The Leader in You by Dale Carnegie & Stuart R. Levine & Michael A. Crom

Author:Dale Carnegie & Stuart R. Levine & Michael A. Crom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

9

Recognition, Praise, and Rewards

In the early nineteenth century, a young man in London aspired to be a writer. But everything seemed to be against him. He had never been able to attend school more than four years. His father had been thrown in jail because he couldn’t pay his debts, and this young man often knew the pangs of hunger. Finally he got a job pasting labels on bottles in a rat-infested warehouse, and he slept at night in a dismal attic room with two other boys—guttersnipes from the slums of London. He had so little confidence in his ability to write that he sneaked out and mailed his first manuscript in the dead of night so nobody would laugh at him. Story after story was refused. Finally the great day came when one was accepted. True, he wasn’t paid for it, but one editor had praised him. One editor had given him recognition. He was so thrilled that he wandered aimlessly around the streets with tears rolling down his cheeks.

The praise, the recognition that he received through getting one story in print changed his whole life. If it hadn’t been for that encouragement, he might have spent his entire life working in rat-infested factories. You may have heard of that boy. His name is Charles Dickens.

—DALE CARNEGIE

Mary Kay Ash, the cosmetics-company founder, began her life in the business world by giving sales parties for the Stanley Home Products Company. She wasn’t a very good saleswoman—not at first. “We had to give the hostess a four-dollar-and-ninety-nine-cent mop and duster,” Ash recalls. “I was making about seven dollars a party, so when I walked out the door, that left maybe two bucks.” But Ash had three small children to support and not many marketable skills. So she kept on plugging.

After a few weeks she realized she wasn’t going to make a living this way, not unless something changed, fast. The time for drastic action had arrived. “I watched all these people telling me what they sold, and I said, ‘How did they do it? Gee whiz, nobody bought those mops from me.’ I didn’t know how to do it. So I said, ‘I’ve got to go to the Stanley convention. I’ve got to find out how to do it because I’ve got three kids to support.’ ”

For a single mother in Texas in those days, that was a real gamble. Ash had no money and no encouragement. “I had to borrow the money that it took to go to the convention,” she said. “It cost twelve dollars. That included the chartered train—now you’re going to know how long ago this was—from Houston to Dallas and back again, and it included three nights at the Adolphus Hotel. You couldn’t step across that threshold today for twelve dollars. I borrowed the twelve dollars from a friend. I lost a lot of friends asking for the twelve bucks. I just tried to borrow it, and the one I got it from said, ‘You ought to be staying home buying shoes for your kids with twelve dollars.

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