Brian Tracy: “Winners Take the First Step.”

Brian Tracy shares a powerful exercise to design your ideal future and turn it into action. By creating a clear five-year vision and identifying the one skill that will move you forward most, you unlock progress. Success comes from clarity, action, and continuous improvement — starting with the very first step. Want Ad-Free Episodes? Join QOD Club and hear zero ads inside our Circle community. Plus, book clubs, mentorship calls, weekly business trainings, and new likeminded friends. Get started for only $9. Source: 2021 SUNDAY SEMINAR: Brian Tracy (PART 1)Hosted by Sean CroxtonFollow me on InstagramSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The top 20% of people in every society and business are proactive. They're constantly taking action. The bottom 80% are passive. Is there waiting for someone else to come and tell them what to do?

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Welcome back to the Quote of the Day Show. I am your host, Shawn Croxton, AshawnCroxton.com. We got Brian Tracy back on the show today. This is my favorite talk of the week. The QOD is this. Winners take the first step. The people who don't win, they don't take any steps. They just have ideas. Ideas that they never do anything with. They need to be absolutely 100% sure that it's going to work before they actually do anything. And that's just simply not how it works. You gotta go out there and do something. You have to take that first step. And as he says today, the first step is the hardest step. But when you take that first step, you can get feedback.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  You're going to get new ideas, as he talks about here. You're going to become more confident. Earlier this year, I launched a business program. And I wasn't fully clear on exactly what it was. I just knew it was something. And I was like, let's just go ahead and launch it. And let's figure it out along the way, because that's how you get clarity. Right? It's the action that creates the clarity. And now we're six weeks into the program and I'm going, okay, like this needs fixing next time. This was really good. This is something I don't want to do next time. This is something I do want to do. Here's where we need some improvement. Oh, you know, in a few months, this program's going to absolutely rock. But you have to like take action in order to find the places where it needs improvement.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  You gotta take action to get clear on exactly what it's going to look like. Too many of us aren't taking any action. You're not going to have the certainty that you want before you take action. It's just not how it works that way. You clarify along the way. Another thing he's going to talk about here is skill development. Improving your skills every day. There's a shirt that I wear around the house. It's a, it says kaizen on it. K A I Z E N. And it's a Japanese word for constant improvement. Like every day I sit down and I get better at something, right? And that's what you have to do.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Instead of like hoping that you're going to develop a skill just by fate. You step in, you say, okay, here's what I'm going to do every day to become better at this one thing that I need to be really good at in order to move the needle in my business and my life and my relationships, whatever it may be. But you have to kaizen it, right? You gotta improve on a daily basis. If you don't, somebody else is. And so keep those things in mind. Kaizen and take action because action is what creates the clarity that you want. Brian Tracy's coming up.

• 3:09Speaker 00

  So one of the things we do when we do strategic planning with corporations, and I suggest that you do this, we say, imagine you could make, wave a magic wand and create what is called a five-year fantasy. You could project forward five years and five years from now, your life would be perfect in every way. If your life was perfect in every way, five years from now, how would it be different from today? And one of the things that we teach in more extended courses is the four areas. First of all, your business, your career, your income. Second of all, your family and relationships. Third of all, your health. And fourth of all, your financial condition overall. How much do you have accumulated? How much do you have coming in monthly from your investments? Those are the four critical areas of life.

• 3:50Speaker 00

  And about 99% of your happiness or unhappiness will be because of success or failure in one of those four areas. Let's just talk about business. And what I'll do when I do strategic planning for a corporation, and these are, these are top executives in billion-dollar corporations. I'll say, let's sort of be like children. Let's fantasize and project forward. Five years and create a fantasy. And imagine that the leading business publication in your city was going to do a story on your company in five years. And they were going to go out and investigate and research and talk to customers and competitors and clients and people internally. And they're going to find that your company is incredible. And they're going to write a story about your company

• 4:33Speaker 00

  and talk about all the wonderful things about your company. The question is, what would you like them to say? What would you like them to say in this article? And would you like to say them to say? And people come up with the same answer. Great products, fabulous people, wonderful leadership, high levels of profitability, tremendous market growth, great place to work, we can attract the best people, fabulous customer service, wonderful technology. In other words, they start to just play like children with this idea. If my company was perfect, this is what they would say about my company. And I cannot tell you how important this is because there's a rule that says that whatever you see, you will be. And if you have a clear picture of what you would like your future company to look like,

• 5:17Speaker 00

  and then you come back to the present and you say, all right, if that's where I want to be in five years, what would I have to do starting today to begin to create that perfect company? What would be the first step? And here's the most amazing thing is you could always see the first step. You'd always know that you that you should start doing more of this or start doing less of that or start doing something new or stop doing something that you're already doing. But you can always see the first step. And the most wonderful thing is that when you take the first step is you get three benefits. The first benefit is that you get feedback, which enables you to self-correct. And all of life is a process of experimenting and feedback and changing and correcting. It's all of life. Second of all is you get ideas. There's something about acting that actually triggers your creativity.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  It makes you smarter. It activates more of your brain. Sitting there passively doesn't do anything. But taking action actually sort of lights up your brain like a Christmas tree or whatever we use. And the third factor is that taking action gives you confidence. Your self-confidence goes up. Is the more actions you take in the direction of your goals, the more confidence you have, the more creative you are, the more energy you have, the happier you are, you feel like you're in control of your life, you feel powerful. And that is why the difference, the eighty twenty rule that we've talked about, the top twenty percent of people in every society and business are proactive. They're constantly taking action. The bottom eighty percent are passive. Is they're waiting for someone else to come and tell them what to do. And so, since you are highly proactive,

• 6:47Speaker 00

  you're obviously in the top, probably the top ten percent of your field. And the people in the top ten percent are the ones who enjoy all the rewards. They're the ones that make all the money, they're the ones that make all the progress. Maybe not in the short term, but in the long term. You know, we're talking on the radio today is that the average self-made millionaire has been bankrupt, or nearly bankrupt, two point three times before they broke through. And they finally hit it. And they made countless mistakes, they failed over and over again. They fell on their face and fell on their face. But because they knew where they were going, when they fell on their face and picked themselves up, they were a little bit closer to their goal. Each time you fall down, you pick yourself up. So be very clear about this fantasy and then take the first step. And you always know what the first step is. The first step, I was in China last week, believe it or not.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  And in China, they have this saying, "A journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step." Well, the first step is always the hardest. To do something new, to start something new, to move out of your comfort zone, the first step is always the hardest. But it's very much like skiing, if you know, and here we have, we ski here. Unbelievable what you can do with a trillion dollars.

• 7:57Speaker 00

  But in skiing, you have to work very hard to get yourself up to the top of the slope. And then you push off, and then the natural momentum starts to carry you and you go faster, faster down the slope. Well, taking the first step is the same as pushing off. Once you take the first step, you kind of break the inertia that's holding you back and you start to move faster towards your goal. Now, when you take the first step, the most wonderful thing is you can then see the second step. And then you can see the third step, and you can always see one step ahead. And the difference between winners and losers in business and in life is winners take the first step. Everybody wants to be rich and successful and happy and healthy and have a great family relationship and live forever. People say, "Oh, these are my goals," as if you're unique.

• 8:41Speaker 00

  Everybody's got the same goals. The only question is, some people take the first step. And then they take the second step, and they take the third step, and they keep getting feedback and ideas. And they fail, and they fall down, and they pick themselves up, but they're intensely action-oriented. If there's one thing about top people like yourself, is they're action-oriented. How do I know that you're action-oriented? It's because you're here. You had to go through a lot of time and trouble and inconvenience to be here today, which means that you're action-oriented people. That is the highest praise that you can say to a person. Most people, the bottom 80%, are passive. So the first question we do is wave a magic wand and say, "If your business was perfect in five years, what would it look like?" Now Peter Drucker, the management guru, had this wonderful observation. I love Drucker.

• 9:24Speaker 00

  He said, "We greatly overestimate what we can do in one year, but we greatly underestimate what we can do in five years." And so if your job is to create a great company with absolutely excellent products and services, great reputation, good people, high sales, great profitability, wonderful place to work and so on, it's all achievable. It's just a matter of time. All you have to do is do what other companies have done to achieve the same thing. So this brings us back, and I'm looping back again, to the other fantasy that we do. Again, it's a five-year fantasy or even shorter, is you ask yourself, if you had a magic wand, and you could wave this magic wand, and overnight you could become excellent at any one skill in your business.

• 10:09Speaker 00

  You could become world-class and top maybe 1% of people in your field. If you could develop any skill within 24 hours, or take a magic pill and wake up in the next morning, and be absolutely excellent at any one skill, what one skill would help you the most to be more successful in your business? Now, this is one of the great questions, and it becomes a guiding question for the rest of your career. You ask other people this question, you ask your children, if you're as a consultant or an advisor. Keep asking people what one skill, one capability, what they call one core competence, would help you the most to achieve your business goals. In many audiences, I say, "How many people here would like to double their income?"

• 10:54Speaker 00

  And everybody raises their hand. Then I say, "What one skill would help you the most to double your income?" And you know that most people are only one skill away from doubling their income? They're only one skill away. And so, what I have found is that almost everybody knows the answer to that question. If you don't know the answer to that question, you cannot move ahead. If you do not know the answer to that question, and you cannot focus on that question, then you're stuck in place. Because the only way that we move ahead is by getting better at the most important things that we do. If we're not getting better, as the basketball coach said, "If you're not getting better, you're getting worse." And so, if we're not continually improving in the most important areas, and if you're going to improve, improve in the area that's going to give you the biggest bang for your buck.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  It's going to give you the biggest impact on your financial life in business. There may be a different answer in health, there may be a different answer in sports, but in business, what would be the one skill that would help you the most? If you could be overnight absolutely excellent, or your company could be absolutely excellent in any one skill, what would it be? Now, I'm going to ask you to write this down. Write down your answer to this question. Remember, you're proactive. Proactive people write things down. Passive people sit there like cattle and chew grass. All right? It's really important. Write it down. You must know the answer to this question.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  Now, sometimes, the answer to this question makes you a little bit uncomfortable. You don't really like the answer to this question, and the reason is you're uncomfortable in this particular skill area. Normal and natural. And why is it that you're uncomfortable with a particular skill? Can you guess? And the answer is, because you're not good at it yet. You're not good at it. When? You're not good at it yet.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  That was Brian Tracy. His website is BrianTracy.com. You can watch today's entire talk on the YouTube. It's called 2021 Sunday Seminar, Brian Tracy, Part One. All right, my friend, I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did, and I will see you tomorrow with the Rappin' Dad, Derek Clark. I'm out. Peace.

• 13:21Speaker 02

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