The Seeds We Sow & How They Grow

Imagine the modest expectations of those attending the class on public speaking at the 125th Street YMCA in New York City in 1912—especially if they knew the less-than-impressive backstory of the person leading the class. The teacher was himself living at the YMCA, having just finished a stint in acting after working as a salesman in Nebraska. And although he’d been to college—Warrensburg State Teachers College, to be precise—he left without a degree because he couldn’t pass Latin. Students could be forgiven for thinking that whatever this guy might have to say about public speaking might not be worth listening to.

The manager at the YMCA seemed to share that view. Instructors normally received a guaranteed salary of $2 per session, but the manager wasn’t sure he was worth it. So the manager, perhaps grudgingly, struck a deal: the man could keep 80% of the proceeds from whomever he got to sign up for the course.

Now imagine the excitement of someone sitting in the front row of a Dale Carnegie seminar in the 1940s. By then, Carnegie was a bestselling author—his landmark book How to Win Friends and Influence People was published in 1936. By all accounts, he had become (pun intended) the leading voice on public speaking.?By the end of the following decade, his company, Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., would expand into Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia, with half a million students having taken his classes.

How much would you have paid for a seat at that Dale Carnegie seminar? Whatever the cost, you’d likely have felt you’d gotten your money’s worth. As for that 1912 public-speaking class at the YMCA, you might have balked at even free admission, thinking “My time is too valuable to squander on a college-dropout former actor who probably doesn’t know a thing about public speaking.”

Yet both classes were taught by the same man, and the seed for the Dale Carnegie self-improvement program that was in full bloom in the 1940s germinated during that fateful 1912 class. Carnegie found a way to connect with students and help them overcome their fear of speaking. Just a few years later he was the talk of the town, and not long after that, the talk of the country.

Still, there would have been no reason to believe, had we been at the 125th Street YMCA in New York City in 1912, that we were seeing something historic. Instead we’d have seen only someone filled with passion and purpose, aiming to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others.

May we all seek to do likewise; who knows what might blossom from our humble, homespun efforts?