy entrepreneurs and he goes, they look up one day and realize that 93 % of their success comes down to two hours a week. It’s just hard to believe that that could be so important those two hours.

John Jantsch (05:02.006)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (05:29.036)

Thank

John Jantsch (05:29.474)

Yeah. You know, I wonder, I’ve often, in fact, I wrote about this years ago, so more than one dude, I guess. If somebody just said, look, I’m just going to start working 20 hours a week. That’s just all the time I got. Cause I got this other thing, whatever it is. Would they be any less productive? I wonder.

Jay Papasan (05:47.936)

think if they’re committed to a big goal, they’d be more productive. So like, I don’t know, I’ve written about the power of constraints and my wife launched her career just as soon as our youngest child was being dropped off for daycare. And she said, I will only sell between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. because I’m going to be there for drop off and I’m going to be there for pickup. And she was rookie of the year and sold like 85 homes. And it’s not so much.

John Jantsch (05:51.095)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:12.344)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Papasan (06:16.18)

What she did, what she did is what all successful real estate salespeople do. It’s all the stuff that she chose not to do. She wasn’t hanging out at the water cooler. So I think of it like the day before vacation miracle, right? The day before vacation, you are a very productive individual and it’s not because of what you’re doing. You’re doing the right stuff. It’s you’re not doing any of the nonsense.

John Jantsch (06:23.192)

Yeah, right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:37.74)

Yeah, yeah. On April 14th, everybody has time to get their last minute tax preparation done, So what are some of the kind of common, especially in a book that is seemingly simple, it’s not a large book, 150 pages, something like that. What are some of the common misperceptions when people hear that this simple concept?

Jay Papasan (06:43.116)

Yeah, you got it.

Jay Papasan (07:03.444)

You know, when they hear the one thing, I think they think only one thing. And I think that really stops a lot of people in their tracks. I mean, maybe it sells a lot of books because they’re like, well, I want to know what that is. But the reality is we want people to understand it in a given moment, right? This week, this month, this hour, you should be clear about what your number one priority is. And so if you you pick up the US edition of the book, it’s white hardcover.

John Jantsch (07:05.698)

Yeah, right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:26.232)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (07:31.946)

We never put testimonials on the back. We never did any of the traditional stuff. We always had a question because we were very clear that what was the one thing we wanted people to do when they put down this book? We wanted them ask, like, what’s my one thing? And we wanted to make the book into a, like I’ve heard from people who flip the cover around on their bookshelf so that they were always staring at the question just to remind themselves, am I acting in my priorities or am I messing around right now?

John Jantsch (07:44.994)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (07:59.81)

So there’s a huge body of work talking about core values in a business and finding your why and your purpose. I’ve had a lot of people go through those exercises and, and, and end up saying, well, now what, what do I do with that? do you feel like you’ve sort of crossed that bridge?

Jay Papasan (08:12.993)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (08:18.888)

Yeah, I mean, when we were preparing to talk, like I shared, one of the things that since the book came out, I think I’ve gotten really good at is making decisions based on my core values. And core values isn’t actually in the book. We talk about purpose. And I’ve taught the book, I don’t know, four or 500 times now, corporate and private audiences. And everybody kind of struggles with this idea of what’s my purpose, what’s my mission. And a lot of times they’ll pull together a statement

John Jantsch (08:32.398)

Yeah, yeah.

Jay Papasan (08:47.616)

that doesn’t feel wholly authentic because it’s too weighty. I’ve found that core values is a gateway drug and I could give you the long story, but I won’t. What we teach people to do is identify what are your top three core values. And when you have a big decision, it should be a nine out of 10 on all three if possible, but certainly on number one. And mine are impact, family and abundance.

John Jantsch (08:49.816)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Papasan (09:11.872)

And we teach people like, I know what family means. It’s not just my immediate family. It’s my friends and partners. It’s the people I treat like family. And I mean, I actually got some of this from a fellow named Stu McLaren, who’s big in our space. He sold his first business because of this realization from reading our book and essentialism. So if you see my phone and I’ll hold it up for the people watching, I’ve got my core values as my screen saver.

John Jantsch (09:19.96)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (09:37.986)

Mm-hmm.

Jay Papasan (09:39.732)

I’ve read that you see your phone screen 87 times a day. I’ve got them on my one page goal sheet. I’ve got them front and center with my coach. So what I’ve tried to do is make it impossible for me to forget the things I’ve decided are important to me so that I can try to let my decisions be informed by them. But how do we make it practical? Is it a nine out of 10?

John Jantsch (10:03.928)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jay Papasan (10:06.09)

Or is it a five out of 10? Like that should tell you something. That’s not a heck yes, that’s a heck no.

John Jantsch (10:12.672)

So I’m sure that in your teaching, somebody says, okay, here’s the process, or you teach, here’s the process for identifying your one thing in a sea of competing priorities. Is there a process?

Jay Papasan (10:29.142)

There is. what I thought, I was worried. Gary, you know, he’s the self-made billionaire. He was the coach of all the top people in our industry for so long. He had more faith in it than I did because he’d lived it longer. But when someone asked the focusing question, what’s the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier, unnecessary? It’s a mouthful, but it’s a big question. I even asked him, I said, what if people don’t know the answer? He goes, you might be surprised.

John Jantsch (10:30.094)

Ha

Jay Papasan (10:58.342)

And having taught this to probably 10,000 people, I’ll tell you 98 % of people know what their one thing is, and they just are too busy to stop to ask the question. And usually they’ll tell you they feel guilty for not doing it. They’re walking around with a bad case of the shoulds. I know I should be doing this. I know I should be doing this. What they don’t have is a framework for them to live their intentions. And so we tried to help them have a simple framework.

for identifying that thing, which most people can, but then how do I put it on my calendar and live my schedule?

John Jantsch (11:32.366)

Yeah. Yeah. So, so that gets us to habits. This is a lot about habits, right? Because I think, I think a lot of times people can have a, they can go to a weekend workshop or whatever, have the aha, you know, but just like everything, if I say I’m going to lose weight, well, there’s some habits I’m going to have to change or develop, right? So what have you found have been the habits that people need to change or develop to really bring this to life?

Jay Papasan (11:49.707)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (11:57.878)

So in our research, we discovered that as near as we can tell factually, takes 66 days on average to form a habit. That was a discovery because we walked into it thinking it was 21 or 30 days. And so it takes longer than people think. But we’ve done, actually trademarked 66 day challenge just for the fun of it. And every year we lead three or four cohorts. So I’ve actually got good data on the habits that people have found most impactful. So I’ll share with you.

John Jantsch (12:21.57)

Huh. Yeah.

Jay Papasan (12:27.306)

I’m writing about it in a few weeks, but I’ll give you the sneak peek. The most impactful habit we ever did as a group cohort was getting people to look at their goals before they picked up their phone. And I underestimated it, I’ll be honest. But when you know what you’ve actually said yes to, it becomes a lot easier to say no to everything else. And almost everyone you know and I know, within 10 minutes of getting up, they’re on their phone.

John Jantsch (12:39.458)

Mm.

John Jantsch (12:50.21)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (12:56.707)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (12:57.236)

and they’re usually on social media, email or text. And those are places that other people’s priorities live. And so we had the highest reported overall halo effect when people just took five minutes in the morning to look at their goals before they went about their business. They did more work, they did it earlier, they were more focused, less distracted, like weird stuff, like fewer dirty dishes. So…

John Jantsch (13:22.626)

Ha

Jay Papasan (13:23.584)

There you go. I mean, I could go through habit after habit that has impacted me, but in terms of the ones that we’ve measured, that’s been by far the most successful.

John Jantsch (13:32.674)

Yeah. And I think it makes a ton of sense because especially, well, anybody, but I’ve been an entrepreneur all my life. So I’ll use my example. mean, we just, from the minute you get in front of your computer, you’re pulled in a thousand directions. it feels like, and so you’re right, just the simple habit of reminding yourself, yeah, I said I was going to do that. is, is so I could see the power.

Jay Papasan (13:45.632)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (13:55.318)

think I heard John Maxwell say this, so this is not a J original. He just said, some yeses are bigger than others. When you said, do, you knew that you were saying no to everybody else. And he’s like, I just remember thinking, wow, we need more clear yeses in our life so that we can say no.

John Jantsch (13:58.285)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:06.636)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:15.414)

So obviously this concept applies to any human being, right? Any individual. But what have you seen the impact it’s made on business leaders in kind of growing or scaling or changing their company, making it more sustainable, all those kinds of goals?

Jay Papasan (14:32.776)

There’s been a couple of things I’ve seen in sales teams. What I’ve seen them do is instead of going big goals, big action, they’ve actually gotten a little bit clear about being a little bit more precise about what they’re going to do to hit the goal. So they tend to do fewer things at a higher level. And one team, I remember at a huge biomedical company went from the bottom quartile to the top three in two quarters, and they focused on one product and one customer.

And they just used the book and they just said, how simple can we make it? And the challenge why people don’t like to do that is that when there’s complexity, people have places to hide. If you say you’re just going to do one thing, it’s yes or no, did you do it? And that’s a huge amount of accountability. So one, I’ve found people grow their revenue by simplifying their sales funnels hugely. And the other one from a team is

John Jantsch (15:11.681)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:15.372)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:24.248)

Yes, yes, yes.

Jay Papasan (15:27.574)

We teach people to do a very simple business plan. Everything’s on one page and it’s got to be like 12 point type, no cheating. And if it’s that simple, like one goal, three big initiatives, everybody kind of knows what their role is. And so we found two things like the power of focus and the power of clarity in business are very underrated.

John Jantsch (15:50.734)

100%. Do you find, I know you probably have worked with people that have been very successful that get at some point get to a place where they’re like, okay, I’ve done a lot of things. What’s next? So is that then a different reframing of the one thing or is it just a, okay, I just need to sit down and re-strategize.

Jay Papasan (16:12.652)

I think that we have seasons in our life. I do think that, you know, I know that something I read about millennials say that they’ll have as many as like 14 careers in their life. And I’ve been at the same place for 24 years and my dad was at the same place for 25. Gary’s been doing the same thing for 45. But if I actually step back, I’ve gone through phases about every seven years. And the one constant for me has been books.

John Jantsch (16:24.257)

just look at LinkedIn. It’s crazy.

John Jantsch (16:37.048)

Yeah, yeah.

Jay Papasan (16:41.568)

That has been the through line of my life. So there is a theme, but what I’ve been doing around it has evolved and changed. So I’m open to that. Like, I don’t think that just because that’s your one thing that you’re a prisoner to it. But what I do find is that if you can make peace with the boredom of success, which most people struggle with, their one thing will open up so many doors to things they didn’t expect. So I don’t know. Like I don’t.

John Jantsch (16:55.096)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (17:08.81)

I think that we can always ask the question, has my one thing changed?

John Jantsch (17:12.238)

Yeah. Well, the world’s changed around us, right? Every, every five years. So we better be at least checking in, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, I know you have the, read it in the bio, the name of it, let me get it right. The one thing training company. do people show, is that something that people buy from you custom or do you have routine? Like I can show up and we’ll do this three day thing. How does that work?

Jay Papasan (17:14.634)

Yeah!

Jay Papasan (17:17.992)

Nimble. Yeah with AI and everything like now, especially as writers. I my goodness

Jay Papasan (17:41.066)

You know, it’s evolving. When I took over, think we had 24 SKUs. And I remember sitting down at a mastermind and someone said, dude, your first job is to one thing, you’re one thing business. I was like, yeah, I heard you. and we’ve simplified and now we have basically one model for like what people come to us for is I want to either run my life or my business using these principles. So I worked with our head coach, got named Jordan Fried. He’s been my coach for the last few years. We built out our training program.

John Jantsch (17:45.738)

huh.

John Jantsch (17:51.026)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:03.651)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (18:10.624)

Here’s where we start, here’s where we finish, and here’s how we keep going. And we now just kind of offer that in different formats. Do you want to do a group coaching model? Do you want us to come to your company and teach it? Do you want us to do one-on-one coaching? Right? We have different ways we deliver fundamentally our one thing process. It’s a little different for big businesses. We have some Fortune 50 companies, and there’s a lot more rules with them, that’s for sure. But we do…

John Jantsch (18:31.48)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:39.074)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (18:40.32)

We fundamentally today teach people how to lead themselves and lead their teams using these principles and we offer it in different mediums. That would be the simplest way I could explain it. And we just get leads on the website. Right now we don’t even do cold outreach.

John Jantsch (18:57.73)

How much of a competitive advantage or competitive asset do you believe the one thing is for Keller Williams?

Jay Papasan (19:07.35)

We’ve got two signature books. So what’s weird, the one thing has sold 3.6 million copies in all editions now. It’ll be 3.7 in the next few months. Our first book we co-wrote together and we published it in 2003, it was called The Millionaire Real Estate Agent. That sold 1.6. In an industry at that time of about 800,000, today it’s over a million. Both of them are perennial.

John Jantsch (19:33.157)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (19:37.106)

sellers. They’re not always on the bestseller list anymore. But I do believe when people say, look up and say, you wrote the book on X, it provides a certain amount of thought leadership. It’s very hard to measure. You know this with PR and marketing, but the exposure, I have to think every time someone walked through an airport, they saw Gary Keller’s name on a bestselling book that has to provide a certain amount of authority. And I can tell you, I talked to

John Jantsch (19:52.568)

Sure, sure.

Jay Papasan (20:05.696)

the people who run our franchises, and I just always ask the question, how many of you had someone show up to join your team without you recruiting them because they read a book? And there’s usually always about 10 % of the room will raise their hands. So it attracts talent, it provides thought leadership. I can’t measure it, but I know that we grew about 40 % year over year for six years after the first book came out.

John Jantsch (20:17.826)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:31.468)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think there’s no question. There’s some attribution there. Well, Jay, I. Yeah, no, no question. Absolutely. I mean, I have a similar story when my first book came out. No question. Again, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Ductate Marketing podcast. mean, it’s really amazing to that you think of the legacy that this book certainly is created for you and.

Jay Papasan (20:36.032)

I think it’s a great reason for business people to write books.

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (20:59.85)

It’s funny. I feel the same way about you. Like you’re on like my special shelf with Al Ries and Trout and Seth Godin. Like you’re in the hallowed halls of marketing writers for me. So I’m kind of sitting here and thinking, wow, I’m so lucky to be on your podcast. So thank you for having me. I’m serious about that.

John Jantsch (21:06.958)

You

John Jantsch (21:14.414)

I

Well, I appreciate that, Jay. And again, I appreciate you taking a few moments and hopefully we’ll run into you again soon one of these days out there on the road.

Jay Papasan (21:24.566)

can’t wait.