Paul J. Meyer 1928 - 2009

I lost a mentor and dear friend this morning.

The personal development industry lost a legend.

The world lost a truly wonderful human being.

At the youthful age of 81, our dear friend Mr. Paul J. Meyer passed on early this morning.

From the SUCCESS Legend feature in SUCCESS, June/July 2008: Paul J. Meyer is considered one of the most influential people in the history of the personal-achievement industry. He is the No.1-selling author of personal-development ...

materials in the world. He has sold more than $3 billion worth of materials translated into 24 languages in more than 60 countries. Just a single program—The Dynamics of Personal Motivation—has racked up more than $700 million in sales.

Paul started Success Motivation Institute 48 years ago. He was the first to condense self-improvement books and put them on reel-to-reel, later 12-inch LPs, then 8-track tapes, then cassettes and now CDs and DVDs. Paul has since written 28 full-length programs and courses on the subject of goal-setting, motivation, sales and leadership. If put into book form, all these programs would be equivalent to more than 100 books containing some of the most important and impacting personal-achievement material ever produced. W. Clement Stone, owner of SUCCESS magazine for several decades, said

Paul J. Meyer took the personal-development industry from the reading age to the audio age. Paul’s body of work has influenced the lives and teachings of many in the personal-development space including John C. Maxwell, best-selling author on leadership, who was a young man, recently married and still finding his feet as a pastor, when he first heard of him. “I have the highest regard for Paul J. Meyer and for what he stands for,” Maxwell says. “He helped open my eyes to the reality of living in the world of the possible, setting goals and taking giant steps toward my destiny. Paul J. Meyer doesn’t talk theory, he’s talking reality.”

Read the rest of this article HERE Or in SUCCESS June/July 2008 digital edtion: HERE Paul bought one of my companies back in 1999. Later I moved to Waco, TX for two years to help turn around one of his educational software companies.

Through all of this Paul was an invaluable mentor and a treasured friend. His greatest influence on me is not what he said or even from his material but the example of how he lived his life. He truly lived 'off-stage' as he represented 'on-stage'.

He was a prolific entrepreneur and mind-bogglingly productive individual which resulted in great wealth. At the same time he was an endlessly romantic husband, a dedicated father and grandfather and a generous philanthropist. He really did embody how we define 'SUCCESS' here at SUCCESS magazine.

Paul will be greatly missed but will live on through the lives he has transformed, inspired or enlightened over his 81 years of his contribution to humanity.

Did SMI (Success Motivation Institute) or Paul J. Meyer have an impact on you? If so, how?

Hide