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Hi, Siimon Reynolds here from The Fortune Institute Business Coaching. You know we’re pretty well known as teachers of business. But today I want to talk about the fact that we’re also students; we’re constantly studying the best in the world, and I want to talk about one person’s principles today that I think you’ll find very, very useful for your career and that is Brian Tracy: a man who has been in the personal and business development field for decades, who has written over 70 books and is really a preeminent expert on the art and science of business success.
So here are 4 principles from Brian that I found are very, very powerful in my life and I think you will find very useful as well.
1. So the first one is ‘all business skills are learnable’. Now that’s a really important concept to keep in mind because often in business we can be frustrated. We’ll try doing some direct mail pieces and they won’t work. We’ll try understanding finance and we won’t be able to do it. And if we are not careful we can convince ourselves that all of this stuff in business – being successful in business – is beyond us. It’s just not true. You know, business isn’t like rocket science or asteroid physics, or something demanding, extraordinary individual talent like being a number 1 pop singer… Business is much simpler and every skill inside business (sales, marketing, presentation, finance), they are all learnable. So even if you’re frustrated, remember YOU CAN DO THIS! Keep going and keep getting better.
2. The second principle that’s really powerful is ‘nothing works first time’, and I think that’s generally true. 9 out of 10 times you try something new in business, it doesn’t work very well. So that itself can stop people. A lot of people will try something once… they’ll try a different type of marketing (let’s say Facebook ads) and it won’t work for them. And so they just stop. But I love the principle ‘nothing works first time’ because it’s a reminder that it’s okay that it didn’t work… “I’ll just keep going, I’ll just keep trying and I’ll keep persisting until it does work”.
3. The third principle that’s really powerful is ‘you should aim to be in the top 10% of your field’. A lot of people are aiming too low. A lot of people are just hoping to survive the month. A lot of people just aspire to a 10% profit rise. A lot of people in business just want enough money to retire, and these are all worthy aims but the trouble with aiming low is you tend to get poor results. But if you aspire to be in the top 10% of your field then everything changes; how you behave changes, how you perform changes, what you learn changes, who you emulate changes… So it’s a single distinction that makes a profound difference to all of the standards of your work.
Now notice that I didn’t say, ‘become the best in the world at your field’. You know that may be a stretch for you to believe that you can (although I’m sure you can, genuinely), but what I love about aiming to be in the top 10% of your field is anybody can do that because most people aren’t trying. Most people aren’t into excellence. Most people aren’t getting better all the time. It doesn’t take that much effort. – maybe 2-3 years – to really be in the top 10% of your particular industry and it’s a great thing to aim for.
4. And then the fourth principle I think is really important is ‘all change starts with the change in your mental pictures’. That’s very true, isn’t? If you spend all day hoping to be successful in business but your mental pictures all day are of things failing or you not being good enough, then it tends to be that you don’t get good results, but if you can discipline yourself to change your mental pictures and constantly see yourself being successful… constantly see what your business would be like if it was performing brilliantly… then that change of mental pictures almost always leads to a change of actions and a change of results.
So there’s 4 very powerful principles from Brian Tracy that have helped me over the decades and I think you’ll find them very useful as well.
