Dale Carnegie the ultimate salesman

Dale Breckenridge Carnegie (November 24, 1888 – November 1, 1955) was an American writer. And the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, training and development, public speaking, and interpersonal skills. Apart from his career as an author and lecturer, his counsel was frequently sought by prominent leaders. He was also a syndicated newspaper columnist and the host of his own talk radio show.

Born on a farm in Missouri, he attended Central Missouri State College and worked in sales and acting before developing his concept for a course in public speaking and self-improvement. He was the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, first published in 1936, a massive bestseller that remains popular today. He also wrote a biography of Abraham Lincoln, entitled Lincoln the Unknown, as well as several other books. Carnegie’s courses were attended by millions of participants, and his work is credited with influencing the early stages of the popular psychology and human potential movements.

Early life

Born in 1888, in Harmony Church, Missouri, Carnegie was a poor farmer’s boy, the second son of James William Carnagie and Amanda Elizabeth Harbison.

Dale’s father claimed a remote link to Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate and great philanthropist. Dale himself never claimed, publicly or privately, any such connection, however.

In his teens, Dale managed to get an education at Central Missouri State College in Warrensburg, Missouri. While getting up at 4:00 a.m. every day to feed the pigs and milk his parents’ cows. Out of a student population of 800, he was one of only four students so poor that rode to school on horseback. His first job after college (1908) was selling correspondence courses to ranchers. He then moved on to selling bacon, soap, and lard for Armour & Company. He was successful to the point of making his sales territory—southern Omaha and the badlands of South Dakota—the national leading sales area for the firm. Going against his mother’s wishes for him to be a missionary, he headed east to study speech and drama, turning down a promotion offer from Armour & Company.

Dale Carnegie as an actor

Upon deciding to take up studies in New York City, in 1910, Carnegie headed to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA) based mostly upon the recommendation of a passenger whom he had met on one of his train rides across the badlands of South Dakota. The school’s statement of principles especially appealed to him: “To create an accent on naturalism accompanied by emotional recall in order to achieve a deeper more essential ‘truth’ in performance.” The hefty admission fee of $400 for the six months’ course, however, virtually depleted his savings.

Upon graduation, Carnegie played the role of Dr. Hartley in a road show of Polly and the Circus. Rooming with Howard Lindsay, who later rose to fame as the co-writer of such classic hits as Arsenic and Old Lace, The Sound of Music, and Life With Father, he made pocket money selling suitcases and ties.
Carnegie soon grew weary of touring and was unable to find work as a Broadway actor. Living at the YMCA on 125th Street, he persuaded the manager there to allow him to instruct a public speaking class. In return for 80 percent of the net proceeds. By 1912, the outline of a broader vision and course had begun to form.

Other influences

Carnegie was influenced by a 1925 book by Harry Overstreet. A professor at the College of the City of New York. In his, Influencing Human Behavior, Overstreet was a very basic principle in  advertising: “First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.”

Overstreet saw the advertiser as continually appealing to certain fundamental human wants, declaring him a “pioneer in psychological technique.” Carnegie saw the same principle at work in sales, popularizing Overstreet’s earlier words as the now famous salesman’s maxim: “Arouse in the other person an eager want.”

Other contemporaries who influenced Carnegie included Norman Vincent Peale, Orison Marden, Emile Coué, and psychologist Henry Link. By the 1930s, Dale Carnegie was recruiting others to teach the principles and methods that he had carefully developed. He called it simply, The Dale Carnegie Course.

The Dale Carnegie Course

The Dale Carnegie Course is a self-improvement program is given around the world. Several variations on the course exist. Including a public speaking course, a sales course, a high impact presentation course, and a management course.

The basic course consists of 12 sessions lasting three and a half hours each.  Typically there are 20-35 participants in a course. Unpaid assistants, who are graduates of the course, are on hand to assist participants, assist with classroom logistics, and work with small groups. Instructors are college graduates with a variety of professional experience who must attend rigorous training before teaching the course. They must annually attend refresher courses to maintain their certification.

This flier advertises Carnegie as a speaker, boasting that his book was the best selling non-fiction title of the era.
Much of the content of the course is based on Dale Carnegie’s teachings. In  three books: How to Win Friends and Influence People, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, and The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking.

The course has thousands of enrollees and instructors, as well as millions of graduates, worldwide.

Personal life

Carnegie’s first marriage to Lolita Baucaire ended in divorce in 1931. In 1944, he married Dorothy Price Vanderpool.  Carnegie had two daughters: Rosemary, from his first marriage, and Donna Dale from his second marriage. He was 63 when Donna Dale was born.

Dorothy Carnegie, his second wife, was installed as vice-president of Carnegie & Associates when it was created in 1945, and went on to help launch the Dorothy Carnegie Course in Personal Development for Women in 1948. After her husband’s death, she wrote and edited while carrying on the legacy of her husband’s work by becoming the chairman of the parent company, Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., in Garden City, New York.

Dale Carnegie Quotes

“Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic!”
“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.”
“Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it. And you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.”
“You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world’s happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.”
“If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.”

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