100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success. Brian Tracy

developers, plying them with questions. Then I optioned a piece of land for $100, put together the necessary financial analyses and proposals, found a financial partner with the strength to underwrite the project, and went on to build and completely lease out a $3 million shopping center in the next twelve months.

      When I began importing Japanese automobiles, I followed the same procedure. Within one year, I built a sixty-five-dealer network through which I eventually sold more than $25 million worth of vehicles.

      When I became the chief operating officer of a $265 million development company, I applied to my new position the proven, tested laws, principles, and techniques that I had gathered. I completely restaffed, reorganized, and refocused the company, turning it from confusion to profitability in less than a year.

      Businesspeople began to hire me as a consultant and as a troubleshooter. In company after company, I used the same procedure. I immersed myself in the business until I had ascertained the underlying “success principles” of that industry or field, and then I applied them. As a result, I was able to save or make my clients millions of dollars time after time.

      I then began organizing these ideas and principles into talks and seminars for public and private audiences. Eventually, I created an entire series of seminars and training programs for individuals and businesses, many of which have now been recorded on video and audio. They are taught to businesses across America and throughout the world, in twenty languages and in thirty-one countries.

      The reason that these principles, and the seminars and programs based on them, are so successful is simple. They are built around practical, proven techniques that save people years of hard work in achieving the same results. My graduates have applied the ideas they have learned toward generating hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars of increased sales, reduced costs, or improved profits.

      Over the years, working with hundreds of businesses and thousands of businesspeople, I have found that all the successful, happy, dynamic, prosperous, and growing enterprises practice these principles consistently in virtually everything they do. And when you do the same things they do, you will begin almost immediately to get the same results.

      Most success in business can be easily explained by the consistent practice of these laws. Most failure can be explained by the violation or ignorance of these laws. When you align your activities with these universal principles, you will find yourself getting more and better results with less effort. You will be more relaxed and confident. You will be more optimistic and cheerful. You will be more efficient and effective.

      Instead of working yourself into a state of exhaustion, only to feel frustrated and overwhelmed, you will go through enormous quantities of work quickly and easily and get far better results than other people who may be working twice as hard.

      There is a simple analogy for the use of these principles that I sometimes share with my seminar audiences. I ask the question, “If you purchased a treadmill and took it home, what would determine how much benefit you got from that treadmill?” Quite quickly, the businesspeople in my audiences reply that the amount of benefit they would receive from a treadmill would be in direct proportion to how often they used it and how long they stayed on it each time.

      Here is the point: There is never any question of whether or not the treadmill would help make a person fitter and healthier. Everyone knows that this is a given. The treadmill is a tested and proven device for physical fitness. This has long since been settled.

      It is the same when you begin to use these tested and proven laws and principles in your own business life. The question is not whether or not they will work. The only question is how faithfully and consistently you apply them to your activities. And like a treadmill, the more often and the more consistently you apply these laws, the better they will work and the greater and easier results you will achieve.

      One final point before we begin. The most common quality of successful people is they are intensely action oriented. They are proactive rather than reactive. They take initiative. When they hear a good idea, they act on it immediately. By taking action quickly, they immediately get feedback that enables them to self-correct and move ahead. They learn and grow from every experience. And they keep trying new things.

      When you see a good idea in the pages ahead that you can apply to your work, resolve to take action on it immediately. Don’t delay. One decisive action or decision to do something different can change your whole life.

      The only question that should concern you is, Does it work? And these ideas work. They work virtually everywhere, under virtually all circumstances in our business system. And the more you use them, the better they will work for you. The more you align your life with these laws and principles, the happier and more successful you will be. There are no limits.

      CHAPTER ONE

      The Laws of Life

      Why are some people and organizations more successful than others? Why do some people have wonderful careers, moving from position to position, onward and upward, earning far more money, being consistently paid more and promoted faster?

      And why is it that others go from job to job, continually worrying about money and feeling that they are unappreciated for their hard work and their contributions? Why do so many people, as Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “live lives of quiet desperation"?