A few years ago, I read a book called The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papsan. The book stuck with me and showed me the importance of avoiding distractions, or what they call shiny object syndrome. This is a modern phenomenon that so many people struggle with because of all the different opportunities there are out there for people to try. It can be overwhelming, almost intoxicating how much there is in the world for you to try in order to better yourself and your family financially. The One Thing breaks down the components of life we strive for success in and all of the things we are susceptible to succumb to by creating focus in these key areas of importance where consistency will create success. The concept is so simple, it should be easy to implement. “What’s the one thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” I’ve pondered this question and it’s allowed me to niche down in the real estate industry. In my case, my one thing has evolved and the way we have applied it to our business has evolved.
My Misunderstanding Of The One Thing
If we rewind the clocks 18 months, I was all over the place. From buying properties, to trying to wholesale, doing a fix and flip, and so on and so forth, I was just trying to do anything and everything I could to see what I could make stick. Everyday was a wild goose chase where you couldn’t tell productive from busy if you tried. I was a mess and I had no business at all, just a lot of jobs in which I would be lucky to make any money doing! Around this time, I reread The One Thing and it changed a lot for me. I realized that the best use of time for myself and my partners would be to wholesale real estate using creative finance. Pretty specific I thought. Now, I would really get to nail down my one thing and see how to truly drive the most revenue to our business.
Choosing to specifically wholesale real estate and drop everything else was a very good decision. It was the one thing we could do as a company that would make everything else easier or unnecessary. Our mistake was taking the one thing too far. Our focus on solely creative finance deals let us leave a lot of money on the table. We were ignorant of other strategies investors were using to profit off of thst we could be implementing. Instead, we stuck within the confines of our single strategy niche and it nearly put us out of business.
Wholesaling real estate, for those who don’t know, is essentially finding deals that we package up and market for other investors to buy. The more strategies you have in your toolbelt as a wholesaler, the more options you can provide sellers, and the more access you have to different buyers to monetize your deals. It seems so simple, I’m not sure how we overlooked it for so long. Having the ability to look at a deal and dissect it from multiple different angles is where the most money is made in this game. We made the grave mistake of applying the one thing concept to not only the niche of real estate investing we chose, but we also applied it to the lens we were viewing any and all deals through, significantly reducing our chances of landing more consistent deals for a larger cohort of buyers! The truth is, we pushed the limits of the one thing to a fault. We took it so literally to the point of ignorance and that is not the point of the one thing. The purpose is to add focus to your actions, not limit your opportunities that are within the focus of that action. This was a tough but necessary lesson we had to learn.
What The One Thing Really Means For Us
The One Thing for us has everything to do specifically with the actions we take on a day to day basis. I know the one thing I have to do everyday that will make everything else easier or unnecessary is follow the marketing checklist we’ve created for when deals come down the pipeline to sell to another investor. This process is still being fine-tuned, but I know that my time and energy is in the right place when I am going down that marketing checklist and deals get done directly as a result. It is the closest thing to the money I could possibly be doing, and at the end of the day, that’s the name of the game! Every single deal that crosses our plate we analyze deeply in search of the most profitable exit strategy we can implement to package and sell to our buyers. This is the highest and best use of our time.
Evolving The One Thing
The role we are all in right now within the business is designed for scale. Our one thing now won’t be our one thing 5 years from now within our business if we do it the right way. What the one thing truly means in this context is the following question:
What is the one thing you can be doing right now to truly drive progress in your business?
As we grow and scale, this will continue to evolve, and that’s okay! Scale is our goal and with that in mind, we need to be in the most important roles to continue to grow the business. When your one thing evolves, it should coincide with growth and improvement within the business. We have had some evolutions of the one thing in our own lives and business so far, but with the right understanding of the one thing, we will always be doing something that makes everything else easier or unnecessary!