Jack Reacher author Lee Child has hailed Birmingham as the 'Silicon Valley of the 19th century' and said that being a Brummie is the secret to his success.
The best-selling author credited his 'down-and-dirty' childhood in Midlands with giving him the drive and knowledge that 'if I do the work properly, it's gonna work out'.
The 67-year-old - whose novels have sold more than 100 million copies - added the hard-working qualities of the people of the 'last of the industrial cities' had made art and commerce look like 'the same thing'.
Speaking on the High Performance Podcast, Child - real name is James Dover Grant - said: "Deep down my [growth mindset] came from Birmingham, which was where I grew up.
"For those who don't know Birmingham or don't remember it at that time, it was a manufacturing city where they could do anything at all.
"Whatever you wanted, someone would make it for you. In the 19th century, a long time ago now - 200 years ago really - it was the Silicon Valley of the world.
"Anything could be done there and it was really the last of the industrial cities to fade away.
"When I was a little kid it was still going full-strength, and it was all based on the fact that whatever you wanted, somebody could do it for you.
"They would do it well, they would do it with a little bit of understated pride, and then tomorrow they would tell you how to do it better, faster and cheaper.
"It was an artisan approach and it was totally baked into me that, I believed deep-down that if you did the work and you got it right, then somebody would buy it.
"It was that simple, because that's what I saw all around me. Not in that intensive, high-falutin' way, it was all down-and-dirty.
"Whatever you wanted: you want a bolt? You want a nut? You want a steering wheel?
"There was this story going around in about 1961 or 1962, that somebody had re-designed the steering wheel for the new Ford Cortina like, 20 times, in order to save a penny.
"A lot of people thought, 'Well, that's stupid,' but if you're a Brummie, you understood immediately: a million steering wheels is a million pennies and that's worth saving.
"It also got past the argument of: 'What is art, and what is commerce?' They're both basically the same thing.
"That was my background and I thought, 'If I do the work and do it properly, it's gonna work out'."
Child explained how he incorporated his industrious Birmingham upbringing into his writing after being made redundant at 39 and deciding to write his first Jack Reacher novel.
He added: "Being a writer is monstrously egotistical. You're saying, 'I'm writing something that is worth other people's time reading', which is a ludicrously egotistical thing to say.
"But you have to believe it... Once you have achieved that you can then remember it's about the reader, it's not about you.
"It's not about getting in the gossip pages or being famous or anything like that: it's keeping the reader happy.
"Which comes back to the Birmingham thing: doing your job, doing it right."
Child has written a total of 27 books in his Jack Reacher series since his 1997 debut Killing Floor.
The character and books have since been adapted into a Hollywood film series starring Tom Cruise, and a new Amazon Prime series, Reacher.
