The Giants of Sales: What Dale Carnegie, John Patterson, Elmer Wheeler, and Joe Girard Can Teach You About Real Sales Success

Chapter 8. The Young Man from Missouri

For somebody who has had such tremendous influence on the history of selling, Dale Carnegie wasn’t much of a salesman.

Originally the name was Carnagey, not Carnegie. Dale changed it many years later, when he had a small office in Carnegie Hall. Changing his name was an example of something that he struggled with all his life—trying to be “good enough,” to be recognized.

Dale Carnegie was born in 1888 in a small farmhouse in Missouri and was raised on hog farms in rural Missouri. His father struggled to make a go of it as a farmer, suffering from a combination of bad luck—his hogs got cholera and the herd was wiped out; the farm was flooded more than once—and poor judgment. In spite of the family’s financial ...