Internet Gurus Who Coach

    In total twenty-two Internet entrepreneuers are treated. The first dozen offer coaching as a sideline to their other on-line offerings and are treated below. They are Brendon Buchard, Sean D'Souza, Brad Fallon, Mike Filsaime, Kate Freiling, Andy Jenkins, Glenn Livingston, Eben Pagan, Howie Schwartz, Paul Simister, Yaro Starak and Brian Tracy.

   Another ten U.S. Internet gurus, followed by a sample list of couple of dozen other U.S. individuals active in Internet marketing, are treated in the subpage "Internet Gurus Who Do Not Coach."

    An irritating common denominator for most of the Internet gurus is that they practice "stealth marketing," - not much by way of contact information on their websites, let alone resumes of the team. (By law in Germany a website must have an imprint giving a physical address and contact (E-Mail, telephone) of the owner. Living in Munich, I have become spoiled by this comendable requirement.)

    The obvious way to get an address is to enter the person's various domain names into Whosis. Sometimes the information is blocked (labeled "private"). However with some Internet dectective work and telephoning around, one can indeed find them. Only a couple of U.S. addresses are given below, as the return on time invested (as far as these comments are concerned) is low.

    Those with the best content are designated with an exclamation point: ! Those about whom there are major questions are designated with a question mark: ? 

    As always, you need to do your own due diligence, regardless of what people (including myself) have written in the past. What are people saying now about the products? For starters, check to see if there are any scam complaints at www.strategicprofits.com  and the (rather garish, tending towards rants) www.saltydroid.info. Also look at IM Report Card. IM's reports of the gurus are whitewashed. However the product reviews tend to be more reliable. 

!? Brendon Buchard, www.brendonburchard.com, (well done, crisp, albeit with no corporate information, no CV), www. expertsacademy.com (fair) and www.highperformanceacademy.com (single page black and white website) is a friend of the star "inspirationalist" Anthony Robbins.  A young newcomer well on the way to stardom himself, Brendon Buchard combines business and motivational content very well. He is the author of an inspirational novel, Life´s Golden Ticket, and the founder of a training institute, Expert's Academy.
    Unfortunately, Brendon Burchard has had a bad year in 2011, so bad that the ? was reluctantly added to his name. His own product remains excellent. However he has joint ventured with, and heavily promoted, two individuals whose products raise serious questions, Tim Ferris and Dean Graziosi. They are further discussed below. One has to wonder what kind of due diligence Brendon Buchard does about someone before partnering with him. 

    Allegedly Brendon Buchard attracted 200 people at $5,000 each (i.e. a million dollars gross) for a weekend seminar, before he had become thirty. His personal website offers one-on-one coaching. For an annual fee (2010) of $35,000 you get to spend half a day with him, receive telephone and on-line coaching, and also may attend his seminars and webinars at no additional charge. In the promotion for that program he states: "If you were to hire me to come in to your company and consult with you - You´d pay my standard rate of $5,000 an hour." The website states that the waiting list for the one-on-one coaching is a year.

    He also has a $25,000 a year on-line personal coaching program. For it the waiting list is two years, according to a statment he made (May 2011) in a promotional video for another offering. In one of the Expert Academy CD (audio) programs he states that his fee for telephone consultation is $3,500 an hour.

    His emphasis is on how to make money as an expert. He makes the assumption that just about anyone's life experience qualifies him as an expert in one field or another. You then just need to package this expertise as an author, public speaker, seminar leader and coach -- and with that offer associated CDs, DVDs, on-line training and webinars. That is one heck of an assumption, a real stretch, for most of the "just plain folk" out there.

    However if you are creative and do indeed have a useful expertise to share, Brendon Buchard offers outstanding training on how to monitize your knowledge, taking full advantage of the Internet. He also offers training about how to be productive. His May 2011 offer of Total Product Blueprint also includes a presentation by a guest speaker about inventing products (versus information) to sell on the Internet, a welcome addition indeed.  

    Brendon Buchard offers the rare combination of being an exceptional public speaker with solid content. (Anthony Robbins massive public seminars represent Hollywood movie star caliber entertainment and generate corresponding revenues. However he does not offer much in the way of business content.) Originally from Montana, Brendon Buchard has the hard-working ethic that is part of that culture. He states, very believably, "I get things done."

    Nevertheless he made a remarkable marketing blunder in an offering on May 11th, 2011 for Total Product Blueprint. One clicked on a link in the E-mail to get to the presentation, the first of three free videos. In it he states that 30% of his customers are from overseas, i.e. almost one third. He mentions that he earned $4.6 million in two years and now gets up to $50,000 for a keynote speech (one or two hours). One should submit a video following his format to participate in a contest.  The grand prize for the winner is $1,200.  There was NO free pass to one of his seminars, NO DVD or on-line training offered, the cost of which would be trivial to him. He didn´t think that after touting his fat earnings this prize would make him seem cheap?

    It gets worse. One clicks on to the contest rules, and sees legal boilerplate that certainly cost more than the prize of $1,200. You have to be a U.S. resident to participate! He makes an offer that frustrates and irritates almost one in three of his (potential) customers. Given the excellent quality of most of his content, this blunder is astonishing.

    Perhaps it reflects, not so much xenophobia, but rather that curious American attitude that the U.S. is the center of the known universe. In an E-Mail of June 9th, 2011 Brendon Burchard states that Total Product Blueprint generated $3.5 million in sales the first ten days of its release. Apparently the blunder was not fatal.

    There is also the question about just how much due diligence Brendon Burchard does before cooperating with someone. On July 26th, 2011 he (along with Eben Pagan, described below, and, a day later, Andy Jenkins, described at "Gurus who do not coach") introduced via E-Mail Dean Graziosi, the real estate investor. Dean was on a video promoting his method to acquire properties in the depressed U.S. real estate market.

    He is the author of Profit from Real Estate Now! The Proven No Money Down System for Today's Market, 2010. The book was really hammered by some real estate professionals at amazon.com, such as the review by Jeffrey D. Smith. Apparently Dean Graziosi's flipping technique is both unnecessarily complicated and flawed. Furthermore there are customer complaints on the Internet about his aggressive cross-selling. A "complete package" for $12,000 was promptly followed by sales calls for a "necessary supplementry tax course" for $5,000, in turn followed by ones for a "necessary credit repair service course."

    To be fair to Brendon Burchard, he admits that real estate his not his field. Making presentations is, and there is no question that Dean Graziosi is an entertaining, polished and imaginative, high energy presenter. His video series features a kind of "business card drawing" for a prize. The "business card" is your E-mail address and the prize is a house, which rents for $750 a month. (Now that prize is a little more interesting than Brendon Burchard's "only U.S. residents" $1,200 video contest.)
    However Brendon Burchard also cooperated with Tim Ferris in marketing his program about how to publish and write bestsellers. In an interview the two did with one another (July 29th/30th), the offer was made that if one attended the Tim Ferris weekend training for about $9,000 one could also attend a premium seminar by Brendon Burchard at no extra charge. 
    The publishing program may well be worth its price tag. Tim Ferris was certainly able sucessfully to promote his own books of rather dubious content: The 4-Hour Work Week and The 4-Hour Body. Apparently one of his techniques is to outsource favorable reviews of his books to be submitted to Amazon.com. At the risk of sounding old-fashioned, and perhaps influenced by my father's having been an editor, bookdealer and publisher, buying favorable reviews strikes me as about the same as buying votes. 
    Furthermore Brendon Burchard would be the first to tell you that he did not start out to build his multi-million dollar Internet empire with four hour work weeks. He does not continue to grow it with four hour work weeks, or four hour work days either. In The 4-Hour Body Tim Ferris goes even further, really outdoing himself. In it he suggests one can have a great body not with four hours a week, but with four hours a month (!) in the gym.

     The company address for Brendon Burchard is:

                                        The Burchard Group

                                        PO Box 5368 Portland

                                        Oregon 97228 USA

! Sean D´Souza, www.psychotactics.com, moved from India to New Zealand by way of Australia. Although he studied accounting, he started out as a computer savvy cartoonist and copywriter and moved into his own Internet business. His website, which has good to excellent free content, offers products about marketing and Internet marketing. An attractive feature of his "bricks and mortars" seminars is that he limits attendance to 25.

    Unlike many of the Internet heavyweights, he has a major business website. It has extensive information about his on-line products, and substantial free content as well. Surprisingly there is very little information about his company or himself on it. In his case this omission is startling. He has disagreed with the position of some Internet gurus that one should reveal little about oneself. Being mysterious elicits respect from the customers. No, he argues, trust is what counts, and to be trusted you need to give information about yourself. 

    A money-back guarantee is a major element to building trust. It is emphasized by Brendon Burchard above. The number of dishonest people who will take advantage of the guarantee to steal from you is a small fraction of the additional people who will buy because their risk has been lowered. Sean D'Souza himself mentions money back guarantees in the "Risk Reversal" section of his Brain Alchemy Master Class, a $2000 product.

    He offered (23.07.2011) a cartooning course for $350, which appears to be excellent. Yet at FAQs he baldly stated that the payment was non-refundable; there was no guarantee. Given his marketing expertise, this "not practicing what one preaches"  blunder is surprising.  

Brad Fallon, www.stompernet.com, in contrast to many other Internet entrepreneurs, does publicly admit where he was educated, as does the co-founder of StomperNet, Andy Jenkins, discussed at the subpage "Gurus who do not (coach)." Brad Fallon bought out Andy Jenkins (described below) in 2009 and StomperNet has been reported as being less successful since the split. 

    If you go to www.stompernet.com/blog/ you will find there a brief CV of Brad Fallon mentioning a degree in economics from Claremont McKenna College (1990) and a law degree from the University of Florida College of Law (1997). He proceeds from those credible points of departure to claim first year (2004?) revenues of $1.2 million from on-line business, possible, growing to $32 million p.a. by 2006, i.e. in just two years, which seems a bit of a stretch. He continues with a claim of $12 million of sales of information products in the first 12 hours of launching Stompernet in October 2006! (A rock star at a concert or a heavyweight boxing champion defending his title can earn a $1,000,000 an hour, but an Internet guru? Perhaps.)

    In an E-mail on 27.05.2011 he promotes a coaching offering of Rich Schefren (cf. below). In the E-Mail, Brad Fallon credits Rich Schefren's coaching with helping him to have earned $114 million. 

    At the blog portion of his site (as given above) he also offers professional mentors, i.e. business coaching. The hype notwithstanding, his site does offer solid content. He apparerntly is also one of the prime movers behind uQast. This site is a comprehensive platform for Internet marketing. It is based on seven elements: (1) digital media, (2) offering free content with a "one click" tie-in to paid content, (3) easy video uploading, (4) social media, (5) reviews and ratings - content on uQast will be ranked with an algorithm that reflects what viewers think of its quality, (6) built-in affiliate marketing, and (7) micro-payment continuity.

    The system will be able to handle efficiently small payments, such as $5.00 a month for an E-zine. Joining as a founding affiliate before its general release cost about $1,000, for which one received a uQast domain name, a free merchant's account and access to free Internet training. The offer, made on a webinar (23.07.2011), was well presented, with the irritating exception of constantly referring to a market of 7 billion potential customers. At best, 2 billion people have Internet access, and perhaps a little over a quarter of those use English as their primary language. A target market of over 500 million people for the webinars English speaking viewers is still huge. There is no need to multiply it by 14 by way of hype. 

? Mike Filsaime, www.mikefilsaime.com, has the professional website one would expect, but with little information about his background. In 2010 I telephoned his office on another matter and, curious, asked around a bit. Apparently Mike Filsaime was enrolled in business and computer science courses at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) from 1986 to 1988. (NYIT is a university with campuses in New York City and Long Island, and also abroad in the Middle East, China and Canada, with a total enrollment in 2010 of 15,000 students up to the Masters level.)

    He then worked for auto dealerships, becoming the sales manager for a Hyundai/Toyota dealership on Long Island. In 2004 he left that position to concentrate full time on Internet marketing, citing in his E-Mails (2010) earnings of $300,000 a month, i.e. $3,600,000 a year. In 2011 on another website, www.the-profit-platform.com, he revised this figure downwards to $1,740,000 a year. 

    In April 2011 his already attractive personal website had signficantly improved, including a mini-biography about himself. The bio still leaves some pretty large holes, but is certainly a step in the right direction. Two months later the website had taken another major step forward with sophisticated offering of a variety of products.

    He has a major E-mail list of one hundred thousand, perhaps even double or triple that, and is an expert in SEO and affiliate marketing. He is probably best known for his Butterfly Marketing program. The two spiral bound booklets of 120 and 80 pages that accompany it are excellent, well written with solid content, and for a modest price. (The program´s software was not tested.)

    He has also written an a comprehensive resource summary, The Research Report, Everything You Need To Run Your Online Business Is Here. It is sent as a pdf file. In it are references, with brief descriptions, of a variety of services. These include domain name registration, auto-responders, credit card processors, survey software and much more, 37 pages in all.

     Nevertheless, caveat emptor! There is evidence that firm does not honor its product guarantees, as scathing scam complaints  at www.strategicprofits.com show. These begin with a complaint from December, 2008. More sobering is the follow-on thread, which relates similar difficulties in more restrained language about getting a refund for Profit Program Plug-N-Play, a $1000 to $2,000 purchase (July, 2011). Let the buyer beware indeed. (The weapon of choice in the U.S. is the Better Business Bureau, www.bbb.org, which has successfully intervened on behalf of other of his customers.)

    His coaching programs are mostly delivered by staff, with his own contribution reserved for the top end. In 2011 he offered a program based on a franchising, strictly speaking, licensing, model. You could select among 45 pre-done websites. These had a triple offer: 1) the starter offer (including some free content), 2) the continuing offer for a subscription to The Internet Marketing Newsletter, a magazine about the information industry published by Mike Filsaime and 3) a big-ticket upsale for a seminar workshop or coaching program, with inquiries being received by a large, professional call center. The basic concept was that you would receive the website(s) and some SEO training, and then market the products, sharing the revenues with Mike Filsaime. 

    The concept is good. However it had a major weakness, viz. the magazine subscription. The reviews I have seen of the magazine have been overwhelmingly negative. In a webinar (30.06.2011) promoting the product, he mentioned its having a retention rate of four months. Four months is a disaster! In Graig Harris's article about "Renewal Rates," InCirculation Magazine (01/05/2006) he is writing about annual rates.     

    Three weeks after the original offer for the program, Mike Filsaime sent out to his E-mail list an opportunity to buy the same system for half price, i.e. about $1,000. Coming that soon after the original offer, the new one would irritate existing customers. Furthermore some would be bound to have the bright idea of asking for a refund, and having a friend buy them the product at half price. This approach only makes sense if you make obtaining a refund difficult indeed, which seems to be the case. 

    Mike Filsaime has also had the brainstorm of scheduling cruise ship excursions, the Annual Internet Marketers Cruise. One goes on this working holiday for a chance to network with some of the main Internet gurus.

     Suggestion: If E-Commerce is a priority for your company, investigate this cruise and similar offers. If your due diligence indicates that one of them lives up to its promotion, then reward a member of your staff with it. That person should be able to find, or get a referral to, the right "E-consultant" for you.

Katie Freiling, www.katiefreiling.com, from California, apparently spent some time in Las Vegas and now (2011) lives in San Diego. She has a "holistic" orientation towards personal development and spirituality, which is rather different from anything one encounters in the C-suites. At the risk of not sounding politically correct, in the "rampant with fat-bodies" U.S., her trim figure is notable; in fact, she´s gorgeous.

    Regardless, she is dead serious about her on-line business. She shares the same focus as the others mentioned here, viz. teaching people how to make money on the Internet. Her website has several nicely done videos and she periodically offers private business coaching. In a video of June 2nd, 2011, she claimed on-line earnings of $575,000, which at any rate seems more credible than the astronomical claims of some of her competitors, such as Eben Pagan and Rich Schefren, cf. below.

! Andy Jenkins www.andyjenkinsblog.com and www.thevideoboss.com. He is a graduate of  New York University (NYU's Tisch School and Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film & Television). He has worked on Hollywood films and I believe he has won a technical Emmy for editing. He co-founded SomperNet with Brad Fallon, as described above under the latter's name, leaving it in 2009.

    Andy Jenkins periodically offers an excellent course for making website videos, The Video Boss.  The on-line course runs 9 weeks. In 2011 the cost was $2,000, promptly selling out. For its market niche it is considered the best value for money in the U.S., quite possibly world-wide.

    As Bridges has a strategic alliance with Aladin Video Clips, having a contact address is desirable. One source cites a San Diego address, but the following seems more likely to be worth trying:

Jenkins Internet Marketing LLC

7660-H Fay Ave. # 184 La Jolla

                                               California 92037 USA.  

Glenn Livingston  has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Yeshiva U. His websites include:

     1) www.tlgonline.com  Because this site has his bio (the link is to it), it was placed at the head of the list. The other sites are in alphabetical order. The site mentions that he is CEO of the firm. However he does not appear elsewhere on it, also not on the team bios. The homepage features the very attractive Sharon Livingston, presumably his wife, who has a Ph.D. in psychology from Kennedy Western U.

    2) www.emotionaleatingsecrets.com   "Eat less; exercise more." There, I solved it for you. I share Frank Kern's disbelief about the huge diat business in the U.S. His amusing take on it is quoted in the section about him on the following subpage "Internet Gurus Who Do Not" (coach). He is making a comparison to "eating" too many "how to make money on the Internet" courses without any exercise, i.e. doing the work to make something happen.

    3) www.glennlivingston.com 

    4) www.howtodoubleyourbusiness.com This website is for Hyper Responsive Marketing Secrets, which apparently is supported by 21 employees (not shown on the website though). Glenn Livingston mentions that he is the CEO of two consulting companies, The Livingston Group for Marketing, Inc. and Executive Solutions, Inc. Together these have billed $14 million to the Fortune 500. On website (3) above his wife uses the figure $30 million.

    5) www.lifecoachingbusinesssecrets.com  "As an experienced coach and supervisor of dozens more. . ." Glenn Livingston offers two products on this website. They are "Back Pocket Coaching Power" and "Time Management for Coaches," together offered for $50. Interestingly the website mentions, highlighted in yellow, that he only accepts PayPal for purchasing products, and not for continuity programs. Why?

    6) www.payperclicksearchmarketing.com   At "About" on this website there is a bio of Glen Livingston. On this website Glen Livingston offers telephone coaching: $334 for 20 minutes, $500 for 30 min. and $1,000 for 60 min. Or you may talk to a student of his who will reveal his last name upon your actually talking to him for $200 fro 20 min., $300 for 30 min. and $600 for an hour.

! ?  Eben Pagan has had a great first half of a year in 2011, moving from a big ? to an ! with a little ? remaining as a penality for exaggerated claims. First, let us consider the good news.
     The bad news are his claims of on-line revenues of $20 million per year, i.e. about $1,666,000 a month. In an E-Mail of 23.06.2011 he states that since starting to sell information products on-line ten years ago, he has had over $100 million in sales, all without a central office. Therefore his having multiple websites is not surprising. However that each of the six sites below generates an average of $278,000 a month appears unlikely. Perhaps he has other significant sources of on-line revenues. The status of the websites as of May 2011 was:

    1) www.doubleyourdating.com, his first site, is still alive and well. It has some amusing content about how single men can improve their social lives, at any rate in the context of the Californian dating scene.

    2) www.ebenpaganvideos.com appears inactive, as it leads one to an Optimize Press site that does not seem to have anything to do with his businesses.

    3) www.ebenpagan.wordpress.com is a straight print blog, without images. It emphasizes self-promotion. The most recent posts on it were from August, 2009.

    4) www.ebenpage.org is rather garish. It has a large opt-in for one to receive a free report about him.

    5) www.getaltitude.com brings one to the headline "Altitude is closed" -- followed by a quieter opt-in to receive free video training.

    6) www.altitudeblog.com is by far the most attractive of the sites, with a clean, elegant design. However as of May, 2011 the material on it is all dated 2008. For further information, it directs you to the preceding website (5).

    He does not appear to have a comprehensive business website, either under his own name or that of a corporation. He is associated with Hot Media Inc., according to an FTC Disclosure.*  He is excellent at public speaking and offers some good free content. He has done tele-seminars with Brendon Burchard, whose programs and training he frequently promotes.

    Information gleaned from here and there is that Eben Pagan is originally from Oregon. He had a slow start, flunking out of high school, then out of community college.  Apparently he did manual labor in his early twenties before getting into real estate sales.

    His first on-line venture was selling dating advice: "Double Your Dating" under the pseudonym David DeAngelo. Four major coaching launches are:

        1. - Guru Mastermind

        2. - Guru Homestudy

        3. - Guru Blueprint (2010) The program was to help people launch their information businesses on the Internet with a three-month group coaching program. One also received one-on-one sessions with business coaches he had hired, as well as webinars and other training material. Program sections were limited to 25 persons. The cost was about $ 2,000.

        4. - Guru Mastermind (August, 2011) One receives the Blueprint with updated material and new videos for about $2,000.

    Two company addresses are:

    Get Altitude LLC                                       David DeAngelo Marketing, Inc.

    3960 Howard Hughes** Hwy Las Vegas     3435 Ocean Park Blvd. Suite 202    

    Nevada 89169 USA                                  Santa Monica, California 90405 USA

* FTC  www.ftc.gov refers to the Federal Trade Commission of the U.S. It is a federal agency that enforces consumer protection laws, such as the endorsement guidelines for bloggers (revised 2009).

** The street is named after Howard Hughes, the aviation entrepreneur. He had his first flying lessons at 14 and became one of the most influential aviators in history. (Along the way he owned TWA airlines.)  He produced his first Hollywood film, a critical and financial success, at the age of 22. At 25 he spent $3.8 million (ca. $50 million today) to produce the aviation film Hell´s Angels. He died as an eccentric billionaire recluse. (Wikipedia, 2011)

! Howie Schwartz, www.howiesapprenticevoyeur.com, www.consistentpromotion.com, repeatedly offers very well done, long pdf downloads for free about various Internet marketing subjects. (He´s seen the halls of academia somewhere, possibly at one of those prestigious East coast "decked with holly" ones.) The website is for one of his programs, but, similar to many other Internet gurus, he has no comprehensive business website.

    The apprentice website itself is not updated, peculiar indeed for someone who has staff working for him. In April 2011 the site featured a program for May 2010, and takes you to a page that "does not exist" when you click on his name. When you click on "consulting," you see a reference to his being CEO of Blogsucession.com, which also no longer exists, and a fee of $150 an hour for telephone coaching. Both Eben Pagan and he have good content, so their "smoke and mirrors" (lack of) company and personal information seems odd.

    In April 2011 Howie Schwartz offered a comprehensive five-month coaching program, limited to 25 people, at a cost of $3,000. The first two months consist of webinars with follow-up Q & A sessions, and one personal 30 min. telephone call per month with him. The next three months one has two calls per month. A real plus of the program is the chance to attend two "real" seminars (as opposed to webinars), one in May in Connecticut and the other in June in San Francisco.

    As a bonus for joining one gets access to on-line content he has sold in the past, apparently to almost all of it. The program appears to be good value for money. However before signing up for it, or a similar future offering, one needs first to do a little more "due diligence" on the obscure creator and presenter.

! Yaro Starak, www.entrepreneurs-journey.com, out of Australia is the leading blogging guru. He teaches people how to make money blogging. (There are a number of competitors in the field with lesser reputations.) His website (also vague about his business) mentions coaching, including the possibility of one-on-one coaching. In 2010 for $5,000 or $6,000 one could receive over a period of twelve weeks six one-on-one calls (i.e. three hours) and six conference calls (duration not specified) plus access to various on-line resources. His fee for private coaching over the phone or Skype is $1,000 an hour (2011).

    A host of Internet marketers imply a "life on the beach" can be achieved with little effort. The "four hour work week" is one of the most ludicrous claims. In contrast, Yarol Starak has written a very honest blog about what it really does take to succeed. His autobiographical blog, ten ways to make money on the Internet, is far more detailed than a resume. Anyone who thinks the Internet is an easy road to instant millions should read it!

Brian Tracy, www.briantracy.com, although not really an Internet guru, is an interesting example of "bricks and clicks." He sells self-help, motivational and business education products on-line with upgrades to seminars. In a recent promotion (September, 2010) for a business seminar, he mentions that his fee for one-on-one coaching is $5,000 an hour. (Is this fee just advertising puffery, or is it really what he earns, reflecting low level celebrity status?). He too has good content. In fact a one-and-a-half minute video of his, "Eat that frog!" is the second part of the insert at "II. Inspiration versus Procrastination" at B. Blue Star Start-up Strategy, VI. Start-up Strategy, at Services.

     An attractive aspect of his website is that it actually shows pictures and paragraph CVs of the 15 people who comprise his staff. That notwithstanding, the information about himself is very vague. The statement is made that in a thirty-year career he has consulted over 10,000 companies, held over 5,000 seminars and talks, and written 45 books. That means that in an average year he consulted with 333 companies and made 167 presentations, meanwhile writing 1 and 1/2 books.

    Of course he did not work just 50 five day-weeks (250 days) in the year. Let us say that he worked 38 six-day weeks, and 15 seven-day weeks (333 days). Every work day he consulted with a different company. Every other work day he made a presentation. His free Sundays (38 of them in the year), he did his writing for his books. (That means in an uninterruped ten weeks of full time writing, he would finish three books.) As his talks were held in 80 some countries, one also has to include significant travel time. To maintain this pace over decades is impressive.

    He also states having been COO of a company with $265 million in assets and $75 million in sales, but does not name it. He claims he knows four languages, but does not name them. The Wikipedia article about him fills in some of the blanks. He dropped out of high school in Vancouver, Canada, worked as a laborer. Then he traveled the world for two years working on a Norwegian freighter. He earned a high school diploma through evening courses.

    He got into commission sales, then real estate. He worked for Allarcom Developments, a home builder in Edmonton, Alberta Canada. He started selling self-improvement tapes and books out of an office in a warehouse in the south end of Edmonton. Eventually he moved to California, and never looked back.

    His books (the website mentions a total of 45) focus on self-help, as the following two examples show: Maximum Achievement, Strategies That Will Unlock Your Hidden Powers to Succeed (1993) and Flight Plan, the Real Secret of Success (2008). The Brian Tracy College of Business and Entrepreneurship, featuring an executive MBA, at Andrew Jackson University (www.aju.com) is named after him. It is a distance learning school based in Hoover, Alabama.