The key ideas

Earn What You're Really Worth

Brian Tracy, 2012

Your salary seems to be decided by your boss or by the economy. Brian Tracy sees it differently: each of us is a one-person company that sells its results. The book shows what sets the price of those results, where to look for jobs that are never advertised, and how to talk about money when you're hired and afterwards.

Who it is for

For people who work for an employer and feel they're worth more than they're paid. And for anyone looking for a job or getting ready to ask for a raise.

If you are not happy with the amount that you are earning, you can go to the nearest mirror and negotiate with your boss.

Who decided how much you earn

When Brian Tracy first heard that everyone earns exactly as much as they have decided to earn, he was furious. “That's not true,” he argued. “No one would choose to earn this amount, and worry about money all the time!” He blamed his low income on his parents, his education, his boss, the competition and the economy.

Then he looked around. There were hundreds and even thousands of people with the same problems, and they were earning far more and living much better. So it wasn't only a matter of circumstances. Tracy accepted that only one person could change his income: himself.

He wrote this book in 2012, after the crisis of 2007–2010, when many people were waiting for things to go back to the way they were. Tracy thought otherwise: the rules of the job market had changed for good.

Ahead: why every salary is a kind of commission, how the same skill can be worth several times more, where the jobs that never appear on websites are hiding, and how to ask for money with arguments rather than complaints.

A company where you're the only employee

Tracy suggests looking at your work through the eyes of a business owner. Whoever pays your salary, you always work for yourself. You run a company with one employee and one product: your services. In it you're responsible for everything at once: quality, sales, finance and growth.

The main asset of this company, according to Tracy, is your ability to get results that people will pay you for. Unless a person is already rich, this ability accounts, by the author's estimate, for 80 to 90 percent of their entire financial value.

The author compares this ability to farmland. If you don't fertilize and water it, the harvest gets poorer every year. Skills are the same: they either gain value or lose it. Someone who has stopped growing isn't standing still; he's falling behind.

Tracy cites a study which found that the top 3 percent of workers in every field acted as if they owned the companies they worked for. They took responsibility for the whole result. Losers, as he puts it, say: “That's not my job.” Winners say: “This is my company; everything is my job.”

Hence his tough joke: if you're not happy with your salary, go to the mirror and negotiate with your boss.

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About the author

Brian Tracy is an American business trainer and consultant who has worked with more than a thousand companies, and the author of books on sales and careers. He himself started out without a high school diploma, doing day labor.

All books by this author: Brian Tracy

Terms from the book

  • Zero-based thinking
  • Inflation
  • Mutual funds
  • Commission: The share of each sale that goes to the salesperson. Tracy argues that in effect every employee works on commission: every salary is paid out of the company's sales revenue.
  • Conglomerate: A large company that owns other companies, often in different industries.
  • Law of three: A rule from the book, not an economic law: an employee should bring the company three to six dollars of profit for every dollar of their salary.
  • Universal hiring rule: The author's idea: if you can raise a company's revenue or cut its costs by more than you cost yourself, it pays to hire you, even when there's no opening.
  • Copywriter: A person who writes advertising copy.
  • Cold calling: Calling and visiting people who aren't expecting a salesperson and have never dealt with one before.
  • Segmentation: Choosing the part of the market where your skill is valued most. A marketing term that Tracy carries over to careers.
  • Hidden job market: Jobs that are never advertised anywhere. By Tracy's estimate, they make up about 85 percent of all jobs.
  • Informational interview: A short meeting where you don't ask for a job but question someone who knows the field about the industry and the company.
  • Salary range: The spread of pay an employer has in mind for a position, from the lowest amount to the highest.
  • Twenty-four hour rule: The author's advice: never accept a job offer on the spot, but ask for a day to think it over.
  • Bracketing: The author's name for a negotiating technique: in response to the amount offered, name a range 10–30 percent above it.
  • Diane: The secretary Tracy hired in 1987. Six months later she asked for a 50 percent raise and got it.

All terms

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