Secrets of Success
Transcription of interview with Brian Tracy on May 28, 2012.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
Brian Tracy is the chairman and CEO of Brian Tracy International, whose goal is to help
people achieve their personal and business goals.
He has certainly succeeded in having consulted for well over a thousand companies and he
has addressed more than 5 million people.
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Tracy on Arutz Sheva
Radio.
Douglas Goldstein: You’ve spoken so much about how people can change their way of thinking
and then change reality.
Is it really true that people can do that?
Brian Tracy: People change their thinking all the time with new information, as they
feed new information into their mind which is consistent with something else that they
want to be or do.
For example, a doctor starts at college with no knowledge of medicine and he comes out
the other end as a doctor.
The constant influx of information transforms a person’s thinking both about themselves,
about their opportunities, about their possibilities, and that’s why you and I are continuous
learners and just continue grabbing up new information, looking for new pieces of information
and what can help us to move ahead faster.
It’s very possible to change your thinking.
It’s not easy and not quick, but it definitely happens all the time.
Douglas Goldstein: Is this something that people should look to do in small steps instead
of for very small goals?
Brian Tracy: Goals are so important.
I teach programs on goal setting.
A friend of mine once said, “Success is goals and all else is commentary,” as you
can’t target that you can’t see.
If you have a very clear target, then one of the things you ask is what will I have
to learn to be able to achieve that goal.
There’s a rule that says, “To achieve a goal you’ve never achieved before, you’re
going to have to learn and do things you’ve never done before.”
In other words, you cannot achieve your goals on the same level that you are today.
You’re going to have to learn and practice something new and different.
The goal is the key.
Douglas Goldstein: This actually goes in line with a lot of the discussions about the concept
that genius is something that can be learned and is not necessarily inborn or genetic.
Are you on that side of the equation?
Brian Tracy: The research shows that intelligence is malleable over about 25 IQ points, so a
person with an average IQ can, by working their brain studying, concentrating, learning
and memorizing, actually increase their intelligence and increase their ability to learn and retain
new information.
I have a good friend who is a memory expert.
He was in the army, and when he came out he was selling tickets for a friend of his who
was doing memory seminars.
After a while, he said, “I can do this.”
He began to study memory, and this guy just won the world memory championships.
One of the contests was in turning over deck of cards, one card at a time.
This guy could memorize 14 decks, and he’s the world champion.
I have seen him do things that are phenomenal.
You go around a large room and have 50 people throw out 2-digit numbers, and they’ve given
numbers 22, 33, and 45.
They stand on the stage, and he’ll recite the numbers all back in order and then he’ll
recite them back in reverse.
This is just a learnable technique, just memory techniques.
People have vast potentials that they habitually fail to use.
If you sit and watch television, socialize, read the paper or watch sports all the time,
your brain becomes just like a muscle that’s not being used, getting soft and flabby.
But if you’re challenging your brain all the time, it gets smart, quick and tough.
Our potential
is great.
Douglas Goldstein: What are the first steps to take for people who want to achieve and
increase their productivity and who are determined to do it?
Brian Tracy: The first point is that all highly successful people are rated by their peers
as highly productive and extremely result-oriented.
They got a lot done in the same period of time that most people waste time so how do
you do that?
I’ve written all kinds of books and articles on it but just to summarize it, you make a
list of everything you actually do each day and prioritize the list according to which
is more important and which is less important.
Pick your most important task, the one that will have the greatest impact on your life
and your career, and do that first.
We say, do the worst first.
The natural tendency for human beings is to procrastinate on the biggest, ugliest, most
important task, but what top people do is throw their whole heart into getting the biggest,
ugliest, most important task done first.
If you just do that, you’ll double your productivity on the first day and if you do
it regularly, it will become a habit, and once it becomes a habit, you’ll find yourselves
out- producing everybody around you in whatever field you’re in.
A time management expert once said to me that all of time management comes down to choosing
the sequence of events.
Choose what to do first, what to do second, and what to not do at all.
If you can get that right, then you can manage your time and your life and accomplish extraordinary
things.
Douglas Goldstein: How do you recommend people can build their own personal financial stability?
Brian Tracy: All of wealth comes from adding value.
It is adding value of some kind, so you produce a product or a service or you improve an existing
product or service, and it’s always focused on the person who is going to use it.
You find that successful people have an obsession with developing products and services that
other people want and need and they’re going to pay for.
Unfortunately, too many people are looking for shortcuts.
They’re looking for quick, easy ways to make money without working, and we know that
successful people work six days a week.
I was listening to a really successful guy, and he was asked, “What are you doing on
the weekends?”
and he said, “I don’t know any successful person who works less than six days a week”
and he was at the top of his field and still works six days a week.
But here’s the good news - if you’re doing what you enjoy and you’re doing it really
well, you’re motivated to work longer hours.
You can hardly wait.
You and I have to discipline ourselves not to work.
We have to discipline ourselves to take time off because we love to work, and you find
that all successful people have channeled themselves into an area that they really love
to do and they like to do more and more.
They like to do it better and they like to do higher priorities, but it’s not a chore
for them.
Wealth creation comes back to adding value to other people’s lives, and there are these
ideas where you can make money by shuffling or having a 4-hour work week and something
like that.
You can have a 4-hour work a week if you have already spent 20 years building a business
which is what the author of the book did, and now he’s got people working for him.
But you can’t start off with a 4-hour week, or you’re going to have a really hard life.
Douglas Goldstein: A guy who’s got a day job and working puts money in his 401K or
NRA, and no one’s asking him necessarily to add value to the shares of Coca Cola.
What value could he add in order to ensure that he’s building his wealth?
Brian Tracy: The stock market is where you store your money, and a very few people make
a lot of money in the stock market.
There’s a famous joke that says one of the stock market moguls was talking to one of
his friends and he was pointing out all of the yachts down Manhattan, and he said, “These
yachts all belong to the brokers and the traders and the big financial houses.”
Someone asked the question, “Where are the clients’ yachts?”
and he looked at him pityingly for asking such a stupid question.
“The clients don’t have yachts,” he said.
“It’s the traders that have the yachts.”
It’s a good place to park money.
Most people who are entrepreneurs park their money in the stock market, but mostly in real
estate and meanwhile, they keep focusing on earning more money by creating products and
services that people want and need and are willing to pay for.
That has to be the central focus.
Who is it?
Whether it’s Apple or Microsoft or the wealthiest entrepreneurs in Israel, these people are
intensely focused on offering products and services that satisfy people.
Douglas Goldstein: Too many people actually measure their success by the amount of money
that they have.
How can people learn to look beyond that?
Brian Tracy: I think in the early stages of your life, I see a lot of people being told
you should be loving, hugging, giving, sharing and joining charities and working in soup
kitchens and so on.
There’s a time for that.
As I say, poor people never helped anybody.
There’s a time in your life where you put your head down for 20 years to become financially
successful and once you become financially successful, if you like then you could start
to contribute to worthy charities.
When you start to contribute to worthy charities before you’ve ever made any money, it’s
very hard for you to accumulate enough to do anything worthwhile, so there’s a time.
Everything comes in sequence.
Your biggest philanthropist like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet began giving their money
away after they’d made it, so that’s the key.
First make it and then give it to causes that you think are worthy.
Douglas Goldstein: Could you tell people how they can learn more about the work that you’re
doing?
Brian Tracy: They can come to my website www.briantracy.com and there’s a free letter called Getting
Your Ideas Across.
It’s a white paper and it’s basically how you can persuade and convince people to
accept your ideas.
It’s very good for managers, executives, and especially it’s very good for sales
people.
Go to www.briantracy.com/communicate and just enter your email address.
It’s completely free and we’ll send you this white paper.
I’ve written more than 50 books and these books have been translated into 50 languages.
They are all over the place and many of them have been recorded both by myself in English
and by many other people in foreign languages as well.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host
of the Goldstein on Gelt radio show (Monday nights at 7:00 PM on www.israelnationalradio.com.
He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel.
Securities offered through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, NFA,
SIFMA.
Accounts carried by National Financial Services LLC.
Member NYSE/SIPC, a Fidelity Investments company.
His book Building Wealth in Israel is available in bookstores, on the web, or can be ordered
at: www.profile-financial.com (02) 624-2788 or (03) 524-0942.
Disclaimer: This document is a transcription and/or an educational article.
While it is believed to be current and accurate, divergence from the original is to be expected.
The original podcast can be heard at https://sites.google.com/site/goldsteinradioshows/.
All information on this website is purely information and should not be used as the
sole basis for making financial decisions.
The opinions rendered herein are those of the guests, and not necessarily those of Douglas
Goldstein, Profile Investment Services, Ltd., or Israel National News.
Readers should consult with a professional financial advisor before making any financial
decisions.
Please see the complete disclaimer at https://sites.google.com/site/goldsteinradioshows/.