Brian Tracy (1944–2026) was a Canadian-American author, speaker and business trainer, and the founder of Brian Tracy International. Best known for Eat That Frog!, he wrote more than 70 books on goals, time management, selling and personal success, according to his company. According to reports published on 13 November 2026, he died on 12 November 2026, aged 82, according to Wikipedia and RFG News.
Who was Brian Tracy?
Brian Tracy was born in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, on 5 January 1944, according to Wikipedia. He left high school without graduating and worked as a labourer before finding his way into straight-commission sales, according to The Psychology of Selling (Thomas Nelson, 2004), Library of Congress record. His breakthrough came when he asked the most successful salesman in his company what he was doing differently, and learned that there was a method to selling. “You can learn anything you need to learn to achieve any goal you can set for yourself,” he later said, according to Ayn Rand Institute.
He went on to earn a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Alberta in 1978 (according to University of Alberta Alumni), and in 1984 founded Brian Tracy International in Vancouver, according to Wikipedia. That year the audio publisher Nightingale-Conant released his programme The Psychology of Achievement. His company says he consulted for more than 1,000 companies and addressed more than 5 million people in about 5,000 talks and seminars; these figures come from the company itself.
His books include Maximum Achievement (1993) (according to Simon & Schuster), Eat That Frog! (2001), Goals! (2003), The Psychology of Selling (2004) and No Excuses! (2010), according to Wikipedia. He married Barbara Tracy in 1979, and they had four children. According to reports published on 13 November 2026, he died on 12 November 2026, aged 82, according to RFG News.
Tracy was open about his teachers. “I first began with the books of Napoleon Hill, Norman Vincent Peale, and others. Later, I migrated to Peter Drucker, Ludwig Von Mises, and hundreds of other thinkers,” he said in 2012, according to LA’s The Place. His influences included Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale, Maxwell Maltz, Norman Vincent Peale and Peter Drucker, and he belonged to the same generation of speakers as Zig Ziglar and Jim Rohn, according to Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life (Wiley, 2003).
For his full life story, philosophy and every technique explained step by step, read our in-depth article: Brian Tracy (1944–2026): His Life, Philosophy, Techniques and Legacy.
His key ideas in brief
- Eat That Frog. Do your most important task first.
- ABCDE. Rank every task by its consequences.
- Write your goals. Decide, write, set a deadline, plan and act.
- The self-concept. You act in line with how you see yourself.
- Self-discipline. Do what you should do, whether you feel like it or not.
- Review. Ask what you did right and what you would do differently.
At a glance
Born: 5 January 1944, Charlottetown, Canada
Died: 12 November 2026, according to reports
Education: BCom, University of Alberta, 1978
Founded: Brian Tracy International, 1984
Best-known book: Eat That Frog! (2001)
Website: BrianTracy.com
Good fit if
You want practical, step-by-step methods for time management, goal setting, selling or self-discipline, and you like lists and exercises more than theory.
Our take
One of the clearest teachers of practical productivity. Many of his methods line up well with research, though some of the figures he repeated cannot be traced to a source. Start with Eat That Frog.
Brian Tracy’s key ideas
Tracy turned the principles of earlier success writers into simple, repeatable procedures. Each card links to our complete guide. Tap a card to read more.
Eat That Frog
Tracy’s best-known idea: your “frog” is the biggest, most important task on your list, the one you are most likely to put off. Do it first, before anything else, according to Eat That Frog!. His publisher says Eat That Frog! has sold more than 4 million copies, according to Berrett-Koehler.
Read our complete Eat That Frog guide, or see how he combined it with the ABCDE method, the 80/20 rule, time blocking and single-handling and the salami-slice and Swiss-cheese methods.
ABCDE, 80/20 and the Law of Three
Tracy ranked every task by its consequences: A for must do, B for should do, C for nice to do, D for delegate and E for eliminate. “You should never be distracted by a tadpole when there is a big frog sitting there waiting to be eaten”. He paired this with the 80/20 rule and the Law of Three, which says that three tasks account for most of the value you contribute at work, according to Eat That Frog!.
Our guides: ABCDE method, 80/20 principle, Law of Three and key result areas and zero-based thinking.
Written goals and the seven steps
“A goal that is not in writing is not a goal at all. It is merely a wish and it has no energy behind it”, according to Tracy. His seven steps: decide exactly what you want, write it down, set a deadline, list everything you need to do, organise the list into a plan, take action immediately, and do something every day towards your main goal.
Goal-setting research supports specific, challenging goals (according to Locke and Latham), though the often-quoted “Yale goals study” he and others repeated has never been found, according to Tabak. Read our complete goal-setting guide, then try mindstorming to generate 20 ways to reach each goal.
The self-concept
Tracy taught that your self-concept has three parts: the self-ideal (who you want to be), the self-image (how you see yourself, your “inner mirror”) and self-esteem (how much you like yourself), according to Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life (Wiley, 2003). He followed Maxwell Maltz on the self-image, and recommended affirmations such as “I like myself”.
Research suggests that repeating positive statements can backfire for people with low self-esteem, according to Wood, Perunovic and Lee. Our guides: self-concept and affirmations.
Self-discipline and no excuses
Tracy called self-discipline the key to personal greatness, and built No Excuses! (2010) around it, with a focus on delayed gratification and long-term thinking, according to Wikipedia. Long-term research supports the importance of self-control: in a study of 1,000 children followed to age 32, childhood self-control predicted adult health, wealth and offending, according to Moffitt and colleagues.
Read our self-discipline and delayed gratification guide.
The golden hour and the two magic questions
“The golden hour is the rudder of the day”, according to Tracy. Tracy recommended spending the first hour of each morning reading, planning and reviewing goals. After every event, he asked two questions: “What did I do right?” and “What would I do differently?”, according to Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life (Wiley, 2003). Structured debriefs like this improve performance by about 25 percent on average, according to Tannenbaum and Cerasoli.
Our guides: morning routine and the golden hour and after-action review.
The psychology of selling
Tracy’s career began with door-to-door sales, and his breakthrough came when a top salesman showed him a presentation built on “a series of logical questions, from general to specific”, according to The Psychology of Selling (Thomas Nelson, 2004), Library of Congress record. His book The Psychology of Selling (2004) covers the inner game of the salesperson’s self-concept and the seven key result areas of selling.
Videos with Brian Tracy
Hand-picked and checked one by one, mostly from his official YouTube channel.
Start here
Tracy in his own words
Articles about Brian Tracy
Books by Brian Tracy
Tracy’s company says he wrote more than 70 books, according to Brian Tracy International. These are the ones most readers start with.
Courses and free resources
What the Research Shows
Many of Tracy’s methods line up with research. Others rest on figures he repeated without a source.
- Goals. Specific, challenging goals lead to better performance than vague ones in hundreds of studies, according to Locke and Latham. If–then plans, which turn goals into concrete actions, have a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals, according to Gollwitzer and Sheeran.
- The Yale goals study. The story that 3 percent of Yale graduates with written goals earned more than the other 97 percent combined has never been found; a researcher who searched the archives found no evidence it took place, according to Tabak.
- Affirmations. Repeating positive self-statements helped people with high self-esteem a little but made people with low self-esteem feel worse, according to Wood, Perunovic and Lee.
- Self-discipline. Childhood self-control predicted adult health, wealth and offending over 32 years, according to Moffitt and colleagues.
- Reviews. Debriefs after events improve performance by about 25 percent on average, according to Tannenbaum and Cerasoli.
For a full comparison, see how his advice compares with research.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Brian Tracy?
A Canadian-American author, speaker and business trainer, born in 1944, who founded Brian Tracy International and wrote more than 70 books, including Eat That Frog!, according to his company.
When did Brian Tracy die?
According to reports published on 13 November 2026, he died on 12 November 2026, aged 82.
What is Brian Tracy best known for?
His book Eat That Frog! (2001), which teaches you to do your most important task first. He is also known for the ABCDE method, his seven-step goal-setting process and The Psychology of Selling.
What does eat that frog mean?
Your frog is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to put off. Tracy’s advice was to do it first thing.
What are Brian Tracy’s best books?
Most readers start with Eat That Frog!, Maximum Achievement, Goals!, The Psychology of Selling and No Excuses!
Who influenced Brian Tracy?
He named Napoleon Hill, Norman Vincent Peale, Peter Drucker and Ludwig von Mises among his influences, and acknowledged Maxwell Maltz, Earl Nightingale, Jim Rohn and Zig Ziglar.
Books and sources
- Wikipedia: Brian Tracy (accessed 13 November 2026)
- Brian Tracy International: About Brian and Brian Tracy International
- RFG News: Brian Tracy obituary, 13 November 2026
- University of Alberta Alumni: speaker biography, Brian Tracy, ’78 BCom
- Tracy, The Psychology of Selling (Thomas Nelson, 2004), Library of Congress record
- Ayn Rand Institute: interview with Brian Tracy, recorded June 2012
- Tracy, Eat That Frog!, 3rd edition (Berrett-Koehler, 2017)
- Berrett-Koehler: 2025 bestsellers list
- Tracy, Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life (Wiley, 2003)
- Tracy: Seven Steps to Success, briantracy.com
- Tracy: How to Set Priorities Using the ABCDE Method, briantracy.com
- Tracy: The Golden Hour, briantracy.com
- Simon & Schuster: Maximum Achievement by Brian Tracy
- Locke and Latham, Building a practically useful theory of goal setting, American Psychologist 2002
- Tabak, If Your Goal Is Success, Don’t Consult These Gurus, Fast Company 1996
- Wood, Perunovic and Lee, Positive self-statements, Psychological Science 2009
- Moffitt et al., A gradient of childhood self-control, PNAS 2011
- Gollwitzer and Sheeran, Implementation intentions and goal achievement, 2006
- Tracy: Best Self Improvement & Development Books, briantracy.com
- LA’s The Place: A Chat With Brian Tracy, 10 March 2012
- Tannenbaum and Cerasoli, Do team and individual debriefs enhance performance?, Human Factors 2013
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