PLANO, TEXAS - 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." And you have to remember that "money's not the most important thing in life, but it's reasonably close to oxygen." And there will be setbacks, but "failure is an event, not a person."
Ziglar, a motivational speaker whose "Success Rallies," "Born to Win" seminars, more than 25 self-help books and countless audiotapes attracted millions of devoted followers with homespun advice on career advancement and moral uplift, died Nov. 28 at a hospital in the Dallas suburb of Plano. He was 86.
He had pneumonia, said his executive assistant, Laurie Magers.
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.
Zig Ziglar! A human exclamation point! The world's most popular motivational speaker, as he was often described, was always excited because "you never judge a day by the weather!"
He was a presence at corporate retreats and conferences for firms such as IBM and JCPenney. 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. 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, the former FedEx chief executive, told Texas Monthly in 1999.
"I think he's a little like Billy Graham, who has 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, to applying some eternal truths about character, commitment, hard work and self-determination."
Advancement in all its forms appealed to Hilary Hinton Ziglar, who was the 10th of 12 children born in rural Coffee County, Ala., on Nov. 6, 1926. He was raised by his widowed mother in Yazoo City, Miss.
After Navy service at the end in World War II, he was married in 1946 to Jean Abernathy. He attended the University of South Carolina, but he was a middling student and left to work as a door-to-door cookware salesman.
As he was promoted through the ranks of the company, Ziglar became drawn to the power of self-help speakers and their ability to influence others. He began giving talks at church and Rotary Club meetings.
He settled in the Dallas area by the late 1960s, initially for a job training workers at a direct-sales company. The business soon folded, but the demand for Ziglar's speaking had intensified. He launched a business called the Zigmanship Institute, now simply known as Ziglar Inc.
Ziglar, who sometimes earned tens of thousands of dollars per speech and other times waived his fee, kept up a rigorous touring schedule until retiring in 2010.