Brian Tracy FULL INTERVIEW with A.T. Anthony Gell

[Music] he's not just touched the lives of millions of people he's transformed the lives of millions of people he is the author of many books including goals which has transformed my life and I'm certainly hoping that he'll sign before he leaves today he's the CEO of Brian Tracy International uh which website is Briant tracy.com and we are absolutely honored and delighted to have him here today Brian welcome sir thank you Anthony excellent Brian if we can just start with getting to know Brian Tracy uh you know some of the sort of personal things about you um if we can just start with where were you born sir and and where where do you live at the moment well I was I was born in Eastern Canada during the war um my father was in the RAF and stationed in Charlton Prince Island okay I grew up in Toronto and then my family moved to California and back to Canada I spent many years traveling and now I live in California again favorite Cuisine or restaurant any anything comes to mind you know I have traveled now in 98 countries and I like virtually everything I like Italian food I like Indian food I like Mexican food I like french food I like everything thank you airline food presumably as well top vacation spot uh Hawaii is my favorite but also the uh about also Austria and Switzerland fantastic and your favorite website apart from tracy.com uh it's probably Google because I can get so much information so fast and your number one Um passion outside of uh changing the world and inspiring us all well I I love to read and I love my wife and children so we spent a lot of time together so I'm not working I usually spend time with my family you're the World's expert at psychology of achievement uh amongst other things but how did you get into the space was there an epiphany moment when you thought this is when I this is what I want to do for the rest of my life well yes I I remember discovering something that was astonishing to me and it was that your level of self-esteem or self-worth your sense of personal value the the amount that you like yourself and respect yourself determines the entire quality of your life it determines the goals you set and how big they are it determines how much you believe in yourself which is how much you persist in your goals it determines what you learn it determines how much you like other people how much they like you back so the psychology of achievement is based around this concept that the more you do the things that make you feel good about yourself which is setting goals working toward them treating people well learning taking good care of yourself all the positive things that you do raise your self-esteem improve your self-image improve the quality of your relationships with other people and enable you to have a wonderful life and that just set me off yeah great and because you didn't come from a you didn't inherit a significant amount of money you didn't come from from a sort of a particularly affluent Early Childhood I think you then no I I I came from a poor background my parents never had any money they were working people my father was a carpenter my mother was a nurse uh I left school without graduating I worked at laboring jobs for several years and then I got into sales when I could no longer find a laboring job like most people in sales today uh and then I started asking a question which changed my life and the question is why is it that some people are more successful than others why is this and I looked around me and I saw people now I was 23 24 people younger than me doing better than me and they weren't any smarter than me and some of them were Dumber one of the thing one of the things I say is that nothing will make you matter than to see somebody who's dumber than you who's doing better than you and you say how can this idiot be doing so well and I began asking this question in selling I began asking why is it that some salespeople are more successful than others and I did something that very few people ever do I I later is I went to the best salespeople and I said how come you're so successful and they told me what they were doing and I did it and I made more sales and so people said how come you're making so many sales so I told them and they did it and their sales went up and when I got into business I asked managers how do you manage in a business like this how do you organize it and they told me and I did it and so one of the greatest success principles that you'll ever find is learn from the experts learn from the people who are already demonstrating the results that you want to get read their books listen to their programs attend their courses learn from and ask them and they will always tell you and you can save yourself years of hard work by simply learning from people who' already learned it by themselves yeah fantastic as I mentioned to you you've studied and you you've gone through and you've you've learned uh what is it that takes you know makes people highly highly successful in whatever field there is so we're going to go into some uh some detail later on but sort of at a macro level what are the top two or three things that worldclass people do well worldclass people have a much bigger vision of what is possible for them um one of the things I techniques I learned many years ago from an expert was called X to 10x X to 10x which means imagine that you could go from X your current income to 10x 10 times your current income and your first response to that is that that's completely prepost it's there's no way that I could increase my income 10 times it's not possible so then I'll ask an audience I'll say well has uh is there any chance at all that you could increase your income by 10 times in the course of your lifetime is there maybe one chance in a thousand everybody will say well there's maybe one chance in a thousand okay then I'll say well now how many people here from the time you took your first job until now have already doubled your income every hand goes up triple most hands go up quadruple lots of hands go up I I said so you already doubled your income tripled your income so all you need to do now is do the same things that you did to double and triple your income and you'll double and triple it again and double and triple it again and then you'll have increased your income 10 times and there are people all over the world who are earning 10 times as much as you and they're no better and no smarter than you are and what this does is it explodes your thinking because most of us begin to develop narrow thinking around our current income and then we adjust our lives we adjust our appetites the rest resturants we go to the food we eat the home we live in the clothes we wear the car we drive we we forced our whole world to fit into our current income whereas top people create a vision here's an interesting point Peter Ducker said that if you do not have a vision to be a world leader when you start your business on your kitchen table you'll probably never be very successful so if you're starting your business on a kitchen table imagine you could be a world leader and then you ask the question well if I was the world leader in my field how would I be different from today how would my company be different from today we were just talking earlier about uh Steve Jobs and uh Apple computer Steve Jobs and Steve wnc started out in a garage with an idea to put together pieces and make a little Apple computer that people could have at home Bill Gates of Microsoft started off with this idea that if they could make it usable you could have a PC on every desktop everyone's heard about that that was his Vision a PC on every desktop in the world when he said this in the late' 7s everybody said you must be crazy who the heads of the IBM were saying there's no reason for anyone to have a computer at home there's no reason for anyone to have a personal computer and within a couple of years they were literally avalanched out of the business because you find that everybody wanted a personal computer the only question was the technology to build it and the programs to operate today if you don't have a computer you're living in the Stone ages people your telephone is is a computer you have a iPad you have a computer at home you have a so so you start thinking of if your business was world class if you were World Class how would you be different from today and then here's the key this is the key take the first step the first step is always the hardest step because it forces you like a like a chick breaking out of an egg when it hatches the first step forces you to break out of your comfort zone and the comfort zone is so strong that probably 90% of people are held back from their full potential all their Liv because of this Vice like comfort zone and when you take the first step the only way you can do it is break out and suddenly you see the second step and the third step and the fourth step and then as you take the steps your self-esteem goes up and your self-confidence goes up and you become more creative and you start to think of all kinds of ideas and people say what is gotten into you I mean what are you smoking because whatever it is you should share it with the others uh and and so this is the difference between top people is they have a big idea of what's possible and they take the first step yeah it's interesting because you you you talk about when you in your book goals that people need to uh almost do magic wand thinking when they're writing their goals it sounds like you know you're talking about there with sort of you know an unbelievable Vision it sounds similar and linked to magic wand is this what what what I do is this I take out my magic wand I always have my magic wand and I'll do this with every audience I'll say the key to success is what is called future orientation that means top people top 10 per of people think about the future most of the time they think about the future most of the time and they practice a concept used by top people called idealization they idealize they imagine they have no limitations and imagine you could wave a magic wand and make your future perfect in every way so we say there's four areas the first area is of course your income your career your work if it was perfect if you're earning the kind of money you wanted doing what you wanted to do with the people you wanted to do it what would it look like 5 years from now and how would it be different from today and the same thing we say is with your relationships and your family if your family life and lifestyle was perfect how would it be different from today I just spoke to somebody who asked this question he was really shocked because he found that he was working 12-hour days he was seeing his kids once or twice a week his wife was frustrated and irritated he'd come home at late at night and he'd watch television and he realized the reason I'm trying to be successful is so I can provide a good life for my family and here I am ignoring my family so he began to idealize and say if my family life was perfect what would it look like he said I would have dinner with my family every night and so he changed his schedule so he got his work done and he had dinner with his family every night and then he would play with his children and then he put them to bed and then he would work later in the evening and then go to bed at a reasonable time it transformed his family life completely and so but if you don't think about these things you'll just go on the same way forever doing what you're doing yeah ask if your health was perfect how would it be different and finally if your financial situation was perfect in every way how would it be different from today and then what is the first thing you could do the first step right now to make your future life perfect in every way and whatever it is just take the first step yeah interesting because it sounds like there you've got the visualization of like you know the ideal ideal future which is a good thing for you to be doing for your subconscious anyway but then also linking it down to what are we actually going to do next to deliv this in terms of you write you talk about um in goals you should write them all down the key thing seems to be writing them all down yes but in terms of goals should you write them on it's a very small practical point but should you write them on pieces of paper uh computers media does it not matter necessarily why you write these goals down there any thoughts on that well I I teach a a program um it's it's an advanced coaching and mentoring program to business owners and I tell them that if you come and work with me for one year I will show you how to double your income and double your time off within 12 months and then what I do is I frontend load the first day of coaching so that they double their income within 30 days everybody does it it's very simple I hand them out a spiral notebook like a school notebook and I say what I'm going to ask you to do is I'm going to write ask you to write down 10 goals that you'd like to accomplish in the next 12 months write them in the present tense as though they are already a reality not I will earn but I earn and then at the end of it write byy and have a due date I earn this amount by this date I weigh this number of kilos or pounds by this date I achieve this goal by this state now when you write it down you engage in what is called a psychon neurom motor activity which is a 50 Cent word as we say it's it's a big word but what it means is that you see it when you're writing it you subvocalize when you are right speaking you kinesthetically write it and by doing the handwriting you actually program it into the hard drive of your subconscious mind and I've had people do this exercise once and a year later they found that list of goals and they were astonished to find that eight of the 10 goals had been achieved I spoke to a gentleman recently remarkable story he said after he had gone through my seminar and he heard me say write down 101 goals that you want to accomplish in your lifetime well he was about 24 he was struggling he was poor he had a used car no money unmarried single so on so he went home that weekend he got a spiral notebook he wrote down 101 goals now 12 years later I'm coming back to the same City Atlanta Georgia and so he came to my seminar and he said I have to talk to you he said because two weeks ago I was going through my papers and I found that notebook and I said ah there's that notebook I wrote so many years ago and he took it out and he said I wonder how I did and so he began looking and he took out a pen and he began ticking off the 101 goals yes I achieved that and I achieved that and I achieved that he said Brian and he started to cry he started to shake he said Brian I had achieved all 101 goals in 12 years one of my goals was to marry beautiful woman which I did to have children which I do to start my own business which I did to become a millionaire which I I am today to own a new Mercedes which I have to put my children in private schools which I did to travel around the world to learn a language to sing a song to learn to speak to he said it was unbelievable he said not 100 101 goals had been achieved in 12 years he said it was overwhelming to him he could not believe it because I had told him if you write them down it's like programming them into your subconscious mind where they then begin to work 24 hours a day while you're doing other things great so a spiral notebook and a pen yes and some imagination and some discipline each morning talk about each morning do you say that you should should you look at your goals then every single morning I know that you say you're a big believer and going to bed early waking up early reading uh nourishment for the brain and then looking at the goals is that what I do is I rewrite my goals every morning okay I carry a spiral notebook I have stacks now over the years and every morning I get up and I do a little bit of reading I exercise and then I'll open my book and I'll write down the goals now here here's the key do not refer to the previous day what you do is you turn it over and you rewrite your goals again today now here's what we'll happen when you first write down 10 goals they will be the first things that occur to you the next day when you write them down without reference you will change the order you may actually drop off one or add something else the wording will change in the goals which is very important because your subconscious mind is activated by the Precision of the words that you use and so you'll find yourself writing the goals differently and in different order and sequence and at a certain point you'll find yourself every morning writing the same 10 goals like that and then one by one they'll start to be achieved and replaced by a new goal and a year from now it's almost like if you decided to exercise and lose weight a little bit each day a year from now you could be as fit as an Olympic Athlete a year from now you have accomplished so much it will be astonishing to you you know and people say well it sounds really good big American motivational speaker and so on they say but what if it doesn't work I say no no that's the wrong question what if it does work all it costs is a spiral notebook a pen and a few minutes a day maybe five minutes what if it could transform your life as it has done for millions of other people with no exceptions in 56 countries where I've spoken so if it works for everybody everywhere in the world it'll probably work for you all it takes is 5 minutes a day and it's really really a test of how much you really want those goals is do you have the discipline to rewrite them every day if you will do that that front loads the entire success process you know the very Act of writing goals raises your self-esteem it improves your self-image it increases your self-confidence confidence and it activates your creative mind you start to see all kinds of ideas and ways to achieve the goals that you've written it's so powerful it's literally lifechanging that one technique and should you when you when you with the spiral notebook in the morning should be the days goals week goals year goals or just the the key well it's not a Time planner no it's just it is your goals for the foreseeable future okay now when I I say start off write down onee goals if you have more confidence you can write down five and 10 year goals but I have never written a goal that I didn't achieve and I've gone from literally from Rags to Riches from being broke to being worth an enormous amount of money uh and it was exactly what I wrote down the car the home the the the family the the business everything I wrote down eventually came true and everybody I speak to says it all comes true eventually a lot of the things you say um I I guess Bri link to cause and effect you're you're telling us that you know you you can do things it's proven it's tried and tested if you follow these methodologies yes then you can have the same effect is that right the same results yes um but one of the things I went to one one of your courses I was lucky enough to go one of your courses last year where you were saying that when it comes to achieving greatness you don't have to be significantly better than the people around you your competitors have to be marginally better and you you talking about a metaphor with a horse race and you could say it a lot better than than I can but it really had an impact on the audience so can you just well we call this The Winning Edge Technique we find that top people have edges they're a little bit better just like the Olympic athletes win by an inch they win the gold and the person who comes in two inches later doesn't even appear on the winner Stand The Winning Edge concept says that a horse that wins in a horse race by a nose wins 10 times the prize money of the horse that comes in second by a nose and now is the horse that comes in first 10 times faster 10 times better 10 times anything no just a nose faster a nose can be an inch or two in a photo finish and it can make the difference between world championship and forgotten top people and the research that's coming out now since the last time we were together shows that the best people in every field the ones that go from the bottom to the top in their careers are people who engage in a concept called deliberate practice now this is a breakthrough concept it's like quality circles it's it's it's a whole new Concept in business deliberate practice means that like a sniper they they select the one skill that today can help them the most to be the most productive to to make the greatest contribution where they are right now and they ask around if I was really good at one skill you know the magic wand concept if I was really good at one skill right now which one skill would help me the most at this stage of my career and your boss can tell you your co-workers can tell you your your your your staff can tell you but you've got to know because this is the key it's almost like you're trapped in a room there's one door out the one door is the most important skill that you can learn if you learn all the other skills you go through all the other doors nothing will improve for you but if you get really good in this one skill today it can really help you sometimes it's understanding financial statements sometimes it's negotiating sometimes it's being really excellent in meeting management sometimes it's good it's public speaking sometimes you never know what it is but people around you know what it is and in your heart you know what it is but here's the point all business skills are learnable all business skills are learnable that means you can learn any business skill and the point is you must never allow yourself to be held back in your career to be trapped in the room room with the doors all ready to be open with the keys and the locks you must never allow yourself to be trapped because you lack a business skill and many people for give you a very simple example delegation the ability to delegate intelligently and well to the right person in the right way the right job and make sure it's done is an absolutely essential executive skill if you do not have it you cannot survive or succeed as an executive you must be replaced or carefully supervised because you will never get results through other people the definition of management but delegation is a learnable skill and every successful executive is excellent at delegating they're excellent at selecting the right people working with them to get clarity about the right job and what needs to be done making sure that they have everything that they need and then backing away and letting them do it because if you can't delegate a task you must do it all yourself and a lot of managers say well if you want it done right you have to do it yourself no if you want it done right you have to delegate it well to someone else and make sure that they do it so it's just that one skill and there's there's a series of management skills can transform your entire career I have had senior vice presidents working for me that I've had to fire because they could not delegate every single time they handed out a task it fell in its face uh another task is planning they could not plan is they were disorganized all the time another task is is is measuring they could not set measures or standards so that nobody knew what Target they were aiming at so people were always at each other's throats because there were no stand I mean these are little things you think well of course those are absolutely essential and they're all skills and they're all learnable and that's the great breakthrough you can learn any skill you need to develop The Winning Edge in any field that you're in let's talk about learning for a second I mean has you're a master teacher but in terms of your students have you is there any Technologies or any advancements in terms of how people can best learn yes well first of all the human being is an automatic a natural learning organism a child in the first 3 to five years learns to coordinate 26 senses they learn 5,000 words they learn how to read 100 different facial expressions so they know exactly what people are thinking and feeling they know how to interact and get along with others they learn at 30 times the adult rate in the first 3 to 5 years but there's not no reason why adults cannot learn at a rapid rate as well it's like breathing in and breathing out and you find your most successful people we say all leaders are readers all leaders are Learners because they recognize that whatever got you to where you are today is not enough to get you any further is you've got to be continually upgrading your skills and sometimes one new idea at the right time if it's the right idea for you will save you five years of hard work I was listening to an audio program last year and I heard one concept on that audio program about business success that triggered a whole series of ideas of how you could Implement that process it's a very simple idea and it's based on this is that 90% of all business success is having a great product to start with it was just a throwaway line in an interview and I stopped my the car I stopped the the CD and I started thinking about that and my mind was churning is look at all the struggle we work for in business we try we start a business we're working we're in competition but 90% of your success is having a great product and a perfect example is the iPod iPhone iPad every time people use this what do they say they say this is a great product the car that brought me over here today Michael the driver he got an iPad and he said his wife got it for him for Christmas he said this is a great product he said he can't live without it well so I said how do you measure how successful you are going to be in business how do you predict your business future it's very simple it's the percentage of times that your customers after using your product or service say this is a great product this is a great service this is a great company because without exception all successful businesses trigger that response so you can take every planning and organizing upgrading your skills learning staff customer service sales marketing everything comes right down to this how often people say after consuming your product or service this is a great product we went to a wonderful Indian restaurant just around the corner from the hotel last night so we said to the uh coner is there an excellent restaurant around here he said what kind of food would you like obviously we said well how about Indian food they said yes one of the best Indian food restaurants in London is just down off just off gler uh Road it's about a f minute walk so we walked down there and we walked in and we sat down beautiful Decor High ceilings beautiful lighting we sat down and the food and the service were outstanding and what we said is this is a great restaurant I mean we want to come back here we want to come back and bring our friends we want to bring our our spouses we want to tell other people to come here if you can trigger that reaction in your customers then your future is guaranteed now important point no company starts off with a product or service that triggers that reaction the first product or service May satisfy some people but now you just improve it you just continue to improve it until you hit that critical point where people start saying Gees this is a great product then you know you've hit it and every product has to trigger that and not no they don't start off that way you keep improving them and improving them improve your service improve your people improve the product if you can do that so there that one idea that I have I have generated more than a million Dollar in new revenues by taking that concept expanding it like a horizon and teaching hundreds of business owners how to install this greatness system within their business at every level from planning organizing uh marketing selling customer service bus manager development and so on so now companies will walk out of my my process and literally double the size of their business in 30 days they and when the economy is in a recession their businesses are people say why well because they've got great products they've got great people you see what I mean it's a very one concept like that but you never know where you're going to find a concept like that so you've got to be like a radar uh scan screening The Horizon looking for those Concepts reading listening talking asking questions and every so often Bo like the lightning strike in the cartoon you get this lightning strike one idea can save you five or 10 years of hard work so it's it's as you're saying it's like you're reading I think you've mentioned before the interview you do about 3 hours of reading each day so you're certainly constantly learning but it's it's it's almost like separating what what that was is the ability to separate out of just one idea out of all the millions of other ideas that you could have absorbed so how do you make sure you incorporate the right idea is it is it the one that well you you have to understand that there is a great power in the universe that is trying to get you the ideas you need to achieve your goals so you go right back to I want to ACH I want to increase my income so I say to people you want to double your income in the next 2 to three years everybody says yes I said it's a reasonable goal a lot of people in this room will double their income in next two or three years so how do you do it and I say well could you increase your productivity because your income is determined by the value of your contribution the results that you get for others that they will pay you for they say well yeah so so could you increase your productivity by one/ Tenth of 1% in one day that's 1 1,000th in a day could you be 1 1000 thousandth more productive in one day and people say of course you could probably be twice as productive in one day if you just focused on your most important task and did only that but let's just say 1 1,000th we're not talking about 100% we're talking about 1 1,000 having done it for the first day could you do it for the second day yes could you do it for the third day I mean if you really determined if you had a gun to your hand could you do it yes yes so so you could do it for 5 days well that would be 1 half of 1% you think you could be 1 half of 1% more productive over over the course of an entire week they say well of course one half of a percent could you do it for the next four weeks now there's 13 4-we months in a year 52 weeks divided by four so having done it for a month that's 2% more productive in a whole month could you do it for the next month and the answer is yes because now you're get into the rhythm of better productivity you're learning new skills you're managing your time better and so on if you do this for an entire year at the end of a year you'll be 26% more productive that's without compounding could you do that could you do that if you really want wanted to if your life depended upon it could you do it people say yes of course well having done it for the first year could you do it for the second year and they say well yes of course because now you're into the Rhythm it's easier and easier it's like skiing you go faster and faster and faster you get Dev develop what is called the momentum principle of success could you do it for 10 years well 25 26% compounded over 10 years is 104% so increase your you'd increase your productivity performance and output and your results by 10 times in 10 years so you'd increase your income 10 times as well and people will line up at your door to hire you at that at 10 times what you're earning today because you are so valuable and so productive and people say and I said I just told you that's what everybody does everybody who's earning 10 times as much as you did not do it in a big leap you if it's a big leap it gets into the newspapers but the people who are doing really well did it incrementally it's called The Law of incremental Improvement or the law of accumulation it's every great success is an accumulation of many little time tiny efforts that nobody ever sees or appreciates but they start to accumulate like a snowball they start to build up and build up and over the course of years the person is more and more productive and when you're looking for ideas you'll have ideas that will help you to be more productive I could do this and I could do that and you read this article oh that's a great article that's sometimes you just find one idea that will cause your your life to go off into a different direction change you completely but you never know what they idea is going to be so you must bombard your mind with many ideas just knowing that the right idea will come to you at the right time and it always does it always does if you will just keep being open to new ideas it's incredible because but you've got to have those goals in the first place in order to actually then trigger those ideas absolutely it's it's like you you want to start off to a distant destination well you have got to be clear about the destination then you find the way to get there you find the the right route the wrong route you change this you stop this you go here you go there but you've got to be clear about where you're going it's like if you're going through London traffic oh my Lord I mean you have to be turning and twisting and turning in and around and back and Corners everything else but you know where you're going so the It's the final goal that organizes your entire your entire trip if we can talk about now sort of you know time management because we talked about sort of the vision how to have inspirational goals you using the magic wand U you know not saying you know not setting too low bar goals high ones achieving but let's talk about how you can actually implement this a sort of day-by-day basis now I mean you wrote that the book eat that frog uh phenomenal book um so what are the what was the concept behind eat that frog and one or two key time management lessons we can take away so well I'll give you a couple of Concepts and then one lesson that will double your income anybody here can double their income with this lesson it's it's it's so simple it's embarrassing you'll walk away shaking your head you see that's so simple because all the great truths by the way are simple truths uh I've studied philosophy going back to Socrates and Plato and Aristotle all the great truths ever discovered are simple and easy to apply they are not deep or complex if it's complex it's may not be true okay so what we know is that all of time management and I've written my books have sold millions of copies in 38 languages I'm I'm probably the best time management author bestselling time management author in the world uh and I don't even consider myself to be a specialist but what I did is I began learning from the experts I read every book I took every course I traveled around the country and sat in on seminars I bought every time management system and used them so I so I understood how they worked and then I put it all together in systems and I have eat that frog is a short book it's available down the street here it's I just came from Bratislava they have it in Slovak language I stopped off in Prague for four hours they have it in Czechoslovakian Czech language the head of the company that brought me in uh last November found a copy of this book and began began to read it and today he has a thousand employees and he attributes it all to this book he said it transformed his life he carries it like a Bible it's written up and Rewritten and wrinkled and everything else he said it's such an amazing book because it basically says this is is decide upon your goals and your most important goal and then every day begin your day with a list the best time to write a list is the night before because when you write a list the night before the next morning you'll come up with all kinds of ideas for the list it's like goals for the day then what you do is you look at your list and you say if I could only do one thing on this list what one activity what one task what I want to be sure to complete before I left town for a month all right and that becomes your most important task for the day now the eat the Frog concept comes from a story where they say if you the first thing that you do in the morning is you eat a live frog you'll have the satisfaction of going through the day knowing that's probably the worst thing that can happen to you is eating a live frog and the two corollaries of this principle are if you have to eat two frogs eat the ugliest one first now the frog is your biggest task it's the one you're most likely to procrastinate on it's also the one that will have the greatest positive impact on your career if you do it now and so if you have two really important tasks do the most important one we say do the worst first do the biggest ugliest one and the second corollary is that if you have to eat a frog at all it does not pay to sit and look at it for tooo long so what you do is you start on that task now when I've done this talk or part of this talk for corporations very often they will go out and they will have brass frogs made up for all their Executives and the brass frog sits on the executives desk and it sits there so when they come into work the first thing they see is the frog or they plan their day and they put the frog on top of the plan first thing they see is the Frog and it reminds them start and do the worst first do the task that has the biggest round ramifications first and then discipline yourself to work single-mindedly at that task no matter what happens if you get pulled away keep coming back to the task like a gyroscope keeps coming back to Center keep on that task because you've now decided that everything else is a relative waste of time except this task it doesn't mean they're a waste of time but relative or in comparison with this task everything else is secondary or worse if you can do that and develop the habit of doing that you will double your product the first day and it will just continue to increase for the rest of your career you will be so productive you'll get so much done you'll get more responsibilities you'll get more opportunities but here's the wonderful thing everybody wants to feel like a winner everybody wants to feel like a winner so how do you get the winning feeling simple answer you win okay how do you win well you cross the finish line first now fortunately in life with successful people do and I learned this after many years it's so important is they set up Finish Lines for themselves that they can cross and so if you complete a task of any value it's like winning a little bit and you feel like a winner you start you work you complete the task even if all you do is wash your car and clean out the inside you stand back you feel happy because whenever you win your brain releases endorphins and endorphins are called Nature's happy drugs and they make you feel happy and your self-esteem goes up and your self-confidence goes up and you feel happier and more personable you're actually a more Charming person believe it or not when you set up a task and you complete it you feel like a winner your endorphins go up your self-esteem improves you your self-confidence goes up now if you have a list of tasks to do and you choose to do your most important task and you complete it you get a rush it's called an endorphin rush like that and your brain releases endorphins which flood your system and make you actually feel exhilarated you almost laugh out loud you're happy your heart rate goes up you you your smile sometimes you will stay and we work late at night to complete a task and you get it done at 2 or 3: in the morning and you finish it and even though you should be exhausted you you're happy you can't sleep you're walking around you watch television I mean because you feel great so what do winners do is they recreate this feeling over and over until it becomes a positive addiction now positive addiction is a very interesting subject you can get a negative addiction to an illegal drug or you can develop a positive addiction to endorphins and positive addictions are fed by setting and completing important tasks tasks that have an important role in your life people say well isn't that don't you lose your spontaneity if you're always working on top task no you're happy all the time and you are respected and este esteem by the people around you and you feel proud and you have a positive self-image and people like you and you earn more money what's to complain about that so therefore it's a very simple thing and that's why the book transforms people's lives it takes them from ragster riches make a list identify your most important task start on that and stay with it until it's done now I said I would give you a formula I'll give my friends a formula here I call it the ab formula and the ab formula says simply this if all the work you have to do there are two types of tasks there are a tasks that move you toward your most important goals doubling your income improving your lifestyle increasing your sales and Market there are B tasks that do not move you towards your goals conversations playing with the internet reading the paper going for lunch many cases they move you away from your goals so here's the rule do only a tasks do not do B tasks at all if you will do only a tasks the tasks that move you toward what you say you you want only those tasks and then you do the tasks that move you the fastest toward what you want your most important task you will have a wonderful life but most people 80% or more of people spend their entire days on B tasks tasks that are fun small irrelevant useless make no contribution to their careers and they don't understand why 10 years have gone by and their income has gone up at the rate of inflation whereas the people who've been working on AAS their income goes up and up and up people eagerly pay them more money because they are so valuable to the company mention you remember you talking about an hourly rate and and work out calculate what your hourly rate is and therefore only do things that justify that hour could you just reiterate that point because it's it's linked isn't it well we find we find that the average Brit average German average French person Works about 16 hours, 1600 hours a year average executive or business owner Works about 2,000 hours a year so what you do is you take your annual income and you divide it by 2,000 so let's say you're earning 100,000 a year divided by 2,000 that means that you're earning 50 pound an hour this is your hourly rate over time you can even include all your benefits and pensions and so on but whatever it is say let's say your hourly income is 50 pounds an hour that means by law the Ricardo's law Ricardo the David Ricardo the British Economist law of comparative advantage is you don't do anything that pays less than $50 an hour you only do things that pay you $50 an an hour or more or that people would pay you 50 I'm sorry 50 Quid an hour or more to do and everything else you delegate if there's something that someone else can do for 10 pounds an hour you hire somebody to do that 20 pounds an hour 30 pounds an hour you keep hiring people who can do things tasks at a lower hourly rate than yourself now here's the Great Discovery and this again is life-changing I call it the law of three the law of three says that no matter how many things you do how many tasks you do in a week or a month and it's usually 20 or 30 three of those tasks account for 90% of your value only three and you make a list of all of your tasks and I do this with my business owners and I have them go through this and they're astonished and they double their income within 30 days because I asked them the three magic questions magic question number one if you could only do one thing on this list one task on this list all day long which one task would have the greatest positive impact on your career which one task well it'll usually pop it'll jump out at you so you put a circle on there and you say if you could only do two things all day long which would be number two and you put a circle around that if you could only do three things all day long which would be number three put a circle around that and suddenly it's almost like all these other tasks fade like in a like in a camera shoot in a movie they fade and those three tasks are sitting there like those three magic Tas and you realize oh my God those are the by Big Three everything else is secondary everything else can be done by someone else or done later or not done at all and then you focus on the three so here's the rule for doubling your income and doubling it again and doubling it again do fewer things but do more important things and do them more often and get better at them repeat do fewer things the big three do more important things do more of them spend more of your day working on those three tasks and then get better at those tasks so you can get more of them done faster at a higher level of quality if you will practice the law of three you'll transform your life if you combine that with the eat the Frog and work on your most important task the one that can contribute the most value and you can do that until it becomes a habit just automatic you get up in the morning and you just start work on your most important task and you say no I don't do that I don't do little tasks those are not those are not my job people say what about this what about that I say excuse excuse me I'm management not labor I do management tasks I do my big three labor does all those other things they go ho ho ho so you person who's watching this right now is your management not labor think of yourself as management and do your three tasks if you can do that until it becomes a habit you're going to conquer the world if we can talk about uh sales now you you mentioned earlier about the fact that companies have really really got to make sure or you got to make sure your product is exceptionally good so if You' got an exceptionally good salesperson uh watching this right now they think the product is average at best what advice would you give to them they should they just leave and go and find a company where the product is good or should they scream at management that they need to incrementally improve their product you think well they should probably have their managers look at the first part of this interview the second part is if you're in sales as I was for many years you don't really have a choice over the product you have to assume that your company has produced a good product or service and they have priced it well in a competitive market so your job is to sell more of it and this brings us to the great breakthrough of the 21st century is that all sales in the 21st century are relationship sales they're relationship sales which means that people do not buy the product or service they buy how they feel about the person selling it and then the product or service becomes important so the first job of the sales professional is to take the time to develop a relationship of trust and credibility with the prospect sincerely uh we say Step n step one is to separate prospects from suspects a prospect is someone who needs it who wants it who can afford it and who can use it and they have all of those needs now a suspect is someone who may need it or want it sometime in the future don't spend all of your time or any of your time speaking to people who don't have a need for what you're selling in the short-term future so you ask them some questions what are you doing now and how is that working and what are your plans for the future if they say well we're perfectly satisfied and we don't have any money and uh business is terrible and we're not making any changes and they said great you you have a wonderful day and here's my business card and call me if ever things change and you keep looking for people who have a need we say that if you're selling fire extinguishers and a person's head hair is on fire that's a good Prospect they need your product and they need it now and they need it immediately um and so there's a whole series of things we teach on how to identify the best prospects how to find them how to approach them and so on the second thing is to build credibility with them in sales and in life credibility is everything your trustworthiness your believability how much I can trust you how much confidence I feel in dealing with you is the most important single Factor not only as a salesperson but as a human being and so you will find that your very best relationships in life are people with whom you have this perfect trust relationship your spouse your best friends your best customers you have relationship I work with people on multi-million dollar deals who I 've never met on the telephone or by email because we have a trust relationship and we can enter into agreements and we can make commitments and we can actually spend money and put in hours because we trust each other there's no problem and so trust between a a customer and a salesperson is really important and you build trust by asking questions not by talking about your company or your service by asking really good questions and listening closely to the answers and working to understand your customer one of the things I say is position yourself as a doctor of selling many salespeople kill the sale by walking in and saying hello I'm Brian Tracy let me tell you about my product or service that's like going into a party and saying oh you're a pretty girl and jumping all over them wait wait wait it's too soon it's too soon to pounce most salesp people go in and pounce because they're nervous instead what you do do is you go slow and what you say is is um I'd like to ask you a couple of questions and see if we can't help you achieve your goals in a cost effective way would that be all right people will relax if you offer to ask them questions and make no effort to sell at all because you don't even know if this is a prospect or a suspect yet so if you start to sell before you are clear and before the customer is clear that a need exists you'll kill the sale so just go slow and ask questions and ask questions about them one of the things we teach our sales professionals is to prepare thoroughly for every meeting go on to Google do whatever you need to do to find out everything you can about the prospect before you meet them for the first time remember the first impression is lasting and a customer today can tell if you're prepared or not within 30 seconds if you walk in and you say thank you very much for your time I had no idea your company had been here for 33 years you have 270 people in 12 branches and your bestselling product is this or that and they just won the quality award uh last year I said how do you know all this stuff well I went to your website and I looked it up and what do people put on their website they put the things that they're most proud of they this we call this their bragging page they put things on their bragging page so you go to their website and you'll learn the things that they are most proud of as a company and if you feed it back to them and say I looked at your website and wow that's pretty good pretty good material they say we can't even get our own people to look at our website much less outside people and you know what your credibility goes straight up and their fears and skepticism and negativity goes straight down and there's a there's an inverse relationship between the two as your credibility goes up their fear goes down now they start off with a high level of fear and skepticism but as you begin to build credibility by doing your homework and then by asking good questions to fill in the answers and listening closely to the answers they start to go I'm dealing with a professional thank so here's what I teach my professionals I say imagine that you are a doctor of selling I have my uh diploma granter here in my form of a magic wand and I'm going to make all of you into doctors from now on the only difference is that you make house calls and other doctors in Harley Street you have to go and see them or wherever they are so what does a doctor do anywhere in the world a doctor follows three steps in a doctor relationship doctor patient relationship the first step is the examination where the doctor asks a lot of questions takes tests pulse heart rate uh blood pressure and so on and then they do test and then they sit down and they say here are the results of our test this is the questioning process in selling as well here's the diagnosis here's what we think you need here's the situation that we think you have and the customer says yes that sounds like what I have that's what I need the waiter says this is what I would recommend for you based on what you want to eat you say yeah that sounds good then the prescription is now here is what I suggest and this is where you offer your product or service or close the sale so it's always examination diagnosis agreed upon and prescription what most salese do is they commit what we call sales malpractice is they walk in and they go straight to prescription and they start talking about what the product or service will do and how long their company's been in business and uh how long they customer doesn't care about that the customer only cares is how will your product or service transform my life or work in some way how will it change me how will it helped me or benefit me and I I don't even want to know that until I get to know you and so I trust you and you get to know me so that your recommendation has some value imagine if you went into a restaurant with many dishes and you say what would you recommend and they say this and this well don't you want to know what I like or what I want or or uh no no I don't know everybody likes this well that's how most salespeople sell they just walk and they assume that whatever somebody else bought this person wants as well say J talking about the prodct that's the same as pouncing on a girl uh at a social Gathering when you meet her for the first time so don't do the pounds just stop and be prepared to go back a second time take notes carefully in a sales presentation and say may I think about what you have said for a couple of days and come back to you with some ideas is on how we might be able to help you what is the customer going to say customer going say absolutely what if a doctor does a complete examination says look I'd like to get all of these results together and then see you again in about a week would that be all right of course you start to shift your whole schedule you are looking forward eagerly to hearing what the doctor has found out and what his recommendations or her recommendations would be and this is this is the beginning of the of the relationship based selling process and people who sell like this earn 10 times as much as people who sell the other way uh leadership obviously a huge huge issue people we need more inspirational leadership out there I actually went to your website Brian Tracy not long ago.com and um subscribe to your newsletters got seven um I think it was this the seven responsibilities of leaders right um if we can just start with um what is the sort of the number one responsibility of a leader or if there's any other things that highlights of those seven that you'd like to shed okay remember the umbrella concept is I read all these books about leadership and be a leader and everything else and I think a lot of them are nonsense they are written by academics and they're written by Consultants a leader is a person who gets results and their measure of leadership is how many results you get and how predictably you get results and there is a wonderful osmotic process in our society in the free market in the in the private sector is that if you get results at one level you'll be given higher responsibilities to get results at a higher level and a higher level and when you look at the presidents I was reading an article about the head of one of your diamond companies here in London this man is a billionaire and he started off working at a jewelry store sorting stones and talking to customers he now is one of the great Diamond merchants of the world I think his name is maybe it's graph or something like that but here's a man who started off and he was able to get results dealing with customers across the counter and then he was able to get results helping other people in the store and then he's built up and now he's one of the most respected and richest men in the world because he still gets great results and getting results is learnable you can learn to get lots of results so that's the umbrella and then we talk about the seven responsibilities of leadership and they're all based on getting results and number one is to set and Achieve business goals this is the primary responsibility of the leader is to set and Achieve business goals so you must be crystal clear about your goals the top managers I know in many entrepreneurial businesses set goals for sales for every day some companies set goals especially in retail for sales for every hour and they're looking at the numbers and a and a fixation on the numbers that measure your progress towards your goals causes you to improve in those areas so they say oh sales were down this hour what can we do to make this hour which is after lunch which is a slow hour how can we improve our sales at that time could we send out a special offer at 11:00 which is expires at two in other words they're always thinking in terms of small time increments but they're always thinking about their sales and profitability goals so that is the number one thing which you've heard me talk about before average managers are really unclear and everybody around them is unclear key managers are crystal clear and everybody around them is crystal clear about the goals everybody's pulling in the same direction just like a sports team they're very clear about what they have to do in soccer to to to make a goal they don't run around the the field and kicked the ball here and there and Shout at each other no they're absolutely laser focused on getting that ball into the net and that's the job of the manager yeah nobody else is responsible for that okay great you also wrote a book on on how the best leaders lead yes um is there any key Insight that we can take from that well it's the my favorite word in management is Clarity my favorite word in life is Clarity the greater Clarity you have with regard to what you're trying to accomplish the faster you'll achieve it in fact people with clear written goals and plans with priorities accomplish 10 times as much in life as people without it's very simple it's the 10 times Factor then make sure that everybody that works with you is crystal clear about what job they're supposed to do be clear about your three most important tasks and help everybody else be clear about their three most important tasks so you get everybody always working on the three most important things they can do and you hire other people who can do the task at a lower rate than your best people you free them up from small tasks so they can do the things that make the greatest contribution to your overall goals that's the job of a leader you mentioned uh Steve Jobs earlier in this interview and we have um other CEOs that are that are trying to model Steve Jobs and and other but for for the aspiring CEOs or CEOs out there that are watching this video is there any specific advice for them or what you feel uh the best CEOs do what is the sort of the the job and activities of the best CEOs in the world well I studied the subject and written about it but uh Jim Collins wrote a book good to Great five years ago still a top selling book and he in that he identified the companies that go from good to great and he found that they have seven qualities and one is quality was what he called a level five leader and a level five leader was a person who's actually pretty easygoing not an egomaniac is often the public doesn't even know who the president of this massive company is but this person is very clear about their goals very determined to make the company successful and it's very supportive of all the people around them and helps them they know that if I cannot get other people to do the work I have to do it so what they do is they select people very carefully remember we talked about selection and delegation so they'll select very good people and the rule is get the right people on the bus get the wrong people off the bus and then get the right people in the right seats on the bus this is Jim Collins formula and so that's what the leader does is the leader focuses on finding the right people to put in the right seats on the bus and then they will drive the company forward fantastic thank you very much for that br br um if we can uh talk about something SL more personal but still very encapsulating to everything you've been talking about today and that's overcoming obstacles visualization and everything else you've U overcome uh cancer um as last year I believe you were diagnosed with throat cancer can you just tell us about that story and maybe some of the lessons that you've learned along that Journey yeah well I I believe in having regular medical checkups after the age of 40 you should have a checkup every year because doctors can find things in a checkup that will not really even appear especially blood tests and so not even appear for several years so regular checkups can save can can add about 8 to 10 years to your life well I got so busy for two or three years I never went to a doctor I finally uh had a little snipple that there didn't go away so I went to my doctor for my medical checkup and he looked in my throat he said you looks like you have an infection let me give you some antibiotics come back in a week so I did came back I said it's not an infection the infection is cleared up I think he said I'm afraid you're I'm going to have to change your life you have cancer this is an internist very smart doctor and he said I'm going to send you to an expert who will do a biopsy just to make sure that we're correct so he did and the biopsy came back and the MRI and the Pet Scan and the CT scan showed that I had a cancer about this size the size of a lime on the back of my throat now as a speaker as anybody but as a speaker this was frightening to find out you have throat cancer fortunately it was not on my larynx it's out of my voice bite was on the side so I said well what is the course of treatment and they said well first of all we start off with chemotherapy to shrink it and then surgery to remove the scar tissue and then radiation to kill any microscopic cells so I began to read copiously learn from the experts I went onto the internet I went to the American Cancer Institute I checked my cancer against other cancers and predictions I joined a support group I read books on the subject I got second opinions from other doctors and then I finally came to the conclusion trust your doctors these people do this all day and each of my doctors there's three one for uh chemotherapy one for radiation one for surgery and this is called your team when you get cancer they say select your team carefully and the team works together just like they talk on a regular basis like the three people heading to company they talk about you as a patient on a regular basis they analyze your treatment they decide how to change it each person is individual each treatment course of treatment is individual and so you trust your doctors and you do what they tell you to do get second opinions to give yourself Comfort learn everything you can and so I did I said what's the likelihood of success and they said most people who go through this go through it once and they are cured and it never happens again if you remember the actor Michael Douglas came down with throat cancer about the same time and it was more serious than mine and he just went through his course of treatment he trusted his doctors and today he's back to a normal life and making movies so the best advice I can give you is get be well informed don't allow yourself to be put off base and then trust your doctors your doctors have one goal in life and that's to heal you to cure you to get rid of the cancer so that it never comes back again and so that's what I did and I made a movie of it which is now on the internet and I think it's called conquering cancer so if you go to Briant try.com and if you or anyone in your family has cancer or learns that they have cancer go and watch this movie because people are saying transforms their confidence in their ability to deal with cancer to deal with a family member who has cancer um the the two the four most important words ever discovered in history are the words this two shall pass this two shall pass it's true at all times for all people under all circumstances in all situations whether it's the economy or whether it's a relationship or whether it's cancer this two Shall Pass one way or another if we can just end with one uh piece what we call the one piece of advice uh game and that's is one piece of advice for in the following scenarios if we can right um so A salesperson wanting to double their income well it's very simple double the amount of time that you spend face Toof face with customers from this day forward use every single bit of intelligence Brilliance time management planning goals efficiency to double the amount of FaceTime your sales are directly in proportion to the amount of time you spend face Toof face with qualified prospects the average salesperson Works 90 minutes a day in that they are face to face with customers 90 minutes a day on average half are below half or above if you want to double your income spend 180 minutes per day which is three hours out of eight each day face to face with customers and by the law of probabilities you will double your income and I have taught this for years and everyone who does it is astonished they double their income within less than a month excellent um number number two somebody in a job that they're not particularly passionate about but they're afraid of leaving because of the financial commitments they have at home all right then what you do is you imagine that you um are financially independent that you have uh 20 million pounds in the bank and simultaneously you only have 10 years to live you're going to enjoy superb Health but you have all the money that you need and you have to work at something you cannot be a layabout so therefore if you could work at anything and you had all the money you needed and you didn't want to waste any time what career would you choose if you could wave a magic wand and have all the talent and skill that you need to be successful in any field what field would you choose for yourself and then what you do is you just start to do some research on that field work in it part-time work in it for free read books and courses talk to people who are in it and I have spoken to literally thousands of people over the years who did that and eventually changed out of their current job sometimes within their same company changed out of their current job where they weren't very satisfied into a new job that they loved and they became a star at that new job and virtually everybody can do this yeah it's very similar to that but a lot of people uh want to learn find their passion a lot of people say you've got to go and do what you're passionate about but people who aren't haven't found their passion or advice well this whole thing about find your passion is a motivational it's motivational clap trap the way that you find your passion is whatever job you have to do throw your whole heart into it and this has been discovered for centuries throw your whole heart into what you're doing and you'll find out very quickly if this is the right work for you if it's not you won't get any excitement or happiness from it so then change many people don't realize that until you throw your whole heart into something you don't get anything back and so what they do is they say well I'll try this and see if it works and if it does I read this wonderful line two weeks ago every so often I come across a great line it said this is work is never fun until you're good at it and so when you begin job it may take you a year or two of hard work to become good at what you're doing then it becomes fun then it becomes your passion and maybe people say oh find my passion find my passion no do your job right well and do it really well and get really good at it and if when you're really good at it if you still don't enjoy it then look for something else excellent somebody who who knows what they should do from an intuitive perspective but they're feeling the fear and they're not taking action all right the greatest obstacle to success to answer your question is the fear of failure combined with the fear of rejection the fear of failure is what if I lose my time lose my money the fear of rejection is what if I make a mistake and somebody disapproves of me we are obsessed with the opinions of others and we're obsessed with failure now we find that the Great Discovery in all of human history is that you become what you think about most of the time top people think about their goals all the time and surprise surprise they create wonderful lives for themselves average people think about television and sports and socializing and surprise surprise that's what they're doing 10 or 20 years later you also become what you say to yourself so you can have an enormous impact on your emotions of confidence and courage uh and confidence by speaking to yourself in a positive way and the magic words discovered in Psychology are the words I can do it I can do it I can do it so whenever you think of something that you'd like to do and you're fearful say hey wait a minute I can do it I can do it I can do it I can do it and as you say I can do it your courage and confidence goes up and your fears go down in inverse proportion and then at a certain point you will overflow and you'll just take action and then all of your fear disappears excellent and the final answer a CEO that wants to become a world-class CEO even better than Jack wash was well then what you do is you focus on getting results through people which is be very very clear about the goals that you want to achieve and set big goals Jack Welch wanted to make U General Electric either first or second in every category in the world and that was his rule is we will be first or second whether it's turbine engines or whether it's powered hydroelectric dams or nuclear reactors will be number one or number two in every field or we will get out of it and so every single manager had a job is if we're number five your job is to get to us us to one or two within a certain period of time or we will discontinue the field and maybe discontinue you as well so everyone in his company all the officers were focused on winning battles getting to one or two the second thing is be very very sensitive and considerate to the people that you work with all the best managers they're firm but they're very caring about their people they're very thoughtful they are respectful they are courteous they treat people well and people feel happy when they go to work for these people and as a result they produce twice as much as they would anywhere else BR Tracy it's been a personal goal of mine to have be sitting in front of you like I have been today so I'm absolutely honored uh from the bottom of my heart to have you here sir and thank you very very much indeed for your Insight and your wisdom as always thank you Anthony it's been a pleasure thank you thank [Music] you

Channel: Anthony Gell

Views: 344,143

Keywords: leadership, success, mba, management, the, book, of, anthony, gell, talent, development, speaker, Brian, Tracy, (Author), time, secret, #how, to, be

Id: pjofpEIWWrc

Length: 69min 20sec (4160 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 09 2014