The Secrets of Self-Made Billionaires By Brian Tracy

Brian, welcome back. What a pleasure. Well, thank you so much. You know, I was reading the Wall Street Journal today, and there's a lot of controversy in politics and economics, and it all comes down, in my estimation, to telling the truth. Telling the truth. What is the truth? And whatever the truth is, tell the truth. Don't try to change it or minimize it and so on. And the same thing, in America, when I began studying, we had 5,000 self-made millionaires. 5,000 back in 1980. Today we have millions of self-made millionaires. Somebody becomes a self-made millionaire, 80 or 90% in sales, every eight minutes. I mean, the statistics are phenomenal. So if you don't become a self-made millionaire in your entrepreneurial business, you should be taken out in the back and beaten with a stick, because the fact is, it has never been easier. There have never been more opportunities for you to do well in life if you tell yourself the truth. And the truth is, nothing replaces hard, hard work from a long period of time. Start earlier. Self-made millionaires, and now I've done a whole several years of research on self-made billionaires. Self-made billionaires have specific habits. I've got them all here, written down and laid out. And number one is they get up early. They get up before 6 a.m. Number two is they get started. They exercise, get their body going, and then they study. The average self-made millionaire, billionaire, jillionaire reads two hours a day in order to become better. One of the richest men in the world, Bill Gates, reads a book a week. And then what he does is he takes and he underlines all the key points, and then he goes back and he puts all the key points on his website. So if you want to know what Bill Gates is reading, then what you do is you go to BillGates.com. And there's his latest book, and what he thought were the most important points in that book. Now, if you're not doing that, then you're really not serious about becoming wealthy. Because this is free information by the richest self-made multi-billionaire in the world, and he just gives it to you. You know what I find fascinating is, you know, if we go back to the 1980s, it seemed like the majority of the people were not aware of what needed to be done to become a millionaire. Now that information is available, yet there's often many people saying slightly different things, and some people are paralyzed from doing anything because they don't know what they should prioritize. How do we overcome this inertia from overwhelm? Well, let me tell you my own story. When I do a seminar and I design a seminar, in the margin I write MOS, my own story, which is the example of what happened to me. So I never talk about anything that I have not proven to work, and that I don't have hundreds if not thousands of people who have proven it to work. I was in Washington at a big conference three weeks ago, and this man came up to me out of the crowd, and he recognized me, I didn't know who he was. And he said, you changed my life, you made me rich. And I have heard that, surprise, surprise, a thousand times, all over the world. Every day. Emails and letters and communications, you changed my life, you made me rich. In every conceivable language. Why? And I always ask them why, and you know what they do, they smile like a pumpkin on Halloween, and they say, it was the goals. It was the goals. Before I listened to you or read your stuff, I didn't know how important goals were. So many years ago, I started off, and I had been broke all my life, I was 35, 36 years old, and I decided to give seminars. And one day, a businessman called me, he had a large multi-level organization nationwide, he had 800 people who were small business people, entrepreneurs, and they're having an annual conference, and he said, all of these people have one common goal, which is to become millionaires in the course of their working lifetime. Can you do a seminar on how to become a millionaire? And I still remember that, and I said, absolutely. Because when you're starting off as a speaker, you agree to speak on any subject that they will pay you for. There's a funny little story that I think of, and it's a story about the priest who has two parrots, and they sit on the stand, and they pray all the time, Brother Matthew and Brother Paul. And they sit there with a rosary, and they pray all the time. One day, another priest is visiting them, and there they are praying away, praying away, doing their rosaries. And he said, I'm really concerned about my two parrots, because they're so pious that all they do is pray. And he said, well, as a matter of fact, my son came back from sailing, working on a ship, and he brought me a parrot that had been on the ship, and the parrot had learned a lot of foul language from the other sailors. And so he talks all the time, never stops talking, why don't we bring my son's parrot, put him on the stand between the two pious parrots, and maybe that will loosen them up. So they brought the parrot over, they put him there, and the parrot from the ship said, I'm a whore, I'm a whore, I'm a whore. And the priest was paralyzed. But one of the parrots, Brother Matthew, leaned over to Brother Paul and said, Brother Paul, our prayers have been answered. So I always think of that. I tell this to my audiences all over the world. I say, whenever you go out there, remember, you're a whore, you're a whore. What does that mean? It means that you sell. Your job is to go out there and generate revenues and money. Your job is not to drink coffee and talk to your friends and go to movies in the afternoon that I know you do it, because nobody's watching you. And so your job is to work, and there's a direct relationship between how long and how hard you work relative to others that determines how much you earn relative to others. And this is a truth, just like gravity is a truth. Things fall down, they don't fall up. Your job is to be always doing things to generate money, like that joke. Anyway, so he called me and asked me if I would speak about how to become a self-made millionaire, and I said, of course. And I hung up the phone, and I realized I had been dreaming, that's what we in America do, is from the time we were teens, we start to fantasize about becoming millionaires. And we look at rich people who have beautiful cars and homes, and they're in the newspapers and stories and movies and everything else, and we fantasize about becoming wealthy. So here I was, I started fantasizing at the age of 15 or so, and now I'm 36 years old and I'm still in debt. In fact, when I got into speaking, I used to joke, I learned how to sell again. I sold my house, I sold my car, I sold my furniture, I sold everything that I owned and moved into a rented house and just basically worked 16 hours a day for the next two or three years. However, so I said, okay, so I began to study, I'd call it a full court press. I did a full court press on self-made millionaires. What I found was that there's lots of great research on self-made millionaires because it's an interesting subject. People wrote books and articles and they did university studies and so on, but they found that they had certain characteristics in common. So what I did is I began to write them down, and I came up with a talk called The 21 Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires. And two months later, I stood up in front of the audience, I had one hour to speak, and I went through the talk very quickly, 21 Success Secrets. And they're very simple ideas. One is dream big dreams, that's the first one. Dream big dreams. Start dreaming about yourself as being a millionaire. Think about it. Fantasize about it. When you see other people who are rich, say, I could do that. That person. 90% of people who have money today were broke when they started. The 80-20 rule is one of the other principles that the top 20% of people in our society earn. 80% of the money paid out in our society. Every person in the top 20% started where? Where did they start? They started in the bottom 20%. And then they started doing things differently, like climbing stairs. And a week, a month, a year, a few years later, they were in the top 20%. Then the top 10%. Then the top 5%. But virtually everybody starts at the bottom. So no problem. If you're broke, good. That's where all the top people started. They started broke, but they made a decision, I'm not going to stay here. So anyway, I gave this talk and it was so well received, standing ovation, I was asked to give it again and again and again. I started giving it all over the world. I stretched it from 60 minutes to 90 minutes to three hours to a full day. I recorded an audio video. I wrote a book on the subject, which is one of the best-selling books in the world on the 21 Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires. So what I want to do with us in the time that we have together, Jason, is I'm just going to give you a couple of ideas, and if you follow these ideas, these were the turning points in my life. And as I studied the life stories of people who've gone from rags to riches, I find that virtually everyone had these three stories. And if you look at Bill Gates, why are you rich? One, two, three. If you look at Elon Musk, if you look at Jeff Bezos, you look at the richest people in the world, they say, well, these were the things that changed my life when I was young. So here they are. Number one, and I call this the golden triangle of success. The golden triangle has three points. The top point is mental, and it is the acceptance of complete responsibility for yourself and your life. Refusal to make excuses, refusal to blame other people, refusal to be depressed or negative. Just simply say the magic words, I am responsible. I'm responsible. If I'm not happy with any part of my life, I'm responsible. Did somebody do you dirty? Did somebody treat you badly? Did you have a lousy childhood? Did your boss cheat you? Did you have a bad marriage, and so on and so forth? So life sucks, and then you die, okay? We used to say, life's a bitch, and then you die. So therefore, what you do is you just take a deep breath, and you say, oh, shoot, well, I am responsible. And the interesting thing is, blaming is the number one reason for unhappiness and failure in life. And as soon as you say, I am responsible, you cancel all blame. So whenever you start to become angry about anything, you say, wait a minute, I'm responsible. And it just stops it, like one of those crash dummies going against a wall, whack. It's all your blaming stops. And when your blaming stops, which is the source of all negative emotions, all negative emotions, where the negative emotions go, since nature abhors a vacuum, what comes into your mind? And the answer is positive emotions. And what are the positive emotions? Ambition, excitement, happiness, joy, energy, all the good things. But if you're blaming somebody for something that they did or didn't do to you, then, and people, you know, one of the things in America, which is a great tragedy, is there's millions, maybe tens of millions of people who blame successful people for their failure. They say, oh, rich people are the reason I'm poor. Well, I've got a news for you. Rich people have never seen you or heard about you in their whole life, and they have nothing to do with your being poor. The reason you're poor is because you're yourself. So here's the most important thing is accept responsibility. Just say, I am responsible. I am responsible. And you instantly cancel all negative emotions, and suddenly you're in complete control of your life and your thought. So I've read stories and biographies and autobiographies of rich people, and you read their stories, and there was a certain point in their life where they reached the line. And the line is between childhood and adulthood. And when you cross the line, you become an adult. Because when you stop blaming and criticizing other people, you become an adult. And from then on, you're in charge of your life. But as long as you're blaming your mother and your father and your boss and your spouse and everything else, you remain a child. You remain a whimpering, crying little child. And you get together and you drink and you whine and complain about your life. No. From now on, you say, I'm responsible. So that's the first part of the triangle. Without that, nothing is possible. I love that we're starting with such a powerful intervention moment. And it's interesting how there seems to be a culture being nurtured in society today that's talking about how you're not responsible for this, you're not responsible for that. And the blame seems to be amplified. But at the same time, when I look at what changes happened in my life, when I took that 100% responsibility, is you would think you're taking on extra burden, but it was actually a liberation. It was almost like giving myself freedom. And because the culture is encouraging the opposite, it feels like the pathways open up so easily when you make that one decision of being responsible. So to go back to the point you made earlier, how it's easier than ever to be a millionaire, I feel like, wow, this is probably the one that everyone should probably listen to again. It changes everything. Right. Now, here's the triangle again. The second point of the triangle is if you're now responsible, what are you responsible for? And the answer is you're responsible for being clear about your goals and then achieving those goals. That's what you're responsible for. You're not responsible for being happy. You're responsible for setting goals, things that you really want to be and have and do. Now, I discovered this, I guess, 30 or 40 years ago. And what it simply said is that if you want to achieve goals, write them down. So what I did was this, and I've got this here from you. This is a spiral notebook. This costs less than $2, probably a dollar and a half. If you are serious about becoming wealthy, this is your millionaire maker. And this is so powerful. It is scary. So what it said was basically write down your goals. And what I did is I made a habit from that day onward, I put today's date and I wrote down my 10 goals. Now, what I learned is that your subconscious mind can only accept a command when it is couched in the present tense. So you don't say, I will earn, I will weigh, I will do, I will achieve. You always say, I am a self-made millionaire. Buy and give yourself a reasonable date. Remember this, you can always change the date. No problem. You can always change the date and move it forward. So you write down your goals. And what I do is put in the day's date and then write down your 10 most important goals in life right now. Now, tomorrow, you do it again without reference to the previous list. You don't copy. This is not copying from one page to another. You close it, open it up, and write your 10 goals again. Surprise, surprise. Your goals are going to change their order because you're not remembering. And the description of your goals and the timing of your goals will change. And then you do it again. Now, in 2000, there was a dot-com, dot-bomb bust. And thousands and thousands of small entrepreneurs were driven to the verge of bankruptcy. So I started a group coaching program where I charged $5,000 a year to come and spend one day with me every three months. And I would work with 20 or 30 people at a time so that it was economically sensible for me. And they would come down, and I would put them through a series of exercises. The first thing I would do is I'd say, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. And I want to introduce you to your new best friend. Here is your new best friend. And I would hand them up. And I would say, I want you to write down your goals. Do them now. And then discuss them with the people at your table. I've got five people at a round table facing forward. And so they'd all write down their 10 goals. And they would discuss them. I say, good. Now, from the next three months, I want you to write down your goals over and over again, just like we just talked about, without reference to the previous page. I said, if you'll do this, you'll double your income, and you'll become wealthy. They say, well, you're going to charge $5,000. That's what they do. They can give $5,000 to come and sit in a room with you four times a year. And how can I justify that amount? I said, I'll tell you what. If you do not double your income and double your time off with your family within the next 12 months, I'll give you your money back. No charge. Unconditionally guaranteed. You don't just have to say anything. Just say, I didn't get my money's worth. Bang. Have your money back. I gave that program for seven years to more than 1,000 entrepreneurs. I never had a refund request. Many people doubled their income in the first week, most of them in a month. But all of them doubled and tripled their income. They couldn't believe it. When they came back to the second session three months later, that whole room was full of shining faces. Everybody was happy. And they were laughing. And they were joking. Because I've also taught them the importance of personal responsibility, the importance of managing your time, setting priorities, starting early, working harder, staying later, those things. And they were hungry. That's the most wonderful characteristic of successful people is they're hungry. They want it. They want to be successful. Anybody who's heard speakers has probably heard my friend Les Brown. And Les Brown has a book. And he's got a talk and a seminar. And Les has told me many times that he cut his teeth on my materials. And all his children have been brought up on my materials. But his name of his talk is You Gotta Be Hungry. You gotta be hungry. And he says it beautifully. He gets on the stage. And he's a big black guy. And he says, you gotta be hungry if you want to be successful. Have you heard that? I haven't heard him speak, actually. So I haven't. But I know of Les Brown. And I could imagine what kind of energy he brings to a room, for sure. He is just great. I think he's the best motivational speaker in America. And you're right. Because he's right. You gotta be hungry. If you're not hungry in a world where everybody's hungry, you haven't got a chance. You haven't got a chance. I'd be curious to know your opinion on how there is a lot of advertising, marketing that gets sent to people. And it seems like for the hungry people, they're offering what is called fast food. I'm talking about the shortcuts, the get rich quick. And all of these things that get taunted for a lot of us that are hungry for that millionaire paycheck. And I'd be curious to know, what is your opinion on the fact that that exists? And I know it has always existed. And how do you discern? Well, I've got a very good opinion on that. I have taken advantage of some of these super offers. Low price, low entry price, guaranteed stories of people who went from rags to riches, went from being overweight to thin, developing sexual prowess that would stun an Olympic athlete and so on. And just to take the pills and everything else. And what I found is that nothing works. My friend Charlie Jones, who's no longer with us, he said in part of his speech, one of his funny remarks, he said, now I'm going to tell you the secret of life. This is the secret of life. Write it down. Get out your notepad, write it down. You hold up a pen, write this down. This is the secret of life. Are you ready? He's such a funny guy. He said, are you ready? And everybody's leaning forward. And he said, here it is. You ready? Here it is. Nothing works. And everybody would just, he said, nothing works. At least it doesn't work the first time or the second time or the third time. So recently there was a study and they looked at all the offers online. And you and I follow this stuff because we're always looking for something that will give us an edge, something that will help us to achieve our goals, maybe a little faster than before and cost effectively. So it costs $59.95 to try this or that or something. Anyway, what they found, they looked at 570 offers online and 100% of them were bogus. 100% of the offers online turned out to be bogus. None of them work. As Charlie said, nothing works. And what they do is they try to con you by offering you substantial improvements in your life at a very low price. And you've got to be very careful because these people have only one goal. It's to get your credit card number. And pretty soon you find yourself stuff being delivered to your door and you try to stop it and you can't stop it. You call them up, cancel it. The only thing that you can do if you go to the credit card companies is I'm canceling my credit card. Now they won't do it. They won't cancel the credit card. So what you have to do is you have to submit it as lost or stolen. Lost or stolen credit card. And only then will they destroy it internally so that nobody can ever use it. But you're going to spend half your life getting credit cards lost or stolen because none of these things online work. Because if you want to accomplish anything worthwhile, you have to work hard for a long period of time. So what I would do is I would say, all right, this is what we're going to do. And every single time that we come to our session here, three months, every three months, I want you to review these every single day. And then I want you to discuss with us what happened to you. Well, they would arrive and I would say, OK, now how many people worked on their goals every single day for the last three months? Everybody looks down, you know. Well, so when so when did you review your goals? On the airplane, on the way out here, wasn't that true? And everybody says, yeah. I said, and how many of your goals did you achieve? And then they all brighten up the whole room, right? These are all entrepreneurs, business owners, people who make at least $200,000 a year, sometimes five, sometimes more. And they were all brightened up. And they said they read their goal list on the plane, on the way out here to the second or third session, and they had achieved all their goals, every single, not nine out of 10, 10 out of 10. How much are you earning today? People said, I'm earning three times what I was earning when I first came to this meeting. And they were all happy, got a room full of happy people. Does anybody want their money back? No, no, no, I want more, more. So it's the same thing. If you just did this every day for 30 days, write down your 10 goals in the present tense as though they are already a reality. Do it again next day without reference to the previous day. Just keep doing this for 30 or 31 days. And I learned this reading something about success decades ago, and it changed my life forever. And I've taught this all over the world. And people come up to me and say, you changed my life. You made me rich. It changed my life. You made me rich. And it was the goals. You see, if you don't write a goal down, it's very much like blowing cigarette smoke in a large room. It just disappears. It has no energy behind it. They say a goal that is not written is a goal that has no energy. In other words, it has no power to move you. It has no power to drive you. You forget it completely. You just get easily distracted. But if you write it down, everything that you write down in the present tense is automatically recorded by your subconscious mind. And your subconscious mind then goes to work on it 24 hours a day. And it'll give you insights and ideas. And you'll see stuff in the newspaper. And a friend, you'll meet somebody in a bus stop. You know, I wrote a book called The Power of Luck. And I did a whole bunch of research on luck. And one of the things that I found in one of the research studies was that luck, many people had great breakthroughs by an accidental bumping into a stranger on a bus stop. In other words, they're just banging into someone and they're chatting away. And the person said, have you ever read this book? Or have you ever did this? Or they said, no, I haven't done that. And so they do that. And that was the key to their wealth, key to their riches. It was like, look, how on earth did you bump into this person? So that's the second thing is write down your goals. Now, we can talk lots more about how you write goals. Well, first off, I am super excited about, you know, the practicality of what we can do right now. And again, for anybody listening, we're not talking about doing, you know, three hours a day. This is writing your goals. But doing it? Let's see. Five minutes to become rich. And that's what it takes. I'll have one clarification because I've had these synchronicity happen all the time. Like the moment the goal is there, then is the same as like, if you start, you buy a certain car, now you start seeing it everywhere. When you set a certain goal, then the opportunities seem to flood my way. But I wanted to get your opinion on one aspect of goal setting, which I've heard two sides of opinions here. One is that when you set your goals, you keep them to yourself. Another one is you set goals and you declare it or you share it with someone. Do you find there's some difference in either of these methods? My opinion, and this is purely opinion, is, of course, share your goals, but only people who want you to be successful in achieving those goals. Every goal that my wife has, she tells me. Every goal I have, I tell my wife. But I don't tell people at the bus stop or people at work. These people have no interest in me being successful. So therefore, share your goals with people who want you to be successful. And it makes you happy. It gives you energy. And they will encourage you. And they'll ask you, how's it going? And they'll congratulate you and so on. So that's the key difference. Don't talk about it. Oh, my goal is this. My goal is that. I'll shut that you-know-what up. Who cares? But your friends, your children, have your children share their goals with you. Have your best friends. Talk to your best friends. And this motivates both of you. So if you're telling me your goals, and I'm going to tell you my goals, and we're both going to work on our goals. And every so often, somebody will give you a call and say, you know, you were telling me you had that goal. I spoke to somebody yesterday who's just from out of town. And he says this about that. Have you ever thought of that? Let me give you a great story, okay? Great story. One of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world is Steve Jobs. God bless him. I'm sorry he's not here. And I just read a book by Elon Musk. Actually, a story by Elon Musk. He said there's seven books that had an enormous impact on his life. And Steve Jobs' life story by- Isaac- The perp author. Yeah, it's like Isaac Wharton. It'll come to you. He said that's the number one book that influenced him. Anyway, here's Steve Jobs. He starts Apple. He's a very difficult personality. And the company is growing. And he owns a lot of shares. But finally, they got mad at him. And the board of directors threw him out and fired him. So he went off and he started Pixar. And Pixar became a multi-billion dollar company. And he was invited to come in sort of like as a consultant. Just come in, walk around, see if he sees anything. But he wasn't on the payroll. So he came in and walked around and got some sense of the market. And finally, they came to him and said, look, the company's not doing that well. We're going to give it back to you. And so here it is. So long. You're a major shareholder. It's yours. So he said, well, called the accountants and said, what is our situation? He found that they had only two months of money left. And then the company would be bankrupt. Two months. And they were, of course, hiding it and shuffling it around. And so he set his managers down. And he said, how many products do we have? Surprise, surprise. 104 products. How many of these products are making money? Four. The other 100 are just keeping people employed. And they're just marginal. They're losing money. And so the company's going bust. So he looks at it. He's got two months left to live. And he's got to have several million dollars to stay alive. And he only knows one person who has that kind of money, Bill Gates. And Bill Gates and he had been at loggerheads for years. And he had been, Steve Jobs had been attacking Bill Gates for being antiquated and old and unimaginative and everything else. But Bill Gates had a very simple idea. A laptop on every desk. And it's interesting because the head of IBM, when Bill Gates started, said, there's a market worldwide for no more than 300 laptops. And Bill Gates said, no, if you make it easy to use, you could have every single person will have a laptop. If you didn't have a laptop today, people would look at you like you lived under a rock somewhere. Everybody has a laptop and multiple laptops and desktops and everything. Anyway, so he calls Steve, he's been beating up Bill Gates for years on public stages and everything else. And so he calls up Bill Gates and he said, Bill, he said, I'm in trouble. He said, if I don't have some money, I'm going to die. Apple is going to go broke. And I wonder if I could borrow some money from you. And Bill Gates said this and it brings tears to my eyes when I think about it. He said, Steve, he said, Apple is too important a company to go broke. He said, I'll give you all the money you need. He said, but I'm not going to give you a loan. He said, I'm going to buy stock in Apple. So I'm going to be in the same rowboat with you and I'm going to gamble that you're going to make it a success. And so that was the turning point. He now had the money to survive. He called all of his managers together and he said, I want each person here to recommend 10 products that we need to cut off, discontinue. And they all cried and wept and no, no, we can't do that. And we worked so hard to bring these up, 10 each. So we eventually brought them meeting after meeting after meeting. And they all came down to finally four products. They got rid of 100 products. Then the next thing they said is we've got to have a new product. It is the market for laptops and every Japanese company in the world has got laptops that are cheaper than ours and sometimes, oops, better and so on. So he said, what do we do? And they came up with this idea of a phone and a phone would have everything in it. It would have recording and video and audio and music and it would be a one single phone and everything else. And they kept bringing him different versions and he kept saying, I don't like it. I don't like it. But here was the greatest thing is the biggest phone manufacturers in the world at that time were Nokia and Blackberry. They each had 49% of the world market and Nokia had developed the technology of the iPhone but decided not to use it because they were very happy with their market domination already. And so it was patented. Everybody, when you apply for a patent, it becomes public knowledge. Everybody knows about it. So they were looking and they found that Nokia had this new technology for iPhone and they weren't doing anything with it. So they called them up and said, would you sell that technology? And they said, sure. We have no intention of using it. It'll help us to recover some of our costs. So they bought the entire Nokia package, which is today's iPhone. And they said, you can take it because it won't do you any good. Within five years, Apple was the dominant phone supplier in the world and Nokia was broke. Their markets share went from 49% to one. Blackberry went from 49% to 1% and five years later, they sold a billion iPhones and made and they say now that the way it's going, it's going to be the first trillion dollar company. Be the first trillion dollar company because this is one of the most important things you ever learn in business is that there's three keys to business success. Number one, make a sale. Number two, make a second sale to the customer because they're so happy with what you gave them in the first sale. Number three is bring your friends. So again, bring your friends because you're so happy you want your friends to have it as well. My son, my son, my staff, everybody that I knew, I had a Nokia, I had a Blackberry and everybody around me was all using the iPhones. They said, Brian, you got to have an iPhone. You got to have an iPhone. My son was telling me, Dad, you got to invest in Apple. This iPhone is going to go crazy. He's 16 years old. I said, my son, you don't know these things. You're a child. I'm an adult. I'm going to keep up with my little Blackberry. And I had a good friend, one of my clients, who was about 60 at that time, and he decided he's going to go all in, like in Las Vegas. He went all in on Apple, took all the money he had in his life and bought Apple stock. Within five years, he was so rich he never had to work again. So what happened with this iPhone is that it just exploded. And after it had been out for about five or eight years, they had made a billion sales. Then they interviewed their clients and they asked them, what do you feel about buying another iPhone when they come out with something more modern? 90% of iPhone clients said, we'll buy a new one as soon as it comes out. This was the point where the famous Warren Buffett, Warren Buffett said, I don't invest in technology because I don't understand it. I don't invest in anything I don't understand. When he saw that, I'm just guessing. This is not a fact. When he saw that 90% of their customers were going to buy another iPhone, he just bought billions of dollars worth of Apple stock. He was interviewed just two weeks ago at their annual meeting in Omaha, said one of the best investment decisions he made in his whole life. And he has achieved a return on investment with Berkshire Hathaway of 1,246% return on investment. If you had bought with him at the very beginning, you'd have had a more than a million times return on your money. And he said, and Apple was one of the best. So therefore, this is so exciting. The opportunities are all around you. You just have to keep looking, reading, studying, reading, studying. Sometimes people, when I was starting to give seminars, one of the things I found is that when you go to foreign countries, 95% of the products that are really popular in a foreign country are never sold outside that country. They're never sold outside that country. So sometimes you will find a product, a franchise opportunity, a mechanical device, something that nobody's using back home. And you go to them and you say, can I have that? Can I enter into an agreement with you and pay your royalty? And they say, sure. We have no plans to go outside of our country. And some of the richest people in the world just walk down the street. Remember the story of Krispy Kreme donuts? Krispy Kreme donuts became the most popular donut franchise in the world. And what happened was a little baker in New York who baked bread and cakes and desserts and so on. He was on vacation with his wife in Paris. And they were walking around. And there was this great lineup in front of this little bakery. And they're all lined up. So they said, well, that's what we do. Bakery. It's a bakery. And it must be good. So they got in line. And they got up there and they brought a couple of donuts. And they went and sat outside and ate the donuts. And they said, cheese. These are good. Cheese. These are good. Wow. Holy smokes. And so we went in and got in line again and went all the way up to the front and said, could I speak to the person who runs this shop? Just a small shop. And fortunately, he had somebody there who could speak English. He said, could I get the recipe for these donuts? And he said, sure. These people are always asking for the recipe for the donuts. He said, sure. So he gave him the recipe. He had it all printed out and everything. So he went back home to his little bakery in New York. And he began to produce these donuts, these Krispy Kreme donuts, is what he called it. And the lineup stood all the way down the streets of people coming from everywhere. And they didn't buy a donut or two donuts. They bought dozens of donuts. And they sat outside on the curbs and they sat on the streets and they just ate these donuts because they were so delicious. And this was a phenomena that took place. And this guy became rich. These Krispy Kreme donut franchises became the most expensive and most popular franchises in the world. And whenever something opened up, there would be hundreds of cars coming from everywhere, dropping their cars up, running across the sidewalks to get up and line up all day long to buy these donuts. And where did it come from? Is this nice little guy, little baker, walking down the street, saw the opportunity and asked him for the recipe. And he said, sure. It's great. The opportunities for you to become wealthy are greater today. There's more opportunities than have ever existed in human history. And your job is to make a decision to become wealthy. And if you make a decision to become wealthy, you're going to set up a force field of energy and you're going to start to attract law of attraction into your life, your ideas and inspirations and meetings, unexpected meetings of strangers sitting next to somebody on an airplane. And what will happen is the information that you need and the resources you need will come to you. They'll gravitate towards you as soon as you're ready. So your job is to make yourself ready, which leads us to the last part of my triangle. And that is continuous learning and personal development. The average wealthy person will tell you, Bill Gates will tell you, Warren Buffett reads five hours a day, five hours a day. Bill Gates, two to three hours a day. All wealthy people read two to three hours a day, constantly upgrading their knowledge and skill. And you need to do the same thing. You need to do the same thing. If you'll do that, accept responsibility, write down your goals every single day to keep your mind churning and then continue to learn and grow and become better and better. Your success is guaranteed. It's literally, I've taught this for years. I went from earning $14,400 a year when I stumbled across these ideas. In five years, I was earning $145,000 a year, 10 times. But then I developed the 10 times formula, which we will maybe talk about at a later time. And I kept using this formula and teaching it. Five years later, it was actually increase your income 10 times every 10 years. But it worked for me every five years. So the 10 years, I earned $1,445,000. It's very funny, is $14,400, and I made $1,400,000 that year. And I went literally from rags, I say, to non-rags. And I have countless people who've been in my seminars, done the same thing. They come up and they drive beautiful cars. It's just wonderful. If you just write your goals down every day, what you need to achieve those goals will come to you from all sides. Brian, that was beautiful. That was amazing. I personally am very anchored to the fact that you shared that your story started at 35, which is the age that I am right now. I feel like I'm on that journey. And what I received was a powerful reminder of some of the basics that need to be done. And one of the questions I was planning on asking, which I don't need to ask because I have the answer, is what happens when you're not so sure or clear on the goals. If you write that 365 times in a year, you will find that clarity. You will start getting clearer and you will start making more purposeful actions. And honestly, it was such a powerful conversation that I'm so glad we got to have again. Always an incredible pleasure. And I don't remember if I've asked this question, but I'll ask it again anyways, because I know it'll be a beautiful answer. Being on the Selling With Love podcast, what does Selling With Love mean to Brian Tracy? Well, I only sell products that I really, really believe in. And I only sell to people that I really care about. And I think that's probably the thing that's been most helpful to me. When I stand up in front of an audience, I talk to people from my heart and they know it. They know that this is an act and performance art and things like that, is I talk to them because I care about them and I want them to be successful. And whenever anybody asks me a question, sends me an email, does anything, I always respond personally. Always, even though I've done very well in life, let me put it that way. But I have so much respect and regard for our people. These are the people who listen to us and learn from us and attribute some of their success to us. That's really good. And they know it. The person knows instantly if what you're saying is the truth, if it's coming from your heart or not. And that's been your success and that's been my success. That's the reason I'm here, by the way. I don't, the amount that you pay, which is in the zero range, which is of no value because I charge a lot for a talk like this. But I know that you speak and work from your heart. And so we both do. Brian, I much appreciate it. Very grateful. And honestly, you've given so much to my audience, which I'm very grateful for as well. Ladies and gentlemen, this was Brian Tracy. We will have some show notes that will include tons of links so you can discover his programs. If you are not currently a student of Brian's material, you can change that by getting a book, signing up to his programs and doing something wonderful involved with him. Because as you know, this over delivers. If it's none of it, get the notebook again, take responsibility, set those goals. And of course, continue to learn and grow by being listeners of this podcast. I know at least we got the third of the pyramid set up, but there's more to be done and it's not that much, but it's just enough to be above the mediocrity line, which is not set that high. The opportunities are there. Let's be hungry for them, but don't consume the fast food. We're going to go for the quality stuff. And with that, I will encourage you all to go out there and keep selling with love. Thank you, Jason. We'll talk to you again.