Motivational speaker gave advice in upbeat manner
In Zig Ziglar’s world, the morning alarm rang on the “opportunity clock” and “if you aren’t on fire” when you get to work, “then your wood is wet.”
Ziglar, a motivational speaker whose “Success Rallies,” “Born to Win” seminars, more than 25 self-help books and countless audiotapes attracted millions of followers with homespun advice on career advancement and moral uplift, died Wednesday at a hospital in the Dallas suburb of Plano. He was 86.
Rising by one’s bootstraps through the “power of positive thinking” has long been a compelling narrative in American lore. Few messengers of prosperity have been able to sustain a relentlessly upbeat and lucrative career for as long as Ziglar.
He was a presence at corporate retreats and conferences for firms such as IBM and J.C. Penney. For the general public, some people paid $49 to hear him live or $1,595 to buy his complete written and audio package. He won over crowds with his faith-filled proverbs and earnest metaphors about setting goals and facing down adversity.
“If you’re going to have to swallow a frog,” he said in his Southern drawl, “you don’t want to have to look at that sucker too long!”
“Have you ever noticed that people who are the problem never realize it? They’re in denial. They think denial is a river in Egypt!”
“The more you gripe about your problems, the more problems you have to gripe about!”
What his words lacked in depth, they made up for in conviction.
“I’ve asked myself many times how Zig can say the same things people have been hearing all their lives, and instead of getting yawns he gets a tremendous response,” his friend Fred Smith, a former FedEx chief executive, told Texas Monthly in 1999.
“I think he’s a little like Billy Graham, whohas never really departed from the same sermon he was giving back in his 20s yet who’s never lost any effectiveness,” Smith said. “After all these years, Zig still devotes every day to living this life he talks about.”
Ziglar, who was born Hilary Hinton Ziglar, settled in the Dallas area in the late 1960s, initially for a job training workers at a direct-sales company. The business soon folded, but demand for Ziglar’s speaki ng i ntensified. He launched a business called the Zigmanship Institute, now simply known as Ziglar Inc.
His first book, “Biscuits, Fleas, and Pump Handles,” published in 1974 and later retitled “See You at the Top,” urged readers to reevaluate their lives with a “checkup from the neck up” and to quit their “stinkin’ thinkin.’ ”
His other books included “Courtship After Marriage” ( 1990) and “Staying Up, Up, Up in a Down, Down World” (2000). He wrote a memoir in 2002.
Ziglar kept up a rigorous touring schedule until retiring in 2010.