Zig Ziglar

Born Hillary Ziglar in southern rural Alabama, "Zig" Ziglar and family soon moved to Yazoo City, Mississippi, and the salesman, motivational speaker and born-again Christian hasn't looked back. As a child of the depression, Ziglar says he struggled with basic insecurities and small expectations for years. After a discharge from the Navy in 1946 Ziglar studied at the University of South Carolina. However he soon abandoned his studies and began selling aluminum pots door to door for the Wearever Aluminum Company.

But he still struggled: "During the [first] two and a half years all I did was prove they had been right not to hire me in the first place. It was really a question of survival. When our first baby was born, I had to literally go out and sell two sets of cookware in order to get her out of the hospital." Ziglar's turnaround came during a regional sales meeting when a Wearever executive pulled him aside and told Ziglar, who was shocked that the executive even knew his name, that he had been wasting his time for the past two and a half years. Although Ziglar thought he was hearing a prelude to a dismissal, the executive told him that if he'd only recognize his ability, he'd become "a great one." Soon thereafter Ziglar was 2nd of some 7,000 Wearever salesmen.

Ziglar's second revelation came in 1972 while floating in his trademark arrow-shaped swimming pool of his suburban Dallas home. Reflecting on his recent experience of being born again in Tullahoma, Tennessee, he said to himself, "Lord, I know you put this whole big universe together, and I know that someday you're going to take it down." Then, after a shooting star passed his gaze, Ziglar heard the following from the heavens above: "That's right boy, and don't you ever forget it." This would not be God's only direct contact with Ziglar: later Ziglar would hear The Creator interrupt his telephone call to tell him that if Ziglar "would leave it up to [Him, He] would take care of [the] little things for [Ziglar]."

And Ziglar's works reflect the beliefs of a born-again Southern Baptist who frequently chats with God. The best selling See You at the Top warns that "our creator decreed that the man is the head of the household" while Confessions of a Happy Christian admonishes that "[i]n Rome and Greece and all of the other eighty-eight civilizations that fell, homosexuality was the final straw." Horoscopes are "Satan's daily bulletin, published in Hell." Still, the main focus for Ziglar's written works has remained improving the self-esteem and results of sales people across the world. If the electronic presence of his name (which has spread like a rash over the Internet) should give any indication, Ziglar's fans are devout and numerous.