Developing a Powerful Sales Personality
Posted by Brian Tracy on Aug 27, 2009
Look for my Free Report at the bottom of this post.
Becoming excellent in closing sales is an inside job. It begins within you. In sales, your personality is more important than your product knowledge. It is more important than your sales skills. It is more important than the product or service that you are selling. In fact, your personality determines fully 80 percent of your sales success. Read the rest of this entry »
Take off the Gloves
Posted by Brian Tracy on Mar 25, 2009
There is good news and bad news in our economy today. First, the bad news: We are immersed in the worst economic situation of our lifetimes. As a nation, we have been on a spending binge for decades, spending money that we have not earned on things that we could not afford, and on terms that we could not pay for, to impress people that we don’t care about that much in any case. Read the rest of this entry »
What Are You Worth?
Posted by Brian Tracy on Sep 24, 2008
Invest in yourself to achieve the best.
In the world of work, some people earn a little and some people earn a lot. What is the difference? This question has been studied for more than 100 years, and now we know the answers.
People who earn a lot—the top 20% in any field—make a greater contribution and get better results than people who earn a little-the bottom 80%.
Your work and earning life is very much like a marathon. All the runners assemble from different places at the starting line. The gun goes off! The runners begin to run, at different speeds. Some people sprint to take the lead quickly. Others go a little slower, preferring to run steadily over the long course. Others start off slowly and fall further back in the pack throughout the race, finally coming in so far behind that almost everyone has gone home by the time they cross the finish line.
In life, we all start off at the same place. When we get out of high school or college, we have few, if any, marketable skills. We take the first job that we can get and go to work. At that point, most people settle into the hum-drum of work life, doing what they are told to do, coming in at nine and leaving at five, and going home and watching television in the evenings.
But this is not for you. The race is on! The good news is that most people do not know that they are in a race so they are easy to beat.
From the time you take your first job until the time you retire, you are the president of your own personal services corporation. You are the president of an entrepreneurial company with one employee: yourself! You have one product to sell in the competitive marketplace: your personal services.
Throughout the history of economics, there has been only one way to increase your income, and that is to "add value." Every day in every way, you must be looking for ways to add value to your work, to yourself, your employer, and your customers.
Perhaps the greatest question you can ask repeatedly is: "What can I do to increase the value of my service to my customers today?"
Successful people never rest. They read continually in their field, looking for ideas and insights that will help them to add greater value. They listen to audio programs in their cars, seeking ways to contribute more to their business and to their customers. They attend seminars, and today, they become members of iLearningGlobal and plug into the preeminent source of continuous learning in the world.
One of the most important qualities of successful people is that they are highly responsible. They do not make excuses or blame others. They do not criticize or complain. They say, "If it’s to be, it’s up to me."
But responsible for what? They are, first of all, responsible for setting goals and writing down how they will achieve them. They are responsible for working on those goals every hour of every day. But they are also responsible to themselves, to earn the very most of which they are capable throughout their working lives. In this sense, they are responsible to their spouses and children, who depend upon them to earn a good living and to provide a good life.
Don’t Waste Your Potential
Perhaps the greatest tragedy in our society is that of "wasted potential." Many people have the ability to earn two or three times the amount of income they are presently enjoying by simply adding one or two new skills to their skill set.
Over the years, I have trained more than 5 million people in 47 countries. Many thousands of those people have told me and written to me giving examples of how one new skill enabled them to increase their income by 500% and even 1,000%. Many people go from rags to riches with one additional skill. Many people go from living in rented accommodation, worrying about money, to living in big houses on the hill, driving new cars and putting their children in private schools with one additional skill.
The terrible tragedy would be for you to go through your life with the ability to earn three times, four times, five times what you are earning today by simply dedicating yourself to continuous learning, and upgrading your skill set on a regular basis.
The greatest miracle of success is continuous learning, continuous personal and professional development. And just like physical fitness, you have to work at mental fitness every day. "If you don’t use it, you lose it."
The wonderful thing is that all the answers have been found. Every skill that you need to learn to increase your income radically and permanently has already been discovered and is already being taught somewhere, probably on iLearningGlobal.
Perhaps the best investment you could ever make is to buy stock in yourself. Realize that you are your most valuable asset. Your ability to earn money is the most precious thing you have. Everything that you do to increase your ability to add value and to serve other people increases the amount of money you earn and the quality of life you enjoy.
Go for it!
See Also
- Brian Tracy International
Helping you achieve your personal and business goals faster than you ever imagined!
How to Succeed in Business
Posted by Brian Tracy on Aug 21, 2008
Build Your Own Business
The high road to becoming a self-made millionaire in America is starting and building your own business. But this is not as easy as it sounds. Most businesses started by inexperienced people fail.
Probably the primary reason why people don’t start businesses is because they’re afraid that they’re going to lose their money and for good reason. 99 percent of businesses started by people lacking business experience fail within the first two or three years.
Why Businesses Fail
And why is that? It’s because they don’t know how to succeed. They haven’t the slightest idea how to make a business successful. They may have an idea for a product or service, but they don’t know all the things that they need to know to run a successful business.
Why Businesses Succeed
However, surprisingly enough, 80 percent of businesses started by experienced businesspeople succeed. Now why should this be so? The reason is because experienced businesspeople know what to do. They know how to purchase their products and their services. They know how to negotiate with their suppliers. They know how to raise money. They know how to negotiate leases. They know how to sell and to market. They know how to manage their finances. In other words, experience is the key. In order to start your own business and succeed, you have to learn how.
Succeed in business with How You Can Start, Build, Manage or Turn Around Any Business Home Study Course
Competence Makes the Difference
Now according to Dunn and Bradstreet, 96 percent of businesses in America that fail, fail because of what is called "managerial incompetence". Managerial incompetence means that the people running the businesses don’t know what they’re doing. And here are the two critical areas of managerial incompetence that cause business failure.
First is sales and marketing. 48 percent of businesses that fail in America fail because the business cannot sell enough of its products or services. Very few businesses fail when they have high levels of sales and revenues coming in.
Control Your Costs
The second reason that businesses fail, 46 percent, is because of poor cost control. They may be selling enough on the front end, but they’re losing so much on the back end that they go broke anyway. Sales and marketing, financing and cost control, both require experience. And if you’re serious about becoming financially independent, you have to learn how to do both of these.
Put Luck On Your Side
You must learn the skills you need to be successful. Business success is not a matter of luck. Business success is a matter of application. It’s a matter of ability. It’s a matter of experience and skill and intelligence, and wonderfully enough, you can learn what you need to know to be successful. And you can start by learning through on-the-job training, which is called OJT. Most successful businesspeople become successful because they get all their training by working for someone else.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to make sure that your business succeeds greatly:
First, take the time to get the knowledge and experience you need in business by working for someone else where you can learn a lot in a short period of time. Go to work in an area in which you are interested and learn everything you possibly can.
Second, read and study in business, especially entrepreneurial business, all the time. Read one or two business books per week and read every business magazine that is published on your subject. Never stop learning and growing.
How You Can Start, Build, Manage or Turn Around Any Business Home Study Course
See Also
- Brian Tracy International
Helping you achieve your personal and business goals faster than you ever imagined
Seven Simple Steps to Small Business Success
Posted by Brian Tracy on Aug 7, 2008
Many businesspeople achieve their greatest successes in unexpected areas.
They begin a business and then they find that it isn’t as profitable as they had anticipated, so they change direction, using their experience and their momentum, and strike paydirt in something else. The most important thing is to begin. To take action. To move forward one step at a time, learning and growing as you go. There is enough information available in virtually every field for you to become knowledgeable enough to achieve success. But action is necessary.
The Two Parts of Success
Success author Orison Swett Marden once wrote, the first part of success is get-to-it-ivness. The second part is stick-to-it-iveness. Every business beginning requires an act of faith and courage, a bold leap into the unknown. Only one in ten people who want to start their own businesses ever develop enough courage to begin and enough persistence to continue. Get-to-it-iveness. And stick-to-it-iveness. The fear of failure, more than anything else, holds people back. It paralyzes action. And it makes failure inevitable.
Begin With a Dream
Fortunately, even if you know nothing about business, you can begin with a dream, a castle in the air, and then build a foundation under it.
Learn How You Can Start, Build, Manage or Turn Around Any Business Home Study Course
Seven Simple Steps
The starting point of many great fortunes has been these seven simple steps. Number one, set a goal and back it with a burning desire. Number two, begin accumulating capital with a regular savings program. Nothing else is possible without this. You cannot move forward until you start a savings program.
Use Your Current Job As A Springboard
Number three, use your current job as a springboard to later success. Learn while you earn. Take the long view. Number four, experiment in business on a limited scale so you can learn the key abilities necessary for success. Number five, search for problems, needs unmet, products or services you can supply of good quality at reasonable prices.
Read Everything You Can Find
Number six, read everything you can find on your chosen field. Remain flexible. Be willing to change your mind if you get different information. And number seven, implement your plans with courage and persistence. Have complete faith in your ability to succeed and never, never give up.
Action Exercises
Now, here are two actions you can take immediately to start moving toward entrepreneurial success:
First, set a goal, make a plan and then launch your plan. Get started. Do something. Begin on a small scale with limited risk and investment but get going!
Second, resolve that, no matter what happens, you will never, never give up until you are successful. Before you accomplish anything worthwhile, you will have to pass the persistence test. And the test will come far sooner than you imagine.
How You Can Start, Build, Manage or Turn Around Any Business Home Study Course
See Also
- Brian Tracy International
Helping you achieve your personal and business goals faster than you ever imagined
Build Your Own Business
Posted by Brian Tracy on Jun 12, 2008
The high road to becoming a self-made millionaire in America is starting and building your own business.
But this is not as easy as it sounds. Most businesses started by inexperienced people fail. Probably the primary reason why people don’t start businesses is because they’re afraid that they’re going to lose their money and for good reason. 99 percent of businesses started by people lacking business experience fail within the first two or three years.
Why Businesses Fail
And why is that? It’s because they don’t know how. They haven’t the slightest idea how to make a business successful. They may have an idea for a product or service, but they don’t know all the things that they need to know to run a successful business.
Why Businesses Succeed
However, surprisingly enough, 80 percent of businesses started by experienced businesspeople succeed. Now why should this be so? The reason is because experienced businesspeople know what to do. They know how to purchase their products and their services. They know how to negotiate with their suppliers. They know how to raise money. They know how to negotiate leases. They know how to sell and to market. They know how to manage their finances. In other words, experience is the key. In order to start your own business and succeed, you have to learn how.
Learn how with 21 Great Ways to Start and Build Your Own Successful Business
Control Your Costs
The second reason that businesses fail, 46 percent, is because of poor cost control. They may be selling enough on the front end, but they’re losing so much on the back end that they go broke anyway. Sales and marketing, financing and cost control, both require experience. And if you’re serious about becoming financially independent, you have to learn how to do both of these.
Put Luck On Your Side
You must learn the skills you need to be successful. Business success is not a matter of luck. Business success is a matter of application. It’s a matter of ability. It’s a matter of experience and skill and intelligence, and wonderfully enough, you can learn what you need to know to be successful.
And you can start by learning through on-the-job training, which is called OJT. Most successful businesspeople become successful because they get all their training by working for someone else.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to make sure that your business succeeds greatly:
First, take the time to get the knowledge and experience you need in business by working for someone else where you can learn a lot in a short period of time. Go to work in an area in which you are interested and learn everything you possibly can.
Second, read and study in business, especially entrepreneurial business, all the time. Read one or two business books per week and read every business magazine that is published on your subject. Never stop learning and growing.
21 Great Ways to Start and Build Your Own Successful Business
See Also
- Brian Tracy International
Helping you achieve your personal and business goals faster than you ever imagined
The Right Stuff
Posted by Brian Tracy on Feb 13, 2008
“Why is it that some people are more successful than others?�?
Throughout human history, the very best thinkers have asked the question, “Why is it that some people are more successful than others?”
This is the underlying question of most history, philosophy, religion, metaphysics, psychology and success literature. Aristotle said that behind every desire we have is yet another desire, until you come to the basic desire of all people, “The wish to be happy.”
Throughout your life, you constantly strive to move away from pain toward pleasure, and away from discomfort toward comfort. Consciously and unconsciously, you strive to be happy. In business and in sales, we define happiness as “fulfilling our full potential and achieving everything that is possible for us.”
What then are the qualities of the most successful and happy people in sales and business? Over the years, based on thousands of articles and research studies, I have concluded that there are basically seven qualities, each of which is learnable via practice and persistence. Here they are:
First, successful people are ambitious. They have an intense, burning desire to be successful, to achieve more and more, and to constantly raise the bar on themselves.
In addition, ambitious people see themselves capable of “being the best.” From the time they begin their sales or business careers, they strive for excellence, to be among the very best people in their industry. They set bigger and bigger goals for themselves, and persist longer than anyone else to achieve those goals. And they never give up.
Second, successful people are courageous. They work to confront the fears that hold most people back. The two biggest fears that interfere with your success are the fear of failure and the fear of rejection. The fear of failure causes you to think more of what you might lose if you take a chance than what you might gain. The fear of rejection makes you hypersensitive to the opinions or criticisms of other people, and especially to the negative reactions you get from prospective customers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.” What this means is that successful people confront their fears, face their fears, master their fears, and do it anyway. The wonderful thing is that, the more you do the things you fear, the less you fear doing them. Eventually you become fearless, and then unstoppable.
Third, successful people are committed. They believe in their companies, their products, their customers and themselves. They actually become emotionally involved in what they sell and who they sell it to. You’ve heard it said that, “They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Successful people care.
Because they are committed, top people love their work. They can hardly wait to get started in the morning and they hate to quit in the evening. This infectious enthusiasm for their products and services transfers into the minds of their customers. The customers then want to buy from these people and recommend them to their friends.
Fourth, top sales people and businesspeople see themselves as professional. They see themselves as consultants, dispensing good advice, council and recommendations to their customers. They see themselves as “helpers,” continually looking for ways to help their customers to get more enjoyment and benefit from what they sell.
Instead of talking incessantly about their products or services, they ask good questions and listen carefully to the answers. They look for ways that they can improve the life or work of their customers with their products or services. Their goal is to help their customers to be better off with their products or services than they could be without them.
Fifth, top people are more thoroughly prepared than average performers. Preparation is the mark of the professional in today’s competitive environment. Top people take the time to do pre-call research, finding out everything they can about their customers before they approach them the first time. They set pre-call objectives; determine exactly what questions they will ask, and what results they want to achieve in a particular sales meeting. Finally, top salespeople do detailed post-call analysis, writing down everything that was discussed in the sales meeting so they don’t forget it later.
Because they are so well prepared, top salespeople have more confidence when they approach a customer. And customers can tell. Customers know when the salesperson has taken the time to do his preparation. This dramatically increases the salesperson’s credibility with the customer, and makes it much more likely that the customer will listen to the salesperson and buy his or her products or services.
Sixth, top sales professionals are dedicated to continuous personal and professional development, to lifelong learning.
They realize that, “To earn more, you must learn more.” Whatever got you to where you are today is not enough to get you any further. Your current level of knowledge and skill is only sufficient to keep you where you are, but does not allow you to go any further. To increase your income, to grow in your field toward being one of the highest paid people, requires that you continually learn and apply new ideas.
The key to continuous learning is simple: Read in your field of sales and business 30-60 minutes each day. This will amount to about one book per week, or 50 books per year. Since the average sales or business person reads less than one book per year, reading regularly in your field will give you a distinct advantage over your competition.
Next, listen to audio programs in your car. The average sales professional sits behind the wheel of his car 500-1000 hours per year. This is the equivalent of 3-6 months of 40 hour weeks, or 1-2 university semesters. By listening to audio programs, by turning your car into a university on wheels, you can become one of the best educated, most knowledgeable and most skilled professionals in your field.
Finally, take all the seminars and additional courses that you possibly can. Attend sales seminars given by professionals in your city. Enroll in on-line learning programs for sales effectiveness. Become a life-long “do-it-to-yourself” project. Never stop learning and growing.
Seventh, and as important as anything else, top professionals see themselves as 100% responsible for themselves, and everything that happens to them.
Because they are responsible, they do not make excuses or blame other people. They do not criticize or complain. They say, “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.”
This attitude causes top people to see themselves as self-employed, as “Presidents” of their own personal sales corporations. They see themselves as responsible for every aspect of their own personal entrepreneurial business, including production, quality control, marketing, promotion and training and development.
Summary
You have within you, right now, the ability to be, do and have, far more than you have ever accomplished before. The only limit to what you can achieve in the future is your imagination.
You can learn anything you need to learn, to accomplish any goal you can set for yourself. You can solve any problem, overcome any obstacle, and achieve any level of income you desire, if you will but apply yourself, and practice the seven qualities of top people until they become lifelong habits.
Good luck!
Brian Tracy
Traveling in the South Atlantic
Posted by Brian Tracy on Jul 13, 2007
There has never been a better time to be alive.
Traveling in the South Atlantic.
June was a busy month for me. After 15 speaking engagements in May, several of them in the Gulf, and traveling all over the United States and Canada, June was very much the same.
After giving a full day seminar in Philadelphia, I took a taxi out to the airport to catch my plane to Birmingham via Atlanta. But there were violent storms in Atlanta and my plane had been cancelled. Fortunately, I was able to transfer onto a flight at 8:15 PM which was also delayed because of the same weather conditions.
The plane finally took off at 11:00pm [vs. the 7:15pm flight I was originally scheduled on] and arrived in Atlanta at 12:30am. Because there were no more flights, I rented a car from Hertz and drove the 2 1/2 Hours to Birmingham for my full day seminar on Wednesday. I arrived at 3:30am, slept four hours, spoke all day to a very nice group of people, and then hurried out to the airport to fly to Nashville.
The flight to Nashville was also delayed because of weather. But I finally arrived in Nashville, got a few hours sleep, spoke all day Thursday and then flew back to San Diego.
When you are younger, you can absorb a few short nights combined with long days. But when you travel and speak continuously, with a series of short nights, it catches up on you.
On June 23 [Sat], I flew to Christ Church in New Zealand to conduct a series of one-day seminars for Mike Doughty, a successful entrepreneur and seminar promoter who brings top speakers from all over the world to speak to his audiences of entrepreneurs, sales people and executives.
Because of the international dateline, when I left on Saturday, 14 hours later, I arrived on Monday, losing a full day. We conducted seminars in Christ Church, Auckland and Wellington on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
New Zealand is an interesting country in many ways. Not only is it quite beautiful, lush and green, with beautiful weather and excellent skiing on the South Island, but the people are a real pleasure as well. They are well educated, informed, warm, friendly, curious, interested and committed to success, just as we are here in the U.S.
The history of New Zealand is interesting. After World War II, it became a socialistic country. The government moved in and took over 60% of the economy. Interest rates and unemployment were extremely high. Large sectors of the population were on welfare and unemployment insurance. A major export of New Zealand, aside from sheep, was young people leaving for other countries to seek opportunities.
In 1980, the labor party came into power and made a startling concession. They realized that the economy was not working. New Zealand, which should have been a dynamic, prospering country, was a socialist, impoverished backwater in the South Atlantic.
The finance minister, Roger Douglas, set off in 1983 to travel around the world seeking a new national business model. He carefully studied the low tax, low regulation policies of Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher, and brought them back to New Zealand.
Over the next three years, they slashed the role of government to 30%. They cut taxes, freed up business, limited regulation and liberated the economy.
As a result, the New Zealand economy took off. Unemployment dropped and disappeared. Everybody went back to work. Investment poured in. Within another two years, New Zealand was the fastest growing industrialized country in the world, with the lowest level of corruption and the highest level of new business formation. It was a revolutionary turn-around!
Just as they called it “Reganomics” in the U.S., they called it “Rogernomics” in New Zealand. I had the great good fortune of spending three hours personally with Roger Douglas back in the 1990’s, learning about the incredible transition he had brought to his country by slashing taxes and regulation.
The lesson seems to be lost on U.S. lawmakers, especially those who control Congress and the Senate. Every industrialized country in the world today is slashing taxes, especially the taxes on businesses. The U.S. now has the highest business taxes of any country in the world. More and more U.S. companies are moving overseas to function under more favorable tax regimes.
The tax cuts of 2003 in the U.S. were directly responsible for the incredible growth of the U.S. economy since then. They had the same effects as the Regan tax cuts in 1983, which led to 17 years of growth and expansion, making the U.S. the biggest, most prosperous, most entrepreneurial and dynamic country in history.
Here is the real wrinkle. Businesses do not pay taxes. They merely collect taxes for the government and pass them on. All business taxes are ultimately paid in three ways. The company raises its prices, if it can. If it cannot, it reduces its economic activities to only its most profitable products and services. And the third way that companies pays taxes is by lowering the amount of wages and other compensation for their employees. They have no choice.
We are living today at the most prosperous time in all of human history, especially in the industrialized nations, and most importantly, in the United States. But because of the incessant negative publicity in the newspapers, radio and television, all aimed at influencing the 2008 elections, fully 60% of Americans are convinced that the U.S. is currently in a recession. It is amazing how powerful propaganda can be.
There has never been a better time to be alive. There are more opportunities and possibilities for you today than have ever existed before. And if anything, the future will be even better. It is up to you to take full advantage of all these opportunities and possibilities, and achieve your full potential, both personally and financially.
Travel In the Middle East
Posted by Brian Tracy on Jun 11, 2007
We are living in an amazing world today
We are living in an amazing world today. I have just returned from 10 days in the Gulf, speaking to more than 2,000 people in five different seminars and three different countries.
Some months ago, we received a contact from a company in Tehran. They wanted to invite me to come to Iran to meet with them and speak with their many clients. Our initial reaction was to decline the invitation because of the political situation between the United States and Iran.
However, it turned out that Americans regularly visit Iran, travel all over the country as tourists and never have any problems or difficulties. We therefore decided to go.
In my three days in Tehran, I met hundreds of people, almost all of which were warm, friendly, interested, curious and open to new information. It turns out that Iran does not recognize copyrights on books or anything else. As a result, they have published more than 20 of my books in Farsi and sold more than 3,000,000 copies, making me one of the most popular authors in the country. There is a special section of Brian Tracy books in every bookstore in Iran.
The history of Iran goes back almost 3,000 years, but really began with the rise of Cyrus the Great, who built the first empire in world history, stretching from what is today Russia and Pakistan all the way to the Mediterranean, including Egypt and Greece. He built beautiful cities and brought an enormous part of the globe under Persian influence. His empire endured for more than 300 years, until 330 BC when the Emperor Darius II was defeated by Alexander the Great at Arbela.
When I traveled in Iran many years ago, I read an excerpt that said, “And the great caravans came from East and West when Isfahan was the center of the world.” The city of Isfahan is one of the great archeological treasures. It is full of temples, mosques, and beautiful buildings that attest to the richness of the Persian culture.
My trip to Iran was completely with incident, arriving and departing smoothly and on schedule. From Tehran, I flew onto Kuwait where I spent a day and a half with my friend Khalid al-Kanzi, one of the most talented and entrepreneurial businessmen I have ever met. Khalid organizes high-level training and development programs for leaders, managers and entrepreneurs in Kuwait, as well as assisting them in setting up websites to trade internationally.
My friend Tom McCarthy, one of the top business speakers in the world, who lives only two miles from me here in Solana Beach, was also in Kuwait speaking to the same group of people for Khalid. Kuwait is a remarkable country, sitting on an ocean of oil, and having one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. It is a beautiful, modern city with new hotels and office buildings going up everything. It is easy to see why the Western world reacted so strongly and came to the defense of Kuwait when Saddam Hussein invaded in 1990.
After a productive day in Kuwait, speaking on the Military Principles of Leadership as Applied to Business, I flew onto Dubai to give a one-day seminar for DAMAC, one of the fastest growing real estate developments in the world today. Dubai is booming in every sense of the word! The government has decided to make Dubai a business and financial hub for the Gulf, and for the entire region. They have liberalized business and banking laws, and are encouraging corporations and banks to open headquarters offices in the country.
DAMAC has built, or is building, 38 high-rise condominium towers to accommodate the explosive growth of Dubai. They are expanding throughout the Gulf with projects in other countries that include the construction of entire new cities.
My friend, Anand Menon of DAMAC, who brought me into speak to 185 of their top associates, executives and sales professionals, is one of the most talented personal and business development experts I have ever met. Together with his team, he is helping to build DAMAC into a world-class development and construction giant.
Interestingly enough, there was virtually no discussion of Iraq during my visit. Everyone I spoke to is pro-Western and pro-American. They have the same desires and ambitions as anyone else. They want to be successful in business, make as much money as possible, build a happy family life and enjoy all the benefits of the modern world. In addition, most of the people I worked with are highly intelligent, well educated, knowledgeable about the world, well read and hard working. Just like you!
It took 18 hours of flying to get out to the Gulf, and another 18 hours to get back. I departed Dubai on Wednesday and flew all day long, changing planes in London, and flying onto Toronto to arrive on the afternoon of the same day. After a well-received talk to 600 top executives and financial service experts of Assante Wealth Management in Toronto, I caught the afternoon flight and arrived back in San Diego by midnight Thursday, May 31 – 12 days on the road.
Here in Solana Beach, Brian Tracy University is growing and expanding. Mr. Mehran Hamidi, an experienced Internet executive, has taken over the sales and marketing activities of the University, expanding our reach worldwide. Our primary programs on Sales and Entrepreneurship are bringing about rapid increases in income and profitability for our students. Please come to www.briantracyu.com, download a free Business and Sales Assessment for yourself or your company, and watch a complete presentation on how our programs can help you achieve all your personal and business goals, guaranteed.
Next week, I am on my way to New Zealand to speak for a week. In the meantime, I continue to wish you the best of health and prosperity.
Think For Yourself
Posted by Brian Tracy on May 14, 2007
seminars in Calgary, Alberta, Vancouver, British Columbia, Las Vegas and Sacramento.
This has been a busy week for me. I gave seminars in Calgary, Alberta, Vancouver, British Columbia, Las Vegas and Sacramento. In all, my audiences tolled more than 2,000 people, almost all of them sales professionals, sales managers, entrepreneurs and business owners.
As I travel, I am continually amazed at the high standard of living and affluence that we enjoy in North America. One of the things that frustrates me is the continual drumbeat of negativity in the press, almost purely for political reasons.
Even though we are enjoying the strongest and most powerful economic times in all of human history, with 69% home ownership, an unemployment rate of 4.4%, the highest profits for companies, large and small, and greater increases in personal wealth than have ever taken place at any time in history, the newspapers continually tell us that our economy is in trouble.
Fully 28% of Americans believe that the economy is in recession. This is so silly as to be almost unbelievable. Every year, the US creates 22 million new jobs, while shedding or downsizing 20 million jobs. This is a net increase of two million new jobs per year, more than all of Europe put together.
More than one million Americans take the plunge and start a new business each year. Money pours into the US from all over the world, as do new immigrants from 194 countries. The OECD in Paris ranks the United States as the most entrepreneurial country in the world, offering more opportunities and possibilities for the average person to start a business and become success than any other country.
One of the little secrets I learned when I was in Europe is that more than two million young entrepreneurs from France and Germany, what they called “Old Europe,” have quietly immigrated to other countries seeking opportunities, many of them to the United States.
This is the best time in all of human history to be alive. And if anything, it is only going to get better in the years ahead.
When you read negative stories about America, Americans and the state of the economy, just look around you. Fully 50% of all the wealth in America has been created in the last 25 years, and wealth creation continues all around us, every single day.
Most of the negativity you read in the newspapers is politically motivated. Fully 89% of writers for the newspapers, magazines, television and radio have put themselves on record as being opposed to the current national government, and committed to getting their party back into power. To this end, they are twisting and misshaping news and information to the point where the truth is almost unrecognizable today.
Bill Gates was once asked, “If you could ask a person standing behind a screen just one question, what one question would tell you the most about his or her possibilities for success in life?”
Bill Gate’s answer to this question was that he would ask, “What country do you live in?”
If the person behind the screen answered, “The United States,” he or she would have a better chance of success than a person living anywhere else in the world.
We should get up every morning and thank whatever God we believe in that we live in this wonderful country and have endless possibilities unfolding before us.
I’ll talk to you again soon.
