“You can make more friends in two months by becoming really interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Which is just another way of saying that the way to make a friend is to be one.” – Dale Carnegie

The Brooklyn businessman, newly enrolled in a Dale Carnegie course, approached the podium to deliver his maiden speech. To this day, people recall how his hands trembled and his face twitched. Reaching the lectern, the Brooklyner turned to face his listeners. He felt like a man under a 1,000 watt bulb. He unhinged his jaw, but nothing came out. He fainted and crumpled to the floor.

In an instant, Dale Carnegie leapt to the platform and swept his hand toward the prostrate body.

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“One month from today, this man will make a speech from this platform!” he thundered.

Sure enough, one month later the famous Brooklyn fainter made that speech.

Dale Carnegie – who was this man who inspired hundreds of thousands, and whose message has blossomed and spread in the 30 years since his death in 1955 to help mold millions of men and women including the now legendary figures like Lee Iacocca, Zig Ziglar and Ed Foreman?

Like all those who earn “bigger than life” status, Carnegie was many people in one. Salesman, brilliant intellect, grassroots philosopher, renowned speaker and innovator, and author of the worldwide best-seller, How to Win Friends and Influence People. A diligent scholar familiar with Shakespeare, Socrates and Plato. A pragmatist who applied learning to advance his teachings. Friend of Presidents, explorers, film stars, writers, and the common man. Equally comfortable in the company of business leaders or heads of state.

More than anything else, Carnegie was a man who believed – and proved countless times over – that the art of communication, learned through the mastery of public speaking and the study of human nature, is the key to prosperity and happiness.

THE MAN

J. Oliver Crom, who met Carnegie in 1952 and is now president of Dale Carnegie & Associates Inc. in New York, remembers him as a person with innumerable interests, a deep love of life, and a wonderful sense of humor.

“He loved to work in the yard. He was a gardener and loved roses. He was a fantastic photographer and he loved the theater. He loved museums. He loved everything in life – fishing and hunting and climbing mountains,” says Crom.

“He asked questions and listened.” In other words, Carnegie practiced what he preached in his famous book and lectures; he showed appreciation for people, made them feel important, and respected the views of others.

Crom has a favorite story that illustrates this quality of Carnegie’s:

“He was at a very fancy affair, and was seated next to a scientific person. Mr. Carnegie knew nothing about this particular science, but throughout the dinner he asked the scientist questions that encouraged him to talk about what he was involved in. At the end of the dinner, the scientist went up to the host and told him that Mr. Carnegie was a most fascinating conversationalist -and all that he’d done was ask questions and listen!”

The idea of showing appreciation for others through intent listening was first outlined in Carnegie’s lecture (and later book), How to Win Friends and Influence People. The book, which has since been printed in nearly forty languages, made Carnegie an “overnight” success. Of course, like most “overnight” successes, Carnegie’s triumph took many years to achieve -24, in fact. During that time, Carnegie developed the ideas that would later form the hub of his teachings. Through an incredible variety of jobs, experiences and travels, he molded himself into the man who would one day have the ears of millions.

THE MYTH

Like Abe Lincoln, whom he admired (and later wrote a book about), Carnegie had a background of which myths are made – both came from humble origins. Born in 1888, son of an unsuccessful Missouri hog farmer, young Dale rode to school on horseback wearing a pair of pants that pinched and a coat that swallowed him. But even as a youth, he shot off sparks illuminating the brilliant career that lay ahead. In college he so excelled at debating that he was given the job of coaching other members of the debate team.

Carnegie began to click when he set out to make his fortune. His early working years, from 1908 to 1922, was the distillery from which he would tap the 100 proof, strong-as-white-lightning ideas that intoxicated later audiences.

Beginning in 1908, Carnegie took jobs selling everything from bacon to courses in engineering. He gave up selling temporarily to tour the country as an a actor and stage manager. Disappointed with his income, Carnegie augmented his earnings by selling neckties, then chucked both to sell Packard automobiles, a product he amiably admitted he “knew nothing about.”

Nineteen hundred twelve was a turnaround year. It was then that Carnegie hit on the idea of teaching a course on public speaking at New York City’s YMCA. The course was a smash hit, as were the inspirational articles he began to publish. By 1916, he was earning $400 per week, big money for those days, and could call on the likes of Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Navy Secretary, to headline a speaking engagement.

Already, Carnegie was beginning to understand why audiences were drawn to him.

“Those adults didn’t come to my classes because they wanted college credit or social prestige,” Carnegie later recalled. “They wanted to solve their problems. They wanted to be able to stand up on their feet and say a few words at a business meeting without fainting from fright.”

At the same time, Carnegie discovered the technique for getting people to overcome their fear of public speaking. He simply asked them to talk about themselves. “Without knowing what I was doing, I stumbled on the best method of conquering fear,” he said.

World War I sidetracked him with a brief Army stint. Afterward, he was off on yet another venture, traveling the globe as Lowell Thomas’ business manager. Passing his thirtieth year, he left Thomas and set out to become a literary legend. However, his novel, Blizzard, was received frostily by publishers.

Like many Superachievers, Dale Carnegie was a man leaping from success to success, over the occasional sinkhole of disappointment. He seemed obsessed with launching boldly into new ventures, totally undaunted by the prospect of failure, as if for no other reason than to enrich his life with novel experiences. One might surmise that Carnegie sensed the coming calling of his destiny, and that he considered all challenges simply as prerequisite courses.

The stories from this era testify to his exuberant attitude in dealing with roadblocks. There was the time, for instance, that he climbed a telephone pole to sell an engineering course to a lineman. Later selling pork for Armour, Carnegie confronted a merchant who couldn’t pay his bill. They struck a bargain. Carnegie took a stack of shoes off the counter, walked down the street to the railway station and sold them to the gandy dancers. The receipts were forwarded to Armour that afternoon.

Each experience – as a salesman, actor, business manager, author – contributed to the man who blossomed during the 1920’s.

THE MESSAGE

In 1922 he again began to teach, patiently building up his classes in New York. Not discouraged by the failure of his novel, Carnegie resumed writing, turning out innumerable articles, and publishing his first successful book, Lincoln the Unknown. Soon he was broadcasting his own radio program to millions of listeners.

After several years of teaching, and the 1926 publication of a four-volume work on oratory, Carnegie condensed what he’d learned about his students. It dawned on him that the goal of communication since the eras of Pericles and Cicero had been to influence others. And the most effective communicators had always been those who were not merely good orators, but who also understood human nature.

For Carnegie, it was a revelation. The years of experience crystallized in the seed of what was to become the famous Dale Carnegie Course.

Setting out to learn all he could about the art of human relations, Carnegie was amazed to discover that there wasn’t a single modern book on the subject. Ever the man to take the initiative, he hired a researcher who spent eight hours a day for eighteen solid months plowing through countless thousands of magazine articles – reading everything that had the remotest bearing on the subject of how to win friends and influence people.

Drawing on this raw material and his own rich experience, Carnegie wrote a brief talk, which later evolved into a full-blown lecture entitled, How to Win Friends and Influence People. A Simon & Schuster editor who happened to take the course liked Carnegie’s ideas so much he offered him a book contract. The year was 1936, smack in the middle of the Great Depression. Lines of people jamming bookstores for Carnegie’s masterpiece may have at times surpassed those at soup kitchens. A half-million copies sold in the first year.

What made the book such a sensation? Carnegie employed a surefire formula: Tell the people something that is practical, personal and optimistic. Keep it simple, and make the goals accessible by using real life stories as proof that the teachings work. It was a winning formula and it worked.

Carnegie taught one fundamental lesson: How to deal successfully with others. He trumpeted the principles of how to be a good salesman of products, services and ideas.

He made his points unforgettable by telling a story and summing it up with a moral. Whether he was quoting Shakespeare or spinning a yarn about a salesman, he employed simple language to reinforce universal principles.

This was his genius – drawing attention to the overlooked nugget of truth. What could be more commonplace than his advice, “Don’t criticize, condemn or complain,” or “Become genuinely interested in other people.” Where Carnegie was profound, it was in his ability to convince people that these gems of wisdom were too often taken for granted.

TIME-TESTED PRINCIPLES

Because Carnegie was a man of action, it’s little wonder that his books are “action books” and his lectures “calls to action.” How to Win Friends and Influence People proceeds from anecdote to anecdote. In case you missed it, Carnegie offers a one-sentence synopsis at the end of each chapter that tells you what to do.

“If you want to persuade someone to your point of view, make him feel like somebody,” said Carnegie. Put yourself in his shoes. Don’t talk – listen to his problems and concerns. Show that you are genuinely interested. Don’t argue -respect the opinions of others. Lavish praise for the merest achievement or improvement. Make people happy about helping you. In other words, use the personal touch – that’s the way to sell yourself.

And remember the shortest rule: Smile!

Carnegie’s message showed him to be not only a man of his times, but a man of our times. Why? By stressing empathy and the personal touch in dealing with others, he balmed one of the most sensitive nerves in modern industrial society – fear and resentment over being a mere cog in a huge steel and granite bureaucracy. Think of the stony-faced depersonalized environment many of us work in today, and Carnegie’s simple plea to “Smile!” takes on a new meaning.

STEWARDSHIP

Carnegie taught that anyone could learn and follow these ideas, and went further to say that all successful people do exactly that. In fact, knowledge of human nature is always more important than mere professional or technical skill. The man who masters this wisdom becomes the trusted steward of power.

Carnegie’s principal hero in this regard was Charles Schwab, the man chosen by industrialist Andrew Carnegie to run U.S. Steel. Acknowledged as the first executive to earn a million dollars a year, Schwab frequently admitted that there were many men better versed in the steel business. But he gave ground to no one in the field of human relations, where he was an undisputed master.

In his teachings, Dale Carnegie often used a favorite quote of Schwab’s:

“I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement.”

Schwab was not the bare-knuckled entrepreneur Andrew Carnegie was, nor did he have any desire to become one. He was a steward, charged with the responsibility of understanding and managing others.

DALE CARNEGIE TODAY

Carnegie’s teachings are as fresh and inspiring now as on the day he assembled them in the mid 1930s. If he was bigger than life while alive, it may be said that in death he has become an institution, with 10-fold growth in 30 years. There are two reasons for the continued success of Dale Carnegie. One is the universal appeal of the teachings, which have been expanded to include courses in management training and sales training. The other is the concept of stewardship which Carnegie’s successors put to work within the organization soon after his death.

It’s an inspiring story, one J. Oliver Crom relishes telling:

“Shortly after Mr. Carnegie died, a group of business people came to Mrs. Carnegie and said, ‘We’re here to purchase the company – this is what we’re offering and you’d better take it.’ She turned them down.

“The following June at our convention, Dorothy Carnegie rose before the assembly and said, ‘This is a sad time for all of us following my husband’s death. I don’t know what you all are planning to do, but I know what I’m planning to do.’

“Talk about inspiration. Everyone wanted to know what they could do to help. And that’s when this organization began to take on truly national proportions,” says Crom.

Under Dorothy Carnegie’s direction, the company introduced stronger, more centralized management and financial planning. It formalized instructor training programs to assure the highest quality, hired marketing specialists, and launched its first national advertising campaign.

All of this was accomplished in the space of one year – 1957. Today, as Dale Carnegie & Associates nears the fiftieth anniversary of How to Win Friends and Influence People, it can look with pride on having trained 3,000 instructors offering courses in 1,000 cities. Graduates now number more than three million people, compared to 350,000 at the time of Dale Carnegie’s death.

Crom attributes this success to Dorothy Carnegie, who ran the company for 20 years. Now Crom himself is the steward, and as he considers the growth of the organization, he muses on the “problems” that sometimes attend success.

“Our image is so good in the area of public speaking that many people don’t realize we also have the other programs to satisfy very special needs within an organization,” says Crom.

Too good an image in public speaking? One can imagine a feisty ex-salesman, ex-actor, ex-novelist, ex-road manager belly laughing at the thought of that.

Dale Carnegie is alive and well.

Dale Carnegie:

On Self-Consciousness

There is only one person who can cure someone of self-consciousness and that is himself. I know of no other handicap the cure for which can be written in so few words – “Forget yourself.” When you are feeling shy, timid, self-conscious, put your mind on something else immediately. If you are speaking, forget everything but the subject. Never mind what others are thinking of you or your delivery. Just forget yourself and go ahead.

On Pep Talks

Is giving yourself a pep talk every day silly, superficial, childish? No. On the contrary, it is the very essence of sound psychology. “Our life is what our thoughts make it.” Those words are just as true today as they were eighteen centuries ago when Marcus Aureoles first wrote them in his book of meditations.

On Opening Minds

Remember that the man you are talking to is a hundred times more interested in himself and his wants and his problems than he is in you and your problems. His toothache means more to him than a famine in China that kills a million people. A boil on his neck interests him more than forty earthquakes in Africa. Think of that the next time you start a conversation.

On Enthusiasm

How can you make yourself become enthusiastic? By telling yourself what you like about what you are doing and pass on quickly from the part you don’t like to the part you do like. Then act enthusiastic; tell someone about it; let them know why it interests you.

On Acting

If you act “as if” you are interested in your job, that bit of acting will tend to make your interest real. It will also tend to decrease your fatigue, your tensions and your worries.

On Smiling

Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, “I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you.”

That is why dogs make such a hit. They are so glad to see us that they almost jump out of their skins. So, naturally we are glad to see them.

An insincere grin? No. That doesn’t fool anybody. We know it is mechanical and we resent it.

On Disappointment

Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success. No other elements can do so much for a man if he is willing to study them and make capital out of them. Look backward. Can’t you see where your failures have helped you?

On Perspective

About 90 percent of the things in our lives are right and about 10 percent are wrong, if we want to be happy, all we have to do is concentrate on the 90 percent that are right and ignore the 10 percent that are wrong. If we want to be worried and bitter and have stomach ulcers, all we have to do is to concentrate on the 10 percent that are wrong and ignore the 90 percent that are glorious.

On Enemies

When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us; power over our sleep, our appetites, blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us, and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them at all, but our hate is turning our own days and nights into a hellish turmoil.

On Selling Ideas

Don’t you have much more faith in ideas that you discover for yourself than in ideas that are handed to you on a silver platter? If so, isn’t it bad judgment to try to ram your opinions down the throats of other people? Wouldn’t it be wiser to make suggestions – and let the other man think out the conclusion for himself?

On Worry

If you have a worry problem, do these three things:

1. Ask yourself, “What is the worst that can possibly happen?”
2. Prepare to accept it if you have to.
3. Then calmly proceed to improve on the worst.

On Making Friends

If you want to win friends, make it a point to remember them. If you remember my name, you pay me a subtle compliment; you indicate that I have made an impression on you. Remember my name and you add to my feeling of importance.

On Values

I honestly believe that this is one of the greatest secrets to true peace of mind – a decent sense of values. And I believe we could annihilate 50 percent of all our worries at once if we would develop a sort of private gold standard -gold standard of what things are worth to us in terms of our lives.

On Showmanship

This is the day of dramatization. Merely stating a truth isn’t enough. The truth has to be made vivid, interesting, dramatic. You have to use showmanship. The movies do it. Radio does it. And you will have to do it if you want attention.