Dale Carnegie was a true self-made entrepreneur, born into poverty in 1888 on a Missouri farm where he was expected to wake up at 3am to milk cows and feed pigs before going to school. He took an interest in public speaking at school and dreamed of becoming a lecturer on the then-popular Chautauqua lecture circuit.

After brief stints as a salesman and a failed attempt at acting, Carnegie found success lecturing on public speaking and began publishing collected writings of public speaking advice. In 1936, Simon & Schuster picked up and published a book he had written called How To Win Friends & Influence People.

What more is there to say? How To Win Friends & Influence People was an immediate blockbuster and has remained a staple of the self-improvement canon ever since.

Fun fact — Dale Carnegie was actually born Dale Carnagey. In 1916, twenty years before the publication of How to Win Friends & Influence People, he accomplished the impressive feat of selling out a lecture he was to give at Carnegie Hall, a venue named for the legendary industrialist Andrew Carnegie. This gave him the idea to change his name to avoid confusion and misspellings … and, just maybe, surround his own personal brand with the magic dust of the Steel Baron. In 1919, after serving as a pilot in WWI (where he reportedly lost a fingertip) he made the change official.

No one was begging Dale Carnegie to join the lecture circuit or give talks on public speaking. After failing as an actor and moving into the YMCA on 125th St in New York, he persuaded the YMCA to let him give talks on public speaking by offering them 20% of the ticket sales. Tapping into an unrealized desire in Americans for greater self-confidence, Carnegie saw attendance of his lectures grow until he was making $2,000 a month for his lectures and live courses — or over $58,000 a month in today’s currency.

After How To Win Friends & Influence People made him an icon of the self-improvement industry, Carnegie founded the Dale Carnegie Institute, which remains vital to this day. At the time of his death in 1955, the Dale Carnegie Institute had graduated 450,000 students, with Carnegie’s books having sold over 5 million copies in 31 languages.

The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking (1962)