Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Interview with Brian Tracy

I recently interviewed Brian Tracy on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today has written 90 books and has inspired millions on and off stage. Brian Tracy is the author of the worldwide bestseller, Eat That Frog, which was just released in a new iteration focused on motivating students. Brian, thank you for joining us.

Brain: It's a pleasure, Adam. Thank you very much.

Adam: So Brian, your new book is called Eat That Frog for Students: 22 Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Excel in School. And I want to go back to your days as a student and to the early beginnings of your career. What were the key skills you developed early on that have been most integral to your success?

Brian: Well, I didn't think that I was very successful at all. I didn't graduate from high school, I failed out of the 12th grade. And the only thing I could get at that time was laboring jobs. And so I started off washing dishes. And when I got fired from that, I washed cars in a car lot. And when I got fired from that I washed floors with a janitorial service. I say that I thought washing floors was going to be in my future because I thought okay, I ended up doing that when I went from a laboring job to a laboring job. I slept in my car in the wintertime, I slept next to it in the summertime. And I just went from place to place. And when I could no longer get a laboring job, I got a sales job knocking on doors going from door to door. And I struggled with that, until I had a breakthrough, which changed my life and which brings us to this book. I asked a top sales guy, what are you doing differently from me? And so he explained to me exactly what he was doing. And I never heard of a sales presentation or proposal or anything else. And I then learned that there's a cause and effect relationship between the things you should do, and the results that you get. And it changed my life forever. And so from that time on to today, whenever I wanted to accomplish something, I went out and I buried myself in the cause and effect relationships. If you do A you get B. I learned that this goes back to Aristotle, the Aristotle, in the principle of causality. Aristotle was the greatest philosopher of all time, he said that there is a direct connection between what you do and the results that you get that we don't get results from the guys or from the locker, or something like that is what there is. There are things that you do. And if you do these things, you get specific results. And so I began to sell more and more and more and more by doing what other successful sales people were doing. I began to read books and listen to audio programs and attend seminars. And every time I learned something helpful, I tried it out and practiced it. And surprise, surprise, my sales increased 10 times. Within a year I was in charge of six countries and earned more money than ever in my life before. And I went from company to company and industry to industry. And the first thing I did is I sat down and said, what do you have to do to be successful in this industry? And people have written them down and taught them and everything else. So what I've done in this book, is we've said that you can be a huge success in life, if you just do certain things in a certain way. And in life, your success is determined by your results. And so if you get consistently good quality results, you're going to have a vastly better life than if you don't. So I began to write books. I began to teach new seminars. And then after 10 years of speaking, I took the speech and put it into audio programs and video programs. And then books. Actually I'm working on my 91st book right now. These books are sold all over the world. And basically the book, it says if you want to be successful in selling marketing, management, anything, just do what other successful people do. And in this book on time management, Eat That Frog for Students, it helps young people get launched at a very early age, so that they can accomplish their goals faster than they ever thought possible.

Adam: Brian, I love that. And over the course of the conversation, we're definitely going to dive into the advice that you shared in the book and the advice that you've been sharing on stage and your writing in all the mediums that listeners and readers have been privileged to enjoy over many years. And I wanted to start off by asking you about a topic that you've written extensively about both in this book and in previous books. And you mentioned that one of the keys to your early success was just doing it, taking all this advice that you were consuming, and incorporating it into your life, reading books and acting on them, but a big hurdle that so many people have surrounds procrastination. And I wanted to ask you, how can we stop procrastinating and overcome that inhibition so that we can ultimately get on with whatever it is we're trying to achieve?

Brain: Well, procrastination is something that everybody has. I've been teaching it now for two or three decades, and I still procrastinate. You look behind me, you see all those books and papers and everything else. And I still put things off, because I have so much to do. As you say, too much to do and too little time. And so you have to discipline yourself. And you have to make a list of everything that you do very simply. And then you have to organize the list by priority. And then you have to start with your most important task. And what the book teaches is 22 different ways to use your time well. It basically says this; if you start and complete your most important task, everything else will be easy. And you have to discipline yourself repeatedly. And do that over and over again until it becomes a habit. And once it becomes a habit, you're going to be 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 times more productive than the average person. It’s a very simple concept. And something you just have to work at all the time.

Adam: I want to talk more about habits and developing habits. You have a video that has been viewed by more than four and a half million people, called Daily Habits of Successful People. It was posted six years ago. And I actually give a talk to audiences that I speak to called Lessons from America's Top Leaders where I share some of the best leadership insights that I've learned from some of the great leaders who I've gotten to know and who I've interviewed on this podcast. And I wanted to ask you about your opinion; what is the single most important daily habit that each and every one of us should understand and ultimately develop?

Brian: Well, there's a wonderful story that your listeners will really enjoy. I started giving seminars in 1981. And I gave seminars on personal success. I found that there's some incredible relationships, for example, your self esteem is really the critical factor. And your self esteem is how much you like and respect yourself, how much you appreciate yourself and feel that you are a good and worthwhile person. And the great appendage to that is that everything counts. Everything counts, everything that you do, has an effect of some kind. Everything helps or hurts. Everything moves your head or moves you back. But with regard to self esteem, which is how good you feel about yourself, how happy you are and everything that you do raises or lowers your self esteem. And if you are starting to complete a task, it makes you feel like a winner. It makes you feel good about yourself and makes you feel happy and positive and strong and accomplished. I was going to tell you this story. I studied everything I could find on personal success so we could teach it in my seminars. And I came across some work that was done in the 50’s and 60’s, way, way before us. And it was a series of books on success principles. And I found four books. Each book had 250 principles. And each book was written by a man named Scott Buchmeier. He spent 54 years studying success, and then publishing these books. The book sold 1000’s, millions of copies. Time passed. And you and I came along. And we didn't know. I’d never heard of the books. But I found them because I was aggressive about learning. And I read all of these books. And one day I was in a Food Fair, in Washington, DC. And I was sitting by myself, it's lunchtime, and the place was jammed. And I'm sitting by myself. And this old man with his assistant came along carrying a tray. There's no place to sit, the place was packed. And so I got up and I said, sir, please join me. I got a table for four here. Every other table is full. He said, no, no, I couldn't do that. I wouldn't want to disturb you. And I said, no. He's turned out to be a nice, very gracious man. But I insisted that he sat down, and I introduced myself and his name is Scott Buchmeier. My hero, I read all of his stuff. And then I listened to all of his programs on audio, cassette, and I said, Wow, I'm a fan of yours. I read all your material. I love all this stuff. So we had a great conversation. And then I asked the question that you would ask, after all these years, and I asked him with these 1000 principles, what is the most important success principle of all? What is number one? And he gave me a big grin. Like he had been asked that question many times. And he said, the most important success principle was encapsulated by a writer many years ago, named Elbert Hubbard, and it’s self discipline, he said, and self discipline is your ability to make yourself do what you shouldn't do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not. And self discipline is what builds your self esteem. Self discipline is what assures that you get good results. Self discipline makes you happy. Self discipline is the hallmark of superior people. It's all those good things. And it is a learnable skill. So learn about habits. And you get self discipline by practicing self discipline, whenever self discipline is called for. Sounds like a very simple thing. But there it is.

Adam: Brian, you shared so much wisdom, there's so much to unpack there. But just honing in on your advice around self discipline. And I love the story, meeting your mentor and meeting him by being generous and gracious. And I'll tell you a quote that I've told listeners in previous episodes of this podcast, my favorite writer of all time is David Halberstam. And a quote that he used to love sharing was a quote that he heard from Julius Erving, the great basketball player, which is, “being a professional is doing what you love to do on the days you don't feel like doing it.” And that's a quote that I turn to on the days that I don't feel motivated. It could be a day that I don't feel like lifting weights, even though I love exercising. It could be a day that I am lethargic, not getting out of bed, but I have to get out of bed and get my full day in. So I think it's really important that no matter what it is, if you have that self discipline, if you have the ability to look past whatever is holding you back and push forward, Brian, to your point, that will enable you to become successful in whatever it is you're trying to do. I also wanted to add that you make a really interesting point in that when you asked your mentor and the person who you looked up to what is the one attribute that allows all of these other attributes to work and to flow and to come together? I think about if someone were to ask me, what is the one attribute that anyone would need to have to be a great leader. That's a very, very difficult question. I think I would probably answer that by saying that anyone and everyone who wants to be an effective leader would and there are so many different ways we can go with this. And I know that's not the theme of today's conversation. But our conversation got me thinking about that question. One way I would answer that would be that you would have to be a dedicated lifelong learner because you would have to be dedicated to wanting to continue to learn and grow and improve and be open to becoming a better form of yourself and a better leader. And that's advice that I've gotten in different iterations from other great leaders who I've spoken to in terms of their personal dedication to lifelong learning. And without the open mindedness to continue to learn, to continue to grow, to continue to improve, you're never going to put yourself in a position to become a better leader, to become more successful. And, Brian, you're a living example of that, because of what you shared right at the outset of our conversation, which was that you got your start by consuming as much information as possible, and then acting on it.

Brian: Absolutely, absolutely. As I say that the law of cause and effect is learning to do. And I discovered this at a very early age, just learning to do and I realized that you can learn anything that you need to learn to achieve any goal you can set for yourself. So I have what I call my golden triangle of success. And this comes from speaking to 1,000’s of people and reading about 6,000 books over the years. And if you can imagine a triangle, at the top of the triangle is self responsibility. It is where you accept complete responsibility for yourself and for everything that happens to you. And you say the magic words, I am responsible, I am responsible. I spent maybe 4,000 hours studying in a Russian branch of metaphysics that was created in the last part of the 1900s. And basically, what it said is that the biggest problem that we have, as human beings is negative emotions, negative emotions. And so one of the great jobs is to eliminate negative emotions. Because if you eliminate negative emotions, since your mind is like a vacuum, it will not remain empty. And the only thing that it's filled with is positive emotions. And positive emotions are all the good things that make life a wonderful experience. So what they did is they studied and I studied it for hours and hours and hours. And then I realized, and this is my, I think, contribution to personal success is simply this; that it is impossible to be negative and accept responsibility at the same time. So when you say the magic words, I am responsible, I am responsible and you refuse to blame anybody else for anything in your life, then all that's left is positive emotions. And the positive emotions are concrete and constructive. And I have self esteem and you feel good about yourself and your relationships with other people are good, and so on. And so I studied and studied and studied for decades, actually. And I find that every great person actually becomes a great person when they stop making excuses and they say, you know, if it's to be, it's up to me, that if I want to change, if I'm not happy with some situation in my life, then it's up to me to accept responsibility and change it. And so when you do that, you automatically become a positive person, you automatically become a concrete, specific positive thinker. It's the most wonderful thing. And when you accept responsibility for starting and completing a task, then you feel good about yourself. You feel positive and strong and concrete, you find that the quality of leaders is leaders. Don't blame anybody for anything. They say, I am responsible, what do we do now? There's a famous story of a great American businessman named W. Clement Stone and he started off as an orphan selling newspapers on the streets of Chicago. And he taught us that whenever he had a problem, he started his own company which became Combined Insurance Company of America with branches all over the world. And what he would do is whenever you had a problem he’d immediately say, that's good. And then focus on what's good about it. I have been, from the time the Coronavirus set in, I have been getting calls from all over the world to do seminars on how to master the crisis. How do we deal with a crisis? I say, the very first thing that you do is you take a deep breath, and you stay calm. And you say, okay, this is an unfortunate situation, but there's always something good and something bad. So what might it be? And you look into every crisis for what you're gonna learn. And you look into every crisis or problem for the lessons that it contains. And you say, that's good. And you have to, as a leader, what you do is you stay calm, and you make sure that everybody else stays calm, as well. And the way to stay calm is to ask questions. All right, what is the situation? What do we do now? What is our next step, and so on. And you get everybody thinking about moving ahead, thinking about the future, thinking about what we can do? Now one of the things that I've talked to hundreds of 1,000’s of people about is making a difference between a problem and a fact. And a problem is something that you can do, something about a fact is something that you just have to live with. Your age is a fact. The weather is a fact, the time of day is a fact. These are things that cannot be changed: facts, problems, crises, difficulties in the Coronavirus, and so on. These are things that you can’t do something, these are things that you can’t actually take action to do something about. So you never get upset about facts. It's amazing how many people, probably 80% 80/20. But it's amazing how 80% of people are upset and unhappy today because of facts that have occurred or are occurring in their lives that you can't do anything about. So what you do is you recognize that if something has happened, it's a fact. The Coronavirus is a fact. So then what you do is you say all right, how can we deal with this in a positive and constructive way? Another thing I teach, of course, is to accept responsibility. Don't get upset and angry, don't blame other people. Just my favorite words are the words I am responsible for. It is impossible to accept responsibility and be angry. When you accept responsibility, you immediately become calm and in control. You feel good about yourself, powerful, and so on. Anyway, time management and in time management, what we teach is very simple, find your day and organize it and decide on your most important task, the one task that can have the greatest positive difference on your life right now. And then begin working on that task. And stay with it until it's complete. Very simple. But if you can do that, if you do those things in practice, self discipline, then you are in complete control of your life. So let's talk about the Golden Triangle. The first part of the triangle is accepting responsibility. The second is setting goals and having clear written goals and plans to achieve them. And over the years Harvard has studied this. Over the years, you'll find that the people who are in charge of everything have written goals. They found that only 3%- they did a study many years ago where they interviewed graduates of Harvard Business School. And they asked them, how many of you have clear written goals and plans to achieve them when you leave the university? It turned out to be only 3% had written goals. And 12% had goals but they weren't in writing. And 85% had no goals at all. And so they interview these people. And then 10 years later, they interviewed them again. And they found that the 12% that had written goals, were earning on average, twice as much as those with no goals. And people with written goals and plans were earning on average 10 times as much as the others 10 years after they left the university. And this has been my experience as well. The top 3% of people earn 10 times as much as people who don't. Why? It’s because they have goals. They're in control of their lives. They know where they're going, very definite about that. And I look at business success. My favorite point is that in business task completion is everything. We don't get paid for tasks we’re working on. We get paid for completing important tasks. And so therefore you have to ask, of all the tasks that I could complete, that would be the most helpful, what are my most important tasks today. And I got into the habit of starting and completing my most important tasks, and staying up late at night and working weekends, and doing everything else. And I didn't even know these principles. But as I started studying success, I realized that every success comes from starting and completing something that is important to you and to your boss. And it's so amazing, because not only are you paid more and promoted faster, I wrote a book on that, by the way I write, I write books, it was called How To Get Paid for More Faster. And of course, it talks about these principles. And the principles are pretty simple. You just follow along in my book. I found everybody wanted to be wealthy. So I wrote this book 21 success principles of self made millionaires, and that makes people millionaires, but the other one has million dollar habits. And every one of these basically says that you do mental push ups, you discipline yourself to do what you know you should do when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not, and you become a better and stronger person. You become a leader in every area of your life, and you feel great about yourself and everybody looks up to you. It's a wonderful thing.

Adam: Brian, I love that. And it really reinforces what we spoke about earlier, the importance of self discipline. And you brought up time management, I want to make sure that in the interest of time management, we cover two more topics before this episode is over. And the first topic I wanted to cover with you is sales, you've written extensively on sales. What are your guiding principles and best tips for listeners on the topic of sales?

Brian: Well, I’m up there in terms of not only accomplishment in the field of sales, but in helping other people to be successful. And I've learned and read so many things. And I finally came to a very simple conclusion: your job in sales is to be a helper. Your job is to help people to improve their life or work in some way that they may not have done in your absence. And so all of the techniques and strategies and closing techniques and so on. And so I study them all. And what I found was that your job is to help people, to serve people, and focus on finding out what problems people have, because every product or service is a solution to a problem. Find out what needs they have, because every product or service is to satisfy a need. And then find out what people really want, and find out how to help them to get that in a cost effective way. So it's really wonderful when you do that, because it makes you feel happy about yourself. It makes you feel happy to be in the business of helping people to improve the quality of their life and work. And once you see yourself like that, you act differently toward a customer. It lets you think about the customer in a much more positive and constructive way. And so I've taught millions of salespeople, literally millions, my audio program on sales, the Psychology of Selling is the best selling program on selling in audio in the world, in 33 languages or something. And I've had countless people just this last week, just this week, I've had people telling me that this program changed their life. It actually made them successful, it transformed their sales careers. Which in turn turned prospective customers into friends. And Seth Godin, you know, he said this nice little line. He said you're driving and selling. Turn strangers into friends and friends and customers. And it's a really wonderful way to look at it. And people who do that leave the field. They move quickly to the top of their field, and sell and they make far more money. And far more friends. Many of their best friends started off as prospective customers. So that's how I would advise you; to learn everything that you can about how to help people to solve their problems, achieve their goals, overcome their obstacles and improve their lives in some way. See yourself as a helper, see yourself as a friend. The very best companies that I have worked with and my favorite back in the day was IBM teach this throughout the company every level? Is it everybody? And is it copied outside the company; is everyone treated with warmth and respect and kindness and just all good things. So once you've dealt with people who treat you like that? Well, you'll deal with them forever because they're your friends, and you look to them first. So that's what I would say about salespeople. All the techniques and methods are, are good. But as long as you focus on helping people, and finding ways to help people in a cost effective way.

Adam: Brian, I could not agree with you more. I love every word you said there. And that actually transitions perfectly to the last question I wanted to ask you. Given that so much of our conversation has centered around how we can live more productive lives, I wanted to get your advice on what we can do to ultimately live happier lives.

Brian: And well, everything we've been talking about really answers that question. Human beings are designed to be productive, to produce things, to be valuable, to feel important, to have high self esteem. My children I want- what I found when I started to study this is that whenever you see an unhappy, or a troubled adult, you see a person who is criticized, is a child. And so I made the decision- I have four wonderful children- that I would never criticize my children. I was raised in a negative environment. I mean, I studied, so I understood the ramifications of that. And I just made it clear and my wife and I are completely 100% in agreement on this as our children have never been criticized. Now, three of my children are married with children, and they could never criticize their children. And so our children are happy. I mean, our grandchildren are happy, and our children are happy. And the way that you can tell if you're a good parent, is that your children laugh a lot. He laughs all the time. If you have a good company, one of the things that always makes me happy is when people come to my business, and we have about 35 staff, people come from the outside into the business, and they say, this is an amazing place. Everybody laughs all the time, it’s highly productive, but everybody is happy. Because why? Because he treats everybody else with respect, and treats them as if they're valuable and important people. And as a result, everybody performs well and does a great job. And some people actually don't function well in that environment because of their past life. But what we do is we just encourage them to maybe go somewhere else. But mostly we hire very carefully and make sure that the people that really enjoy a high self esteem environment, really enjoy being in an environment where everybody treats everybody well. And that's really the great game thing like Aristotle, again, I love Aristotle's one liners, Aristotle, taught to the ultimate aim of human life is his happiness. And that everything we do in some way is designed to, to achieve to acquire our happiness. And your job. And my job when we have authority over anyone is to make sure that they're happy people. And if you're happy, you're going to be very successful. And even if you have short term problems, you're still going to be very successful, and be happy all the time.

Adam: Brian, thank you for all the advice and thank you for joining us.

Brian: It's a great pleasure. Thank you. And remember, whatever you decide to do in life, you can do it.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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