How to Win Friends and Influence People is an amazing personal development book, and I go back and read it as often as I can.  It is one of the best-selling books of all time with over 30 million copies sold since 1934 when it was first printed.  Amazon has it listed as the 11th highest selling non-fiction book of all time, and Time Magazine lists it in the top 100 most influential books in history.  It is definitely a book that can help you create the best version of yourself while helping you to create massive success in your life.

I’d like to provide a high level summary of this book and encourage you to pick up a copy and spend time studying it’s concepts and teachings.  I believe you can study it’s principles over and over again and still gain knowledge and understand as you grow in your business and life.

The book begins by helping us to understand exactly what the wisdom inside it’s cover can help to do for you.  The list of things it can help you do was originally 12 items, so I included all of them here:

1. Get you out of a mental rut, give you new thoughts, new visions, new ambitions.
2. Enable you to make friends quickly and easily.
3. Increase your popularity.
4. Help you to win people to your way of thinking.
5. Increase your influence, your prestige, and your ability to get things done.
6. Enable you to win new clients, new customers.
7. Increase your earning power.
8. Make you a better salesman, a better executive.
9. Help you to handle complaints, avoid arguments, keep your human contacts smooth and pleasant.
10. Make you a better speaker, a more entertaining conversationalist.
11. Make the principles of psychology easy for you to apply in your daily contacts.
12. Help you to arouse enthusiasm among your associates.

Now I want to make sure you read between the lines here a bit.  The goal is not to put your efforts into making people like you, gain recognition, or even put too much value in others' opinions of you…although that is a definite byproduct.  The goal is to create influence in order to achieve the level of prosperity you desire in your life.  So, if any of the items above interest you, then read on…

Each part of this book gives you tangible advice and strategies for you to use, but more importantly it is packed with Stories, Examples, and Quotes that will help you to understand and apply each of its principles.  The 4 parts of the book are:

• Techniques for Handling People
• Ways to make people like you
• Winning People over to your way of Thinking
• Becoming a Leader.  

I encourage you to read each chapter in the book and relate it to your particular business, life, or experience in order to gain golden nuggets of information and strategies you can use immediately.

Throughout this week, I will be discussing and expanding on each of the 4 sections of the book below on The Daily Mastermind Podcast.  I would love for you to pick up a copy of the book and join me each day as we drill down on this timeless Masterclass from Dale Carnegie.

Part 1- Techniques in Handling People

1. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
2. Give honest and sincere appreciation.
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Part 2- Six Ways to Make People Like You

1. Become genuinely interested in other people.
2. Smile.
3. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
4. Be a good listener.  Encourage others to talk about themselves.
5. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
6. Make the other person feel important…and do it sincerely.

Part 3- Win People to Your Way of Thinking

1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
2. Show respect for the other person’s opinions.  Never say, “You’re Wrong.”
3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
4. Begin in a friendly way.
5. Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.
6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
7. let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
8. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
9. Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
10. Appeal to the nobler motives.
11. Dramatize your ideas.
12. Throw down a challenge.

Part 4- Be a Leader:  How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
2. Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
5. Let the other person save face.
6. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement.
7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
8. Use encouragement.  Make the fault seem easy to correct.
9. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

Overall, I feel this book is one of the best ones I have read on how to Deal with People, Create Influence, and Become a Better Leader.  As Carnegie points out in the book, we are constantly dealing with people in business and it is a key skill that must be developed in order to deal with day to day problems that we face.  It is amazing to me that communication, influence, and people skills are not taught to everyone in school.  I believe we would be much better equipped to deal with life and much better at communicating with those around us if we learn these skills. Nevertheless, I believe that if you will read and apply the teaching in How to Win Friends and Influence People, you will definitely Create a Life of Greater Happiness, Fulfillment and Prosperity. 

George Wright III

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