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Do This One Thing, Get Huge Results | Book Club | 'The ONE Thing' by Gary Keller + Jay Papasan | 318

• Lauren Tilden

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You don’t need a better planner, a longer to-do list, or more discipline. You need one thing... and you might just be avoiding it.

In this final Making Good Book Club episode with Charelle Griffith, we break down The ONE Thing and talk honestly about why doing less is often the fastest path to real growth. We unpack the lies that keep small business owners busy-but-stuck, the mindset shift that changes everything, and the simple question that can instantly clarify what actually matters.

If you’re overwhelmed, juggling too much, or secretly wondering why all your effort isn’t paying off yet—press play. This conversation might be the reset you didn’t know you needed.


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Welcome back to Making Good, the podcast here to help you do better marketing so you can make a bigger impact. I'm your host, Lauren Tilden, and this is episode 318. Today we are back with this month's edition of Making Good Book Club and we are talking about the one thing, the surprisingly simple truth about extraordinary results by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. If this is your first time tuning in to Making Good Book Club, here is the deal once every month, my amazing book club co-host Charelle and I discuss a book we think can help move the needle in your small business. And we talk about our takeaways specifically for small business owners. And I wanna say this upfront, this is actually our last book club episode with Charelle as a co-host after four years. Oh my gosh. Dozens of books and so many fun British versus American English moments. This is our last one together. I am so grateful for Charelle for the time and care she has poured into this series. I have gotten personally so much out of all of these conversations I know that many of you have as well, and I am still deciding what happens next with book clubs. So if you have enjoyed these episodes and you would love to see some version of them continue, Please DM me on Instagram and tell me that seriously, I want your feedback, and that is how I'm going to decide I am at Lauren Tilden. Okay, back to the book. This month we talked about the one thing, which is all about this idea. Big results come from narrowing your focus, not doing more, not hustling harder, not juggling 10,000 things at once. The book gives you super practical frameworks for figuring out what matters most. Staying focused long enough to build momentum and protecting your time so that your one thing actually gets done. In this book club episode, we talked about the domino effect and why small focused actions can build into big results. The six lies that derail our focus, like multitasking, everything matters equally, and the myth of balance. The focus in question. What is the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary. How does set goals from someday to right now in a way that actually leads to action? Why time blocking might be the most important productivity tool there is, and more. If you feel pulled in a million directions, if you feel constantly busy, but not always progressing. Or like your goals, just keep getting buried under life and work and inboxes. This book is for you. Now. If you enjoy the podcast, here's something you can do to help us spread the word. Take a screenshot of your podcast player while you're listening. Tag me on Instagram Stories@laurentilden. I would be so, so grateful for your support. Okay, let's get into this month's book club episode about the one thing.

Lauren Tilden:

Charelle, welcome back to Making Good Book Club.

Charelle Griffith:

you for having me back.

Lauren Tilden:

If you listen to one of the last interviews before this episode came out on Making Good, you'll have heard a big announcement about Making Good Book Club, which is that that is the last time I'm gonna get to say Charelle. Welcome back to Making Good Book Club because this is our last episode, at least with Charelle as co-host, I'm still debating about what to do, if anything, moving forward. So TBD, if there's any form of making good book Club that sticks around, if you're interested, please hit me up. If you are interested in that happening, I would love to hear your feedback. But for now, after four years,

Charelle Griffith:

Which is crazy. I couldn't believe it's four years when I looked back, it's gone so fast.

Lauren Tilden:

neither. Dozens of books we've covered together. So many conversations, so many fun British slash americanisms, and things lost in translation between the two of us. This is our last one and, I'll say it again. I will say it right now. I'm just so grateful, Charelle, for all of these conversations, all of the work. I know it's so much time that you've put into this, so thank you so much.

Charelle Griffith:

Absolutely loved it and I'm a bit like, oh, as I said, it definitely wasn't an easy decision for me to walk away, but, I, I'm very excited to do this last book and moving on to a new chapter in my life.

Lauren Tilden:

A new chapter, see what you did there. Well I'm gonna give you a chance at the end to tell everyone all about what's next for you. And definitely folks stick around for that because Charelle is up to some amazing things. So she'll tell you all about that at the very end. But for now, let's dig into our last book that we're covering together. It is the One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan and this is a book that I feel like has been on my radar for a long time. I know you had actually read it before, and the reason I think we hadn't. Or at least I hadn't really pushed to do it is because we have covered the book Essentialism, which has a similar focus of like short version of the story is like, focus on less so you can achieve more. That's, that is the takeaway of Essentialism and I thought that this would be very similar to that book. So I just didn't see a need to do both. But Charelle was like, no, let's do it. And I'm really glad that we did. It was a perfect book to read this time of year. You said you had read it a while ago. You read it again. So what was your, what was that like reading it for a second time?

Charelle Griffith:

I had totally forgotten much. I think like you, I think between, essentialism and also reading the Compound Effect, I think they'd all sat in that very similar bubble of less is more like just concentrate, basically take, don't take on the whole world, et cetera. And if I was honest, I probably didn't remember like that many of the concepts and that many, much of the book in that like a very vivid way. So it actually was very enjoyable to read it again. Definitely was a few things that I was like, this is what you need to actually apply, take this in. I definitely feel like these are some things that are easier said than done, but I'm very, very glad I read it again and it was perfectly timed.

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah, perfectly time for the end of the year and, this episode comes out December 15th, so everyone will also get to soak in whatever we share from the book now. But also I would just say upfront, like I think it's worth a read. We'll cover as much as we can, but I do think this one is worth reading.

Charelle Griffith:

it's not a hard read, so it's like, it's just over 200 pages. But I think compared to some of the books we've read where they're all like, the font's really small, the book's really big,

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

whatever. This isn't like, I genuinely was like, this is a book that you actually can read at a decent about it taking forever,

Lauren Tilden:

And it's not dry. Like it, it is. I mean, he's a business person. I don't think you have to be a business person to get something from the book. But it's not a lot of like dry business concepts. Like he tells stories, he pulls examples from fiction. Charelle is in as big of a fan of those things as I am. There's great quotes. He surfaced some great quotes that he starts the chapters out with. I'm sure I'll be naming a few of those. So yeah, great. Easy but really thought provoking and useful book to read. I think for basically anyone. So it's broken up into three. Parts, there's a few chapters up front kind of setting the scene, and then there are three parts and I think, we'll, we may not get to every chapter, but we'll definitely kind of try to cover the bases on the parts of the book. From the intro chapters, there's three intro chapters. Anything that really stuck out with you here.

Charelle Griffith:

So my, not a quote that from someone else, quote from him that I pulled out was about like, the, essentially what we're looking at is it's recognizing that not all things matter equally and finding out the things that matter most. And I

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

that that was a quote, I, I highlighted it before and I was like, yeah, I still really, truly believe that. I think obviously as business owners, we do so much, like we all do so much, and like, if only we could really, really, really nail down this thing of being like, a lot of it doesn't make that much of a difference, and some of it really, really does. And so finding out the things about it most, I really was like, yes, this is the bit to remember.

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

so yeah, that was definitely like the thing in terms of like this idea of like the one thing that I was like, yeah, I, and it does connect to one of the lies and then the next, in the next section of the book.

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah. Yeah. And something that stood out to me right near the quote you just said, which is extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus. This, I feel like, is the key concept from Essentialism that I think about over and over again. It is a huge personal challenge for me.

Charelle Griffith:

And

Lauren Tilden:

And you, and actually I think maybe, uh. I might be putting words in your mouth, but like part of your decision not to continue with making Good Book Club is a little bit of trying to practice this narrowing in on, you know, the one thing for you.

Charelle Griffith:

a hundred

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

So yeah, I think I would say. I think most entrepreneurs struggle with this. I, I think unless you are someone who genuinely has one passion and you are like, your whole business is just around that, I think most people actually in their heart are multi-passionate and want to do a hundred things and have loads of creative ideas, and trying to focus on one thing is super difficult.

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah. And I think, I think this, this definitely does come up later in the book, which we'll probably get to, but one thing this book had me thinking more about than I remember thinking more about from like Essentialism or other things like this is the concept of like, okay, well how do you figure out what that thing is? Like I get. That we need to narrow down, but you can't just pick a random thing,

Charelle Griffith:

Yeah. Yeah.

Lauren Tilden:

it has to be the right thing that you're narrowing in on. And that, I think, is actually the really challenging part because maybe for, for many of us, when we are dipping our toes into so many things, maybe on a subconscious level, it's like, well, we don't know what the one thing is, so we're trying to like hedge our bets a little bit. And so

Charelle Griffith:

So you talk about that later in the book? No. Hedging our bets.

Lauren Tilden:

yes, no hedging. But yeah, and so we'll talk about it later, but, but I think that is one thing that really stands out to me about this book is the focus on figuring out what that thing is. Another concept in these early chapters is the domino effect.

Charelle Griffith:

knew you were

Lauren Tilden:

Um,

Charelle Griffith:

Go on. Because it's a story

Lauren Tilden:

There's this story, well, there's like just a little anecdote about, the world record for Dominoes, which was set in 2009. Maybe it's been, this book is a little older, so it could have been beat by then. But this, in this publication, it was 4 million, almost 500,000 dominoes that were coordinated to go up. And it unleashed more than 94,000 joules of energy, which is as much as it takes an average sized male to do 545 pushups. Just through this like simple domino effect of one knocking down the next. And then there's this other concept here where dominoes can actually knock over things that are larger than'em. So, so like one domino can knock down a slightly larger domino, which can knock, slight, knock down a slightly larger domino. And he's kind of using this as an example to show like, yes, when you focus on your one thing, you may be starting small, but. It picks up steam pretty quickly and like kind of escalates to bigger and bigger and better and better results, so.

Charelle Griffith:

like that fact. So it says up to, it can be another domino that's up to 50% larger. I think, so then you really get this idea of like how exponential growth really

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

And I think that in some ways is Britney. I think like when you look at the compound effect, it might be slightly different. I think this, um, what did you call it? Anecdote shows it more this idea of like how it, it builds up. And I think knowing

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

little thing, starts to chain reaction. And I think that is

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

so true. I truly believe in that as a concept as a whole. But I think sometimes when we think the thing, I think some of us know the thing we really want, but it seems so big. But actually if you're like, well, actually, if all I've got to do is focus on the chain reaction and it will keep getting bigger and bigger, and actually that growth isn't necessarily as hard or as far away as you might imagine it to be.

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah. He says the key is over time, success is built sequentially. It's one thing at a time.

Charelle Griffith:

And then his last thing in this like intro bit was just around, talks about like success leaving clues. And this is where he really tries to reinforce this idea that extraordinary successful companies all have one product or service they're most known for or that makes them the most money. And I suppose this is where I felt it does give you a bit of leeway in terms of being like, it's not, you only have to have one thing in your business, but what is a thing you're known for? What is a thing that people remember you for, recommend you for, refer you for? Like that's the reason why people approach you. That doesn't then mean you can't have more. But it's like you

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

thing that's like the standout and like obviously I'm like, we talk a lot about like having in my services with like a signature service, a signature offer. So it's like that to me made sense just being like, what's the one thing, you still allowed more, but you need to have one. That's the standout.

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then he, he sort of is diversifying this one thing concept a bit. And he says like, sometimes it's one person who like really believes in you and sets you on the right track. One passion, one skill, one life.

Charelle Griffith:

Yeah,

Lauren Tilden:

Um, I get a little distracted by these extra concepts, honestly. Like I, I feel like I'm like, well wait, now I have a lot more than just one thing. You know, I've got, like, I've got the one project at work. That's the one thing. And then, I don't know, I'm, I'm getting distracted a little bit when we apply this one thing concept so vastly across different parts of our lives. But, um, yeah, that's just me maybe. So part one of the book is the Lies that Mislead and Derail Us. Okay, so just maybe to set the scene here, there are six lies between you and success. Everything matters equally. Multitasking. A disciplined life, willpower is always on, will call a balanced life and big is bad. So maybe we could pick a few of these to dig into

Charelle Griffith:

so I think

Lauren Tilden:

which one stood out to you?

Charelle Griffith:

obviously that everything, mattered equally was the one that I'd already spoken about a little bit before, but he really leans into this idea of like, I never say Paretos Paretos principle, which is the

Lauren Tilden:

Pareto's principle.

Charelle Griffith:

the 80 20 rule and like. Really what I liked about him on this though was he said you could take it further and further. So like looking at the 80 20, working out what's the 20% that makes, you know, the most results or the best output or whatever. And then digging into that again and then digging into that again. And so really, really forcing yourself to like push, I suppose like to the limits. Like what actually is what matters. And actually I think if you really embrace this concept actually is freeing because it will help you to drastically cut down your to-do list.

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

just do it.

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah. So hard. So hard, but he makes very good case for it. Another lie that stood out to me a lot was willpower is always on will call. And this is sort of about the idea that many of us, when we're trying to do something new or we have a goal that we're approaching, we just kind of feel like we have to summon the willpower and then it'll happen. Like we just have to kind of make ourselves do it. And inevitably, like when we are relying on all of this willpower, we fail, we like give up on the project or you know, January 9th, I think it is actually is National Quitter's day. I looked this up recently. It's the second Friday of January. By which date most people have already given up or failed on their news resolutions because I think of like the willpower that we're trying to depend on, and this reminds me of James Clear atomic habits. He says we can't always expect to have motivation, but we can rely on systems. And this is a little bit of a similar concept where like, we just can't always meeting our goals, can't be dependent on summoning a lot of willpower because it's just not always available to us.

Charelle Griffith:

He says, when our willpower runs out, we will all revert to our default settings. This begs the question, what are your default settings?

Lauren Tilden:

yeah. He mentions a bunch of the different things that tax your willpower, so. Implementing new behaviors, filtering out distractions, resisting temptation, suppressing your emotions, restraining aggression, suppressing impulses, tests, trying to impress others, coping with fear, doing something you don't enjoy selecting long-term over short-term results. So like, as you can imagine, maybe just like hearing those things, you can think of all these moments throughout your day where something is taxing your willpower and draining it, and eventually we just run out. So like, if you're one of those people who struggles with, I don't know, maybe you're, you find it easy to stick to your healthy habits in the morning and midday, but by the end of the day you struggle. That's a really good example of this. In practice, like you just run out, we deplete our willpower. And so I think my big takeaway here is like paying attention to how much of your life requires, exercising, willpower, trying not to drain it. Kind of staying in, in touch with like how much willpower you have and if you need to do something to replenish it, take a break or take, go for a walk or whatever it is. Do that. And then also he is really all about, and this comes up again and again in the book, like timing

Charelle Griffith:

He's a

Lauren Tilden:

your most important things so that they happen earlier in the day when you actually have the willpower, like when it's available to you.

Charelle Griffith:

The other one I liked was a balanced life. And he talks about how work life balance and having or having a balanced life is a myth and actually there is like magic in the extremes rather than the middle. So actually sort of is saying like, if we are trying to balance, it's like you're not really giving anything possibly enough for it to really succeed. And so rather than searching for that, he actually says sometimes you are gonna have to like, make trade offs. Some things are gonna have to like not happen. And rather than balance where you're trying to juggle everything equally, he talks about counterbalance. And so there'll be phases where you like it's extreme. Like you are going really hard into one area, for example. And that will mean there is. A negative repercussion on another part of your life. But the point is when all, another part of your business forever. But we're not doing it forever. Like it's for a period of time. And so actually we want counterbalance across like years rather than thinking of like balance within a day or a week.

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah, that resonates to me. Um, oh, I think the, the other one that I was thinking of is a disciplined life, which is similar, I think, to the willpower comment. But, um, he gives the example here of Michael Phelps, the Olympics swimmer, who is like. I think gotten more gold medals than any other Olympian still. And he actually apparently struggled as a child. Like he has not always been this like, super driven, I don't know, like success story that we think of him as today. He shares that. Like he basically had this one thing, which is that he decided he was gonna train seven days a week, 365 days a year. But this way he gets 52 training days extra than everyone else because most people take off a weekend day. So he's training on Sundays. Everyone else isn't. He gets 52 extra training days. And this was like his secret sauce that like, basically he credits to his results. You know, not all of us are gonna be doing something like that, but I think it's a good example of like. Finding that, that one angle of, of your edge. He also talked about disciplines and habits. This is connected to willpower in that like, I don't think if you needed the willpower, you could do 365 days a year for however many years he did it to train. Like eventually it has to become a habit. So you're just like

Charelle Griffith:

That's what I

Lauren Tilden:

defaulting to that, right? Instead of needing the willpower. And so he talks about there's this 21 days to form a habit. Thing that, like people talk about a lot. I'm, I'm sure I have like said that because that's what a lot of people report, but actually they've done studies on it and the average time that it takes to acquire a new habit is 66 days. So that's over two months. Like that is a while of sticking with something. But once it does become a habit, it takes a lot less discipline and willpower to keep it going. And so you just kind of have to be willing to go for 66 days. And this was kind of thought provoking for me because I feel like, yeah, that 21 day or 30 days is touted so often as like what it takes to form a habit. And if you were to feel like you didn't have it as a habit after that, I don't know, it'd be really easy to give up on. So I think this just kind of speaks to the value and sticking out of, sticking it out a bit longer. Even if it's still hard, like after a certain point it does become a habit. It just, it's gonna take longer than 21 days.

Charelle Griffith:

Yeah.

Lauren Tilden:

And he says, do this one at a time. Like don't try five new habits at a time. Trying to stick it out for six to six days on each, like build one habit at a time. Anything else on the lies?

Charelle Griffith:

that's not enough of the lives. Now let's go into the truth.

Lauren Tilden:

All right.

Charelle Griffith:

So this is meant to be this simple path to productivity, and there's only three chapters in this one. So the first is around the focusing question, and the premise of this is around the quality of any answer is directly determined by the quality of the question. And so if we wanna get better answers, we basically have to ask ourselves better questions. And so the focusing question he talks about is, what's the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unneccessary.

Lauren Tilden:

Yep. And this is a question that he comes back to over and over throughout the rest of the book in many different ways. So like, I'm gonna read it again so that you have it in your head. What's the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will become easier or unnecessary. This to me is sort of the filter for helping you figure out like what your one thing is. Would you agree with that?

Charelle Griffith:

Yeah, I think it's well, it's two things. Because the easier part of the question, I see it as that connects back to like what we're saying about where do you put your effort that gets the most resource and stuff. And then the unnecessary I see is you being able to get rid of stuff. So I feel like it's doing two things. It's helping you to get rid of some things and not, and then it's also helping you to try and focus on actually choosing the right thing.

Lauren Tilden:

I think that's a really, like that last part, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary. I think that's the really important part because I don't know, maybe that's the part that can give you some confidence about letting other things go. You know, when you're narrowing down on one thing and just like going all in, that's one thing. But when you're like, okay, by doing this, I know that everything else either doesn't need to be done or is simplified or is irrelevant now, like, I don't know. That's a level of like comfort. I think that I, I haven't put this into practice yet, but I imagine like, it, it becomes easier to let go of all the other stuff when, when you understand

Charelle Griffith:

Yeah,

Lauren Tilden:

the context this way.

Charelle Griffith:

like easy to say no when you know what you're saying yes to. It's that same thing, isn't it? By knowing this is what we're saying yes to, then we can say no to other things,

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

so yeah.

Lauren Tilden:

Okay. Um, the next chapter is the Success Habit.

Charelle Griffith:

And this is where it goes further into the question, but starts to add in categories and timeframes, for example. So we start to look at the one thing I could do such that everything else would be easier or necessary for my personal life, for my key relationships, for my job, for my business, for my finances, for my spiritual life, for my physical health. And so it's really, and then the book, he asks a lot more questions he showed you, but I suppose it's really about how to start applying it to different areas. So the idea is that this can help us in all aspects of our life. It's not just, and I, I suppose it's what, um, a lot of'em was saying in the beginning, like, this is not a business book. Like yes, the techniques really will help you in business, but it can be applied to any area of your life.

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

And then the timeframe thing could be that you could ask yourself like um, right now versus this week.

Lauren Tilden:

What's my one thing overall is big picture and then what's my one thing right now is like day to day. Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

And then the last bit I think you

Lauren Tilden:

Then

Charelle Griffith:

I'm gonna put, I'm gonna put it out there. Liked this next

Lauren Tilden:

I do,

Charelle Griffith:

it a quadrant.

Lauren Tilden:

it had a quadrant, it had something really visual. This final section in this, the second part is the path to great answers. And this is about basically the quality of your question leads to the quality of your answer. So if you have a great question, you can create a great answer. And there's this framework that he introduces, which I really like. He calls it the great question matrix. And across the X axis you have everything from broad to specific. So a broad question to a specific question. And the Y axis, the vertical axis at the top, it's big and small. So as examples, a small and broad question might be, what can I do to increase sales? A small and specific question is, what can I do to increase sales by 5% this year? A big but broad question would be, what can I do to double sales? And a big specific question is, what can I do to double sales in six months? And once he's gone through like all of these different options of types of questions between big, small, broad, specific, he believes that the best type of question, at least in this context of, you know, finding your, the one thing and your, your answer is big and specific. So again, the example there is what can I do to double sales? That's big doubling in six months specific. He finds these to be the elements of a great question. And so you can convert this into a focusing question, which Charelle introduced a couple chapters ago by something like the following, what is the one thing I can do to double sales in six months such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary. And so you have your question. And then the second part here is finding a great answer. He says there are three types of answers here. Three categories, doable, stretch, and possibility. Doable is, you probably already know how to do it. You don't have to do much, you can just go do it. The next level up would be stretch, which is like within reach, but it's, it's gonna be a lot harder. You'll have to, he says, do research, figure out what others have done. And then finally the last one is, possibility. And he says that highly successful people choose to live at the outer limits of achievement. So they're going for this possibility

Charelle Griffith:

Mm-hmm.

Lauren Tilden:

ring on the, on the frame or the possibility category, I guess, of great answers. The way that he approaches this is he. Learns a lot from other people who have done it. So if there's something you wanna do and you find the answer to be that it's, it's gonna really stretch you outside of, it's not doable, it's not stretch, it's in this like possibility category. Like you're gonna have to look at someone who's done it or something similar and look for like the breadcrumbs and then the clues that have been left behind. And so, books, um, experts, mentors the internet, like looking at the clues left by other people who have done it is the best place to start with this.

Charelle Griffith:

On the topic of possibilities, it leads us nicely into the third part of the book, which is extraordinary results, unlocking the possibilities within you. And very early on in this chapter, or this section of the book, we have a nice little diagram. We talks about, purpose, priority, and productivity. And so his thing is your big one thing is your purpose and your small one thing is a priority. You take action on to achieve it. And so in this diagram, it's like an iceberg. And so underneath at the bottom of the iceberg, we've got purpose. Then you've got priority on top, and both these layers are under the water. And then you have productivity, which is. The bit that's showing the iceberg above the water. And so it's like, actually so many of the people that you think are productive, we just see that and we are thinking, oh, they've learned how to do time management better, or they've learn some system better. But for him, he's like, no, actually, what you don't see underneath is they've got a really strong purpose. And so they understand what their priority is and that's what on the top makes it actually productive.

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

And then if you're a business on the top, top of the iceberg would be profit. So it's like if you wanna have a profitable business. And then he says it's purpose, priority, productivity, profit. Because people love A-P-P-P-P in a book, don't they?

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm. He says, yeah, great businesses are built one productive person at a time. Um, and so like the productivity is what leads to the profit, which is why profit's on top. But that has to be based on like these clear priorities and an underlying purpose, which brings us to the next chapter, live With Purpose. And here he tells the Ebenezer Scrooge story from a Christmas Carol, which, he actually tells the whole story in the book, but basically the Scrooge is like a mean, nasty, very money oriented person. He has this like apparition, possibly a dream you don't really know where he basically changes overnight and he's visited by his past, present, and future. And he realizes he's not on the right track. And then he kind of has this. New purpose to use his money for good and like immediately changes. And so it's kind of just, he, he is telling the story to give an example of like, when you have a purpose, it guides all of your behavior. And he's showing, he's telling all these stories about, once Ebenezer, Scrooge has transformed, he tells all these stories of ways he does good with his money through different acts, basically. And so when you have this underlying purpose, your priorities are clear and like your actions are guided kind of effortlessly. Yeah, I mean, I, I think the, the purpose conversation is a bit harder. Like, figuring out exactly what your purpose is is a challenge. I've always struggled with, with this concept of like having a super clear purpose. He says who we are and where we want to go, determine what we do and what we accomplish. And I think he does acknowledge, like in the end of this chapter, if you don't have a clear purpose to find, you can kind of like instead pick a direction to move in. So like, I may not know clearly like this is my life's purpose, but I can. I can sense it's about doing good for others or it's about teaching, or, you know, you can kind of give yourself a nudge in one direction. Play with it. You can change your mind, but yeah, I, I do like this concept. I see the power of it, but I think there are some of us who like, it's not cut and dry.

Charelle Griffith:

I'm, I would agree I'm the same. And I think that's

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

I've read it in so many books, come across it so many times and I think it seems to be something that people either get and they know and it's really, really strong or other people seem to spend a lot of time trying to search and to find it for sure. I can absolutely see actually, probably more so in this book than some of the other reasons how it works, like why it really is important. But yeah,

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

end, he does say this idea of like, purpose may sound heavy, but it doesn't have to be. Think of it simply as the one thing you want your life to be about more than any others. Try writing down something you'd like to accomplish and then describe how you do it. And so, and his actual purpose to me, I was like, oh, actually that's not. not as heavy and as hard and as like big mythical as we talk about. So we talked about how my purpose is to help people live their greatest life possible through my teaching, coaching, writing. Like actually

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

that wasn't that intense.

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

maybe it wasn't as specific as I expected, or just when you hear people talk about purpose. you know, when I think I hear people talk about these like big missions that are like to help a million people do whatever. And I think maybe my brain went into that realm. But yeah, I think

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

find something. And like you said, it doesn't have to be forever. It can be a direction for now.

Lauren Tilden:

Right. Yeah, I agree. His example was less intimidating, but it's still kind of specific, like, you know, he, it, it's based on his profession.

Charelle Griffith:

Yes.

Lauren Tilden:

Now and like, yeah. So I, I would struggle to define it that clearly, but I understand, how having that as like a baseline grounding bottom of the iceberg type visual is, is very compelling, like baseline that your priorities are based on your purpose and your productivity is based on, well, like what you work on is based on your priorities. The iceberg format makes sense to me. I just personally struggle a little bit with that. So I guess I just share that in case anyone listening is like, well, geez, I don't know what my purpose is. Like you're not alone.

Charelle Griffith:

you're not alone.

Lauren Tilden:

Not alone at all.

Charelle Griffith:

All

Lauren Tilden:

Okay.

Charelle Griffith:

is living by priority, which is much easier for me.

Lauren Tilden:

Same.

Charelle Griffith:

how purpose,

Lauren Tilden:

the concept at least.

Charelle Griffith:

the purpose we without priority is powerless. And so he comes around this idea shares called goal setting to the now. And so he talks about this idea if, if you have a Russian doll, so there's dolls that all go inside each other, one by one by one, you will start with like your Someday goal. So what's the one thing I want to do someday? And then you start bringing it closer and closer to now. So you have like a five year one. So based on my Sunday goal, what is the one thing I can do the next five years? Then a one year goal based on my five year goal, what is the one thing I can do this year? Then down to monthly, weekly, daily, until right at the end you get, based on my daily goal, what's the one thing I can do right now? And I really like this because I think, well, one, obviously it's a nice visual, but I think it makes sense. It really has this feeling of like moving towards something, um, but also enabling you to be able to break things down to a much easier, so like your Someday goal could be massive and feel very overwhelming, but you can break it really, really down to something that you wanna do right now.

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah. Well, I think, um, I also really liked this and there is this paragraph where he is like explaining, the step by step of going from someday to five year goal to one year goal. And I was, I like, I, I understood what he was doing, so I skipped that. Most of it, I didn't read it word for word. And then he goes, I hope you hung in there and read the entire thing. And I was like, well shoot. Okay, now I'm gonna go read it and I'm actually gonna read it. It's gonna take me a minute, but I'm gonna read it because I think it does illustrate when you actually read the whole thing. Because on like on one hand, if I were to say, based on my someday goal, what's one thing I can do right now to move toward it? That's the shortcut that most of us want to do. And that to me loses all the power of this exercise.

Charelle Griffith:

Oh.

Lauren Tilden:

So here's, here's the thing I'm gonna read based on my Someday goal, what's one thing I can do in the next five years to be on track to achieve it? Now based on my five year goal, what's one thing I can do this year to be on track to achieve my five year goal so that I'm on track to achieve my Sunday day goal? Now, based on my goal this year, what's the one thing I can do this month? So I'm on track to achieve my goal this year. So I'm on track to achieve my five year goal. So I'm on track to achieve my someday goal. Now, based on my goal this month, what's the one thing I can do this week? So I'm on track to achieve my goal this month so that I'm on track to achieve my goal this year. So I'm on track to achieve my five-year goal so that I'm on track to achieve my Someday goal. Now, based on my goal this week, what's the one thing I can do today? So I'm on track to achieve my goal this week. So I'm on track to achieve my goal this month. So I'm on track to achieve my goal this year. So I'm on track to achieve my five-year goal so that I'm on track to achieve my someday goal. And last one. So based on my goal today, what's the one thing I can do right now so that I'm on track to achieve my goal today? So that I'm on track to achieve my goal this week so that I'm on track to achieve my goal this month. So I'm on track to achieve my goal this year. So I'm on track to achieve my five-year goal. So I'm on track to achieve my Someday goal. So that's the the monologue that I skipped through once I realized what was going on and then was be rated and the text immediately below. But yeah, when you say simply what's one thing I can do right now so I'm on track to achieve my someday goal, you can see how it loses all of the power of like, oh, I understand how these are all related. And I think for me, an exercise like this would help me to, well, to actually do things now that don't have a clear payoff now because it's so clearly step by step tied to all of this goal setting that you've done, like reverse engineered basically. I think like myself and many other people, like we really struggle to do things in the short term when the payoff is way down the road. Like I don't struggle to put my podcast out next week because it's pretty close. But if it was like, here, do something for your podcast growth that you won't see or experience till five years from now, that's so much harder. But an exercise like this, I think makes it really crystal clear how like your actions in the short term create your long term reality. So, I hope that I didn't lose any listeners in my long reading of that, but it was very powerful to me and so I just thought I would make sure you had the chance to soak that into.

Charelle Griffith:

In the next

Lauren Tilden:

All right.

Charelle Griffith:

live for

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

And so this one, he goes through some, some tactics, some very specific tactics that not, I don't think if you've listened to us talk about some of the business books you won't come across. He talks about a typical day versus the productive day and the amount of time, basically you should be actually allocating to your one thing. And so in an ideal world, he says, you should be allocating four hours to your one thing. How did that make you feel, Lauren?

Lauren Tilden:

Um, it felt like a lot.

Charelle Griffith:

Yeah.

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah. And the other thing, so he's suggesting four hours that are time blocked and he is also just suggesting that they're the first four hours of your workday, basically. And to me, I was like, my whole schedule is set up the opposite of this and.

Charelle Griffith:

Mm.

Lauren Tilden:

I think actually part of it is being on Pacific Time,

Charelle Griffith:

Okay.

Lauren Tilden:

um,

Charelle Griffith:

up,

Lauren Tilden:

which when I, well, when I wake up, my inbox is so full. Um, any meetings I do generally have to be in my morning or else I can't do them at all because other people that I'm meeting with aren't on Pacific Time. So it might be their afternoon, but it's not mine. Like you, Charelle, like our meetings for four years now have always been at like eight or 9:00 AM my time, which is not when I should be having meetings if I'm gonna follow this type of advice. So it really actually gave me a ton to think about with that

Charelle Griffith:

a re

Lauren Tilden:

of like,

Charelle Griffith:

interesting thing.'cause obviously, I mean time zone's my favorite topic, not, but is a reality that,

Lauren Tilden:

yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

'cause I was thinking, obviously I know some people where they like will talk maybe like, because of how they've got children and so their responsibilities will mean actually they're like, no, the first thing they've got to do is get everyone up, get everyone up to school, et cetera. Like that's, they've only, that's the priority. But I've never thought of it

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

a, yeah, even from you, from a work perspective actually.'cause the way we, you overlap with people in other time zones that Yeah. Whereas actually for

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

would be, I could

Lauren Tilden:

It's a benefit.

Charelle Griffith:

could do it. Like, it's one of the things that I've said, I was wondering,'cause I was thinking my thing is I'm naturally night owl, so I. Always been like, I'll do the podcast in the unit. It doesn't make a difference to me. I'm fine. Like, and I remember when we was in

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

she's up so late. I was like, yeah, that's fine. I don't mind,

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah. Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

you are with this. So for me, try and do the morning, try and block out four hours would be hard work. But in terms of actual other people, it'd probably be easier. So yeah, sometimes it'cause of life or sometimes it's because of where

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

It's easier said than done.

Lauren Tilden:

And this will depend on what type of work you do too. Like many people don't have to have meetings with people in other time zones. And you know, this will, this conversation might feel totally irrelevant to you, but I do remember, when I was in corporate, I worked for a British company whose marketing team was in New York. And so like, I would wake up and my inbox would be full of people who had been working for like, you know, six hours already so like I was always behind and I remember whenever I traveled to Europe for work, I loved it. Like I would wake up and no one, you know, I was like on top of everything I would, no one was like even online until I got all my work done. Like, it was just, it really did make a difference. So I don't really know if there's a workaround aside from moving, which. Seems a little extreme, but yeah, it is, it is a challenge. And

Charelle Griffith:

hmm.

Lauren Tilden:

I am also a morning person, so like morning is my best time by far to be thinking and using my brain and um, like doing important work. So this did long digression just to say like, this did gimme a lot to think about when it comes to, I think like, so many moments in the book adding up, like the willpower being drained by the end of the day. Okay. Well the end of the day is when I leave for anything that actually is important. And so not, not anything that actually is important, but the, the important thinking, the hard like working on longer term projects, that's the kind of stuff that I tend to have to leave or right now to the end of the day. And that doesn't always get done. So it, the whole book but kind of culminating in this chapter gave me a lot to think about regarding my own schedule and just can I protect my time better. In the hours where like I have the mental discipline, I resist distraction a little bit better. Like I can focus I probably need to be a little more careful with like the way that I use my mornings because they are precious and yeah. So that's, that was kinda my key takeaway. So he talks about time blocking

Charelle Griffith:

he talks about

Lauren Tilden:

four hours.

Charelle Griffith:

four hours of your thing. But he also goes a little bit further. So he talks about time blocking your time off, which obviously I'm always gonna be a big advocate. Take some time off people time block your one thing. So this would be where Lauren, as you're saying, if we are trying to aim for that four hours, how do we put that in the schedule? And I think what I would say right now reading this book is you might genuinely be like, I cannot commit to that now, but can you start commit to one hour till one thing every day? Can you start commit to two

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

up from there? And then third one was time block your planning time.

Lauren Tilden:

Did you love it?

Charelle Griffith:

I did there three things. I literally was like, oh, you just like my best dean. And I just didn't realize. And then you start to think, is it just subconsciously went in like eight years ago? And I've forgotten. But yeah, I swear by that. Totally swear by time blocking anyway. But I think your time off when you're gonna concentrate on what really matter and time for other planning. Yeah. Do it.

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah. Yeah. He has a visual in here of time blocking and just showing if you had a calendar and you were to mark off every day with an X that you had stuck to your four hours of the one thing, there's kind of this like, don't break the chain thing that happens where you see all these exes stacked up. I've worked every weekday for a whole month on my one thing, like I'm gonna keep doing it and do it another day. I mean, this is true with any sort of like habit or. Consistent thing you're trying to do, like having a visual of watching how many days in a row you've done it is one of the most powerful things that will get you to do it another day. Like,'cause you don't wanna break that streak.

Charelle Griffith:

Yes. I used to have a calendar when I first years ago I did used to do it, tick, tick, tick, tick. Tick's not break the chain. It's a very powerful visual.

Lauren Tilden:

yes. Super powerful.

Charelle Griffith:

Mm.

Lauren Tilden:

Um,

Charelle Griffith:

The one or the

Lauren Tilden:

okay then.

Charelle Griffith:

could we do one last thing on time

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

you said

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

your time blocks and saying the best way to protect your time blocks is to adopt the mindset that they can't be moved. And if you do, if you need to erase it, you must replace it. And I just, I think that's the thing.'cause I think lots of people have great intentions then someone else will ask them to do something and then they just delete it. Like it's in your calendar and you just go, boop. And I'm like, no, this, you can't erase it. You must replace it. I would argue like, just move it. So you're just like, actually if you have, if someone wants that meeting, something else comes up, you have to move it. So you're still making sure you are time for your one thing.

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah. The next chapter, the three commitments, these are three commitments that he is suggesting we each make. I'm trying to find another way to say that. And commitment is, is the way there's three commitments he's suggesting we each make to ourselves, to like help give ourselves the best chance possible of, of achieving this big lofty one thing goal that we have. The first is to follow the past path of mastery. And I think part of this is just putting in the hours is how, like understanding that all of these hours, these four hours a day, let's say you're gonna be putting in toward this goal that you have, inevitably there's gonna be a lot of mastery that gets built in that way. Just through like that 10,000 hour rule essentially where, in a study they found that, like basically the, the most talented musicians, I think they're violinists in the study. They had put in more than 10,000 hours of practice by age 20. It was not a gifted thing or they're a natural, or they have this like innate talent. It's that they had the people who were the most elite had just put in the most work. And so this applies obviously to all of us. Like you are gonna be putting in all of these hours every single day and like inevitably in that you are going to be on this path to mastery. And with mastery, like he says, the pursuit of mastery bears gifts, you get more confident. Both your self-confidence and your success competence will grow. He says, this what.

Charelle Griffith:

gonna say, don't make me do, if I move from E to P.

Lauren Tilden:

Oh, I like from E to P. Okay, so then the next one is from E to P. And this is about moving from an entrepreneurial approach to a purposeful approach. This I felt extremely called out on. An entrepreneurial approach is someone who just, like someone says, go cut some firewood. And the entrepreneurial person is like, yes on it. They pick up the ax, they start heading into the woods, chopping down trees and making firewood out of it. Like they get straight to it. They just go. And I think like if that's all I said, you might say, well, that sounds like a good thing. And that's kind of my instinct is like, yes, just get to work. Go take action. But he says we want to move toward purposeful. Which is in the same scenario, a purposeful person might say, where can I get a chainsaw? And therefore like, save all this time, be much more productive. Get a lot of results. And I, I find myself bumping into this all the time. I'm just like, I have a way of doing it. It may not be the most efficient, but like I'm doing it. You know, it may not save the most time. It may not even create the best results, but it's the way that I do it and that's how I'm doing it. And so I felt very called out by this and I'm, I'm just gonna think about it. He says too many people reach a level where their performance is good enough and then they stop working on getting better people on the path to mastery. Avoid this by continually upping their goal, challenging themselves to break through their current ceiling, and staying the forever apprentice. And so it's just about like constantly asking yourself, is there a better way to do this? Could I get different, bigger results if I made some changes? And I was, in many ways thinking about the podcast, I've done a ton with this podcast. I've gotten a lot of great results. It, a lot of people listens to it. It's great. But I think I have gotten into a bit of a, routine that like I'm maybe not often enough asking, like, is there bigger, better, more impactful ways to, to make this show? And so, yes, I'm thinking about this. Like, I think it's, it's challenging to like forever shift your mindset permanently, right? But because I do have this bias for action, like I just like to just do something. And I think I've thought that was good for a really long time. And so trying to be like, yes, do something, but like in the best way, that doesn't slow me down. Also, because I think there's a, there's a risk when you're. Pausing to be like, what's the best way to do this? That you can just not do it like it gets procrastinated or whatever. So I think there's this really fine line of like, yes, take action, but make sure your action is purposeful. So I will be thinking about this. Do you wanna talk about the accountability cycle?

Charelle Griffith:

one. So live in the accountability circle. And this is about how taking complete ownership of your outcomes by holding no one but yourself responsible for them is the most powerful thing you can do to drive your success. So I suppose this is about like victim mentality versus accountable mentality. So when things happen, he talks about how a victim might be like avoiding reality. They don't ask any questions or they fight reality. That's not how I see it. They blame, so they'll blame someone else or they'll make personal excuses and they just sort of like wait and hope so. If it was meant to be, it'll happen. when someone who's accountable, they will seek out reality, like what's happening. They're like, knowledge the reality. So this is what it is. They'll own it. If it has to be, it's up to me. They find solutions like, what am I to do? And then they get on with it. Okay, let's do it. I, I think it's, I think this is a particularly, particularly one that's useful for business owners.'cause I think

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

there's stuff that happens in the external environment all the time and it can be very, very easy to blame all of that. And I think actually taking full responsibility and being like. Whatever's happening outside like will continue to happen, but being a victim of mentality is not gonna help you. And actually really staying focused on being like, how am I accountable and what am I, what's the actual reality? And how, how am I gonna deal with that? What am I gonna do as a result of it, I think is super powerful. he talks about obviously as well, like, one of the fastest ways to bring accountability to your life is to have an accountability partner. So you don't have to try and do all of this by yourself, but either way, it's like cannot blame the world. Other people. you wanna go after

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

own success, it's down to you.

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah. Yeah. The next chapter is called The Four Thieves, and this is just really about the four things that get in the way of being productive. Inability to say no. Uh, I think we've talked about this a bit, but it's just like you have to protect your time and your focus and what you're working on, it's going to require you to say a lot of nos. He said, someone once told me that one, yes, must be defended over time by a thousand nos. So if you say yes to something, if you're taking something on, like you're one thing that's gonna require you to say no to a lot of other things, and you just have to be willing to do that.

Charelle Griffith:

Fear of chaos. I found this such an interesting one'cause he says

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

thing has a guaranteed consequence. Other things don't get done. And like you have to be comfortable with that. I, I think

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

is,

Lauren Tilden:

really hard.

Charelle Griffith:

yeah. I think that's a really hard thing to do, I think to be able to be like, by me saying yes, by me focusing on my one thing here, this will mean other things are gonna be chaotic and I. I think that's a very hard thing for many people to deal with, so I've definitely not got a solution. But he says you just have to deal with it.

Lauren Tilden:

A quote here, and I haven't read very many of my favorite quotes throughout the book, but

Charelle Griffith:

I thought, oh, we

Lauren Tilden:

this is a good one. If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind of what then is an empty desk a sign?

Charelle Griffith:

what is the

Lauren Tilden:

Ooh.

Charelle Griffith:

I spend every week trying to keep my desk not cluttered, which always surprises people. People think I'd have a, I do not have an a Mac desk at all. Never do.

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah. I don't know. And I think there's a flip side argument to this for sure, which is like. External clutter creates internal clutter. Like I personally can't think very well when I'm looking at a bunch of junk. But that might be an exception, like a desk. The place you're actually sitting trying to do that super important work actually feels like it's worth like spending the time to actually keep it tidy and clean. If, if you find that it affects you. I can't work when I'm looking at chaos. Like I, it's like I, and not to say I am impeccably tidy, but sometimes I'll be like, okay, the reason I'm probably struggling so much is that I've got papers and receipts and like all this stuff to deal with. But maybe there are other things you have to overlook, like, I don't know. The dishwasher that needed to be unloaded or if you like being at inbox zero, you might just have to not be at inbox zero. Like there might be things that like, yeah, in an ideal world, maybe you would do all these like more minor things, but understanding where they stack up. Like, okay, is it more important for me to do this super important work on my one thing, or get to inbox zero by filtering out a bunch of junk mail. That's a waste of time relative to these super important tasks. So just putting it in context, but I think just addressing and acknowledging, yeah, you might have to drop the ball on some other things like that might be part of this. That's hard for people who don't like dropping the ball.

Charelle Griffith:

Number three was poor health habits. and I, I don't think we need to go into this. I think we all know we need to look after our health if we want to be

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah. Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

And then number four was environment doesn't support your goals. and it talks about how the people around you well as your action environment, so people and place. How both of these things have an impact on us.

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

we've also talked about those

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

the past. So,

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah, yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

all right. The journey.

Lauren Tilden:

yeah, I was gonna say, there's a couple more chapters kinda wrapping up. There's the journey and then putting the one thing to work. I guess those are the last two, so I know we've gone over. Is there anything that really stood out to you in these kind of wrap up chapters?

Charelle Griffith:

I think the main thing was just like, I think I wrote, I could highlight a bit that was like, action build and action habits, build on habits, success build and success. And just really, like, you've gotta start, haven't you? We, it all goes back to that domino right from the beginning, just being

Lauren Tilden:

Right. Gotta knock the first one over.

Charelle Griffith:

not the first one over. You've gotta start taking the action and keep coming back to this. The one thing like, actually I think it's probably easy to start and then get distracted from enough again to like keep coming back to what is the one thing.

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

Yeah. And then, yeah, I think that was it.

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah. So I said in the beginning like, I really liked it. I thought it was good. Kind of frame of mind to put my, put me in as I start thinking about next year and planning and you know, what to keep doing, what to stop doing, what to add or delete from my life and from my business. I think it was super, super useful. My biggest takeaway might be like a small thing, but just my schedule, and the fact that it's very hard for me to get super focused work done with the way that my schedule currently is. And so that probably needs some rethinking, which is a good time to do that. What would be any big takeaways for you?

Charelle Griffith:

I know it, I know it, but it is such a good reminder thing of the dominoes. I just generally, and it's not very often that a very visual thing sticks in my mind, but I actually just think this, like the little one knocking something over a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger. I think that actually is a visual I'm really gonna remember and focus on, and being like actually like, yes, it's a chain reaction, but it's also a chain reaction that's gaining power as it goes along.

Lauren Tilden:

Well, I think my takeaway for folks, like I could give you a small thing, a small go thing to go do, but I really think this book is worth reading. We said before, it's, it's not a hard read at all. It's not that long. And it's just, it's good. And I think the message was needed on both of our counts it sounds like.

Charelle Griffith:

Yeah. I

Lauren Tilden:

Um.

Charelle Griffith:

it, not all the time I think go read the book, but I actually do. No, I don't. And sometimes they're like, long you like, it's a lot to go through. But I think it's a good balance of like practical tips, some good diagrams, a few nice stories, stuff to do like, I think, and not, and it didn't feel too hard to read. So I, I think this actually is

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah,

Charelle Griffith:

most people, I can't see anyone not gain anything out of it, even though

Lauren Tilden:

same.

Charelle Griffith:

of reminders, I just think it's done in a nice way.

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. I can't see anyone not being able to get something out of this. I agree with that. Okay, Charelle, we just wrapped up our final but club episode together. Tell us what's next for you. What, what are you going to use this new time for? And I'll just plug right now, we did an episode together really digging into Charelle and her her focus moving forward. So definitely go listen to our episode together. It'll be linked in the show notes. It was all about planning for 2026, so that's a great one. But tell us what your, tell us what your one thing is going to be.

Charelle Griffith:

thing. I still dunno my purpose and I still haven't got my one thing, but you were right about me making a concentrated effort to focus on less. So,

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

I am giving, stepping Away from Making Good Book Club, but also I'm stepping away from my own book club that I run for 10 years and Propel

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

so it's very much a moving away from a decade. I've been very book. And

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

consuming and being like fooling as if I needed to get

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

And I'm like, you know, way, way, way enough now.

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

what you need is more time for implementing, more time for executing and to be focused because, you know, it was still was three things that I was, and everything. And I really wanna say this is people that are multi-passionate because I know a lot of people on the podcast, like I had quit for Figuring Out, which was a podcast that I'd had for like two and a half years, and I had this new space in my calendar and the love was like, do you wanna come and do this? And I was like, yes. And it's so, so tempting and to like, just, you give yourself a bit of space and you try and do like exactly what the book says and then you're like, ah, because you're just not used to it. And so

Lauren Tilden:

Mm-hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

and so,

Lauren Tilden:

yeah. Sometimes saying No, you're saying no to things you want to do.

Charelle Griffith:

I.

Lauren Tilden:

That's the hard part that I think we don't talk about. It's like sometimes it sounds really great and it sounds fun and you want to do it,

Charelle Griffith:

And that,

Lauren Tilden:

so,

Charelle Griffith:

thing, like I'm not stepping away'cause I don't enjoy doing this. I'm not stepping away from my own

Lauren Tilden:

Hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

'cause I don't enjoy doing them. I could happily continue to do both of them, but actually when I sit down and I look at like the time and the head space for both of them,

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

I, if I really wanna take my business to the next level, I need to try and follow what all the books seem to tell you, which is

Lauren Tilden:

Yes.

Charelle Griffith:

prioritize.

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

yes, so it's just gonna be about me pouring all my time, all my energy into charellegriffith.com. I'm very much leaning into planning. So as Lauren said, there is a podcast episode on annual planning and I'm really excited to, as if you've listened to the podcast, you'll probably see I'm a very organized person. I'm very disciplined. I know a lot about planning and I think actually having the conversations with you, Lauren, actually some of them made me really realize how much of their strength. had been, I knew it and not,

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

one of the services I'd offered for a long time, but I think I've definitely gained confidence to really try and lean into that now. So yeah, so definitely, if you wanna stay in my world, you can come over to my website, charellegriffith.com. I've got a newsletter. I also am on LinkedIn. It's just my name, Charelle Griffith. And on Instagram it's just my name. I'm super lucky'cause I've got a fairly

Lauren Tilden:

Hmm.

Charelle Griffith:

name, but there's no s on Griffith. The last podcast I was on, someone said, do you think you lose loads of people? Could you forget to tell people there's no S on Griffith? And I was like, oh, I never thought of it. So I'm telling people now, um, I'm like, okay. And yeah. And so I'm gonna be leading much more into planning, so you're gonna see much more me talking about annual planning, quarterly planning, just strategic business planning in general and just trying to help people be super organized so they get the results and business they really want. And totally right. I'm sure loving

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah.

Charelle Griffith:

crazy, does it?

Lauren Tilden:

Not at all. It sounds like exactly how it should be.

Charelle Griffith:

Yeah. And so I'm super excited. But definitely,'cause obviously I know this is a very American audience. There are some things in the pipeline for next year that I'm like looking at new virtual things and the time difference thing you're talking about. There's some stuff that I've got like planned, so I'm definitely looking to, like, I wanna help more and more business owners so things will be changing. So even if right now you feel I'm very British, it's not gonna be for long, that's for sure.

Lauren Tilden:

No, and I've learned so much like I'm American and I've learned a lot from you. When I think about planning, like you are the person who comes to mind. So it sounds exactly right. And I am very excited to continue following along. I know we'll continue to have you back on the podcast because whether it's about a book or about your own expertise, like I love chatting with you and you always have a ton of value to offer. So, but thank you again for everything. I know it's been such a commitment and. It's been such a blast to get to talk with you every month and talk books and geek out. So, I know on behalf of all of our book club folks, just a huge thank you.

Charelle Griffith:

thank you. I've really, really enjoyed it. I'm definitely going to miss it, so I'm sure I'll end up going back'cause I'll be like, I want do something. This space on my

Lauren Tilden:

do books.

Charelle Griffith:

I meant to do with it.

Lauren Tilden:

Yeah. What do I do at 5:00 PM on Wednesdays every month. Well, thank you Charelle, for this great conversation about the one thing and for the dozens of other books we've covered. Yeah, I'll, I'll make sure that all the links to all you've got going on, your socials, your website newsletter, all the stuff is in the show notes. But yes, for one last time, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Making Good Book Club.

Charelle Griffith:

having me.

All right, so there you have our conversation all about the one thing. Did you enjoy it? What were your takeaways? DM us on Instagram and let us know your thoughts. We would love to chat. I am@laurentilden and Charelle is@charellegriffith. Huge, huge, huge thanks to Charelle for four years of making good Book Club. It has been such a treat to cover all of these books with you, Charelle, and I am so grateful for the time, energy, thought, and tension that you've put into this. And listener. We have lots of book club episodes, dozens on so many different books that really will make a difference for your small business. Head to making good podcast.com to see all of our previous episodes. And so for the first time ever, I am not announcing a book for next month on the book club because that was Shell's last book club episode and possibly the last one forever, TBD. But I wanna hear from you. Do you listen to, do you love these book club episodes? Please DM me on Instagram and let's. Chat, I am totally open to continuing. If there is enough demand, I really want to hear from you. You can find the show notes from this episode at makinggoodpodcast.com/318. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast player. It takes just a few seconds and it would totally make my day. Thank you for being here and for focusing on making a difference with your small business. Talk to you next time.