Wisdom from the Word
A man is praised according to his wisdom, but men with warped minds are despised. Proverbs 12:8
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Hints for Your Health
Tips for a Powerful New Year
Jon Gordon
Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less foods that are manufactured in plants.
Drink green tea & plenty of water and eat blueberries, wild Alaskan salmon, broccoli, almonds & walnuts.
Try to make at least 3 people smile each day.
Clear your clutter from your house, your car, your desk and let new and flowing energy into your life.
More tomorrow
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Millionaire Memo
Expand your network by one quality person a day, forever." -- Mark Victor Hansen
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Business Dynamite (“explode” your business)
The following is Brian Tracy’s New Year’s Letter for 1/1/07. Pretend it is no 12/31/07. What kind of letter could you write about 2007?Brian Tracy’s New Year’s Letter
This has been another extraordinary year! The US economy has grown 30% in the last three years, since the tax cuts, and has leaped from $10 trillion dollars to a $13 trillion dollar economy, the biggest in the history of the world.
The OECD in Paris has rated the US as the “Most entrepreneurial country in the world.” Fully 42% of people working in America are working in businesses that were started in the last three years. The small and medium business sector is creating more than 90% of the new jobs in America, and in other countries throughout the world.
More people are making more money today than has ever occurred in human history. Economists are calling the 21st century the “Golden Age of Mankind.”The level of wealth is increasing all over the world, as well. You are all familiar with the rapid growth of China and India in the last decade. This same type of growth, although somewhat slower, is happening throughout Latin America, many places in Africa and in many countries in Asia and Eastern Europe.
In the last year, I have traveled extensively all over the world, almost fully booked as a speaker, giving almost 30 talks and seminars to wonderful audiences in country after country.
In the spring of 2006, I traveled to Europe and spoke in Estonia as the guest of Mr. Peep Vain, the top professional speaker in that fast-growing country.I then flew to Lithuania to do a full day of speaking on Leadership and Sales to an extraordinary group of Lithuanian businesspeople who are quickly transforming that country into a wealthy European nation.
I then flew onto Poland to speak for my friend Marek Stelmaszak, the President of the Polish Real Estate Federation, and 350 top businesspeople in Warsaw.
When I speak on the stage in these countries, I have my translator stand next to me and engage in what is called “Sequential Translation.” I speak a sentence and pause, and the translator then speaks the same sentence in translation. We go back and forth like a windshield wiper. This maintains a high pace and keeps the energy up in the room all day long. The audiences love this style.
My friend Ib Moller, who represents my speaking and training business in many countries around the world, traveled with me to Rome where we spent two days before flying onto Turkey to speak for several hundred high-powered businesspeople. Istanbul is one of the most amazing cities in the world. It lies half in Europe and half in Asia. As you drive through the city, you see the remains of civilizations that go back 2,000 years. My son, Michael, traveled through Istanbul in the summer and was so impressed that he stayed for several days just to explore the streets and bazaars of that city.After Istanbul, we flew to Slovenia where I spoke for a day for my friend Robert Rolih before flying onto Amsterdam where I conducted a full day seminar for John Groot and another 400 highly motivated seminar participants.A few weeks later, I returned to England for a full day seminar for The Coaching Academy at Latimer House, just outside of London. I then flew onto Stuttgart to conduct a seminar for several thousand entrepreneurs and salespeople brought together by my friend Fabian Gaa of Wellstar.
After traveling and speaking all over the US and Canada, I flew off to Asia, to speak in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Chennai, India, all organized by Richard Tan of Singapore. Each Asian country and culture is distinct and different from each other country. The Japanese are conservative, self-contained and thoughtful as a seminar audience.
The Taiwanese are more emotional and expressive, cheering and applauding throughout the day. My audience in Bangkok was somewhere in between, highly intelligent and very interested in ideas on improving personal effectiveness.I conducted two seminars in Chennai in India, one of the fast-growing cities economically on the Indian sub-continent. In every case, the audiences are warm, interested, attentive and eager to learn new ideas.
Back to the US and then back out again to the Middle East, where I spoke in Kuwait, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. In each of these countries, the level of English fluency is so high that no translators or translation was necessary. The high oil prices of the last couple of years have greatly enriched the countries around the Gulf, they are using some of their wealth to bring in high powered speakers and teachers from the US and Britain.
While I was in Kuwait, I spent one evening giving a talk to the very fine people at the US Embassy. Kuwait is a remarkable city/country of 2.6 million people, extraordinarily wealth, prosperous and modern in every way. Our men and women at the Embassy are doing a wonderful job, considering that the temperature gets to 120 degrees in the daytime.
On my final evening in Kuwait, after speaking all day, I was driven one hour outside of the city to speak to almost 100 officers, both men and women, of the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing, the group that provides the “jumping off” place for soldiers and marines on the way to Iraq.
It was an extraordinary experience for me. The men and women of our military are among the best people I have ever met. They are clear-eyed, intelligent, confident, efficient, friendly and completely dedicated to their work. It was an honor for me to share with them some ideas on leadership, and to my complete surprise, they gave me a standing ovation at the end. I will never forget it.
In the summer, I took my family to Canada for our summer vacation, lasting 10 days. We went to Montreal for three days and very much enjoyed the French-Canadian culture, including restaurants, museums, old buildings and beautiful shopping centers.
After Montreal, we flew to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, the province in Canada where I was born in 1944. We spent an entire week driving around Prince Edward Island, visiting the beaches and restaurants. It is an absolutely beautiful, charming little island, with a small population and completely covered with a patchwork of beautiful little farms.
We took one day off from our time in Prince Edward Island to drive to Halifax, which took about 3-4 hours. In Halifax we walked around and visited the waterfront where I had set off to see the world from in 1965.
While I was in Halifax, there was one place that I wanted to visit especially. In 1965, I hitchhiked to Halifax to find a job on a ship and work my way across the Atlantic to England. I did not have enough money to pay my passage or to take a flight. It was the end of February and it was cold, with gusts of snow in the air.
After an entire day of tramping the waterfront, visiting every ship I could find, I was not able to find a ship that was going to England. Discouraged and tired, I trudged up a long hill to the YMCA where I had a little room for the night.As I reached the top of this long hill, I could see the YMCA about a block and a half ahead of me. It was warm and inviting, especially since I was tired, hungry and cold. Then I turned around for a moment and looked back down the hill. About half a mile away, I could see two ships loading cargo with their nightlights. I had not seen those ships previously so I had not approached them looking for a job. They were the only two ships in Halifax that I had not visited that day.
At that moment, I had a choice. I could walk a few steps forward to the YMCA where I would be warm and well fed, or I could walk all the way down the hill to the waterfront and try just one more time. I wrestled with myself, but then I remembered that I had always resolved to persist in the face of adversity.
I walked back down the hill and went to the first ship. It has heading for New York and didn’t need any crew. I went to the second ship, the last ship in Halifax harbor, and asked where they were going and if they needed a crewman. The person at the top of the gangway told me I should come up and talk to the captain, which I did.
The ship was the Norwegian freighter Nordpohl. The captain was a fine gentleman who asked me a few questions about my background and my past, and then asked me if I would take a job as a galley boy, the lowest job on the ship. I assured him that I would. He then said those magic words, “If you can be back on board by 8:00 pm tonight, you have a job on this ship which is going to England.”
My heart leaped into my throat. I was so excited I didn’t know what to say. I thanked him profusely and then hurried back down the gangplank to the dock and all the way up the hill to the YMCA. I quickly checked out and gathered my belongings and then hurried down to the local freight office where I had sent my suitcase. I got my suitcase and spent my last couple of dollars on a taxi back to the dock where I got on board the ship at ten minutes to eight in the evening. At exactly 8:00 pm, the ship cast off from the dock and sailed out into the Atlantic. I will never forget it.
This fall was busy as well. My partner, Victor Risling, organized more than 100 talks and seminars for me all over the country and all over the world in 2006. After speaking in several different cities in September, I did another seminar series with my partners Duane Hendrickson, Gary Troy and Steve Black, with average audiences of 800-1,000 people, and then set off overseas once more. At the end of October, I returned to Asia, speaking for an entire week in Taiwan, Jakarta and Singapore. I then return to the US to do a week of speaking, turned around and flew to Australia to speak in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne for Michael Burnett.
I then returned to the US, spent another week traveling and speaking and flew to India in mid-October for 8 days, speaking in New Delhi, Bangalore, and Mumbai. India is an incredible country, growing at a rapid rate. It was a great experience.
The first time I visited India was in 1968 carrying a backpack with everything I owned in my pockets. Over the years I have returned to India, but it was always a poor place, trapped in taxation, regulation and bureaucracy. But not today.
Today India is booming. It is growing so fast that the biggest single problem they have is their infrastructure; for roads, railroads and airports to handle the booming traffic of people and goods. India is now producing millionaires and billionaires at an incredible rate, as is China and many other developing countries.It is a great sight to see.
During 2006, on November 13, my oldest daughter Christina (26) and her fine husband, Damon, brought Julia into the world, my first granddaughter. She is a beautiful, healthy little girl and is growing rapidly. Christina is a wonderful mother and Damon is a terrific father.
On December 15, we all departed to Maui to spend a three-week family vacation together on the beach. We were joined by Larry and Jackie Stein, Damon’s wonderful parents and all of our other children. My son, Michael (24), is completing a technical degree at New York University Institute of Technology Online and is now working with me at Brian Tracy University in my office, as is his girlfriend, Tasha Holladay.
My son David, and his wonderful girlfriend Sara, are completing their courses at Mira Costa College and are preparing to move onto a large traditional university next year.
My daughter Catherine now has three horses and has moved to a new trainer and a new barn. She is an extremely talented horsewoman with an amazing ability to ride and jump. She has earned literally walls full of ribbons, from first place all the way to eighth place and everywhere in between.
Lest I forget, we launched Brian Tracy University in October and are now enrolling students in Sales, Sales Management, Entrepreneurship, Business Building and Leadership. We have created the finest on-line learning experience in the world today, with each course including videos, audios, reading materials, assignments and a portable “University-in-your-Pocket” IPod-like device that enables you to rewatch and relisten to each course that you have taken online. We are the only ones in the world to offer this learning technology. People who are going through our programs are experiencing immediate increases in sales, revenues, income and profitability.In addition, our partnership with Focal Point International, our business coaching affiliate, is growing throughout the United States and worldwide. One-by-one, we are recruiting experienced sales professionals and businesspeople and training them in the art of business coaching.
We provide a complete business coaching process for small and medium-sized businesses. The process begins with planning and organizing the business to maximize its sales and profitability quickly. Our business coaches conduct a complete analysis of the business, discover where rapid improvements are possible, and then focus our proprietary technologies on helping the business owner to drive sales and profitability in a rapid and predictable way.
If anything, 2007 is going to be an even better year for most people than 2006. More people are going to make more money in the year 2007 than in any year in history prior to this time. Your job is to be one of those people earning high amounts of money. The answer has always been the same: “To earn more you must learn more.” The only way that you can increase your income is by upgrading your knowledge and skills so that you are capable of doing your job at a higher and better level.
You know the old rule, “Whatever got you to where you are today is not enough to get you any further ahead.” You have to learn and practice something new.
Thank you for joining me and being with me as a subscriber to my Newsletters and my Quotes in 2006. In 2007, we will be offering you a new series of ideas, methods, products and techniques that you can use to upgrade your skills, enhance your competitiveness and increase your income.
Our goal is to help you to make 2007 the very best year of your life. Please write to me with any questions or observations and I will get back to you as quickly as I can. I wish you a Happy New Year and a wonderful year in 2007!
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Knowledge Nuggets
All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given us. Kandee G
Speak your future into existence by taking the authority over your words that you speak each day* John DiLemme
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Remember: God knew everything you would ever do and created you anyway! Don’t let your past hold you prisoner!
Live Your Potential!
