17 Key Insights from Dale Carnegie

Dale Carnegie’s timeless How To Win Friends and Influence People, first published in 1936, not only teaches you about how to interact with other humans on a higher level, but as an entrepreneur how to connect with prospects on a very direct level.

Here are 17 key insights from Dale Carnegie:

1. Don’t use the word conversion to describe the process after a prospect takes action and buys, use compliance.
2. There is only one way to get anybody to do anything or take any action, and that’s by making the prospect want to do it. Remember, there is no other way.
3. When eating you may prefer blueberries, but when fishing you may prefer worms. Do this in human affairs.
4. Humans are eternally interested in what they want. Therefore, the only way on earth to influence other people is to simply talk about what they want, and show them how to get it.
5. Most people go through college without ever discovering how their own mind functions.
6. Self-expression is the dominant necessity of human nature. Why can’t we adapt this same psychology to business affairs?
7. Be aware of the power contained in a name, and realize that this single item is wholly and completely owned by the person with whom we are dealing… and nobody else. The name sets the individual apart; it makes him or her unique among all others. It’s the most important sound in any language.
8. Listening should be a form of silence, but a form of activity.
9. Theodore Roosevelt would study the night before on the background of a person he was expecting to meet the next day.
10. If you cannot radiate a genuine interest in others you will fail.
11. Intelligent people dislike cheap flattery, but crave sincere appreciation.
12. The unvarnished truth is that almost all the people you meet feel themselves superior to you in some way, and a sure way to their hearts is to let them realize in some subtle way that you recognize their importance, and recognize it sincerely.
13. “Every man I meet is my superior in some way in that, I learn from him.”  –  Ralph Waldo Emerson
14. A man convinced against his own will is of the same opinion still.
15. If you argue & contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty victory because you will never get your opponents goodwill.
16. You may be right, but as far as changing another mind is concerned, you will probably be just as futile as if you were wrong.
17. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.