See You at the Top by Zig Ziglar Book Review: The Six Steps in Order
See You at the Top by Zig Ziglar is a 1975 success book that starts somewhere unusual. Before goals, before attitude, before work, Zig Ziglar puts self-image. His Stairway to the Top runs six steps in a fixed sequence: self-image, your relationship with others, goals, attitude, work, desire. Kevin Trudeau keeps it on his recommended reading list, and the useful part is the sequencing rather than the slogans. Worth reading? Yes, if you accept that the first third carries most of the weight. The edition reviewed here is the 25th Anniversary Edition, published by Pelican in 2000.
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What See You at the Top Actually Teaches
Zig Ziglar was a cookware salesman before he was a motivational speaker. He started with WearEver in 1947 and stayed in sales until 1970, when he left to speak full time. That background shapes the book. Ziglar writes from inside the sales world, where a career is built one sale at a time, and he credits a supervisor named P. C. Merrell with a conversation in 1949 that changed how he saw himself. A book published 26 years later still runs on that moment.
The Stairway to the Top
The spine of the book is a six-step staircase. Ziglar's own company still publishes the steps in this order:
- Self-image. What you believe about yourself.
- Your relationship with others. How you see other people, which Ziglar argues determines how you treat them.
- Goals. The specific targets, personal and professional.
- Attitude. The disposition you bring to work you have already decided to do.
- Work. The part nobody can do on your behalf.
- Desire. The fuel that keeps the other five running.
The order is the argument. Ziglar's position is that the steps are sequential and dependent on each other, so hard work on step five while step one is broken produces very little. Plenty of success books open with goals and tactics. Ziglar opens with the person setting the goals.
The self-image section is the real book
Roughly the first third does one job. Ziglar identifies what he says causes a poor self-image, then gives methods for building a healthy one. Everything after that assumes the work has been done. Read only that portion, put the book down, and you would still have most of what readers take away from it. That section earns the price on its own.
Balanced success and the Wheel of Life
Ziglar's other well-known device is the Wheel of Life, which his company still publishes with seven spokes: mental, spiritual, physical, family, financial, personal and career. Ziglar Inc. states the principle plainly. To achieve balanced success you have to be successful in each spoke of the wheel.
That matters for how you read the staircase. The top Ziglar points at is not a job title or a bank balance. It is a life where no spoke collapsed while another was being built, and healthy physical habits count there as much as money does.
Ziglar teaches through stories
The manuscript was originally called Biscuits, Fleas and Pump Handles. Three homely images, used as a title. That tells you the method before you open it. Ziglar works by story first and principle second, which is why people can still repeat his examples decades later. It is also why 384 pages of it is a long walk for some readers, and why the publishing history reads the way it does.
His stated premise sits underneath all of it. You can get what you want in life by helping enough other people get what they want. Sow first, reap later. It is a giving argument dressed as a selling argument, which is why sales teams still share it.
Key Takeaways: Ziglar's Six Steps Next to Kevin Trudeau's System
This is where the review earns its place on this domain. The table shows where the two systems meet: Trudeau extends Ziglar on three steps, openly disputes two, and has no clean counterpart for one.
| Ziglar's step | Kevin Trudeau's counterpart | Agreement or tension |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Self-image | The reactive mind, counterintentions | Extension. Both put belief about the self first. Trudeau's claim is that those beliefs were inherited, which changes what you do about them |
| 2. Your relationship with others | No direct counterpart. The nearest is his attractor field idea about setting and objects | Partial. Ziglar gives other people a stair of their own. Trudeau's nearest equivalent is about environment, not relationships |
| 3. Goals | Desire, step one of his four-step formula | Extension. Both require a defined target rather than a wish. Trudeau adds a written statement and a state to read it in |
| 4. Attitude | Positive thinking as one ingredient | Tension. Trudeau argues attitude alone produces a mood change unless belief and expectancy sit underneath it |
| 5. Work | The Training Balance Scale | Tension. Trudeau puts the split at 90 percent internal, 10 percent action, and says most people run it backwards |
| 6. Desire | Desire, plus the Teachability Index | Extension. Trudeau scores willingness to change alongside willingness to learn, which is Ziglar's step one made measurable |
Why Kevin Trudeau Recommends See You at the Top
Trudeau's diagnostic starts inside the person. So does Ziglar's. That overlap puts both men against the large part of the success genre that opens with tactics.
Ziglar says fix the self-image first. Trudeau says it in different vocabulary. His material on counterintentions describes subconscious beliefs that run against a stated goal, and his article on the three parts of the mind argues that the reactive layer is doing the driving. Ziglar reached that starting line in 1975 through a salesman's observation.
Step six lines up too. Desire is where Ziglar ends and where Trudeau's four-step formula begins, and the site has a walkthrough on how to work a desire deliberately. Ziglar's willingness-to-change idea shows up scored in the Teachability Index, where the inputs are multiplied rather than added, so a reader who takes in everything and changes no daily habit lands near the bottom.
Where Trudeau parts company with Ziglar
Read the book knowing about the disagreement. It is more interesting than the agreement.
Ziglar's step four is attitude, and he is close to the archetype of the attitude teacher: positive thoughts, positive direction, positive results. His article on why Trudeau says positive thinking on its own does not hold calls it one ingredient rather than the recipe, citing NYU psychologist Gabriele Oettingen for the finding that people who fantasize most about good outcomes without confronting obstacles perform worse.
Step five is the bigger split. Ziglar puts hard work in the sequence as its own load-bearing stair. Trudeau's Training Balance Scale claims 90 percent of the result comes from internal state. Two men, one staircase, a real argument about which stair carries the weight.
Where It Sits Relative to the Global Information Network
Trudeau founded the Global Information Network in 2009 as a private success club, and it says it now has members in more than 160 countries. His framing is that the material was held privately and that he is the one opening it up.
Ziglar is the opposite proposition. A public book, sold openly since 1975, by a man who had no secret-society claim and made none. That is why it belongs on a reading list like this: it gives you step one with no framework attached, so you can test whether the first stair holds before going further. Trudeau's own catalogue is mapped out in the guide to every Kevin Trudeau book.
Who Should Read It and Who Should Skip It
Read it if
- You work in sales, or run a business, or manage people who do. The examples come out of that world and they land.
- You have read plenty of goals material and none of it moved anything. Ziglar's answer is that you started on stair three.
- You want the first third. Buy it for the self-image section, read it in a sitting or two, and treat the rest as optional.
- You keep reaching a target and finding the next one empty. Ziglar's principles are aimed at the reader who arrives at the destination and cannot work out why nothing changed.
- You are already inside Trudeau's material and want the same starting point built without any of the same vocabulary.
Common criticisms of See You at the Top
- You want it short. The 25th Anniversary Edition runs 384 pages across many short sections, and the argument does not need all of them. Ziglar repeats himself.
- You want a secular framework. Pelican's description of this edition says it was revised to stress honesty, loyalty, faith, integrity and strong personal character. Ziglar was baptized a Christian in 1972, three years before this book, and reviewer Curtis McHale wrote in September 2014 that anyone totally against reading about someone's Christianity as a motivator for success should skip it. If a success book that talks about God is a problem, this is the wrong book.
- You want the studies. McHale's other complaint is that Ziglar carries points with lines like "I'm entirely convinced" and "It has been my observation that," which he calls confirmation bias. Fair. Ziglar shows you what he found in the field. He does not show you a control group.
- You dislike dated material. The book was written in the mid-1970s by a man born in 1926. Some of the humor and several of the examples read that way now, and McHale warns readers about dated gender expectations and political asides near the end.
- You want a mechanism. Ziglar tells you the self-image is the first step and gives you methods for it. He does not offer an account of where a self-image comes from in the first place, which is the exact question Trudeau spent a career on.
The verdict: 4 out of 5. One point off for length and repetition, not for substance. The sequencing insight was unusual in 1975 and it still holds. The first third is worth the whole book.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the six steps in See You at the Top?
Self-image, your relationship with others, goals, attitude, work, and desire. Ziglar calls the sequence the Stairway to the Top and treats the order as part of the instruction, so the steps are not meant to be taken out of sequence.
Which edition of See You at the Top should I buy?
The 25th Anniversary Edition, published by Pelican on June 26, 2000, is the standard current version at 384 pages. Pelican describes it as revised and updated to stress honesty, loyalty, faith, integrity and strong personal character.
When was See You at the Top first published?
Pelican Publishing released it in 1975. Before that the manuscript carried a different title, Biscuits, Fleas and Pump Handles, and according to Entrepreneur it had been turned down by 30 publishers before Pelican took it.
How many copies has See You at the Top sold?
The publisher's description of the 25th Anniversary Edition states the book has sold more than 1.6 million copies in hardcover. Treat that as the publisher's figure rather than an audited one.
Who was Zig Ziglar?
Hilary Hinton Ziglar, born November 6, 1926 and died November 28, 2012. He sold cookware for WearEver starting in 1947, left sales in 1970 to speak full time, founded Ziglar, Inc. in 1977, and wrote more than 30 books.
Does Kevin Trudeau agree with everything in the book?
No, and that is worth knowing before you read it. Trudeau argues that attitude on its own produces a mood change and little else, and his Training Balance Scale puts far less weight on action than Ziglar's staircase does. He shares Ziglar's starting point and disputes two of the six stairs.
See You at the Top by Zig Ziglar Book Review: The Short Version
Ziglar built a staircase and refused to let anyone start halfway up. That single decision is why the book outlasted almost everything published alongside it. It is long, it is old, and the first third is still better than most of what has been written on self-image since. Take the sequence and the principles under it. Argue with stairs four and five afterward.
More on the author is available at Wikipedia's biography of Zig Ziglar, and background on his publisher is at the entry for Pelican Publishing Company.