Gary Keller Quotes & Sayings

When one thing, the right thing, is set in motion, it can topple many things. And that's not all. — Gary Keller

Even if you're sure you can win, be careful that you can live with what you lose. — Gary Keller

Juggling is an illusion ... In reality, the balls are being independently caught and thrown in rapid succession ... It is actually task switching. — Gary Keller

When you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them. — Gary Keller

Purpose, meaning, significance - these are what make a successful life. Seek them and you will most certainly live your life out of balance, criss-crossing an invisible middle line as you pursue your priorities. The act of living a full life by giving time to what matters is a balancing act. — Gary Keller

What's the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary? — Gary Keller

You can become successful with less discipline than you think, for one simple reason: success is about doing the right thing, not about doing everything right. — Gary Keller

Voltaire once wrote, "Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." Sir Francis Bacon added, "A prudent question is one-half of wisdom." Indira Gandhi concluded that "the power to question is the basis of all human progress." Great questions are clearly the quickest path to great answers. — Gary Keller

The way to get the most out of your work and your life is to go as small as possible. — Gary Keller

People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the only ones who do. — Gary Keller

Instead of a to-do list, you need a success list - a list that is purposefully created around extraordinary results. — Gary Keller

GOING SMALL If everyone has the same number of hours in a day, why do some people seem to get so much more done than others? How do they do more, achieve more, earn more, have more? If time is the currency of achievement, then why are some able to cash in their allotment for more chips than others? The answer is they make getting to the heart of things the heart of their approach. They go small. — Gary Keller

When you gamble with your time, you may be placing a bet you can't cover. — Gary Keller

The reason we shouldn't pursue balance is that the magic never happens in the middle; magic happens at the extremes. — Gary Keller

To be financially wealthy you must have a purpose for your life. In other words, without purpose, you'll never know when you have enough money, and you can never be financially wealthy. — Gary Keller

Knocking out a hundred tasks for whatever the reason is a poor substitute for doing even one task that's meaningful. — Gary Keller

The ability to control oneself to determine one's actions is a pretty powerful idea. Base — Gary Keller

Your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun on one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it, adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it. The concerns which fail are those which have scattered their capital, which means that they have scattered their brains also. They have investments in this, or that, or the other, here, there and everywhere. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" is all wrong. I tell you "put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket." Look round you and take notice; men who do that do not often fail. It is easy to watch and carry the one basket. It is trying to carry too many baskets that breaks most eggs in this country. — Gary Keller

If today your company doesn't know what its ONE Thing is, then the company's ONE Thing is to find out. — Gary Keller

Multitasking is a lie — Gary Keller

Long hours spent checking off a to-do list and ending the day with a full trash can and a clean desk are not virtuous and have nothing to do with success. Instead of a to-do list, you need a success list - a list that is purposefully created around extraordinary results.
To-do lists tend to be long; success lists are short. One pulls you in all directions; the other aims you in a specific direction. One is a disorganized directory and the other is an organized directive. If a list isn't built around success, then that's not where it takes you. If your to-do list contains everything, then it's probably taking you everywhere but where you really want to go. — Gary Keller

Your next step is simple. You are the first domino. — Gary Keller

It is not that we have too little time to do all the things we need to do , it is that we feel the need to do too many things in the time we have. — Gary Keller

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is? Mitch: No. What? Curly: This. [He holds up one finger.] Mitch: Your finger? Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don't mean sh*t. Mitch: That's great, but what's the "one thing"? Curly: That's what you've got to figure out. — Gary Keller

Multitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time. — Gary Keller

success comes down to this: being appropriate in the moments of your life. — Gary Keller

Success is actually a short race - a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough for habit to kick in and take over. — Gary Keller

When you're supposed to be working, work, and when you're supposed to be playing, play. It's a weird tightrope you're walking, but it's only when you get your priorities mixed up that things fall apart. — Gary Keller

When you strive for greatness, chaos is guaranteed to show up. — Gary Keller

Don't fear big. Fear mediocrity. Fear waste. Fear the lack of living to your fullest — Gary Keller

Most people think buying is investing, but they're wrong. Buying doesn't make you an investor any more than buying groceries makes you a chef. — Gary Keller

What turns an opportunity into a deal is that the property meets your Criteria and the seller is willing to meet your Terms. — Gary Keller

It's like compound interest with a turbocharger. — Gary Keller

The doors to the world have been flung wide open, and the view that's available is staggering. Through technology and innovation, opportunities abound and possibilities seem endless. As inspiring as this can be, it can be equally overwhelming. The unintended consequence of abundance is that we are bombarded with more information and choices in a day than our ancestors received in a lifetime. Harried and hurried, a nagging sense that we attempt too much and accomplish too little haunts our days. — Gary Keller

No one is self-made — Gary Keller

A life worth living might be measured in many ways, but the one way that stands above all others is living a life of no regrets. — Gary Keller

Only actions that become springboards to succeeding big are those informed by big thinking to begin with. — Gary Keller

the key to success isn't in all the things we do but in the handful of things we do well. — Gary Keller

deductible, depreciable, and deferrable - are about reducing your taxable income. No investment does that better than real estate, which offers unprecedented tax advantages both while you own it and when you sell it. Millionaire — Gary Keller

Albert Einstein had Max Talmud, his first mentor. It was Max who introduced a ten-year-old Einstein to key texts in math, science, and philosophy. Max took one meal a week with the Einstein family for six years while guiding young Albert. No one is self-made. — Gary Keller

If you were trying to talk a passenger through landing a DC-10, you'd stop walking. Likewise, if you were walking across a gorge on a rope bridge, you'd likely stop talking. — Gary Keller

It's important to realize that on the journey to achieving big, you get bigger. Big requires growth, and by the time you arrive, you're big too! What seemed an insurmountable mountain from a distance is just a small hill when you arrive - at least in proportion to the person you've become. Your thinking, your skills, your relationships, your sense of what is possible and what it takes all grow on the journey to big. As you experience big, you become big. — Gary Keller

If everyone has the same number of hours in the day, why do some people seem to get so much more done than others? How do they do more, achieve more, earn more, have more? If time is the currency of achievement, then why are some able to cash in their allotment for more chips than others?
The answer is they make getting to the heart of things the heart of their approach. They go small. Going small is ignoring all the things you could do and doing what you should do. It's recognizing that not all things matter equally and finding the things that matter most. It's a tighter way to connect what you do with what you want. It's realizing that extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus. — Gary Keller

Sometimes what we do doesn't matter, but sometimes it does. And when it does, what we do defines our life more than anything else. In — Gary Keller

Don't let small thinking cut your life down to size. Think big, aim high, act bold. And see just how big you can blow up your life. — Gary Keller

As one would expect, the Devil's tools are all ominous, but oddly, the highest-priced item in his arsenal is an extremely worn and harmless-looking wedge. When asked why it is so expensive, the Devil slowly smiles and replies, To be totally candid, this may be my most powerful weapon of all. I call it the wedge of doubt. When all my other tools fail me, I know I can always rely on doubt and discouragement to break the heart and shatter the will of man. — Gary Keller

To achieve an extraordinary result you must choose what matters most and give it all the time it demands. This requires getting extremely out of balance in relation to all other work issues, — Gary Keller

Your talent and abilities are limited resources. Your time is finite. If you don't make your life about what you say yes to, then it will almost certainly become what you intended to say no to. — Gary Keller

Leaving some things undone is a necessary tradeoff for extraordinary results. — Gary Keller

You must be single-minded. Drive for the one thing on which you have decided. - General George S. Patton — Gary Keller

a different result requires doing something different. — Gary Keller

Task switching exacts a cost few realize they are even paying. — Gary Keller

This is how loose — Gary Keller

Extraordinary results happen only when you give the best you have to become the best you can be at your most important work. — Gary Keller

In one study, elite violinists had separated themselves from all others by each accumulating more than 10,000 hours of practice by age 20. Thus the rule. Many elite performers complete their journey in about ten years, which, if you do the math, is an average of about three hours of deliberate practice a day, every day, 365 days a year. Now, if your ONE Thing relates to work and you put in 250 workdays a year (five days a week for 50 weeks), to keep pace on your mastery journey you'll need to average four hours a day. Sound familiar? It's not a random number. That's the amount of time you need to time block every day for your ONE Thing. More than anything else, expertise tracks with hours invested. Michelangelo once said, "If the people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem wonderful at all." His point is obvious. Time on a task, over time, eventually beats talent every time. I'd say you can "book that," but actually you should "block it. — Gary Keller

The ONE Thing you can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary? — Gary Keller

In your effort to attend to all things, everything gets shortchanged and nothing gets its due. — Gary Keller

buying into The ONE Thing becomes difficult because we've unfortunately bought into too many others - and more often than not those "other things" muddle our thinking, misguide our actions, and sidetrack our success. — Gary Keller

When we fear big, we either consciously or subconsciously work against it. — Gary Keller

Work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls
family, health, friends, integrity
are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered. — Gary Keller

When you can see mastery as a path you go down instead of a destination you arrive at, it starts to feel accessible and attainable. — Gary Keller

Successful real estate investing begins with identifying value. How do investors identify value? That's easy. They look at real estate. They look at a lot of real estate. They look very carefully at a lot of real estate. I wish I could tell you there was a shortcut, but there's not, and I caution you against trying to create one. When you are starting to learn the value of real estate in an area, you will need to look at a lot of real estate. And as you carefully begin to get a sense of what people are asking and what people are willing to pay, you gain a sense of market value - what's worth what. This applies to both sales prices and rental rates. These are the two big variables in the value equation. — Gary Keller

In 2009, New York Times reporter Matt Richtel earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting with a series of articles ("Driven to Distraction") on the dangers of driving while texting or using cell phones. He found that distracted driving is responsible for 16 percent of all traffic fatalities and nearly half a million injuries annually. Even an idle phone conversation when driving takes a 40 percent bite out of your focus and, surprisingly, can have the same effect as being drunk. The — Gary Keller

Extraordinary success is sequential, not simultaneous. What starts out linear becomes geometric. You do the right thing and then you do the next right thing. Over time it adds up, and the geometric potential of success is unleashed. The domino effect applies to the big picture, like your work or your business, and it applies to the smallest moment in each day when you're trying to decide what to do next. — Gary Keller

Not everything matters equally, and success isn't a game won by whoever does the most. Yet that is exactly how most play it on a daily basis. — Gary Keller

One of the most empowering moments of my life came when I realized that life is a question and how we live it is our answer. — Gary Keller

Michelangelo once said, "If the people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem wonderful at all." His — Gary Keller

Success builds on success, and as this happens, over and over, you move toward the highest success possible. — Gary Keller

When you act on your priority, you'll automatically go out of balance, giving more time to one thing over another. — Gary Keller

When life happens, you can be either the author of your life or the victim of it. Those are your only two choices - accountable or unaccountable. This may sound harsh, but it's true. Every day we choose one approach or the other, and the consequences follow us forever. — Gary Keller

The path of mastering something is the combination of not only doing the best you can do at it, but also doing it the best it can be done. — Gary Keller

No one knows their ultimate ceiling for achievement, so worrying about it is a waste of time. — Gary Keller

Happiness happens when you have a bigger purpose than having more fulfills, which is why we say happiness happens on the way to fulfillment. — Gary Keller

If you have to beg, then beg. If you have to barter, then barter. If you have to be creative, then be creative. Just don't be a victim of your circumstance. — Gary Keller

Lacking a clear formula for making decisions, we get reactive and fall back on familiar, comfortable ways to decide what to do. Pinballing through our day like a confused character in a B-horror movie, we end up running up the stairs instead of out the front door. The best decision gets traded for any decision. — Gary Keller

All great achievements are the result of sustained focus over time - all of them. — Gary Keller

You can do two things at once, but you can't focus effectively on two things at once. — Gary Keller

Knowing why you're doing something provides the inspiration and motivation to give the extra perspiration needed to persevere when things go south..
..Purpose provides the ultimate glue that can help you stick to the path you've set. When what you do matches your purpose, your life just feels in rhythm, and the path you beat with your feet seems to match the sound in your head and heart. Live with purpose and don't be surprised if you actually hum more and even whistle while you work. — Gary Keller

When you say yes to something, it's imperative that you understand what you're saying no to. — Gary Keller

Getting extraordinary results is all about creating a domino effect in your life. — Gary Keller

Big is bad is a lie. It's quite possibly the worst lie of all, for if you fear big success, you'll either avoid it or sabotage your efforts to achieve it. — Gary Keller

The key is over time. Success is built sequentially. It's one thing at a time. — Gary Keller

When you think about success, shoot for the moon. The moon is reachable if you prioritize everything and put all of your energy into accomplishing the most important thing. — Gary Keller

To do two things at once is to do neither." - Publilius Syrus — Gary Keller

Anyone who dreams of an uncommon life eventually discovers there is no choice but to seek an uncommon approach to living it. — Gary Keller

You can't really make a deal until you've found an opportunity, and you can't really know if it's an opportunity until you understand value. — Gary Keller

they favor new information over old, even if the older information is more valuable. — Gary Keller

be a maker in the morning and a manager in the afternoon. — Gary Keller

One evening an elder Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside all people. He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us. One is Fear. It carries anxiety, concern, uncertainty, hesitancy, indecision and inaction. The other is Faith. It brings calm, conviction, confidence, enthusiasm, decisiveness, excitement and action." The grandson thought about it for a moment and then meekly asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?" The old Cherokee replied, "The one you feed. — Gary Keller

Gift of the Real Estate Gods. — Gary Keller

You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects. — Gary Keller

In their studies, students who successfully acquired one positive habit reported less stress; less impulsive spending; better dietary habits; decreased alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine consumption; fewer hours watching TV; and even fewer dirty dishes. Sustain the discipline long enough on one habit, and not only does it become easier, but so do other things as well. It's why those with the right habits seem to do better than others. They're doing the most important thing regularly and, as a result, everything else is easier. — Gary Keller

Multitasking doesn't save time - it wastes time. — Gary Keller

priority. FIG. 23 In business, profit and productivity are also driven by priority and purpose. Personal productivity is the building block of all business profit. The two are inseparable. A business can't have unproductive people yet magically still have an immensely — Gary Keller

They allow purpose to be the guiding force in determining the priority that drives their actions. — Gary Keller

Author Dave Crenshaw put it just right when he wrote, "The people we live with and work with on a daily basis deserve our full attention. When we give people segmented attention, piecemeal time, switching back and forth, the switching cost is higher than just the time involved. We end up damaging relationships." Every — Gary Keller

When everything feels urgent and important, everything seems equal. We become active and busy, but this doesn't actually move us any closer to success. Activity is often unrelated to productivity, and busyness rarely takes care of business. — Gary Keller

There are so many great reasons to devote all of your time and effort to taking and marketing listings. The Millionaire Real Estate Agent grasps the incredible advantages of making, obtaining, and marketing seller listings their primary lead-generation focus, and they do so almost exclusively. Over time, they will hire one or more buyer specialists to work the buyer side of the business and concentrate their energy on the high-return, high-leverage business of listings. — Gary Keller

The majority of what you want will come from the minority of what you do. — Gary Keller

Achievers always work from a clear sense of priority. — Gary Keller