The Ziglar Principles That Still Work Today

Ethan Butte (0:01)

Welcome to The Brian Buffini Show. I'm Ethan Butte, and as I mentioned last week, we're bringing back guest interviews, and today is the first. Like you, I've been familiar with the insights of Zig Ziglar for years. Today, I got to go inside a 25-year friendship and go deeper into the practice of helping more people get what they want. By listening in on this conversation between Brian Buffini and Tom Ziglar, CEO of the Zig Ziglar Corporation. You'll get five questions that will tell you in about one minute whether you can help the person in front of you. You'll hear one thing AI can't do for you, no matter how good it gets. And you'll get a simple test to determine whether the thing you've been avoiding all week is actually the thing you should do first. Get all that and much more with Brian and Tom here on The Brian Buffini Show.

Brian Buffini (0:57)

Well, top of the morning to you and welcome to The Brian Buffini Show. I'm your host, Brian Buffini. You know, we mentioned last week that we'd be bringing back our interview format.

Many of you have requested, hey, giving us a lot of feedback on all the things we've been trying. And today is the first of many, many interviews we'll be doing in the months to come. And if you've listened to this show for any length of time at all, you know how much I have been influenced by Zig Ziglar in both my business and life.

And I've been quoting him for 40 years. Well, today I get to sit down with his son, Tom Ziglar, who's the CEO of Ziglar Inc. Tom and I go back 25 years. We were just reminiscing a little bit today offline. And he's the man who ran the corporation and got his dad out in front of the world. And now he's kept that corporation alive. In fact, alive and thriving today. And we're very excited because there's a very special event coming up October 16th. What would have been Zig Ziglar's 100th birthday. And I've been very honored that Tom's asked me to be one of the speakers at that event. So we're very excited about that. I'm going to tell you some information about that event. Also, Tom, it's great to see you. It's been too long. How's life?

Tom Ziglar (2:15)

Well, in true Ziglar fashion, I would say life is gooder. And that's because we get to choose, no matter what's going on in the world, we get to choose how good it's going to be.

Brian Buffini (2:27)

Yeah. You know, we were talking offline a little bit about you and your dad talking about what business you're in. And I think, you know, I'm in an environment of an industry that's gone through a tough time. Consolidation. We've had the lowest sales three years in a row that we've had in 30 years. And Tom, give you an example. There were 80 million more people living in the country at the time. So with a lot more demand, 4 million sales a year is basically 1995 numbers. We've had companies consolidating.

You know, interest rates started to look the right way. And then a little war breaks out with Iran rates run off to the races. Affordability has become a major issue. Young people don't feel like they can buy. And so this is the environment. And I've been kind of gluing up, you know, hundreds of thousands of people here for the past few years.

We talked about a little bit today about discouragement and a little bit about what Ziglar has brought to the table over the years. Maybe you could address that to a bunch of folks who, who've taken a few hits here over the past few years.

Tom Ziglar (3:29)

Yeah, absolutely. I think discouragement is maybe the number one thing that keeps us from doing what we know we should do.

And when I was a little boy, and this is what I heard that I was, I was thinking about that and, and that's a real spiritual concept, right? Because if, because when, when we help somebody into a home or whatever problem we solve, there's a huge ripple effect with that. I mean, it's a legacy impact. It changes a life and how people live. And when we get discouraged from what, what we do, then it robs that opportunity, right? Because we, we give up or give in or don't do what we could. And I remember Brian, I was like nine years old and I said, Dad, what do we do? Because when you're nine, you always, you kind of anchor in. I do what my, my parents do. I do what my dad does.