The Place: Austin Java

The Cup: Plain old coffee for both of us.

The Background: I heard Jay’s name for the first time when I heard Gary Keller speak at an Austin Business Journal event last April. Gary was there to talk about his newly released book, The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results, which he co-authored with Jay Papasan.  This talk, and subsequently the book, were huge game-changers in my life, on many levels.

In a span of less than 12 months, I heard Gary talk another four times – all centered around The ONE Thing. I also had a chance to hear Jay speak three times – three different talks, but each focused around The ONE Thing.

One day I got a note on Twitter from Mega-Agent Ben Kinney, a fellow Keller Williams agent in Washington, telling me he liked my Coffee With a Stranger project, and that I need to have coffee with Jay Papasan.

It turns out Ben and Jay co-wrote an ebook together called SOCI@L: Attract Friends, Followers and Connections to Your Business. After spending several months holed up in an office together writing the book, the pair became friends.

Jay chimed in on the Twitter conversation at some point and said he’d love to have coffee with me, and we set it up.  The entire exchange was pretty much a testament to SOCI@L’s premise – social media doesn’t have to be a distraction. Done properly, it’s a tool to build and strengthen your network.

Before we get into Jay’s remarkable story, let’s cover some:

Common Grounds:

1. What’s a food you can’t live without?  BBQ – growing up in Memphis, I’ve always loved it. For the first two years in Austin I wouldn’t eat the BBQ. But I’ve come to really appreciate brisket, and the sausage here is great. It’s all the Czech influence. My favorite used to be Artz, but now they’ve closed. As a family, we like Salt Lick. You can’t beat the experience.
2. What’s your guilty pleasure? Reading cheap novels – pulp fiction. I read fantasy sci-fi as a kid, then horror and mysteries. For the last year or so I’ve been reading adventures. Gary (Keller) told me to read James Rollins, which led to spy novels. I come home and once the kids are in bed, I get into my yellow recliner, sit down with a beer and a book, and I’m happy.
3. How did you make your first buck? Lawn mowing. My first entrepreneurial move was when I got $10 to mow a yard and I paid someone else $5 to mow it.
4. What is the best part about your job? I get to feed my curiosity. I’m always asking, “How does this work?” I love to connect things that at first, maybe didn’t seem to connect.
5. What’s the worst part about your job? The scariest part: no matter how confident we are, no matter how much research we’ve done, there’s always that period of time when you’ve finished writing the book and it’s at the publisher. There’s maybe a 2-3 month lag when just a few people have read the book and you start to get a neurotic sort of fear that it will fail. It’s that waiting to see – that’s hard.
6. What’s your favorite movie? Jaws. I’m mortified of sharks. During Shark Week, I’ll be curled up in the fetal position. But for whatever reason, I’ve always loved Jaws. I’ve probably watched in twenty times. I have huge stretches memorized. If it’s on TV, I’ll flip over to it and watch. It’s just great story-telling.
7. If you could swap lives with someone for a day, who would you pick? Sherlock Holmes – his ability to see the truth in things and cut through all the distractions; it’s like a superpower. To get perfect vision for a day would be pretty wild.
8. What’s the best place to eat in Austin? Olivia’s. Their french fries are to die for. Not the kind of place you think about for french fries, but it’s a comfort food for me. Wendy (Jay’s wife) and I often go there for date night.

On top of the New York Times Best-Sellers list. How did Jay find himself there? Oh, that’s a terrific story!

Standing on a soccer field with the Girls of Summer. How did Jay wind up here? What a great story that is!S

Sleeping on a bench in Paris, on the night of his honeymoon. How did they get there? Well, that’s a beautiful love story!

Jay’s life thus far has been a series of incredible short stories. To hear them over a few cups of dark, rich coffee first thing on a beautiful, sunshiny Austin morning was pure joy. Jay is a talented wordsmith, and story-telling has been a gift since he was a child.

Jay recounts for me one of his first writing forays. At 12 years old, Jay set up a card table in a corner of his bedroom, plunked down an old manual typewriter, and set about writing a great work of literature. If the resulting masterpiece hadn’t been, essentially, a knock-off of The Hobbit, we might have seen Jay’s name on a book cover much sooner.

Another vivid writing memory for Jay came from high school, when he’d been asked to write a biographical essay. Jay wrote of a time he recalled as a child at his grandmother’s house – which he described for me as “a cathedral of Southern living”. It seems Jay decided his grandmother’s black cat should be white, and set off chasing it around the house peppering it with handfuls of flour. He began receiving comments from various teachers about how much they’d enjoyed reading the essay. It turns out, his teacher was so impressed with the writing that the essay had been passed around for other teachers to enjoy. Jay says, “To hear them say they really liked my story; it was very validating.”

You Are Shaped By the People Around You

Jay’s audience also included his circle of friends, who he entertained with his humorous science-fiction tales over lunch. Jay says of his posse, “I later learned that our group was known as “The Intellectuals”. Not the best moniker when you’re in high school and trying to get a date.” They played soccer and ran track, but they were also really smart.  Jay tells me, “I was the least academic among my friends. They all had great vocabularies. I didn’t walk around using worlds like ‘loquacious’  so I had to work to keep up.”

This habit of hanging around people Jay considered to be “better” or “brighter” than him carried on into college, where his roommate instilled in Jay (or helped solidify) an appreciation of words. This roommate, Scott, encouraged Jay to create a word habit. Each time he came across a word he didn’t know, he was to write down the word, the definition, the sentence he found it in and then create a sentence of his own using the new word. Jay took this advice – ultimately filling several notebooks with new words. The task paid off and now he walks around using words like “loquacious”.

After graduating from The University of Memphis with a degree in English and French, Jay headed to Paris, where he’d spend the next two and a half years working 20 hours a week (the maximum allowed) as a translator. The short work week meant Jay had lots of free time, which he spent writing short stories, walking around, and traveling with friends. Also, countless hours logged in coffee shops.  As Jay tells me, “Coffee was a simple pleasure I could afford to enjoy.”

Always Look for the Silver Lining

Jay’s next adventure took him to New York City, where after completing his Masters program at NYU, he began a career in publishing. First as an editorial assistant at New Market Press, then on to HarperCollins where, through myriad seemingly unfortunate events, Jay always found the silver lining of opportunity.

When huge downsizing meant Jay’s boss was let go, suddenly Jay found himself doing work he’d normally spend a decade earning the chance to do. This increased workload and responsibility turned into the chance to work with David Hirshey, who had an unbelievable Rolodex of contacts – having just spent 10 years as deputy editor at Esquire magazine.

Jay and David hit it off immediately, based largely on a shared affinity for soccer. This love of the game is what led them to publish Go For the Goal by Mia Hamm. This is also how Jay found himself on the soccer field with The Girls of Summer – the 1999 US Women’s World Cup Champions.

Body For Life by Bill Phillips was a project that neither Jay nor David were all that excited about. What they didn’t realize at the time was that this muscle-head, Bill, had written a book that would forever change fitness and nutrition paradigms.

Of the hundreds of book titles that have Jay’s name listed in the editorial credits, these two titles would prove surprisingly important in another few years. Before we get there, though, there’s another important story to tell. And it’s a love story!

Life is Even Better When It’s Shared

Jay had been in New York for about five years when he met his future wife, Wendy. It would be a year, almost exactly, after their first meeting that he’d get the chance to ask her out. The two were at a mutual friend’s birthday party. Jay tells me, “You just notice these things about a person. She had wrapped up a bunch of Pringles cans and given them to our friend for her birthday. It was just goofy. Then when we were walking across the street from one bar to another, she said, ‘Let’s swap IDs and see if the doorman notices.’ That was our first real interaction and I decided I wanted to ask her out.” A year later, they were engaged. 18 months later, they were married and on their way to a five month honeymoon in Europe and Northern Africa.

“Wendy had spent a year traveling by herself. She’s daring. I admire that about her,” Jay tells me when I express awe over their expansive itinerary. So the fact that they spent the first night of their honeymoon sleeping on a bench (as they waited overnight for a train) was just part of the fun. Jay says, “It horrified my grandmother, but it was kind of perfect for us.”

Always Be Up For An Adventure

When the time came to bid adieu to the romantic adventure, they needed to decide the setting for their next chapter. Because Wendy had been to Austin a few times, the Capital of Texas got her vote. She and Jay planned a weekend trip to check it out. During a time when all their New York friends were bundled up in layers of sweaters, scarfs and jackets, they found themselves sitting in the sunshine in Zilker Park, watching a soccer game, drinking beers out of Jay’s backpack. {For those of you who live in Austin, you’ll agree it doesn’t get more quintessentially  “Austin” than that.} The spell was cast, and the pair moved to Austin in February of 2000, with no jobs and a plan to figure it out when they settled.

Figure it out they did. Jay got a few writing gigs and eventually applied for a Newsletter Writer 2 position at Keller Williams International. After an extensive hiring process that led Jay to suspect he may have inadvertently applied to work for the CIA, Jay was hired. He moved around a few times, got to learn a lot about business and was enjoying the entrepreneurial atmosphere at KW.

One day he noticed what was obviously a book cover on the computer screen of a co-worker. He figured it must be a project he was doing on the side, but decided to inquire, which is when he learned that Gary Keller was planning to write a book.

Ambition Will Get You Where You Need to Be

Jay is ambitious, if you haven’t already figured that out. In fact, he told me he once got dinged on a review for being “too ambitious”. So when Jay had a chance encounter with Gary in the men’s room, he took a gamble. He told Gary he heard he was working on a book and asked if Gary remembered that he had worked in publishing.

Gary invited Jay back to his office, where he laid out his plans for writing 13 books. The first – The Millionaire Real Estate Agent – he wanted to write that year. Gary and Dave Jenks had gone to the bookstore and bought their favorite how-to, self-help books that they wanted to model theirs after. There was Good To Great by Jim Collins, The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley and William Danko, Go For the Goal by Mia Hamm, and Body For Life by Bill Phillips. Jay says it was one of those chill-to-the-bone moments. He turned to the pages of the last two books where his name was listed and said, “I edited both of those.” Hired!

Jay had 30 days to write a business plan and then in July, they set about writing the book that would become, arguably, the real estate professional’s success Bible. As Jay describes it, every day, Gary and Dave would talk and write on white boards for hours and Jay would take all the notes and assemble them into, on average, 14 pages of book. They did this every day, and eventually (about four months later), a 400-page book was ready to be sent to the publisher on November 3.

Clear Vision + Hard Work = Winning

This was just the beginning. Since that first book, Jay has co-authored The Millionaire Real Estate Investor, SHIFT, and Your First Home, served as developmental editor for numerous best-selling titles, including Green Your Home, SHIFT Commercial, and FLIP: How to Find, Fix and Sell Houses for Profit. HOLD: How to Find, Buy and Rent Houses for Wealth was released in 2012, and appeared on the Publishers Weekly and the USA Today bestseller lists.

Gary and Jay’s most recent book, and the project Jay names as his greatest professional achievement to date is The ONE Thing. Since its April, 2013 publication The ONE Thing has made more than 135 appearances on national bestseller lists, including #1 on the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Publisher’s Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, BookScan, and 800CEOREAD. Remarkable!

Success Means Stretching

I want to know what Jay thinks people might be surprised to learn about him, and he tells me it’s that he’s introverted. Last year, Jay presented The ONE Thing over 30 times – each time on stage in front of hundreds to several thousands of people. Jay tells me, “After doing an event and meeting strangers all day, I’m exhausted.” He also says being on stage presenting doesn’t just come naturally to him. He says, “I have to really practice to be up there.”

Jay has certainly accomplished so much already. I wonder if there’s anything left on his bucket list – or if he even has one. He shares with me that every year, he and Wendy spend time goal-setting and planning the following year, and even look ahead five years. One thing he knows he’ll do, when the time is right, is to write his own book. At this point he’s not sure if it will be fiction or non-fiction, but he knows he’ll write one eventually.

Personally, when it come to great achievements, he tells me he hopes it will be how he and Wendy parented their children. He says, “It’s a huge priority for us. We just try to make time. Every morning, for at least half of breakfast, we’re at the table together.  At night, we have dinner together with no TV, except on Friday night which is movie night. But then the TV being on is special and fun. And we read together at night.”

The Answers are in the Questions

Some advice that’s had an impact on Jay’s life came in the form of a question from Gary. Jays says, “I think we’re doing good, and then suddenly I hear Gary’s voice asking, ‘Is that the best you can do, or the best that can be done?’ That’s a very convicting question. But it’s taught us to think bigger. Your best is not always the best that can be done. Usually it’s just a little more work and you can change your whole approach, and you’re doing it more effectively.”

Jay’s time spent researching, then writing The ONE Thing with Gary has had a profound impact that encompasses nearly every aspect of his life. I want to know what Jay considers to be the greatest issue facing society today and he talks about distraction.

Learning to Let Go

Jay says, “We’re in the Information Age. I think when we look back in 30-40 years, we won’t call it the Age of Information, we’ll call it the Age of Distraction.  We have so many opportunities to decide how to devote our time, focus and energy. People just aren’t equipped to make decisions that quickly. That’s why my heart is in The ONE Thing. I really think it’s the solution. I’ve been passionately sharing this message and it’s really resonating with people. They are overbooking their calendars and instead of feeling like this is a glorious time to be living in, they are stressed out. And that feels wrong.  It’s about making better choices and doing fewer things.  Everyone I know who has made that choice is happier and more content.  If you went back to 1880, people wouldn’t be complaining about being stressed out. Time used to be thought of like; my morning, my afternoon and my evening. With our smart phones, we can now block out our time in 15 minute increments. That’s not necessarily a healthy thing. We have so many diversions.”

Jay goes on to share with me a story that illustrates this self-inflicted stress perfectly. Everyone kept telling him he needed to watch Downton Abbey. He had two seasons on DVR and just never watched it. He’d see it every time he turned on the TV and it was stressful. Jay says, “I was carrying that around like a lodestone of guilt. And it’s not even necessary. So there’s this stuff – ‘Oh gosh, this weekend I’ve got to get caught up on half a season of The Walking Dead.” We’ve added that stuff to the mix. It’s dysfunction. One day, after I got Wendy’s permission, I deleted the whole Downton Abbey folder. It was so liberating.”

To Thine Own Self Be True

Something Jay believed to be true for a long time, but now knows differently, has to do with what he learned about willpower.  He says, “Writing that chapter in The ONE Thing totally changed the way I thought about nutrition and cognitive stamina. There is a reason why Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein wore the same clothes every day. Your blood sugar actually drops after every decision you make. Now, I keep almonds and Power Bars around. To keep your mind sharp, you need to feed it.  The subtle thing about habits – eventually it is now your default and takes no extra energy. Also, positive habits have a snowball, or a domino effect. This didn’t make it into the book, but people who formed one positive habit were found to have fewer dirty dishes, they showed up on time more – it creates a halo of discipline without you even thinking about it. It’s positive momentum.”

What would Jay say to the world if he had 30 seconds to do so? This is his message:

“People can accomplish more by having better priorities. My greatest satisfaction right now is the feedback from people who’ve read the book. We’ve had sales teams report back that they’ve had huge results – record 4th quarters. That’s great. But then I get a note from someone: ‘After reading the book and hearing you speak, I started walking my daughter to school.’ Jay pauses here, visibly moved at this memory. He swallows and then tells me, “That’s much more important! It’s about getting the big priorities in place.”

He needlessly apologizes for the show of emotion and adds, “I got that note last week and I thought, THAT’S IT! That’s what we write books for!  It’s about the little differences. People are getting their lives in perspective and putting the important things first. It’s my favorite thing to hear someone say, ‘Your book changed my life.’ For Gary and I both, obviously there’s a business purpose for writing the books too. But the passion; how you spend 5 years there writing it; is about making a difference.”

Jay’s story is far from finished. In fact, I doubt it’s even half-told at this point. But the so-far life story of our protagonist, or perhaps more accurately, our hero, offers several important life lessons. My favorites, though, are the questions his story offers.

• Are you doing the best you can do, or the best that can be done?
• What difference did you make in someone’s life today, and how did you celebrate?
• Who made a difference in your life today, and how did you thank them?
• What’s the ONE thing you can do, such that by doing it makes everything else easier or unnecessary?

I have a feeling the extent of your contentment and happiness can be found in your answers. Here’s a hint: it has nothing to do with Downton Abbey.