100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success

100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success
Brian Tracy

Why are some people more successful in business? Why do some businesses flourish where others fail? Renowned business speaker and author, Brian Tracy has discovered the answers to these profoundly puzzling questions. In The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success Tracy draws on his thirty years' experience and knowledge to present a set of principles or "universal laws" that lie behind the success of business people everywhere, in every kind of enterprise, large and small. These are natural laws, he says, and they work everywhere and for everyone, virtually without exception. Every year, says Tracy, thousands of companies underperform or even fail and millions of individuals underachieve, frustrated by thwarted ambition and dreams–all because they either attempted to violate or did not know these universal laws. But ignorance of the law is no excuse! Tracy breaks the 100 laws down into nine major categories: Life, Success, Business, Leadership, Money, Economics, Selling, Negotiating, and Time Management. For each of the nine groups he details the specific laws that govern it-laws such as the Law of Cause and Effect, the Law of Service, the Law of Increasing Returns, the Law of Compensation, and the Law of Independence. Drawing on a lifetime of observation, investigation, and experience, Tracy not only identifies and defines each law, he also reveals its source and foundation, whether in science, nature, philosophy, experience, or common sense. He illustrates how it functions in the world using real-life anecdotes and examples shows how to apply it to your life and work through specific questions and practical steps and exercises that everyone can use–sometimes in just minutes–to begin the journey toward greater business success. Now for the first time in one volume, these key principles can be understood and put to use by business people of all ages and experience for better, faster, more predictable results. "When you know and understand them," 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, no matter what external conditions might exist…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 with greater consistency." Easy to read, easy to understand, and easy to apply, The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success offers a straightforward, eye-opening, life-affirming approach to how the world of business really works.

Brian Tracy

Laws of Business Success

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my son Michael Tracy. May these timeless truths guide and inspire you to the wonderful life in business that stretches before you

Preface

Once upon a time, I set out on a lifelong journey to find out why the world works the way it does. Like many people on this journey, I found my way into sales, then management, and eventually entrepreneurship and business building. Over time, I began to notice consistent and predictable patterns and principles that seemed to accompany all business success. Listing and explaining them is the purpose of this book.

My mission in life has been the same for more than twenty-five years. It is to liberate individual potential by giving people ideas and strategies they can use to get more of the benefits and rewards they want far faster than they would without these ideas.

I believe that life is the most precious and wonderful of all gifts. With this belief, I have been driven for years to find ways to reduce the amount of life you need to spend to achieve the material and nonmaterial goals you set for yourself. Thus this book on the Laws of Business Success.

This book is written specifically for people working in the business world who want to maximize their personal potentials and get the greatest quality and quantity of business results possible in exchange for the hours, weeks, months, and years of their precious lives that they invest in their careers.

Any one of these laws can save you months and even years of hard work if you have not been living and working consistent with it up to now. And each of these laws is indispensable to your realizing your full potential. The consistent violation of any one of these laws can cost you months and even years of frustration and underachievement.

Here is a question for you: If you could earn $50,000 per year or $100,000 per year, all other things being equal, which would you choose?

The answer is obvious. You would always prefer more to less for the same amount of time and effort. And the fact is that people living by these laws and practicing these principles earn far more in the same period of time than people who do not.

These laws are similar to laws of physics, laws of mathematics, laws of mechanics, or laws of electricity. They are practical, proven laws that apply everywhere to success and business. They do not deal with health or home or love or balance or any of the great factors that make for happiness and personal fulfillment. This book does not attempt to address those issues, only the timeless principles of business success.

The best news of all regarding business success is that nature is neutral. If you do what other successful people do, you will get the results that other successful people get. And if you don’t, you won’t. It is as simple as that.

Some of these laws may seem simplistic or self-evident. Some repeat themselves in different ways in different categories. Don’t be fooled into discounting or dismissing them on that account. Great success and mastery in any field always go to those who are “brilliant on the basics.”

As you read, take a few moments with each law and honestly evaluate your own conduct and behavior with regard to that law. One insight or new idea that you did not have before can be all that it takes to change the direction of your life.

When you apply The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success and you live your business life in harmony with them, you will gain a distinct advantage over those who do not. You will enjoy levels of success and satisfaction you may never have imagined possible. You will accomplish more in a few months or years than many people accomplish in a lifetime!

    Brian Tracy
    Solana Beach, California
    March 2000

About the Author

Brian Tracy started at the bottom and worked his way up, one step at a time. He began his adult life uneducated, unskilled, and unemployed, living in his car and working at odd jobs as they came along.

At an early age, he became intensely curious about the way things work, why things happen the way they do. As he worked and traveled, read, and spoke to people, he began to discover a certain regularity and predictability in human affairs. These insights changed the direction of his life and led ultimately to the laws and ideas in this book.

Like a scientist or researcher, he tested and applied each principle, comparing his conclusions with those of others. As he worked his way from job to job, from position to position, and eventually from failure to success, he used himself as a guinea pig to prove or disprove the validity of his discoveries.

The cumulative effect of learning and applying these universal principles of success and achievement was exactly as he had predicted.

Today, Brian Tracy is one of the top business consultants in the United States and one of the most popular professional speakers in the world. He has worked with more than 500 companies of all sizes, including many in the Fortune 500. He speaks to more than 300,000 people each year worldwide on subjects of personal and corporate effectiveness.

Brian Tracy has written ten books, some of which have been translated into twelve languages. His video and audio learning programs are used worldwide to teach leadership, sales, personal success, and time management.

In addition, he has traveled and worked in eighty countries on five continents. He has a master’s degree in business and administration and is an avid reader in history, philosophy, economics, religion, metaphysics, and psychology.

Brian has a wonderful way of synthesizing ideas and insights from several disciplines into practical strategies that work quickly and get fast results.

He is the president of Brian Tracy International, a consulting and training organization based in Solana Beach, California. He is married with four children and is actively involved in his community.

In this book, he shares with you his many years of wisdom distilled from his experience with people and companies across America and throughout the world.

INTRODUCTION

Success Is Predictable

This is a wonderful time to be alive. There have never been more opportunities for more people to accomplish more of their goals, both personally and professionally, than exist today. And if anything, our situation is getting better and better with each passing year.

Why is this happening? The simplest answer is that we know more today about how to achieve better results in more areas of business than we have ever known before. And this information, these ideas and insights, are like water, flowing everywhere and to everyone who is open to them and willing to use them.

The wonderful thing about information and ideas is that they are infinitely divisible. If you have an idea that can help me to be more effective in some part of my business and you share it with me, we are both enriched. If I then share this idea with someone else, and that person shares it with someone else again, everyone who receives the new idea is better off.

And knowledge is cumulative. Once it exists, it does not cease to exist. It becomes available to more and more people and it grows exponentially. Every new piece of knowledge reveals connections and interconnections with other areas of knowledge in a self-reinforcing and accelerating pattern. Each breakthrough in knowledge creates new opportunities that expand and multiply as that knowledge is exploited.

The driving force behind the explosion of knowledge and the expansion of technology is competition. This competition is more aggressive, determined, creative, and ruthless than ever before, and if anything, it will be even tougher in the months and years ahead.

It has been said that “business is war.” Business books, articles, and courses are filled with references to “marketing warfare,” “guerilla tactics,” “counterattacks,” and other military terms. And these are all true with one important distinction: the nature of the type of “war” being fought.

Military warfare is aimed at the conquest of people and territory. Business warfare is aimed at winning customers and markets. Military combat aims at destruction and victory by the use of overwhelming force. Business competition aims at finding better, faster, and cheaper ways of pleasing customers in competition with other companies that are trying to please the same customers.

This business competition is fierce. Many of the finest minds and the most talented people who have ever lived are thinking and working day and night to find ways to satisfy customers with new and better products and services. The race is on. Only those who can learn and apply the very best ideas and methods faster than their competitors will survive.

The “Winning Edge” concept says, “small differences in ability can lead to enormous differences in results.” Small differences in your own personal repertoire of knowledge and skills can lead to major differences in your income and achievements.

Your aim throughout your career, for yourself and your company, should be to acquire and develop the winning edges in your field that can mean all the difference between success and mediocrity.

Today, strategies and techniques for achieving success at every level of business, and in every activity of life, are more widely available and proliferating more rapidly than at any other time in human history. And we can all benefit from them by seizing them and applying them to our lives.

The purpose of this book is to share with you a system of proven principles, or “laws,” that have been discovered and rediscovered, practiced and implemented, by the most successful businesspeople everywhere, in every kind of organization, large and small, throughout the history of business enterprise. The practice of these laws will give you the winning edge.

When you know and understand these timeless truths, you will gain a tremendous advantage over those who do not. When you organize your life and business according to these universal laws and principles, you can start, build, manage, or turn around a business or department faster and easier than perhaps you ever thought possible.

The more you incorporate these principles into your daily thinking and decision making, the more effective you will become. 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 with greater consistency.

Some of these laws may sound unusual or even controversial when you first read them. Nonetheless, they are timeless truths. They have always existed. They have always worked. They are natural laws. They are embedded in the universe. In the long run, they are inviolable.

Thomas Henry Huxley wrote in A Liberal Education, “The chess board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the Laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.”