Everybody's seen Tony Little; he's that guy with the signature long blonde ponytail screaming at you to buy his Gazelle or an array of other products on the Home Shopping Network. His profound success has led him to 45 million customers and over four billion dollars in sales. He's done Geico commercials, an ABC Nightline special and just released his book, "There's Always A Way."
Recently, Tony's been heavily involved in his company Cheeks International as well as releasing a product called the EasyShaper. He's about to enter the watch world when he releases a new product in January. The new Gazelle Transformer is in development, which he says acts like "Robocop", mimicking your every motion. Tony spoke with TheCelebrityCafe's Matt Thompson about his new book and his life.
TheCelebrityCafe: I must say your story truly is incredible after reading your book. How long did it take you to write?
Tony Little: The book probably took about eight months.
TCC: Where did you come up with the idea to write a book such as this?
TL: I didn’t come up with the idea actually. I’ve written actually four fitness books in the past for everything from Royal Home Books to Penguin books, things like that, but it was Wiley and Sons whose basically more of an educational business type of publication, that came to me and said, 'In the economy right now everybody is doing pretty rough and they’re depressed and they don’t think they can achieve anything. You’ve done really, really well and you continue to do well. Let’s write a book about your adversities and your victories and let’s motivate some people.' It was their idea. Obviously, I was excited about it because it was something other than fitness, it was more about change your mindset, change your life.
TCC: What would you say to people that would call your book optimistic and idealistic instead of being realistic?
TL: I would say that they probably aren’t making much money and they probably aren’t succeeding. [Laughs] If people read the book and see what I’ve been through and then they'll see how it parallels to the success. When one door closes and one opens. When there’s one trail up a mountain and there’s 99 trails and I have to go 97 before I hit the last one. I think that people have to go back to believing in themselves. It’s not the same as reading a success book and you’re writing down all these workbook solutions: 'I’m going to do this for the next seven days, I’m going to do this for the next ten days.' My book is about changing your mindset and going back to believing in yourself. Being positive. Being enthusiastic. That’s what gets you an audience with people.
My belief is right now there is a huge amount of opportunities in an economy like this, because the people who step out, they stand out. The people who are positive and believe in themselves are enthusiastic and really go for it, are the people who employers want to hire. I think we’re tired of people that are non-motivated and don’t know how to get the job done. So obviously it is real, it’s real if you want to make money, it’s real if you want to be a success. It’s real if you want to take the next step and go forward. You got to believe in yourself, you got to change your mindset.
TCC: After all you’ve been through, do you have less patience for people who feel sorry for themselves about their own situations?
TL: I don’t think I have less patience because obviously I feel like I’ve always got challenges. You know one of the things that’s not in my book was a new challenge that we had November 23rd and that was where we had premature twins. They were in the neonatal intensive care unit for three months. There were twelve weeks where they were on the borderline of a pound, 14 ounces. Probably ten years ago they would have died. So, even past that book I still get my own challenges just like everybody else. I don’t have patience with people who can’t seem to get it together at a time, because sometimes you keep getting pounded, but it’s the attitude that you have that gets you through that. It’s the attitude that you have and the belief in yourself and the belief in above that gets you beyond all these adversaries and into the victory areas. It’s funny -- I think probably three weeks ago -- believe it or not, it was a double page spread in the National Enquirer about the babies and the adversaries. And it was a positive article, it was a motivating article, it was an inspiring article. Sometimes you just wouldn’t think that that would come out of that magazine, but it did. I thought that was pretty cool.