Brian Tracy

Brian Tracy was born on January 5, 1944, in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. He described his childhood as one of humble beginnings: his parents were good people, he said, but they were often out of work and the family never seemed to have enough money.

He did not graduate from high school. At the commencement ceremony he received what he called a "Leaving Certificate" rather than a diploma, and he later said he had failed the 12th grade. His first full time job was washing dishes in a hotel. He went on to wash cars and floors, and to work in a sawmill, at a gas station, on a logging crew, as a well digger, and in factories, on farms and ranches and in construction. For a time he was homeless, sleeping in his car in winter and next to it in summer.

Throughout those years, he said, he kept asking himself why some people are more successful than others. That question became the foundation of his life's work.

Tracy left high school without graduating. He later studied at the University of Alberta. Most of his education, by his own description, was self-directed: he read widely in business, economics, history, philosophy and psychology, listened to audio programs and attended seminars, and he credited the principle of cause and effect, which he traced back to Aristotle, as the key idea that shaped his thinking.

When he could no longer find laboring jobs, Tracy took a straight commission sales job going door to door. After months of struggling, he asked a top salesman what he was doing differently and was shown a professional sales process for the first time. He began studying selling systematically, and his results improved dramatically. He moved into sales management and later worked in real estate development and syndication, investments, importing, distribution and management consulting. Before founding his own company he was chief operating officer of a development company.

In 1984 he founded Brian Tracy International in Vancouver, British Columbia. The company offered training in leadership, selling, self-esteem, goals, strategy, creativity and success psychology, and was later headquartered in Solana Beach, California. According to the company, Tracy consulted for more than 1,000 companies and addressed more than five million people in about 5,000 talks and seminars in the United States, Canada and dozens of other countries, speaking to as many as 250,000 people a year at his peak. He produced more than 300 audio and video programs, including the best selling The Psychology of Achievement.

He was one of the most prolific authors in the self-help field, writing more than 80 books translated into dozens of languages.

Tracy married Barbara Tracy in 1979. They had four children: Christina Tracy Stein, Michael Tracy, Catherine Tracy and David Tracy. Christina, a psychotherapist, co-wrote books with her father including Kiss That Frog! (2012) and Find Your Balance Point (2015), and both she and Michael taught and spoke through Brian Tracy International.

In 2010 Tracy announced on his blog that he had been diagnosed with throat cancer. After months of treatment he reported that the cancer had been successfully treated, and he returned to writing and speaking.

Tracy's philosophy rested on personal responsibility. He taught that success is the result of specific actions rather than luck, that people should write down clear goals and plans, that the most important task of the day should be done first, and that continuous learning and self-discipline separate high achievers from everyone else. He often described this as cause and effect: do what successful people do and, over time, you will get the results they get.

Politically he was a conservative. He was a trustee of The Heritage Foundation from 2003, and he gave interviews to organizations such as the Ayn Rand Institute in which he argued that each person's success is his or her own responsibility.

Brian Tracy was one of the defining figures of the modern personal development and sales training industry. Eat That Frog! became one of the best known productivity books ever written, and its central image, tackling the hardest task first, entered everyday workplace language. His audio programs were a staple of commuters and salespeople for decades, and his talks continue to circulate widely on YouTube and social media.

After his death, German publisher Julien Backhaus called him "the professor of success literature" and said his books Eat That Frog and Goals would outlive him. On social media, readers around the world described how a single Brian Tracy book had changed the way they worked.

Selected books: The Psychology of Selling (1988); The Science of Self-Confidence (1991); Maximum Achievement (1993); Accelerated Learning Techniques, with Colin Rose (1995); The 21 Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires (2001); Focal Point (2001); Eat That Frog! (2001, third edition 2017); The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success (2002); Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life (2003); Create Your Own Future (2005); The Power of Charm (2006); The Art of Closing the Sale (2007); Flight Plan (2009); Reinvention (2009); No Excuses! The Power of Self-Discipline (2010); Goals!, second edition (2010); How the Best Leaders Lead (2010); Kiss That Frog!, with Christina Tracy Stein (2012); Earn What You're Really Worth (2012); The Power of Self-Confidence (2012); the Brian Tracy Success Library (2013 to 2016); Find Your Balance Point, with Christina Stein (2015); Master Your Time, Master Your Life (2016); Million Dollar Habits (2017); Believe It to Achieve It (2017).

Audio programs include The Psychology of Achievement and The New Psychology of Achievement (2008), published by Nightingale-Conant and Simon & Schuster Audio.

In 2003 Tracy entered the California gubernatorial recall election as an independent, one of 135 candidates on the ballot. He received 729 votes. His campaign was followed by BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House, where presenter Eddie Mair telephoned him every week for an update on the race.

From 2003 he served as a trustee of The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank later known for Project 2025.

Brian Tracy died on November 12, 2026, at the age of 82. His death was reported on November 13, 2026, by outlets in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere. His grandson Will Stein, the son of Christina Tracy Stein, posted a tribute saying he did not normally post about deaths in the family but knew his grandfather would want him to, and recalling that he had spoken to him the night before he died.

No cause of death or place of death has been made public.