Jeremy Weisz 4:25
He truly, Reid as you know him, truly lives Overdeliver, you know, that’s just kind of who he is. That’s his way of life. Who are some of the other business books that we could point to? From Hay House also, I think Jim Kwik was one of them.
Reid Tracy 4:41
Yeah, we did Limitless with Jim Kwik, a big bestseller last year, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Russell Brunson who does ClickFunnels. Dan Sullivan, we did a book called Who Not How.
Jeremy Weisz 4:58
I love that book. That’s a great one. Yeah.
Reid Tracy 5:00
Super successful. We were going to publish Ryan Levesque? I don’t know if you know him.
Reid Tracy 5:00
Of course. I’ve had Ryan Levesque on the podcast. Yeah.
Reid Tracy 5:11
So he’s—we do him. We have, we’re gonna be doing Jeff Walker’s book shortly Victoria Laval? We have lots and lots and lots of different people, most of them, like I said, in the entertainment entrepreneur space.
Jeremy Weisz 5:29
How does it work Reid to for an author to work with you, at what point in the process? Do they have to have a finished book at that point? How does it work for an author?
Reid Tracy 5:40
I mean, basically, we pick the books that we’re going to do. For business books, we do 12, a year, one a month. And so it’s very competitive. But we choose the books from a book proposal, that you create a book proposal. And then we look at the books from that point, and then decide which ones we’re going to do so and a lot of it depends on your audience that you have already. And because publishers are looking for authors that have an audience that they can bring to start buying the book, because you need an audience to start with so the word of mouth starts, you know. And that’s really everyone buys books, by recommendations from their friends from business associates, or whatever. But you usually hear oh, you know, like I mentioned Who Not How you go, I liked that book, he probably told people about it. Totally. How the books get out there. And that’s what we’re looking for. And so that, yeah, I mean, several mastering businesses, you know, like to help build a business, you get a lot like Who Not How is a good example, when we launched that book, we sold like 20,000, in the first month of the book between ebooks and physical books. And Dan got 800 new clients for his things which, which people pay 10 to $30,000 for so you guys can do the math. That was a nice seven figure boost to his business from the book.
Jeremy Weisz 7:20
Yeah. And in Yeah, I was, I mean, several masterminds. And that book, the specific the Who Not How one has been thrown around several times in the mastermind groups, and I recommended it for sure. They think he wrote with Benjamin Hardy, as well. And so I’m curious, so you choose one a month, right? What do you look for? How do you choose the book audience is one factor, what are the other factors you look for?
Reid Tracy 7:48
And then like the unique idea like that, that you bring to the book that’s different from what’s already out there. And everyone kind of does this because your story’s unique, your business is unique and word is looking for ones that people are going to be able to use and benefit their business as well. So that part’s a little trickier. We’re looking for people that can write or have a writer that can write because we need the book to be completed. So when you do a book proposal, you give a couple sample chapters to show that you’re going to be able to write the book or a lot of people use writers, that’s fine. I always tell people that you know, there’s an author of the book and that a writer and they don’t have to be the same person and the author along with the ideas and thoughts and the process and the writer puts it down for everyone to read so.
Jeremy Weisz 8:41
Yeah, so audience and a unique idea and I think you know, with Who Not How I believe it was kind of like this collaboration between Tucker Max, Benjamin Hardy, and Dan Solomon. It sounded like from it and Tucker has been in the space and the, you know, the author and book world for a long time as well.
Reid Tracy 8:58
Yeah, so yeah, Tucker. So, basically, we met all of us at Joe Polish’s mastermind, we were speaking at his 100k mastermind, like he invited us to come and talk to that group about books. And it was the way well, Ben was there. I mean, he wasn’t there to talk about books, but he is an author. And he was there I think to give another talk or he’s part of that group or something. And then Tucker, I, and another agent, all were talking about books, and then Dan was there too. So we all connected at dinner and then decided to do it.
Jeremy Weisz 9:45
It was birthed.
Reid Tracy 9:47
Ben and Dan had already decided they wanted to do with it is needed to find the right publisher. That’s a long story, but it all worked out and Tucker’s got an agent for it.
Jeremy Weisz 10:01
Yeah.
Reid Tracy 10:02
And he helps that I think with a little of that editorial.
Jeremy Weisz 10:05
Yeah.
Reid Tracy 10:06
Great writer. So totally.
Jeremy Weisz 10:08
So audience, unique idea, any other pieces that you look for? Because you probably get a lot for every meal, one proposal, you probably get lots and lots of proposal, you’ve probably gone through many throughout the years, what else do you look for?
Reid Tracy 10:21
I mean, those are the main things. And then what we do from that, is then have a conversation with the author and make sure we’re a good fit for each other. And since we only do 12 business books a year, we’re very selective on what we pick, we pick. So we try to make, you know, as many of them successful, and we’ve had a lot of success. And in that category, I mean, Russell Brunson Traffic Secrets was a bestseller, New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller last year, as well. And we did three, we re-published his other two books that he had, and you have a new book coming out from him in 2022.
Jeremy Weisz 11:04
All right, cool.
Reid Tracy 11:04
We’re doing a book a year with Dan Sullivan. And, and that’s gonna be so every fall, we’re gonna have a new book from them, Ben and Dan’s for the next 10 years. So you guys can all look forward to seeing those?
Jeremy Weisz 11:22
No, they’re great. I mean, I think I’ve purchased all of his books on Audible before, and some, you know, some are shorter books, and then the Who Not How was a little bit longer, but it’s not that long. So it’s very, very valuable. So I encourage anyone check it out. Um, what about launch? So you choose, this is a really competitive process, you choose one a month, now, you’re ready to launch? What do you do to get it out there?
Reid Tracy 11:49
Yeah, well, it’s, I mean, the author that one of the things we’re doing is picking authors with an audience. So the authors will email their email list, they have podcast, hopefully, they learn from you how to do a podcast, they get that going build an audience there. And then usually they do other people’s podcasts, right. So they do like your podcast or friend’s podcast, you know, different ones for the audience they’re trying to reach that’s like the new radio shows and radio shows and TV nowadays, there’s not so much TV, the radio shows, no one listens to the radio. So everyone’s listening to podcasts. It aims in that direction. Some people have good social media followings, we have a whole process that we teach them how to do different launches. And a lot of people give bonuses if they preorder the book or order it right when it comes out. Because what you’re trying to do is get enough people to read it and tell their friends to build a critical mass, so that you get that word of mouth, which that’s what we all want. So keep that selling. So the launch is to get enough people to read it that it keeps selling. And then he does mention it every couple weeks after that, you know, to remind the new people that are coming into your world that you have a book out there and keep selling and that sort of thing. So a lot of it you know, people have their friends promote it and talk about it. And you know, there’s not there’s not a huge amount of money in books though it’s a lot of to do with friends and it’s more of the back end of the people you get into your business that buy other things brought from you than the money you’re gonna make from the book. So even the biggest selling authors are making a small portion of their income from books, but it does build the rest of their business.
Jeremy Weisz 13:50
Yeah, they may do consulting, they may have a course they may have a group program they may have another business and it all funnels into those other things that they’re doing and and obviously if you discover someone’s methodology and you love it you’re gonna see what else do they have to offer and and go down that path.
Reid Tracy 14:07
Right it just gives you tons of credibility and that sort of thing as well.
Jeremy Weisz 14:12
You know, you mentioned it. Yeah, people go on the podcast circuit as well and that podcast circuit or launching emails just gives them momentum that tends to carry through and you mentioned something Reid I love to hear more about his bonuses. I would love to hear some of the killer bonuses you seen people offer throughout the years and that could be go to the Wayne Dyers or the business one whatever, because I remember I think it was like Tim Ferriss released one of his books and, and Gary V. and really some of his books and if you buy a certain number, you get all these interesting bonuses, and I always love the creative ways people come up with bonuses. So what have you seen, that has been creative bonuses that people have come up with?
Reid Tracy 14:54
Yeah, well, I mean, there’s all different ones. I mean, people like Russell Brunson, when he first launched his first book he gave away a Ferrari, you know, or something
Jeremy Weisz 15:03
That’s pretty creative.
Reid Tracy 15:05
I think Jeff Walker won the Ferrari from all the partners that promoted his book forums, so that’s a pretty good one. People do, you know, like, I think like trips to Necker Island, and then I got, but the main ones that really make a difference are like where you they get access to you the author, either in a talk that you’re giving or something that’s valuable, the big mistake I think people make is, they don’t want to give away their best stuff in the bonuses. But that really makes a difference to give something good that they really want. So a lot of times they’ll buy the book to get the bonus. And then it’s really up to you as the author to get them to read the book. So some of the bonuses that I think are most effective are with you going through the book with them with the reader and say, like, you know, not reading it to them but explaining why chapter three is so important. And then maybe mentioned, be sure to read chapter four, and six and those kind of thing. So a lot of times like Brendon Burchard is one of our authors very successful, like High Performance Habits. He when he launched that he had a whole like four week program where he worked with them on high performance habits and really got the book out there in practice, people saw how it could affect them and their lives and started mentioning it to other people. So those are effective. I mean, each one is kind of unique and different to the author and the skills they have and audience that they’re trying to reach.
Jeremy Weisz 16:46
Yeah, no, I appreciate you sharing that Reid. Because I know one you’ve been doing this for decades and to see like personal stories but two, you’re also in with some of the best and brightest and Jeff Walker’s group in the launch. So you’ve seen what that people are doing in the creative ways. It’s really interesting. And I love what you shared. Because it’s like sometimes the most obvious thing we’re thinking of all the fancy Oh, there may be a car or a trip, but some people just want more of the same and they want more access to the author.
Reid Tracy 17:16
Yep, usually those are the best ones. Like the cars and trips might be for the partners, like if you’re used to doing some kind of partner launch where you’re getting in the mail and for leads or book sales and you really want to get people fired up because there’s like I said, there’s not a lot of money because it’s a $20 book, like how much can you make it’s not like selling a $2,000 course or something like that.
Jeremy Weisz 17:44
Yeah, I remember I was talking to this is a little while ago Jayson Gaignard at a mastermind talks and he, I believe early on, or I don’t know if his first mastermind talks, bought a ton of books from Tim Ferriss. And the bonus was to have him speak at the event. And that’s how he had Tim Ferriss speak it. I don’t know, it was one of his first events, but he bought a ton of books. You know,
Reid Tracy 18:09
Yeah people will definitely like, especially the super well known authors, like they want access to him so, that’s another way to get it going. And you know, I go Gary V. will come and speak at your mastermind, if you buy 1000 books, you know, and you know, so and people do that, like be speakers a lot of times will say, you know, I’ll reduce my speaker fee. But yeah, to give everyone a book and that sort of thing when they’re trying to make bestseller lists at the beginning. There’s all different e book campaigns you can do but yeah, there’s a whole bunch of different things you can do to launch books and and and it’s really good just to watch other people in your same industry when they released the book, what’s effective for them, and then they kind of evolves over time. So what worked two years ago might not work now. So you want to see what people are doing now so.
Jeremy Weisz 19:09
Yeah, I interviewed Dave Woodward of ClickFunnels. And he shared some of the really interesting stuff they do in their book funnel process. So I encourage anyone check out that episode because he kind of walks through from you know, the webinar to the book to the audio version and their masters. Obviously, ClickFunnels they have the back end.
Reid Tracy 19:36
And they talk about it in Traffic Secrets. He explains it all to like how they use their book funnels and then after you release the book, you can create funnels and that like Brendon Burchard has done extremely well for us and Dean Graziosi. See, when we did his book and it he did some really good stuff. For, so where they buy the book for $10, or $8, or $7, or whatever the amount is, and then have a back end where they sell courses or memberships. And
Jeremy Weisz 20:15
Yeah, Reid like, I’m the best person to be on people’s lists, because I am a heavy consumer of books and audio books. But also I just like to experience their process. So I will literally buy their book, I will buy the upsells I will buy everything because from my personal standard, but also just to see how it works. And the best way to do is just go actually go through it as a customer yourself.
Reid Tracy 20:42
Yeah, for sure, man. Yeah, like the audios we have the Hay House Unlimited Audio App. So if you want all the Hay House business books and the self help books in one place, we have it all there. Where you get access to every book ever published from Hay House, that’s all in one place. It’s and it’s cheap too like $9 a month or $59 a year. And you can have every self help book, every business book, every meditation, everything in one place. There’s 30,000 hours of audios.
Jeremy Weisz 21:18
Save you a little bit of time with time set aside. I’m curious of why you decided to do that the Unlimited Audio App. That’s an amazing deal. I’ll have to check it out. I’m a big, you know, I probably listen to two to five books per week on Audible. And so I’ll have to check out the app. What made you decide to do that Unlimited Audio App?
Reid Tracy 21:40
Yeah, well, we sell all our stuff on Audible as well. And it’s fine for consumers and the way that they have it set up but the actual deal for the publishers isn’t great, you know, you get a very, very low percentage of the revenue. It’s the opposite of ebooks and ebooks, the publisher gets the majority of the revenue and audio they get a very small percentage. And so we wanted to find other ways to give the audio to our audience at a reasonable price and we have people who love Hay House books and love Hay House authors and our audios. We’ve been doing audios since 1987 so we’re one of the first people actually to do audios. We had some of the first audios and bookstores back then where before anyone else even had audio.
Jeremy Weisz 22:37
I had the Wayne Dyer cassette tapes at home.
Reid Tracy 22:39
Yeah, we had Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay, and Bernie Siegel were the big ones
Jeremy Weisz 22:47
Yeah
Reid Tracy 22:47
We started out with and so we add all this audio and we’re you know a lot of people listen to it on Audible but we want to get another audience and we just want to give people access to more of it because for just a flat fee you can get access to all the Wayne Dyer audios we’ve ever done and you can add people just check it out and we give them 30 days free or 14 days free depending on the different offers we have and people are able to get in there try it out. And it’s a great app like it’s easy to use and it’s and people love it and that we have we launched it about 11 months ago or 10 and a half months ago and we have over 30,000 subscribers and like it’s kinda like insane word of mouth people are telling their friends try it out we have lots of meditations and the things to help you with your sleep if you want that and we have 52 morning and evening meditations that you can get your day started right Enjoy your day right but it’s really just to give our customers easy access to everything Hay House basically Yeah, I do like 10 new audios every month at least so you get all those and so there’s there’s a never ending supply.
Jeremy Weisz 24:13
It’s um it’s pretty amazing. I’m curious of that as an undertaking because it’s a big decision for a company because it’s a lot it’s a no as a technology undertaking. And by the way, so people if you want to check it out, you can go to hayhouose.com and check it out and they have a 14 day trial with unlimited access that I’m gonna I’m gonna go sign up for for sure because I spend way more per like day or a week on Audible than the whole month on Hay House. So I wish you would have told me this like 10 years ago because I’ve read one of those converters that you put the audio cassette in and converts it to digital because I want to preserve all my audio cassettes tapes the Wayne Dyer ones and everything else. And you would have saved me a lot of time because I was not easy so why? You know, what was the undertaking like of this technology?
Reid Tracy 25:07
Yeah. So I mean, we use that third party to help us do it. It’s, you know, it took us about a year to put it all together, cost like seven figures to do the development. And it’s a never, when you do an out for anyone that’s ever done. When we’ve done over 100 of them in Hay House, though I know a little bit about the app. That means it’s one thing to develop it, but then you keep making changes. So we’re on our fifth version.
Jeremy Weisz 25:35
It’s not a set it and forget it type of situation.
Reid Tracy 25:38
Though it’s a, there’s a lot of cost involved. But it’s great for the customers and really, like, we just want to give an easy access to more of the product that we have here at Hay House. Yeah. And when in the future, we’re going to be adding audio from other companies we are in talks with some people right now to do that. And so it’s really evolving, and it’s, and it’s big. And it’s fun, because audio is something you can do quick, so we can get an idea release it in a month or two, whereas books it takes years to get them out. Yeah, yeah, you get the idea that you start writing it and two or three years later it’s out people’s hands. So—
Jeremy Weisz 26:23
I’ve definitely spent more on the Audible books than I would for a year on the same authors that I bought on Audible that would be a year on Hay House. So I’m definitely going to try it.
Reid Tracy 26:34
And there’s bunch of unique things that are out there. You can’t get anywhere else do like teaching programs and things like that, that aren’t even on Audible or anywhere else. And we have a bunch of exclusive audios in there too. But mainly it’s stuff you can get everywhere else. It’s just a lot cheaper on Hay House. Yeah, like you imagine Joe Dispenza. He’s in there and Deepak Chopra is in there. And Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay, Gabby Bernstein, Jim Kwik we mentioned, Who Not How we mentioned all those. Everyone we mentioned.
Jeremy Weisz 27:14
I’ll check it out.
Reid Tracy 27:17
Just on the business stuff there’s like 20 or 30 programs. So that’s 100 hours that’ll keep you busy for a while.
Jeremy Weisz 27:24
Totally. I want to go through because you have some really, you’ve really worked with these authors and a very close basis. I’d love to hear some of those stories and lessons. But what’s the—I’m curious, Reid. Have you approached? I know you get lots of proposals. Were there any authors that you brought on that you were like, We need to have this author and you ended up approaching them instead of vice versa?
Reid Tracy 27:51
Yeah, I mean, lots of them we approach. I mean, like Esther Hicks who did Abraham. I don’t know if you know her, but she’s a big author of ours. And our very first book we did with her, it’s called Ask and It Is Given. It’s a huge classic in the self help world. We approached them they had self published some books. And we got Gregg Braden that we got and Bruce Lipton odds of our authors. When I started at Hay House, basically everyone we approached because we had three books and three books and four tapes. So you know, when I started out in 1988, that’s where we were, and we had like a million dollars in revenue. And we’re just the beginning company, and that over the years, we grew to do a lot more, we have $100 million in revenue now. So it’s changing greatly over the time. We’ve, for the first 10 years at Hay House in 1988. When I started our biggest book was You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. And she was on Oprah and Donahue in the same week in March of 1988. And it became a big huge hit. And I was like, at that time Donahue was bigger than Oprah. So that was the actually the big show was Donahue. And we’re on this little upstart, Oprah.
Jeremy Weisz 29:25
It’s amazing to think back at that, right?
Reid Tracy 29:28
Yeah. And so we the book went on the bestseller list became a big hit. But it took us 10 years before our next best selling book. So we you know, we were doing anything we could with all the different authors, lots of audio, lots of things that no one else wanted to do. Just like our very first book with Wayne Dyer was called Everyday Wisdom was just quotes, a book of quotes, because we couldn’t afford to get big advances and he was getting, you know, seven figures advances from publishers even though I was talking to Wayne every single day and Hay House paid for Wayne Dyer’s very well in partnership with Wayne his very first PBS special that was selling tons of books for Harper. We were just working with people anyway, we-could-we-did lectures, visions of the future, and I can-do-it lectures, like 30-40 a year with a bunch of different authors. And we got to know people, and met them and kinda like yours that, you know, like Brian Kurtz’s Overdeliver, like when I would pick them up, like at the days when you could walk to the gate at the airport, and I would meet them at the gate at the airport, and then drive them to the hotel and bring them to the event and then bring them back.
Jeremy Weisz 30:50
Like their personal concierge.
Reid Tracy 30:52
Yeah, personal. And, you know, no one knew that I even worked at a house that I was running it for Louise, but like so
Jeremy Weisz 31:02
They thought you were just a driver.
Reid Tracy 31:04
I mean, I knew I worked there, the authors, but know that I used to sell books in the back of the lectures, and hell, you know, all that sort of thing. And then we would just build up a relationship and get little products from them and things no one would want or we create some idea of doing a gift product or something. And then eventually, we are able to, you know, sign some of these authors and but a lot of them, you know, we helped grow them from nothing like you mentioned, Dr. Joe Dispenza. Like he had one book with health communications. And we always I had always watched him and I liked that book and liked him. And so we approached him years later and said, Look, if you’re ever gonna write another book, we would love to do it. And we ended up publishing, Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself, which is a huge international bestseller. And then we did his next book, You Are The Placebo, and then and it’s, uh, you know, and then he just became huge all over the world. But when we signed on, he wasn’t big, and yeah, you know, we talked before we got started, we’re talking about Deepak Chopra. And he said, do you have any stories about him and it’s, I have a great story about Deepak. Before anyone knew who Deepak was he had this retreat center that he had in Massachusetts, and Louise Hay and Wayne Dyer had both been there, and met him, and liked them and had read some of his books and audio programs and different things like that. And so we said, Hey, Deepak do you want to come speak at one of our events? You know, and he goes, sure, you know, my fees like $1,000. And we said, okay, we’ll give you $3,000 if you want to come and speak for us.
Jeremy Weisz 33:03
Good negotiation.
Reid Tracy 33:05
Wayne and Louise, like I think Louise went on before him and started talking him up and saying, He’s the greatest thing and she loves them. And like, we sold out of all of his books before he even got on stage. And no one had ever heard him really speak before at that point. And then he came up and gave a speech. And then Wayne was after him. And I remember at the dinner afterwards, we’re all talking. And he’s like, well, Wayne, how can I improve my speaking and Wayne like, worked with them for months and years after that, to help him become a good speaker and—
Jeremy Weisz 33:41
It’s a real community. And that’s what I hear about Hay House is the community aspect of it. I mean, the authors are helping each other. It sounds like
Reid Tracy 33:48
Yeah, we call it the Hay House, family, and everyone works together and helps each other. And it’s like a unique publisher in the sense like, we help others build their whole business, even if we’re not part of it, which no other publisher does. And we, you know, we know about internet marketing, which no other publisher does, and, like, we are one of our new authors as Mel Robbins. I don’t know if you know, her, but we’re going to publish our first book with her this fall. And we’re meeting with her and her agent, and we’re talking about the promotion and the launch and the bonuses and not the agent goes oh my god, you know, I do these meetings every day with all my authors, and you’re the only publisher that ever really has understood any of it as if it’s like that. And we do like masterminds with their authors, teach them how to do membership programs or online courses, make money for them not for Hay House, and they’re a unique place. It’s a different thing. So—
Jeremy Weisz 34:56
I love what you said, Reid, about, you know, what stuck out to me is relationships, hustle and creativity because. Listen, like you were building those relationships, picking them up from the airport, dropping them off, like, you know, just doing whatever it took in the creativity of even if you want to work with a Wayne Dyer, who has seven figure advances or whatever you just found a way to work with him with the quote book that was totally creative, and you are able to work with somebody and help them. I’d love to hear because you I think you were talking to Wayne Dyer every week, every day. What were some of the the fun Wayne Dyer stories? What was he like?
Reid Tracy 35:33
He was great. I mean, I literally did talk to him every day, my wife will tell us the call is on vacation every day. Do you answer Wayne you know, what the heck, give us a break all that but me and Evelyn became good friends of like, the classic story of him with my kids or he always taught him the Great Lakes homes, you know, here on Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior. So that’s the Great Lakes. And he always would every time he saw which was lots of times over the years, he’d say, what are the Great Lakes, let me hear things like that. And we went on cruises and trips around the world and tours. And I used to go to Maui several times a year and hang out with him and his family and a new all his kids and everybody you know, so we I mean, he there’s just so many like all the different stories that he tells and audios and PBS shows and all that sort of thing. So it’s, I mean, everything that you see in public and the books and the PBS and the lectures was how he was every day, though. I mean, it was—
Jeremy Weisz 36:52
Does anything stick out from him. I know you talk to him quite frequently. Any specific lesson that he gave to you, or any specific story he told you still that you still think about often?
Reid Tracy 37:08
Yeah, I mean, I don’t know there’s a specific story, but it’s just more of like how he treated everybody great. And like everyone from like the waitress to the flight attendant to, you know, when his suitcases came off the you know, thing at the airport, he would grab them and put them on the thing. Or, you know, he wasn’t like thinking he was better than everybody else. And I think that was a big lesson from him. I mean, it’s all his, you know, little quotes that he has, like, if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change from the power of intention, and there’s 10 secrets for success and one of them is don’t die with your music still in you. You know, like those kind of things. And I was actually we did a movie with Wayne Dyer called The Shift.
Yeah, I’ve watched that.
Yeah, yeah. And I just rewatched it last week. I mean, it’s still the lessons are so good. It’s really all about going from ambition to meaning in your life and just all his insights and thoughts and ideas and and it’s like all the stuff from Wayne like for me it wasn’t like I was like a big fan of his before he came to Hay House I always tell everybody like I get most of my knowledge from Hay House is by osmosis, just being around everyone to kind of soaks in and that someone says what do you think I should do? And I end up giving advice from one of our authors without even knowing it. And it was like that with him just hanging out and saying all the things he’s done and do that sort of stuff.
Jeremy Weisz 38:53
Reid I think your story of how you got started in this is interesting. And it’s not like you set out like I want to be in the book publishing world, right? I mean, I think you started off as an accountant right?
Reid Tracy 39:04
Yeah, I was a CPA for basically a CPA and our CPA firm I worked for was across the hall from Hay House. And when I as I mentioned earlier, Louise was on Oprah and Donahue in the same week and their whole business exploded and they walked across the hall and say, What do we do like what about this and that and so they get the partners that well, you know, we we got a you know, get all your books in order and we’ll help you and there’s the taxes and we can help you set up a foundation which we still have the Hay Foundation, where Louise left every penny that she may her whole time at Hay House and to that foundation and we give it to charities and things like that but and then they assign me and two other people to work on it. And at that time, I had never even heard of self-help or Louise Hay or anything. And it was a tough time in the world at that time because it was right in the middle of the AIDS epidemic or the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. And Louise Hay was the center point of it all like helping people. Even the President of the United States at that time wouldn’t even say the word AIDS say the word AIDS and so it was like almost it was honestly was scary like to go in there. Because of all the different people there were, you didn’t know anything about it. going in and out. Like we used to go in there. It’s embarrassing to say this a little bit now. But I used to go in there, like do the thing and then run out, wash my hands and like, do these different things.
Jeremy Weisz 40:55
Well, it’s kind of like, you know, when the Coronavirus came out, like you just have a little information, see, people don’t know how you transmitted, they don’t know how it’s passed until they get deeper in the research, you know?
Reid Tracy 41:09
Exactly. And Louise started with three people in our living room. And by 1988, she had 1,000 people a week at a park in West Hollywood called the HayRide, they used to call it and it was just basically a support group. They’re taking a positive approach to this situation like she always uses say and it’s not a we’re not going to do Ain’t it awful, we’re going to do a positive approach and do the best we can. And a lot of people did die from it, but a lot of people didn’t die from it. And she was showing, you know, that it’s possible to live and make it through and then you know, obviously they have the medical advances that have helped, but so it was a, you know, it was a weird time and all of that was new to me. And but somehow like Louise, like what always say, you know, like your thoughts create your life. And you can change things by the way you think. And I—you know, I thought it was a little weird. But I used to tell my friends like the lady’s real weird, and she has these things like, heal yourself by why you think but she’s not like trying to sell it. Like she really believes that like, she’s not like doing any of this. So there’s something about her and all that. And then they needed someone to do the accounting, they got tired of paying all the bills of the CPA firm. And I got tired of doing public accounting, which I knew I didn’t always want to do, but I wanted to get my CPA thing and all that. And then so I just took that job. And even the partners at the CPA firm said, Look, you’re good at accounting, we have all these,
Jeremy Weisz 42:58
They tried to talk you out of it.
Reid Tracy 43:00
You could go to work, like these movie studios and movie stars and construction companies and all this and like I wouldn’t pick this place. And I’m like, Well, I don’t know there’s something I’ll try it and I know there’s lots and lots of stories about it. But obviously it all worked out over this time.
Jeremy Weisz 43:22
It’s interesting read I wonder what the authors would say about this because it’s it’s crazy how I don’t know if you call it dumb luck. I don’t know if you call it fate. I don’t know what you call it. But like if your office wasn’t across the hall, and you didn’t end up working for that place, you would have never been on this lifelong journey at the Hay House. So it’s just crazy how some of these decisions take us on this path. Right this journey. And you mentioned that with Louise Hay You know, one of my one of my favorite books. So my background is in biochemistry as a chiropractor and one of my favorite books is by Candace Pert The Molecules of Emotion and she’s a you know, American neuroscientist, and she basically talks about the actual physiology of our thoughts, you know, and it’s really interesting, you know.
Reid Tracy 44:10
We did a book with Candace.
Jeremy Weisz 44:12
Oh, you did? Okay.
Reid Tracy 44:14
Yeah, so all of the research is doing.
Jeremy Weisz 44:18
it’s fascinating stuff. Reid, first of all, I have one last question but I just want to thank you thanks for the work that you do and the work you in the Hay House put out in the world. It’s I followed it for several decades and it’s an honor to have you on and talk about it firsthand. So thank you everyone, check out hayhouse.com. Check out their Unlimited Access Audio App which I will definitely be checking out after this. Now they found out about it. And last question Reid is I’d love to hear you know, obviously she was an amazing woman and giving woman and set up the foundation. I’m wondering what has come out of the foundation if there’s—You know, out of the people you’ve helped, just to give people an idea of what the foundation does and who they help.
Reid Tracy 45:06
Yeah, we, we kind of we aim for certain. Like Louise always loved to help like smaller charities but don’t spend all their money on getting more money. And like that the money goes really to help the individual people that are doing it, one of the big charities that we support is one called Solutions for Change. And what is here in San Diego, it’s in Vista, actually, and what they do is help get homeless families off the streets of mothers, usually on their kids, sometimes mothers and fathers and their kids, and, and they make them get off of any drugs or alcohol to come in, they make them have a job, they make them pay a small amount of rent for the place, and it’s 100 day program. And if you make it through the 100 days, they have like a 95% success rate to pay off being homeless. But one of the problems that they have is that they can’t get any money from the government because the government doesn’t give any money to help homeless people if you make them get off drugs, you know, so they the government doesn’t see any correlation between being on drugs and being homeless, but this place does and they’re able to see that you know, you just clean them up and it’s amazing just talking to these people. And really well the reason why it’s like these kind of charities that help kids I see it as helping kids obviously it helps the parents as well but are so important for like the Hay Foundation as Louise when she was 13 years old, she was homeless. And she lived she was from California, but she ended up in Chicago. By the time she was 16 or 15 or 16 she ended up having a baby and found a home for the baby all that sort of thing so she kind of went through this journey before she became Louise Hay. And so we’re we’re big on helping those kinds of organizations we help people like we have Yeah, like there’s a bunch of different ones we have like one of them and Oakland helps people like people that can’t afford to get alternative therapies for like cancer and things like that which obviously is big for the Hay House and. And like you said before we help people like animals Louise always loved helping animals so we do things that do that. But we have a short list of people like we’ve always held like getting food to people so like AIDS Project LA and some of the Mama’s Kitchen here in San Diego and different things like that. But it’s we give away like millions of dollars each year and try to you know help as many people as we can.
Jeremy Weisz 48:23
Reid, I want to be the first one to thank you everyone check out hayhouse.com check out more episodes of the podcast and inspiredinsider.com and check out everything else. Thanks everyone.
