Art Linkletter

Arthur Gordon Linkletter, whose face is as familiar to most Americans as their favorite breakfast cereal, celebrates his seventieth birthday on July 12. He can look back on a life filled with one success after another…an entertainer, author, businessman and public speaker.

But Art Linkletter is looking ahead, not back…and he sees a future of absolutely endless opportunities. In this exclusive interview with Personal Selling Power, he tells us how to make the most of the opportunities to come in the next 10 years. He’s so excited about the prospects that he would like to face them at 20 years of age without a quarter in his pocket!

PSP: We all know that you’re an enthusiastic advocate of the free enterprise system. How did you get that way? Why?

Linkletter: Because I started with nothing, and I was given the opportunity to get everything through work and perseverance, planning and goal-setting, not forgetting the spur of adversity. So, I must, of course, be an enthusiast for any system that permits an unknown, unnamed, abandoned orphan to get to the top of the heap. And that’s what this system does.

PSP: When did you first know that you wanted to be a professional speaker, a salesman of ideas and ideals?

Linkletter: I suppose that it started when I was eleven or twelve years of age. I was getting ready to go to Woodrow Wilson Junior High School which was being built in east San Diego. Following the regular school day when the workmen had left the building of the auditorium, (the seats were unfinished, empty), I used to go over and stand on the stage and make “pretend” speeches to “pretend” audiences. But, it wasn’t really until I got into college and started studying to be an English professor, when I began to work in debating, speaking and writing that I realized where my heart really lay.

PSP: You’ve achieved great success and you are a role model for so many people. Do you attribute this success partially to luck, or to what?

Linkletter: Luck comes when opportunity meets preparation. But timing is important too, and I happened to come along at a marvelous time. In 1933 with the invention of radio came the invention of the “man on the street” show. And when I heard that, I said, “Now, there is something I can do!”

PSP: And you soon became an American institution and later expanded into TV. How did you get into the speaking profession?

Linkletter: In a sense, I’d always wanted to speak, and I’d always been a speaker at informal appearances before service clubs and at rallies to raise money for hospitals and charitable causes. But it was only in the last 12 or 13 years that I became what might be called a “professional lecturer.” And it arose out of free appearances that I made as a memorial to my daughter, who had died during a drug incident, and I was speaking against drug abuse. I embarked, partly at the behest of Norman Vincent Peale, on a crusade to try to save young people. And it was during this time that I really began to spread my wings. Talking about drug abuse led me into talking about human frailties of all kinds and the need for positive, motivated living.

PSP: You’ve been talking a great deal on how to win over the many adversities that come with a rapidly changing world. Do you think that in spite of the many external changes, the individual is totally responsible for his or her life?

Linkletter: Oh, yes. In fact, I speak about that quite often. The real answer to getting people off drugs, vandalism, sex orgies, or all the other destructive things, lies in personal responsibility. You must take charge of your own life, and you must not point the finger at luck, fate, other people or your family history. You can say that you’ve had problems because of these other things, but ultimately you are responsible for yourself. As such, I tell people that they must develop a healthy self-esteem. They must think enough of themselves to invest the extra vigilance required to meet all new challenges head on.

PSP: You are a man who appears to have a very high regard for human beings. To what do you attribute your high degree of self-esteem, in spite of all the obstacles and barriers you’ve encountered?

Linkletter: I’ve worked with young people all my life. I started out wanting to be a YMCA secretary because my parents were old people when they adopted me. My father was crippled; he was unable to play games with me. He was a strict and stern Baptist minister, so I didn’t have the freedom that other young people had. The YMCA became in a sense, my foster father. I became a leader in youth work and later a schoolteacher; then because of circumstances, a radio announcer. I think working with young people gives you a special flavor of energy, inspiration and joy.

PSP: I can see that you have preserved this special flavor.

Linkletter: I think too many grownups forget the child in themselves. That’s the important thing. All of us have a child inside of us who’s spontaneous, curious, happy, carefree, mischievous, and all the other kinds of things that children are. People think that maturity and adulthood preclude the ability to enjoy that part of our lives. So, they turn it off, they cover it up. I encourage it to come out. It leads to more honest, more successful relationships.

PSP: You mention success. What does it mean to you?

Linkletter: I would think that success is the hardest word in Webster’s Dictionary to properly define because it’s so personal. It has so many different meanings for each person. We’re all motivated by different inner drives.

My own definition is doing what I like to do best, and doing it better all the time. In my opinion, success is a journey, not a destination. So, if you’re successful in your travel towards success, that becomes success.

PSP: Abraham Maslow coined a term called “peak experience.” He mentioned that successful people can feel this special sensation many times in their lives. Can you tell us about this from your own journeys toward success?

Linkletter: I would say that an incident occurred recently at a very large meeting of establishment people who are of the Fortune 500 group. I was speaking to them about the free enterprise system and where it was going and I gave such a glowing report with my philosophy of America today and in the next 20 years, that the audience was electrified. I could get them up out of their seats with a turn of a phrase or even a raised eyebrow. At the end, I had three or four minutes of a standing ovation from people who are ordinarily a bit slow to express that kind of enthusiasm because they’re chief executive officers and they have the aloofness characteristic of top command.

PSP: You have always had a great ability to sell people on our free enterprise system. What do you envision for the next 10 years?

Linkletter: I think a very important book for anybody to read these days is Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave. It is one of the most interesting books I have ever read in my whole life. In the third wave, we’re going to see the standard, old-fashioned, large industrial complexes (steel, rubber, automobile, and things like that) give way to what Toffler calls “the cottage civilization,” which means that more people are going to be working in smaller units, in their homes in many cases, with computer controls and data analyzers, and the input from where you’re actually best suited to live.

PSP: Isn’t that going to narrow our perspective?

Linkletter: No, I don’t think so. The wider a choice you have, the more people are gong to be tempted to experiment. And it will be slow growth; it won’t be revolutionary.

PSP: Then, what you’re saying is that people need to expand their awareness of their choices in order to grow.

Linkletter: Right. I would love to be 20 years of age, without a quarter, facing the next 10 years, because I think the opportunities are absolutely endless.

PSP: But most people don’t think so. They’re wailing and weeping that it’s all been said and it’s all been done. And here you’re saying, “This is just the beginning.”

Linkletter: Oh, just the beginning. There’s so many opportunities today, so many chances, that I weep at people who say it’s all been said or done. It hasn’t. We’ve just started. And many of the things need to be resaid and redone better. There’s a whole new generation waiting, anxious and eager, and I think hungrily, for all kinds of new experiences. I also think that some of the standards have been lowered in the last fifteen years so that people of quality, determination and perseverance stand out like lighthouses. In a time when people want to get along and go along, the people who are forging along and forging ahead are just that much more quickly recognized and rewarded.

PSP: Would you say that you are fulfilling whatever purpose you think you have in life?

Linkletter: I am now. I think that for many years, I was doing something that was great fun and I think brought a lot of entertainment to people and made me a lot of money, but I was purely a selfish person, driven towards getting rich and famous. And that, I suppose, is not too abnormal in the world of entertainment. But I think in the last 15 years, my life has broadened out and I see much more clearly the good I can do and the constructive things I can give. Because the more you give, the more you get. And my life has really been in three phases for almost seventy years.

The first was the struggle of a poor boy in the depression. The second was the giddy, unnatural, unbelievable wealth and fame and power that comes with this business we’re in. And then, the third came from the realization of maturity that you should give back the things that you get.

PSP: From what you’re saying, and the way that you look right at this moment, you’re enjoying this third phase more than the other two.

Linkletter: Oh, much, much more. In every way!

PSP: Thank you for sharing your ideas and your awareness of the tremendous opportunities ahead of us.

Linkletter: It was a delight to be with you.

By Art Linkletter

Persuading by Paying Attention

I suppose one key to my success as an interviewer in radio and TV has been sympathetic, encouraging, thoughtful listening. Some interviewers, instead of thinking about what their guest is saying, spend the time thinking up a wisecrack or another question. So their interviews go nowhere.

Most people being interviewed feel insecure, children most of all. Take a five year old and put him in front of lights and cameras and a big audience of strangers; what are the chances of getting him to say much? Almost nil. But I found that by looking him in the eye unwaveringly, never glancing around, never seeming amused or shocked, never demeaning his replies no matter how ridiculous, always staying on his level – by doing all this, I virtually hypnotized him, narrowing his focus of attention to me exclusively so that he talked naturally.

I realized that if I could do this with a child, I could do it with adults. Try it.