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Series - Shoulders Of Giants Jay Abraham Interviews Brian Tracy

JAY ABRAHAM: Hi, everybody! AUDIENCE: Hi Jay! How are you? JAY: Im just fine. Now, theoretically, there should be about 300 of you on this line representing entrepreneurial and professional achievement from all over the United States and from other continents. Im flattered, and honored, and appreciative, and I dont want to take a lot of time besides that except to say that our goal today is to move each and every one of you to a far high level of action, focus and strategic accomplishment than youve ever done in your life, and also than youve ever done in your experiences with this program. The gentleman who is speaking to you, who is going to share, not just wisdom, but real, first-hand accomplishment, is Brian Tracy. Brian is THE most successful, and the most renown author of business and personal achievement audiotape albums in the world --- sold millions. He travels, I dont know, probably of the time speaking to about 450,000 eager listeners like yourselves around the world, and has influenced and impacted more people than about anybody else I know. And he has graciously agreed not to give a difficult, 90-minute soliloquy of syrupy bromide for you, but to let me interact with him, ask him questions, advocate to the marketplace, to you for him, and listen to him respond, and take interaction between you. It should be a fun 90-120 minutes for each and every one of you. So with no further ado, Brian, Id like to welcome you. Id like all of you to give him a great welcome. AUDIENCE: Welcome, Brian. BRIAN TRACY: Thank you, Jay, Im delighted to be with you. JAY: Go ahead, Brian. You want to say anything first, before I --BRIAN: Its a delight to be with you. I am an entrepreneur on my own. I have my own business with 20 people. We do $7 million worth of business a year. We have operations in 18 countries, 18 languages --- and we sell in 35 countries, actually. And we probably sell $20- to $30 million worth of programs of retail [AS WELL]. So we started from nothing, booking out of my house with a single desk, and a [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. And so what Jay is doing, and what Ive learned from Jay is some

Shoulders Of Giants Jay Abraham Interviews Brian Tracy

of the most extraordinary ideas to help me be more successful in marketing in my life. Its a pleasure to be able to help some of you with some of these very things, I think. JAY: Were just honored and delighted. OK, now can we start this? Theres two ways that this will probably flow best, and you tell me what works best for you. I can ask you if there is a logical sequence that youd like to start with, or I can give you some areas, and ask you questions that I personally am most curious of, and I think would advocate the issues that are of most concern to people. Im easy --- whichever BRIAN: Well, let me begin with the concept that has taken me from rags to nonrags. I used to sleep in my car. I sometimes joke with the audiences --- I was homeless before it was respectable. I worked at laboring jobs. When I was in my 20s I was an itinerate farm laborer. I worked on ships in the North Atlantic. I worked digging ditches, and digging wells, and in factories putting nuts on bolts before I finally got into sales, and eventually into my own business. So Im not unfamiliar with where many people started from. Now, when I worked in corporations --- and last week I did two full-days of strategic planning --- one company with $600 million a year in sales, and the other company, with more than a billion. And I sat down with their senior executives, and I walked them through a scenario which Im going to go through now, which is extraordinarily helpful. As a matter of fact, I think its one of the most important things you can do in life on a go-forward basis. And everything well talk about is go forward. Just do it on a regular basis, and keep coming back to it. And heres what it is: I started off in what I call idealization. And idealization is to encourage you to develop a designed, ideal life in every respect to stand back and say, If I had all the time, and all the money, and all the resources, and all the contacts, and all the everything that I would need, and I wanted to design my life perfectly, what would it look like? And then, avoid the natural weakness that most people have when they say, Well, I couldnt do this, or do that, because of the money, or because of him or her. No, just stop. Start with a blank sheet of paper and imagine you could design your life around you. By the way, why is that immigrants to the United States succeed and become selfmade millionaires at four times the rate of native-born Americans on a per-capita basis? And the simplest reason of all, aside from the fact that they had to have more ambition to leave their home to come here, is that they come here with a blank slate is they come here, and they say, Now, Im starting all over from nothing. Many of them come here penniless, with no friends, no contacts, no ability to speak English. They have no education. They have no background. They start with nothing but a blank slate. And what they do is they say, Now, Im in the land of dreams. What is my dream?

Shoulders Of Giants Jay Abraham Interviews Brian Tracy

So when I speak with corporations I take this one step further, and I say, Let us do an exercise in revision. Let us imagine that five weeks have passed, and that your company --- this company --- is perfect in every respect. Every goal has been achieved -- size and volume of sales, cash flow, profitability, money in the bank people, the kind of people you have working for you. The reputation is very important. How do people talk about you, and think about you in the marketplace? When they think about you, what specifically comes to mind in terms of quality, excellence, character, integrity, innovation, and so on? So lets think about these things. And we start to write them down. And what I do is I [UNINTELLIGIBLE] listen to this, and if you have a staff, or even if you have a spouse. Put down the [WORDS] of your spouse. Its a great exercise. My wife Barbara and I do this every year. We plan our lives. We visualize this life. And its absolutely --- its amazing how it determines your future. So we say to them, OK, now everybody here --- and these are people, I was working with a company with 700 employees, and I had the 17 top executives in the boardroom. And I said, Lets go around the room, and lets write down what would be perfect, from your point of view if we achieved all our goals. And we ended up with 20 different answers. And once you have the 20 different answers --- which, by the way, nobody in that room had ever seen before. Many of them had never thought about it before. The president and owner of the company, one of the richest men in the world, was sitting there almost thrown back in his chair. He was staggered. He had no idea. And I said, Now that we have all of these ideas And people had, In my department, if my department was perfect we would have a very high level of sales volume, fewer people, greater use of computers. Someone else said, In my department, we would be the world leader in [SALES]. Someone else said In other words, each person defines their ideal in terms of what they were responsible for. If youre responsible for your whole business, then you have to define it in terms of your whole business. So we looked at all of these, and then we began looking at that almost like [PLATES]. And you know how you can lay plates down and they overlap? So imagine circles that overlap. And we kept looking for the overlaps. Where is there a common vision that links all of these together, all of these life plans, a spike that you throw all the rings on? And we eventually came up with an absolutely crystal clear vision of where wed be in five years. And if we were there, everybody elses vision would have been realized, and the realization of all of those visions would be essential to getting us there. And suddenly the whole company --- it was almost like the fog lifted. Everybodys crystal clear about where youre going.

Shoulders Of Giants Jay Abraham Interviews Brian Tracy

The senior executive said to me afterwards, it was almost like they had just suffered a bomb blast. They came to me just a little bit staggered, and said, You know, were going to have to change an awful lot of what were doing around here. Were going to have to go back to the drawing boards and our strategic plan. This exercise --this has changed the future of the organization. Ive done this many times, and every single time people are sort of [UNINTELLIGLE], like theyve just been next to a huge explosion, and theyre just stunned, because until you articulate this vision, you cant do anything. Youre basically focused to operate, and operating is the same as climbing a mountain looking at your feet, as opposed to taking and lifting up your eyes, and seeing clearly the top of the mountain. One of the most important rules Ive learned of success in the last couple of years is this: If you just combine long-term vision --- where youre going --- with short-term focus on the most important actions you can take each hour of each day to achieve your vision. So if you can hold those two ideas in your mind [ALBERT HUXABLE] said the mark of a superior mind is that they can hold two contradictory ideas in their mind at the same time, and still continue to function. So what you do is you say, OK, what is my long-term vision? And I will tell you this --- 80% of our problems in life come from fuzziness, or lack of clarity about where were going, and what we really want to accomplish. 80% of our success, on the other hand, is accompanied by tremendous clarity about who you are, and what you want to accomplish. Now, lets go back to vision again. Well, what is your vision based on? And theres only one answer, is your vision must be based on your values. Your vision must be based on what is really important to you. And so therefore, now you have to ask, What are my values? What do I consider important? What do I care about? What do I stand for? What would I not stand for? What would I never sacrifice or compromise? And when Ive done this with large corporations its amazing, and if ever theres been a deviation from this, the companys been in trouble. Almost every major organization, with their senior executives, come to the conclusion that their number one value is integrity. The number one value is integrity. Its that they will do whatever it takes to achieve the success of the company, but they will not compromise on their integrity. Now, its an interesting thing. If you look at the word integrity, it comes from the Greek word meaning integer. It means wholeness, completeness, perfection, unity, harmony, without flaw, or blemish. So you say, all right, integrity means two things. It means, on the inside, it means complete honesty and truthfulness, not playing games with yourself. Youre perfectly honest with yourself. And on the outside it means quality and excellence in everything

Shoulders Of Giants Jay Abraham Interviews Brian Tracy

that you do. What you do is done with integrity. Your products and services are excellent. The quality of what you do is the finest. And of course, you know that the commitment to quality and excellence is a lifelong journey. You never, ever get there. Its a series of constantly working at making it better every single day. The good news is that if your vision is five years from now your customers will think of you as one of the finest people, and one of the finest companies producing and offering some of the finest products and services that your reputation, people say, This is my company, or people say, Thats your company --- oh, wow! Wow, that is a good company! Its like the strategy that Lexus had when they came to the U.S. a few years ago, they decided that they would [UNINTELLIGIBLE] to the upper mid-level luxury automobile market. They said, What would be the sign that we had done this well? And the answer is that they would have the number one ranking in the J.D. Powers ratings for customer satisfaction. So then they took the ratings, and they broke them down, and they said, What should the car have to do and be? What would our service have to do and be in order to achieve that? And they found these were two things, is that the Toyota Motor Company has some of the highest ratings for quality of product, but some of the most mediocre ratings for sales and service satisfaction. So they said, We cannot sell this car in the Toyota network. We have to set up a totally separate network and make sure that from the get-go, from the very beginning, everything is done absolutely perfectly so that we win the J.D. Powers rating. Their second year in the U.S. market they were number one for J.D. Powers, and theyve been number one ever since. Its translated into hundreds of millions, and billions of dollars worth of sales. If ever you want to see a madhouse, go to a Lexus dealership on Saturday afternoons, and theres people pouring in with Cadillacs, and Mercedes Benz, and BMWs, and turning them in and driving away without them. Its the most amazing darned thing. You go to another dealership, and you could shoot a cannon across it. You go to a Lexus dealership and its a flurry. Why? Theres too many people saying, Lexus? Ah! Wonderful quality, tremendous service and satisfaction. By the way, Jay talks about this better than I do, is that people dont buy your product or service, according to the University of Chicago studies. They buy how they expect to feel as a result of patronizing you. They expect, and they buy how they anticipate feeling the emotion that they anticipate having --- pride, satisfaction, happiness, warmth, pleasure, self-esteem, security So therefore, the very best organizations sell and concentrate on how you will feel as a result of dealing with them, and the focus therefore is how you feel at every minute youre in the process.

Shoulders Of Giants Jay Abraham Interviews Brian Tracy

So we go back to vision, and we say, Well, what is your vision? Well, one of your visions is the people who deal with you really like you. Theyre really happy in their experience with you, so much so that they want to come back and bring their friends. Now, I did this exercise with a billion-dollar corporation recently, and after we had gone through every single conceivable vision statement, and goals, and values, we said, What would have to happen for this company to be a major success? And the answer is that every person who bought from us would be so happy with not only the experience, but the product or service, that they would buy from us again and again, and they would bring their friends to buy from us. Not just tell their friends its a good idea. They would take them by the arm. Theyd drive them down, bring them over. They would feel almost like zealots, almost like prosthetizers. They would be determined to bring their friends to become customers for it. I said, What would happen to your business if every person who buys from you bought from you again through the course of their buying lifetime, and brought their friends? They said, Well, wed become one of the biggest and most successful, most profitable companies in history. I said, Good. Now, now how do you achieve it? Now, Jay talks about this all time. Its very important. The attitude that is critical to your success is the attitude of optimism --- optimism in all the studies has been shown to be the number one most important single quality that an entrepreneur can have to be successful. And optimism, in my estimation, is the equivalent of mental fitness. Now, if I would ask you, How do you become mentally fit? Do you read a read a book on --- Oh, Im sorry. How do you become physically fit? Do you read a book on physical fitness? Do you listen to a tape? Do you watch a video? Do you go to a sports event? Do you watch and cheer for the competitors? No. If you want to become physically fit, you have to exercise. You have to sweat, and if you do the specific thing, and as a result, youll be physically fit. So how do you become mentally fit, especially if youre not? Especially if youre [UNINTELLIGIBLE]? Well, its very simple. You do the things that optimists do, and you think the way that optimists think until it becomes a habit. Now, if you talk to optimistic people, you say to them, How do you think positive all the time? And they look at you with a blank. They say, I dont understand the question. I mean, youre always positive. Youre always optimistic. Youre always upbeat. Youre always cheerful. How do you do that with all the stuff thats going on? And by the way, dont ever forget that optimists have as many or more problems than you or I ever could dream of. Its not as though they have a blessed life. They have real, real challenging lives. The only difference is their attitude towards it.

Shoulders Of Giants Jay Abraham Interviews Brian Tracy

So, the answer is they say, Well, I just I dont know. Because theyve been doing it so long that its become automatic. They are on autopilot that every hour of every day, their attitude toward everything is such that they respond to it in a positive, confident and optimistic way. So heres how you do it. Optimists have three or four characteristics, and Ill give them to you quickly. And these are just habits, habits of thoughts. This is how you approach any challenge in your life. Number one, an optimist always looks for the good. They just --- in every situation, every setback, every difficulty, every word, they say, Well, whats good about this? W. Clement Stone, who founded combined insurance company of America, went from selling papers on the street of Chicago at the age of 12 to a fortune of $800 million with a very simple mental attitude. His mental attitude was that he was an inverse paranoid. An inverse paranoid is a person who is absolutely convinced that the world is conspiring to make them successful. So every single time something happens --- and if youre in business youll have setbacks and difficulties all day, every day for the rest of your life --- every single time something happened he would say, Thats good. And then hed start to say, What is good about this? What can we find in this that we can benefit from? So the starting point is to look for the good. The second point, which follows from that, is to seek the value or lesson in every difficulty that you have. If you have a setback, OK, what can I learn from this that will help me in the future? And Ive learned a very interesting thing. When you decide with a very clear vision of what you want to accomplish, theres virtually no doubt that you will achieve it. If your vision is clear enough, and you hold to it long enough, you will achieve it. So the optimist says, OK, every single time something happens, what can I learn from it? And nature sends you [UNINTELLIGIBLE] Because weve found psychologically that you only learn through the emotions. You only learn if you suffer. If you dont suffer, you dont learn. You disregard the lesson, and very often, you make the same mistake. So what nature does, once you start to work towards your goal, is nature will give you a little kind of a pain here, almost always a financial pain. Often, sometimes, its a people pain. But theyll give you a pain, and the purpose --- the reason nature gives you this pain is to teach you a lesson that will save you from even greater pain in the future. So if youre suffering pains right now --- which you are, as everyones got challenges in their life --- ask yourself, What lesson am I meant to learn from this? And learn it as quickly as possible, because nature will keep coming back, and keep raising the cost. If you dont learn it the first time, itll come back again, and youll pay even more dearly. And if you dont learn it then, itll come back again, and its going to cause you real big problems, and real challenges. So therefore, say, What am I meant to learn?

Shoulders Of Giants Jay Abraham Interviews Brian Tracy

Now, the third way that you become a professional optimist is you focus on the future, rather than the past. You keep looking toward the future, and the opportunities of tomorrow, the things you can do (which were coming to in this discussion), rather than the problems of the past, and maybe the things that youve regretted. A psychiatrist who had worked with people for 25 years said recently that the most tragic words he ever heard were the words, If only. If only I would have gotten out of the stock market three years ago. If only I had started this business. If only I hadnt hired this person. If only I hadnt spent this money on advertising. And Robert Blakely says you can take all your if onlys and couldas and shouldas, and add 50 cents, and get yourself a cup of coffee in a cheap place, because if only has only one value, one purpose to life, and thats to teach us a lesson so we dont do it again next time. I had lunch recently with a fellow who had been through many ups and downs in his entrepreneurial career, and I told him something which he said saved his life, mentally. I said, Every single experience was sent to you to teach you something invaluable that would guarantee a failure in the future. Your job is just to make sure that you derive from it the greatest value. And heres the fourth thing, and this is the most important of all, is optimists are intensely solution-oriented. If something goes wrong, they say, OK, whats the solution? What do we do? Whats the next step? Theyre always thinking in terms of solutions. Pessimists, average people who dont accomplish much, are so bogged down in the problem of who did it, whos to blame, and who can you apportion the guilt to? But the successful person says, OK, what cannot be cured must be endured. You cant cry over spilled milk. That was then. This is now. Whats the solution? What do we do? And then they get on it. And the more busy you are, (and thats what were coming to) in terms of taking constructive, persistent, continuous action in the direction of your goals --- the busier you are moving toward the fulfillment of your vision, the more optimistic you become the happier you are the more energy you have the more creative you are the more positive you are. Sometimes I ask an audience this, as I did to several hundred people yesterday, and I said, If you do something over and over again, repeatedly --- anything --- what do you eventually develop? And of course, the bright people, they said, Well, you develop a habit. I said, So whats the difference between failures and successes, and why? And theres a pause, and they looked at each other, and they all smiled, and they said, Well, successful people have success habits. Failures have failure habits.

Shoulders Of Giants Jay Abraham Interviews Brian Tracy

And whats the most important of all habits? Well, one of the most important of all habits is whenever something goes wrong, you look at the solutions. You look for the answer. You look for the value of the lesson. One of my favorite points in metaphysics is that every problem you have today --and especially your biggest problem --- has been sent to you at this moment because it is precisely what you need right now for your continued growth and development. Its been sent to you as a gift, and your job is to look into it, and to find the gift. So do you want me to just go on, Jay? Because Im on a roll. JAY: Yeah, its great. Its great. No, no, youre wonderful. Im thinking about it myself. Im lost in reflective thought. Please do. BRIAN: OK. So now we have a vision, and we have our values. We know that we will not compromise. What Ive found is the finest men and women in our society are men and women who are clearly defined. Leaders are men and women who know who they are, and they never deviate from it. And if you look, youll find a lot of contradictory stuff in our society, and people dont care about ethics, and value, and deceit, and faithfulness, and truthfulness, and so on and so forth. Right up to the highest level in our country we have people saying that this is nonsense, and it always has been nonsense. The most important people in your life are the men and women that you like and trust the most. In fact, it is impossible to build a life except that you build it with people that you trust, and that you know you can rely on. And everybody else is the same. We did a study with one of the organizations I belong to. We spent $50,000 interviewing customers of our industry group. And our industry sells similar products to similar people. And we asked the customers, In retrospect, why did you buy from Company A? What was the most important thing you looked for? Every single one said, without exception, The very first thing we looked for in identifying a decision is honesty on the part of the person were talking to. If theres the slightest question that the person lacks perfect integrity, well just take a pass. Wed much rather buy a lesser product at a higher price than deal with a person or accompany that lacks integrity. So once you know who you are and what your visions and your values are, then you break it down to practical [UNINTELLIGIBLE] effects, and you set goals for yourself. If your life was perfect in every respect, what would you be doing in terms of sales, and volume, and profitability five years from now? Just write it down. Dont worry about being too precise. And then work it down, back to the present, in the fourth year, third year, second year, first year. Work it right down to the week. Work it down to the month, and then to the week, and say, All right. If our company was perfect in every respect, then this is the kind of business we would be doing.

Shoulders Of Giants Jay Abraham Interviews Brian Tracy

And heres the most important question of the optimist, and Ill repeat this over and over again. The question is, how? How do we do it? How do we get there? The question about whether or not were going to do it is not on the table. It is moot on the table. The only question in front of you now, now that you know what you want, is the question, how? And the only answer is, you need to take specific, continuous, persistent action, every single day, in the direction of your goal --- knowing that you will fail more times than you succeed, and every failure is going to teach you something that is inaccessible to your ultimate success. Thomas A. Watkins, Sr. was once asked by a young man, How could I be more successful faster? And he said, Thats very simple. He said, You must double your rate of failure. Double your rate of failure. The reason why people dont try new things, dont take risks, dont get out of their comfort zone, is because, conscious or unconscious, theyre afraid of failure. Theyre afraid of losing money. Theyre afraid of losing time. Theyre afraid of making an effort and finding that they get nothing from it. The reason that people do succeed is that they force themselves out of their comfort zone, almost like shoving a person from behind with two hands. You must mentally shove yourself out of the comfort zone, out there, into the area of discomfort, where youre doing something youve never done before. Now, heres a rule for you, and its one of the most important rules youll ever learn. It is this: Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly at first --- and often, its worth doing poorly several times. When I was a young man, I had a revelation. I dont really remember where it was, but the question was, Why is it that Americans dont speak additional languages? I was speaking to a German gentleman yesterday in my seminar, and he was telling me this little joke which Ive heard a hundred times, but Ill pass it on to you. What do you call a person who speaks several languages? And the answer is, a multilingual. What do you call a person who speaks a single language? And its an American. Well, the reason that Americans dont learn other languages --- and by the way, if you do not yet know Spanish, its something that you need to put onto your goals, because Spanish will be the second language in the United States in a few years. In California where we live, in the year 2020, Hispanics will pass the 50% mark. If you dont speak Spanish, then its going to really hurt you in business in a few years. So, the reason they dont learn languages is because they try it once, and the other person doesnt understand them, and they collapse and fall apart. Its just so awkward that they revert back to English. The reason Europeans learn languages quickly is because they just keep stabbing away at it, and trying every word they have until they make themselves understood, because they dont care.

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Shoulders Of Giants Jay Abraham Interviews Brian Tracy

And that is a very important thing that I learned about taking action in the direction of your goal, is that you must realize the first couple of times you try it youll feel awkward and clumsy. You wont do it right. Youll make mistakes, and forget obvious things. Itll cost you more than you expected. Itll take longer to get results. But the average person --- and youre not average. If youre listening to this conversation, youre not average. The above average person forces themselves to stick it out, and keep doing it until they master it, rather than go running back to a lower level of performance. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi at the University of Chicago did a wonderful series of studies which he summarized in a book called Flow: The Psychology Of Optimal Experience. And you dont need to read the book. If youre going to read a book, read my book, Maximum Achievement, because its vastly better than that, and much simpler to understand. But what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, after 30 years of research, found, that people get into flow, this optimal experience where they feel[UNINTELLIGIBLE] feel like, because they consciously, they force themselves out of their comfort zone into the discomfort zone, where theyre trying something new, and they force themselves to stay there until they master it, and they develop a comfort zone at a new, higher level of performance. So why is it that people dont take action in the direction of their goals? The number one reason is theyre not clear about what their goals are. The number two reason --- their goals are too big. I want to make a lot of money. I want to double my sales. I want to sell a million dollars a year. I want to have a nice house, nice life, nice health And so on. These are wonderful goals, but they really are more like fantasies than goals. Theyre like cigarette smoke, I say. Its very hard to get your hands around cigarette smoke, and they dissipate very quickly. But successful people have very clear, specific, written goals that are broken down from the macrocosm, I want to be earning a million dollars a year five years from now. In order to do that, Ill have to sell $5 million a year of my product, and make a 20% net profit margin. And they break it all the way down to today, and where they are today, and they practice what Peter Drucker calls intellectual honesty. They look at their situation in complete honesty, and then they say, What will I have to do every hour of every day to get from where I am to where I want to go? And this brings us to one of the most important single principles of business success. Its what I call the breakthrough principle. Its called The Theory of Constraints. The Theory of Constraints is that between where you are and where you want to go, theres always a constraint. Its like a bottleneck, or a choke point. Its a thing that determines speed, or how fast you go from where you are to where you want to go.

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Shoulders Of Giants Jay Abraham Interviews Brian Tracy

So lets say that your goal is a certain level of sales. This is a real good place to start. Then you have to say, OK, what is the constraint? What determines the speed at which I achieve that level of sales? So you could say --- it could be several things. You could say, Well, it could be the number of qualified prospects that I attract through advertising, referrals, promotional sales whatever. The number of qualified prospects I attract. OK. You say, all right. If that is the constraint, then you focus all of your energy and attention on attracting qualified prospects, and you alleviate that constraint. The natural tendency for us all is we diffuse our efforts like light, gently across everything we have to do, and were busy, busy, busy all day long. But we dont focus our efforts like a laser beam on the constraint, the alleviation of which will lead you towards your goals faster than any other single thing you can do. Its interesting. Pete [TOMPLINGER] says that the job of a leader (and thats what you are in your own organization) the job of a leader is to choose the area of effort. It is to choose the focal point of concentration. It is to choose and discipline not only himself or herself, but the other people to focus all of their energy single-mindedly on the single result, the accomplishment of which can help you more than anything else. And heres the kick. The kick is that the single result is the hardest darn thing you can do. It requires tremendous self discipline and will power, concentration. Its hard, because the phones are ringing, and people are coming in. Theres a hundred little, piddly, nit-picking little details. But youve got to keep yourself focused on the one big thing that can make all the difference. And youve got to keep your key people focused. All success comes from concentrating your very best talents on your very biggest opportunity. And all failure comes from not doing that, all day, every day. And you, as the key person, are the only one who can keep people focused. And if you dont keep them focused, its like herding cats. Theyll all go off in other directions, and theyll always work on the little, fun, easy, irrelevant things. Theyre working on this, and that, and this, and that, and everybodys busy, and happy, happy, happy And youre going to find that the big thing, the constraint, the critical factor, is being ignored. So you ask yourself, OK, whats my constraint? Now, lets go back to that again. If you say its attracting qualified prospects, well, maybe you could say, Maybe thats not it. Maybe the answer is writing outstanding advertising so that more qualified prospects will call. Or maybe you could say something totally different. Maybe the constraint on my growth is converting qualified prospects. I worked with a company recently, one of the biggest in the U.S. I sat with their senior executives in a very expensive hotel in Phoenix, and put them through this exercise, and I said, What is the critical constraint to your growth? And they said, Well, its conversion of leads or prospects, or suspects into prospects. I said, Whats your conversion rate now? Well, they had a showroom type of operation. They said,

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Shoulders Of Giants Jay Abraham Interviews Brian Tracy

Well, about 5% of the people who come into our showrooms buy. The other 95% dont. They had a 1 in 20 hit rate. I said, Well what would happen (it was a billion dollar corporation) if you could increase the conversion rate from 5% to 50%? They said, Well, just a minute. And their accountant took control there. He just quickly, on paper, he said, Itd be $100 million a year more in money. I said, What would it cost for you to intensively train every single sales person in your organization so that they had that little, critical edge that would enable them to make the conversion, so that they could close six out of 100 rather than five out of 100. They said, Well, the total cost would be if we just blew our brain on sales training, itd be less than $1 million. Well, what would be the contribution to the bottom line? $100 million. Whats the downside? Zero. Whats the upside? 100 times return in the first year. Well, surprise, surprise. They [UNINTELLIGIBLE], and they did. They flew the [UNINTELLIGIBLE] come from the United States. Their [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. Now, does that sound very complicated? No, it wasnt that complicated. So then, you have to ask yourself, Well, if the conversion ratio is the key, what do we have to do to convert a higher percentage of prospects into customers? Now, the only question you ask is how? How? How will we do it? You know its doable, because you know other people are doing it. And if someone else is doing it, you can do it. And if youre not quite sure how to do it, then what you do is you go to the next town, or the other side of the city, and you go to your most successful competitor, and you go up to them and say, How are you doing it? And you know what? Theyll tell you! Ha! They dont care! Theyre so busy with their own work, they wont keep it a secret. And Ill promise you this. A company came from out of town and said, Look, I sell the same product or service in my town, and youre doing great. How do you do it? Hell say, Let me show you. And theyll sit down, and theyll open up, and theyll show you how theyre doing it, and what they learned, and what not to do. You know, one of the very fastest ways for you to keep score of your success is to find out somebody else who has extraordinary success and ask them, and theyll tell you. Its a wonderful thing in America. Successful people in America have an abundance mentality. An abundance mentality means, Hey, theres lots. So if -- and they want to share their success. Everybody --Look at Jay. Jay is extremely successful at what he does, and what he wants to do more than anything else --- its all he thinks about, all day long, because Ive spoken to him several times --- How can I get this idea into the hands of more people? Because they work. And every single person who is successful creates more wealth and abundance, which makes it possible for even more people to be successful. Its not as if the pie gets smaller if you slice it up. The pie gets bigger as you become more successful.

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Shoulders Of Giants Jay Abraham Interviews Brian Tracy

So, how do you convert more qualified prospects? Now, Im going to give you a very simple principle thats been helpful to me throughout my life, and its the 80/20 Principle, applied to personal development. It says this: 80% of the constraints that are holding you back in any part of your life are internal. Theyre within yourself. Theyre within your business. Theyre within your people in your business. Theyre within your products. Theyre under your own control. Theyre not the market. Its not the competition. Its not the prices. Its not the Japanese. Its not the government. 80% of all your challenges are inside yourself. One of the Greek philosophers said that when a mans fight begins with himself, that hes worth something, then hes worth something. And throughout my life, whenever Ive had a temptation to blame my problems on someone else --- which we all do --- If youve been brought up in the Judaic-Christian ethic, which most of us have, your natural, automatic tendency when something goes wrong is to look for whos guilty is to blame it on someone else. But of course, if you do that too much it becomes a habit, and you stop looking for where the real reason is, which in 80% of the cases, its in ourselves. So therefore, you ask yourself, Whats the critical constraint, and how can I alleviate this constraint? And then heres the most important question of all: What can I do immediately --- this minute --- that will begin alleviating the constraint? And then force yourself to do it. The American [MINISTRY] Association does studies all the time. They came up with a study which Ive seen over the years, and I like to see my best ideas corroborated by professionals. They followed a series of executives, and they looked at those who succeeded, and those who failed those who got onto the fast track in their lives, and those who were mediocre. And they looked at their backgrounds, and they found they had pretty much the same education, pretty much the same intelligence. They all networked. They belonged to the same clubs and associations. They had ten years of experience. But some were on the fast track, and some were not. So they looked at their behaviors, and they were looking for a reason for their success, and they found it was one simple quality. And in this study, they called it the quality of initiative. The quality of initiative, they defined, was the willingness to initiate action quickly when circumstances called for it. And so they asked the [UNINTELLIGLE] What do you mean by initiative? And they went back to double check, which is helpful. They found that the low performing group felt that they had initiative as well. They felt they had as much initiative as other people. So they said, Well, how do you define initiative? They said, Well, when the phone rings I answer it, and when my customer comes in I talk to them, and when something needs to be deliver it. I mean, I have initiative. I do what needs to be done.

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So they asked the high performers, How do you define initiative with regard to what the low performers said? They said, Oh, that just goes with the job. Thats not initiative. Thats just doing the job. Anybody can do that. You can hire a person on the street to do what theyre required to do. Initiative is going beyond. Its doing more. Its reacting quickly, and responsibly, and creatively. Its being intensely action-oriented. Being action-oriented means ready, fire at will. Its when something comes up, take action on it. When somebodys calling, you dont take a message. What you do is you say, Ill take care of it right away. And you take personal responsibility for making sure that that customers satisfied fast. You dont say, Hey, somebody called. You take care of it. Its, you do it right away. And so that words Right away. Right away. Right away --- seems to go hand in hand with great success in competitive enterprise. They take action immediately. Now, Jay is giving, through this course --- and Ive been through all of his material. Not all of it, but almost all of it. Im going through it now. Is hes giving idea, after idea, after idea on how you can build your business. But everybody who is given these ideas will fall into one of two camps. You might call it the sheep and the goats, if you like. The sheep will say, Thats a good idea. Bahbah. And theyll look at the idea, and theyll say, Geez, I should do that someday. Bah..bah. And then theyll go back, and theyll watch television, and theyll go back to what they were doing. The goats, however, as you know if youve ever been around a goat, a goat will butt you. They see you --- they butt you. No peace for goats! So when youre talking with a goat, the goat will take the action and run with it. They attack the new idea. They will see if it works, because they know that only two things can happen, is you can try it and it doesnt work for you, or you can try it, and it does. If you try it and it does, you now have a new tool that you have for life. From now on, you have a new way of generating money that you didnt have before. If it doesnt work for you, youve learned a valuable lesson, that this is not a good place to allocate your time and money. And I will take it even further ahead. And if you try it several times, in almost every single case these ideas will take you closer to your goal, increase your sales, and become far more [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. But the hardest thing of all is to take the first step. The hardest thing of all is to charge for it, is to be intensely action oriented. And heres the truth: If you have an absolutely brilliant person who has the finest education, a Harvard MBA, with a Ph.D. in Entrepreneurial Studies, who has 70 years of work with a major corporation, and who is tutored by Jay, happens to be one of the finest, most creative entrepreneurs in the world, this person is not worth a pinch of you-knowwhat --- snuff --- if they wont take action on what they know. But on the other hand, if you take a mediocre person, an average person with a poor education who walked in off the street, but whos got a very, very focused gaze, and

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will take action on just one idea, that persons worth 100 times the [UNINTELLIGIBLE] who has the idea, but takes no action. And I [UNINTELLIGIBLE] the biggest killer of all --- its procrastination. We say, [UNINTELLIGIBLE] action --- just not yet. However, lets go back to the question I ask my audience. If you do anything --- or fail to do anything --- over and over again, what do you develop? And the answer is, you develop a habit. And a habit of procrastination, which sneaks up on you You never meant it to. Its just like that middle age paunch, where you start to develop that spare tire. You never meant for that to happen, but there it is. That habit of procrastination that sneaks up on you is very, very insidious. It sneaks up on you from behind, and then it traps you. If you remember the book Gullivers Travels, where he talks about falling asleep in the land of the Lilliputians, and the Lilliputs, the little people, come and they tie him down with thousands of little strings. That book was a paradigm. It was a metaphor. It was a political/philosophical/psychological book, and he was trying to make a point without directly attacking some of the mediocre people in his society, the bureaucrats and the people in government reacting stupidly. Those little lines that they developed which tied down Gulliver with But Gulliver was huge and powerful. But with thousands of little lines, made him completely helpless. The repetition of acts of procrastination form into steel cables of habits that destroy the likelihood of success of even the most extraordinary person. And what you have to do is you have to, one by one, throw them off. You have to say, All right. I get an idea. Im going to act --- now. Im going to take action immediately. Im going to do it this minute. Im not going to wait. Im not going to delay, because I know that if I do its going to kill me in the long term. Sounds like a person who says, Im not going to do a dessert anymore, because I know if I do the ramifications will be tremendous. So, what you do is you decide what your vision is, and your values, and you set your goals, and you break your goals down, and say, Of all the things that I could do, what would be the most helpful to do now? What is the one thing that I could do that could help me the most? What is the one thing that sets the speed at which I achieve my goals? And then discipline yourself to do nothing else but that until youve mastered it. Jay, would you like to jump in here for a second? JAY: Yeah, sure. Can I ask a couple of clarifying questions? BRIAN: Sure. JAY: OK. So youre saying something much more eloquently than I. Ive always suggested that the only way anybody can achieve their goals is, first and foremost, know what they are, and the specific manner, and then reverse engineering them. And it sounds pretty much like what youre saying.

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BRIAN: Exactly. JAY: And what Id like to have you help us with, and I want you to really grab me with We have people on this phone, 100, 200 of them, whove achieved some really remarkable accomplishments in their life. And Im very flattered. A lot of them have accomplished it through the utilization of my principles. However, they seem to hit a false ceiling. They seem to hit a wall. They seem to not be able to break through and get more yield, more performance, more expansion, more experimentation out of their day, out of their people, out of their line, out of their whole set of possibility-based whatever. Can you help us there? BRIAN: OK. The most important thing that Ive ever learned is that the quality of your thinking determines the quality of your life. And if people start to stop in terms of getting more, our natural tendency when we were younger, the old paradigm, is you work longer and harder. You work longer hours. You work harder. You do more things. You throw more mud against the wall, and hope some of it will stick. Today, however, the whole paradigm has shifted. And whether we see how its shifted --- today, what we do is we use our minds to apply ourselves with much greater effectiveness. And theres two principles which I repeat over and over again. They are the principles of leverage and acceleration. One of the things that you can do to give you the greatest leverage that enables you to maximize your output per unit energy or input. And the second is, what can you do to accelerate or increase the speed at which you achieve your goals? Usually, were saying, Im out of resources. And let me give you a thinking tool that comes from Harvard Business School. Its called The Principle Of Critical Success Factors. The Principle Of Critical Success Factors is based on the fact that there are hundreds of things going on in your business. However, only a small number of them are critical. Now, critical means if a person has been in a car accident and rushed to the hospital, and someone said they are in critical condition, what does that mean? Well, the answer is it means that they could live or die. Its critical. Its the determination of [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. In your business there are critical success factors. If you do them, you live. If you dont, the business dies. Youre developing your business. You do customer generation if you want. Some people have satisfactory products and services that theyre happy with, it ends up they keep, is two. Proper selling methodology is three. Proper accounting and financing is four. In every business, and in every position in your business, there are critical success factors. And the interesting thing is theres seldom more than five to seven critical success factors. So when you talk about reverse engineering, the critical thing about re-

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engineering is to identify the factors. What are the five to seven factors that determine the survival or death of your business? Now, heres what we learned. Norman Augustine talked about this. He said ten years writing Augustines Laws he was asked again by one of the national journals, What have you learned in the last ten years? He said, The most important single thing Ive learned --- Im surprised I never saw it before --- was that your weakest critical success factor determines the height at which you can use all your other skills. And I sat back in my chair like I had just been thrown by an explosion, and thought, Wow! Wow, that is an idea! Think about it. You can do great on six of the seven critical factors in your business, but all of your problems will come from a weakness in the seventh. So if we want to get leverage, where do you get the most leverage? We get the most leverage by identifying the major problem area --- our greatest weakness, the greatest (going back to constraints) the greatest weakness that we have, and then focusing all of our energy on bringing that up. Sometimes we can outsource it. Sometimes we can bring in someone else who has the skill. By the way, just to make a quick shift, but with regard to skill, one of the things we know is that good people are free. And its a very important thing to understand. No matter how much you pay good people, theyre free. The second thing about that is that your companys growth is totally constrained by your ability to get and keep good people. And 80% of the reason for that is in yourself. The reason good people are free (to go back to the beginning) is that good people contribute vastly more than they cost. In fact, all companies are successful to the degree to which they can get and keep good people who contribute more than they cost. Poor people are very expensive. Poor people can [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. But good people are free. So therefore, your job --- People come in and say, I want to make $100,000 a year working here. I say, Thats fine. Just show me how you can justify that kind of income, and youll make your job contingent on it. I dont mind paying $100,000. Ive even hired people, and I paid them more than I make. I know a person in my company that makes twice as much as the president of the company, and everybody in the company is very happy hes making that kind of money because hes so productive, he generates so much revenue to the company that it underwrites everybody elses salaries. And so good people are free, poor people are expensive. Your job is --- Its amazing how people quibble over nickels and dimes when theyre hiring people. They say, Maybe I can get them really, really cheap. Well, of course, your job is to pay the very least for the very most. Its a factor of production. But nevertheless, remember,

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good people are free. And you want as many as you can get, the faster you can build your business. That may be the greatest accelerator of all. Maybe your greatest weakness is that you do not have a key person in a key place. And there are two things that you can do with regard to that. You can say, Do I need to hire a key person, or can I outsource this entire function and have somebody else do it? JAY: Brian, let me BRIAN: Sure. JAY: Sorry. But in that question, Im thinking I have somebody who is an expert somebody who is many times better skilled in understanding, in facilitating, in managing, in dealing with that issue, day in and day out, so that I dont have to be mediocre, or I dont have to manage, or I dont have to try to bring that expertise internal. BRIAN: What we know is this: Entrepreneurs [CHARGE], and are successful in business because they can sell the product or service. They love the product. They really have a passion for it, and they believe that its good, and they go out there, and they can sell it. I had a very good friend who was a superb, superb salesman --- $3-, $4-, $500,000 a year, and he decided, Geez, I should have my own company. So he did. He started a company and decided to be a manager. And the company began to fall apart. And he said, This is ridiculous. So he brought in a president. He said, A good executive can run the company. Thats cheaper than the amount of money Im losing by not being in the field. So he brought in a crackerjack executive to come in and run his company, and he went back in the field and sold. And he sat in the sales meetings as a salesperson, and he came to work as a salesperson, and he was just a salesperson. He owned the whole darned company, but he could generate more business for his company by being in sales than he could on the outside. So sometimes you can say, Our weakest problem is our sales. I cant get good salespeople. Oh, you poor darling! Nobody can get good salespeople. Give yourself a shake. If there was a formula for that, wed all be rich! The reason youre successful in your business is that you can sell. And by the way, I will say this: If you cannot sell, dont go into business. Work for somebody else. But Ill also say this: Selling is something you can learn. Ive worked for a whole [UNINTELLIGIBLE] accountants, and as you know, the joke is that accountants become accountants because they lack the charisma of engineers [UNINTELLIGIBLE].

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So I worked with accountants which now have been told by their companies that You must go out and make rain. You must go out and generate business, as well as doing books. And theyre absolutely paralyzed with fear. The very idea of going out and asking people for business traumatizes them. Some of them become alcoholics. They [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. Anyway So I say, Look. Lets look at what selling involves. Selling involves finding people who you can help to improve their life or work, and then showing them that whatever it is theyre trying to accomplish, whatever their goals are, you can help them achieve their goals faster and easier, and in a very cost-effective way. So what people have to do is say, What is my weakest key area? And in almost every entrepreneurial business, the weakest key area is selling --- your ability to go out and generate new business. And the weakness is in the inability to apply your ideas, Jay, but its also the weakness to just get face to face with people who can and will buy, and to ask them to buy. And of all the skills, this is one of the skills that can be brought up very, very fast with proper books, proper tapes, proper course. And this may be such a constraint that if its your constraint, those who are listening, then what you should do is say, OK. This is 1998. This is the year Ill become superb in selling. This year Im going to think day and night, day and night, how I can sell more how my company can sell more how to advertise how to promote how to get referrals how to get repeats and resales how to sell more to the same customer how to get the same customer buying more often. Its all Im going to think about all day long, is how to sell more. Heres an interesting statistic. Its been repeated over the years, by the way. They asked small entrepreneurs, they say, How important is sales and marketing to you in your business? Do you know what entrepreneurs say? Its very important! Its the most important. If we didnt have the sales Its the blood to the brain. Wed die. Good. Now why dont you do a time and motion study and sort of track your time for awhile. And every 15 minutes, write down what youre doing, and well do this for about six weeks. And then we do it, and I do an analysis of the persons time. And you know what they find? Surprise, surprise --- the average entrepreneur, if theyre not careful, is spending 11% of their time in sales and marketing. 11%. The critical thing that determines the whole future of their business, but they get so bogged down in minutiae that they lose sight of the most important thing they should be doing. Peter Drucker talks about the fact that most companies, when they have a goodselling product, they will take their best sales people off of their best-selling products, and put them on their worst-selling products in order to try to get the sales going up so the person whos idea the product was will not be embarrassed. So instead of concentrating on the opportunities, the big opportunity areas, we spend a lot of our time on things that no one will remember when you get [UNINTELLIGIBLE].

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So thats the first thinking tool, and you need to apply it to every stressful part of your life. And if the answer is no, then how do you get out of it, and how fast? How do you deal with it? And the way to deal with it is straightforward, straight on. Now, the second thing is to understand that all human lives, businesses, careers, products, services and companies go in cycles. Its called the segment curve. The segment curve is like an S laying down with the tail on the left sort of up in the air, and then it slopes down, and then it goes up much higher, and then it slopes down again. The segment curve is the basis of all the work done at UCLA by [UNINTELLIGIBLE] in his work in corporate life cycles. Its taught all over the world, and 99% of business people have never heard of it. Whenever I show this curve to any business person, people just go, Wow! because it explains their situation perfectly. Let me explain the beginning of the S. Its high. This is where the good company starts, and it immediately goes into a down cycle, where youre learning how to run the business before you run out of money. Youre scrambling to make sales. If you can figure out how to make money faster than you lose it, then the company starts to come out of the dive and begins to move up, that second part of the S. It goes through adolescence, into growth, and the company starts to grow, and you sell a lot of products and services, and then you reach a point of stability where the S levels off again, and begins to go into decline. Now, all products go through that cycle. They start off, go through the learning period, begin to grow, level off and decline. All careers, all marriages, all friendships, all companies, all advertising campaigns everything goes through the S curve. And if you can understand that, when you go and you reach stability at the top of the curve and begin to decline, what this means is that youve changed, the market has changed, the customers have changed, the products have changed, the competition has changed It doesnt really matter what it is. Its that cycle or season. You dont say, Why on earth are we having winter? It just happens. And so you can reach a point where youre working harder and harder, and getting less sales... youre selling harder and harder, but making less profit youre working harder and harder, but getting less satisfaction. And what you have to recognize is that youve gotten to the downside of the curve. And what will happen is the harder you work, the smaller the margins will become, the less money youll make. So the question that youve talked about is you have to ask, What is my next miracle going to be? You have to say, OK, when things are going really, really great, now is the time to plan for the curve. What do we do now? Weve got money. Weve got sales. Weve got the forward motion. We have the energy. We have the reserves now. We have to plan the next curve.

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So a good company is a series of climbing curves, like a series of Ss, linked in with each other. So just at the point where youre at what [UNINTELLIGIBLE] calls prime, --- the companys in the very best condition of its life --- just at that time you know that youre reaching stability and decline. So you have to pull back and begin finding new products, new processes, new markets which entail new risks, and new thinking, and really, out of the comfort zone --- trying something new and different. Youll notice that if a restaurant does not change its menu, no matter how well its doing, itll go into decline. If a restaurant doesnt change the dcor --- sometimes you go into a restaurant, and theyve remodeled. Well, geez, its expensive to remodel. Why did they do that? Because people, even if the food is good, if they dont add dishes, delete dishes, change the dcor, right when theyre selling, people will stop going there. You notice how restaurants and nightclubs go through cycles where theyre the hot spot, and the next year, theyre dead? Whats changed? Nothing changed --- thats why. People have gone on to something else. So in your business and in your career, keep asking, is there a product or process, or a service that youre doing, using, selling, that knowing what you know now, you wouldnt get into? Is there a person working with you, for you, or youre in a relationship of any kind, that knowing what you now know, you wouldnt get into? Is there any commitment of time or money or emotion that knowing what you now know, you wouldnt embark upon? If the answer is no, then how do you get out of it, and how fast? And sometimes, just pulling that plug which is the major stressor and fatiguer in life, suddenly ignites things. Suddenly, youre happy again. Suddenly, youre elated. Suddenly, youve got ideas and possibilities, and you can recharge yourself with that simple exercise. JAY: Thats great. What Id like to do, if it pleases you, (and if it doesnt, you dont have to) we have about ten, fifteen minutes left in this session. Youve given unhedgingly, and I think youve given in a really remarkable way. You have a very, very impactful delivery style, and Im delighted to experience it firsthand, even if its vicariously by phone. I appreciate it on behalf of everybody. What Id like to do is we have I dont know how many people are on the phone. Lets see if any of them have the wherewithal, the interest, the capacity to pose to you either general, or more preferably, a specific question or challenge scenario that they might be eager to get one or two little gems of either strategic or tactical help on. In other words, that they have a question, a problem, a challenge that is grappling with them, or vice versa in the field of focusing, goal-setting, and helping them --- or hampering them -- from accomplishing what I want, which is for them to progressively take one little baby step every couple of weeks by taking a new concept and implementing it. So are you up for that challenge?

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BRIAN: Absolutely. JAY: Great, OK. Lets do it. Operator, are you there? OPERATOR: Yes, sir. JAY: Heres what I want you to do. Im going to put you back on speaker, because I want to make some notes. I want you to put us into a guest queuing mode so that people can push --- what do I push? *0, or something? OPERATOR: Sir, theyll have to push 1 on their touch tone phone, and theyll be placed into queue. JAY: If you are on this call, and you would like to pose a specific or a general question to Brian that has to do with the subjects we just covered, and specifically, with your more effective ability to set and achieve specific goals to use your time, and your opportunity, and your ability more effectively to grapple with, and to remove once and for all the demon procrastination, deviation and non-forward motion from your life, push 1, and what? *1? Or 1? What did you say? OPERATOR: 1, sir, and they will be placed in the queue. JAY: Do it now, please. And Operator? OPERATOR: Yes, sir. JAY: As they occur and the nice, wonderful thing, participant, that you dont have a volunteer, I will volunteer different people for it. OPERATOR: Joseph Janisec is online with a question. Please state your question. OPERATOR: Hi, Brian. I have a financial advisor business, so Im fully familiar with the planning process, and do that pretty well. In my own business I tend to set a plan, get motivated, and when were in the action mode and taking action on it, theres times when I tend to get in a cycle of losing track of the plan, and the momentum, and rather than focusing on the action repeatedly, I start regrouping and getting lost on the plan. So as a cycle Ive recognized it in my life for quite a long time, and I was wondering if you have any hints how I can help get out of that cycle. BRIAN: Well, remember we said that --- its a great question. Remember, we said that life is the center of attention. And thats why its so important to plan each day in terms of specific actions that you can take, and then take the first action as early as you can in the morning. And instead of trying to change your week or your month, concentrate on changing your hour, and force yourself to take action this hour.

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Winston Churchill was very famous in his time management skills, and he put at the top of his list every day, he said, Action this day, and a big exclamation point. Action this day. And thats what he worked on --- action this day. So dont try to change the world, because youre going against a lot of psychological inertia. Just try to change each day, and then try to change each hour of the day. And you have to force yourself. And I mentally use the picture of pushing myself with my own hands, and my own back --- pushing myself into the fray. And if you keep doing that to yourself, eventually you will develop a new habit. OPERATOR: Thank you. BRIAN: Thank you, Joseph. JAY: OK. Next, Operator? OPERATOR: Tony Bass is online with a question. Please state your question. TONY: Yes, thank you, and hello, Brian. BRIAN: Hi, Tony. TONY: The question I have revolves around my sales process. Im a landscape contractor company, and our sales process goes like this: The client calls. We set up a time to go see them, their lawn, and take a look around, come up with ideas, generate a plan, and present those plans, price this work, and finally get to do the work one day. We have like a 60-day time that it takes us from initial call until job completion. My thought is if I brought this thing down, itd make a big difference, and Im just kind of stuck. Its been this way for a few years now. BRIAN: What is the major objection that you get to going ahead? TONY: Well, its the sales process that we have, I believe, is the Kind of like you said earlier, its kind of like what weve been doing, I guess, for so long, its just the same way weve always done it. And BRIAN: OK, remember that there are some things in life, Tony One is fact, and one is a problem. A fact is how long it takes a plant to grow. TONY: Mm hmm. BRIAN: And you cant accelerate that, except marginally with fertilizers and chemicals. You cant say, Grow faster. Its a fact. Its not a problem. Its not amenable to a solution. And there are some buying cycles, and I think in terms of landscape architecture --- my brothers a landscape architect, and I used to be a gardener -

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-- similar to interior decorating, is that no matter how brilliant you are, you cannot get the homeowner to make a decision faster than theyre going to make it, and to proceed any sooner than theyre going to do it. So maybe what youre frustrated about is something that is not amenable to a solution. Im not saying that it isnt, but think of it a different way. Maybe what you need to do is you need to have more prospective clients in the pipeline. [UNINTELLIGIBLE], but make sure that the pipelines absolutely full so that the ones coming out of the pipeline are coming out on a regular basis, and at a higher rate, and thats your critical concern --- that theres more clients, more profit. TONY: Were very fortunate to have been benefiting from all the ideas that Jay has brought, and we have the extraordinary time basis that were able to keep our crews booked beyond our capacity for [UNINTELLIGIBLE], so the frustration is I get that critical nature of Spring, then Winter. Thats a bit of a challenge in this business. BRIAN: Well, you know, the risk reversal concept is the only thing that I ever found that really works for accelerating the customer making a decision, is to unconditionally guarantee complete satisfaction so theres really no risk in going ahead immediately. And I think if you can really hammer that home, and if you can offer some kind of incentive, or premium, or bonus for making a decision immediately Many professional services firms will say, We have some slow time here which enables us to make you a better offer with a guarantee and more bonus if you would take advantage of this slack time that we have within our system. And even if you dont have slack time within your system, by saying that, by giving them a reason for going ahead now, very often theyll take advantage. If theres no difference whether they go ahead now or in 60 days in terms of the final price and the delivery of the finished landscaping, then theres a rule that says, No urgency, no sales. If theres no reason for them to make a decision sooner, then why should they? But if you can give them some kind of a reason, that if you will go ahead faster, in 30 days rather than 60 days, then heres a real bonus for you. And that is often very successful. JAY: Thats great. Well take one more, if theres another one. Is there one more online? OPERATOR: [BEFOW] Coller is online with a question. Please state your question. BEFOW: Yes, Brian, I want to ask you regarding, you mentioned how your wife have you lawn cut, and then when you came home, that one day. But was it something you enjoy doing? Surely, there are certain things in life that we do that we cannot put a price tag on. There are certain things that we enjoy doing, no matter how long they take us, just love doing those things. And sometimes successful people, we need to be doing something we enjoy without before we put a price tag.

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BRIAN: Yes, that is true. However, we enjoy many things, and this is what Ive found, is that there are some things that give us far more return for the enjoyable activities in others. And maybe we enjoy gardening, but maybe we would be much better off going for a walk, or playing with our kids. Maybe we would get much more pleasure out of doing something else. And the other thing is this: If I didnt get somebody else to mow the lawn, Id have to do it. Now it becomes a job that I have to do because I dont have a choice. Now the lawn owns me. I dont own the lawn anymore. So thats really the question, that you want to expand your options. And you want to do the things that give you the greatest amount of pleasure. Many things give you pleasure. Think of the things that give you the very most. And thats how Ive organized my life. BEFOW: Thank you. BRIAN: Thank you. JAY: All right. Now Brian, I would like to ask one more question of you, and then Id like to thank you, and to have everybody on this call, I would say that the two hours that weve shared will have a profound impact on the rest of their business careers, and correspondingly, the impact they can make on not only their customers or clients, but on their staff, families, communities and industries. And thats a very wonderful kind of a leverage. In parting, if you never talk to him again if you paid $2 million and were successful for the request Im about to make, what were the one, or two, or three concluding, either points, or actions, or insights, or applications, or recommendations you would like to conclude with, B), that would have the highest probability of having a very meaningful, immediate and continual impact on these people per activity-wise, and sense of future accomplishments. BRIAN: OK. Pretty good question, very good answer, and here it is: Number one, the most important thing is everybody listening who is either a millionaire or who wants to be one, so the very best way to find out how to be one is to interview, test thousands of others, and find out how they think and feel. And here it is: Find out what you like to do. Do what you love. Do something that you know really makes a difference. Do something that makes you happy in the doing, as well as in the accomplishing. Do something that when you are doing it, time stands still. When youre doing it, youre so busy doing it, you sometimes even forget to eat. You can hardly wait to get there, and you hate to leave. If what youre doing doesnt grab you if what youre doing does not intrinsically motivate you and drive you you just want it, and you really love it and especially, youd love to do it successfully Thats the first thing. If it doesnt hold your heart, youll never be successful at it. As Mark Twain said, Youll always make the most money doing what you most enjoy.

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And heres the second principle. The second principle is to ask yourself, Out of all the things that I could do, what is the one thing that if I did it really, really well, would contribute more to my success than anything else? What one skill, if I developed and did it in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my work and my career? And identify it. Ask questions. Look around. Interview others. And once youve become crystal clear about that skill, set it as a goal, and then write it down and set a deadline, and make a plan to achieve it. And then work on becoming really excellent at that every single day until people tell you how good you are at that. And I promise you this: The clarity of doing what you love to do, and then focusing all of your energies on becoming really good at the one thing that could help you the most, which --- surprise, surprise! --- will be your critical constraint. Itll be your weakest critical success factor. It will be the one thing that the lack of competence in is holding you back. When you go to work on that, youll start to get results out of all proportion to your efforts. Youll start to feel like a winner every day. Youll start to feel happy about your work. Youll start to do more and more with less effort. Youll start to be more and more successful, and get paid more and more. Youll start to feel wonderful about yourself and your work. Youll have this wonderful endorphin rush, as you can hardly wait to get there, and you hate to leave. And the final principle is this: Is that successful people --- optimists --- have two qualities: Its that they are more willing to begin with no guarantee of success. Theyre more willing to take action on a neat idea, without anybody guaranteeing that this will work. They dont ever ask the question, What if it doesnt work? When they hear a new idea from Jay Abraham, they say, What if it does? What if it does work? And thats the only question. And the final part of being an optimist is that theyre more persistent. Theyre more persistent than anyone else. They have unreal levels of optimism in the beginning, and unreal levels of optimism in persisting. And they make a decision in advance that No matter what happens, Ill never give up. Ill never quit. Ill never stop. Ill keep going. Ill try something new and different. The only question they ask is the question, How? How do I get from where I am to where I want to go? And if you remember that wonderful line from the movie Apollo 13, they remind themselves that failure is not an option. Failure is not an option, and thats the mark of the most successful person. And once you reach the point where youre doing what you love to do, and youre doing it well, and you dont even consider the possibility of failure, youre absolutely guaranteed to be a big success. JAY: Thats wonderful. Brian, wait just one second. Operator, are you there?

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OPERATOR: Yes, sir. JAY: Would you open all the lines? I would like to thank you personally, and Id like to have everyone thank you personally. Youve been very gracious. Everybody, if youll thank Brian real quick, then I want to have a few minutes privately with you, and sort of AUDIENCE: Thank you, Brian. Really fantastic. JAY: Thank you, Brian. Youve been a gracious contributor, and youve been enormously helpful. I really appreciate it. BRIAN: Ill talk to you again soon, Jay. JAY: Thank you. PARTICIPANT: Jay, would it be possible to get a copy of this? JAY: Yes, Im going to get you a copy, and Im also probably going to transcribe it for you, and Ill publish it for you. PARTICIPANTS: That would be great. Very helpful. Thanks, Jay. Thanks, Brian. JAY: What do you think is the thanks I want? PARTICIPANT: Action. JAY: One focal point. I want you to do stuff. I want you to do stuff every single week. I want you to do stuff and share it with us. I want you to try stuff, and if it doesnt work, try something else, and have fun doing it. So this was really good. We also --- Im trying to invest back in you. [AUDIO INTERFERENCE] Somebodys got me on speaker phone, trying to record it. Move your tape player. Well let you know what were going to do as far as trying to get a tape deal, and Ill ask you what it costs, but well either give it to you or let you pay us the hard cost of it. Ive got to see what the timing and everything is on it. But well let you know. But I would encourage you to listen to it and take repetitive notes. [UNRELATED INFORMATION] The last thing I want to say is, those of you who have already accomplished some great successes, my congratulations. Those of you who are each and every week making progress, my congratulations. Those of you who have been diverted, detoured, impeded, I hope this has helped get you back on track and inspire you. Im more inspired. I hope

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you are also, and I hope this was a very worthwhile investment of two hours of your valuable time. I thank you all, and Ill talk to you very soon.

END

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