Zig Ziglar

Hilary Hinton "Zig" Ziglar (1926-2012) was an American author, salesman and motivational speaker. He became one of the best-known voices of the self-help movement in the United States, blending years of sales experience with an upbeat, faith-centered message that reached audiences far beyond the business world.

He was born prematurely in Coffee County, Alabama, the tenth of twelve children. When he was five, his father took a management job on a Mississippi farm, and the family moved to Yazoo City, where most of his childhood unfolded. The following year his father died of a stroke, and a younger sister died two days later. His mother raised the children alone; Ziglar later described her as having little formal schooling yet a remarkable store of common sense, and he often quoted her sayings.

Between 1943 and 1945 he took part in a Navy training program at the University of South Carolina, where he met Jean Abernathy, his future wife. After leaving college in 1947 he took a sales job with the WearEver cookware company in South Carolina. The first years were financially hard for the couple, but he kept a hopeful outlook, and he rose to field manager and then divisional supervisor by 1950. Alongside his day job he began giving talks on self-improvement.

In 1963 he was a founding member of American Salesmasters, which staged seminars for salespeople in cities across the South and Midwest, and he went on to speak widely for the National Association of Sales Education. In 1977 he founded what became Ziglar, Inc. His style was conversational and full of stories, and he openly built Christian faith into his talks and writing.

His legacy rests on popularizing the idea that attitude, discipline and good relationships shape professional success, a message that shaped many trainers and salespeople. After a fall in 2007 left him with short-term memory problems, he retired in 2010. He died in 2012 at a hospital in Plano, Texas.