What Zig Ziglar Can Teach the Professional Bail Agent
A Mississippi-raised salesman’s lessons on service, character, and persistence still apply to every licensed surety bail agent today
Zig Ziglar is one of the most recognized names in American sales and personal development, and his story runs straight through Mississippi. Born in Coffee County, Alabama, in 1926, he moved with his family to Yazoo City when he was five years old. His father died the next year, and he was raised as one of twelve children by a single mother. By the age of six he was selling peanuts on the streets of Yazoo City. He went on to sell cookware, teach for the Dale Carnegie Institute, and write more than thirty books before his death in 2012. His lessons were built for salesmen, but they fit the professional bail agent better than most people would expect.
His best-known teaching is simple: “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” That sentence describes the surety bail business. A family wants their loved one home. The court wants the defendant in the courtroom on the scheduled date. The community wants accountability without the taxpayer footing the bill. When a bail agent does the job right, all three get what they want, and the agent earns a living doing it. The agent who forgets that this business is built on serving others does not last long.
Ziglar also taught that it is not your aptitude but your attitude that determines your altitude. Every bail agent in Mississippi meets the same licensing requirements. What separates the agent who is respected in the courthouse from the agent who is merely tolerated is attitude. It shows in how an agent dresses, how he speaks to a clerk, how he answers the phone at two in the morning, and how he handles a judge who disagrees with him. Knowledge gets you licensed. Attitude determines how far you go once you are.
He said, “The way you see people is the way you treat them.” Bail agents meet families on the worst day of their lives. A mother calling about her son is scared, confused, and often embarrassed. The agent who sees her as a sale to be closed will treat her one way, and the agent who sees her as a person who needs help and honest answers will treat her another. Families remember how they were treated, and they tell others. That word of mouth builds a business.
Ziglar named honesty, character, integrity, faith, love, and loyalty as the foundation stones of success. Our profession is under constant attack from organizations that want surety bail eliminated, and they look for every bad actor and every mistake to make their case. The best defense we have is a profession full of agents whose character holds up under examination. Integrity is not a slogan for a bail agent. It is the evidence that defeats the argument against us.
He also understood that success is not a single event. As he put it, success doesn’t come overnight, it comes over time. The agent who stops learning after licensing falls behind, because laws change, court rules change, and the expectations of judges and the public change with them. Education has to be ongoing for every agent, not a box checked once and forgotten.
Finally, Ziglar knew rejection. His first book, See You at the Top, was turned down by about thirty publishers before a small Louisiana publishing house took a chance on it, and it is still in print today. Bail agents know rejection too. Bills die in committee, judges refuse surety, and reform groups win a news cycle. The answer Ziglar gave is the same answer our profession needs: keep going, keep improving, and keep telling the truth.
Zig Ziglar spent his life teaching that serving others, guarding your character, and refusing to quit lead to success. The professional surety bail agent who lives by those lessons builds a better business and a stronger profession for everyone who comes after. As Ziglar would say, see you at the top.
About the Author
Mike Morrison is the 2026 PBUS National Bail Agent of the Year, President of the Mississippi Bail Agents Association, and a nationally recognized bail educator, speaker, and criminal justice commentator. With more than 35 years of hands-on experience as a licensed Professional Bail Agent and owner of Mike Morrison Bail Bonding Company in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, he brings a practical, real-world perspective to discussions involving American legal history, institutional accountability, constitutional rights, public safety, technology, and public policy.
Morrison is recognized as a bail trainer by the Mississippi Judicial College and is a sought-after guest speaker for judicial, prosecutorial, and industry conferences across the country. He has presented before state judges, justice court clerks, prosecutors, attorneys general staff, and bail professionals nationwide, and he travels to state bail association conferences to speak on bail and on social media strategy for the profession. He also leads professional education and ethics programs for bail agents through the Master Class Bail Agent Series and other national training initiatives.
At the national level, Morrison works with the Professional Bail Agents of the United States (PBUS) Board of Directors and supports its committees on national initiatives. He also works with the boards of directors of other state bail associations, sharing the strategies behind Mississippi’s successes so they can be put to work across the profession.
He has published nearly 200 articles examining the institutions, policies, and decisions that affect working Americans. His writing is grounded in decades spent inside courtrooms, jails, communities, and the criminal justice system, and his commentary has surpassed 1.9 million views across social media in 2026.
Independent, plain-spoken, and focused on accountability, Morrison writes and speaks about the intersection of government, liberty, public safety, professional responsibility, and the real-world consequences of public policy in Mississippi and across the nation.
© 2026 Mike Morrison. All rights reserved.
