This week's book: "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie.
"Talk to someone about themselves and they'll listen for hours."
Dale Carnegie
This week I'm finally reading Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. It came out in 1936 and with over 30 million copies sold, it's one of the most influential personal-development books ever written. Somehow, after all the books I've read, this one slipped past me and at 64 I'm excited to get after it.
Here's what I learned about the man himself.
Carnegie wasn't a professor developing theories behind a desk, he was a poor kid who grew up on a Missouri farm. His first real job was selling correspondence courses by horseback to ranchers out west, then bacon and soap door to door. He learned hands on how to deal with people because his next meal depended on it. After saving a few hundred dollars, he moved to New York City to become an actor. After going broke and presumably to pay the bills, he started teaching communication classes at a YMCA.
His students kept telling him the same thing, that they didn't just want to speak well, they also wanted to get along better with people; to be better leaders, they wanted to learn to persuade, and to connect. No book could be found that addressed the topic. So, Carnegie had his students test ideas in the real world and report back. Fifteen years later he started writing his own book. This book isn't theory; it’s years of field experiments on how humans actually interact.
And, by the way, I had something completely wrong. I always assumed, from the title, that this was a book about collecting friends and manipulating people to get what you want. It isn't. Not even close. It's about genuinely understanding people. How to make someone feel truly important. How to disagree without making an enemy. How to become the kind of listener people open up to. How to lead without being bossy.
Carnegie believed these weren't gifts you're born with. They're skills anyone can learn. Even me, and that’s saying something.
Here's what we’ll learn this week: by Saturday you'll have Carnegie's core principles, an honest assessment of whether his teachings still hold up after 90 years, and, since I'm reading it fresh right alongside you, my real reactions to a book most of the world seems to have read (or claims to have) but me.
Here’s my question to start the week: what's a famous, obvious book you've always wanted to read but never got around to it? Let me know… your secret is safe with me.
I'll go first, obviously this one. Somehow I built a whole newsletter around reading the best personal-development books and never even cracked the most famous one of them all. Better late than never.
Reading ahead?
Next week's book is still a surprise, I'll announce it in a day or two. Watch your inbox.
If someone forwarded you this, you can get the daily insights free at www.allstarmentors.com.
Talk tomorrow,
Mike
Practical wisdom for the life you're building