my granddaughter Katherine Lemons, and my sonin-law Jim Norman for helping me bring this book to press. It is my joy to work with my family.
Thank you, Laurie Magers, my executive assistant for over thirty-four years, for being dedicated to making this book the best it can be and for always doing everything with great care and professionalism.
Thank you, Billy Cox, my longtime friend, Ziglar, Inc., board member, and exceptional business entrepreneur, for the incredible amount of time and effort you put into helping me make the content of this book all that it needed to be.
Thank you, my friend Larry Carpenter, for writing the foreword of this book, for serving on the Ziglar, Inc., Advisory Board, and for being the person who attended my Born to Win course more often than any other! You have always championed the Born to Win philosophy, and you live the philosophy more completely than anyone I have ever met. Your success in life and in business are proof that you were born to win!
Thank you, Milli Brown, CEO of Brown Books Publishing Group, and David Leach for your belief in and contributions to this project. Thank you, Michael Levin, my new friend, for editing my book with a heart of true understanding about my goals for my reader. Your insight was spot-on and your input added untold value to the content.
Thank you to my Ziglar, Inc., team! You make my work sustainable and I am happily indebted to you!
Many thanks to all of you who have read one of my books or heard me speak, applied what you learned, and discovered that you, too, were born to win! This book is a result of your success in applying these principles.
My deepest gratitude is for the One who has directed my life since July 4, 1972: my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Because of my relationship with Him, my mind and heart are free of fear and worry, and I can look forward in excited anticipation for what is yet to come.
IN NOVEMBER OF 2011, I celebrated the sixty-fourth anniversary of my twenty-first birthday, and I’m still busier than a one-armed man calling on twin sisters! I’m still working on new books and encouraging people everywhere I go. I love every minute of it. Lots of people say they heard I have retired! I always exclaim, “You heard wrong! You should have heard I was ‘re-fired.’ I’m not going to ease up, let up, shut up, or give up until I’m taken up. As a matter of fact, I’m just getting warmed up.”
However, when you get to be my age, you think back over your life and consider how effective you may have been and what you did that made the biggest difference in people’s lives. For me, that is an easy answer. In my own life, my conversion to Christ and my marriage made the biggest difference for me. As for the things I did that had the greatest impact on the lives of others, the first is providing audio products for people to listen to in their cars. I’ve always been an advocate of “Automobile University,” and through the years I’ve received hundreds of pounds of mail from people telling me how they take me with them every day on their daily commute and business trips. I’m always tickled that I can go just about anywhere and very few people recognize my face, but when I open my mouth and start talking, heads turn, and often I’m asked if I am Zig Ziglar. My voice is distinctive, and when you combine it with my Yazoo City, Mississippi, accent, well, it’s not really stepping out on a limb when folks guess that it’s me.
The second effective thing I’ve done is a three-day seminar I offered several times a year for more than thirty years. Originally, the seminar was called “The Richer Life Course,” but eventually it became known as simply “Born to Win.” Through the years I’ve come to know thousands of people whose lives were transformed materially and spiritually as a result of participating in the Born to Win experience.
Possibly you, my friend, have contributed to the stack of mail I’ve gotten these past forty-plus years. I am so grateful for folks like you who have shared what has been most important and significant to them. As I previously mentioned, the Born to Win seminar and my audio products head the lists, but why have they been so effective? What was being taught in those activities that has had such a powerful impact on people’s lives? The answer to that question is in the words I’ve used to describe the Born to Win experience: “You were born to win, but to be the winner you were born to be, you have to plan to win and prepare to win. Then and only then can you expect to win.” The “Ziglar Gold” is found in principles and techniques I have taught people that show them how to plan, prepare, and expect to win. This may not sound earth-shaking, but you must understand that these skills and attitudes have the power to transform your life.
My own life was transformed by these principles more than fifty years ago by some tough comments made by one of my mentors, my area sales supervisor, Mr. P. Merrell. I will share more of my experience with Mr. Merrell later in the book. However, through his instruction and lots of mentoring from others, I learned the power of planning, preparing, and expecting to win. When I learned how to plan each day and set specific goals, I became more focused on the things that really make a difference. When I learned how to prepare myself and equip myself with the tools and skills I needed to be successful, I was able to execute my plans and turn them into winning results. Finally, when I learned how to expect success, it all came together and transformed my life and the life of my family. All this to say that Ziglar Gold is captured when you acquire the skill set needed to plan, prepare, and expect to win.
I’ve always considered myself to be a professional “encourager,” and my mission was to help people find hope when there didn’t seem to be any. To fulfill that role, I’ve always tried to give people lots of simple ideas that will help them change the way they think about themselves. As I look back over my career, I see that just about everything I taught really can be categorized as planning, preparing, or expecting to win. Because of that, I have organized this book into three sections that track the best stories, ideas, and principles that relate to those skills. When you finish reading Born to Win, you will have the absolutely very best of the core principles and skills I have shared with people for the past forty-plus years. Let me give you a quick preview of what you will learn in Born to Win.
PART I: PLANNING TO WIN
There are lots of parts and sub-parts you have to put together when you begin to plan your success, but a few things are foundational. Planning has to be based on getting a clear vision of what you want, because without a vision you don’t know which goals to set. Without goals you have no targets, and without targets you have nothing to measure how you’re doing. So you can see how important a vision is. Getting a clear vision for your future is also important because it plays a huge role in the creation of desire! Did you know that desire is the mother of motivation? Desire is the “want to” and the motor that fuels and powers sustained success.
Desire is important and vision is critical, but there are some personal qualities you must have or acquire to get the best possible results. As a matter of fact, there are six qualities: honesty, character, faith, integrity, love, and loyalty. I have called these qualities the foundation stones in the stairway to the top. You are going to learn how these qualities are critical and how to implement them as you plan to win.
PART II: PREPARING TO WIN
At first glance, you might think planning and preparing mean the same thing. I admit they might look like they are first cousins, but I see preparation as much different from planning. Preparation is a matter of equipping yourself to win with the right tools, knowledge, and support it will take to turn your dreams into plans that will make your vision into reality. So, this section of Born to Win will be about how to equip yourself in the best possible way to ensure your planning efforts will be successful.
Equipping and preparing yourself to win requires five things:
You need the right knowledge to win
You must continually raise your personal