So often what I do is talk strictly about money. And today, I’m going to stray a little bit from that because I promised that I would be talking about success secrets. And I always want to start with the basics. So, for me, when I was a little kid, my dad was into personal growth. I guess that’s why I’m still a personal growth junkie right now. And he was always into personal development, and getting better and improving. He had all the greats on his shelf, he had Dale Carnegie, Earl Nightingale, Napoleon Hill and Norman Vincent Peale. And all these great writers that wrote back in the 20th century, about how to become a better human being. And you know, when I was a kid, in second or third grade, I guess I was a smart aleck. And I guess I kept getting bullied but I guess I brought it on myself. I didn’t like that, I wanted to be liked by more people, just like every kid does. And I got bullied a bit. Finally I decided I wasn’t going to take it anymore and I had a conversation with my dad. I don’t really remember the conversation. I just know, I had one with him. And he gave me this book. Now, I didn’t know that this book was going to change my entire life for the next 50 to 100 years or whatever. But he gave me this book. And it was a tattered yellow copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. And I thought what a crazy long title, I didn’t really resonate with that as a, 12–13-year-old kid, whatever I was, but I wasn’t even that old. Actually, I was a little bit younger. But I remember I had a typewriter. And I remember as I got that book, I would type the little sections at the end of each chapter called in a nutshell, and I typed all of those things out. What I didn’t realize was that I was actually typing the real human relations principles. The principles of Dale Carnegie that he built his entire organization on. And I will tell you that to this day, I teach for Dale Carnegie.. So that’s how much of an impact this man had on my life. But it wasn’t just him because I had never met him. But it was his ideas and his ideas are timeless, and they live on forever. You would do yourself a huge favor, and learn Dale Carnegie’s 30 Human Relations principles, we’re not going to spend time and do 30. Today, I’m going to just do nine, because the nine core principles that he started out with are really what everything else is built on.  

So, I want to start out with those principles. And I want to just kind of go through them. And if you could take one of them each week and start to implement it in your life and make it a habit, your life will become markedly better. I can tell you that because this first one that I’m going to tell you is the one that we all have a problem with so often, this is what our issues are? We are focused, f you have your hand in front of you, it’s really hard to focus on anything behind your hand, isn’t it? So, you’ve got to get your hand out of the way. But so often, the thing that’s in front of you, the hand, is most interesting. Why? Because it’s right there in front of you, you can’t get rid of it. And so, we are bombarded with tons of information from the news, negative information from the press politicians on and on the environment, etc. So, Dale Carnegie’s first human relation principle, and it’s the only negative one, it’s the only one that has the word don’t in it. And I think that there’s a reason and it is because it’s a negative human relation principle that we violate. 

And so, he says, “Don’t criticize, condemn or complain”. Now, think about it. If your life was void of criticizing, condemning, or complaining, how cool would that be? Now a lot of people make fun of me, they say “Oh, you’re really positive, but it’s a facade or, you know, nobody could be that positive.” Somebody told me years ago, but at the end of the day, I’m a happier person because I make a choice. We all have the choice. You could choose to be negative. You could choose to criticize, condemn or complain, and I’m not immune from it. I’m not perfect. And the brain wants to do that because the brain likes excitement and variety. But if you can stay away from criticizing, condemning and complaining your life, I guarantee it will become markedly better. And I highly recommend that you follow that key principle because that one to me is so critically important. 

Now, we start to focus away from ourselves and focus on other people. Principle number two is: “give honest, sincere appreciation.” And so, you know, you want to come from the heart, you don’t want to just say, “Hey, you’re great”, like that comedian that comes out and goes, “Hey, you guys are a great audience.” Well, that’s not very sincere, right? And it’s not very, maybe it’s honest. But it’s not that sincere, we want to feel that there’s real meat behind it. Especially if you can give some evidence, what’s the appreciation that you’re actually showing, tell them something about what you did that you do appreciate it, and it’s going to land so much better. So, give honest and sincere appreciation.  

The next one is: To arouse in others an eager want”. You know, let them figure out a way to want to be around you, let them figure out a way to want something, to want to talk, arouse them that eager want, don’t force things on people. But arouse that, bring it out, use your skills, to bring that arousal out of them and arousing in other people, that eager want. And by doing that, you’re going to see that they start to come alive.  

Number four: “Become genuinely interested in other people” which means that you have to go into their world, you have to enter their world and figure out what makes them tick, that is what it is all about. So, I know that in western society, we are so fluffy, right? When we meet somebody, it’s about the weather, or what do they do? We don’t really go deep with people, right? You have to be genuinely interested in other people. How do you do that? You do it with questions, right? If you really want to know what they’re about. It’s the who, what, where, why, and how questions that you get into that you start to figure out what makes people tick. If you can get to why people do things, if you can get to emotions, right? Rather than just the fluffy stuff, you’re really going to create a connection. You know, a lot of times I’ll go to a party, or I know people that will go to a party. I’ve heard this many times. And they’ll say, “well, that person is such a great conversationalist.” And I realized why they are a great conversationalist is because they asked lots of questions about that person. They didn’t just talk about themselves. So, when we talk about ourselves, a lot of times people are thinking about other things, you’re looking over your shoulder, what’s going on behind you. But when you let them talk about themselves, they feel heard in our society, we don’t really feel heard as much as we probably should. So, become genuinely interested in other people.  

And so that brings us to number five, number five is an easy one. And it’s just simple with the word “smile.”  And it basically means if you smile, you know that song, the whole world smiles with you, it’s a lot easier to look at somebody to hang out with them, to want to be with them when they’re smiling. So, allow that smile to come out. And, and you’ll see that it’ll create an environment and an attraction around you.  

Now, this one I always found was really interesting, because this one, I learned that there’s some negative connotations to it, but it’s called,” remember that a person’s name is to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” Why is that? Well, we’ve heard our names zillions of times, right? Now, a lot of times, it’s like Geoffrey get over here, Johnny don’t do that. And it’s got a negative connotation for some people. But really, at the end of the day, when people remember our names, how good do you feel? How important do you feel when somebody can remember your name? It’s really critical to remember somebody’s name. Now, a lot of people say, “Well, I’m terrible with names.” And if you say you’re terrible with names, you’re probably terrible names. Because your brain is listening in on what it’s saying and what it’s hearing. So, if it hears while we’re terrible with names, well, bald guy says we’re terrible with names, so we don’t have to worry about remembering. But if you say I’m awesome with names, and you start to make a science and again and have some fun with remembering somebody’s name, you know, repeating it a few times. People love that, right? You don’t want to be embarrassed in the beginning, that you just met somebody and then two seconds later, go, “Well, I’m sorry, what was your name again?” Instead, turn it around, make it a game. Say Hi, John. Nice to meet you, John. It’s John. Right? I got did I get it? Right? It’s a…..John. John, that is so cool. John has your dad’s name John. Great. Like, he’s going to be like, what’s wrong with this guy, but at the same time, he’s going to be like, he really cares about remembering my name. Now, if you can associate something around the name, John, and I’m going to let you use your imagination on that and associate it with something on his face. The next time you see John, maybe it’s 10 years later, your brain will remember that you met John, right? So really make a focus on it. Be because that that person’s name is to that person, the single most important sweet sound in any language. All right, cool.  

Number seven is cool. I love number seven; “be a good listener”. You know, God gave you two ears and one mouth, and you should use them in that proportion. Remember how I said before, people love to talk about themselves, allow people that opportunity to talk about themselves. I know, people that talk about themselves without even having an opportunity. And that’s always an interesting challenge. But be a good listener and encourage other people to talk about themselves. You know, we’re all interesting in our own way. I believe everybody’s a genius at something, maybe make it a game to go find that genius in somebody. Make it a game to find out something really cool. Some story that changed their life when they were younger, something they want, something they lost. Somebody they lost, somebody that said yes, somebody that said no, right, when they had a baby, there’s always something really cool. So, encourage those people to talk about themselves. And it will reflect really, really well on you.  

Now, “talk in terms of the other person’s interest is such a good one for me.”  

Number eight is: “talk in terms of the other person’s interest”. Listen, if all I talk about is the stock market, and that’s what I talk about a lot, or Bitcoin and I talk about Bitcoin a lot. I’m not a very interesting person. But if I find out what the other person, going back to that last one, going and find out what that other person is genuinely interested in, maybe they’re interested in baseball, there’s probably something that I can find common ground and talk about, at least if not, that person can teach me some things about baseball, because they’re really interested. Remember, we want to get them talking. Right? These are human relations principles. This is how we relate to each other. And you’re not going to learn anything if you’re just constantly talking. But you might learn a really cool thing if you just shut up and you listen about that other person’s interest.  

Number nine; “make the other person feel important and do it sincerely.” Okay. How do you make that other person feel important? Well, everything else to this point is led up to that principle. And how do you do it sincerely? You do it with evidence you do it with? “Wow, I really do care about you, I’m really, how did that happen to you? That’s interesting. Did was that a pivotal moment in your life? How did that make you feel? If you ever listen to a really good interview? Not some of these people that are sideline reporters on ESPN? Like, how did you feel when the guy fumbled the ball? Like that’s not what I’m talking about? I’m talking about like, how did you really feel like, oh, that must have hurt when that happened. Or you must have been elated when that happened, right? Make the other first person feel important and do it sincerely.  

So those are the nine principles that came from one of the most classic books of all time, written by Dale Carnegie. It’s called How to Win Friends and Influence People. It’s one of my three reads every year. And I’ll tell you what my three reads are every year. It’s number one, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. That book will change your life if you’ve never read it. And if you have read it, you should read it and read it and read it because it was an amalgamation of all of the successful people that Andrew Carnegie, who was one of the wealthiest people and now the biggest benefactors in history. He wanted to find out what the science of success was. And he hired this journalist named Napoleon Hill. And he commissioned him for 25 years to go and interview all of his buddies, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and all the people that were successful back at the turn of the century, in the 20th century. And he came up with these principles, these 17 principles. And I highly recommend reading: Think Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I read How to Win friends and influence people every year. It’s been updated for the digital age, there is a great version for that. He also wrote another book called: How to stop worrying and start living. And a lot of people live their lives and stress and worry and there’s no reason to do that. He’s got some great things in that book as well. And then I love Rich Dad, Poor Dad from Robert Kiyosaki. I think that is such a great way to look at money and finances and things like that. I have hundreds of books that I can recommend. But those are the three that I really try to read every year, because there are things that go into my makeup, that I believe if you want to keep learning something, if you read a book once you’re gonna learn a few things, but if you read it over and over again, at different times in your life, you’re gonna have a different spin on it. So, listen, there’s another 19 principles that came out from Dale Carnegie and through this podcast, and later on, I’m going to be talking about them. But those first nine if you can go back and listen to this podcast again. You could pull it up, you could pull up the Golden Book. Online, you can get an app called the Golden Book from Dale Carnegie.  It’s out there, read the book they are right in the book as well. But start to practice one a day, one a week, and really focus on becoming good. And I’ll tell you, start with that don’t criticize, condemn and complain. And you might start catching yourself going, “wow, I really do a lot of that” and your life will get better if you do it.