1) The book provides 5 specific paths to wealth: entrepreneurship, working your way up in a company, becoming a professional, entering sales, or investing well. 2) Becoming wealthy is a matter of developing the right habits and mindsets, not luck, and taking consistent steps like the wealthy have done. 3) Small, consistent actions like saving $100 per month can make you a millionaire over the long run through compound interest. Guarding your integrity and becoming a "no limits" person are also emphasized.

1. Getting Rich Your Own Way
Achieve All Your Financial Goals Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible
by Brian Tracy
John Wiley & Sons © 2004
284 pages
Focus
Leadership & Mgt.
Strategy
Sales & Marketing
Take-Aways
• The odds that you will become financially successful are one in 19. Go for it.
• Wealthy people possess prosperity consciousness, that is, they have perspectives
and habits that help make them rich.
Corporate Finance
Human Resources
Technology & Production
Small Business
Economics & Politics
Industries & Regions
Career Development
Personal Finance
Concepts & Trends
• Developing that prosperity consciousness is the first step to financial
independence.
• Becoming rich depends on shaping the right habits and taking the correct steps
over and over again. It is no accident.
• People who attain excellence (and money) have a “result orientation.” That is, they
focus on behavior that gets the outcome they desire, and they don’t get distracted.
• Choose one of the five specific, time-proven paths to getting rich: entrepreneurship,
working your way up, investing well, becoming a professional or being a salesperson.
• A good work ethic and good work habits are essential ingredients to prosperity.
• Anyone who saves $100 a month from age 21 to age 65, and invests the money to
earn 10% interest, will be worth more than $1 million upon retirement.
• Guard your integrity and become a person others can trust.
• Become a “no limits” person. Don’t listen to those who tell you what you cannot do.
Rating
(10 is best)
Overall
Applicability
Innovation
Style
8
10
6
8
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2. Relevance
What You Will Learn
In this Abstract, you will learn: 1) How to follow the specific paths to wealth; 2) Why
becoming wealthy is a matter of habit, not accident; 3) How to observe what wealthy
people do, and copy it repeatedly, so you can be wealthy, too; and 4) Why you should
strive to become a “no limits” person.
Recommendation
If you go around humming, “If I were a rich man” from Fiddler on the Roof, it might
be time to stop fiddling and go around reading instead. If wealth is your goal, man
or woman, help yourself to a serving of some vintage Brian Tracy advice. He offers
a tasty stew of maxims, aphorisms, anecdotes and general words of wisdom that will
motivate you to become better at what you do, in order to become richer. Tracy is a
walking oracle of motivation. If your desire to be wealthy seems like a pipe dream,
wake up to the blend of information he has assembled. As the master of self-help books,
Tracy offers practical advice, encouragement, motivation and effective techniques for
self-improvement. In this book, he tells you how to help yourself to money. That’s as
good an invitation as we’ve seen anywhere. Now let’s see if it works. In high hopes,
getAbstract.com recommends Tracy’s application of upbeat philosophy to the goal of
accumulating wealth.
Abstract
“Making money
is a basic skill. It
takes knowledge
and practice to
master, but since
hundreds of
thousands, and
even millions, of
men and women
have learned how
to make money
over the years,
it is obviously a
learnable skill.”
“You, too, can
become wealthy
over the course
of your working
lifetime.”
Golden Opportunities
Old world immigrants who crowded aboard creaky boats to cross the ocean to a better
life used to tell stories during the voyage. As they waited for the coast of America to
appear like a mirage of hope on the horizon, they repeated yarns about streets that
were paved with gold. America’s wealth, they said, was boundless and its opportunities
were endless.
In many ways, the opportunities they imagined generations ago are real. Anyone can
become a success. Anyone. That’s not to say it will be easy. In fact, the odds are against
you if you intend to become rich. To attain a higher level of prosperity, you have to do
more than merely wish for it. You must discipline yourself, your attitudes, your habits
and your behavior. But, if you feel, think and do the right things over and over, you will
achieve your ambition.
Once, while presenting that message to 1,200 people, author Brian Tracy watched as a
mentally-challenged young man pushed to the front of the audience and demanded in a
loud voice, “Mister Tracy, Mister Tracy, can I be a success too?” Suddenly Tracy felt he
was on the spot. While he wondered what to say, the young fellow added that he lived in
a group home and bought a $100 savings bond each month with his savings.
That was the answer. Tracy knew that someone who saves $100 a month from age 21 to
age 65, and invests it at a 10% rate of return, will be worth more than a million dollars at
retirement. In front of everyone, he was honestly able to tell the man, that he, too, could
become a success. And he repeated his contention, “Anyone can do it.”
Getting Rich Your Own Way
© Copyright 2005 getAbstract
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3. “You must become
a financial success
in your thinking
long before you
achieve it in your
reality.”
“Until you move
out of your comfort
zone and make
the mistakes
that give you the
experience you
need to succeed,
it is not possible
for you to grow
and become
capable of earning
the kind of money
you desire.”
Begin at the Beginning
The biggest difference between the wealthy and the poor, other than money, is that
prosperous people have used more of their talents and fulfilled more of their potential.
It is not magic. They focused their energies on earning wealth, and through a process
of trial and error, they achieved their goal. If you do what other successful people have
done, and do it repeatedly, you will eventually get the same result. Financial success is
no accident and no miracle. It is simply the outcome of cause and effect. Making money
is essentially a skill that can be mastered like any other skill. In essence, you aren’t rich
yet because, so far, you haven’t learned how to become rich.
Learn to Become Rich
Most people want to become rich but instead they continue to be poor. Their economic
position reflects the fact that they do the things you need to do if you want to remain poor.
There are five proven ways to stay poor:
1. Don’t imagine or believe you can become wealthy. Consider it an impossible goal fit
only for dreamers.
2. Accept that it’s possible, but don’t decide to make it true in your own life. Focus on
other things beside becoming wealthy.
3. Decide that you will improve your financial life, but procrastinate and put off the
journey. Today you’re busy or tired or whatever. Maybe you’ll start tomorrow.
4. Fail to delay gratification and spending. Don’t worry about your budget, don’t save
today so that you can invest tomorrow.
5. Continuously operate with a short-term perspective, living day to day. Don’t try to
plan your retirement or take control of your own life.
Instead, follow the five proven ways to become wealthy. They are:
“First, make a
decision to be
the best at what
you do. Pay any
price. Make any
sacrifice. Go
any distance to
become excellent
in your field.”
1. Become an entrepreneur – Economic history suggests this is the number one path to
new found riches in America. For the past 200 years, 74% of all self-made millionaires
in the U.S. have owned their own businesses.
2. Work your way up – With the advent of stock options, it is also possible to work
your way to wealth. About one in 10 of the millionaires in the U.S. worked for
large corporations for many years. They worked hard, were promoted, earned stock
options, participated in profit sharing plans and held onto that money to become
millionaires. The Seattle area, for example, is famous for its Microsoft millionaires
who went to work in the 1970s and 1980s as secretaries and programmers. They
became millionaires through stock options.
3. Become a professional – Education pays. Ten percent of U.S. millionaires are
professionals with advanced degrees, such as dentists, doctors, lawyers, architects
and engineers, whose services are in demand and who charge well for what they do.
“Self-mastery is
hard at first, but
with practice you
can reach the
point where you
can keep your
thinking on your
goals and desires
most of the time.”
4. Enter the sales profession – Some 5% of U.S. millionaires, one in 20, got that way
by being top salespeople and sales consultants. Great salespeople may never have
started a business, but they know how to sell a product or service and they get paid
handsomely for doing it. Here the 80/20 rule proves true: the top 20% of salespeople
earn 80% of the money.
5. Invest well – Some millionaires invested well in the stock market, created an invention
or authored some creative product or service.
Getting Rich Your Own Way
© Copyright 2005 getAbstract
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4. “The wealthy are
not very different
from you and me.
They have simply
used more of their
God-given talents
and done things
in a different way
from the majority.”
To learn to get rich, become a “no-limit person.” That is, you must decide that no external
factor, nothing outside yourself, can prevent you from accomplishing your goals. Stop
putting limits on yourself and do not allow others to place limits on you either.
Learn from the Best
You have two ways, and only two ways, to learn how to become wealthy. You can make
your own mistakes and learn from them. Or, you can learn from the mistakes of others.
The latter is, by far, preferable to the former.
One of the best techniques is to simply seek out successful people and follow their behavior
as a model. According to a Gallup Organization poll of 1,500 men and women registered
in Who’s Who In America, the top individuals in any field possess five qualities:
“Only one person
in 100 becomes
wealthy in the
course of their
lifetimes. Only 5%
achieve financial
independence,
in that they have
enough money
to support their
lifestyles without
ever having to
work again. This
means that the
odds against
you ending your
financial life
successfully are
19 to 1.”
“Wealth is cash
flow from other
sources. You
may earn a lot of
money, but you
are wealthy only
when your money
works for you.”
“The good news
is that focus and
concentration are
learnable skills.
They are habits
you can develop
with willpower
and practice.”
1. Uncommon common sense – The respondents had the ability to learn from their
experiences and not repeat their mistakes. They determined what worked and what
didn’t, and pursued what worked.
2. Intelligence – This is more than IQ, or what grades you received in school. Some
of those polled didn’t do particularly well in college, if they graduated at all. Many
successful entrepreneurs display the same traits of impatient curiosity exhibited by
children with attention deficit disorder. The two key forms of intelligence needed to
succeed in life are social intelligence, which is the ability to get along well with a
large variety of people, and entrepreneurial intelligence, defined as the ability to see
opportunities for profit that others might miss. These two forms of intelligence are
not covered by standard IQ tests, and are rarely tested in school. Perhaps intelligence
is best revealed by the behavior it exhibits. Intelligence is as intelligence does.
3. Job excellence – Successful people do their jobs well. They are expert at what they do
and become recognized as top performers. Above average performance isn’t enough;
you must achieve excellence. If you dedicate yourself to pursuing excellence, after
seven years of putting your whole heart into it, you will be in the top 1-2% of your
field, and you will earn 20 to 30 times more than those performing at average levels.
4. Self reliance – Top performers consider themselves the primary motivating, creative
force in their own lives. In their minds, they are responsible for their own success.
Thus, they refuse to make excuses or blame others. If you’re a top producer, you
think of yourself as the leading actor on the stage of your life.
5. Result orientation – People who have attained excellence focus continually on getting
results. They are single-minded, intent on doing what it takes to get the job done.
If you find people who exhibit these qualities and model your behavior after theirs, before
long, the odds are you’ll be on your way to a prosperous future. Other suggestions that
will put you on the fast track to riches include:
• Find a good job – And then work hard on doing the job well. If that advice sounds
simplistic, consider that 10% of self-made millionaires in the U.S. have worked all
their lives for their companies. They became very wealthy by becoming very good at
what they did.
• Do what you love to do – Successful people virtually always love what they do for a
living. Ask yourself if you could only do one thing all day long, what would it be?
• Determine your core competencies – What jobs or tasks do you do really well?
Answer that question, and then organize your life around those endeavors.
• Live with passion – Make a total commitment to be excellent.
Getting Rich Your Own Way
© Copyright 2005 getAbstract
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5. “It is only when
you can get
your finances
under control at
a low level that
you demonstrate
that you have the
ability to manage
and grow your
money at a
higher level. You
have to walk
before you run.”
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
“The starting point
of all financial
success is for
you to develop
a prosperity
consciousness.
Think of yourself
as a wealthy
person in training,
as a work
in progress.”
•
•
•
•
•
Be a good student – Commit to lifelong learning.
Save your money – Always save 10% of what you earn.
Boost others – Make yourself critical to other people’s success.
Be diligent – Work harder than everyone else.
Use your time efficiently – Don’t do anything that takes you away from your work.
Don’t drink coffee, read irrelevant e-mails or visit with your pals at the water cooler.
Expand your workday – Try starting an hour earlier or working through lunch.
Accept total responsibility for your results – Tell yourself, “I am responsible.”
Examine your priorities – Check with your boss to make sure your priorities match
what you are expected to accomplish.
Take over tasks from your boss – Learn what your boss dislikes doing and then do it
better.
Refuse to be satisfied – Always ask for more. Ask for more responsibility from your
boss and for more productivity from those working under you.
Develop specialized knowledge – In the information economy, knowledge is power.
Learn to do things faster – Become known as the one others rely on to do a job fast.
Network continually – Being a successful manager means getting promoted, and often
that depends on whom you know. Consider joining a professional association, Dale
Carnegie or Toastmasters. Being able to think and speak on your feet is a big plus.
Refuse to let fear hold you back – Don’t let worries or fears get in your way.
Determine your job’s critical aspects – Every job has crucial responsibilities. Identify
those areas and focus on being excellent in accomplishing them.
Determine where you are weakest – Commit to improving any lagging skills.
Develop excellent work habits – Maximize your productivity. Become more efficient.
Nurture a power base – Build power in your company and your community. Establish
personal power in relationships, expert power due to job knowledge and abilities, and
position power from rank and title. Make the most of your status in these areas.
Guard your integrity – Trust is the basis for all relationships; be the one others trust.
Focus on the future – Where you came from doesn’t matter as much as where you are
headed. Become a results-oriented, future-oriented person.
Start where you are – Don’t pine over what you are not. Instead, focus on what you
are and make yourself better.
Develop prosperity consciousness – Write and rewrite your goals, and believe in
your future prosperity.
Become a no-limit person – It is just as difficult to remain poor as it is to make
the necessary sacrifices to become successful and wealthy. Working harder at the
beginning will pay off handsomely later.
Your success is 100% up to you. Start the process, continue and never give up. Believe
that the streets you walk daily really are paved with golden opportunities. You only have
to open your eyes and see them. Always remember that you can get rich.
About The Author
Brian Tracy, chairman and CEO of Brian Tracy International, is a trainer, consultant,
motivator and author of the best-selling Create Your Own Future, among many other
books. He makes presentations to approximately 450,000 people a year.
Getting Rich Your Own Way
© Copyright 2005 getAbstract
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