Jay Papasan:
Today, we’re gonna ask and answer the question, what does winning actually look like for you and your business when you really break it down? Do you know what winning is? Like, the thing that you do, and when you do it predictably, you’re kinda destined to come out on the other side better than you started. And do you know where to start to make that thing happen?
So, this week, we’ve got our head coach, Jordan Freed, and we’re gonna break down, just in time for football season, folks, first downs, first dominoes, and false starts. But we’re not gonna go too deep into the sports. In fact, we only mention the Kansas City Chiefs once, which is maybe a record for an hour conversation with Jordan Freed. But we are gonna talk about how you can break down your business into something that’s very predictable, so that you can plan for success and make it reliable and consistent. Enjoy this episode with Jordan Freed.
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Jay Papasan:
I’m Jay Papasan. And this is The ONE Thing, your weekly guide to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results
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Jay Papasan:
Jordan, welcome back to The ONE Thing.
Jordan Freed:
Good to see you, Jay.
Jay Papasan:
It’s always fun to be chatting with my former coach, my friend, and our current head coach. One of the things that we’ve been kicking around is as we coach businesses and we help businesses, how do we help them make their business more predictable? And you and I both come from the real estate industry, and it’s pretty well documented. The moment we get an appointment with a potential buyer or seller, our odds of getting closed business and income start to become very predictable from that point. Everything up to that can be a little crazy, and we especially love the idea of a listing.
For those who are not familiar with real estate, that means you have a contract to help someone sell their home, which is, in fact, the inventory of our store in real estate, right? That’s the product that everybody is either hoping to buy or sell. And that looks different in every industry, but every entrepreneur wants their business to be more predictable. How do we help people identify what that first step in the process is? You call it finding the first down, right?
Jordan Freed:
Yeah. So, the first down actually came from, Jay, a conference that I was at in 2018. And I was in San Francisco, and one of the speakers is Joe Montana. And if you don’t know who Joe Montana is, he’s a Hall of Fame quarterback. He actually played at San Francisco, and then he came to the Kansas City Chiefs, my beloved Kansas City Chiefs. He didn’t win any Super Bowls here, though. Jay was asking how many times the Chiefs were gonna come up in this conversation, so if you’re keeping track, there’s the first one.
But Joe Montana was up on stage, and he was being interviewed, and he said something that has just always stuck with me because he was talking about how his coach, Bill Walsh, had a very different formula for winning football games. And his formula was not so much looking at the scoreboard. It was the first team to get to 25 first downs would win the game, right?
Now, formulas have to have credibility and track records in order for us to buy into them. And those two gentlemen, Bill Walsh and Joe Montana, won four Super Bowls together. So-
Jay Papasan:
Pretty credible track record.
Jordan Freed:
Yeah. I think the credibility is there. And so, that idea of a first down, of getting clear on… And this is what The ONE Thing book really helped me with, Jay, when it first came out, is thinking about what is the one area that if I get that right, everything else can go wrong, and I’ll still have a high likelihood of achieving my goals, right?
Jay Papasan:
So, what’s a first down in real estate? What do you call a first down in real estate?
Jordan Freed:
Either leads or listings. In the real estate industry, I think that listings are the linchpin, that I’ve never coached a real estate professional that knocked down their listing taken number consistently every single month that didn’t hit the rest of their goals. And so, whatever industry you’re in, I think it always depends upon, what is your listing? What is the one thing that if you got it right, everything else could go wrong, and you still have a high probability or likelihood of achieving your goals.
And I had a conversation with somebody recently about this, and we even broke it down to where his first down every single week was 50 contacts. 50 contacts to people in search of listings, right? That was his first down. And I’d like to share a little story about that, Jay, because this is somebody who has been very successful. And then, COVID happened to his family and hurt his wife’s business, had some health issues, some things showed up. And so, he was really trying to right the ship and has struggled for the last five or six years.
And the thing that I shared with him about the first down is if you are a New England Patriots fan, you’re gonna absolutely love this because in the Super Bowl of 2017, the New England Patriots were down to the Atlanta Falcons by 25 points. Tom Brady was down by 25 points. Now, Jay, pop quiz. What is the maximum amount of points you can score on one drive in a football game? What’s the maximum number of points?
Jay Papasan:
Eight.
Jordan Freed:
Eight. So, that’s a touchdown and the two-point conversion, right?
Jay Papasan:
That’s right. That’s the max.
Jordan Freed:
Yeah, that’s what I was sharing with him is I said, “Look, in that game, if the maximum number of points you can score on one drive is eight, how many possessions is he down?”
Jay Papasan:
So, 25 points, that would be four possessions, right?
Jordan Freed:
Right, four possessions. And I said, “Look, if you want an exercise in the power of the first down and the power of really seeing this play out, go watch that game, at least the last half of it.” Because what Joe or what Tom Brady did not do is lose faith. What he did was rallied his team around one play, one down, one drive, one score, and they famously came back, tied the game, went into overtime, and they won it.
Jay Papasan:
I remember watching that game. It was insane to watch. It was the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history, if I remember correctly.
Jordan Freed:
It was, and still to this day remains the biggest Super Bowl comeback. It was the first Super Bowl at that time that had ever gone into overtime. Now, I might be wrong about that, but I’m pretty certain.
And so, the power of the first down and being really clear on what that is for you in your business and in your life, it’s that one thing that if I just do that, then I have a high likelihood of achieving my goal, even if everything else does not go the way I think it will.
Jay Papasan:
You’re making me think of Moneyball. A lot of us read that book or saw the movie, and they figured out their first down, right? That’s to mix our metaphors really completely. They just needed to draft players or select players in free agency who were a hard out, right? That they were likely, whether they hit home runs or not, they just were good at getting on base. And they decided to assemble a team with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, the Oakland A’s, around people who were just hard outs. They may not be able to hit it out of the park. They might just hit soft singles. But they got on first base. But when you got on first base, the odds that you could get all the way around second, third to home and score go dramatically up. And that was a winning formula. So, it plays out in sports. It also plays out in business.
Jordan Freed:
That’s right. Now, where this led, Jay, is the first domino, right? So, the first down is what is the repeatable action that if you do that, you’ll win. And do you remember when you called and told me about the first domino and the idea of the first domino?
Jay Papasan:
I was so excited. I thought I’d had this big breakthrough, and you were just a big wet blanket. You’re like, “What? What are you talking about, man? I don’t get it at all.”
Jordan Freed:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah.
Jordan Freed:
I remember specifically I was standing in my office, and I was like, “Jay, I don’t know why you’re so excited about this.” And I was like, “Hey, at least you know I’m not just a yes man, right?”
Jay Papasan:
Yeah.
Jordan Freed:
At least you know I’ll tell you the truth. But at that time, Jay, that was in 2024. You asked me, you said, “Let me just play it out for you.” And you said, “What’s your big goal for the year?” And at that point, it was my health and specifically getting much better at nutritional eating. I grew up in a household where we were fed a lot of junk food, and I wanted to get much better at nutritional eating.
And you said, “So, based on what I’ve shared with you about the first domino, what is your first domino in order for you to achieve that goal?” And I said, “Meal prepping.” And you said, “That’s not the first domino.” I said, “What do you mean?” And you said, “Well, what do you have to have in order to meal prep?” “Groceries.” “Where do you have to go to get the groceries?” “Grocery store.” “Okay. Do you just walk into the grocery store and aimlessly walk around and just start throwing things into your cart?” Sometimes, but normally I have a list.
Jay Papasan:
If you’re gonna meal prep, you probably need a list.
Jordan Freed:
That’s right. Now, what creates the list? The meal plan. And that was when you connected the dot for me, and it changed my life.
Jay Papasan:
Your one thing was to eat healthy. The thing that you thought you needed to do in order to reliably eat healthy was prep your meals, and I can attest to that. When people prep their meals, they take a lot of the friction out of healthy eating. It’s right there. It’s already ready to go. I just have to heat it up or not and just eat that thing that I’ve already prepared to eat. If they have a choice, now they’re like, “Well, I could go get Chick-fil-A. I could go get pizza.” It gets easy to do the other things.
So, meal prep is a great kind of early domino to get there, but we had to go backwards because you’re not gonna reliably meal prep without the meal plan. So, how has that worked out for you?
Jordan Freed:
Oh, it’s been great. And now, I think of it as meal prepping is my first down. But sitting down and the thing that you and I landed on was that I needed to have a 30 to 45-minute time block on Fridays to meal plan for the next week, and that was my first domino. It was the first thing that set off all the other actions. And when that happened, Jay, I was like, “That’s it. That’s it.”
Jay Papasan:
That’s kinda how we define the first domino of people. We’ve talked about it, or I’ve certainly talked about it here on the show before. The first domino it’s a big part of The ONE Thing, the idea of what starts the domino run for you. So, what’s the first significant action you can take that unlocks the momentum towards doing the things that you need to do to get the outcomes that you seek? And we traced it back for you on eating healthy. The first down was meal prep, but the first domino was planning the meals. When you planned the meals, you got the list. When you had the list, you could go and shop for the list. When you got the groceries, you could actually do the meal prep. And when you did the meal prep, you tended to eat healthy. It feels complicated, but it’s actually kinda simple if you step back.
You talked about the gentleman whose first down was to make 50 calls. You helped him figure out his first domino, too, didn’t you?
Jordan Freed:
Yeah. And so, this is very common amongst small business owners, is that they know that their first down is typically a number of contacts, for example, right? And yet, when we started to unpack that, I asked him “What is the smallest, most meaningful course of action that would allow you to consistently make those contacts?” And it always ends up with the same thing. “I need to sit down the week before and create the list of people that I’m actually going to reach out to.”
And so, that showed up as a time block on his calendar. This was last week. I got the first text from him on Monday saying that he was ready. And I love that because he was starting his week. And this is something that I think is really important. He was starting his week without guesswork, because guesswork is an invitation to distraction. When we are sitting there wondering what to do, we invite any and all distractions into our life, and then we justify them, typically in the name of customer service or helping my team.
Jay Papasan:
I think a lack of clarity invites indiscriminate action in general. I was, like, chatting with someone the other day about the hustle culture and how I think a lot of people hustle all the time ’cause they’re not clear of the value they actually deliver. And if they were actually clear of the unique value they brought, they would do a lot more of that thing instead of doing everything, right? You’re talking about getting clear, so he got really clear, not only about what he needed to do, but what he needed to do in order to do that thing.
Jordan Freed:
That’s right. And so, that’s the first domino that then sets up the first down.
Jay Papasan:
So, I’ll just pause here before we get to false start. I would just invite our listeners, you’re driving, maybe you’re walking the dog, maybe you’re on the treadmill, or you’re at SoulCycle bike, whatever it is you’re doing while you’re listening to this podcast, what’s your first down? And have you actually accurately identified the first domino to make that thing happen? Because if nothing else, if you had to check out of this podcast, if you could figure out what your first down was, if you could then identify the thing that if you did it consistently, that first down would probably happen, your business would get very predictable, your anxiety would go down, your fears don’t go completely away, but man, the moment we start to have faith in the action we’re taking and our ability to take it, Jordan, so much gets easier for us.
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Jay Papasan:
So, how do we false start? I know what that looks like in football. You jump across the line before they snap the ball, right? It’s a false start.
Jordan Freed:
Yep. You move on the offensive side of the ball. And so, what I noticed in myself and in other people, Jay, is that we have a tendency to wanna start on step two or three of something rather than starting on step one. So, let’s use the analogy or the story of you and I when you were excitedly explaining to me the first domino. I was false starting because my focus was on, “I just need to meal prep.” Well, that’s starting on step three or four.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah. It’s gonna happen some weeks, but some weeks you’re gonna go to meal prep and realize crap, I don’t have the ingredients I need. And it derails your progress because there was a previous step that you skipped.
Jordan Freed:
And so, then, it’s gonna invite distraction, i.e., let’s just go to Chick-fil-A and, I’ll eat Chipotle burritos all week long.
Jay Papasan:
There’s some people who would take that outcome and go, “That’s not so bad.” Except that they’re not hitting their health goal.
Jordan Freed:
Yeah, that’s true, and they probably don’t have… I’m, I have a dad bod I’m trying to put into remission. And so, maybe they’re not quite dealing with that at the level that I am. But yeah, we have a tendency. And again, it’s the same thing with if we’re using the 50 contacts. If we aren’t clear, even if you know when you’re gonna make those calls, right? But you show up Monday morning, 9:00 AM, it’s right there on your schedule, I’m following my time block, but then you step into it and you go, “I don’t know who I’m gonna call. I don’t know what I’m gonna say.” You are completely and utterly unprepared. And now, you’re guessing, and that guesswork is just detrimental to your own consistency. And so, that’s false starting. And if you’re consistently false starting, you’re just gonna get frustrated, and that frustration builds.
Jay Papasan:
So, you were… maybe because you’re a coach, like, we got to your first domino, and you didn’t really object. For you it was just, “Oh, that’s clarity. That makes sense. I’m gonna do it.” I’ve found with a lot of the people that we serve and work with, they’re highly ambitious, they believe in big swings and big action. A lot of them see what the first domino is, like that thing that if they could just do it, so much of their success becomes predictable, and they just don’t wanna believe it’s that small. Is that something you’ve experienced? And if so, how do you address it with them?
Jordan Freed:
We’ve all experienced that to a degree, Jay. And you don’t find very many achievers, like for example, there was a woman last week that I was talking to and she said, things just aren’t quite moving as quickly as I think they should.” And anytime I hear that on a coaching call, I always stop and I ask those people, “Can you name one thing in this world that moves at the speed that you think it should?” And what do you think the answer is, Jay?
Jay Papasan:
Yeah.
Jordan Freed:
If we asked your wife, Wendy, “Hey what moves at the speed that you think it should?” What do you think she’d say?
Jay Papasan:
Me, and that’s it. Everybody else is slow.
Jordan Freed:
Right. Nothing moves at the speed that we think it should.
Jay Papasan:
No.
Jordan Freed:
Right? And so, one, the recognition that it is patience in the macro, and it is hustle in the micro. And that people, if you want quality long-term results, it is going to require quality long-term focus. And what I try to help them see is that they are in a lot of ways, because of their ambition, they’re tripping over their shoestrings, you’re trying to do too much, you’re rushing from one thing to the next, nothing’s really getting completed, and if we really look at the track record of results that you’ve created so far, how has that mentality really served you? And if it hasn’t, then are you the type of person that has the wisdom or discernment to be open to trying something different for a season?
Jay Papasan:
I love how you put it all in questions. You just kinda guide them through questions to name that, “Yes, I’m ready. It hasn’t served me well. I’ve had ups and then downs. I get very frustrated. I let myself down. I get off track, then I get back on track, and it always feels like these wild swings.” That’s usually what you hear, some version of that. They’re really, really, really on it until they’re completely burnt out and not doing it at all.
Once someone makes peace with this so you, now, dutifully show up to do the boring work of planning your meals every week. You now have to also make peace with the fact that this kind of long-term, very predictable success It’s not that exciting. How do we battle that from your standpoint?
Jordan Freed:
It’s not that exciting and unless you give it enough time. Because I think you’ve probably experienced this in writing, Jay, where it feels like nothing’s happening, and then there’s this, like, real amazing season of not micro progression, but a macro progression. Like “Whoa,” right? I feel like I just experienced all of that time that I wasn’t getting results. The results just decided to release themselves in this little window, and it’s almost like you’re building, building, building, and then all of a sudden it unleashes.
And I’ve seen this in myself and other people, that if you will give the first domino and your first domino or your first down long enough, then you will experience those times of heightened progression. And once you experience that, I find it to be very addicting. Like, “Oh, okay, yeah, I know that those results are coming.”
But what’s the problem, Jay, is that most people are not consistent enough to ever create that heightened season of progression. They never truly experience it for themselves, so it’s always secondhand. It’s me trying to tell you, “Hey, Jay, this is what it’s like,” but it’s like me trying to explain to you what a banana tastes like, right? You have to eat the banana to know what it tastes like. Does that make sense?
Jay Papasan:
Totally. And I go towards… I was working with someone, ’cause you brought up writing, one of my coaching clients, and she was describing to me how she had one of those days where it just all flowed. It felt very clear to her that what she was writing was significant. She felt like she had an amazing grasp on the ideas she was trying to relate to the reader down the line. And she was frustrated that the four or five preceding writing sessions just felt so unproductive.
And I’ve been doing this long enough now that I know that you don’t get that day without having those unproductive days. And it’s a little bit like your pickaxe, like you’re hitting this rock wall and it bounces back and your hands are numb. It might even hurt your shoulder and elbow, and you’re like, “This is not working.” And you hit it again, and you hit it again, but then there’s the big crack, and suddenly it opens up.
But I think you have to get those reps in that feel less productive to get the really productive ones. And the people who do it most consistently, that’s when they start to get… That’s what we talk about, the domino run. They start to get those more frequently than other people. And I think a lot of people who do it infrequently, they’ll just jump in and say, “You know what? I’m gonna do my 50 contacts this week because I’m in a class, and the class has got accountability or a reward system, and I’m just gonna do it.” And they may get one of those days. But then because they don’t do it frequently, they don’t understand it’s not an even distribution of results, right? It’s random.
You can play roulette and get black five times in a row, but it’s still a 50/50 chance basically to get red the next time. It just feels like nothing’s happening. And they will judge the average days now by that one good day they were lucky to have, and it wasn’t something they earned. But if you submit to the process, you just surrender to it, those days show up and you start getting more than even those lucky people do. That’s where I think it gets addictive, when you start to see a pattern and you start to understand the unproductive day is really setting you up for a productive one.
Jordan Freed:
That’s right. And I think, also, when people experience things like that day that she experienced, I like to get infinitely curious like what you just did, right? Because she didn’t catch that. She didn’t catch that state. She produced it. It’s not like COVID. And so-
Jay Papasan:
It’s not a cold.
Jordan Freed:
It’s not a cold. Like, how did you produce that, right? And you can go back to the previous four or five days, eating, sleeping, what were you doing? And so, that also creates a sense of agency of, like, “Oh, I’m starting to figure out…” If we all have a combination lock but your combination is 13-36-45 and mine’s another set of three numbers, and if you go at it enough and you get enough iterations, you start to figure out what unlocks you.
And once you figure that out, I think you get addicted to the consistency. And I think the other thing to that, Jay, is that then you also realize you don’t have to sacrifice everything else, that you can still have a growing business. And I was thinking about this yesterday as I was picking up or driving home to meet my kids at my house at 5:00, and everything is done, and the whole evening we had already mapped out. And you don’t have to sacrifice your health. You can still have an amazing marriage.
And one thing that entrepreneurs need to hear is you can still have friends, because I think that feels like something that is a luxury that our time can’t afford. When you master this, you start to understand that most of what you do doesn’t really matter, but these little bitty things create such results. You get addicted to that progression, but you also get addicted to the idea that I don’t have to sacrifice what is important to me to chase down my vision.
Jay Papasan:
All of the evidence in their past for the most part, has been this high-intensity effort where they did miss the kids’ soccer game, or they were distracted at dinner, or they were anxious, or they were just so exhausted from the sprint they did at work that day that they just wanna have a glass of wine and veg out in front of the TV instead of actually participate in the family.
And what I’ve seen is people who slowly start to believe in the process, they’re living it, they’re experiencing it, the evidence is starting to mount. Those days where they show up and they still have energy, and they actually get a little unnerved in the beginning. They’re like, “Wait, something must be wrong. The other shoe’s gonna drop. Where is it?” That anxiety haunts them because so much of their past experience with big success has come with those price tags, and they’re just looking for the hidden cost that’s not actually gonna be there.
Jordan Freed:
And pulling on that analogy, I said this to someone two or three weeks ago, where she said that same thing. She’s like, “Well, the other shoe is gonna drop.” And I said, “Well, I can appreciate that, but you have been doing such good work in all seven circles of your life that I’m not asking you to ask God or the universe to throw a shoe at you, but if it does, guess what? You are shoe-proof.”
And when you maintain a healthy balancing act between your work and your personal and professional life, then when things inevitably come your way, you are strong enough to handle it. And so, I think there’s a lot of rich ways that this ultimately pays off because you become so much more resilient and happy and joyful along the journey. It doesn’t feel like you’re sacrificing all the time. That season of sacrifice wears on us.
Jay Papasan:
It feels like cheating, and just embrace it and go, “Yeah. Yeah, maybe it is. Maybe this is a cheat code that we’ve all been looking for.” It’s just one that requires you to show up on a regular basis. It’s not the kind that lets you just sit on a beach and the things just happen for you. You have to do the work. But it’s very achievable work, and it’s work that you can then still have a wonderful life around.
So, we’ve got a first down. When I think about what our listeners can take away from this conversation, do you know what a first down is in your business and your practice? Have you identified that thing that it if Bill Walsh, if he could accumulate 25 of them on game day, you’re gonna win more often than not. Do you know where to start? And that’s the combination of the first domino and the false start. What challenge would you give our listeners based on this conversation? You’re a great coach. Where would you invite them to actually start that process?
Jordan Freed:
One, I would invite you to think about it in a chunk of time. And so, like right now, I like, Jay, as you know, to put things inside of a 90-day window. And between now and the end of the year, for example, if we were having this conversation on Christmas or New Year’s Eve, for example, what would have to happen for you to be really happy with your progress? And let’s just get clear on, what is your first goal? What’s the thing that’s most important to you?
Jay Papasan:
What does winning look like right now in this particular season? Got it.
Jordan Freed:
Yes. Yes. And then, okay, we have the goal, ’cause that was where you started with me in the first domino. And so, the goal being I wanna be healthy, vital, I wanna have that sense of energy, right? Or I wanna make X number of dollars because I want my holiday season to look like this.
But getting really clear on that, and then that one goal becomes, the first down becomes the first domino, and then making certain that you’re litmus testing that and going, “Okay, where do I…” I think this is a great question once people understand it: where do I typically false start? If I had a false start in my work or personal life, what is it? What is my most likely to cause a false start activity? Those are the things I would start people with, and seeing, where that takes them. What would you add to that?
Jay Papasan:
No, I love it. I’m reflecting on other ways that people false start. You talked about when we lack clarity is when distraction comes in. So, getting clear about what their false start is or their first domino, both of those kind of lead them to the same answer. That’s the wrong place to start, so where can I start where I can start building momentum between now and the end of the year? I love that.
Jordan, I could easily talk to you for another hour, so we’ll just have to keep bringing you back as often as we can. Thanks for pouring into people. If people want to find out more about you, where do they go to find you?
Jordan Freed:
JordanFreed.com
Jay Papasan:
Love it. Thank you so much, Jordan, for pouring into us again.
Jordan Freed:
Thanks, Jay.
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