Scientists at the Montreal Neurological Institute have studied hundreds of brain scans, and have come up with an amazing discovery that I want to tell you about.

The music we enjoy most, they've found, switches on the higher thinking centers of our main brain, the central cortex. The moment the good stuff starts to play we immediately think better, feel better, and work better. As Neurological Institute psychologist Robert Zatorre describes it, music triggers the "ancient circuitry, the motivation and reward system of the human mind."

This circuitry is wired in the limbic system somewhere at the center of the brain, where it rules our most basic drives, including the need for food, sex, pleasure—and music.

That's right; your brain considers the urge for music as necessary as your urge to eat, to have sex, and to seek pleasure.

For human beings music is food. It's universal to all cultures. When you and I are deprived of it we wither.

I had just parked my car at a lot and was walking toward the main shopping area on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood when I heard music drifting in my direction.

I turned the corner, looked up the street, and saw something I'll never forget.

A young college-age girl was seated at a card table along the edge of the busy sidewalk. On the table in front of her was a 1950s-style Remington manual typewriter. She was plunking away at it, occasionally gazing up at the horizon as if searching for inspiration. A big sign on her table read, "The Poem Shop."

For $10 this enterprising young lady would write a page of verse on any subject you wanted. She'd do it quickly and on the spot. Songs with lyrics added were also available. These cost $20.

Now here's the interesting part. Under her table an iPod had been programmed to broadcast arias from famous operas, the perfect music to accompany her art. Before I saw her on the sidewalk, it was the music that pulled me in her direction. Other people on the block apparently had the same experience, too. Seven or eight of them were standing around her table watching her at work, stepping up now and then with their $10 bills.

"Music," says rock singer Marilyn Manson, "is the strongest form of magic."

Along with sex, it is also is one of the world's greatest financial activators. It makes people positive, happy, and hopeful—all states of mind to put them in a buying mood. "Popular music," John Lennon once remarked, "is the world's cash register."

When I was performing on the bodybuilding circuit, the music of choice that my competitors used to accompany their routines was usually hard-pounding rock hits they'd borrowed from the top 10.

This was cool. But it was also herd thinking.

To be different, I chose the Bob Seger country and western tune "Turn the Page" as my theme song.

Already 10 years old at the time, Seger's song stirred up memory-lane nostalgia in the audience's mind, and offered a mellow contrast to heavy metal. I also did something with my musical routine that nobody in bodybuilding had ever done before. I matched the lyrics of the song to the movements in my routine.

For example, the theme of the Seger song basically says, "Here I am, on the road again. Playing the star again." These lines defined the message I wanted to convey to the audience and judges: I was on stage, playing the star. Look at me. For emphasis, every time Seger sang the refrain "Turn the page," I'd turn my back on the audience and flex my lats. Another line in the song said something to the effect that when you look at me you can't compete. When these words came on I'd point to the number pinned on my trunks.

From then on whenever bodybuilding fans heard this song, they associated the tune and the words with me. It became a kind of brand. This is the selling power of music.

Knowing how involved my son and daughter were in popular music, I once informed them that one day I'd produce my own music CDs and merchandise them across the country along with the biggest pop hits. When I told them this they laughed.

"You can't sing," my daughter taunted. "You don't play an instrument," my son chuckled.

They were right, of course. But only sort of. "You'll see," I said, and left it at that.

A few days later I called my manager, Ray Manzella, and told him I wanted to pull off a coup in the fitness industry that would change the way people across the country exercised. I wanted to take the best rock-and-roll songs of the past decades by the original artists and make them into personal trainer music CDs.

Exercisers are bored with the Muzak-like studio instrumentals, I told Ray. When people work out today, they may hear a song or two they like on their exercise CD. But the rest of the songs suck and put them to sleep. What they really want is exercise music that they know and love. Like the music they grew up with. Like oldies but goodies.

Ray loved the idea but said it would never fly. I couldn't afford to pay the millions of dollars in royalties for these songs, he insisted.

And he was right. It was an impossible idea.

But I had a plan.

I knew that Ray was friends with Rupert Perry, president of EMI and Capital Records in London. I was doing a lot of selling on QVC TV in London at the time, so I sent Mr. Perry a letter and asked if we could meet the next time I was in town. He wrote back and said sure.

A month or two later I met with Rupert Perry in his London office and explained my idea for an exercise CD using oldies but goodies. What, I asked him, was more motivational than a kick-ass personal trainer? Answer: kick-ass motivational music with original hits by original artists!

He got the concept right away and was pretty enthused. He picked up the phone, called the EMI and Capital Records offices in California, said I was coming out to LA, and told them that they should "give this man everything he wants."

To make a long story short, the West Coast guys green-lighted me on the project and gave me access to their entire library of past hits. They would take care of paying the royalties, too, they promised. I pinched myself. I had just been given access to all of EMI and Capital's greatest rock-and-roll hits copyright free!

In the next few months I launched myself into project "Exercise CD" full steam ahead.

I listened to more than 500 oldies but goodies and chose the ones I thought worked best for exercise. Then I sequenced the songs on the CD so that the number of beats in each song became progressively faster.

For instance, for the warm-up section of the CD I picked songs with 105 to 115 beats per minute. Hits like "Get on Up" by the Esquires. At beginner's level I raised the count to 115 to 125 beats with "Pump Up the Jam" by Technotronic. At intermediate the music got hotter at 130 or 140 beats with "Takin' Care of Business" by Bachman-Turner Overdrive and "Rockin' Down the Highway" by the Doobie Brothers. Then advanced level hit 150 to 160 beats per minute with "All Fired Up" by Pat Benatar. That one really gets your heart going.

Finally, for the cool-off portion of the CD I brought the rhythm down to around 125 beats a minute with "Turn Back the Hands of Time" by Tyrone Davis and others. This graded sequence ensured that an exerciser's heart rate increased in a gradual, natural way from beginner to intermediate to advanced, and then down again. And it was motivating as hell to boot.

In the next year I produced a series of four exercise CDs under the name Fit Trax. One Fit Trax CD featured old rock-and-roll songs, another pop tunes, a third techno, and a fourth funk.

A few months after the CDs came out and were distributed to stores across the country, I made a trip to Wal-Mart with my kids. I guided them past the aisles of sneakers and cosmetics over to the CD shelves.

"Hey," I said, pretending that I just happened to stumble on something interesting. "Look at this, guys. Tony Little's Fit Trax CDs. Right here on the shelf at Wal-Mart. Next to a Limp Bizkit recording. Go figure!"

Their eyes popped out. They couldn't believe it.

There's always a way when you believe in yourself and then you go for it.

Here are a few ideas to get you thinking music in your selling: