Author
Gary Keller
The real-estate founder who reduced productivity to a single question.
1 book on BookYol
The story and the impact
Gary Keller is an American entrepreneur. A graduate of Baylor University, he co-founded the real-estate company Keller Williams in Austin, Texas, in 1983, and led it as it grew into one of the largest franchises in its industry.
His writing began inside that business: The Millionaire Real Estate Agent (2003), written with Jay Papasan, distilled what the company had learned about how its best agents worked, and a series of Millionaire titles followed. The ONE Thing (2013), also with Papasan, took the same lesson out of real estate and made it general: extraordinary results come from narrowing focus to the one action that makes the rest easier or unnecessary.
He remains associated with the company he founded and speaks on the principles of the book.
The signature
Keller's signature is the focusing question and the domino image that goes with it: find the one thing, line up the rest behind it, and protect the time to push it. His writing is plain and single-minded, and it draws its authority from having run an organization on the idea rather than from research.