Product Description

Why are some people more successful in business? Why do some businesses flourish where others fail? In this text, the author draws on his experience to present set universal laws that lie behind the success of business people everywhere, in every kind of enterprise, large and small.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #118546 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 319 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The scrappy spirit of Horatio Alger is alive and well in success guru Brian Tracy. He may not be a household name yet like his colleagues Warren Bennis and Anthony Robbins, but (his publisher tells us) he still lectures hundreds of thousands annually on personal and professional development, including top cats at IBM and Arthur Andersen. This, his latest of some 10 books (including the "bestseller" Maximum Achievement), is exactly what its title suggests--100 maxims everyone must learn and live by to make it big, broken down into the laws of Life, Success, Business, Leadership, Money, Selling, Negotiating and Time Management. Each law is followed up by anecdotes and quotes through history, plus bulleted points on "How You Can Apply This Law Immediately", which provide welcome structure and practicality.

In fact, Tracy's 100 laws are so cheerily practical, such an astoundingly uncomplicated affirmation of good old bootstrap self-determinism, they recall a fictional era where you could make it big through pluck, elbow grease and high hopes alone. At times, Tracy's laws read like a Rotarian's shameless plug for capitalism ("The free market is the most efficient way for millions of people to have their needs met at the lowest possible cost"), an expression of Nietzschean contempt ("People are poor because they have not yet decided to become rich"), or, in a few instances, the kind of declaration that sets survivors of totalitarian regimes all a-tremble ("Power gravitates to the person who can use it most effectively to get the desired results"--yikes!).

That said, Tracy's pronouncements are more than usually correct; an unfailing boost to the indecisive, under-confident, or fatalistic soul ("You are completely responsible for everything you are and for everything you become and achieve"); and even occasionally astute, especially in matters of sales ("Top money-earners in sales are viewed as consultants, helpers, counsellors and advisors to their customers, not as salespeople"), where he had his own humble beginnings. You won't find anything especially new in Tracy's "100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws", so think of it as all the best advice for improvement of your self, career and business you'll ever read or hear, packed into one turbo-charged go-getter's almanac. At the book's start, Tracy promises us that just by writing down 10 of our goals in the first-person present tense ("I actually AM too rich and too thin!"), eight will have come true in a year's time. I ask you: Did even your own mother ever have that much faith in you? --Timothy Murphy, Amazon.com

From the Publisher
“When you know and understand [these laws],” writes Tracy, “you gain a tremendous advantage over those who do not. When you organize your life and business according to these universal laws and timeless truths, you find that it is much easier to build and run a successful and profitable business or department...You will attract and keep better people, produce and sell more and better products and services, control costs more intelligently, expand and grow more predictably, and increase your profits.”

About the Author
Brian Tracy is chairman of Brian Tracy International and the author/narrator of some of the world’s bestselling audio cassette programs, including The Psychology of Achievement and The Psychology of Success. He speaks to such groups as IBM, McDonnell Douglas and The Million Dollar Round Table.

Customer Reviews

Read this in one sitting!
I have to confess to buying this at the airport on the way to holiday (sad, but true!). An amazing collection of business maxims. Like many things in life, it is when someone shows you something that you think "well, that's obvious isn't it?"; but if that is the case, why aren't you doing it?!? Dip in to this book at any page and there is something to enhance the way you do business. A great read - a one sitting book.

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This book will probably be most appealing to people in their 20s who are trying to make some sense out of how to get ahead, but don't have much education or experience on the subject.

Now a 100 ideas sounds like a lot. You should know that Tracy often breaks them into subsets, so the total is really somewhere between 300 and 400 ideas. You'll really feel loaded down before he's done sharing with you.

They are all about positive thinking, exchanging value for value, and being persistent. Ben Franklin would approve of the emphasis on improvement. For example, the first set of laws are about Life -- and they read pretty much like a modern version of Think and Grow Rich.

Two things bothered me about the book. One was the lack of attribution (except for a list of books at the end). For example, Tracy says that the purpose of a business is to create a customer -- perhaps Peter Drucker's single most famous quote, but you look in vain for quotation marks or a reference to Drucker. The book that Drucker said it in (Management) is not cited in the bibliography.

The second thing that bothers me is that in some places Tracy is a little behind the curve. In the Dell-like Internet world, products and service can be customized for each person and that will be the wave of the future. Tracy still talks about segmenting customers rather than individualizing products and customers for each different customer.

So you might ask, why should I read this book? Frankly, it's because you probably won't read all of those books in his bibliography. This way, you'll at least get Tracy's take on what all of this means. One of the nice things about his work is he gives you directions for how to begin applying each principle.

My final quibble is that there is an appendix with pages of services and products that Tracy sells. I don't think such advertisements belong in a business book that someone has paid for. Skip the appendix.

After you have finished reviewing the lists here, I suggest that you think about how you can turn these ideas into good habits. One useful approach would be to create your own outlines to apply the 100 items to classes of actions and decisions that you make all of the time. For example, if you are in sales, how should you use these ideas for getting prospects? After you have that outline, you can develop some measures to tell you whether you are following the outline or not. When it becomes automatic to do so, keep measuring and make another outline. In the case of sales, you might look next at identifying what the customer's needs are. And then keep going.

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