The ONE Thing

Maybe you have heard of a fella named Gary Keller?

He has this pretty amazing system called the ONE Thing, and he has used this as a thought leadership tool to develop his brokerages across the country and has since parlayed this into a business of it's own.

Basically, it's a thought leadership system to help develop great leaders within companies. In a nutshell it's a great system and there are a ton of take-aways from the readings and learnings within that system. Here is a FREE resource to the ebook. you can review – "Click to Get It"

But what I want to talk about today is distilling down a component of these teachings and see how it can be applied to your business now. What is "The ONE Thing" you can do right now to make a difference in your business? 

And you might be surprised at what that ONE Thing might be. At first glance you might think okay he's going to talk about.... you need to make phone calls (outbound) YAY, everyones favorite thing to do. But, that isn't necessarily the case. Sure, that will make a difference in what your trying to accomplish, but that is hopefully being productive. More importantly how can create a space in your life where you can be productive? 

In this book Gary talks about finding your purpose. This is something we find near and dear, as you all know we are purpose driven! Having purpose is what puts a little "oomph" into your actions. This makes all the difference, because when your building out priorities (also important) they should be in line with your purpose. Your purpose is a north star guiding you along the way. If your taking inventory of your actions and you seeing a lot of things that don't align with you purpose, you need to reconsider what you're doing. 

So, take the time and define your purpose. It is very important. Now, take a step back and look at your schedule, investigate the things you're doing, are they inline with your purpose? Interestingly enough they typically are not. That's because life is messy, but you're in control. It's up to you to clean it up. 

They also talk about a hint that I feel is invaluable. They talk about protecting your time In exercise 5 of the book 

"EXERCISE 5: PLAN TO PROTECT YOUR TIME BLOCK

1. Review your time block appointments.

2. Identify three possible challenges that might get in the way of your daily appointment with

yourself. In the box on the following page, draw a circle around each challenge.

3. Identify solutions for each challenge. Sketch these out as appropriate for each challenge.

These solutions are for you, so draw them as they make sense. Your solution might be multi-

pronged or it might build on other steps being in place."

Again, these might not all be apples-to-apples comparisons but they are important to take into consideration when you are attempting to achieve something great. Thieves of time are the biggest detractor to finding success and we don't even realize it is happening most of the time.

Maybe, you're "mismanaging" your home-life?
Maybe you're "misplacing focus" in you regular job?
Maybe you're "not truly committed" to your purpose? 

These are hundreds of "maybe's" when analyzing how you can be more efficient.

For example, I'll give you one from my life.

My one BIG goal in life is to shed financial worry.

That's a very ambiguous statement so I'll let you know what that means to me. To me that means I want to know that my family is in a good spot, were not silver spoon rich at all "by any means" and I don't ever want that (important distinction) BUT, we have the basic needs met and we can afford to create memories and fun times without financial pressures. No were not taking a sailboat across the globe, but If I want to take an extra day to create a camping trip then I want my family to able to do so.

So, what does that mean for me specifically? That means I need to analyze our family financials and budgeting to what we can accomplish and set goals to increase our financial capacity within reason. Out of reach goals are just insanity. Writing "I want to a billionaire" on your goal sheet is okay, but have a plan you can execute and a pathway to get there. Nothing feels worse then continually missing the mark.

So, if thats what I want, I know we have to be fiscally responsible and live within my families means. The most important thing was to identify the roadblocks. The number roadblocks were scheduling freedom. My ONE Thing was managing time. If my time is managed correctly I find a lot more of it and I can use that time to create memories with my family which is the goal I had its the purpose behind the work. 

Within that one thing comes many things but it's about identifying truly what needs to change. So, now take that and apply it to your own life, apply it to your business, what do you see? What is one thing you can change that allows you to pour the energy you need into your business so it can give you what you want from it? 

What do you want from it? These are questions that needs answers and you need to work on your business, not in your business to find these answers. Happy hunting, I'm here to help!