After finishing the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, I now highly recommend it to entrepreneurs. The book has a tremendous number of short anecdotes and ideas about how to be a better person. In the latter part of the book the author enumerates 12 core principles to win people over for your way of thinking:
- The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
- Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong.”
- If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
- Begin in a friendly way.
- Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.
- Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
- Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
- Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
- Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
- Appeal to the nobler motives.
- Dramatize your ideas.
- Throw down a challenge.
Entrepreneurs should put this book on their list and embrace the 12 core principles.
What else? What are your thoughts on the 12 core principles?
David Cummings on Startups 
This is one of my favorite “personal improvement” books of all time, right up there with Crucial Conversations.