Talk:Brian Tracy
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Brian Tracy is one of the most listened persons in the field of personal and business success in the world today. His fast-moving talks and seminars on leadership, sales, managerial effectiveness and business strategy are loaded with powerful, proven ideas and strategies that people can immediately apply to get better results in every area.
[edit] Career, Personal History, Accomplishments
I've read one of Brian Tracy's books and listened to several of his audio programs, and I think he's a great author and speaker on the topics of motivation, time management and goal setting. As a big fan of this guy, it's disappointing that we can't find anything about his personal history and accomplishments anywhere on the web. Googling his name doesn't bring anything up, and all the information on his website is extremely vague. It would be interesting to know where he's from, what schools he went to, what companies he's worked for and when, and other details about his career. Can anyone find any newspaper articles, any other resources online about Brian Tracy? Since he's a fairly high-selling author, it's curious that there's not too much information about him out there.
Some questions I'd like to throw out there to anyone who might have some information about this guy, or who can do some research and find out:
Tracy's website claims he "was the chief operating officer of a development company with $265 million in assets and $75 million in annual sales." What company was this?
The website claims he "serves on the board of two non-profit organizations." What non-profit organizations are these?
The website claims he can speak four languages. Which languages are these?
What school did he get his degree from?
More background... Maximum Achievement (1993) Brian Tracy
Brian Tracy grew up in a poor family and had to wear charity store clothes. After dropping out of school he worked in a succession of laboring jobs, living in boarding houses. At 21 he found work on a Norwegian freighter ship and travelled around the world, but two years later was back laboring and doing some commission selling. Though not an outward success, Tracy had always been interested in the question, "What makes some people successful and others not?" As a freshly minted salesman, he started to read voraciously on selling techniques and what makes the best salespeople the best. He copied what they did, and slowly, his results improved. Six months later he was the top salesperson in his company.
When he moved into management, he read everything he could on managing people and built a large sales organization across several countries. Entering the real estate industry, he "hit the books again" and talked to successful developers. His first project was financing, building and leasing out a three-million dollar shopping center. At night Tracy completed a high school diploma, and eventually gained entry to an MBA program to study business theory and marketing, which enabled him to become a management consultant. To learn about happiness, he read what he could find on metaphysics, psychology and motivation, and when he married learned all he could about parenting. To get a sense of perspective, and find out why some countries were rich and others poor, he read widely on history, economics and politics.
After two decades of thinking about the question, "What makes some people more successful than others?", Tracy decided to put everything he knew into a 'success system' which could help others. He designed a seminar, but it took about three years to really catch on. Then he released an audiotape program, The Psychology of Achievement, which went on to sell half a million copies.
Maximum Achievement is the written version of this program.
The master skill
Tracy provides us with this potted biography to show how he moved from being a wanderer to a focused person. His varied work roles became his means to continue his real love: studying success itself.
As he came to synthesise everything he knew, he realised that there was a 'master skill' which could produce brilliant results across a person's life: the ability to set goals and achieve them. When he discovered goal-setting at 23, for the first time Tracy felt he could have control over his future. Human beings, he learned, are teleological; we are shaped by our ambitions, adapting ourselves to meet the image of an imagined end state. Maxwell Maltz's famous Psycho-cybernetics, told him that man is really a goal-setting machine, needing goals in order to fully live. Maltz compared a person to a self-guided missile, which constantly adjust its path so as to hit a target; in the same way, we could program ourselves to achieve our desires through constant self-feedback.
The interesting thing about goals, Tracy found, is that they are value-neutral: whatever desires you set for yourself, you are likely to achieve them whether they are good or bad; therefore, why not take the time to create wonderful, life-enriching goals?
Becoming an expert goal-setter
Less than 3 per cent of people have written goals, and fewer than 1 per cent regularly review them, Tracy notes. Yet most of us know that it is good to have goals, may even have been to seminars or read books on the matter. We spend a dozen years being schooled, but the most important contributor to success in life - how to concretize our wishes and ambitions - is rarely learned.
So why are we not taking the step to set goals for ourselves? Tracy lists reasons, but one that stands out is that we aren't willing to accept full responsibility for our lives. If we don't set goals, then we don't have to reach them. The more mundane reason is that goal-setting has never been part of our family or social background. As a result, we may end up mixing with people who have no clear idea where they are headed, becoming a person who "follows the followers".
The payoff of goal-setting is that as we achieve each goal we feel in charge of our own destiny, with every moment taken up productively. Self-esteem increases, and it is easy to remain motivated. You suddenly see the meaning of the saying, "Nothing succeeds like success."
Goals must be written down. Although this requires some discipline, there is something magic about 'putting it on paper' which increases the probability of a goal becoming fact. The more detail about the goal, the better, because the subconscious needs details to shape action: "You can't hit a target you can't see", Tracy says. You don't need to worry about the details of how the goal will be achieved, however; what is important is to be certain and exact about what you want. Without this you are leaving your life up to chance.
Final word
Maximum Achievement is a straightforward success manual, and many of the book's ideas may seem like nothing new - but go beyond the cover and you may find yourself deeply inspired. We have focused here on only the central element of Tracy's philosophy, goal-setting, but there is a wealth of material which answers his original question, "What makes successful people successful?"
One of the answers is that they are great readers. The motivational gurus like Denis Waitley, Tom Hopkins, Anthony Robbins and Tracy never seem to miss an opportunity to tell how books opened their eyes to what was possible. This is because the more you read about the lives and actions of successful people, the more likely it is that you will set the bar higher for yourself.
Read the full commentary in 50 Success Classics by Tom Butler-Bowdon
Where is he from? In one of his books he says he's from Canada, but where? I don't remember the source right now, but one of the intros to his tapes or lectures talks about how he worked on a commercial fishing boat before becoming a salesperson.
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- This is from the introduction to "the 21 secrets of self made millionaires" audio program. Here are some of its highlights: He did not graduate from high school, he worked at laboring jobs, then in construction, and on a ship in the north atlantic before getting involved in sales. He then got into business management. Now he has started, built, managed, or turned around 22 different businesses, and has served as a speaker, trainer, or consultant to over 500 corporations. Has graduated over 2 million men and women through his courses, and his audio and video programs have been translated into 20 languages, and are sold in 38 countries worldwide. Davemcarlson 01:41, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
- Read his book "Maximum Achievement", immediately :-) In the 1st chapter you will find his own story.
- I like that man, re-read his books day by day, because of many good words. Vugluskr 20:28, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
