The Best Business Book I Ever Read
There is a group writing project going on over at Word Sell that involves talking about the best business book you’ve ever read and I decided to join in. It took a lot of thinking, however, to come up with the best book. I read a lot. I have been reading a lot since I COULD read, very much a bookworm. I cannot imagine living in a world where books did not exist. I would certainly perish.
Anyway, after a couple of days of thinking about it I decided that the best business book I ever read was Dale Carnegie’s HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE. I read it when I was probably 16 years old. My daddy was in the Jaycees for a time. The Jaycees is an organization much like the Kiwanis. That was during one of his periods of trying to improve himself in between bouts of manic depression and alcoholism. Let it never be said that a person with mental illness and/or a social disease cannot also be a great person, even if their periods of greatness may come and go. My daddy was one of those great people and he taught me much about life and about human nature, as did this book.
It changed my life as a matter of fact. For one thing, it made me realize that I possessed some of the key qualities that it takes to succeed, in both life and in business. I was intelligent, I was friendly, I had good manners, and a sort of charisma that was already drawing people to me. What HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE did was shore up my confidence in myself and help me to see that there was a much better way of living, a happier life, out there for me than the one I was living.
I have spent my life as a career woman. I have sold life insurance, winning top honors continuously, I have been the office/credit manager of a building material center, I have been the assistant administrator at two nursing homes, I owned a small advertising business for 10 years, and now I am full time blogger/writer. And through all of these incarnations I thank that one little book for helping me to see what a people person I was and that I really could win friends and influence people.
And I have!
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Comments
Thanks, Brad. I added a last paragraph after your comment to reflect a little more of the business side of this equation.
This is a powerful story Denise. Thanks for sharing it.
I’ve linked to your post and to some more group writing projects. Thanks for the tip off about this one.
[...] Denise recommends the classic How to Win Friends & Influence People. Classics are classic for a reason. [...]
Hi Denise, thank you for contributing! Your story is very moving, and I guess it shows we can’t always separate business from the rest of our lives. Brad