Joe Hart, TAKE COMMAND (A Dale Carnegie Book)

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Welcome back friends to our podcast, unlocking Your World of Creativity. And we've been traveling around the world talking to creative practitioners about how they get inspired and how they organize those ideas and how to gain the confidence and the connections to launch their work out into the world. And today we're going to apply some, I mean, lifelong, historically long principles of confidence, relationship building, and well really how to win friends and influence people. And if you haven't heard this title in your career, you're missing out. But today we're talking to Joe Hart, who's president, and c e o of the Dale Carnegie Training Company. Joe, welcome to the program.

(: 00:43

Thanks, mark. Great to be with you.

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And Joe, you've got a terrific new book just coming out called Take Command, and it is a Dale Carnegie book. It's built on those principles, but one reviewer called it a modern manual for these kind of human relations development. Let's take both of those words for a second. How have you modernized some of these classic Dale Carnegie principles? And then how do we find this to be a manual, really a guidebook for our success?

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Yeah, so it's interesting because even beginning this project, it was a little daunting in a way. You think about the masterpiece of how to win friends and influence people is right. It's bestselling book for over 85 years influenced tens of millions of people. And there's just, Dale Carnegie is so brilliant and how to stop worrying and start living another phenomenal book of Dale Carnegie's. And the observation we had was we don't wanna try to rewrite these books. We wanna build on these books and contextualize and really for a modern audience, so many times people will read either of those books and say, these are phenomenal. And some of the things might be harder to relate to today's reader, things that were written in the thirties or the early 19 hundreds and so forth. So what we set out to do was to say, these principles are still everybody as applicable as they are as they were when they were written maybe even more important today than they were in many ways.

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And let's find some examples of people around the world. So we actually interviewed hundreds of people, young people particularly. This book is, it's geared, I primarily for a younger audience, I'd say 22 to 45. I mean, I think hopefully could benefit anyone and certainly may people have read it, are outside of that age range. But we wanted to find stories that people could really relate to. You've got divor diverse stories from people all over the world who are successful or telling their experiences, applying the Dale Carnegie principles, principles, whether they realize that it was the Dale Carnegie principles or not. We also start each chapter with a quote from Dale Carnegie, and we, we've created our own set of principles based on the lessons in the chapter. So the today's principles are a little bit different and maybe things that can resonate with a younger audience.

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The manual part, it's funny because I gave a copy of this book to a friend of mine and just an early galley copy, kinda like the one you have, mark. And he said, the thing about this book, this is not a book that you just read, this is a book that I'm going to need to come back to over and over and over, because part of what we're working on is how do you take command of your thoughts and your emotions? That's not something you do in a single aha kind of moment. It's something you have to work on in practice, or how do you take command of your relationships or your future, your vision. So we see it as a manual or roadmap that people will hopefully come back to and read and then apply and practice and so forth. Because our goal really is for this to be a transformative work in the lives of the readers.

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So good. And I couldn't help but notice some of the sort of craftsmanship of the book. You say you're opening with a Dale Carnegie quote. I also noticed the stories that you talk about in the original 1936 edition. He also uses a lot of stories of corporate leaders and public figures. And I really think that, as you say, it does help bring this to life. It's not just, here's a checklist of things to do or things to say, instead of this, say this. But the stories and examples really do bring it to life.

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Yeah. Well thank you for saying that. When we undertook to write this, I mean, again, Dale Carnegie is so brilliant, such a master storyteller. Part of the thing that makes all of this book so compelling are just these powerful stories. We basically said, we want a high percentage of this book of taking in to be stories. People love stories that resonate with stories. People have their own epiphanies around stories. So we set out for 80 plus percent of the book to be stories combined with what might be research or insights or other kinds of lessons. So we didn't want this to be kind of a lecture book, the kind of book that you read. It's like someone just telling you what you need to do. It's like, okay, the example teaches the saying that the example teaches, the story teaches. So we really tried to find some really great stories and hopefully to tell those stories in a pretty compelling way.

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Yes. Well then in addition, each chapter is bookended or summarized by a take command principle and action steps. And I just selected one of them here on this opportunity to find change. But it does highlight that one of the things that all these stories have moving through them is the idea, the overcoming resistance, embracing change, experiencing joy just despite hardships. And boy, these are tough lessons to learn sometime because we feel like we've been beaten down sometimes and it's hard to move forward. But I wondered if you could comment on this idea of embracing change, especially in the modern world.

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Yeah, it's such a challenge for all of us. It can be to embrace change, right? Things, we like to have things in a controlled way, or we live in our comfort zones or whatnot. And then something changes, excuse me. Certainly over the past couple years when we were dealing with covid, I mean, this is a change that none of us would've wished on ourselves or the world. And then the questions, how do we deal with this? And all the different things that come along with it. So this concept of embracing change, whether it's in something big or something small, is the reality that often the problem with change is our response to it. We resist, we fight, we argue we wish that it wasn't. So we get frustrated or angry or fearful. And the reality is, and this is one of the principles that Dale Carnegie teaches in how to Win Friends is, or obviously actually it's in how to stop worrying and start living is cooperate with the inevitable, which is sometimes things are going to happen, okay?

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It doesn't mean you don't respond to those things. You have to respond to those things and deal with those things. What you don't wanna do is to create unnecessary stress and anxiety and fear about things that may have nothing to do with it. Say there's a change at work or there's a policy at work that changes, or there's someone says there's going to be a merger. Okay, well then does our mind automatically go to the worst possible situation? Or do we think to ourselves, what I can get through this no matter, no matter what happens, the question is where's the opportunity? So part of what we're trying to do in the entire first part of the book is to help people work on mindset. We've got our own way of seeing the world often that way can, it can be negative if we let those thoughts kind of guide us. So how do we reframe our thinking? How do we develop a mindset? How do we condition our minds and ourselves for success so that we can become resilient and agile and just really strong and you know, face some adversity, whatever it is, and you can work through it and keep on moving and find opportunity and thrive even during difficult times. And embracing change in that chapter you referenced is a really important part of that whole process.

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And I couldn't help but wonder, again, thinking about your creative process, I don't know exactly when you decided, hey, now's the time to do a book. But as you mentioned, we've been through years now, months of change. I was curious if you were sitting there in 2019 saying, I think we ought to write a book about success principles. How did you navigate through all the change and then say, we still have a relevant book despite everything we've been through?

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Yeah, it's interesting because I've had in the back of my mind for many years to write a book, but I really couldn't think about what exactly would it want to be. And 2020 was the time at which it all kind of galvanized because frankly, I was going through a very hard time just like everyone else was. And part of what led to this book and the creative process around this book was my own experience. So in January of 2020, let me just back up, mark as Dale, Dale Carney is a global company. We've got 200 operations in 80 plus countries, and one of those countries is China. And when Covid struck in 2020, we were realizing what this was maybe even before a lot of people, certainly North America were, because we were seeing our teams impacted. And I remember our China team telling us we're going to be going to a lockdown.

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And the concept of lockdown was just, it was just crazy. And it was like, well, how long is this going to be and what's the impact in this? And then all of a sudden it started to be other countries throughout Asia and then Europe, and then finally it got the United States and then Canada and Latin America. But by March, 2020, we had seen a very significant part of our business start to shut down. Basically, we were an in-person training company, and as the c e O of that company, I had many, many sleepless nights. And I talk about this in chapter one of the book where I finally had an epiphany one night, I kept waking up at three in the morning. I was just really just sick with worry, even though I shouldn't, I had the benefit of years and decades worth of these principles.

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But in those moments I was struggling and I found something in how to stop worrying and start living. It was a chapter 12 of the book where Dale Carnegie's asked about the most valuable thing you ever learned. He said, the most valuable thing he ever learned was the value of what we think and our life is what our thoughts make it. And he talks about how, why is it the two people who are in the same spot? One is miserable, one is happy. And I started to think for myself about why I was framing everything in such a catastrophic way. And I took command for myself and for the business and all in a whole range of different ways and turn that around. And as a result, our business, and frankly again, it's our team. We've got a global team of people who are phenomenal, who really made a huge difference in embracing change.

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But we turned things around. And so it was right around, I think June or July of 2020 where I started to think about, we've gotta get these principles to a world that hurts individuals, businesses, organizations, how do we, it's and it's, so it really came down to the idea was first you gotta take commander yourself. If you can't control or impact your thoughts and your emotions, then it's so easy to just to get sucked into a whirlwind of just toxicity. So you gotta take control of yourself and your thinking. You gotta set yourself up for success. You gotta develop resilience and inner strength. The second part, and that really comes from Dale Carnegie's, how to stop worry and start living inspired part one. Part two is what about your relationships now that you, you're working on yourself. Everything in life comes down to relationships so much.

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And whether we're happy or unhappy or effective or ineffective comes down to those relationships. So part two is take command of your relationships. And then part three, and that comes from how to Win Friends and Influence People. Part three is really, what about your future? Do we get frustrated where we look at our lives and we think about years that go by and we're like, oh my gosh, I've never really done the things that I really want to do. Part three is about what are your values? What's your vision for yourself? What are the things? If you lived an intentional life, a life unbounded by fear, what would you do? What go for? And how do you start taking steps right now to make that happen? So a lot of that is inspired by the Dale Carnegie course, the world famous Dale Carnegie course. So we put all those things together, we had the idea to do it. We worked on the idea. Michael and I did for many, many months framing the book before we went to Simon and Schuster. And they ultimately said, we love this idea, and we moved forward with them.

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Very good. Well, I'm glad you brought Michael up because I wanted to make sure that we mentioned your co-author, Michael Crum. And as I was researching, Michael obviously had been a chief learning officer at the company and now a board member. But you gotta look at the asterisk and say, Michael is the grandson of Dale Carnegie. How was it writing this book and working alongside someone who would've been literally raised on these principles?

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Yeah, was mean the Dale Carnegie principles were part of his upbringing. We talk about this in different parts of the book. I've known Michael for over 20 years, tremendous human being and someone who just has such a breadth of knowledge. So he was the first person I thought about when I thought about this concept of the book. And it was great to work with him because he himself had just been interviewing these, he'd find these Fortune 30 under 30 people. He's been intrigued. He is an extraordinary interviewer. He asked just these just such insightful questions that kind of really get people talking. And so he had been conducting these interviews and we were talking about it, and that was really an important foundation for the book is, Hey, we want this to be rich with stories. And these people, these young people are absolutely mind blowing in terms of some of the things that they've been able to do. So Michael himself interviewed over a hundred people, and many of those people are featured in the book. So it was a lot of fun working with him. And from a creative standpoint, we were in agreement pretty much with everything. So that was not really, I'd say, any conflict in the writing process.

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Very good. Well, and I think about the generational passing down of these principles, and you mentioned the target reader of your new book might be this younger generation, and I couldn't help but think of the, I guess I'll call it the family tree, but certainly the lineage of success and motivational writers and speakers. If you come down from Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie all the way to w g Clement Stone, to Jack Canfield and Mark Victor, Tony Robbins, and all Zig Ziegler, all the ones that we know and love did you find that the new generation of leaders can still embrace this generational sort of cross-generational principles?

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We did. It's interesting because sometimes we think live in a modern world and things are so different today, and in many ways they are very different technologically, they're different. The way we communicate, the way we connect is different. And at the same time, we're still human beings. And so the things that say Dale Carnegie wrote about or learned in 1912 or in the twenties and thirties, those principles, those insights were almost breakthroughs in human understanding. So a lot of the people that you mentioned root back to Dale Carne. Exactly. So whether it's Zig Zigler or Tony Robbins, many of these people are those who've taken Dale Carnegie programs, read his books. Jan. Jan Canfield I believe is also pretty familiar with Dale Carnegie. And so the reason why a lot of these things resonate is because they connect with us on a human level. They go to who we are. Carnegie talks about appreciating and respecting and listening to people, making them feel important. I mean, we still have those same desires and so to speak, as people did way back when the difference might be that we're connecting in some different ways. It may not be face-to-face, it might be through social media, through texting and so forth. So if we think about relationships, we need to be more mindful in many ways of how we communicate because we can easily trigger someone in a way that maybe we didn't intend.

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And I wanted to move towards the end of the book. You go from sort of personal development principles to community development, world building. I think this does resonate with this generation that says, I don't want to just make a career for myself or do a great job and get promoted, but I really do wanna make an impact. And this book takes us there doesn't, it

(: 16:41

Does, and it does for a specific purpose partly because for a couple reasons. One is observation that Michael and I have both had, and this is perspective about getting older, is that when you get older, and then you talked about people who are even older, they look back in their lives and they say, gosh, I wish I had taken more chances. I wish I'd been more bold. Yeah, really wanted to do this, but I didn't because I was afraid. So many times people get to later stages of their lives and they have regret. The other thing is that many younger people really are purpose driven. They want to make an impact. They are values based. They will choose an employer that to work with or not based upon the values of the company. So when you think about those two things, those last four chapters of the book, part three really are all about what do you wanna do in life?

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You've got this day and once this day's over that day's gone, you got one fewer day. It's like you wanna make sure your days have impact. Life is great. So trying to keep people focused on some of the end results, and some of the stories in the book are absolutely extraordinary about people who who've done just incredible things. In many cases, they are impacting oceans like Danielle Fernandez, who was a 19 year old at Georgetown and basically said, I wanna create an alliance of people to focus on saving the oceans. And she's created the Sustainable Ocean Alliance, which is this global what maybe the largest global organization of its kind. And so people who say, how do you do that? Well, she did that. So that was around her purpose or her vision. But other people have other kinds of things. But our goal is, Hey Mark, what's your vision? Okay, this is not about suggesting what someone's vision should be, but what's really important to you? What resonates with you? What do you want your life to be about? And those chapters are really about trying to help people think those things through and also take steps to live intentionally so that when they get to the end of their lives, they can really be proud about things that they've accomplished.

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And I think about the readers who would say, well, this is great for a C E O of Ford and Boeing and a major league Baseball Hall of Famer and a bestselling author and so forth. But what about me? I'm I'm just a guy. I'm just a gal. How did these principles help sort of the average person?

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Yeah, the book is written, especially for you or for anybody who says, what about me? I think about my kids. And I've learned a lot as a father. I've got six children who are 16 to 24, and I look at it at a generation that really needs the kinds of things that are in this book because they haven't had the benefit mark that maybe you and I have had of reading and learning and so forth. I'm 54, so there's a lot I've read and learned. And if I'd had a book like this when I was younger, it would've saved me a lot of time and energy in terms of just trying to figure things out, things about myself, things I stressed about, worried about struggles and relationships or whatnot. So this is especially designed for a younger audience that can thrive if they apply the principles and ideas in it.

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Very good. Well, we're looking forward to digging into it. And Joe, this might be a good time for me to ask you how to connect with you, learn more about your work personally, but also Dale Carnegie training's work.

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Yeah, thank you. So a couple ways that you can connect with me. I'm very active on LinkedIn and Twitter, so can I think it's Joseph K. Hart are my handles on both Twitter and LinkedIn. carnegie.com is where you can learn more about Dale Carnegie. And frankly, I, I'm just super fired up and passionate about what we do as a business. Because it was a Dale Carnegie course that I took in my twenties that was pivotal. It literally just changed everything for me. I was a young lawyer at that time, and I realized in taking the course, and I was challenged on vision like we do in part three of this book, what do you wanna do with the rest of your life? Do you wanna see 20 or 30 or 40 years of doing this? And I've got a lot of friends, friends who are lawyers, and they're awesome lawyers and they love what they're doing, and that's great for them, but it wasn't for me.

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So it was a catalyst. The Dale Carnegie course was a catalyst for me to think about my vision and ultimately to change what I was doing. And frankly, the skills that I learned gave me the confidence, the vision, the ability to interact with people. So I went from the law into a business. I was quickly promoted through that business, ultimately left that business to start my own e-learning company was able to keep that business going through very, very challenging times. In 2001 after nine 11 ultimately sold that business and helped start another one, which where I was the president of a company. And so the principles of Dale Carnegie have just been such a key part of my life. I've shared that my shared this, these with my wife and my kids all of whom have taken Dale Carnegie programs. We offer programs for young people, for teens.

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And frankly, I think one of the best gifts that a parent can give one of their kids is to take a program like this. The biggest regret I had when I took my tail Carnegie class as a 27 year old was, I wish I had taken this earlier. It really would've. The earlier the better for me. So our programs are available. We work with companies, frankly, a lot of organizations bring us in to help with talent development, culture change. We work with 400 of the Fortune, fortune 500 companies. We work with companies globally. So it's a true honor and privilege to be a part of this organization, mark and to have the impact that we do. I'll say one more thing if I may, which is that I became in 2019 a Dale Carnegie trainer, just like your wife. I know your wife is a former Dale Carnegie trainer.

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So she knows it's not easy to do that. And part of the reason I wanted to do it is I wanted to be close to our methodology. It's very hard to become a Dale Carnegie trainer, but when you talk to someone who says, I took a Dale Carnegie program 20 years ago, 30 years ago, it changed my life. It's like, how does that happen? So I wanted to learn those things for myself. And part of the power of that for me, I taught a Dale Carnegie program in Atlanta in November, and it is just the way that our programs impact people personally, that it can help build confidence, help them with people skills, communication skills. People might be nervous about speaking in front of other people. All of a sudden that goes away. They get much more comfortable. How do they learn to deal with stress and worry? How do they build better relationships? They've got a boss that they can't get along with. How do they learn how to navigate that? So those are the kinds of things that we teach in our programs. And they can be game changers for individuals and for organizations.

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They really can. And I have seen that not only with my wife, but also we did recommend programs like this for our children and many employees that I've worked with. I often saw it as a public speaking course. And I wanted to close on that note, the idea of storytelling comes up in our podcast almost every episode that people are either telling a story to investors or they're writing a book to tell a story or making a film or writing a song to tell a story. And I think about the exercise in a Dale Carnegie class where you're literally asked to stand up and tell your story for, I forget how long it is, a minute, two minutes. It's not very long.

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Two minute talk.

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Two minute talk. So maybe as we close Joe, I could ask you to give one of those two minute talks and tell us about take command, the book and why we should be reading it.

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Yeah. So let me just say that the two minute talks that you referenced are a hallmark of Dale Carnegie. And just to go back for one second, yes. Part of what he discovered, just as you did, he set out for the Dale Carnegie course to be a public speaking course. He found out it was about so much more. It was about confidence in interpersonal skills and so forth. So that ultimately led to the Dale Carnegie course. But here's what I'd say about take command. Command is an opportunity for people to look at their lives and to say, am I happy with this? Or in what ways could I get even better? How can I be more effective? Are there things that cause you to fear or to hold you back? What are the things that, the insecurities that you have or the difficulties you have in with stress or worry or anxiety?

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Number one, it's going to help you take command of yourself. You're going to find yourself to become a stronger more, a resilient person. Somebody who can handle the challenges that life comes, that that's part of what we are part of the promise of that whole first part of the book. The second thing is relationships. I don't know where people are. Maybe people have great relationships with everyone, maybe people don't. But if you wanna advance in your organization, if you want to have a strong family life and those kinds of things, the principles we teach in this book are invaluable. And then the last part really is about your future. What is important to you as a human being? And who are the people you want to impact? Do you think about that? Do you have a plan for that? Do you know how to get that? So the value of take command for someone is it's really about your life. It's about you creating the life that you want, taking action right now. It's not not called study, it's not called learn to take command. It's take command. This is the time and you're the person to do it.

(: 26:15

Good call to action. Thanks for that summary, Joe. I really appreciate you being on the show. It's been a great conversation. Thank you. Now,

(: 26:22

Thank you, mark, it's been a pleasure to be with you

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And listeners, I hope you've enjoyed this conversation too. And let me remind you, we've been talking with Joe Hart. He and his co-author, Michael Crum, have written a terrific book Take Command, and it's just released from Simon and Schuster, and we've been talking about take command and this subtext, find your inner strength, build enduring relationships, and live the life you want. And we have a chance to talk to a lot of great authors on this show, but rarely have we had mention of such a great author as Dale Carnegie himself. So take command is the book, put it on your bookshelf right next to Dale Carnegie's, how to Win Friends and Influence People, as well as the stop worrying and Start Living. These will be good guidebooks for your personal, your company, and just your relationship development. So thanks again, Joe and listeners, come back again. Next time we'll continue our around the world journeys to talk with creative practitioners of all kinds, how they get inspired, how they organize their ideas, and how they gain the confidence as we've talked about today, and connections and human relations to launch your work out into the world. So until next time, I'm Mark Stinson and we're unlocking your world of creativity. See you soon.