We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP 069 : How to Win Friends and Influence People (Business Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 We study billionaires, and this is episode 69 of The Investors Podcast. Broadcasting from Bel Air, Maryland. This is the Investors Podcast. They'll read the books and summarize the lessons. They'll test the waters and tell you when it's cold. They'll give you actionable investing strategies. Your host, Preston Pish and Sting Broderson. Hey, how's everybody doing out there?

Starting point is 00:00:31 This is Preston Fish, and I'm your host for The Investing. investors podcast, and as usual, I'm accompanied by my co-host Stig Broderson out in Denmark. Today, we've got a book that we're going to be talking about, and it's a book that we've mentioned a lot on the show, and the name of the book is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. So this is one of Warren Buffett's favorite books of all time, and I think if you asked Warren Buffett would be one of the most important books he's ever read in his life. I'd be willing to bet this would probably be one of the top books of his list. He talks about this book a lot. You know, if you went into his office and Jillian, who we had on the show,

Starting point is 00:01:08 probably, I don't know, six months ago, a while back, Gillian said that when you go into his office and you look at all the stuff that he has hanging up on the wall, he really only has two things. He has a picture of his father, and he has a certificate for graduating from the Dale Carnegie course, which is really what this book is all about. So it's interesting. He didn't have his diplomas from where he went to college or anything like that. He had a certificate get from graduating from the Dale Carnegie course. So this book, hands down, is everything that people say it is because I know the first time I read this book, I was just totally floored. It was saying things that, you know, when you read it, you're just kind of shaking your head and be like,

Starting point is 00:01:49 you know what, this is just good sound advice that everyone. This should be something that everyone in high school reads. If you haven't read this, you need to read this book. I promise you, you need to read this book. And the best way to do it, go on to our, Audibles link. You can download it for free, and this could be the first book that you read for free through Audibles. So we highly recommend this book. Before we start talking about the book here, I want to tell people a little bit of a mistake I made last night. And this is embarrassing, but I think it's something that I need to talk about. And Stiggs smiling because he knows what I'm going to say. So last night, and everyone knows, we're putting together this Berkshire Hathaway,

Starting point is 00:02:27 shareholders get together, and at the end of April when it goes into the 1st of May, and And, you know, we sent out a message to all the people on our subscriber list when we emailed out our last copy of our executive summary. At the bottom, I said, hey, if you want to go to the Berkshire meeting, here's a link for you to sign up so that we know who you are and whether you're going or not. So we had a lot of people sign up, a couple hundred people signed up to go out to Omaha. So this is going to be like, we're going to have so much fun out there, folks. So like, if you're not signed up and you do want to go to this thing, please sign up. It's going to be a blast. But anyway, so I'm getting ready to email the group of.

Starting point is 00:03:02 people that signed up to go out to Omaha and I type up this email and I send it out and I selected send it to this list of a couple hundred people. Well, I make a massive mistake and I send it out to almost everybody on our subscription list for the book summaries and everything else. So this thing goes out to like tens of thousands of people. And if you're one of those people and you're listening to the show, I am so sorry. I did not mean to send this email out to you and just clutter your inbox I think if you guys haven't noticed, I'm not sending you an email unless there's a reason for it, unless I just absolutely make a mistake like I did last night. So I just want everybody to know that.

Starting point is 00:03:44 I want people to be aware that I did not send that on purpose. It was an accident and I apologize and I will try to work harder to be a little bit more detail oriented so that I don't clutter your inbox with a message like that. But for the people that are going, I hope that it was beneficial because it lays out all the ways that you can attend the shareholders meeting by getting your credentials and where we're staying and all that kind of stuff. So I just wanted to talk about that. My royal blunder of last night because I got a lot of email responses from people and they're saying, I'm not going to the meeting and I totally understand why you sent those. So wanted to get that out of the way and I want to go ahead and start talking about this book. So Stig, I got a question for you.

Starting point is 00:04:22 What was the very first thing you thought after you completed this book, you put it down? What was the overall feeling you had after reading this? I think the first, really the predominant feeling I had is that this book is going to change my life. And I know that it almost sounds like a spiritual thing, but for me it really was. And this is one of the two books that has really changed my life. So how to influence influence people, which we're doing today, but also change your thinking, change your life by Brian Tracy. And I do want to say like this whole episode about being this book is the most fantastic thing ever written. But I think it's also a question about, are you ready for the book. I read into, hear to the advice that you get from the book. And when I was reading

Starting point is 00:05:06 this book, it was probably four years ago. I read the book the first time. I was probably for the first time in my life ready to read the book because the book is really also just throwing a lot of things in your face. Like if you're talking to people like this, bad things probably happen to you. If you talk to people like that, good things will happen to you. And I can just feel how many things, how many mistakes that I made connecting with other people. So it was really a very emotional experience for me to be reading this book. And I can definitely see why this is Warren Buffett's favorite books. And funny enough, as Preston saying, this is not about investing at all. This is about personal relationships. And my take is that this book has been just as important

Starting point is 00:05:49 for Warren Buffett as, say, the intelligent investor. Because this book taught him how to interact with other people and you can't be successful in business without being good with other people. Yeah, I think at the end of the day, if you're in a position like Buffett and you're a leader in business, you're in the room making deals. And a lot of the times in order to make great deals, it has to be a win-win situation. It has to be orchestrated with great social skills. And I think that that's what this book is really taught Warren Buffett, also the course that he attended. Now, whenever I was done with it, I remember just kind of putting it down and thinking, that was amazing. That was a great book.

Starting point is 00:06:23 But now's the hard part of like actually implementing this stuff. because reading it and agreeing with it is one thing, but then actually putting it into practice and executing this is a lot harder than it sounds. At least I think it is. Now, as you try out these habits and you keep doing this, that's what it turns into is a habit and it turns into just kind of a way of life for a person. And that's why I would tell people, you're going to read this book once, but you'll definitely probably read it again because you're going to try to remember and continue to implement these things as you go along. So let's go ahead and dive in and we'll just like that. dissect it by part. So the very first part he talks about is fundamental techniques in handling people.

Starting point is 00:07:03 And to start off, he provides this really great story. He provides an awesome story about Al Capone and other criminals and their inability or unwillingness to blame themselves for anything that they had done wrong. While most people are not criminals and probably that part doesn't really relate to them, I think he uses this as an extreme example to share their incapacity to criticize themselves and and really go through this self-improvement phase. And I think that he starts off with this because this is so foundational to a person's growth. If you're not willing to accept responsibility for something bad that happens to you, or you're not real good at receiving criticism, you have to start there.

Starting point is 00:07:45 You can't even begin to touch some of these other subjects until that becomes kind of a way of life for you. So I've mentioned it a few times on the show that I went to a military academy. I went to West Point and up there that you learned that lesson really, really fast. Your whole first year is just, it's quite humorous because there's nothing you can do right. You're constantly being told all the different things that you do wrong and some of it is just, you know, ridiculous at times. But you come to an appreciation of this idea that you always look at yourself first before you place the blame anywhere else. You know, somebody might come up to me when I was in the hall as a freshman and be like, you know, Pish, why did you do this? And it'd be like, no excuse, sir. That's the first response, no matter what, is no excuse, sir.

Starting point is 00:08:31 And then it's, you know, your friend went out and did X, Y, Z. Yes, sir, that is my fault. Whether it is or is not, you just immediately have this opinion, this response that everything and anything is your responsibility. And when you have that kind of beat into your head for an entire year straight, and really the next three years were like that too, but when you have that beat into your head, you really start to view the world through a different lens of always taking responsibility for yourself. And I think that that's what he's getting about in this first part of the book is you have to be of that mindset before you can even go anywhere else. Yeah, and I think it's a really good point that you have about criticism, because as soon as we start to criticize other people, as you're saying, we are not taking full responsibility

Starting point is 00:09:18 for ourselves. And I think one of the problems, at least I know that's from personal experience, But I also see this with my students, for instance, if something is not their fault, they just sit back and just start criticizing. And that's probably the worst thing you can do. And you might be thinking, well, if it's not my fault, why should I take responsibility? But if you relate this to a work situation, basically what I see is that there's three things you can do if something goes wrong or something goes against you. First of all, you can change it.

Starting point is 00:09:47 That might not be possible. Then you can change your job. That's kind of extreme, but you can't do that. or you probably should just accept it. So that's the third option. And I think the whole acceptance instead of criticizing is probably one of the most valuable advice from this book because once you start to accept things as they are,

Starting point is 00:10:06 especially if you can't change them, then you will probably also realize that they are not that big of a problem after all. So I read this article, and this was probably five to ten years ago. It was really a long time ago. And I keep searching for it on the net and I cannot find the reference of this article.

Starting point is 00:10:24 But it really had an enormous impact on the way I saw things. And in the article, it was written by a psychologist. I'm out in California. I can't remember any of the names because this was a while ago. But the psychologist was talking about that they dealt with these hardcore criminals, like guys that were just straight evil. And what was the common thread amongst these men that were locked up that were just the evilest human beings that you could ever face.

Starting point is 00:10:52 And you know what the common theme or the thread was between all of them? None of them had any empathy at all for other people. They had no ability to step outside of their own way of seeing things and try to understand life from another person's perspective. That was the common thread that this psychologist came up with. And, you know, ever since I read that, I was like, huh, So let me just flip that on its head. Let me do the Charlie Munger here and invert.

Starting point is 00:11:23 So if I become a very empathetic person and I try to always understand things from the other person's perspective instead of my own, wouldn't that make me just an exceptional person instead of a person that needs to be behind bars and the evilest person on the planet? And so I just kind of inverted that. And I thought about, I think about this article I read so much because it's such a profound idea of empathy and trying to understand. things from another person's perspective. So let me take this a step further. So there's these studies that, and I know we're getting kind of off the topic here of the book, but a lot of this stuff relates back to the book. So there's a test that they do for intelligence on animals. It's called the mirror test. And they say that you can judge an animal's intelligence by their

Starting point is 00:12:07 ability to recognize themselves in the mirror. So like a dolphin can recognize itself in a mirror, some pets can. It really depends on the animal. But all those animals that can recognize themselves in the mirror, they can recognize oneself in the world. They are a higher and intellectual being. So when you think about that step of, I don't even know who I am, I know who I am, not only do I know who I am, but I understand that other person too, and I understand what they're thinking about and I can kind of feel and understand the context and how they see the world too. So you can see that progress of intelligence. And so what I think, whenever I think about an intelligent person, a person that really is an empathetic in a person who can see things from a context of multiple people, call it five,

Starting point is 00:12:53 ten people's opinions. And a person's sitting over there and you say, I can empathize with that person. I can see why maybe they're upset. In my opinion, that's a very, very intelligent person because they're seeing the world from just such a broader context. But I know we kind of went off on a tangent there. I think it does relate to some of the stuff we're going to be talking here as we move along. So let's keep on moving. And the second section of part one, he talks about this big secret. And this big secret is there is only one way to get somebody to do something. And he says, it's to make the person want to do it. And I think, Preston, in continuations of what you just said, the whole concept of appreciating other people is really something you should pay attention to.

Starting point is 00:13:36 And if we're really going to flip list, I might also ask you, so could you give me a reason why you shouldn't appreciate being other people do something good? Like, I can challenge everyone in the world. I hope no one could come up with an answer, right? Because why shouldn't you tell other people that where they're doing is good? And I don't think you can do it too much. Well, I have to say, it has to be sincere. Like, you shouldn't flatter, but you should be able to give sincere appreciation to other people. And I really can't see any downside for doing it. And if I had to relate to what you said, Preston before, is that it's one of the leaders' best ways of motivating people. Because money will only take you this far. And basically, it doesn't have to be

Starting point is 00:14:14 related to business is also relevant in all types of relationships. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right, I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord, and every conversation you have is with people who are actually shaping the future. That's what the Oslo Freedom Forum is. From June 1st through the 3rd, 2026, the Oslo Freedom Forum is entering its 18th year, bringing together activists, technologists, journalists, investors, and builders from all over the world, many of them operating on the front lines of history. This is where you hear firsthand stories from people using Bitcoin to

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Starting point is 00:17:56 and even enhance your product photography. Plus, if you ever get stuck, they've got award-winning 24-7 customer support. Start your business today with the industry's best best. business partner, Shopify, and start hearing, sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash WSB. Go to Shopify.com slash WSB. That's Shopify.com slash WSB. All right. Back to the show. Well, I think it's a function of like genuine real gratitude. And I think in order to have genuine real gratitude, you have to have to, you have to be a person that sees things from a context that's outside of your own domain. You have to see it

Starting point is 00:18:45 from the other person's vantage point. So let's say you have a subordinate and they just completed something that was really a lot of work for them. If the superior can't step out of his own skin and see things from that subordinates point of view as far as them working hard and all, everything that they had to do in order to do that, how can they have any type of gratitude towards their work or true genuine appreciation for it? And so I think it really goes back to that underlying theme. And I think that's why he starts off the book the way he did is because it has such a layering effect. If you can't see things from outside that perspective, you're not going to be able to have that gratitude or appreciation and respect for the other people as you move forward.

Starting point is 00:19:23 And then the last thing that he really talks about in this section is this desire to feel like you have importance in the world. So he makes the statement that everybody, everybody on this earth right now has this desire to feel some type of importance. You know, whenever you just look at Stig and I, like, we get our level of importance through doing like this show right here. Like, I feel important because I do this show and I'm able to help people with finance or investing or whatever. That's where I get my desire because I absolutely have that same desire. And I'm sure that if you are driving down your car, you're in your car right now and you're thinking,

Starting point is 00:20:03 yeah, I agree with that. I, what is that thing for you, though? there's something out there that you need to feel like you're important for something. And you know what? When a person stops feeling like they're important, that's when they really go into this deep depression type state because they don't feel like they have anything to add to the world. And so understanding that idea and that concept, it's amazing how much you can do to help out other people by making them feel important in a genuine way, not doing it just totally fake,

Starting point is 00:20:32 but you have to do it in a genuine way because when you do that, that's really really, the core fundamental thing here is everybody should be able to feel important about something. And when you go after that and you try to assist that desire in another person, it's amazing what you'll get in return. Okay, so let's go ahead and move into the second part of the book. And in the second part of the book, he has six principles to make people like you. So I'm sure a lot of people want to hear some of these. Okay. So principle one, become genuinely interested in other people. So this, he talks about, you know, You know, just I think one of the most important things that you can do is just listen to a person.

Starting point is 00:21:11 When you listen to a person and you just sit down and you can tell that the person that's talking to, you can tell that you have genuine interest in what they're talking about. You're not sitting there on your smartphone, like typing a message as they're talking, okay? That's not genuine interest in what the person's saying. This is like, I'm going to put the cell phone down. I'm not going to look or think about anything else. I'm going to look this person and I'm going to listen to what they're saying and be actively engaged in what they're saying. Yeah, and this is also the section, this is definitely before Facebook, but this is also the section where he's talking about how he's writing people's birthdays down. So he always remember them. So they will make it feel important. And he's talking about be a friend to become a friend. And in continuation of this, I just want to say that tomorrow is Preston's birthday. And it's not because of Facebook that I know that.

Starting point is 00:21:59 Wow. So what's really funny is I didn't even remember that tomorrow is my birthday. Wow, that was amazing Stig. I'm impressed. See, now, when I think about that, you can see how well this works, because I just look this, like, wow, he's a really good friend. Oh, my gosh. So the thing that's important here in this idea of listening to people is really the sincerity piece, is your intent, okay, and man, I'm big on intentions.

Starting point is 00:22:29 Like, for me, there's nothing bigger than talking about the intent of something. So if your intent is a pure intention, because you really do want to get to know the person, they're going to sense that and they're going to know it. If your intention is to manipulate them, to make them think that you're a friend, they're going to sense that too. If there's one thing I've learned in life, people can sniff out an intention faster than anything on the planet. Okay.

Starting point is 00:22:52 So if you are not paying attention to your intentions, you're going to have some bad repercussions that are going to fall out of it. And I also have another saying, when I tell my kids this all the time, I talk about this way too much with them, but I don't really share this with the podcast because we're usually talking about, you know, equities and stocks and intrinsic values and stuff like that. So my opinion is that intentions work like boomerangs. And intentions have to be tied to an action.

Starting point is 00:23:18 So every single action where you actually do something, there's an intention tied to that action. And I look at intentions and actions just like you would say, and I'm going to really geek out on you here. When you talk about a force, you have mass times acceleration. Mass time acceleration creates a force. And so my opinion is that your mass and acceleration in life is your intention and your action. When you combine those two together, you create a comedic type event that if your intention is a bad one and you have an action tied to it, it's going to come back to you like a boomerang and it's going to have something ill or something bad that happens to you.

Starting point is 00:23:57 And it's not dependent on time. Time, it could happen 10 years from now. It could happen in 10 seconds from now. I consciously think about that in any type of action that I take because if my intention is bad, I fully expect that to come back to me in a bad manner. And so I'm not going to go down that path much more because I could talk about that for probably an entire episode, that idea. But I'll tell you, folks, that fundamental idea is something that I hold so close

Starting point is 00:24:23 and that I think about so often is this idea of combining action with intention and thinking about the consequence that I'm potentially creating because of If I have a bad intention, it's going to come back to me. For Principle 3 says, remember that a person's name is the sweetest and most important sound in any language. Yeah, so in my situation, again, sorry, I always refer to this to teaching. And I don't know if me saying people's name is the most beautiful thing they've ever heard. But I can definitely see why this is usual, both for me and for them. I get quite a few names need to learn.

Starting point is 00:25:01 and I have made it very important to me to learn people's names really, really fast. So basically what I do whenever I get a list with people's names, I also get picture of them, is that I would go home and then I would spend hours learning people's names. And you might think that why would I spend time on that? Why shouldn't I prepare the curriculum or whatnot? But I just quickly figured out that it's really, really hard for me to teach my student what they need to know if I don't know their names. And, you know, they might seem weird because, again, why? But it's really a question of for them to care, I need to care. And if I keep saying, hey, you in the red sweater or you with a hat, whatever, I would have a really hard time connecting with my students. And I don't think you can really connect with another person if you don't know their name because it just becomes too impersonal, in my opinion.

Starting point is 00:25:53 So he provides a story in the book that's just outstanding on this one. And I love this story. I don't can't remember. I ever talked about this on the podcast, but I'm going to mention it again in case I didn't. So Andrew Carnegie, whenever he was younger, he wanted to have some rabbits, some pet rabbits. And he implemented the power of a person's name. And so he didn't want to have to take care of these rabbits because he didn't want to have to go out there and feed them and everything. But he wanted the opportunity to go and hold them and pet them whenever he wanted. But he didn't want to have to do all the dirty work of cleaning up after them. I believe the story goes, because I read this a long time ago, I believe the story goes,

Starting point is 00:26:28 there was three neighbor girls that lived next to Andrew Carnegie, and the three girls obviously liked the rabbits too. And so Carnegie worked a deal with the three girls, and he said, I am going to name each one of these rabbits after you, but if I do that, you have to take care of the rabbits. And the three girls said, oh, that's awesome.

Starting point is 00:26:53 Oh, my gosh, you know, they were all excited that they were going to have the rabbits named after them. And so he did that. He named each rabbit after each of the girls. And in the end, he didn't have to take care of the rabbits. He just, he owned the rabbits. He went out there, played with him when he wanted, but he never had to clean up after him because he implemented the power of using a person's name for something. And I think it talks about later on, he was working some big deal when he was selling the company. And it was between, I can't remember who was. It was another powerhouse name during that era. But he couldn't come to the agreement on the final. deal as far as the price that they were going to be paying and everything. And then Carnegie remembered this lesson that he learned at a very young age. And he goes, you know what? We will name the company after you. My name will be second or it won't even be in the titling. And that's what enabled him to close out the deal. No more money or anything. He just used the person's name. So if you don't think a person's name is important, and I really like Stig's point too as far as in the classroom,

Starting point is 00:27:53 because from a student's vantage point, if you don't know their name, their opinion is that you're at a different plane, you're not at their level, they're not important, you are important. And that's really what you're conveying in something like that. You're basically saying, you're not even important enough for me to know your name. And that's, again, you can't step out and understand it from the other person's vantage point if that's how you think as a teacher. You just don't. Yeah, and it's not only a question about like how you speak to each other. It's also, like in modern age, it's also about how you email each other. So I would get a ton of emails from people and some of them would be like, send me the executive summaries, thanks.

Starting point is 00:28:31 And, you know, I would never, ever respond to a Christian like that or a demand like that. But like people saying, hey, stick, I like your podcast. I'm really curious about the executive summaries. Would you mind sending me a link because I can't find them inside? And I would be happy to do that. And like, when I'm thinking about it's like, it's kind of the same thing, but it's not because he's using my name so he actually knows who I am. He's creating a connection and he's saying you're doing a good job.

Starting point is 00:28:56 So immediate, I feel like I need to recipient I need to recipient instead of just saying, oh, I can just put that in my spam filter or whatnot. So again, it's not just how we speak to each other. It's actually also how we interact or email or in moderation in general. Yeah, that's kind of a funny point because I get a lot of the same messages. Some are just like, you can tell people have respect for what you do or they're just respectful of your time.

Starting point is 00:29:21 And then you get other people that will send you something. They're like, send me this now. And you're like, not only no, but delete. Yeah. No, it's very true. It's amazing how just the context of how you could write or that you can speak to people, the response that you get is just so drastically different. And this is also something I really thought about after interviewing Guy Spear,

Starting point is 00:29:45 because Guy, guy, he was talking about how should you interact with people that you like and how should you interact with people you don't like? because you can also be very confrontational if you really have to tell people what you think about them, especially if you don't like them. And what he's saying is that, well, you should probably respond longer, respond better, faster to people that you want to attract in your life. And you might not want to respond to people that you don't want attract in your life. So whenever I have an inquiry one way or the other and I don't find it respectful, I might not, typically I don't answer it. But even if I do, I also emphasize that just between the lines that,

Starting point is 00:30:22 we should probably not continue with this type of relationship. But on the other hand, whenever I get inquiring for someone who really respect my time and like what I do and seem generally interested in me, that's a connection and that's a relationship I want to keep building on. So also think about that whenever you're communicating with other people. Like, who do you want to be a part of your life? All right. So principle four, we already kind of hit on this one, and that is Be a Good Listener.

Starting point is 00:30:47 And he provides fantastic for each one of these things. This is the thing that I think I like about the book most is he's not just preaching it, kind of like what we're doing on the podcast. He's providing like really good, thoughtful examples and stories to represent the idea to you. So it's really easy reading and the stories that he provides are really fun and interesting. So we're just kind of cutting right to the meat of what he's trying to say. But when you read the book, I'm telling you, it is just a fantastic representation of each of these ideas. So principle four, be a good listener.

Starting point is 00:31:19 and I think that we kind of hit on a lot of the major points of that, and we're going to move along so we can keep things going. Principle 5. Talk in terms of the other person's interests. So I believe in the book, and again, I've read this quite a while ago, but in the book, he provides an example of a letter. And he writes the letter in two different contexts. The first context is in terms of the letter writer's interest. The other one is in terms of the person that he's writing to his interests. And when you read the letters and the comparison, it's borderline hilarious because you can see how people actually get what they want when they talk in terms of the other person. The letter, if I remember right, was something like he was trying to get this other person to do something for him.

Starting point is 00:32:03 So in the original letter that he writes, it's something like, I need this and I need this because and it was all for his own self-interest reasons. When he rewrote the letter, he started off with, hey, Mr. So-and-so, you know, it's such a pleasure to be. be working with a company like yours because you guys are always on time and whatnot. I'm writing this letter because I want to afford you the opportunity to maybe benefit from something that is in your interest. And he explains, he goes through this letter. And when you read the comparison between the two, it's just amazing to see how well crafted and how well thought out the second one is.

Starting point is 00:32:40 And it all revolves around this idea of thinking about the other person's vantage point first before your own. And he talks in terms of. are the other person's interest. So I use this all the time. And I don't use it for a malevolent cause. I use it because it is mutually beneficial, because it is a win-win. And how I use it is whenever I write people to come onto our show, I often talk about how it will benefit them first, opposed to how it will benefit me or necessarily our audience. And so whenever you think about how you could use this in your daily life or interaction or written correspondence, either

Starting point is 00:33:20 one of those two. Always try to think in the other person's terms before your own, and you'll be amazed at how much you're able to shape and influence that what you want to get, but also make sure that it also shapes and influences what the other person wants and what they need to get as well. And when you have that win-win, that's when you're really going to have success. So let's go go to the sixth principle, which is make the other person feel important, and most importantly, you've got to do it sincerely. If it is sincere and somebody is talking about something that you have a genuine interest in, it's amazing how much of a bond you can establish with a person quickly because you're talking about something that they enjoy or that they like.

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Starting point is 00:37:23 Yeah, and I think that the whole process of asking people for the advice is really powerful. And why is it powerful? Well, because of the concept that we're just talking about here, that you're making the other person feel important. You would not ask another person about their opinion if you didn't think they're important. So, you know, to me, it's kind of strange. I still have a problem asking other people, not necessarily the opinion, but their advice, because sometimes I feel, well, that makes me look stupid.

Starting point is 00:37:51 But they're probably willing to help you. They feel empowered by you asking them. And this is the very foundation for creating a good relationship that you can both prosper from. So the book, after it goes through these different principles, then it shifts into the third part. And the book is broken into four parts. So the book shifts into the third part. And the title of the third part is how to win people to your way of thinking. And it really gets into this deep philosophical discussion of, is it right to criticize other people? And I think a lot of people out there will absolutely say, yeah, you've got to tell people when they do something wrong. And I agree with that.

Starting point is 00:38:27 But I think the manner in which you tell people that they're doing something wrong is what makes all the difference in the world. So instead of using an example here from the book, I want to talk about discussion that I had with a family member. So one of my family members works at a golf course and they cut the grass, they cut all the greens and all that kind of stuff. And there's times when this person's out there and they're cutting grass and they come across a golfer that's just completely, you know, basically destroying the golf course. And so he was telling me this story and he said, you know, and he talked about, I guess, somebody had like a golf cart and they like ran it like up on the green and just like kept going or something really ridiculous, something that you don't do on a golf course.

Starting point is 00:39:11 And so he told me, he said, I went over there and I just, I gave it to him. I let him. And he just told me how he basically lambas at this person. And so after he was done telling me this story, I said to him, I said, well, what was your end state? what were you trying to accomplish with that? And he just kind of looked at me, kind of like confused. Like, what do you mean? What was my end state?

Starting point is 00:39:33 I was trying to make sure this guy was never going to do that again and kind of destroy him. And I said, well, the most important thing you can do in an exchange is to ask yourself first, what is it that I want to get out of this? Well, he didn't want him to drive the golf cart up on the green again, and he wanted him to be respectful of the course. So what's the best way that you can get a person to do that? Well, you've got to make the person understand things. from your vantage point, but you've got to do it in a manner that is respectful and thoughtful.

Starting point is 00:40:03 So if you think about that scenario and you think about, well, if I would go up to this person after they just drove the golf cart across of it and you yell at him and you scream at him, his first thing is the person's exchange back is going to be immediately in defensive mode and they're going to be like, I'm not listening to you. Who are you anyway? And just the exchange immediately goes off in the wrong direction. And you're not accomplishing your end state. You wanted him to not do that again and to learn a lesson.

Starting point is 00:40:27 So what you're actually doing when you're yelling at them or you're having this major confrontation is you're doing the exact opposite of what your intention and what your end state that you wanted to achieve. And so you've got to really think about that when you're having these interactions. And so think about it from this context. Let's say that my family member would have gone up to this person and said, hey, sir, you know, I hope you're having a great day golf. And I'm sorry, but I want to talk to you about something that is, you know, really

Starting point is 00:40:53 important to me. I'm out here. I'm cutting these greens and I'll tell you, I put in eight hours a day really trying to make this golf course look beautiful. And I don't mean to criticize you, but whenever you drive your golf cart up on the green, it'll leave this rut and it'll make it hard for other golfers that come after you to put over that surface because it won't be an even surface because the golf cart's so heavy. If you could just really try to be cognizant of that as you go on the rest of the course, you know, it'll help me out tremendously and it'll help out the golfers behind you. And if you would have a conversation that's calm, collective, thoughtful, you have a reason behind it. It's amazing. You would accomplish your end state. You would get exactly

Starting point is 00:41:34 what it is that you're trying to achieve. And you would do it. And you know what? The guy would look at you like, I like that guy. He was nice. You know? And I think that that's something that is so insanely hard to do because a lot of the times you're acting on your ego. Yeah. And, And I'm also thinking of this in monetary terms, right? I can't help myself. And if you think about this in monetary terms, like, think about this person will probably quit, or at least his productivity will be very, very low and you might need to replace him anyway. So as person is saying, you don't gain anything. Well, you might get some kind of satisfaction in the next five minutes or something like that, but in the long run, it's just a very, very bad way of

Starting point is 00:42:16 managing your relationships. And I think perhaps the one thing that Preston's family member perhaps did right or at least didn't do wrong in this situation was that he likely didn't do it in front of other people. Well, people often know when they're wrong and you don't have to be harsh on them and especially you don't have to do it in front of other people because especially if you're superior, it can't feel like a humiliation of that person if you're doing it from other people because the person made a mistake. You're his boss for instance. So he can't really tell you anything back. And that, like, he might forget what you have been. saying, but he will never ever forget how you made him feel. I think that's something we should

Starting point is 00:42:57 all consider when it's acting with other people. I love that comment, Stig. Maya Angelou has a quote that goes along with his lines of people, you know, 10, 20, 30 years from now will not remember what was said. They will forget the words completely. But the one thing that people will never forget is how you make them feel. And I think that that is such a profound idea. So let's go into the last section. This is part four and it's titled, Be a Leader, How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment. And so the example in this section, they talk about Charles Schwab. So this is what we had written down. So call attention to people's mistakes indirectly. What would a thoughtful leader do if he were to find employees smoking directly under a no

Starting point is 00:43:42 smoking sign? And then it says Charles Schwab found himself in precisely this situation. and instead of belittling his workers, he approached them, offered them a cigar, and kindly requested that they enjoy it outside. And according to Charles Schwab, he earned their respect of his workers by giving them a little present and making them feel important while enforcing the rules in an indirect manner. And so that's the thing. Sometimes you can get exactly what you want. And, you know, some of these leaders and some of these people that get exactly what they want, they are so smooth. and they do it in an indirect manner and where they're respectful of the people

Starting point is 00:44:18 that are working for them or working alongside them, they're respectful of them and they see it from their vantage point. They know that they want to smoke, even though that they can't directly empathize with it, they have respect for the people. And then they just kind of just put their little twist on there

Starting point is 00:44:34 to get what it is that they want and to do the right thing. And I think that when you think about it, that idea is rooted in doing the right thing. And you know what? when you challenge people to do the right thing and you do it in a manner that's respectful and calm, they will do the right thing. And you know what? In the end, it'll gain your respect too. And that's what he's really getting at with this. So, Stig, did you have any points for anything

Starting point is 00:44:56 to add for that last part of the book? Well, I think the whole idea of asking questions instead of giving orders, I think that was something that I really like. And one of the examples that Carnegie come up with here in this book is that he's saying, if you're predominant, you're a predominant. manager and you want to increase your production. What you can say to your employees is that, well, we need to increase production now and I need you to start working harder now. Instead, he is saying, why don't you ask we need to increase production? What are the different ways we can go about it? Like your message comes through just as powerful, probably even more. And again, you have your employees chipping in with the best ideas. And since they are handling the production

Starting point is 00:45:37 on the day-to-day basis, they probably have better ideas than you have. And they will feel this ownership that is so important for all dealers to have employees that have. So whenever I was a company commander back in the day, one of my big things that I would tell the gentleman that I had the total pleasure of leading, because I'll tell you, I had some of the absolute best soldiers that worked for me. But sometimes they would come into my office and they would have a problem. And I think this is something that anybody in a leadership position can empathize with. You have employees. They come in. They bring you problems. But one of the most important, important ways that I finally discovered on how to get everybody involved in the process was

Starting point is 00:46:18 if somebody brought me a problem, we would further define what the problem was. Sometimes they might have their end of the story and not have some other aspects from maybe my vantage point or other people's vantage point. So we would further define the problem. After we completely define the problem, I would look at the person and I would say, okay, so I think we both understand the context of the problem. So what are three courses of action to see? solve that problem. And a lot of the times the person would look at me and be like, well, I don't know. That's why I came to you. And I would take it. And I would totally flip it on its head. And I'd say, well, I want you to think about it. I want you to come back to me with what the three courses

Starting point is 00:46:56 of action are to solve this problem. There's three ways to solve it. I don't know what they are, but I want you to solve the problem three different ways and come back to me with what those courses of action are. So, you know, a couple hours later, the person would come back and say, well, we could do this, we could do that, or we could do this thing over here. And I'd say, you know what, I like the second one. Let's do that. And you know what? You're going to be the primary person to execute that course of action.

Starting point is 00:47:19 So if you need my help, if you need me to get other resources for you in order to accomplish that, just let me know. But you're the primary POC in order to execute course of action number two. Now, let's move out. Like Stig said, there's ownership, there's buy-in. They're thinking of creative solutions. A lot of the times the person working down at the lowest level has the, the most information and the most details about how to solve the problem.

Starting point is 00:47:43 And so what it does is it generates this conversation. I have this saying, most people in the world are problem identifiers. They're great at identifying problems. They can identify them for days and days on end. Very few people are problem solvers. And so what I tried to do as a leader was always try to create as many problem solvers as I could within an organization. and when you do that, you do it in an indirect way, and you do it in a manner that is so conducive and productive to the entire organization.

Starting point is 00:48:14 I just have to ask you, Preston, how you came up with this solution? Because I just read a book about Google, and apparently this is corporate policies that to bring a problem to a boss at Google, you have to bring a solution to them. So I'm just thinking, is it kind of like this parallel Google, Preston Piss universe, or how did you come up with it? If there's anything I know in life, it's not because I originated a whole. myself. I promise you that. It's because I read it somewhere or somebody else taught it to me. And in this case, somebody else had taught it to me. Okay. But it's really profound. I mean, whenever I heard that in the book, I was like, how could I not have come up with this before? Because I have so many problems brought to me. And I'm like, you know, running around trying to figure out like what the

Starting point is 00:48:55 answer is. And now I'm starting to ask, well, what do you think we should do about it? And often they come up with a better, you know, solution than I would anyway. Well, and so it's beneficial. Now, I will say this, sometimes you can have some downside risk, if you will, to implementing this way of interacting with your subordinates. And the downside is if you get people that bring you problems before and you basically made them solve it and you made them execute the solution, they might be hesitant to bring you more problems in the future. And so it's important that is there may be, and the way that I would go about making sure that they would continue to bring me problems, because that's important.

Starting point is 00:49:35 You need to know that as a leader. That's how you know what's happening within your organization. What I would try to do is I would try to partake and participate in the solution or somehow in any way that I could show them that they've got my full support and how much I appreciated them actually solving the problem. It's just really kind of how you handle it. You can't be just, you brought me this problem and you got to give me the solution and now you're going to solve it.

Starting point is 00:50:00 If you got that approach, it goes back to your intent. You go back to that approach. Roach, it's going to be disastrous. You're going to be that leader in your organization that doesn't know any of the problems in the organization because no one wants to bring them to you because they know how you're going to handle it. But I think if you do it in a delicate and respectful and show appreciation and gratitude for what they're doing, you're going to have people bringing your problems all the time

Starting point is 00:50:21 and solutions. All right. So that really concludes and we got a little bit off on a tangent there in a couple different spots, but I think it's really important to highlight some of these things because what you're really getting at is how to be a great leader and how to, you to work with other people really well. And, you know, I can't speak highly enough of this book. I really do think that this is one of those books that is a mandatory read for people. I think that this should be built into everyone's curriculum across the country. That's really all I have stick. Did you have anything

Starting point is 00:50:49 else that you want to add? I'm all said. I can definitely also just recommend this to anyone. Not only leaders, I know we talked a lot about leadership, but it's not so much corporate leadership and is also personal leadership. And that is perhaps even more important. So definitely read this book. Okay, so if you've noticed, we haven't played a lot of questions from the audience lately.

Starting point is 00:51:11 And today we're not going to play one either. But what we're going to do in the future episode that's going to be coming up, we're going to play about five questions from the members of our audience. So please continue to go to AsktheInvesters.com. Record your questions there. We'll play them on the show.

Starting point is 00:51:24 We're going to send out a bunch of books to people in a coming episode where we play a lot of the different questions. where we also talk about the current market conditions as it continues to evolve. Really interesting in the market right now. It's getting pretty crazy. Also, I wanted to just highlight once again, if you want to read this book or you want to listen to this book on audibles, use our link on our website to download How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Starting point is 00:51:46 You can listen to that book completely for free if you use our link because you get your first book for free if you use the link from the Investors podcast website. Also, sign up on our email list. We're going to send out, I think it's a six-page executive summary of how to win friends and influence people that captures all the things that we talked about today. It's a great outline. I personally print off every one of our executive summaries and I stick it inside the book after I'm done

Starting point is 00:52:08 so that I can quickly access and pull out the information from each of the books that we read. And I recommend people do the same. So if you sign up on our email list, we don't send any spam unless I send you an accidental message at night, which I am deeply sorry for. I really am. I'm so sorry, folks.

Starting point is 00:52:24 So that's really all we have for you guys this week. And we hope you guys enjoyed this episode and we'll see you guys next week. Thanks for listening to The Investors Podcast. To listen to more shows or access to the tools discussed on the show, be sure to visit www. www.theinvestorspodcast.com. Submit your questions or request a guest appearance to the Investors podcast

Starting point is 00:52:45 by going to www.w.com. If your question is answered during the show, you will receive a free autographed copy of the Warren Buffett Accounting Book. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. This material is copyrighted by the TIP network and must have written approval before a commercial application.

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP 069 : How to Win Friends and Influence People (Business Podcast)

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