How To Win Friends And Influence People Summary – 13 Laws To A Pleasing Personality

Hey there my friend!

Thanks for stopping by to read my ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People Summary‘.

I just actually finished this book, the day before yesterday and I’ve been digesting it so I can remember and apply these laws moving forward. 

The book itself has like 30 different tips and 30 different things to do. 

I compressed them down into what I’d like to call “The 13 Laws of a Pleasing Personality”.

how to win friends and influence people summary

Why do I call them The 13 Laws of Pleasing Personality?

I do that because in Napoleon Hill’s 1928 book called The Laws of Success, he gives 15 Laws of Success. 

And law number 9 is a Pleasing Personality.

How Do You Get A Pleasing Personality & Why Is It So Profitable? 

Well, a great way to start would be to read the book ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ or at least, to read this How to Win Friends and Influence People Summary post,

… so that you can get the principles that Dale Carnegie lays out in that book.

And why might you want to understand these principles?

According to Dale Carnegie in the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, this is the most profitable skill you can possibly have.

how to win friends and influence people summary

Working with people, gaining cooperation from other people.

In fact in the book, he talks about how in various enterprises and various companies in businesses, you’ll have like for instance – a group of Engineers;

…you’ll have one Engineer who’s more knowledgable, and is more skilled, more capable, more talented.

And that Engineer will be making less money than the Engineer that knows how to work with people and knows how to influence people.

So this is some important stuff.

As I mentioned in the first part of this video, I actually took down the 30 principles and I shrunk them down into 13. 

And why did I do that?

Well it’s because, who’s going to remember 30 principles?

Honestly, right? 

And I wanted to take from this book some action steps that I can apply in my life. 

30 is a little bit too many for me to remember. 

13, I can handle.

And the other reason why what I’ve done seems to work is because in the book How to Win Friends and Influence People,

…there are some tips that are like negative commands.

For instance, he’ll say things like,

‘Don’t Argue, Don’t complain or criticize’

And instead of remembering those, what I wanted to do is I wanted to re-frame those tips in a positive command.

Positive action steps, so to speak.

And so I’ve done that, I’ve taken those negative commands and I’ve re-framed them into positive commands.

I also realized that lots of the principles mentioned in the book can be chunked into a bigger principles that when you follow the bigger principle, you’ll just inherently be applying some of the other steps.

So in doing these things, it’s allowing me to shrink them down into 13 Principles and as you continue to read on, I’m going to give them to you. 

A Simple Way To Memorize This List

Not not do I want to give you these principles, I also want to give you a way to memorize these really, really easily,

so that you can use them.

Because if you don’t remember ’em it might be difficult to actually apply them.

So a really easy way to memorize a list of items is to take your number, so in this case we’re going to do about 12 or 13 Principles.

And you want to associate a mental image with each number on the list. 

And then, as you’re going through memorizing the list that you want to memorize, you associate that principle or that idea with the image that’s been associated with the number.

So in our case, I’m going to give you a list of 12:

One – bun

Two – shoe

Three – tree

Four – door

Five – hive

Six – sticks

Seven – heaven

Eight – gate

Nine – mine

Ten – hen

Eleven – it’s not a rhyming word but when I think of the number 11, I like to think of a field goal or goal post at the end of the football field that you can kick the football through.

That’s 11.

Twelve – I always think of a dozen eggs.13 – I actually haven’t come up for one on 13 yet…

Do you have any ideas?  

If so, please share with me in the comments down below.  

So the 13 Laws of having a Pleasing Personality as deduced from the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. 

So this is like a How to Win Friends and Influence People Summary.

Here we go, you ready?

Pleasing Personality Law # 1:  Smile 

You can picture a bun, like a hamburger bun.

If you flip that hamburger bun up, so you see the underside… and,

…If you can imagine taking a bottle of ketchup – And just drawing a smiling face on that bun?

Law number 1 to a pleasing personality is to smile.

And I’m telling you this this law works like crazy.

Just the other day, I was going to town to get some pizza with my 8 year old. 

His name is Kayden.

And I said “Kayden should we practice law number 1?” and I started to smile and as I smiled, he smiled.

And as we’re walking into the pizza place, I said “Let’s see if we can get this gal behind the counter to smile.”

So I started smiling and he’s kind of smiling, even though the was a little bit embarrassed,

…and next thing you know —–>  the lady behind the counter starts to smile, right?

So that’s law of a Pleasing Personality.

Number 1 is you’ve got to smile.

Pleasing Personality Law # 2: Be Agreeable

We remember 2 with shoe.

You want to be agreeable, right?

Be agreeable with people.

When two pigs wrestle in the mud, both of them get dirty, don’t they?

And Dale Carnegie points this out several times throughout the book. 

He said that if you want to be agreeable, you don’t want to argue.

You want to just kind of get along with people and be agreeable.

So the way I remember this is, let’s imagine if your wife comes and says “Honey I just got this new pair of shoes,?

(2 – shoe)

How do you like them?

You want to say,

“Oh, I love those shoes they look great, right?”

You want to be agreeable.

That’s law number 2.

Pleasing Personality Laws # 3 & 4:  Ask Questions & Listen

I remember tree or at least the way I remember is 3 – tree.

And law number 3 is you want to ask questions.

So I picture a tree that I have in my front yard with question marks instead of leaves.  

So Law number 3 – ask questions.

And that goes hand in hand with law number 4 which is to listen.

And how do we remember 4?

Four – door. 

When I was teaching my kids this, I said, “Imagine you’ve got a door on your left ear and a door on your right ear and that just means to listen when people are   speaking. 

You want to open the doors to your ears and you want to listen.

So ask questions and listen. 

This is really really important when working with people; you want to ask people questions about themselves.

You want to ask people questions about what they’re interested in.

You want to ask people questions about what theyve got going on and then you want to listen to what they’re saying.

And Dale Carnegie points out that when you do this, people will think you are an amazing conversationalist even if you don’t do anything other than ask questions and listen.

So there we’ve got law number 3 and law number 4.

Pleasing Personality Law # 5: Pour On The Honey

I remember 5 with beehive.

And what did they do in a beehive?

The bees make honey.

So Law number 5 is you want to give people the honey

And you want to pour it on.

What do I mean by honey?

While I was explaining this to my 5 year old, I said,

“Kyson, I love your hair man.

I love the way that it flips up in the front like that.”

And as I complimented him, he started to smile.

So we want to compliment people.

We want to recognize people for their achievements.

That’s called giving them the honey.

And when we give people the honey, they’re going to eat it up and they’re going to think we’re sweet and they’re going to love us.  

That’s number five of the Laws of the Pleasing Personality.

Pleasing Personality Law # 6:  Make It All About THEM.. 

Six rhymes with sticks.

So if you can imagine yourself in a one on one conversation with somebody, if you can imagine holding up two sticks,

…Maybe they’re drum sticks or whatever other kind of sticks you want to imagine. 

And you can just point those sticks at the other person.

This is a metaphor or an image to help us remember that whenever we’re in a conversation, it’s always about the other person.

We’re always asking them questions about them, the things that are interesting to them and the things that they want to achieve.

It’s all about them.

Not about us.

It’s all about the other person.

If we can keep them talking about things that they’re interested in, we’re going to go a long way in having people like us.

So that’s number 6.

Pleasing Personality Law # 7:  Gratitude (show honest & sincere appreciation) 

Number 7 rhymes with heaven.

And I like to associate gratitude with the word heaven.

Because gratitude seems to me, to be a Godly type of a quality.

So what we want to do is we want to be grateful for people. 

How does it feel when someone says to you, “You know what?

I’m so grateful for you.

I’m so grateful that you did this.

I’m so grateful that you helped me with this thing.”

Feels AWESOME, Right?

When we are grateful to people, it automatically fosters this great feeling between us.

So that’s law of a Pleasing Personality number 7.

Pleasing Personality Law # 8: See Things From Their View

Eight rhymes with gate. 

If you can picture yourself standing on one side of the gate, facing another person whose standing on the other side of the gate.

The person on the other side of the gate, they’ve got a view going one way, and you’ve got a view going the opposite way.

I’m actually picturing the gate that’s at the end of my driveway.

And if my neighbor on the other side is looking back towards my house, he’s going to see my house and a mountain range behind my house & and a long drive way.

If I’m looking the other way, towards HIS house, I’m not going to see any mountains, right? 

I’m going to have a totally different view.

And so the Law of a Pleasing Personality number 8- is always do your best to see things from the other person’s point of view.

So when I picture this gate, and me facing off with my neighbor, I like to imagine climbing over the gate and turning around and seeing things from his or her point of view.

This is a really important principle in working with people because we all have different perceptions.

We all see things a little bit differently. 

And good communication, I believe, begins when we do the best we can to really listen to other person and see what they’re seeing.

So that’s Law of a Pleasing Personality number 8.

Pleasing Personality Law # 9: Remember & Use People’s Names

Nine rhymes with mine. 

And if you can picture a Goldmine or a Silver mine to help you remember this it’ll help a lot.

We are going to use mine a little bit differently here. 

We’re going to use nine and mine to help us remember that mine tends to refer to — my name

If I say this is “my” mic. 

This is Paul’s mic.

If I say this is my phone, this is Paul’s phone.

This is meant to remind us that a person’s name is the sweetest sound in the human language to that person.

So nine – mine is meant to remind us that we always want to do the best we can to remember and use people’s names. 

And this plays out in a whole bunch of different areas.

It can be in a one on one communication and also plays out well in marketing.

If you put your prospects’ first name in the subject line, youre open retes will likeley go up.

Why?

Because their name is the sweetest sound in all of human language.

That’s number 9.

Pleasing Personality Law # 10:  Make It Their Idea

10 rhymes with hen.  

I don’t’ know if you’ve ever had chickens or a chicken coop or something like that. 

My In-laws actually have a chicken coop and my kids love to go out and get the eggs. 

Every time we go see grandpa and grandma, they love to go and get the eggs.

Well if you can imagine taking an egg from one hen and putting it under another hen when the other hen is not looking.

If you can imagine fooling the hens so that, so that hen number 2 thinks that that eggs is hers…

What she’s going to do?

She’s going to protect it.

She’s going to nourish it.

She’s going to sit on it and keep it warm until it hatches.

And then when it hatches, she’s going to call her her baby.

So 10 is to remember that if we can make the other person think it’s it’s their idea, we’re going to have infinitely higher chances of success in influencing people to do what we want them to do. 

Why?

Because if it’s their baby, if they came up with it, they’re going to want to follow through on that idea WAY more than if they think it’s our baby.

So in working with people, if we can find ways to plant ideas in the mind of the other person so that they will think that it’s their idea,

…we’re going to have a lot more of success. 

Seems logical right?  

Pleasing Personality Law # 11: Always Save Them Face

Remember the goal posts, like at the end of a football field?

Imagine a big face staring back out you right from the middle of the goal posts.

…law number 11 is to always save the other persons face.

What does that mean?

It means never berate someone, period.

I think we should never berate someone or criticize or condemn or complain.

In fact, that’s one of the things that Dale Carnegie talks about.

He says “Never criticize, condemn or complain, one on one.  Let alone in groups.”

When you criticize someone in a group, it really hurts their self esteem.

It hurts their pride.

You caused them to lose face in front of other people.

So what we want to do instead, is if somebody’s doing something that maybe is not the best and maybe it can be done in a better way,

If we can, call attention to that, maybe in a group setting and don’t single the person out.

Maybe just use that as a lesson to teach the entire group. 

And allow that person to save face and hopefully catch the lesson in a different way.

That’s Law number 11 of a Pleasing Personality. 

Always allow the other person to save face.

Pleasing Personality Law # 12: When Wrong, Admit It

This law is the dozen eggs.

When I think of 12, I think of a dozen eggs.

If you can imagine, you know going out and getting all the eggs from the chicken coop.

Let’s say you’re a kid and your Mom or Dad say’s “Go get the eggs for me.”

And you go get them and you’re running back and you’re not paying attention. 

Maybe you’re playing with a little toy on the way and you trip and fall and break the eggs?

What do you want to do?

You’ve done something wrong.

You want to admit your fault quickly and emphatically.

You want to say, “You know what, I made a mistake.” 

And you want to tell your Mom you made a mistake.

The other day, I got into a bit little of an argument with one of my good friends.

And I was sitting in my office, I was feeling very frustrated.

He was in his office and he was feeling very frustrated too.

I said to myself,  “You know what? I probably did something wrong.”

So I got up and went in to his office and I said,

“Look I am sorry.

I blew it.

I should not have done that.”

And you know what he did?

His face lightens up and he’s like “I’m so glad you came in here.”

When you’re wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.

That’s law of a Pleasing Personality number 12.

Pleasing Personality Law # 13: Humor 

This one I threw on for good measure. 

I actually don’t have a way to associate this with 13 yet.

Maybe you can come up with one and post it down in the comments below.

Law number 13 is actually one that was not mentioned in the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. 

However, I’ve noticed in my observations of watching successful people that most of them always do this one thing and they do it really really well.

And that’s humor!

If you can make people laugh, if you can know how to crack a joke every now and then,

….if you can make fun of yourself and make fun of a situation that you all have in common,

……………people seem to love that.

I know I do, don’t you?

It loosens things up.

It just makes you smile.

So if you can be humorous that’s going to go a long way also in helping you to win more friends and influence more people.

So my friend, those are the 13 Laws of a Pleasing Personality A.K.A. How to Win Friends and Influence People Summary.

Let’s recap the 13 Laws Of A Pleasing Personality Real Quick 

Law number 1: Smile

Law number 2: Be agreeable

Law number 3: Ask questions

Law number 4: Listen

Law number 5: Pour on the honey. Say great things about other people. Compliment. Praise them. Recognize them.

Law number 6: It’s always about the other person. Get the conversation on them and the things that they are interested in, where they want to go in life and keep it there.

Law number 7: Gratitude. Show your appreciation.  

Show them that you’re grateful for them.

Tell them that you’re grateful for them.

Law number 8: Always do your best to see things from the other person’s point of view.

Get on the other side of that gate and see things the way they’re seeing them.

Law number 9: Remember that a person’s name is the sweetest sound in all of human language.  So remember their name and use it.

Law number 10: Do your best to make the other person feel like the idea is his or hers

Law number 11: Always allow the other person to save face.

Law number 12: When you’re wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.

Law number 13: this one’s not in the book, but I think it’s a winner. 

It’s humor.

Learn a joke or two.

Crack a joke or two when you’re around people. And they’re going to love ya.

So, my friend I hope you’ve enjoyed these tips.

I hope you enjoy this Summary of the book on How to Win Friends and Influence People.

And I challenge you to memorize this stuff and practice it and use it. You’re going to see magical results in your life. I promise.

Did you enjoy this post?  Do you have any experience with these tips or do you have other tips to a pleasing personality not mentioned above?  Please share down below.

 

5 thoughts on “How To Win Friends And Influence People Summary – 13 Laws To A Pleasing Personality”

  1. Paul,
    That’s an awesome post! As people get busier, it’s really nice to review the contents of this amazing classic, in a condensed way. Each idea truly makes for a more pleasing personality. I appreciate you bringing the value!

    Reply
    • Hey Mahara,

      You are such an AMAZING person!

      Thanks for the coment – and for sure – review is important .

      Especially of something that has such a HUGE impact on our ability to generate income.

      Keep rockin in your purpose and spirit my friend.

      You got this,

      Paul

      Reply

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