In a world marked by polarization, misinformation, and constant noise, discerning truth has become one of the most critical leadership skills of our time. In this powerful and personal conversation, David Lykken sits down with Tom Ziglar—CEO of Ziglar, Inc. and son of legendary motivator Zig Ziglar—to explore how truth, identity, and grace-driven leadership can anchor us in uncertain times. Drawing from his father’s timeless philosophy, ancient wisdom, and real-world business leadership, Tom introduces the Truth Compass, shares stories of courageous discernment, and explains how Zig AI is helping leaders apply proven principles with clarity and confidence. This episode is both a tribute to legacy and a practical guide for navigating chaos with conviction, humility, and purpose.
[David] Listeners, we’re in for a real treat today. We’ve got Tom Zigglar, the son of Zig Zigglar, joining us. And the reason this podcast was so special to me is Tom’s dad, Zig Ziglar, was a part of my earliest days. My dad was an avid listener to Zig Zigglar. I have more cassettes in my garage that I inherited from my dad when he passed away that he held on to, right up to his death. And he passed them on to his boys. I got some of them, my brother got some of them. And it’s just, I love that man. I love what he did for my dad, what he got him grounded in. And I believe it was my dad was in the farm equipment business. And so I believe he spoke at a Zig spoke at a farm equipment dealership conference, the annual one. And that’s when my dad locked on, but my dad just heard it and got it and said, I have got to have this in my life. And so, Tom, it is a real privilege to have you here. I feel a son talking to the son that was the son of the guy that talked to my dad who influenced me, and two sons talking together, honoring both of our dads who are passed on, and what an honor to have you here, friend.
[Tom] Well, David, what a what a delight to be here, and I’m excited for our conversation. We had so much fun when we met. We did that event together. We were up on stage together, and I enjoyed watching your presentation. You set me up, so that’s always good.
[David] It was it was such a joy. We’re talking about the sales mastery event this last, I think it was October that was, and in Dallas. And such a blessing, Todd Duncan introduced both of us, and what a blessing to be at that and to share the stage with you or be on the same stage is just back to back to each other. What a blessing. And what you sensed in me was actually the continuation of things I heard from your dad Zig for years and years, many years either earlier. I’m 75 years old. I believe I started listening to Zig as early as I was five years old, whatever that was. I don’t know, it was a long time ago, but whenever those that happened, it was such a blessing. And we read the books and went on. But Tom, I’m really interested. You’re carrying on the tradition, you’re the CEO of Zig Ziglar Corporation, and you are stewarding the timeless, and I mean timeless Zig Ziglar philosophy, and that is, you can have everything in life that you want if you are willing to help other people get what they want. And that selfless message is so timeless, even today, because so many are competing in this crazy business called mortgage industry, real estate industry. For three decades, you’ve helped expand your dad’s impact through innovation training and coaching programs, and the author of “Choose to Win” and the “10 Leadership Virtues of Disruptive Times’. You speak around the world to billion-dollar enterprises, small business, every size of company, to leading universities at Cambridge, Harvard on performance, culture, and coach leadership. Today you carry on the brand, the Zig Ziglar brand, and we’re just honored to have you here, so I’ve done a lot to introduce you here, but is there anything more to the story? Did you realize when you were growing up that you were that you were the son of a bit of a legend? Was that did that come through to you?
[Tom] You know, when you grow up, your dad is just your dad. You don’t realize what’s going on, and then one day you look around and we couldn’t get through an airport without people stopping and shaking his hands. We would go to a conference and it would take him an hour to get from the room to the to the elevator, you know, and it’s just, he was so well known. And I just one of the stories I love because it happened so many times is we’d be out to eat and somebody would come up and they would quietly introduce themselves, and then they would tell dad how he changed their life.
[David] Oh, yeah.
[Tom] And that is never an interruption. And so I’ve always, I’ve always felt sorry for athletes or celebrities who get interrupted for the selfie just so I can look good. Yeah, because that is a totally different thing than when somebody comes up and says, Yes, I’m a different person because of you, and so that was that’s what I grew up with, and yeah, just an amazing thing.
[David] Oh, what an amazing thing, how do you discern a discovered truth? That’s one of the things that we were talking about, and it’s very much a part of what you’re doing. Your dad spoke from a place of authenticity and sincerity and conviction that was his truth. How have you what I kind of navigate discovering and discerning truth in this day and age, which seems to be so confusing?
[Tom] Yeah, I tell you, you know, we had a hypersensitive thing, a tragedy happen when Charlie Kirk was killed. I didn’t really know him. I didn’t really know him. I’d seen some of his videos, didn’t even know what turning point was, but the next 12 hours, it was like on my timeline, he was either the Messiah or he was Satan.
[David] And I and based on what you heard, that you you can draw either of those conclusions, yeah.
[Tom] And so then I pulled back out and I’m like, gosh, you know, this might be the biggest challenge of our lifetime, is on social media and cable news and everything, there’s like this purposeful polarization that’s going on where people are saying things that just aren’t true. And so I went about what can we do about that? And so I wrote this thing called the truth compass, which is 13 principles on how to discern and discover the truth, and it’s really what I think is what maybe the number one need that we have, because we’re going through the day, and I’ve got this little marionette puppet on my desk with all the strings on it, and it’s like most people you see they’re like they’re like a marionette puppet, and they hear something on cable or they hear something on see something on social media, they go to lunch with people after church, and people start yanking their strings and they’re going nuts, and that’s no way to live.
[David] No, it’s not the way to live.
[Tom] And so yeah, so that Truth Compass was really about how do we do that.
[David] So talk about that. Talk about how you came up with this and uh the impact that it’s begun to have.
[Tom] Yeah, so the kind of the first principle is I’m kind of weird, nerdy, maybe. I like to read and learn. And one of the things that I studied for a while was kind of ancient Jewish tradition. And the old rabbis would get together and think about centuries ago, and they would get together, they’d get around the table, and they would argue these theological, you know, deep thoughts, and they would get all heated and they would have these, you know, these arguments, and then they would get up from the table and they would be best friends, and they would stay at each other’s houses, and even though they were in different communities, they just kind of loved each other and they appreciated each other. And here’s the principle they weren’t arguing to win the argument, they were arguing to discover the truth.
[David] To learn, to learn discover the truth. There you go.
[Tom] Yeah, and so that’s something that’s really we’ve kind of lost sight of is that when you see the talking heads, it’s like they’re trying to win the argument, and then they go and they violate other principles, like they dehumanize somebody or they belittle somebody in the process of trying to win, and that’s not what it’s about, you know, is people trying to do life and do business and create friendships. We should be on this path together to figure out what is true and then honor that truth. And so these principles really help you do it, and that’s what we’ve done. We’ve created a program around that and we help people discern that, and it’s just been powerful.
[David] I want to get into those and how you’ve codified that because that’s such a we have technology available that something that your dad, my dad didn’t have other than just the spoken word back then. I didn’t think we had to cassette tapes when we first started. So it’s like they passed on the word however they did. We had books. But the most important part was, what you just talked about is we’ve lost the art of discern, I mean, discovering truth through healthy debate because there’s got to be a winner and a loser in so many of these discussions. And I think that’s making for weaker organizations, Tom, when we cannot strongly, vehemently disagree with someone, but then get up afterwards and go break bread with them and realize, you know, you made some great points in that spirited, heated discussion. You made some great points. It’s causing me to think about things. I think that is a that is such a mature thing to do. And what are your observations? What brought us to the point where we can have that? And what does it take to, more importantly, what does it take to turn that around?
[Tom] Yeah, so there’s another principle. It’s the principle of establishing common ground. And I was doing some research on it, and there’s a gentleman, I can’t recall his name, an African-American man, and he has helped over 200 KKK members leave the Klan.
[David] Wow.
[Tom] And so they’re interviewing him and they’re saying, Now, how did you do that? And he says,
[David] It’s an African-American guy to the top of it. Wow.
[Tom] He goes, Now look at this wisdom. He says, I knew that hate wouldn’t be the answer, and I knew that we were so far apart that there was little chance of me winning an argument. So he said, I just would have coffee with him, and we found out that we had so much in common, and that they were living a life that was so desperate, so disappointing, so discouraged. I mean, you’ve got to imagine if your life is just wrapped up in hatred for something, how it permeates and poisons everything else.
[David] And that only causes health problems.
[Tom] Yea h, so the interviewer’s like, well, how can you have a conversation with somebody who hates you? And he says, Well, I respect them. And they said, Well, you respect what they believe. He said, No, I don’t respect what they believe or what they say, I respect them as a person. And so that’s a big principle. And when you think about it, you know, if you if you study politics and political polarization, if you take 12 people who are leaning a little bit right and you give them a social problem, their solution will be further right than the average of the 12. And if you take 12 people who are leaning a little left and you give them a social problem, their solution will be further left than the average of the 12. And so what happens is we keep moving further and further out to the point we never invite somebody to the table who’s for discover truth. Yeah, to discover the common ground. I really like that, and the reality is both sides want to solve the same problems, it’s just that we have different ideas on how to get there, but we can’t unless we’re at the table together, and so and then when this program went on, it’s like there’s all these lies that the culture tells us, yes, but they’re also lies that we tell ourselves.
[David] Yeah, and I think those are the most dangerous ones. I mean, though uh give us an example of what you’re talking about, the lies we tell ourselves.
[Tom] Oh, well, let’s just talk about um your business. You’re in the mortgage business. well, I can’t go there because people like me don’t go there. Well, ho said?, you know, well, that that account is bigger than what I can handle. Who said that, right?
[David] These are all lies that you’re self-imposed limitations, yes.
[Tom] Yeah, the imposter syndrome, or I’m not good enough, or whatever that is. That is a lie that you’ve told yourself. Well, guess what? You can take the 13 principles and also the truth filter, which is another thing, and you can take that lie, that thing that you believe about yourself, and you could put it through this, and at the end of it, you’ll shrug your shoulders and go, huh. I never knew I believed that. And why did I believe that? It’s just we tell ourselves lies, a big piece of it is identity.
[David] And what do you mean by identity? I mean, it’s what it’s the wrong, it’s the lie that we identify with that we are not good enough. Is that what you’re talking about?
[Tom] Yeah, we say, Well, this is who I am, you know, this is what I wear, this is the job I have, this is the amount of money I’m supposed to make, this is the kind of car I drive, these are the beliefs that I have. And so our identity is all these things. And then when somebody says, Well, have you ever thought about this? And they put the truth in front of us, a lot of times people will say, Nope, I’m not looking at that, I’m not going there, I don’t believe that, because it’s easier to deny the truth than it is to change your identity, right? Because we’re so locked down on it, and so personally, my identity is not something that I can earn, it’s something that’s given to me by my creator, yes, right. And so, what that does for me is it’s pretty cool, is because I’ve had a lot of beliefs in my life that as I matured and learned new things, I realized they were wrong. But because my identity wasn’t my belief, right, I didn’t have a shaking of the core. I was like, okay, God forgive me for that. I’ve learned, right? But my value was never my belief, my value was how I was created, and so that’s really an interesting thing because if you talk to people whose identity is their belief and you challenge their belief, even in a good-natured way or in a loving and kind way, sometimes you get a reaction that you didn’t expect, right? Because you’re telling them you’re not somebody, and so that’s why the way to do it is through great questions. Because if I question you and you come to your own conclusion, that’s a win for both of us.
[David] Yeah, that and that is a really good approach. So it’s asking for defining, redefining questions, trying to probe and be a listener by asking great questions. Is this what you mean with the deepest grace and the highest standard? You and I are talking about this, you talk about something called deepest grace.
[Tom] Yeah, and so here’s the reality, a lot of people don’t understand that you can have at the same time the highest standards and the deepest grace. So let’s talk about business and then we’ll talk about the human or the spiritual side. So in business, if I didn’t have any standards in my business, I’d go out of business, right? Because anything’s good enough, and then pretty soon everybody’s beating you. So you gotta have super high standards. But in order for a business to thrive and to grow, you’re gonna have people working in that business, and people are gonna make mistakes, and so how do we handle that? Well, we give them the deepest grace, right? We come in and we love them and we try to understand how they made that mistake, and most mistakes you can recover from. Now, there’s some that we might have to be real serious about, but we don’t lower the standard to adjust for their mistake. Instead, we come in with the love and say, hey, no, this is the way we do it, this is why we do it. You can, you know, you’re capable of doing it, fantastic. And it’s just like the old parable in the Bible where, you know, they the Pharisees brought the woman caught in adultery, and they said, Oh, look, you know, look, Rabbi, we’ve caught her. The law says we should stone her. What should we, what should we do?
[David] What do you say we should do? Yes.
[Tom] Yeah, Jesus writes in the sand, they don’t know what he says, and then and then he looks up and he says, He who is cast, he who is without sin cast the first stone. Yeah, and everybody melts away.
[David] One by one they drop their stones of water. Yeah, it’s there’s a business principle in that. I mean, it’s a great, it’s a great life principle. But it is like he asked, he didn’t defeat it by saying, What are you fools thinking of? He asked them a question. Or he made he made it okay. Which one of you it as a challenging I guess it was a statement, but it was a question. Okay, which one of you is without? Yeah, exactly. And they go like it’s so true.
[Tom] The principle and then he closes it off. He says, No one here condemns you, and neither do I, now go and sin no more. So, what did he do? He gave the deepest grace, and then he kept the highest standard. Go and sin no more.
[David] And so that’s a great example. That is a really good example of that. I’m trying to think of a situation in business. Someone fails. I’m thinking of one person, I think they don’t mind because I already put it on the podcast, but Pavan at SunWest, it was actually me introduced interviewing Jennifer, and she told the story about where she made a mistake in the market, and it was I mean, it was tens of thousands of dollars, which at the time for that company where they were at was a significant amount of money. And so she had to go in to Pavan and let him know what had happened and that through a mistake and it was just really for her. She was already thinking I gotta go get a box start packing in my office. What am I gonna do next? I’m gonna get fired. And he looked up and says, Well, how did it happen? He says, Well, I did this, I did this, and I failed to do this. And he says, Okay, did you learn from it? And he goes, Well, yeah. She says, Would you will you do this ever again? He goes, Absolutely not. He says, Okay, good. Go back to your desk, go back to work. And she was floored, it was the deepest grace. And it was an expensive lesson. And she says, That made me so loyal to this company. Because when you really and she says, I work never to make other mistakes. We all make our different mistakes. I made some other mistakes, but none of them were as expensive as that one. And it may have been hundreds of thousands. I don’t know, but it was a significant amount of money that could have put a lot of companies out of business. And he forgave her and just said, did you learn from it? Can we now make sure we don’t do that again? And she went right back to work. No impunity. And it’s like, you know, we’re you’re now on probation or anything like that. It’s just like it made for one of the strongest employees in that company. I love these kind of stories about holding a high standard. But doing that, how do you do this when you’re in your with your technology? Because first of all, let’s talk about your technology. You developed some great technology that’s built on your dad’s principles, Zig Ziglar’s principles, and you put them in, you’ve codified them. And how did how did you do that and how does this system work?
[Tom] Yeah, so we call it Zig AI.
[David] Zig AI, oh good.
[Tom] Real simple and it’s pretty cool. What we did is, you know, the problem with AI is sometimes you can’t trust where it gets the information from. Kind of makes it up. Now I will say this AI is a lot better now than it was six months ago and it’s going to be a lot better in the future. But what we did is we circumnavigated that we just took 15 of dad’s books. We took 50 hours of dad’s audio programs. We took some other training courses we had, we took my two books and we put it into Zig AI and then we built a coaching lens. So the AI tool is like a coach and so you can go into it and you can say hey Zig I want to have the best 2026 in my mortgage industry in my mortgage business I’ve ever had what’s the Zigglr way of setting goals to make that happen and you get a Zig Ziglar answer right I mean Zig’s voice superpower. No this is just AI fuel which is what Todd has got the voice and now that is next level cool so yeah there’s some next level that’s how we did it and that’s and for everybody who’s listening to this I’m a huge proponent in AI to speed up our ability to learn and to do busy work so we can build more face-to-face phone-to-phone relationships so amazing.
[David] We just recorded a day that’s what it is recorded a recorded podcast just before I did this one with Matthew Marks at Evocalize and he said the same thing his goal with his AI product is to be able to create it’s so and make it so easy that people are spending more time at human-to-human connection because that is where the real especially something as significant as a real estate transaction whether you’re the realtor or whether you’re not you’re the loan officer helping them secure the financing to buy that property it is such an important level of trust in there and that is done human to human but having the tools to set the goals. I love that idea so how is that, how can we access that system.
[Tom] Yeah, so we do a free trial subscription you don’t need a credit card or anything, you just get your phone out and you the subject line is Zig AI. Z-I-G-A-I all caps so and the number is three three seven seven seven you just text it and then it’ll send you back a little text number it’ll ask for your email address you send that in and then we send you the login credentials and you’ve got.
[David] So, let’s see if we have that right so you text the number 33375
[Tom] 33777
[David] Oh 33777 so all right and then you put in Zig AI in the subject part all caps and and you will have you’ll give you getting a response as soon as we hang up here that’s outstanding yeah and play with it ask it your favorite zig questions ask it anything and so it’ll put zig quotes in there it you know one of the great questions we had is we have the seven step goal setting system and the dad made famous 50 plus years ago and so one of our coaches was working with a client coaching them and the client said this is great I want to share this with my eight year old, how do I do that and so they went to Zig AI and they said write the seven step goal setting process in a way an eight year old would understand it and it popped out in an eight year old language it changed the name of it to instead of goal setting it the new name is how to get what you want so if you have an eight year old and they want what they want you need to get them on Zig AI because it’ll get them on zig AI.
[David] I’m thinking we it’s good that we’re releasing this right after Christmas because on January 2nd is when we’re going to be publishing this interview otherwise we’re gonna have some parents call you really mess me up because my Christmas budget and blew my Christmas budget cost me a lot of money this past demand so how do you how do the lies we tell ourselves limit us and I mean that’s something you talk about when you’re speaking I heard you talk about this share that with our listeners.
[Tom] Yeah and it goes back to this, I have this saying and this is also the number one thing I learned from my dad. My dad’s quote that I love the most is this “you are what you are and where you are because of what’s gone into your mind, you can change what you are and you can change where you are by changing what goes into your mind” And so I took that quote and I shortened it to my own version and it says this “what you feed your mind determines your appetite” and so the problem with lies is it’s not that we hear it one time or we say it one time or you know it pops out every three months. It is a constant thing that’s the self-talk in our brain and so whatever it is well you know I can’t make those calls they’re probably not going to answer anyway or I’ve never called somebody who’s the CEO of that large of a company to ask for their business right these are all lies that you’re telling yourself and you replay them over and over and over again and they suddenly become how you behave and your behavior creates the results so your thinking drives your behavior be your behavior gets the results and it all starts in your…
[David] Yeah, they say golf is a game of six inches it’s the same thing. I mean it’s what goes on between our ears that’s it and what comes out of our mouth and I think what goes in our ears is one thing but what comes out of our mouth our self-talk is such a big part of it. What’s the one habit that Zig Ziggler had that made him who he was.
[Tom] Yeah man that is that is strong I got asked that question uh one time and out of my mouth popped this here’s the one habit for over 40 years he spent two to three hours every day first thing in the morning learning something new so that he could internalize and personalize it so that he could share it with somebody else for their benefit. Now that’s a long statement so let me make it shorter. How different would your life be a year from now if you just took five minutes first thing in the morning to learn something new that you would share with someone you loved and cared about for their benefit you see it’s the motive as to how you do the learning and why you do the learning that changes you. Dad’s whole life he like his whole desire was to make a profound difference in anybody he spoke to like that’s what he woke up that’s what gave him joy that was his purpose and so he just took that little action of learning things new. Now he didn’t start off with two or three hours a day, he started off with five minutes and then 10 minutes and then that grew to 20 and then it grew to 45 and then it was like who he was and so if you want to know how Zig Ziglar became who he was, that was the one habit that he did but the motive of that habit is the key thing there. He was doing it to benefit someone else.
[David] Yeah and I love that which goes back to that statement his philosophy you can have everything in life you want if you just help enough people get what they want. And then we’re when we I think that’s such a principle that we can end this interview on and I wanted to have you back Tom because I’m just there’s so many things I want to cover again with you that are principles that your dad taught and now you’re picked up and you have some of your old principles that you’ve taken extracted out of that and you have repackaged them and so I’m really excited about it. Again how can people get that it’s the X they text 33777 and they put in zig AI alt cap letters and that’s going to get them a free trial of that. Then for those that say man I would like to have Tom come to speak at our organization. It’s a great brand to have in your organization it’ll draw people in especially if you’re a having an organization in your city and you go Zig Ziglar’s son speaking here come listen to Tom. I mean that’s a good drawing card. We watched it work and for Todd at the Sales Mastery so how can people reach you to have you come and speak?
[Tom] Yeah David I’m kind of old fashioned, I actually read my emails and I really I love talking to people and so my email is pretty hard to remember it is tom@ziglar.com oh well there you go tom@ziglar.com our website is ziglar.com but it’s but you know just say hey I was on the podcast with you and David and I got a question and I’d love to love to help you and point you in the right direction if it’s not me.
[David] Yeah, well it is it what’s amazing is how many people you speak to and then you told me the size of your organization I go how do you do that with such a small group it’s amazing
[Tom] Yeah we are blessed indeed we’ve got you know one of the things about speaking i’m I’m going to Vietnam in a few weeks and doing leadership over there I get to speak all over the world, is everywhere I go even in Vietnam there are friends and family I haven’t met yet who are there because they’re in multinational companies and they have been trained on the Ziglar philosophy it’s a global uh institution and so whether I’m speaking here in Dallas or in Nashville last week or in Vietnam in a couple of weeks it’s the same thing it’s this legacy that’s been created around that core philosophy you can have everything in life you want if you’ll just help enough other people get what they want.
[David] Yeah it’s it I mean what’s so fun about that it’s a principle that works and has worked for decades. And I’m so glad to have met you Tom what a gracious human being you are and how what an honor you do to your dad to carry on the legacy. I think that’s just awesome. And it’s been great to have you here. Thank you.
[Tom] Thank you sir
Important Links
Tom Ziglar is the CEO of the Zig Ziglar Corporation and steward of the timeless Ziglar philosophy: “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” For three decades he’s expanded Ziglar’s impact through innovative training and coaching programs and as the author of Choose to Win and 10 Leadership Virtues for Disruptive Times. Tom speaks around the world to billion-dollar enterprises, small businesses, and leading universities—including Cambridge and Harvard—on performance, culture, and coach leadership. Today, the Ziglar brand is more relevant than ever, with more than 8 million followers across social platforms.