The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Take Command: Find Your Inner Strength, Build Enduring Relationships, and Live the Life You Want by Joe Hart, Michael A. Crom

Episode Date: December 17, 2022

Take Command: Find Your Inner Strength, Build Enduring Relationships, and Live the Life You Want by Joe Hart, Michael A. Crom Take command of your future with this groundbreaking book from the experts who brought you How to Win Friends and Influence People. Take Command offers powerful tools and time-tested methods to help you live an intentional life by transforming how you approach your thoughts, emotions, relationships, and future. Filled with stories of everyday people and based on expert research and interviews with more than a hundred high-performing leaders, Take Command gives you the strategies you need to unlock your full potential and create the life you want. Written by Joe Hart (CEO) and Michael Crom (Board Member) of Dale Carnegie & Associates, Take Command is a modern manual for personal development that will help anyone, at any age. It is structured around questions geared to encourage self-reflection, such as: -How do we use the power of mindset to deal with stress and anxiety, gain perspective on negative emotions, and build resilience? -Once we understand our inner lives, how do we create enriching, rewarding, and enduring relationships? -How do we deal with difficult people and manage conflict? -After mastering our thoughts and relationships, how do we live courageously and intentionally to build a vision that will bring out the best in ourselves and other people? For more than one hundred years, the wisdom of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People has provided people around the world with richer, more fulfilling relationships and a happier way of life. Now, Take Command combines decades of Dale Carnegie’s award-winning training and timeless principles—ones that have transformed the personal and professional lives of millions—into a master text that tells you everything you need to know about the art of human relations.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by today. And now, ladies and gentlemen, a man who has moderate to severe trust issues with Santa.

It's the holiday season. I even got a laugh out of my guest. Welcome to the show, my friends. I'm your host, Chris Voss. As always, we have amazing guests on the show. We have an amazing one today. He is the CEO of Dale Carnegie & Associates. You may have heard of him. I read the book, uh, uh, how to influence friends and, uh, and stuff in the, in the, uh, in the, uh, I think in my twenties or my late teens,

my late twenties, how to influence friends or how to, how to win friends and influence people. And I've also read the other book, uh, how, how to drive those people away, which is not a book you want to read. So we'll be talking with the CEO of Dale Carnegie Associates here in a second. In the meantime, as always, it's the holiday season. Give the gift that keeps on giving from the family that loves you but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as your mom does or your stepmom does or your mother-in-law does. I should make that joke. I like that one.

So refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Give them the gift this year. It's free. It doesn't cost you a dime. It doesn't cost them a dime. The Chris Voss Show. Gift that keeps on giving or not. One of those two.

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Anyway, on to our future entree. Our future, future entree. And now we're in the future. He is the author of the amazing book, Take Command. Find your inner strength, Build Enduring Relationships, and Live the Life You Want, because that sounds like a great thing, folks. January 10th, 2023, this hot book is coming out. You can pre-order it now wherever fine books are sold. It's by Joe Hart and Michael A. Krom, who we have one of them on the show.

Joe decided to come by the show and hang out with us today and tell us all about the amazing stuff they do over there at Dale Carnegie Associates. He's the CEO of the firm, and since 1912, Dale Carnegie Training has helped millions of people in businesses around the world improve their performance. In over 80 countries and in more than 30 languages, the company applies Dale Carnegie's founding principles to inspire individual and organizational transformation,

excellence, and success. On top of it, by tapping into each person's potential. Take Command, his newest book, helps you with your business performance career and your future by visiting. You can visit thedalecarnegie.com. That got the plug in there for you. Welcome to the show. Joe, how are you doing, man?

Great, Chris. Thank you so much for having me today. There you go. We're off to a rickrolling start. I just did the plug, thedalecarnegie.com for you. Any other plugs where you want people to find out more about you, look you up on the internet and stalk you? Yeah. Well,

I mean, we have a Dale Carnegie.com is the main place to go for our company. Certainly you can track us on Twitter, LinkedIn. I am also Joseph K Hart on Twitter and LinkedIn, often in publishing a lot of different things. So you can check me out there as well. There you go.

There you go. So is this your first book, Joe? It is. It's my first book and my co-author's third. Okay. And did I get his last name pronounced correctly? Yeah, Michael Krom.

There you go. I want to make sure I don't butcher people's names on the show. That's really important. Of course, most people just refer to me in four-letter adjectives or whatever. So what motivated you to want to write this book? Yeah. So just some background, Chris, and thank you for asking. You know, I've been pretty familiar with Dale Carnegie for a long time. My dad used to talk about Dale Carnegie when I was young. And as a teenager, I took the Dale Carnegie program in my 20s. It had a huge impact on my life.

And, you know, ultimately, the principles that Dale Carnegie taught in How to Win Friends and Influence People and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, it really had a huge impact on me. And, you know, when I was going through the pandemic, as we were all just going through the pandemic, I found myself still, notwithstanding all of this kind of foundation I'd had, you know, really not a great place at different points, you know, just really kind of worried and so forth. And I really found a way to turn that around and turn around for myself and also turn around for just the way I was looking at COVID and the business and so forth. And I realized, and talking to Michael Cromer, Michael's the same thing,

Michael is Dale Carnegie's grandson. So, I mean, he's been steeped in kind of all these really wonderful ideas. But we really felt like, my gosh, you know, the world needs this kind of a book now more than ever. It really is three things. It's taking command of your thoughts and your emotions, taking command of your relationships, and taking command of your future and really helping people operate from a position of strength as opposed to fear and insecurity or cowardice or whatever it might be in the face of just the challenges that we have. There you go. I mean, Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, was just a watershed sort of book. I mean, so many people have read it.

So many people have taken the speaking courses that you guys do in the courses you guys do. Uh, we talked in the green room, how I tried to take one of your courses, uh, when I was younger and I just, you know, when you're 20, you're, you're just trying to do every scramble everything in life. And, uh, so I didn't get to it, but I probably should have, um, on this. Not too late, Chris, we can get you signed up it's never too late um at least that's what i don't know there's a joke there somewhere about my age but i don't know what it is in my age my health or something i don't know uh but the doctor says it is let's say that lobotomus says it is um so um how to win friends and influence people

it's kind of funny i brought this up on amazon it says the only book you need to lead to success so uh is this maybe uh in your eyes as deemed as a follow-up to uh maybe part two to how to win friends and influence people or kind of more of a standalone or an updated version so the way i look at how to win friends i mean it's it's a masterpiece it's one of the most um popular books of all. It's one of the most recognizable titles. Dale Carnegie was brilliant. And he really, you know, you talk about, I mean, even improvement, that type of thing. I mean, so much kind of went back to Dale Carnegie, his original thoughts and how to win friends. And then his second book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, or another book. You know, a huge book in terms of its influence and its wisdom.

So, you know, Michael and I, our view is that we wanted to build off of Dale Carnegie principles and, you know, write them in a way that is really maybe might resonate more with a today's audience and especially younger audience. You know, 22, 45, you know, the books, the Dale Carnegie books, which we were talking about were written, you know, a long time ago, How to Win Friends was 1936. So sometimes, you know, some of the language, some of the stories don't connect with people. So what we did was basically we built off of Dale Carnegie's principles. So the first part of our book, which is all about taking command of your thoughts and your emotions, comes from or is derived a lot of that thinking comes from how to stop worrying and start living. And then the second part, it really builds off of how to win friends and influence people. It's how to take command of your relationships.

And the third part, which is taking command of your future, builds on the program that Dale Carnegie had founded, the world-famous Dale Carnegie Chorus, you know, about your vision, being intentional and so forth. So our view was we wanted to introduce people who may not be familiar with Dale Carnegie to Dale Carnegie. Our hope would be, I mean, you know, there's no better place to go than the original source.

So Hato and friends, like, I mean, just even today, Chris, I was talking to someone who'd said, gosh, you know, I read this book and I read it over and over. I read it 15 times because it's such a powerful book and it's had a huge impact on this. This person's an executive who's just talked about the pot, the impact. So so those books remain masterpieces. And, you know, our goal is ultimately to build on them and to reach today's audience. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so

far. We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff.

With over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO, I think I can offer a wonderful breadth of information and knowledge to you or anyone that you want to invite me to for your company. Thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you listening to the show. And be sure to check out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com. Now back to the show.

Well, definitely more people need the Dale Carnegie and Associates help and some of the courses and teachings and teachings in your book and the original books. Uh, I remember reading when I was young for some reason though, in my, in my crotchety old age, I've been working on my book, how to lose friends and make people hate you, but, uh, it hasn't been selling well. So I'm probably good for a chase order your book so that I can, I can change my direction in life. Um, but no, these are really important. I like the principles and how you laid this out. Probably good for a chase order of your books so I can change my direction in life. But no, these are really important. I like the principles and how you laid this out.

So the first thing, to my understanding, is you've got to get control of what's going on in your head with your emotions and your logic. Why is that important? How does that make it different? Why can't I just rage at social media and on Twitter all day long? I mean, everything really starts with us and what's happening between our ears, right? I mean, how we process the world, how we interact with people, the things we do or the things we don't do, the fears that we have. You can have two people in the exact same situation, same set of facts. One person is miserable. The other person is just excited. So why? It's all about the way we think. And we also know that the world

is certainly full of challenges. There are adversities that happen small and large and how do we overcome those? So, you know, the very first thing you have to do is really take command of yourself, take command of your thoughts and your emotions. And, you know, how often do we think about what we think? You know, we go through our days

and we might get angry about something or frustrated or lash out. It's like, wait a second, time out. Am I seeing this the right way? Am I framing this the right way? Is this the way I want to feel? So that whole first part of the book is about understanding the way we think and how our emotions work, being able to take command of those things. And then ultimately, Chris,pping so that we develop courage and resilience and strength so that we can, that leads then to, so we can have the relationships that we want and that we can build the life that we want. If we ourselves are insecure and fearful and doubtful and upset and angry and we've got low

emotional control, it's hard to have good relationships. It's hard to advance in our careers. It's hard to have, you know, to ultimately achieve the kinds of things that we want in our lives. Yeah. When you're when you're being distracted by so many things and emotions are not a good way to go through life because you can just get blown whatever when, you know, somebody posts something, you know, you know, toxic on Facebook and suddenly you're going down that rabbit hole. And social media has become a whole different bag of challenges and things that can distract you and take you on bad paths. And, you know, you mentioned before, you know, people can have differing perceptions of their world. You know, two people can go to a party.

One person can see there was a bad party, boring, and all the people were unhappy at the party. The other person sees it as a fun party, interact with people and everything else. And so the mindset and perception you bring to the game, how you manage your emotions, uh, is, is a very important part. Uh, you know, being in present and things makes all the difference. And so I love that you, you make that your first priority because if your head's not right, everything, nothing else can be right. That's kind of almost the foundation when you say. A hundred percent. I mean, it really is. And everything else flows from that. And just even going back, I mean, one of the very first questions, you know, you asked me is why, why'd we write this book? And when I think back about,

you know, in January 2020, so our organization, I have the privilege of leading an organization that spans 80 plus countries. So we've got 200 operations, 80 countries. In January 2020, we were, you know, in Zoom meetings with our China teams hearing about and understanding what COVID was doing and locking them down. And all of a sudden we saw our business throughout Asia. And at that time, our business was an in-person, face-to-face kind of a program. So you can imagine, it's like, okay, if you can't meet, you can't conduct classes. And that's not good from a business standpoint for anybody.

So, you know, and when we saw the whole world doing this at one time, you know, as the person leading the business, I mean, as you can imagine, I was just terrified at different points. But going to your question, you know, I realized that if I didn't change my thoughts and my emotions, it could be bad for me. It could be bad for the people I'm working with, bad for the company. And it was that kind of flip that made a huge difference just emotionally and saying, well, wait a second, you know, if this is a crisis, which clearly it was, you know, it's an unprecedented crisis. There has to be unprecedented opportunity. So, you know, I took and the whole organization took that as a chance to really relook at our business. We flipped our business model. We were able to train a thousand trainers in less than six months. It's a very rigorous process to become a Dale Carnegie trainer.

And to do that changed our business model entirely. So today, you know, we have greater reach, greater scope, greater capabilities. That wouldn't have happened if we hadn't flipped our thinking first. And it was really an entire organizational thing. So that's why taking control of your thoughts and your emotions are just so important. They guide everything else. Note to self, take control of my thoughts and emotions. All right, I got that down. No, that's really important.

That is the foundation. If you don't have that circle squared, you're screwed. I love love the next one too, because this is where a lot of people fail. They get their head straight. They, they have their stuff together and they get involved in relationships, whether it's marriage, uh, partner or business partner. Sometimes I've had business partners, uh, you know, know, and sometimes just the friends. There's kind of that saying that you are the five people you surround yourself with. Do you find any truth to that or what do you think about that sort of thing? Yeah, I think that's a critical point.

I mean, you know, the kinds of people that we surround ourselves with, the kinds of things that we talk about, the kind of things that we value. I mean, all of those things really kind of reveal, you know, who we are and what's important to us. You know, part of it, just to go back for one second to raise a thought that ties to this chapter, you know, this issue of taking command of our thoughts and emotions at one level might sound, it's like, that sounds easy, but actually doing it is hard, right? I mean, it's really hard to do that. And when we talk about relationships too, it's like, okay, so what are the ways that you go about building a strong relationship and how do you deal with difficult people and how do you deal with giving and receiving criticism and all the different things that come with those kinds of interactions. So the big part of what we're trying to do in this section of the book is to enable people

to have stronger relationships with whomever, with the people that work with, the people around them, the people in our families and so forth. Because ultimately, relationships are, I mean, it's like the essence of life is, you know, we think about what really, if we've got great relationships, that just fuels us. And if we have just toxic relationships or broken or challenged or strained relationships, gosh, it just bums us out, right? I mean, so how do we put ourselves in a position that we can develop those kind of relationships? And we build on Dale Carnegie's principles to do that. There you go.

You know, it's the people you're involved in with relationships. You have to choose wisely in life because they can be the albatross around your neck. They can be a lead. They can be a lead balloon. They can be, you know, your feet stuck in concrete thrown off a bridge, you know. And it's really important to hone those people and surround them because you can have the cleanest head in the world. You can, you can have your stuff on, you can be present, you can have a lot of things you talk about in the book, but

if you associate with people who drag you down, who have negative attitudes, who have issues, who are, you just want to create problems for you or hold you down, um, it can make all the difference in the world. And those people affect you because you're around them all the time. They say one of the reasons we grow up like our parents is because we're around them all the time. Most people don't grow up going, I want to be my parents. I didn't.

But I inherently picked up things from them, and especially when it came down to relationships, because people learn from their parents and people around them growing up as to how relationships are supposed to work by the example they see. And sometimes those examples aren't the best examples. Sorry to break some of your people's hearts about your, maybe your parents weren't as good as you thought they were. Not all, just maybe some. But, and so we, we, we tend to replay those relationships. And so it's really good that we kind of identify quality people, quality people who are like us and surround those people, which reminds me, I should quit having a lunch every day with my friends at the

prison commissary. Uh, one of the things you talk about in the book, too, is how to deal with issues of conflict, how to deal with difficult people and the conflict you may have. Do you talk about a boxing program in there, about how to do body blows or what's inside there? Yeah, that might be a chapter we'll have to do in the sequel, the next book. But I mean, no, it's really but everything you're saying is spot on in terms of, you know, the people that we are around. And sometimes we are around people, whether we like it or not, whether we choose it or not, who are difficult. And then the question is, well, how do we deal with those people? And there's a couple of things we talk about in the book. One is that sometimes the issue with difficult people is more about us

than about them. How do we respond to something? So it's, you know, we might look at someone else and be like, gosh, that Chris is such a pain. I can't remember. Not you. No, it's true. It's true. It's true. It's a different person. All eight of my ex-wives say the same thing. But, you know, but the number one, you know, sometimes we perceive that someone's difficult and they might not even be aware of it. You know, I mean, you know, we do we assume positive intent. You know, I've had situations before where I thought someone was was either trying to hurt me or try to do something else. And I've actually gone to talk to them and they weren't even aware of it.

They weren't aware that they were being negative in a meeting or that they were like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. So, you know, but you might not even be able to get to that point if I don't first start and say, well, wait a second, how am I seeing this? You know, and how do I, how do I handle my own emotional situation around what might be someone who's critical or negative or whatever. And, you know, but we talk about boundaries and making sure, have we communicated boundaries? Have we set boundaries? Do people understand?

Sometimes, you know, we use an example of the book, Chris, about the boss who says, hey, Chris, I need us to work on this. And the boss may not know that you've got 10 other things. Have you communicated? Hey, I can't do this because, or here's what I can do. Instead, we might not do that and just present it. So have we set boundaries? Have we communicated those boundaries?

And then at the end of the day, there are situations where exactly as you said, you might just need to cut people off and say, you know, this is not a person that should be in my life. And in some cases, that might mean switching a job. In some cases that might be switching up significant other, you know, but there are situations that require, you know,

separation. There you go. I mean, it definitely does. I mean, I've learned that it used to be, you know, we got huge on social media back in the day and I've always had big audiences

even with brick and mortar, you know, we got huge on social media back in the day, and I've always had big audiences, even with brick and mortar, you know. And so my policy had always been, you know, hey, friend everybody. The bigger the group, the more the merrier. But, man, after a while, you know, you had so many people. And there are some people that are vampires, that will suck just your positivity out of you. Whatever you do, they'll find the dark spot in it. Oh, you don't want to go be an entrepreneur.

There's a lot of failure over there. But you're right. Boundaries are, like, so important. And I found more and more people are talking about boundaries lately. And boundaries are so important. And, you know, I've had to sit people down and say, look, man, you're being a negative Nancy, like way too much. Like, and that's all you're about.

Like, you know, it's not, it's not like, you know, like I'm sometimes negative, maybe all the time. But, you know, sometimes, sometimes you can be a little negative. You're like, oh, I don't like this or whatever. But, you know, when you have that prone person that just like everything is negative, everything is dark. You just, whenever you're around them, you're just like, oh God, this person. Setting those boundaries is so important. And just going, there's a line here now. And don't cross it.

And talking to sometimes people about it. Like I've had to do that where I've gone, hey man, have you ever noticed that you're always freaking negative? No, I'm not. See, there you were right there. But setting those boundaries are really important. And you're right. I mean, I've just learned, I mean, I don't even, like if I block somebody on social media, cause they're being really destructive, toxic, or some sort of, you know, political thing where they're just being really, you know, wrongheaded, I suppose. I don't even respond anymore. I just go block out,

not even going to argue with you. Not even going to try and figure stuff out. I'm not going to try and figure out who dropped you on your head when you're a child. That's, it's just not my problem anymore. And it's really important because when you clean up that atmosphere and you have loving,

kind people that build you up and, and lift you up and take you places, well, then you're a King who's got one of those people who carry them. That's awesome. A hundred percent. I mean, it's maybe not the king, but certainly, you know, it's, gosh, you know, life is, at one level, life is, we hope, long.

In another hand, it's short. This is the life we've got. And there are people who can make our lives just miserable. And sometimes, again, it's unintentional. They may not know. It's just like you might say to somebody. And Chris, I think you can say almost anything to someone if you say it in the right way,

which is something we teach in Dale. It's true. I learned that in sales. Yeah. How do you say something to someone in a way that doesn't necessarily put them on the defensive? And there are ways to do that. But at the end of the day, if you've gone to your friend and the person just is going to persist being the way they are and this is bringing you down and it's like, oh, my gosh, every time I talk to this person, it's just this negative energy.

Yeah. You know, then that's probably the point at which you might say this isn't worth it. Yeah. You know, then that's probably the, the point at which you might say this, this isn't worth it. Yeah. And you, you said boundaries that say, Hey, look,

we have, we have that line. And if you cross it, we can't, we can't do this anymore. So, um, that kind of helps,

which, you know, most of my girlfriends set a boundary. If you, if you don't quit sending, throwing your socks and your underwear on the floor, it's over, which is probably why I'm still single.

And then the next step you guys get to is how to live courageously and intentionally build a vision. This is the word I love. I love the word vision. I love the word vision. So talk about that. What are some of the aspects of that course? People need to go by the book. Yeah. Well, one of the cornerstones I think for the book is the idea of, and of our Dale Carnegie course is about the importance of being intentional. You know, there's so many things that

happen. I mean, if you ask people, Chris, I, I, I, this is not a statistical study, but I'd say nine out of 10 people, he asked how you're doing, they're going to say, I'm busy, busy, busy. It's like, everyone's busy and we have so many things going on. But what can happen is if we're not intentional, if we're not focusing on what's important to me, what are the things I want to accomplish in this life? What's the kind of legacy I want to leave? What are the kind of people I want to be around? If I'm not intentional about those things, then life can just literally whiz right by.

We know that many people who are older or they're on their deathbeds, they regret things that they didn't do. They regret that they weren't more intentional. So that last part of the book is all about getting people to think about, look, what are your values? What are the things that are important to you? What's the impact you want to make? And then, you know, what's your vision for yourself?

And this is an exercise we take people through in the Dale Carnegie course, which is, you know, if you think about yourself yourself and you can do this at whatever point in time you want, three months, six months, 10 years, you know, where do you see yourself? And you take yourself through an exercise of thinking about where do you see yourself financially? Where do you see yourself socially? Where do you see yourself in your career? Where do you see yourself in your community? Where do you see, but when you do you see yourself in your career? Where do you see yourself in your community? Where do you see? But when you start to think about those kinds of things, if we've written those things down and thought about them, they can draw us forward. And one of the things we talk about in the book, and it's something we teach in our programs, is the importance of using present language.

So, you know, sometimes people will say, in three to six months, I will be doing this. I will be doing this. It's like, no, no, no. OK. In three to six months, I am, you know, I am fit. You know, I am, you know, I am running a marathon into my personal best. I am getting a promotion. I am whatever it is. And the reason we do that is because the mind works in a way that when something is present, it becomes more real. So you say, I will. Well, maybe you will, maybe you won't. But that vision part and the legacy part, everything else in the book, Chris, leads to that last section. You can't take command of your future if you haven't taken care of command of yourself first.

Take command of yourself. Take command of your future if you haven't taken care of command of yourself first. Take command of yourself. Take command of your relationships. It's yourself and your relationships that will ultimately lead to the kind of future you're going to have. And if you do those things, then you can live an incredible life, meaningful life, one that's meaningful to you. Definitely. I love the way you guys laid it out because it makes so much sense. If you're not present, you don't have your head in the right place. And then, you know, starts with you as the center and then everything around you.

And then of course, setting that vision for the future. It was interesting. I don't know if I got it from Dale Carnegie's book, but I was reading like so many different books when I was young. And I think there's that old adage, those who don't plan to succeed, plan to fail. But I had written down a bunch of goals. I want to make a hundred thousand dollars a year. I wanted to, you know, do all the stuff,

have my own business. And I written them down and I found, I found them years later and I'd accomplished most of the things on the list. I think the other one was, I want to be two inches taller. I still haven't achieved that, but I don't know. I'm still working on it.

But, I don't know what that means. And so. If you that, but I don't know. I'm still working on it. Um, but, uh, I don't know what that means. Uh, and so if you figure that out, let me know, because I'm five, eight on a, on a big hair day. So, I mean, I could use a couple more inches of height. So I'm six two, but I really like to dominate people cause I'm kind of narcissistic that way. So I'm, you know, anything I can do to tower over people and look down on them, it's kind of my thing. I have issues,'m, you know, anything I can do to tower over people and look down on them, it's kind of my thing.

I have issues. So you're issues, but everyone knows that except for me. And let's get to, I love the book. I love the concept of how you've laid it out and stuff. People need to pick it up. It'll be a great second or third chapter or third book in Dale. Did you just do two books? Did you do more than two books?

He's actually done many books. These were the two most popular books. He's written a book on Lincoln. He's written a book on public speaking. He's written a number of books. But these two books, How to Win Friends and Influence People and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living are the two that really have been the best sellers by far. There you go. So let's get into Dale Carnegie and Associates and why people should check you guys out, check out some of the courses over there, et cetera, et cetera. Well, a lot of times people could read a book. You could read How to Win Friends. You could read How to Stop Worrying. You could figure out some of these things yourself. But

if you really want an experience, we have programs and courses all over the world, in person and online, that will really work with people to achieve the kinds of things that are important to them. And frankly, a lot of times we're working with companies, large organizations that will bring us in to help them develop high-performing cultures. And how do you get people working together and just being more effective and so forth. So our programs include things like the Dale Carnegie course. That's about self-confidence and people skills and communication skills and leadership and stress and worry. We've got leadership programs, high impact presentation programs.

So what's to say you're nervous. I know you're not Chris about giving a speech. You give up and stand up and give a speech or give a talk, but some people, I just think of everyone as being naked at the time, so that's how it works. And whatever works. I just pretend that I'm naked, and then they have to watch. So, no, I'm just kidding. Sorry, these are jokes. That's fine.

I get your sense of humor. It's great. I apologize in my audience. No, it's all good. A lot of people, I think, you know, and sometimes it's, you're not going to be on a speech with a thousand people. You might just be in a small group, but people, you know, it can not, maybe they don't know the techniques, so they don't know how to really communicate their thoughts.

But we know that people who go the farthest in life are often those who can communicate really effectively. So we have Dale Carnegie's courses that you can take that are instructor-led and where people will work with you one-on-one and with a group to help you kind of have those breakthroughs. A big part of, I'll just tell you my experience, I took a Dale Carnegie course as a young lawyer and frankly, it caused me to challenge myself in terms of my vision. And I came to the conclusion that as much as I was a good lawyer, I wasn't a happy lawyer. I left the law. I went into business. It also really gave me better human relations skills, Chris. I mean, much more

empathy than I had. Who'd think that as a young lawyer, I wouldn't have empathy? Is that a lawyer joke? That's a little bit of a lawyer joke. than I had. I mean, who, who'd have, who'd think that as a young lawyer, I wouldn't have empathy, but, uh, that's a little bit of a lawyer. Wow. It's a lawyer with empathy. Might be a little bit of a oxymoron. I'm going to get hate mail. I'm just,

I'm just kidding. It's fine. I'm still, I'm still, I'm still, I still have my, I'm still a licensed lawyer, but,

um, just not practicing one. But in any event, the point is that I took that program, and it really helped me engage people much more effectively. So I went into business and was able to really work with teams, maybe in a way that I couldn't have before, and develop better friendships. I think I'm a better father, I hope. My kids might differ. Better husband. Hopefully a better father. I hope my kids might differ,

better husband, hopefully a better leader because of the things I've learned in our programs. That or just beat them. Well, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Don't do that people. That's a joke. Um, the, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's, we live in a world and we've had a lot of authors that have come on and talked about this and studied this new remote world we live in and, and how you really have to lead people communicate effectively, uh, uh, not in person as much anymore. And to me, it's much more challenging. Um, you know, as a, as a CEO of my companies over the years, you know, I can get a little soapbox in the department, stand up there, stand at the head of a table and blah, blah, blah, and pitch out my vision or whatever sort of BS I was selling to my poor employees.

And, you know, but I can inspire them. I can motivate them. They were in the office. I can meet them and go, hey, how's it going? What are you up to today? What do you need help with? And they'd be like, oh, wait, we don't like you. And so I could do that.

But now, you know, a lot of remote companies, you know, people are working at home. So you can't walk around the office and touch people, see who's maybe having a bad day. You can't find people who are, you know, they're maybe overloaded. You know, one of the things I used to have to deal with as a CEO is a lot of psychiatry where people come in and be like, Hey Chris, I'm not selling well this month. I got problems at home. I got this, you know, I have to play psychiatrists and get, you know, get their head just like a, just like a basketball coach or anything else. If you're, if your player's head is in the game, you gotta, you gotta go in and do surgery, man. You got to get that thing straight. But you don't have that now. And I think it's even harder to communicate vision, excitement, energy, all the things that goes into being a great leader and getting people motivated. And of course, communicating effectively over Zoom, because it's so easy for people to tune out with that thing. So I think even more now, it's important for you guys' courses and the things you guys teach on how to do that really well, because reaching through that screen is much harder

than doing it in person, I think. Oh, yeah, there's no question. And thank you for saying that you're right, because one of the things we are teaching people is how do you work effectively virtually? We were doing that before the pandemic. A lot of companies were already kind of moving in that direction. But you're right. And it's harder for leaders in many ways because they don't have that direct in-person contact. And so then the question is, how do they do it? And part of it is, you know, you've got to be more intentional. You've got to create time.

You've actually got to make time and schedule time and spend time with people to do that. And then you've also got to know how to communicate through this kind of two-dimensional thing, you know, and you can't see all the body language, you can't see everything else, you know, the way that you could otherwise. So, you know, how do you really develop trust with people that gets them to be willing to open up the way they might if they were in person, you know, so how do you develop that relationship? And certainly those are really important qualities and they're going to continue to be in the years to come. And I don't know, Chris, if you have a point of view about this, about whether things are going to go back to full in office or whatnot.

Our thought is that it's going to continue to be some mix of hybrid for years to come. Some are going to go back. Some aren't going to go back. Some will be in between. But this type of thing that we're doing right now is not going away, right? Yeah. We've crossed the Rubicon. That's out of the box. You're not putting it back. Unless we enter a world where there's lots of unemployment, I don't see that happening anytime soon. But the baby boomers left the market. They retired early. That's one of the biggest problems we have. and that's why employment isn't going to return to what it used to be.

They left. And then a lot of people took an early retirement from my generation, the Gen Zers, and just said, we're flushing our 401ks and going and living our life before we die early. And so a lot of people have kind of learned. And so it's a real interesting ballgame where you have employers that are kind of off for remote as a bonus. And people are just going, hey, you know what? I'm sick of spending two hours in drive time back and forth in the freeway. And I can spend those four hours with my kids and my family. And, you know, it's a much better life for me. I work better when I'm in leisure clothes i i when i'm in a suit i'm like i can feel the stress when i'm in a suit i don't i don't mind

it too much it's kind of nice every now and then but uh being relaxed and and and casual makes a difference but yeah these one of the other challenges is these folks are some of these at these corporate levels they're going through like 10 13 zoom calls a day yeah like and it's just a marathon like my friends will talk about how exhausted they are and and so being able to communicate effectively get to your points get and and convey leadership i mean leadership a lot of leadership is inspiring a lot of what i would do when i would go around my office was, you know, to mentally touch my employees and go, Hey man, how's it going here for you? Great job. You know, whatever it was, I was the cheerleader. Right. And then I also was the communicator of vision. Here's where we're going. Here's why this is important. And here's why, you know, I'm the

guy on the ship going, we're all going to there. And, and, uh, and so being able to communicate as much harder because, you know, people are just sitting at home going really 13th zoom meeting for the day. Oh God, no, no, whatever, man. So, you know, you just, they're probably tuned out by, I don't know, noon or something. So there you go. It's interesting as to what you're saying though, is, I mean, there's two things that you were doing and they're both really important, right? I mean, before you, you can tell people your vision, but if you haven't first built that relationship with them, it's a little bit like – I mean, yeah, you're paying my salary, but who are you?

You know what I mean? You were talking about them and understanding and building a relationship and building trust. And once you have that trust and that foundation, then you can say, let's talk about a vision. Let's have a word on it. Then people can get genuinely excited. But you're right. It's harder today in some ways with all of the Zoom. But I would challenge people to when we go back even to this concept of boundaries and of, you know, communicating with people.

And do I need to be in 13 Zooms today? Do I need to mean, you know, what with people. And do I need to be in 13 Zooms today? Do I need to be in, you know, what do I need to be? I mean, can I have the conversation with my boss? I have found our team has gotten even more effective as we've really said, okay, how many meetings do we need to have? Do, you know, do we have objectives for these meetings? Who needs to be on this meeting?

Do, you know, there's a lot of things that you can do to streamline that and make people's lives better. And that just helps in terms of their productivity as well. Yeah. It really makes all the difference. And like I say, my big thing was mentally touching my employees. I like to check in with them. And when they're in the office, I could check in with them. I could be like, I could come by somebody's desk. Hey, how are you doing, man? You doing okay? Sales a little down? What's going on? What do we need to do? Oh, Hey, you're, you're, your sales are awesome. You're kicking ass. You're taking names, man. Keep it up. Rah, rah, rah. You

know, you know, I pretty much walked around my office with a cheerleader outfit. Uh, that was weird. Um, but, and they thought it was weird too. And HR said, I can't do that anymore. So there's that, but no, I mean, that's what I would do. I do the pump-up. And to me, I can't imagine doing that. I mean, and part of it was, too, is that one-on-one that you really can't do on a Zoom call when there's 500 people. You know, plus it kind of looks bad when you're like, hey, Joe's kicking butt and Joe's doing a great job. And everyone else is like, did you say the rest of us suck?

You know? So it's kind of a whole different thing, but yeah, pitching that vision to communicate. Now, a lot of people, at least me had this perception. You only have a few courses. And one is the speaking. You guys are well known for, uh, you know, uh, uh, uh, more empowerment and, and better attitude and stuff. I'm sure I'm getting this wrong. But you guys have like, it looks like almost hundreds of courses. Is that correct? We do. You know, so we've got some courses that are maybe like kind of core courses. You think about the Dale Carnegie course or sales or leadership or customer service or some of these kinds of things that are there. But we also have other kind of many other kinds of programs,

dealing with difficult people, just agreeing agreeably, you know, some of these things that are, you know, overcoming the fear and horror of public speaking, you know, these are dimensions that might tie into something larger. But a lot of what we're doing for especially our larger corporate clients is creating these custom programs. It's really understanding kind of where they are, where they need to be with their people, how do they develop that culture and that sense of trust and getting people working together. So to some degree, Chris,

it might be kind of mixing together different things to create something specifically for them. So yeah, it's a range and it's pretty exciting. It's just in terms of all that's happening right now in the world from a business standpoint, I think there's a lot of opportunity for companies that really get this down to, uh, accelerate and to, to do things they've never done before. And it's, it's fun for us. It's an honor for us to be a part of that. You know, I, I was talking to a company the other day, we've, we've trained all of their salespeople and, you know, they're thriving. It's just,

it's exciting to be a part of that so it's it's so important to teach these skills i mean there's there's so there's probably an endless list of great leaders probably presidents powerful people and and ceos and businesses that have taken your guys's speaking course and their lives have just been better for it i've had some people that have taken the course that have told me, you know, I'm probably never going to go be a public speaker, but learning that skill and, you know, everything that goes into it made me better at everything I could do. And it's inspired, I think, millions and millions of people. We've had millions of people take our programs, tens of millions of people have read the book. But, you know, just going back a lot of, sometimes people will take the program because they think it's a public speaking program. And it really is so much

more than that. You know, one person who took it and you can Google Warren Buffett and Dale Carnegie and you'll see a video of him talking about, you know, he took the program originally because he was nervous about speaking. But ultimately, it helped him in so many other ways. And that's what it does. It helps people with their with their confidence, with their skills, with their relationships, with their ability to lead, with their empathy. You know, so you might start with a desire for one thing, but it's really, it's way more. And stress and worry, frankly. I'll tell you, Chris, I became a Dale Carnegie trainer myself in 2019. It was a little bit of the undercover boss.

I went through this long program to become a trainer. It was very, very rigorous. And I just taught a program recently in Atlanta. And one of the main takeaways that people had from this course, a lot of it was stress and worry. People are stressed right now. And it's like, all right, well, how do you deal with that on a day-to-day basis? And how do you work through it? And how do you turn that stress into something that actually is not bringing you down, but you can flip it so that actually it's wind at your back? How do you do that? And that's part of what we teach.

There you go. There you go. And there's the pitch, ladies and gentlemen. There you go. Anything more you want to tease out on Dale Carnegie Associates and or the book? Well, we have a lot of other resources on our website, and thank you for asking. We do global research, so there's research on engagement, driving cultures, leadership, those kinds of things. No, we're excited about the book.

We're partnering with Simon & Schuster, a great publisher. And we're really excited about hopefully having an impact. By the way, there is going to be an online workbook that goes with people, too. We've got to work through this. And we're also going to have webinars that people can take. There will be some free sessions so that they can kind of get previews into the book and some practical abilities to apply it. So there's going to be a lot that we'll be doing to support it. So they can go to DaleKarnegie.com for more information.

We're also going to have a TakeCommand.com site set up as well. But I don't think we're quite – it's not quite ready to launch. I look forward to seeing that, man. That'll be awesome. I encourage everybody to check your guys' courses. I mean, I've talked to so many great leaders that have been inspired by you guys over the years. And it's just, there's a reason. It's kind of a, it's a thing that's been around forever and it inspired so many people. So give us any other plugs you want to

shout out on the show so people can find you on the internet personally. Yeah, so Joseph K. Hart, I couldn't get Joe Hart, go figure on Twitter or LinkedIn, but I, I, I post frequently. But those are the two best places to, to reach me. And, you know, the one other thing, Chris, I know you've got a great audience and you run, you run really a fantastic podcast. So thank you for having me. You know, we're getting to the end of the year. We're getting to the holidays.

People are going to go through. I mean, you know, you're on family. You get, you know, those kinds of tense situations. And, you know, there are a lot of things here in terms of Dale Carnegie that can help people work through those relationships. But as you think about the beginning of the year and you think about New Year, this is a great time to take command, take command of 2023. Every single person listening to this podcast, watching this podcast has, you know, kind of an inner greatness that they may or may not see or may or may not feel

right now. And part of what Dale Carnegie is about, part of what this book of take command is about is helping people unlock that and get that out and, and really live the kind of life that they want to have. So my hope is that, uh, that you, I mean, you're already living a great life, but hopefully all of your listeners, we can all take command and live the life we want in 2023. There you go. There you go. Well, thank you for coming on the show, Joe.

We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you. And folks, go order up the book. Hey, guess what? This book comes out January 10th, 2023. If you order it now, you can, you know, it makes a great Christmas gift.

You can give away, you know, tell people it's coming, all that good stuff. And yeah, I mean, you got that. It's what a great gift to give at Christmas. The gift that keeps on giving, that improves people's lives, which is different than the book that I had, How to Lose Friends and Make People Hate You. I'm still working on that one. Yeah, just to mention too, I'm sorry to jump in. It is available on Amazon for pre-order right now. So if people pre-order it right now, then as soon as it releases January 10th, they should get it the next day. There you go. What a great gift to give away.

And a great way to lead off the beginning of the year, right? Because so many people, you know, they set the resolutions at the beginning of the year. They're like, yeah, I want to do better this year. This is a great way to lead off with that. So there you go. Thanks, Modest, for tuning in. Go to YouTube.com, Fortes Christophs. Goodreads.com, Fortes Christophs.

All of our stuff we do there, there's like four or five things on LinkedIn and all the groups on Facebook as well. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other, stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. That should have a sound check.