Early years Proctor claimed to have had a poor self-image and little ambition as a child. After graduating
8th grade public school, he enrolled at
Danforth Tech, but dropped out a couple of months later after a
bandsaw-inflicted thumb injury left him with no plans for the future (he later said, "It was dangling there. It still hurts, and that's 60 years ago"). In his autobiography, Proctor described that after dropping out of school he held a number of odd jobs, in his own words, "dumb jobs, like factories, freaking
gas stations, you know, changing tires, lubricating cars, oil, changing the oil. I just did anything that come along." However, in the early 1960s, Proctor was working with the
Toronto Fire Department, when a man named Raymond Douglas Stanford shared the book
Think and Grow Rich with him. Soon afterward, Proctor claimed his life started to change as the book shifted his focus in life. Proctor claimed he quit his job at the fire department, and started a company offering cleaning services as his first enterprise - a venture that netted him over $100,000 in his starting year despite having neither formal education nor business experience. The book went on to become a New York Times international best seller. It also caught the attention of Australian-based filmmaker
Rhonda Byrne, leading her to request that Proctor participate in the 2006 movie
The Secret. Death Proctor died on February 3, 2022, at the age of 87. A press release sent by the Proctor Gallagher Institute stated that his death was due to "natural causes". ==Law of attraction==