The ONE Thing

How do we unpack the lies that keep us from experiencing extraordinary success? One lie in particular that holds most people back is that “big is bad.” It’s tricky to debunk because, when you put “big” and “results” in the same sentence, many people jump straight to thinking that big is complex, time-consuming, or intimidating. But the four ambitious leaders of the Empire Building podcast live in...

How is your health right now? For many of us, The ONE Thing is our health – or it should be. We get so busy and stuck in the day-to-day that we often neglect healthy choices and, instead, opt for convenience. Or we just feel so busy that making a healthy meal or going to the gym just feels impossible. Today, we want to introduce you to someone who has spent the last few years making health Her ONE...

If you want to change your life, you have to get honest with yourself. What’s working? What isn’t working? Who’s bringing you forward and who’s bringing you back? Candid self-reflection can reveal things you wish weren’t there, but knowing what you’re dealing with makes big change possible. Our guest, Grace Vroom, knew something had to give; there were countless areas of her life that she wanted t...

Have you taken any time to be grateful today? When we think about forming power habits, we often think about doing something that will improve our productivity or health. We rarely consider the transformative power of mindset habits, and one of the most powerful habits is gratitude. That may seem like an easy or trivial thing, but in practice, embodying a state of gratitude every day is both surpr...

A brief summary of this episode

Did you come into this year imaging what was possible for yourself? Many of us had big plans for all the things we were going to accomplish this year—whether personally, professionally, or both—and then COVID-19 hit and we were derailed by our new reality. None of us had the existing habits we needed to support our new environments. Tom Bilyeu took a look at his life and realized he was capable of...

Think back to your childhood: What did you want to be when you grew up? What dreams did you have for yourself? What did you envision your life looking like? Along your journey, you may have come up across ceilings of achievement—or on the other end, you may have been thinking too small. Any time you are hitting up against a ceiling of achievement in your life, you are missing either a person or a...

How do we lead people through fear? The answer, as simple as it may seem, is goals—but the right goals. If the purpose of a goal is to be appropriate in the moment, many of us have lost sight of the fact that our actions may not be leading us to where we want to go. We don’t want to sacrifice our long-term visions and our long-term goals based on short-term circumstances. As an individual, you can...

Are you living a life by default or a life by design? Most people go through their lives by default: They wake up, check email, show up to the office, check email again, go to their first meeting, check email again, etc. And by the end of the day, they wonder why they didn’t get anything done. Day after day, this is how things play out, and they get to where they are by default — without intention...

Do you ever find yourself going through the motions? Operating as if you’re on auto-pilot? Sometimes we get so used to the way things are that we forget to imagine the potential for the way things could be if we set our mind to it — if we asked the big questions and took the time to search for those answers. As a result, we settle into what’s comfortable in exchange for what’s possible. No one ach...

While we’ve all been forced to change the way we work and get things done, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed — the need to have conversations with the people that matter most, conversations that enrich our relationships. While we’ve all been working from home, this has presented its own set of circumstances. We’ve been closer to some people, which could create conflict, and knowing how to have...

Do you think you could turn your life around in just 12 months? Every single one of us is constantly looking up, imagining a future, and asking ourselves how we actually get there. How do we bridge the gap? How do we ensure that the things that show up on our calendar this week put us in alignment with the type of life that we want to be living? Ryan Moran is the owner of capitalism.com, he has bu...

Are you holding on too tightly to the way things used to be? With all that is going on today, there is so much uncertainty. A marked lack of clarity. As business owners, what are some of the things we should be thinking about right now? Don’t let the past, and your attachment to it, stop you from casting a new vision that will bring you into the future. To help you get clarity, we sat down with pa...

Are your goals still achievable? Do they still matter? With all that’s going on in the world, people are really struggling with having a relationship with their goals — because the world has changed. As committed practice leaders of The ONE Thing, how do we get clarity on what our goals are moving forward, and how do we have a relationship with them so that, every single week, we know we are knock...

Welcome to 2020 2.0: The new version of your year you weren’t expecting. So many people out there are throwing in the towel on this year and calling it a wash. We know you’re different — or at least, you want to be — that you ignore the setbacks and keep going in the face of uncertainty. When your goals for the year were canceled by a global pandemic you likely asked the question, “What's the ONE...

If you could only choose one of the needs of your business to meet, which would you choose? Humans have a hierarchy of needs. It starts with psychological needs like water, food, and air. We have a need for safety — personal security, access to resources. We have a need for belonging, love, esteem, and at the very top, self-actualization. And just like humans have a hierarchy of needs, so too do o...

When you’re looking to achieve something extraordinary, you have to unlock the potential that lies within you. So many of us struggle with this. We think we are doing the best that we can do — but, really, most of us don’t know how much we’re capable of because we have never pushed ourselves past the point of discomfort. So, how do we find models and systems that allow us to shatter our ceiling of...

It should be obvious by now: This is not business as usual. This is business like we’ve never seen it before. As leaders, we’re required to lead our teams, our brands, and our organizations like we’ve never led them before. Managing a crisis is about more than just staying afloat for the next few months — it’s about looking far enough ahead to point your people in a direction while also remaining...

With everything that’s going on in the world, every single one of us is dealing with ONE Thing: fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of what’s going to happen to our businesses, our income, our jobs. How do you actually deal with that fear? We all face fear, but it doesn’t have to be a bad thing — on the other side of fear is opportunity. Patrick Sweeney goes by the title of Fear Guru, and not only is...

How are you adapting in these unprecedented times? The path of living The ONE Thing is relatively simple: you identify Your ONE Thing, you time block Your ONE Thing, and you protect your time block. That is a path of mastery that you go down over the course of your life. But we’ve been dealt a new hand now and circumstances have changed. We have to pivot and make sure that we can still be producti...

With everything that’s happening right now with COVID-19, we know that you have questions. So, we’re going to experiment with a new format in which Jay Papasan answers questions from the community. This has been on the back of our 411 for a while and this is a great opportunity to try it out. If you would like some additional support, visit the1thing.com/training. There is a goal-setting master co...

The path to getting everything you want starts with getting one thing at a time. But there are so many things that we want in our lives, and when we view all the things that we need to do, it can be overwhelming. However, when we start living The ONE Thing, we learn to view that overwhelming list of things to do as dominos, line them up, and knock the first one over. The secret to living The ONE T...

Why did you get into business in the first place? Most of us start businesses or aspire to start businesses because we want financial freedom and flexibility. And yet, the stats show that the majority of small business owners don’t have those things. That’s because there is ONE Thing that they don’t do — but if they started doing this ONE thing immediately, it would guarantee profitability for the...

Time is running out. It's time to make a decision on the habit you will form that will help you make it through this challenging time and come out the other side even stronger. Join us at the1thing.com/habits.

We know our lives have been disrupted by COVID-19. The goals we set and the way we worked has completely shifted.  What you may not realize is that you are forming habits right now... the question is, are they being formed by design or by default? In this episode we give you a simple way to choose ONE habit you can form to make it through this pandemic and come out the other side stronger. If you'...