In Hispanic countries, where psychology-meets-entrepreneurship seminars are still a budding industry, Brazilian self-help guru Dr. Lair Ribeiro delivers a forceful wake-up call to those itching for success. Since 1992, when Ribeiro published O succeso não ocorre por acaso (El éxito no viene por casualidad/Success is No Accident) in Portuguese in Brazil, his inspirational books have dominated extended best seller lists throughout Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. O succeso has sold 1.7 million copies in Brazil alone. Some may say that Ribeiro's self-help methods may not resonate in more inundated self-help markets like the United States, but for Ribeiro, people everywhere have the same problems with success. "Most people have ideas but don't have the models they need to carry them out," he says. "That's what I try to provide for them." And his own tremendous success seems to support his theory. He has averaged a book and a half a year since O successo, and with more than 19 titles available in the United States and dozens translated into nine languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Bulgarian, and Esperanto, his simple, scientifically based strategies are reaching far beyond the Latin universe. He can even claim outselling Paulo Coelho in Brazil.

Since he was a young boy, Ribeiro has known instinctively how to realize his goals. He grew up in a middle-class household in Juiz de Fora, Brazil. "We were rich in spirit and resources, but my family were ranchers, and due to lack of education, we were poor in ideas." Despite his humble background, Ribeiro has had a love of learning since childhood, and even worked as a mathematics teacher at age 12. When he started medical school in Juiz de Fora, it didn't take long before he was teaching there too. "I read all I could about the brain in college and over my first summer vacation, I spent 10 hours a day studying it. By the time I reached my second year, I was teaching courses on it."

After he earned his M.D. and worked as a research fellow in medicine at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, he left for Houston to practice cardiology at the Methodist Hospital Baylor College of Medicine. Although Ribeiro excelled as a doctor, he discovered that teaching was still his life's passion. Fascinated by Howard Gardner's theories of intelligence and his discovery of neuro-linguistic programming, Ribeiro began giving lectures to doctors and nurses at the Deborah Heart and Lung Center in Browns Mills, New Jersey, about ways to increase intelligence and personal motivation. As word spread, his audience grew from hundreds to thousands, and Ribeiro realized the impact his talks could have. "I wanted to bring the message of success to anyone, not just those in the medical field." In the early '80s, when Ribeiro became the director at Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories, he started giving seminars around the world as part of his job, and as he moved to other positions at different corporations and universities, he built an impressive roster of contacts and speaking engagements. By the late '80s and early '90s, Ribeiro had decided to bring his message back to Brazil. "I wanted to make my living as a consultant and motivational speaker, and I thought I had my best chance by going back home."

Ribeiro began shuttling his career between Sao Paulo and New York until a friend suggested over dinner, "Why don't you commit to doing something lasting in Brazil to prove that your method works, and show people they can be successful here as well?" Ribeiro decided to introduce to Brazil a behavior modification model based on visualization, improved communication, and flexibility. It's a mix of Gardner's intelligence theories and Ribeiro's extensive knowledge of the brain. "My heroes are people like chemistry Nobel Prize winner Illya Prigogine and Richard Buckminster Fuller, an inventor who obtained hundreds of patents that couldn't even be implemented. I admire him because he was able to communicate such abstract ideas in a simple, understandable way."

As a newcomer to the publishing world, Ribeiro initially released O successo with a small Brazilian house, which asked him to pay for the first printing. He did, and within three months it became a best seller and remained one for three and a half years. In the mid '90s, Urano bought the Spanish rights to the Spanish translation, El éxito no viene por casualidad, and has purchased the rights to a majority of his books since then. (Planeta, which also publishes several Ribeiro books, will bring three of his backlist titles to the U.S. market this spring).

In his books, slim paperbacks that rarely exceed 250 pages, Ribeiro uses ubiquitous graphics and interactive exercises to engage his readers, filling them with bullet points and pull quotes that are easy on the eyes. Concepts like synergy, repetition, and focus may seem familiar to U.S. readers, but the large type, simple graphic covers—reminiscent of the kind of pamphlets you'd find at kiosks in Latin America—and abundant anecdotes add a subtle flair. "Dr. Ribeiro has a genius for taking very complex concepts and making them simple and easy to understand," says Paul Kordis, coauthor of the best-selling Strategy of the Dolphin (William Morrow, 1989) and Ribeiro's coauthor on the upcoming La ventana al mundo (Window on the Future, Planeta, 2005). Ribeiro's focus on relationships is strongly in keeping with Latin culture, and he presents his material in a nonlinear, intuitive manner suited to the Latin learning style. When Ribeiro came to Miami to introduce himself to the U.S. Latino market in 1999, he entered a new phase in his career. "Downtown Miami is completely Brazilian, and people were always asking us if we had his books, even if it was in Spanish," says Downtown Books CEO Raquel Roque. "They started carrying him at the Miami Dade County Library, and people went crazy. We started inviting him to speak at independent and chain bookstores in the area, and it was like discovering a sleeping giant. He's an ideal presenter because he's so engaging as a speaker, and he draws a good crowd [about 75 people and up]. And that 75 will buy 300 books."

The doctor also shows incredible savvy about marketing himself and choosing his topics. In the last year alone, he has done more than 72 television interviews, and he never slows his touring schedule. "I see myself as an international speaker, first, and an author second," he says. Mining international headlines for inspiration, Ribeiro has turned simple concepts into best sellers like Protect Yourself, Get Thin By Eating, To Smoke or Not to Smoke. Who wouldn't be drawn? Perhaps it's this simple communication that keeps Ribeiro current with the zeitgest and has been so good for sales.

Ribeiro strongly believes that public speakers like him have an obligation to help others develop communication and "relating" skills that are woefully underdeveloped in today's societies. "Schools in the United States and around the world teach for a life that doesn't exist anymore," he says. "We're teaching the same way we did in the industrial age, yet we're in the information age. Studies have shown that 85% of success is based on emotional abilities, but these skills aren't taught in school. People don't know how to say good morning to their neighbors. We're passing information, yet we're not communicating." And no matter his subject matter, Ribeiro is communicating to a diverse set of of demographics. He draws men and women of all ages to his readings, says Roque. "The men [attend] for his practical advice to get ahead, and the women look to improve themselves. I've even seen couples come to find better communication strategies."

Ribeiro's fans can look forward to two new mind-expanding releases. His next book, cowritten with Kordis will delve into the "female" side of the brain that focuses on building relationships and strengthening intuition. Also in the works is a novel he's writing with his wife, Eliana, called, in Portuguese, Mister Muss ("Mr. Mozzarella"). But it's not a book about cheese. Ribeiro describes it as "a novel about a retiring entrepreneur who chooses to bequeath his entire empire to seven special employees." Urano plans to release the Spanish translation by July 2004.

It seems that despite the kaleidoscope of topics, it's Ribeiro's personality that comes through to readers, bookstore owners, and librarians, who seek him out wherever he speaks. "We've had tremendous response from libraries requesting his books," says Roque. "Not only because his books are well written but because he's not just your typical translation. He's an ordinary guy who made it as a self-esteem guru in the Hispanic world, and that moves people."