FOREWORD

I met Hyrum Smith over thirty years ago when we shared the speaking platform as part of a daylong seminar on executive excellence. We immediately became soul mates when we discovered our mutual belief that effective living and leading is a result of mastering a few simple truths. As a result, throughout our careers we have strived to identify some of those simple truths to help ourselves and others live better lives. That’s what The One Minute Manager—as well as, I hope, all of my follow-up books—were all about.

Helping people make their lives work was certainly Hyrum’s intention when he and his colleagues created the Franklin Planner and time management seminars. He and his fabulous wife Gail started Franklin Quest and later, through acquisition, created Franklin Covey.

As good as those concepts were, it is my opinion that Hyrum’s greatest work began when he and Jerry Pulsipher developed the Reality Model—the core concept of this wonderful book. I first heard Hyrum speak about the Reality Model over twenty years ago when he agreed to be the “cleanup” speaker on a national tour I was doing with Don Shula, the legendary coach of the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins football team, to promote our coauthored book Everyone’s a Coach. Don and I would talk about the simple truths in our book and then turn the microphone over to Hyrum, who would help the audience understand how to apply the book’s concepts to their lives. Enter the Reality Model and its own simple truth: effective living starts and ends with our beliefs about how to satisfy our basic needs. When Hyrum said, “You are what you believe,” people’s eyes lit up. And, to be honest, Hyrum got the highest ratings of any of us as a speaker. That’s why I’m so excited that this book is being made available.

The big idea of the book is this: if you’re not getting what you want in a certain part of your life, you can always trace it to a lousy belief. It was fun to watch Don Shula listen to Hyrum tell his favorite stories—stories like the man who was on his fourth marriage and had a strong belief that men were superior to women! Was that belief working for him in marriage? Duh! Don would roar with laughter every time.

Hyrum’s Reality Model really helped me a few years ago when I found myself tipping the scale at more than thirty pounds over my normal weight. One day my wife Margie asked me what my philosophy of eating was—particularly when I was on the road, consulting and teaching. I answered, “If I’ve been working hard, I deserve to eat anything I want at night.” She said, “So, how’s that working for you?” I realized if I wanted to change the results I was getting, I needed to change my belief. The use of Hyrum’s Reality Model was instrumental in helping me turn my health around, which resulted in my writing Fit at Last: Look and Feel Better Once and for All with my fitness coach, Tim Kearin.

Read You Are What You Believe and change the results you’re getting in an area of your life that’s not working. Thanks, Hyrum, for sharing the simple truths inherent in your Reality Model. It will continue to make a difference in my life and in the lives of all the people who are fortunate enough to be reading this book, as well as the family members and friends with whom they share it.

Ken Blanchard, coauthor,
The One Minute Manager and Refire! Don’t Retire