Celebrating Zig Ziglar
Zig saved the day. With his relentless generosity, corny stories and down-home wisdom, Zig Ziglar invented modern motivational speaking, and touched the world. He touched my world, that's for sure.
We have very different backgrounds, we're from different generations and we have very different styles, but I'm in his debt. In my dreams, I hope that I will help and inspire a small fraction of the millions of people that Zig has over his fifty year career.
He contributed two giant tools to those of us in business: the notion of listening, over and over, to educational and motivational tapes, and the idea of writing down your goals, committing to them, in writing.
Twenty years ago, when my business was flatlining, Zig spoke up. For hours and hours every day in the car (on cassettes that literally melted from overuse), Zig poked and prodded and encouraged and mostly called my bluff. I remember the long drive home from yet another failed sales call, an hour or two that could have been spent planning on how I was going to quit–instead, Zig was helping me plan how I was going to stick it out.
Fifteen years later, in one of the highlights of my speaking career, he and I did a gig together in Milwaukee. It was Zig, me and Gerald Ford. I can now admit that backstage, the two of us ignored the President and just talked and talked. It's hard for me to overstate how much I owe him. How much so many of us do.
What a thrill, then, to publish a new version of his classic Performance Planner, updated for a new generation. You can buy the four-pack right here. We didn't print many copies, so I apologize if they don't last long…
Recently side-lined by an injury, Zig's no longer able to actively spread the ideas that have helped millions of people accomplish their goals. I'm privileged to be able to bring some of those ideas to you today. I hope you'll give the workbook a shot, and share the other three copies with your colleagues. If you do the work, if you actually write in this planner, the results will be significant.
Thank you for everything, Zig.