In 1997, I formed a business partnership with Bill Gove, the 85-year father of Professional Speaking. I was 32 years old. We were Mutt and Jeff. Bill and I referred to our partnership as “The hustle and the muscle”. Our goals were clear: I got Bill back on the platform (after 20 years of retirement) and he would help launch my speaking career. Bob Proctor described our partnership as “a match made in heaven”. One of Bill’s mentees from the 1960’s/70’s was the amazing Zig Ziglar, who became one of the greatest motivational speakers in history. Bill entertained me over our 5 years together with hundreds of great stories about Zig and his other successful mentees. But Zig and I quickly got off on the wrong foot after a disagreement, and our mutual beef went on for 5 years. I’m sure Zig didn’t lose any sleep over it, but it hurt Bill Gove’s feelings and that got under my skin. Just to be clear, I thought Zig was a nice man. He was also a platform legend. We just didn’t share the same value system when it came to what happened. Maybe I was wrong and he was right. After all, it was over 20 years ago. I realize that Zig is not here to defend his position, so I’ll let you decide. #zigziglar #ipdar #publicspeaking #personaldevelopment #billgove