Brian Tracy Shares his Best
Personal Development Advice in Eat That Frog 4.0

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #591: Brian Tracy Shares his Best Personal Development Advice in Eat That Frog 4.0

Jeff Sanders
Good morning and welcome to the 5 a.m. Miracle, episode number 591. Brian Tracy shares his best personal development advice in Eat That Frog 4.0. I am Jeff Sanders, and you have reached the podcast that is dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast. I am a keynote speaker and corporate trainer, and to learn more about that, head over to jeffsanders.com slash speaking. Now, in the episode this week, I will speak with Brian Tracy about his latest book, Eat That Frog, fourth edition. Brian Tracy is a world renowned bestselling author and speaker, specializing in personal and professional growth. I have followed Brian's work since the beginning of my own personal growth journey, and it is an honor to have him on the show this week. During our conversation, we discuss what it means to eat a frog. Why reading books is the secret sauce to his own success and how you can reorient your life to achieve your grandest goals. Let's dig in. All right. I'm here today with Brian Tracy, the esteemed author, public speaker, and entrepreneur. And I have a lot of questions to ask you today. Really, I want to dig into the best of the best when it comes to productivity. Before we get to the book, though, there's one short story I wanted to share with you, which was that this is about 15 years ago. I had a collection of personal development CDs. They're in my car. And I used to play them every single time I was driving, as you talk about quite a bit in your work. And half of those CDs were from you. And then my car was broken into, and those CDs were stolen. And I, well, had this, like, real deep sense of loss that I had just, like, really lost something so valuable to me. me, but part of me was hoping the person who sold the CDs is now better off because they have some great information. The other half was that this realization to me that that's how important personal growth is to me, that it has been part of my habits for decades, I guess you could say now. And where did personal growth for you hit the marker in terms of now you know how valuable it is for you? Like at what point in your life did you say, I need to commit to personal growth?

Brian Tracy
Well, I was probably 20 years old, and I began to read in personal success, power of positive thinking, think and grow rich, and so on. And I was just astonished at how much has already been discovered about how to be more successful in life. Everybody wants to make more money, be more successful, be more respected by others. And how do you do that? Well, you go to work on yourself. I did a program some years ago that I'm updating now. now, which ties in with eat that frog, and it's on learning. And what I conclude, I repeat it, I just, as I repeat it, I'm amazed at it, is that your level of productivity is largely going to determine the quality of your life, not only psychologically, emotionally, how you feel about yourself and your world, how you compare yourself with others, but how much you get paid. And there are some people who earn a lot. and some people are a little in the same field, doing roughly the same thing, selling the same product or service to the same people, but because they're not productive, they worry about money all the time. 80% of people get up in the morning and worry about money and all day long, they think about not having enough. Only 20% are in the top 20%, the ones that earn 80%. So if you, first thing that I did, when I learned this, I still remember I was 24. I was talking to a top guy in our company. He earned five times as much as anybody else, maybe 10 times. And I said, what's the secret? He said, well, do you read in sales? And I said, are there books on selling? I had no idea. And I didn't have a great education. I'd go to university and so on. So I went down to the bookstore and I was astonished at all the wonderful books written by all the top people and how to sell more faster, easier, and paid more. So I began to gobble them up. I read and read and read. I've now read about 150,000 hours over the years. I have 6,000 books in my office behind me, in my family room in my basement. I've read most of them. I underlined books with, started off with red, and then I moved to blue, and then I moved to green. So if I read a book more than once, it starts to look like a rainbow, read and read and read. And anyway, so what I do is I talk about and eat that frog, things that you can do to become more productive. And there's a wonderful bit of work that was done last century, and it was called positive addiction. And positive addiction, name of the author will come to me in a second, but this psychologist found that each time you do something, you release some kinds of chemicals in your brain. Positive things, release positive chemicals, endorphins and dopamine, negative behaviors, negative problems, worry, depression, and so on, release negative chemicals. And whatever chemicals you continue to release, you develop a addiction. In other words, you start to look forward to it. And if you have a positive addiction to learning, every time you learn something new, different, helpful, and your mind goes, hey, that's a neat idea. Your brain releases endorphins. And endorphins give you a natural high. So eventually you reach the point where you can hardly wait to learn. And that's what you are today. And that's where I am today. And I literally went from rags, I say to non-rags. I went from basically living by one month at a time to becoming a millionaire, just simply by developing a system like a recipe that you can follow and you can become a millionaire too. I think every adult in entrepreneurship in business should set it as a goal to become a millionaire. And then you say, all right, now, how? How do people start because 95% of people who are millionaires started poor. They started with nothing. They were immigrants. They didn't even have any language skills. They walked the streets. They worried about money. They sweated bullets and so on. Like me, I slept on the floor of a friend's one-bedroom apartment. And then they began asking, why are some people more successful than others? Anyway, I'm getting carried away. But the answer is, they produce more as a result. they're paying more. As a result, they're happier. As a result, they do it again. You know, the thing on the shampoo bottle is wash, rinse, repeat. Well, that's the secret to success is do it, get a good result, repeat.

Jeff Sanders
That's right. That's right. I think really what your new book highlights in so many different ways. I was reading through the book earlier today thinking this is kind of like the best of Brian Tracy. There are so many lessons in here. It's 21 great ways to stop procrastinating and get more done in less time with the big moniker of Eat the Frog, which for the listeners today who don't know what eating a frog refers to, which sounds kind of gross. Can you explain a bit about that concept and then where this book really originated from?

Brian Tracy
Sure. Well, when I was writing the book, I read it where I wrote more than, I think it was 21 books called 21 Great Way to do something, whether it was to lose weight. or to build a high profit business or to meet and marry the person of your dreams. And so I could put, from all my years of reading, I wrote them all down. Then I expanded this like an accordion into a book. And my publisher read the book and it was called Double Your Income, Double Your Time Off. And he said, that's a kind of a boring title. But chapter 15 was called Eat That Frog. And eat that frog is a story from supposedly Mark Twain, who said, if the first thing you do in the morning is eat a live frog, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing it's the worst possible thing that's going to happen to you all day long. And your live frog is your biggest, ugliest task. The one task that you avoid, you procrastinate, but it's the one task that will actually give you more results, more payoff, more income than anything else. So the key to success is develop the habit of starting with the worst first. Start with the biggest task and discipline yourself to do it 100%. Interesting, I don't mention psychology and chemicals in your brain. When you complete a task, you can do it to 95% you get nothing, no buds. But when you complete a task, it's like crossing a finish line. You have a sense of exhilaration and you feel happy. And if you feel happy, you want to do it again because you like to be happy. So therefore, you'll find the successful people. There's a little joke in poker. They say the losers grumble and complain and the winners laugh and tell jokes. Well, the winners in life, the ones are completing their most important task, laugh and tell jokes. They're happy all the time. and they're more respected, they earn more money, have a higher standard of living, and they're not any smarter, better educated than anyone else. So when you start to see people who have come to America from third world countries and from Africa and South America and Middle East, they come even with no language skills. And after a few years, they're doing wonderfully. They're earning more money than ever dreamed possible. And the people next to them who are born here are saying, well, they must be, they must be lucky.

Jeff Sanders
Well, what's the real difference there? Obviously, there are some people who make a decision at some point that success is inevitable for them. They're going to, you know, commit to doing what matters. And there is everyone else who it's somewhere along the lines just they've struggled and they continue to struggle. Like, what's the real difference for someone to, I guess, make that decision and say, I'm now willing to jump in and do the work.

Brian Tracy
Well, in the book, by the way, this fourth edition of Eat That Frog was harder to write than the first three editions. It took two, three months and several, maybe 100 hours to clean it up and add new things to it. One of the things we added was the importance of habit, which is something I've done a lot of work with, is that you are your habits. So if you have good habits, the rule is form good habits and make them your masters. And Goethe, the German philosopher, said that new habits are hard to form but easy to live with, whereas bad habits are easy to form, but hard to live with. So what you have to do is say, what is the habit? And the habit is this. Quick aside, I was at a big conference in Washington, D.C. last year. and a man came up to me and he said, you're Brian Tracy. I recognize you from your book. And I said, well, thank you. He said, you changed my life. You made me rich. You changed my life. You made me rich. And the reason I tell you that story, because I've heard that story without exaggeration, maybe a thousand times since I produced this book. People write to me and send emails and come up to me on the street in Europe and Asia and Australia. and they say, you changed my life, you made me rich. And I would say, well, what was it? And the answer was starting each day by identifying your most important task and disciplining yourself to complete that one task before anything else. Just that very simple activity until it becomes automatic. You have to do it every day for a month before it becomes locked in. And what it does is it overrides and replaces the old habits of procrastination. So it becomes automatic and easy to start and complete your major task. And the payoff, of course, is great psychologically, great financially. So just ask yourself, and what I do is I say to people, if you could only do one thing all day long, which one activity would contribute the most value to your life? and your business and your work. What one activity would it be? It's always the one you procrastinate on. And each activity, I tell people, I teach people to start every morning by writing down their 10 top goals and then do it the next morning without looking back. And if you keep writing it down, but you still find that one goal is probably worth 90% of your 10 goals. The one goal that can help you the most, is the one that has the biggest payoff and the one you're most likely to put off. We're really talking character. Character and self-discipline seem to go together like that. If you cannot discipline yourself or control yourself, then you don't like yourself that much. You feel guilty. You get less done. You're always making excuses. I'll get it done tomorrow. you know, Monday, thank God it's Monday, then maybe Tuesday and I'll work on it Wednesday and then think, oh, geez, it's Friday. Well, I'll get to work on it on Monday again instead of starting and completing your most important task. If you do that, you can take complete control of your future. You can double your income and double it again.

Jeff Sanders
I feel like this conversation about procrastination is tied directly into distraction. It seems as though most people would, if you ask them, like, are you busy? The answer is, well, of course, I'm busy all the time. There's a thousand things to do. Like, where do you think people? are prioritizing incorrectly? Like, why is our attention going to the wrong places?

Brian Tracy
Well, unfortunately, fewer and fewer people are actually reading and listening the way you and I did. When I discovered my first set of audio programs, which was the psychology of winning by my friend Dennis Waitley, who lives just down the street from me and who just died last month, he's a wonderful friend. And he just talked about goals and priorities and starting immediately without delay and persisting and little things like that. And I still remember, Jesus, this is neat stuff. I never thought about these things. There's a system to being successful. And that's why this 80-20 rule I teach the 20% of people earn 80% of the money. Now, how do you get into the top 20%? Well, I remember how I did it. When I first learned it, I asked the top guys, said, where does that come from? Oh, he said, it's an old principle, the 80-20 rule. And I said, so what do you do? He said, well, you just determine the top 20% and you only do those things. You don't do anything else until your top tasks are finished. I said, that's so simple. Yes, it is. But if you want to be in the top 20%, it has to become automatic, like the philosopher said, automatic and easy. And pretty soon you just get up in the morning, plan your day. One of the great tools and eat that frog is a list. Make a list every evening at the end of the day of everything you have to do tomorrow. And then go over the list and say, if I could only do one thing on this list, which would be number one. If I could only do two, what would be two? If I could only do three, what would be three? And we talk in the book about the law of three. And the law of three says that there's only three things that account for 90% of your value. When you're doing anything but those three things, you're basically wasting your time and wasting your life. You're letting yourself down, and you're letting down the people who report to you, your family and things like that. So we just start and continue and disqual, discipline yourself to finish your most important task and your whole life. You will start to say, you changed my life, it made me rich. It changed my life. It made me rich. Yes, it's no secret. The great truths are very simple. As you've seen in your study, you hear a great truth, you think, geez, that's so simple. I mean, why doesn't everybody do it? Well, lack of discipline, lack of self-control, lack of decision. Making a decision to do or not do something can be a life-changer.

Jeff Sanders
So multiple times now you've mentioned the fact that when you had a question or were struggling, you talk to, you're calling like top people, like the best in the field. Why do you think that that appears to be like a very like simple strategy to say if I want something, someone else is already getting with their results, I can just go ask them. But I feel like most people don't do that, even though it seems so obvious. Is that, like from the beginning, has that been part of your strategy to say, if I want to learn something, I'll go to the people who are already excelling in that area?

Brian Tracy
Yes. One of the things that changed my life was the discovery that every goal has already been achieved by someone. Every person who's earning fantastic living was one struggling. I have friends who were the top sales trainers, speakers, millionaires in their industries. And the beginning, they struggled and struggled and made no progress. And then finally they decided to study. And they learned what other successful people have done. And then they did it over and over until finally what was hard at the beginning, it became automatic and easy. or it became automatic and easy, their income doubled and doubled again. And I have a formula that I used, that I teach, and it's how to increase your income, how to double your income, and then how to double it again and again. And I thought this through, I still remember when I sat down and I developed a formula, like a recipe. And my thought was that any recipe or any form is better than none at all. And it's very simple. It's got seven parts. It's number one, get up early. wealthy people get up early by five or six o'clock in the morning. Poor people get up at the last possible minute. Number two, if you're going to exercise, which I always do, and then read for one hour each morning in your field. Bill Gates reads two books a week. Warren Buffett reads five hours a day. These guys are the highest, richest people in some of the history of the world. and they attributed all to reading. Warren Buffett was asked, What is your secret to success? And he said it's simple. He said, I just say no to everything that is not my top two or three tasks. I just say no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Just say no until it becomes a habit. And you say, or you can say yes, but not yet. Yes, but yet. And so number one, get up, number two, read an hour a day. If you read an hour a day, that'll be a book a week. A book a week is 50 books a year. 50 books a year is 500 books in 10 years. And people say, 500 books in 10 years, that's a long time. Yes, but the time is going to pass anyway. The only question is, are you going to be at the bottom or you're going to be at the top? You're going to be one of the highest paid people in society or not. I was renting and living in rented apartments and rented condos and things like that when I was in my 30s. And then I finally started to do these things that we're talking about. It's astonishing. Sometimes one or small change. Just identifying your number one task, starting with it and disciplining yourself to complete it. Each morning will make you rich. And if you can't do that, well then you'll be poor. Number three is plan every day in advance. Make a list of everything that you have to do. Number four is set priorities and organize your list. Number one, number two, number three, and so on, as we've talked about. Number five is listen to audio programs when you travel around. When I discovered audio learning, there was a one line or it says that the invention of audio learning is the greatest, breakthrough in education since the invention of the printing press. It's astonishing because you can turn traveling time into learning time. You can turn your car into a university on wheels. You can now turn your phone with audible. You can now take and learn the greatest things in the world are on audible. And you can get them in a few seconds and listen to them whenever you want. And so that's number five. Number six is ask two questions after every experience. What did I do right and what would I do differently next time? Keep evaluating your performance. If you don't evaluate your performance, you don't learn. You don't learn. You don't get better. You don't get better. You don't make any progress. And finally, number seven is treat everybody that you meet as if they were a million dollar customer, as if they could buy a million dollars worth of your product. Treat them with respect, treat them with courtesy, treat them with the debt of, be a nice person. People love to do business with nice people. And nice people are people who ask questions. One of the most important things in life for success is trust. And one of the great one-liners is listening builds trust. Listening builds trust, not talking, but listening. So when you ask questions and listen, and ask follow-up questions and listen, people like you and trust you more. And then they'll buy your product, your service, they'll hire you, they'll marry you. It's wonderful way. So you take those seven. Now, Einstein once said that, his one liner was that compounding is the eighth wonder of the world. Compound is the eighth wonder of the world. Now, how do you get compounding? Well, if you become 2% better per month, 2% more productive by using your time well. I know most people could do that this morning. They can become 2% more effective. And if you do that every month for a year, you'll be 25% more productive. And your income will reflect it. I've never had a person anywhere in the world, 124 countries who ever said it didn't work. They were astonished at how fast it did work. Just a little tiny bit, just plan your day, start with your highest priorities, complete your tasks, things like that. Well, if you increase your income 25% in a year, 2% a month, then you will, if you keep doing that with compounding in three years, you'll double your income. So a great question to ask is, What difference would it make in your life if you were earning twice as much as you're earning today? Well, it's very simple, very easy to do it. Just follow those seven steps. And then in compounding, if you keep doing that, a 25% increase in productivity each year, and 10 years will be 1,04%. It'll be increased your income 10 times in 10 years. I used to teach this in my seminars all over the country. And this guy came up to me, a nice guy named Chris at a seminar recently. And he said, you know, Brian, he said this idea of increasing your income 10 times in 10 years doesn't work. He said, as soon as I learned your formula, I used it every day, seven days a week. It never changed. It doesn't work. I said, really? He said, it only took six years. He said, this is the sixth year since you came to our company and gave that. formula and this year I earned 10 times as much as I was earning that time. I still remember because it's on your income tax forms. Imagine imagine increasing your income 10 times. Wow. Well that's what that frog does is it gives you every single way to approach being more productive and more valuable and the cumulative effect, the compound effect is extraordinary. You just keep working away, working away. It's a wonderful thing.

Jeff Sanders
It's truly powerful to see that what you're talking about here is so simple. And what I think I'm so mesmerized by, I was reading through the book, again, multiple times now. And I keep being struck by the fact that your advice is so straightforward. I think a lot of people want to overcomplicate this journey. They want to see, like, well, it must be more difficult than this. Surely there are a thousand steps to take. But really what you're saying is that success and the motion we're taking here is really just one step, then the next one, as long as those are the next most important biggest rocks to really tackle. But it's not complicated. I love the fact that the way you approach this is it seems so manageable in that way.

Brian Tracy
Yes. Well, there are two questions which I ask, my audience is that I've spoken to almost five million people in 64. countries as a paid professional speaker. I've traveled in 124 countries over the years. I went off when I was 20 years old, I went off to see the world and didn't come back for eight years. And I worked on ships and I worked in the sales and I worked on farms and I finally came back. And then I began personal development. But by that time, my level of confidence in myself was very high. So in my audience, I'll ask two questions, and these two questions are life-changing. And you can help your friends. Question number one, if you could wave a magic wand and achieve any one goal in life, which one goal would have the greatest positive impact on your life? Which one goal? Imagine that a magic wand, what would it be? And everybody knows what it is. Almost always it's financial, because if you have more money, then you can do everything else you want to do. So number two question is, if you can wave the same magic wand and become absolutely excellent in any one skill, which one skill would help you the most to achieve your most important goal. Those are the two great questions of life. And the answer pops out. It's clear as I know what it is. When I was struggling, I was knocking on doors. I was knocking on 60 to 70 doors a day and not making any sales. And so I asked myself these two questions. And the answer was to the second question was closing the sale. If I was really good at asking a person to buy, rather than having them say, let me think it over or leave it with me or call me back. So I began to study sales closing techniques. And I've made myself an expert on sales closing. I've written books that have been published in 30, 40 languages. I've made people millionaires because if you know how to ask a person to buy, no pressure, no tricks, no gimmicks to ask a person to buy, if you know what that is, and then you're more motivated to make more calls because you anticipate more sales, which means more money, which means more motivation, which means more endorphins and dopamine. So you get into this upward spiral. If you know, this was my problem, that you're going to make all these calls, but you're not going to make a single sale because you don't know how to ask for the sale. So once you know how to ask, so I made my, I majored in sales closing techniques. The first seminar I did when I was, when public, was called 24 techniques for closing the sale. And it was a three hour, unconditionally guaranteed, guaranteed seminar, which I offered to salespeople for $95. And every time I put a little ad in the paper, I got 100 people turn out that evening to learn how to close sales. And I wrote out an explanation of every one of the 24 techniques and how to set the stage and so on. And people became wealthy. I mean, they just could not believe how much easier it was to earn more money. And so what I have found is that there's two things that people tell me that they want from one of my live seminars. One of them, they say this, they want to make more money. I have people like yourself and others all over the world who book me to speak, and I charge them a lot. And they say that I ask them, what do your listeners, your members want? They want to make more money. Now, how do entrepreneurs make more money? So we call that MMM. They want an MMM. How do entrepreneurs make more money? They SMS, which is sell more stuff. And the number one reason for business success is high sales. Number one reason for business failure is low sales. Everything else is commentary. So therefore, if you want to make more money, sell more stuff. Start earlier. You know, one of the things I learned from Peter Drucker, who was my, great mentor of the guy. And he said that, remember, there are no customers in the office. There's no customers in the office. What are you doing in the office? If you're in the office, you're not employed. You're basically out of the workforce. You're on reserve, if you like, or vacation. Get out of the office because there's no customers there. And people, because most people spend 50% of their time in the office. even salespeople whose entire income is determined by making sales, contacting people, talking to people, selling to people, they, it creeps up on them. They just spend a little time, a little bit more time, and they talk to their friends, and they shoot the breeze, and they go for lunch, and they come in late and leave early, and go for drinks and things like that. No, no. Because whenever you do repeatedly, it comes,

Jeff Sanders
A habit.

Brian Tracy
A habit. And you are made or broken by your habits. So get out of the office. I was working with a Fortune 500 company and their sales offices all over the country. And the problem was that they kept losing the sales manager because they for performance of the guys, more than 20 guys, was terrible. They had leads, but they had no sales. And so they kept replacing the sales manager. Finally, they took this top sales guy from the West Coast, and he put him in charge of sales for the East Coast, this office. And so he came in on Friday and introduced himself to everybody and said, we'll have a meeting at 8 o'clock on Monday morning. So please be here. It's going to be our first sales meeting. And on Monday morning, everybody came in and all the furniture was gone. All the chairs, all the tables, all the furniture was going. Well, these guys were used to coming in and sitting around and drinking coffee and shooting the breeze and so on. But they advertised and generated leads. They had leads. But people were not making calls. So they came in and everybody's standing around. I said, we're going to have stand-up sales meetings from now on. And but you won't need your chairs because you're not going to spend any time in the office because there's no customers here. And they were ticked off. Some of them said, this guy, blah, blah, blah. And they went back out after the sales meeting. And they said, what are you going to do now? Well, I'm going to go and get another cup of coffee. I'm going to do this and do that. Someone said, well, I'm going to go call on some more leads. And they did. And the end of the day, they came back at 5 o'clock and reported on their activities. And the ones that had made calls and made sales. And they had began to make more money and a base. Well, within a short period of time, within a couple of months, this is one of the leading sales offices in the country. Because everybody was out calling on customers all day long. Imagine that. It's so simple. And most of sales techniques, most techniques for success are quite simple. Write down your goals, set priorities, start on number one. work at it, so it's done. Repeat.

Jeff Sanders
I feel there is so much. The simplicity is beautiful. I love the fact that that's really what it all comes down to. The success is really just what you're stating here. It's just you know what it is you need to do. Just do it. to do the work and the success follows.

Brian Tracy
Just do it. That's a wonderful thing. Now, one of the greatest enemies, and it's in the book, but one of the greatest enemies of success is called the comfort zone. Comfort zone is where you get comfortable doing or not doing something. And the more comfortable you become, the more it becomes a habit. It becomes automatic and easy. And so to be successful, you have to move home. your comfort soul. You have to do things that are uncomfortable until they become comfortable. And so all successful people are willing to expand their boundaries by trying something more by like yourself, reading and listening and then practicing what you read and listen and then do it again, repeat. And pretty soon you see that this idea combined with that idea and this idea, oh, my. my God, and you start to earn more money. I have a book here right here. As soon as I decided to do podcasts, I bought a book, and the book is called Podcasting Made Simple. And I also went to chat GPT, and I wrote down, I asked the question, what do you have to do to build a successful podcasting business? And it punched out 10 answers. And then what's the most important key to getting sponsors? It punched out 10 answers. How do you get more listeners or followers punched out the answers than you read the book? And you know something? Only 3% of people who are working full time in a field like this have read the books. They didn't read books. There's a movie called Patton and Patton came out a long time ago. One seven Academy Awards, a best movie best, director, best, film best, actor and so on. And there's a scene where Patton is the general in charge of the American troops in North Africa. And he's up against Romo. And Romo is the most formidable general on the German side. Extremely competent and dangerous. Anyway, so he organizes and he sets up this trap to lure the Germans in, and then he attacks them from all sides. And they're astonished because they're totally caught off guard. And he's watching from, there's binoculars like this, he's watching as the Germans now start to back up and back up and start to flee and so on. He said, God, he said, Rommel, he said, I read your book, I read your book. And Rommel had written a book called the Tank and Warfare. and it was all of his best ideas. So he said, I read your book. It's a wonderful line. So people say, for example, I decided one day when I was in my late 20s, early 30s, to get into real estate development because I heard about all kinds of people got into real estate development and they made a lot of money. Well, I didn't even know how to spell the word development, whether it had an in the middle or not. So I went down to the library. This is when you used to go to the library, and I started to check out books written by successful real estate developers. And some of them were famous. They started with nothing, become multi-millionaires and so on. So I read the books. I read the books. And then I went out, and I found a piece of property, and I read the books on how you tie up a piece of property and how you negotiate the sale and how you get, tenants and how you build. And I went out, I built a, what would be today, about a $10 million shopping center. And then I didn't have any money, but I had the land tied up. I had the budget done by a construction company. I had the architectural design done by an architect that's all on the come. And then I went to several of the biggest real estate development companies in the city. And I found one that said if all these things you say are true about this piece of property and tenants and everything else, we'll put up the money for 75% of the shopping center. And they did. And I built the shopping center and we had a great opening. It's really great 100% leased. And suddenly I went from rags to riches. They gave me something like $250,000 for my quarter. of the shopping center and they had 75% and then they came back in and bought me out. And I never worried about money again. So I did another real estate project and another. I did more than $500 billion worth of real estate development over the next few years. And people say, how did you do that? I mean, you don't know anything about it. I said, I read the books. I read the books. and the things you can learn, anything you need to learn, to be successful in any area. All the answers have been found. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. It's all been done. Read the books, listen to the audio programs, and then put it into action. Take action on what you've learned. And that's the big mistake is people want to be successful, but they can't get themselves to get over this company, comfort zone. They get into a room and they start to hang out with the wrong people. I remember one salesman came to me at one of my seminars and he said, you know, when I went to work for this company, I was the lowest guy in the whole company. I had no experience, everything was on commission and so on. And he said then, I noticed that there was about 20 guys, about three or four of them, hung out together and they were the top people. They were the highest paid people. So I know the others hung around and drank coffee and so on. So I decided to sort of ask them questions and I asked them more questions and I asked them what to read and I told them what to read. And they kind of embraced me. So they, I started to hang out with the top guys rather than the average guys. And then they said, well, this is how you get leads. This is how you make presentations. This is how you close sales. This is how you solve these books. And they told me, you know, if you ask them, you know, what does they say seek and he shall find for all who seek find it? Is all the answers have been found. So whatever you want to do or need to do to earn more money, you can do it. Just go and ask the most successful people. What advice would you give? By the way, there's something I started doing years ago. And it has to do with books is whenever I meet a person who I, admire and respect like yourself, I would ask them this question. If you could only recommend one book to me, what one book would you suggest for me to read? Sometimes they're a book on philosophy and sometimes they're books on metaphysics and they're real eye-openeres. But every single person who is successful has a favorite book. So you ask them, what's your favorite book? And they'll tell you. And sometimes you read that book, it'll save you five. five years of hard work. It's just be astonishing. You cannot believe it. You pick page after page. Some of the books that have been recommended to me changed my life. I just couldn't believe it. One of the books that really effectively, because I taught it to a million people, is that the most important thing in life is positive emotions. more positive you are, the more energy you have, more focused you are, the more you get done. And the worst thing is negative emotions. And where do negative emotions come from? Well, they come from blaming someone else for something in life that makes you unhappy. Going back to childhood and early experiences and bad relationships and so on. So how do you eliminate negative emotions? You simply say, I am responsible and I am not going to spend a single minute on making a devotion. And one of the things I say is that all causes of negativity are past events. They're past events, not future events. So how do you eliminate a past event? You just simply say, I am responsible and refuse. to become upset about a past event. Because all the psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists in America work with people to help them talk through their negative experiences, their past. And you can't change the past. So never worry about anything that you can't change. If you can't change the past, then let it go. Let it go. So I can't let it go. I suffered too much. It hurt me. And so as let it go. Just let it go. There was a great book called the Sedona Method, written by a psychologist, psychiatrist. And Sedona is a community, sort of like a resort community in Arizona outside of Phoenix. And there's a lot of sort of camps where people go and spend the several. days. Anyway, the gentleman who developed the Sodor method said, if you take a pen and put it in your hand and you squeeze it really hard, and you really hold that hard, and you squeeze it really hard is, and you do this for an hour, what will happen? Well, your hand will start getting stiff and sore. What if you do it for three hours? Or if you do it for 24 hours, just hold that really tight. Well, your whole arm will start to get, tighten up. And what if you do it for a year? Well, the whole upper body will be distorted because of the squeezing. So this is a negative experience that you keep holding onto. And you keep holding onto and it keeps here. So how do you get rid of that pen? How do you get rid of the pen? And the answer was, just open your hand. let it go. And as soon as you let it go, it's gone. And it's the most amazing thing. So you'll find that all of psychology, sacoed very much is aimed at taking people to the point where they finally let it go. They forgive the other person. They learn the very best lesson possible. They get on with their lot. And what happens is in psychology, nature abhors a vacuum. So if you get rid of all your negative emotions by just letting them go, your mind fills with positive emotions. Positive emotions of ambition and eagerness and happiness and joy and love and big goals and things like that. So once you get rid of the negative emotions, they say when the false gods depart, the true gods arrive. And the false gods apart, the negative things that you've been thinking and talking about. And by the way, nobody cares about your negative problems from the past. So if you think that you're entertaining people by telling them, life sucks, no, nobody gives it to harm. Just let it go. And think about what you want. Think about earning more money. Think about being healthier, thinner, everything else. Think about good things, positive things, until it becomes automatic and easy. So that's one of the things that we teach in the book, Eat That Frog. But there's 21 different chapters, and any one of them can be a life changer if it's the right one for you as time.

Jeff Sanders
Absolutely. Yeah, there's so much in this book. And I definitely want our listeners today to get a copy of this. So where can they learn more from you and find the book?

Brian Tracy
Oh, quite Amazon. It used to be bookstores, but the bookstores are shutting down everywhere now. So if you want a book, you know, when Amazon started, they offered seven-day delivery. Today, you can order something from Amazon in the morning, and they will ask you, when today do you want it delivered between 10 and 12, 12 and 2, 2 and 4, and you can actually tell them, and it's there seven days a week. sometimes it's just absolutely amazing. So what you do is if you want to get a book, and this is another thing. My friend Jim Rohn used to say, it's not the cost of the book, it's the cost of not knowing what's in that book that is important. So therefore don't say, well, that book will cost $20, well, I'm going to think about that for a while. Absolutely not. What you do is if you hear about a good book, we, as a, as a, adults buy more books than we'll ever read in our lives. We have surrounded by books. I've read an enormous number, but I have an enormous number still to read. Anyway, what you do is buy the book. Just don't even think about it. Just call Amazon Bing, Bing, and the book will be delivered later on that day or tomorrow. And as soon as you can, read the first chapter. I used to teach super learning. and speed reading. And in speed reading, the way that you get through a book quickly is read the first chapter. The first chapter will either grab you and pull you in to the next chapter as beat that frog does. I go all over the world. That book's in 55 languages now. Everywhere I go, sometimes, I go to India. In India, there's a thousand people in the room and 80% have read the book. in one of the various Indian languages, they've read the book. And so what you do is read the first chapter. In super learning or in speed reading, what I found is if the first chapter doesn't grab you and grab you so, gee, this is good. I can hardly wait. Then put it aside. Don't wait any more time because you won't remember a word of it unless it grabs you. So I say, just grab me, read the first chapter. If the first chapter pulls you in, then read the second, then go on, keep reading as long as it interests you, as long as you can see how to use it, how to improve your life with it. Because that's what you'll remember. You'll remember all the stuff that you like. So that's one of the tricks about which be reading. One of the things that we've learned is that you are a bundle of skills. And if you want to earn more money, you have to learn a new skill, or you have to become better at a particular skill. And so you have to keep thinking that question, Magic One, if you could be excellent at any one thing, which one skill would help you the most to increase your income faster? And there's always an answer. There's always an answer. If you have any doubts at all, call somebody who's successful in your field and ask them for advice. And they said, well, you know, you should do this or you should do that. I never thought of that. And that one could change your life.

Jeff Sanders
That's amazing. I love it. Your advice is timeless. This is fantastic. I'm so excited for listeners to hear this conversation today. And, yeah, Brian, you've been a tremendous influence on my life and like all the others who've said before that you have. have made difference in their lives. I have to thank you for all the influence you've had on me. My love of personal growth in large part stems from you. And so it's a fantastic honor to have you on the show. And I hope our listeners enjoy this book. It's fantastic. You're getting a lot from this, of course, from all the work of Brian Tracy. So Brian, thanks again.

Brian Tracy
You're more than welcome. And remember, if you follow that little formula and just get a little bit better each week, each month, is you'll double your income and then double it again, and then double it again. It's the most amazing damn thing. You say, well, it can't be that simple. It's not easy, but it is simple.

Jeff Sanders
And for the action step this week. Eat your frog. Whatever matters most, do it first. Whatever you've been putting off. Do it now. Read the book. Talk to those who are excelling in your industry and take the complication out of success. It's simple, repeatable, and absolutely possible for you. Of course, grab your copy of Brian Tracy's Eat That Frog, Fourth Edition, right now. And while you're at it, subscribe to this podcast and your favorite podcast app, or go to 5am MiraclePremium.com for the VIP ad-free experience. That's all I've got for you here on the 5 a.m. Miracle podcast this week. Until next time, you have the power to change your life, and all that fun begins bright and early.

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