Good morning.
And welcome to morning cereal
Okay, good morning and welcome to
Thursday. Well, it's
National Name Tag Day. So, hello,
my name is Sean. I'm a husband, a father.
I've been in finance for 25
years. I'm a business owner
and I live in Texas. What's your name?
Well, you can get back to me on that one,
but in the meantime,
I'll also tell you that it's National
Oreo Cookie Day. And I'll be happy to
check that box at lunch
and ironically, it's also National
Dentist Day. You know, I'd like to know
who the smarty pants
is that put those two days together. I
just don't really appreciate
that. Well, if you're in school
or you have kids in school, they'll enjoy
the fact that it's also no
homework day. And I'll be curious
to know if any of the teachers are aware
of that. Interestingly, the
issue of how effective homework
assignments are has been hotly debated
over the years. And in general, the
consensus seems to be
that homework has not proven to
particularly improve the academic
performance of students.
But hold on kids, and I'm speaking to my
kids now, getting your
homework done does improve your
grades and the colleges that you'll get
into. So do your homework.
All right, well, let's do some
quotes. One fun, nostalgic quote, and
then a second quote to tease our book
review later in the episode.
Hopefully, one of these quotes will speak
to you jumpstart your day
in a positive direction.
The first quote is from the artist
Michelangelo, who said, "If people knew
how hard I worked to
get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so
wonderful after all." I love
it. There are no shortcuts to
success. You absolutely have to put in
the time and the effort.
Well, today's teaser quote from
the book review is, "People are honest
and want to discharge their
obligations." And as usual,
we'll unpack that here in just a minute
during the book
review segment. But first,
let's jump into our usual dose of fun and
historic facts from this day in history.
And today's news, facts, and birthdays
are from March 6th. We're
going to start way back in 1475
and the man who provided our first quote
today, the Italian artist
Michelangelo. He was born in
the Republic of Florence on this date.
Then on this day, King
Tut's tomb was first opened
in 1924, and King Tut's burial chamber
had been discovered two
years earlier in 1922.
Then let's move 100 years up the
timeline, 110 to be exact. In
the year 1834, on this date,
Toronto, Canada was incorporated. Then in
1836, the Alamo in Texas,
it fell after a 13-day siege.
Then in 1869, on this date, at a meeting
of the Russian Chemical Society,
the Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev, he
presented the first
periodic table. Then in 1899,
the German company Bayer, they patented
and trademark aspirin.
Finally, to the 20th century,
in 1902, that's when the soccer club,
Real Madrid, it was founded. Then
skipping up 62 years to 1964,
that's when American boxer Cassius Clay,
he took the name Muhammad
Ali. And then skipping up to the
1980s, that's when in 1981 on this date,
journalist Walter Cronkite,
who was known as the most trusted
man in America, he signed off for the
last time as the longtime
anchor of the CBS Evening News.
CBS replaced him three nights later with
Dan Rather. And then finally, a fun fact,
on this day in 2018,
the world's oldest known message in a
bottle was found in Western Australia.
Apparently, the bottle
was thrown from a German ship in 1886,
132 years earlier. Well,
happy birthday. If today's your
birthday, you share a birthday with the
diesel. Shaquille O'Neal, he turns 53
today. And economist
Alan Greenspan, he'll be 99. All right,
well, the number one movie
on this date back in 1993
was "Falling Down." This is a movie
starring Michael Douglas
about a man having a bad day,
with a car breaking down on the LA
highway. And it follows his adventures
trekking across LA to get
to his daughter's birthday party.
Honestly, I had never even
heard of this movie. So homework
assignment for everyone. Watch this movie
and we'll regroup at a later date to
discuss in more detail.
Now the number one song, however,
everyone should know, but you might not
know it as well as you
might think. The number one song on this
date in 1986 was "Cairé" by
Mr. Mr. This is a quintessential
80s song that I think everybody knows.
The song's title is "Cairé" with the
opening line "Cairé il raison,"
which means "Lord have mercy." And the
band says that the song is about a
non-religious dogma,
meditative prayer that realizes just how
insignificant humans
are in the whole of the
universe. I had actually never looked up
the lyrics on this song before doing a
little bit of research
for this. And this is 100% a song that I
made up my own lyrics for.
Come to find out, I was way off
and the song keeps repeating the "Cairé
il raison" line. Listen to the song. Tell
me you didn't do the
same by just making up some words that
sounded somewhat similar.
You can catch a clip on the
Morning Serial Instagram page. Okay,
well, let's move on to some personal
growth where you don't
have to settle for just a clip. You can
get the book review segment of Morning
Serial in its amazing
totality right here, right now. This is
where we take a few moments to
reflect on the lessons learned
from the current book we're reading. And
currently, as you all know,
we're reading through Dale
Carnegie's How to Win Friends and
Influence People. It's a timeless book
that is consistently
on all the must-read lists and it is
packed with rock-solid advice
and actions for all of us to
use and build healthy foundational
concepts to live by.
Yesterday, we began chapter 10 of part
three with that chapter entitled, An
Appeal That Everybody
Likes. And in this chapter,
Carnegie discusses the fact that he
believes most people among us are
idealists. Carnegie says,
"The fact is that all people you meet
have a high regard for themselves." And
they like to think of
themselves as unselfish and noble.
Because of the self-view, many of us have
two reasons for doing
something, right? The first one is the
real reason that we're doing it, which
can often be a little
bit selfish. But the second reason is
something that sounds good to others,
right? Often appearing
to be the more noble of the reasons to
outsiders. So Carnegie says that when we
are trying to appeal
to other people, we should try and appeal
to those secondary reasons, appeal to
their nobler motives.
In Carnegie's next illustration, he
documents the different methods a car
company took in collecting
some overdue bills from multiple
customers. And in this story, there are
six customers that refuse
to pay a bill due to the fact that there
was an issue with one of
the line items on the bill. So
not the whole bill was wrong, but just a
detail or two of it in their
opinion. And because of that,
they did not want to pay. Now, initially,
the company's credit
department went to the customers
demanding to be paid, saying that they,
the car company, was
absolutely right in the billing,
which also suggests that the customers
are absolutely wrong.
And finally, the credit
department, by the way, they spoke to the
clients were suggesting that they knew
far more about cars.
They were far superior. And why would the
customers even bother double guessing
them? Well, that turned
out just as you would expect, just more
arguing and they didn't get paid. So
prior to threatening
legal action, the general manager did
some research on the customers and he
found out that each of these
customers had historically paid on time.
So he knew something was up.
So the GM decided to approach
the customers himself, also knowing that
the bills were correct in
their view, but he didn't say that
to them. He said that he was there to
listen to what his company
had done or had failed to do.
He wanted to hear their story and hear
from them about only their car
specifically, because they
were the foremost expert on their car.
After people are able to
get things off their chest,
they are generally more reasonable. And
it was at this time that
the GM appealed to their
more noble motives. He said first he
thought the matter had been mishandled
and he apologized for
that. Then the GM said he knew they were
fair minded and patient.
And then he asked each of them
individually to look over the bill, make
whatever changes they deemed were
correct. And that would
be the final bill. He left it up to them.
And for the most part, the
way the story goes, most of them
made minor to no changes to the bills.
And only one of the six took
advantage of the situation.
But all six remain customers and they
eventually bought new
cars in the coming years.
Here's what the GM said of that matter.
Quote, "Experience has
taught me that when no information
can be secured about the customer, the
only sound basis on which to proceed is
to assume that he or
she is sincere, honest, truthful, and
willing and anxious to pay the charges
once convinced they are
correct. To put it differently and
perhaps more clearly, people are honest
and want to discharge
their obligations. The expectations to
that rule are comparatively
few. And I am convinced that the
individuals who are inclined to chisel
will in most cases react
favorably if you make them feel that
you consider them honest, upright, and
fair." End quote. Okay, here
it is. In a chapter entitled,
"An Appeal That Everybody Likes,"
Carnegie's principle number 10 is,
"Appeal to the Nobler
Motives." This is really a master's class
in leading people to the
water's edge and learning to do so
with sincerity and positivity. Well,
fantastic job, team. We only have two
more chapters in part three
and each one will take us just one day to
cover. And then we are into
the final part, part four,
of "How to Win Friends and Influence
People." Just for
perspective, we're on page 191 now and we
finished the book on page 247. So we are
nearly there. Great job.
Well, come back tomorrow for
chapter 11 entitled, "The Movies Do It,
TV Does It, Why Don't You Do
It?" I'm in. I hope you are too.
Well, you know how I like my little
sayings to keep us moving forward. So
here's a new one that
I haven't used yet. "A Journey of a
Thousand Miles Begins with the First
Step." Sometimes that's the
hardest step, but do it and then do it
again and do it again. Well,
thanks for joining us today.
We'll see you back here
tomorrow and have a fantastic day.
Don't forget to follow and subscribe to
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So join us.
It'll be a good time, I promise.
Thanks again for listening.
Have a fantastic day and
we'll see you tomorrow.