By Helen M. Ryan
From humble beginnings to international success, bestselling author, Brian Tracy, reveals there’s more to him than meets the eye.
With the impressive background of authoring over 45 books, speaking to more than 4,000,000 people in 40+ countries, and currently heading three companies with worldwide operations, you would never guess that Tracy was a high school dropout struggling to make ends meet.
The proverbial self-made man, Tracy built an empire from nothing but hard work, determination, and a willingness to learn. “You can learn anything you need to learn to achieve any goal you can set for yourself,” says Tracy. “I began studying everything I could, about every field I was in. As a result, I started at the bottom and rose to the top of every company or business that I worked in.”
Having built a $265 million company before pursuing personal development and business training, Tracy understands what makes a business prosper. “Every successful business today is adapting and adjusting to the new realities,” he notes. “They are focusing all of their time, attention and investment on satisfying customers and making them happy. They are willing to chop, change, start, stop and discontinue anything that does not satisfy the customers of today, rather than the customers of tomorrow.”
Tracy’s books, translated into dozens of languages, cover topics such as personal development, sales training, time management and leadership. His “no excuses” tone shares ways you can take control of your life, both personally and in business. He talks about being responsible for yourself, your success and your failure, and of expecting more from your own self.
“When I was a young man, working at laboring jobs, missing meals and broke most of the time, I discovered a great truth: ‘You become what you think about most of the time.’”
Tracy’s latest contribution, Earn What You’re Really Worth—slated for release this month—is a career advancement bible on investing in yourself and dramatically increasing your earning potential. Beneficial for everyone from staff members and executives, to people in job transition, the unemployed and students, Earn What You’re Really Worth provides resources for people simply wanting to do more, be more and earn more.
With a continued desire to help people, Tracy wrote this latest book fueled by his passionate and strong conviction that each person is capable of achieving vastly more. “I have been working on my book, ‘Earn What You’re Really Worth,’ for 30 years. It explains in detail exactly what the average person has to do to earn two or three times as much as they are earning today, by offering and rendering greater value than they ever have before.”
The key to success, taken from Tracy’s own life, is simply to take action. “Significant change only begins for you when you decide to either get in or get out, either fish or cut bait.”