Owner of Mount Hermon Christian Books & Gifts, Victoria Violet Yeo’s life is a powerful testimony of God’s faithfulness.
When her husband passed away in 1985, Victoria Violet Yeo was catapulted into the daunting position of family breadwinner, with a baby daughter to support. An opportune job offer at a Christian bookstore, however, led her down a path of blessings—not just for herself but many others.
Spurred to start her own business so that she would have the flexibility to look after her daughter Andrea, Yeo founded Mount Zion Christian Books & Gifts Centre in 1986. It was anything but easy-going, being a highly niche industry which was already populated with big players. After two years, Yeo was ready to throw in the towel.
“I remember crying out to God, ‘Lord, if it is really You who has called me to this bookstore and gift ministry, I need to hear from You’,” she says. She also feared that closing down her business would be a negative testimony to her family members who were unbelievers. The coming Sunday morning at church, the speaker unexpectedly gave an altar call for those facing business problems. Yeo ran forward with tears streaming down her face. On the way home, with her daughter in her arms, she heard a voice saying to her, “Read and meditate on Psalms 1 day and night—from now on I will bless you.’ That word has sustained me till today.”
The next day at work, an American couple Yeo had never met walked into her store and said to her, “Daughter, God has heard you. Meditate on Psalms 1—the Lord is going to bless you.”
True enough, her business prospered. When the shop relocated to Raffles Place, business boomed, expanding to five branches in 15 years.
At that time, Yeo was also actively serving as a leader at a local church and making frequent mission trips to Indonesia to minister to a church called Elim Kairos Church, in the mountainous area of Berstagi. During her trips there, she experienced many demonic attacks while staying at a run-down visitors’ inn. She dreamed about building a proper facility, and in 1998, with the financial abundance she enjoyed from her business, Yeo bought a piece of land and built the Mount Hermon Mission Centre, a 90-minute drive from Medan airport.
Besides accommodating traveling pastors and mission workers, and serving as a rental facility for international seminars and retreats, the center also doubled up as a venue of worship and service for Elim Kairos Church. Through the use of the center, the church was able to grow its membership to 700, and it has since moved into its own building.
But life took a turn in 2001 for Yeo. She decided to sell her Mount Zion business in order to relocate to the USA with her daughter who was pursuing her university degree there.
For the seven years that they were in America, Yeo faced a great number of setbacks: she was cheated of a large sum of money while trying to set up and run another Christian bookstore called Mount Hermon, her daughter was rebelling against her, the expiry of her visa was looming up, and financial pressure was climbing. But God delivered her from trouble after trouble. Through a miraculous chain of events, she was granted the green card (the United States Permanent Resident Card) after just three years of being in the United States (the minimum is five years’ residency). Her daughter returned to her, and even her USD14,000 tuition debt was paid for by a “Good Samaritan” at the 11th hour.
But Yeo says the real turning point came in 2008, when mother and daughter attended an event in which senior pastor Kong Hee was preaching. Moved by the message, they decided that it was time to return to their roots in Singapore.
Yeo made the decision to drive her business Mount Hermon at YMCA Lodge at Fort Canning Road. “Though it is not a prominent location, the Lord has sustained us and saw us through the business, as the YWCA housed many church seminars and retreats.”
She adds, “I really thank Pastor Kong for speaking about the importance of having dreams at the beginning of this year. My dream is to be able to open up more Mount Hermon branches—that would support 30 missionary workers by allowing them to work part-time at the shop and take months off to do mission work overseas.” Currently the business has four mission workers on its staff, and Yeo is opening a second branch at West Coast Plaza.
Yeo’s heart for missions brought her back to Berstagi a few times this year. Just last month, she was asked to speak to a group of kindergarten teachers. As she ended her sharing, she discovered that among her audience was the Berstagi Head of the Ministry of Education. “He said to me afterward, ‘Victoria, thank you for your message. Please come again.’” The next day, she was invited to give an impromptu speech at the SMA Negeri 1 Berastagia, the top Junior High school in the area.
“I quickly got my daughter to send me some of Pastor Kong’s sermons on dreams, and after my 10-minute sharing in front of 800 students, the Principal came up to me and said that he had never seen the students so lively. He said, ‘Please help us raise the standard of our school. You can even paint the school walls whatever color you want.’” It was then that Yeo was reminded of a dream she had three years ago, of the Lord giving her seven schools.
Now, Yeo is hoping to gather aid, resources and manpower to help revamp the school facilities and give its curriculum a boost. “Looking back now, I can see that the Lord intended for Mount Zion to be a source of provision for me and my daughter during trying times, but with Mount Hermon, I dream that God will use it to be a blessing to many nations in time to come.”
Mount Hermon Christian Books & Gifts
6 Fort Canning Road #01-01, YWCA Lodge
Singapore 179494
www.mounthermon.com.sg
Monday, May 31, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
5 Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires by Kristyn Kusek Lewis
They’re just like you. But with lots of money.
When you think “millionaire,” what image comes to mind? For many of us, it’s a flashy Wall Street banker type who flies a private jet, collects cars and lives the kind of decadent lifestyle that would make Donald Trump proud.
But many modern millionaires live in middle-class neighborhoods, work full-time and shop in discount stores like the rest of us. What motivates them isn’t material possessions but the choices that money can bring: “For the rich, it’s not about getting more stuff. It’s about having the freedom to make almost any decision you want,” says T. Harv Eker, author of Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. Wealth means you can send your child to any school or quit a job you don’t like.
According to the Spectrem Wealth Study, an annual survey of America’s wealthy, there are more people living the good life than ever before—the number of millionaires nearly doubled in the last decade. And the rich are getting richer. To make it onto the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans, a mere billionaire no longer makes the cut. This year you needed a net worth of at least $1.3 billion.
If more people are getting richer than ever, why shouldn’t you be one of them? Here, five people who have at least a million dollars in liquid assets share the secrets that helped them get there.
1. Set your sights on where you’re going
Twenty years ago, Jeff Harris hardly seemed on the road to wealth. He was a college dropout who struggled to support his wife, DeAnn, and three kids, working as a grocery store clerk and at a junkyard where he melted scrap metal alongside convicts. “At times we were so broke that we washed our clothes in the bathtub because we couldn’t afford the Laundromat.” Now he’s a 49-year-old investment advisor and multimillionaire in York, South Carolina.
There was one big reason Jeff pulled ahead of the pack: He always knew he’d be rich. The reality is that 80 percent of Americans worth at least $5 million grew up in middle-class or lesser households, just like Jeff.
Wanting to be wealthy is a crucial first step. Says Eker, “The biggest obstacle to wealth is fear. People are afraid to think big, but if you think small, you’ll only achieve small things.”
It all started for Jeff when he met a stockbroker at a Christmas party. “Talking to him, it felt like discovering fire,” he says. “I started reading books about investing during my breaks at the grocery store, and I began putting $25 a month in a mutual fund.” Next he taught a class at a local community college on investing. His students became his first clients, which led to his investment practice. “There were lots of struggles,” says Jeff, “but what got me through it was believing with all my heart that I would succeed.”
2. Educate yourself
When Steve Maxwell graduated from college, he had an engineering degree and a high-tech job—but he couldn’t balance his checkbook. “I took one finance class in college but dropped it to go on a ski trip,” says the 45-year-old father of three, who lives in Windsor, Colorado. “I actually had to go to my bank and ask them to teach me how to read my statement.”
One of the biggest obstacles to making money is not understanding it: Thousands of us avoid investing because we just don’t get it. But to make money, you must be financially literate. “It bothered me that I didn’t understand this stuff,” says Steve, “so I read books and magazines about money management and investing, and I asked every financial whiz I knew to explain things to me.”
He and his wife started applying the lessons: They made a point to live below their means. They never bought on impulse, always negotiated better deals (on their cars, cable bills, furniture) and stayed in their home long after they could afford a more expensive one. They also put 20 percent of their annual salary into investments.
Within ten years, they were millionaires, and people were coming to Steve for advice. “Someone would say, ‘I need to refinance my house—what should I do?’ A lot of times, I wouldn’t know the answer, but I’d go find it and learn something in the process,” he says.
In 2003, Steve quit his job to become part owner of a company that holds personal finance seminars for employees of corporations like Wal-Mart. He also started going to real estate investment seminars, and it’s paid off: He now owns $30 million worth of investment properties, including apartment complexes, a shopping mall and a quarry.
“I was an engineer who never thought this life was possible, but all it truly takes is a little self-education,” says Steve. “You can do anything once you understand the basics.”
3. Passion pays off
In 1995, Jill Blashack Strahan and her husband were barely making ends meet. Like so many of us, Jill was eager to discover her purpose, so she splurged on a session with a life coach. “When I told her my goal was to make $30,000 a year, she said I was setting the bar too low. I needed to focus on my passion, not on the paycheck.”
Jill, who lives with her son in Alexandria, Minnesota, owned a gift basket company and earned just $15,000 a year. She noticed when she let potential buyers taste the food items, the baskets sold like crazy. Jill thought, Why not sell the food directly to customers in a fun setting?
With $6,000 in savings, a bank loan and a friend’s investment, Jill started packaging gourmet foods in a backyard shed and selling them at taste-testing parties. It wasn’t easy. “I remember sitting outside one day, thinking we were three months behind on our house payment, I had two employees I couldn’t pay, and I ought to get a real job. But then I thought, No, this is your dream. Recommit and get to work.”
She stuck with it, even after her husband died three years later. “I live by the law of abundance, meaning that even when there are challenges in life, I look for the win-win,” she says.
The positive attitude worked: Jill’s backyard company, Tastefully Simple, is now a direct-sales business, with $120 million in sales last year. And Jill was named one of the top 25 female business owners in North America by Fast Company magazine.
According to research by Thomas J. Stanley, author of The Millionaire Mind, over 80 percent of millionaires say they never would have been successful if their vocation wasn’t something they cared about.
4. Grow your money
Most of us know the never-ending cycle of living paycheck to paycheck. “The fastest way to get out of that pattern is to make extra money for the specific purpose of reinvesting in yourself,” says Loral Langemeier, author of The Millionaire Maker. In other words, earmark some money for the sole purpose of investing it in a place where it will grow dramatically—like a business or real estate.
There are endless ways to make extra money for investing—you just have to be willing to do the work. “Everyone has a marketable skill,” says Langemeier. “When I started out, I had a tutoring business, seeing clients in the morning before work and on my lunch break.”
A little moonlighting cash really can grow into a million. Twenty-five years ago, Rick Sikorski dreamed of owning a personal training business. “I rented a tiny studio where I charged $15 an hour,” he says. When money started trickling in, he squirreled it away instead of spending it, putting it all back into the business. Rick’s 400-square-foot studio is now Fitness Together, a franchise based in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, with more than 360 locations worldwide. And he’s worth over $40 million.
When extra money rolls in, it’s easy to think, Now I can buy that new TV. But if you want to get rich, you need to pay yourself first, by putting money where it will work hard for you—whether that’s in your retirement fund, a side business or investments like real estate.
5. No guts, no glory
Last summer, Dave Lindahl footed the bill for 18 relatives at a fancy mansion in the Adirondacks. One night, his dad looked out at the scenery and joked, “I can’t believe we used to call you the black sheep!”
At 29, Dave was broke, living in a small apartment near Boston and wondering what to do after ten years in a local rock band. “I looked around and thought, If I don’t do something, I’ll be stuck here forever.”
He started a landscape company, buying his equipment on credit. When business literally froze over that winter, a banker friend asked if he’d like to renovate a foreclosed home. “I’m a terrible carpenter, but I needed the money, so I went to some free seminars at Home Depot and figured it out as I went,” he says.
After a few more renovations, it occurred to him: Why not buy the homes and sell them for profit? He took a risk and bought his first property. Using the proceeds, he bought another, and another. Twelve years later, he owns apartment buildings, worth $143 million, in eight states.
The Biggest Secret? Stop spending.
Every millionaire we spoke to has one thing in common: Not a single one spends needlessly. Real estate investor Dave Lindahl drives a Ford Explorer and says his middle-class neighbors would be shocked to learn how much he’s worth. Fitness mogul Rick Sikorski can’t fathom why anyone would buy bottled water. Steve Maxwell, the finance teacher, looked at a $1.5 million home but decided to buy one for half the price because “a house with double the cost wouldn’t give me double the enjoyment.”
When you think “millionaire,” what image comes to mind? For many of us, it’s a flashy Wall Street banker type who flies a private jet, collects cars and lives the kind of decadent lifestyle that would make Donald Trump proud.
But many modern millionaires live in middle-class neighborhoods, work full-time and shop in discount stores like the rest of us. What motivates them isn’t material possessions but the choices that money can bring: “For the rich, it’s not about getting more stuff. It’s about having the freedom to make almost any decision you want,” says T. Harv Eker, author of Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. Wealth means you can send your child to any school or quit a job you don’t like.
According to the Spectrem Wealth Study, an annual survey of America’s wealthy, there are more people living the good life than ever before—the number of millionaires nearly doubled in the last decade. And the rich are getting richer. To make it onto the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans, a mere billionaire no longer makes the cut. This year you needed a net worth of at least $1.3 billion.
If more people are getting richer than ever, why shouldn’t you be one of them? Here, five people who have at least a million dollars in liquid assets share the secrets that helped them get there.
1. Set your sights on where you’re going
Twenty years ago, Jeff Harris hardly seemed on the road to wealth. He was a college dropout who struggled to support his wife, DeAnn, and three kids, working as a grocery store clerk and at a junkyard where he melted scrap metal alongside convicts. “At times we were so broke that we washed our clothes in the bathtub because we couldn’t afford the Laundromat.” Now he’s a 49-year-old investment advisor and multimillionaire in York, South Carolina.
There was one big reason Jeff pulled ahead of the pack: He always knew he’d be rich. The reality is that 80 percent of Americans worth at least $5 million grew up in middle-class or lesser households, just like Jeff.
Wanting to be wealthy is a crucial first step. Says Eker, “The biggest obstacle to wealth is fear. People are afraid to think big, but if you think small, you’ll only achieve small things.”
It all started for Jeff when he met a stockbroker at a Christmas party. “Talking to him, it felt like discovering fire,” he says. “I started reading books about investing during my breaks at the grocery store, and I began putting $25 a month in a mutual fund.” Next he taught a class at a local community college on investing. His students became his first clients, which led to his investment practice. “There were lots of struggles,” says Jeff, “but what got me through it was believing with all my heart that I would succeed.”
2. Educate yourself
When Steve Maxwell graduated from college, he had an engineering degree and a high-tech job—but he couldn’t balance his checkbook. “I took one finance class in college but dropped it to go on a ski trip,” says the 45-year-old father of three, who lives in Windsor, Colorado. “I actually had to go to my bank and ask them to teach me how to read my statement.”
One of the biggest obstacles to making money is not understanding it: Thousands of us avoid investing because we just don’t get it. But to make money, you must be financially literate. “It bothered me that I didn’t understand this stuff,” says Steve, “so I read books and magazines about money management and investing, and I asked every financial whiz I knew to explain things to me.”
He and his wife started applying the lessons: They made a point to live below their means. They never bought on impulse, always negotiated better deals (on their cars, cable bills, furniture) and stayed in their home long after they could afford a more expensive one. They also put 20 percent of their annual salary into investments.
Within ten years, they were millionaires, and people were coming to Steve for advice. “Someone would say, ‘I need to refinance my house—what should I do?’ A lot of times, I wouldn’t know the answer, but I’d go find it and learn something in the process,” he says.
In 2003, Steve quit his job to become part owner of a company that holds personal finance seminars for employees of corporations like Wal-Mart. He also started going to real estate investment seminars, and it’s paid off: He now owns $30 million worth of investment properties, including apartment complexes, a shopping mall and a quarry.
“I was an engineer who never thought this life was possible, but all it truly takes is a little self-education,” says Steve. “You can do anything once you understand the basics.”
3. Passion pays off
In 1995, Jill Blashack Strahan and her husband were barely making ends meet. Like so many of us, Jill was eager to discover her purpose, so she splurged on a session with a life coach. “When I told her my goal was to make $30,000 a year, she said I was setting the bar too low. I needed to focus on my passion, not on the paycheck.”
Jill, who lives with her son in Alexandria, Minnesota, owned a gift basket company and earned just $15,000 a year. She noticed when she let potential buyers taste the food items, the baskets sold like crazy. Jill thought, Why not sell the food directly to customers in a fun setting?
With $6,000 in savings, a bank loan and a friend’s investment, Jill started packaging gourmet foods in a backyard shed and selling them at taste-testing parties. It wasn’t easy. “I remember sitting outside one day, thinking we were three months behind on our house payment, I had two employees I couldn’t pay, and I ought to get a real job. But then I thought, No, this is your dream. Recommit and get to work.”
She stuck with it, even after her husband died three years later. “I live by the law of abundance, meaning that even when there are challenges in life, I look for the win-win,” she says.
The positive attitude worked: Jill’s backyard company, Tastefully Simple, is now a direct-sales business, with $120 million in sales last year. And Jill was named one of the top 25 female business owners in North America by Fast Company magazine.
According to research by Thomas J. Stanley, author of The Millionaire Mind, over 80 percent of millionaires say they never would have been successful if their vocation wasn’t something they cared about.
4. Grow your money
Most of us know the never-ending cycle of living paycheck to paycheck. “The fastest way to get out of that pattern is to make extra money for the specific purpose of reinvesting in yourself,” says Loral Langemeier, author of The Millionaire Maker. In other words, earmark some money for the sole purpose of investing it in a place where it will grow dramatically—like a business or real estate.
There are endless ways to make extra money for investing—you just have to be willing to do the work. “Everyone has a marketable skill,” says Langemeier. “When I started out, I had a tutoring business, seeing clients in the morning before work and on my lunch break.”
A little moonlighting cash really can grow into a million. Twenty-five years ago, Rick Sikorski dreamed of owning a personal training business. “I rented a tiny studio where I charged $15 an hour,” he says. When money started trickling in, he squirreled it away instead of spending it, putting it all back into the business. Rick’s 400-square-foot studio is now Fitness Together, a franchise based in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, with more than 360 locations worldwide. And he’s worth over $40 million.
When extra money rolls in, it’s easy to think, Now I can buy that new TV. But if you want to get rich, you need to pay yourself first, by putting money where it will work hard for you—whether that’s in your retirement fund, a side business or investments like real estate.
5. No guts, no glory
Last summer, Dave Lindahl footed the bill for 18 relatives at a fancy mansion in the Adirondacks. One night, his dad looked out at the scenery and joked, “I can’t believe we used to call you the black sheep!”
At 29, Dave was broke, living in a small apartment near Boston and wondering what to do after ten years in a local rock band. “I looked around and thought, If I don’t do something, I’ll be stuck here forever.”
He started a landscape company, buying his equipment on credit. When business literally froze over that winter, a banker friend asked if he’d like to renovate a foreclosed home. “I’m a terrible carpenter, but I needed the money, so I went to some free seminars at Home Depot and figured it out as I went,” he says.
After a few more renovations, it occurred to him: Why not buy the homes and sell them for profit? He took a risk and bought his first property. Using the proceeds, he bought another, and another. Twelve years later, he owns apartment buildings, worth $143 million, in eight states.
The Biggest Secret? Stop spending.
Every millionaire we spoke to has one thing in common: Not a single one spends needlessly. Real estate investor Dave Lindahl drives a Ford Explorer and says his middle-class neighbors would be shocked to learn how much he’s worth. Fitness mogul Rick Sikorski can’t fathom why anyone would buy bottled water. Steve Maxwell, the finance teacher, looked at a $1.5 million home but decided to buy one for half the price because “a house with double the cost wouldn’t give me double the enjoyment.”
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Zig Ziglar Will See You At the Top! by Jeff Widmer
In late 1991 I drove to Philadelphia to see a tag-team match of motivational speakers, Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy. From a scrappy optimist selling cookware to a household name in sales, Zig was the dean of motivators, in the same league as Dr. Norman Vincent Peale when it came to applying spiritual principles to business. And for people interested in building a positive attitude as well as a career, Tracy wasn’t far behind.
I was excited because I’d landed an interview with both Ziglar and Tracy just before their appearances. At the time I was writing a nationally syndicated column for newspapers owned by the publisher of The Wall Street Journal. I’d listened to recordings Ziglar had made about the sales process and marveled at his mix of confidence, self-deprecation and home-spun truisms. He never lectured; he illustrated. And those stories, drawn from a poor childhood in the South, brought comfort as well as knowledge to the listener.
For those who aren’t immediately familiar with the human potential movement, Ziglar inspires people in and out of sales because he’s living proof that hard work and a tough attitude deliver results. The tenth of twelve children, he was born in Alabama and raised in Mississippi by his mother after his father died. In 1944 Ziglar met his wife, Jean, a woman he affectionately calls The Redhead. In 1970 he went into the business of motivational speaking full-time. Some time after that he founded the training company Ziglar, Inc., near Plano, Texas.
He has written twenty-nine books on personal growth, leadership, sales, faith, family and success, including See You at the Top, Raising Positive Kids in a Negative World and Secrets of Closing the Sale. Ten of those titles have hit the best-seller lists.
Despite my appreciation of his work, I had one small problem with the interview. As a journalist, I felt slightly uncomfortable when Zig would close his programs with “I’ll see you at the top.” It sounded more like a tagline designed by marketers than a sincere wish from a very sincere man. But I felt certain we’d find dozens of positive things to discuss.
As luck would have it, I left the newspaper group before writing the columns on Ziglar and Tracy. Nineteen years later, in reviewing the transcription of the tapes, I found the questions I’d asked weren’t very inspiring but the responses were. Over a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs in his hotel room, Zig talked about everything from U.S. history to the influence of television to Biblical values with a passion that belied his good-old-boy image.
When it was time for him to take the stage, he walked me to the door, shook my hand with a firm grip and delivered a line that sent chills down my spine. Looking me straight in the eyes he said, “And I’ll see you at the top.”
I believe him.
JW: You were born in Alabama in 1926 and raised in Yazoo City. Your mother came out one day after you had sown seeds in the garden and made you do the whole thing over again.
ZZ: Yeah. Hoeing the beans. We had milk cows and a big garden right there in town.
JW: You got a lot of fundamental values from your mom.
ZZ: Very much so.
JW: I imagine it was a pretty Spartan existence.
ZZ: We never thought of ourselves as poor because nobody else had anything either. If you had a roof over your head and something to eat and something to wear, you were rich.
JW: I’m reminded of a continuing theme in your work, that if you help enough people get what they want, you too will get what you want.
ZZ: That comes as a result of the old principles that my mother raised us on, which were Biblical principles—you do what’s right, you tell the truth, you work hard, you treat other people like you want to be treated, your word is your bond. That whole scenario was played many, many times to us when we were children.
JW: You used to sell cookware door to door. That strikes me as being a very difficult way to earn a living, but I sense you learned some valuable lessons, such as how to deal with rejection and adversity.
ZZ: There were two or three things, had I known this from the very beginning, that would have made it a lot easier, so I’m teaching people this now, which makes it easier for them. You have to understand that when people say “no” that’s not a personal rejection, it’s a business refusal. I try to remove the personal feeling from it. I have a close friend who is really my mentor, a brilliant man; his name is Fred Smith, and he’s a retired business executive, served on the board of Mobil Oil. He taught salespeople that when that happens, you treat it as an experiment and not an experience.
JW: You don’t extrapolate and say, “Everybody’s that way.”
ZZ: Oh gracious no. In other words, I don’t feel that person was rude to me but was part of an experiment.
JW: And this is a way of detaching yourself.
ZZ: That’s correct. That’s correct. And your image is intact and you go and make the next call.
JW: Did you ever have a worst day in your life?
ZZ: I’ve gotten into some awfully close scrapes financially and I relate to being extremely broke, wondering how I’m going to pay my rent, how I’m going to make my car payment, how we’re going to eat. When my oldest daughter was born [in 1948], the hospital bill was $64, and we didn’t have $64.
JW: What were you doing at the time?
ZZ: Selling cookware. I had to go out and make two sales to get enough money to get my wife and daughter out of the hospital. That’s pressure selling.
JW: And how about your best day?
ZZ: I still vividly remember the most exciting day as a salesman. I was in the cookware business. We were living in Columbia, South Carolina. We were extremely broke, very much in debt. On this particular night I had eight couples at a demonstration and I sold all eight of them. The total was $1,995 and all of the sales were for cash with the exception of one $200 sale. So when I got home that evening we set it down on the bed and counted that money about seventeen times and stacked it every different way you can stack money and just laughed and cut up and had a good time. We were going to be able to pay some bills that badly needed paying.
JW: You talk about being dirt poor, going meal to meal. What were you saying to yourself during those times?
ZZ: I wasn’t really saying a whole lot to myself. You’ve got to understand that I’d been raised that when you make a commitment and accept a responsibility, you never consider escaping that responsibility. I had a wife, I had a family; they were my responsibility. So everything was geared first to survival and then to providing the family the other things that all families need.
JW: You’ve met the material definition of success. But what’s your personal definition of success?
ZZ: Our company’s mission statement is to be the difference-maker in enough lives to make a positive difference in America and the world. Now that sounds pretty grandiose but we’ve been very fortunate in that we have been able to reach an awful lot of people and we’re developing a couple of significant new programs that we believe will enable us to expedite that.
JW: Can you talk a little about those programs?
ZZ: You can trace every problem in our society, whether it’s crime or drugs or the dissolution of the family or our national debt . . . you can trace all of them directly to a lack of leadership in this country.
JW: Government or business leadership?
ZZ: Everybody in leadership. Leadership in the family, that’s the beginning point. Leadership in the schools, leadership in our government, leadership in the media. I think we have to go back to the ‘70s to move ahead in the ‘90s.
JW: The 1970s?
ZZ: I’m talking about the 1770s. If you get your history book out, you’ll read that three million Americans in 1776 produced George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Monroe, etc., etc., etc. According to the Thomas Jefferson Research Institute, over ninety percent of all the educational thrust then was of a religious or a moral nature. Now those people were not religious. But what they did was they taught Biblical principles. By 1951 the percentage was so small you couldn’t measure it. We’ve taken God completely out of every facet of what we do, and we’re paying for it.
The average 18-year-old American watches 17,000 hours of television. He’s listened to 11,000 hours of music, watched 2,000 hours of MTV and the movies. That’s 30,000 hours. Now in 30,000 hours you can finish kindergarten, grade school, middle school, high school, college, medical school and serve an internship. I’m not opposed to us having some relaxation and entertainment—I’m going to play golf tomorrow. But in 30,000 hours we’ve taught our kids to play not to work. We have to go back to teaching our kids that there is a direct relationship between effort and reward. Society is our major problem but it really goes right back to the home.
JW: I’d like to talk a little about why it is so important that we have goals.
ZZ: Every human being I’ve ever talked to that has set and followed goals tells me that they absolutely work.
JW: When you were selling cookware and things didn’t look as nice as they do now, did you have goals?
ZZ: You betcha. My goal primarily was to make four demonstrations a day. That was one. Another would be to be the number-one salesman in our group that week.
JW: What does goal-setting give a person?
ZZ: It gives them a sense of direction.
JW: I’m looking at the time and know you’re going to have to scoot soon. . . . If you could have dinner with anybody in the world, who would it be?
ZZ: Obviously I’d pick that redheaded wife of mine.
I was excited because I’d landed an interview with both Ziglar and Tracy just before their appearances. At the time I was writing a nationally syndicated column for newspapers owned by the publisher of The Wall Street Journal. I’d listened to recordings Ziglar had made about the sales process and marveled at his mix of confidence, self-deprecation and home-spun truisms. He never lectured; he illustrated. And those stories, drawn from a poor childhood in the South, brought comfort as well as knowledge to the listener.
For those who aren’t immediately familiar with the human potential movement, Ziglar inspires people in and out of sales because he’s living proof that hard work and a tough attitude deliver results. The tenth of twelve children, he was born in Alabama and raised in Mississippi by his mother after his father died. In 1944 Ziglar met his wife, Jean, a woman he affectionately calls The Redhead. In 1970 he went into the business of motivational speaking full-time. Some time after that he founded the training company Ziglar, Inc., near Plano, Texas.
He has written twenty-nine books on personal growth, leadership, sales, faith, family and success, including See You at the Top, Raising Positive Kids in a Negative World and Secrets of Closing the Sale. Ten of those titles have hit the best-seller lists.
Despite my appreciation of his work, I had one small problem with the interview. As a journalist, I felt slightly uncomfortable when Zig would close his programs with “I’ll see you at the top.” It sounded more like a tagline designed by marketers than a sincere wish from a very sincere man. But I felt certain we’d find dozens of positive things to discuss.
As luck would have it, I left the newspaper group before writing the columns on Ziglar and Tracy. Nineteen years later, in reviewing the transcription of the tapes, I found the questions I’d asked weren’t very inspiring but the responses were. Over a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs in his hotel room, Zig talked about everything from U.S. history to the influence of television to Biblical values with a passion that belied his good-old-boy image.
When it was time for him to take the stage, he walked me to the door, shook my hand with a firm grip and delivered a line that sent chills down my spine. Looking me straight in the eyes he said, “And I’ll see you at the top.”
I believe him.
JW: You were born in Alabama in 1926 and raised in Yazoo City. Your mother came out one day after you had sown seeds in the garden and made you do the whole thing over again.
ZZ: Yeah. Hoeing the beans. We had milk cows and a big garden right there in town.
JW: You got a lot of fundamental values from your mom.
ZZ: Very much so.
JW: I imagine it was a pretty Spartan existence.
ZZ: We never thought of ourselves as poor because nobody else had anything either. If you had a roof over your head and something to eat and something to wear, you were rich.
JW: I’m reminded of a continuing theme in your work, that if you help enough people get what they want, you too will get what you want.
ZZ: That comes as a result of the old principles that my mother raised us on, which were Biblical principles—you do what’s right, you tell the truth, you work hard, you treat other people like you want to be treated, your word is your bond. That whole scenario was played many, many times to us when we were children.
JW: You used to sell cookware door to door. That strikes me as being a very difficult way to earn a living, but I sense you learned some valuable lessons, such as how to deal with rejection and adversity.
ZZ: There were two or three things, had I known this from the very beginning, that would have made it a lot easier, so I’m teaching people this now, which makes it easier for them. You have to understand that when people say “no” that’s not a personal rejection, it’s a business refusal. I try to remove the personal feeling from it. I have a close friend who is really my mentor, a brilliant man; his name is Fred Smith, and he’s a retired business executive, served on the board of Mobil Oil. He taught salespeople that when that happens, you treat it as an experiment and not an experience.
JW: You don’t extrapolate and say, “Everybody’s that way.”
ZZ: Oh gracious no. In other words, I don’t feel that person was rude to me but was part of an experiment.
JW: And this is a way of detaching yourself.
ZZ: That’s correct. That’s correct. And your image is intact and you go and make the next call.
JW: Did you ever have a worst day in your life?
ZZ: I’ve gotten into some awfully close scrapes financially and I relate to being extremely broke, wondering how I’m going to pay my rent, how I’m going to make my car payment, how we’re going to eat. When my oldest daughter was born [in 1948], the hospital bill was $64, and we didn’t have $64.
JW: What were you doing at the time?
ZZ: Selling cookware. I had to go out and make two sales to get enough money to get my wife and daughter out of the hospital. That’s pressure selling.
JW: And how about your best day?
ZZ: I still vividly remember the most exciting day as a salesman. I was in the cookware business. We were living in Columbia, South Carolina. We were extremely broke, very much in debt. On this particular night I had eight couples at a demonstration and I sold all eight of them. The total was $1,995 and all of the sales were for cash with the exception of one $200 sale. So when I got home that evening we set it down on the bed and counted that money about seventeen times and stacked it every different way you can stack money and just laughed and cut up and had a good time. We were going to be able to pay some bills that badly needed paying.
JW: You talk about being dirt poor, going meal to meal. What were you saying to yourself during those times?
ZZ: I wasn’t really saying a whole lot to myself. You’ve got to understand that I’d been raised that when you make a commitment and accept a responsibility, you never consider escaping that responsibility. I had a wife, I had a family; they were my responsibility. So everything was geared first to survival and then to providing the family the other things that all families need.
JW: You’ve met the material definition of success. But what’s your personal definition of success?
ZZ: Our company’s mission statement is to be the difference-maker in enough lives to make a positive difference in America and the world. Now that sounds pretty grandiose but we’ve been very fortunate in that we have been able to reach an awful lot of people and we’re developing a couple of significant new programs that we believe will enable us to expedite that.
JW: Can you talk a little about those programs?
ZZ: You can trace every problem in our society, whether it’s crime or drugs or the dissolution of the family or our national debt . . . you can trace all of them directly to a lack of leadership in this country.
JW: Government or business leadership?
ZZ: Everybody in leadership. Leadership in the family, that’s the beginning point. Leadership in the schools, leadership in our government, leadership in the media. I think we have to go back to the ‘70s to move ahead in the ‘90s.
JW: The 1970s?
ZZ: I’m talking about the 1770s. If you get your history book out, you’ll read that three million Americans in 1776 produced George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Monroe, etc., etc., etc. According to the Thomas Jefferson Research Institute, over ninety percent of all the educational thrust then was of a religious or a moral nature. Now those people were not religious. But what they did was they taught Biblical principles. By 1951 the percentage was so small you couldn’t measure it. We’ve taken God completely out of every facet of what we do, and we’re paying for it.
The average 18-year-old American watches 17,000 hours of television. He’s listened to 11,000 hours of music, watched 2,000 hours of MTV and the movies. That’s 30,000 hours. Now in 30,000 hours you can finish kindergarten, grade school, middle school, high school, college, medical school and serve an internship. I’m not opposed to us having some relaxation and entertainment—I’m going to play golf tomorrow. But in 30,000 hours we’ve taught our kids to play not to work. We have to go back to teaching our kids that there is a direct relationship between effort and reward. Society is our major problem but it really goes right back to the home.
JW: I’d like to talk a little about why it is so important that we have goals.
ZZ: Every human being I’ve ever talked to that has set and followed goals tells me that they absolutely work.
JW: When you were selling cookware and things didn’t look as nice as they do now, did you have goals?
ZZ: You betcha. My goal primarily was to make four demonstrations a day. That was one. Another would be to be the number-one salesman in our group that week.
JW: What does goal-setting give a person?
ZZ: It gives them a sense of direction.
JW: I’m looking at the time and know you’re going to have to scoot soon. . . . If you could have dinner with anybody in the world, who would it be?
ZZ: Obviously I’d pick that redheaded wife of mine.
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