iphoney

People that know me will tell you that I am a massive football fan. So much so that some of my colleagues from Dale Carnegie have requested that I stop writing blogs about the sport or indeed my favourite team. So instead I want to talk to you about an incident that took place a couple of weeks ago and how it affected me.

A couple of weekends ago I received a letter with the logo of a famous mobile telephone provider on the cover. However, this was not my provider and upon opening it, to my horror, it was a welcome letter. Apparently, I had signed up for a two year deal with an iphone. I immediately went to one of their stores and explained the situation. I was told that I needed to contact customer services by phone.

At this point things began to look bleaker. I was explained that not only had I taken out the contract but the phone itself was delivered to my house and signed for. What?

Could it have been that I managed to do all of this subconsciously? I know there are many people that sleep walk and get up to all sorts of shenanigans. Could I have become a sleep shopper? The answer is no. I was just another victim of identify theft.

I went into work the next Monday feeling violated and so worried and stressed about what details of mine had been captured and used. I then spent the next couple of days talking to the provider to cancel the contract and also investigate why there was no verification or proof that I had made this purchase.

I sat down on my desk feeling defeated, just another victim of a major faceless corporation. It was at this point I found my salvation. It came to me in the shape of an experienced Dale Carnegie coach that lives and breathes the principles that our founder penned many years ago. He went through some fundamental principles for overcoming worry.

• What is the worst that could happen?

Well, the worst already has, I thought. The only thing worse would be if I now got a phone bill for this fraudulent account.

• Prepare to accept the worst.

Ok, I know I didn’t arrange this so I can make sure that I am not liable to pay a phoney bill should it arrive.

• Try to improve the worst.

After gathering up all the evidence I felt much better. I was now in a better position because now I not only knew I was an innocent victim but I could also prove it.

After talking to him and taking action I felt relieved and could concentrate on other more important things. The stress and worry seemed to evaporate.

If you would like to find out more about How to Stop Worrying and Start Living or How to Win Friends and Influence People then please join us on the Dale Carnegie Course which starts on Tuesday 28th June. If you would like to have a taster and experience a session for free prior to joining then please attend the complimentary session on Tuesday 14th June.

All the details can be found on our website - http://www.london.dalecarnegie.com/

Just before I let you go……I did get that phone bill last week. It amounted to £229.39 and yet I do not feel stressed at all.

Amar Garcha
Sales Consultant

www.London.dalecarnegie.com

Building Relationships in Las Vegas

Last week I enjoyed the best road trip that I’ve ever done in my life. My wife and I flew to Las Vegas and we drove 1,000 miles to San Francisco through the Sequoia Forest and Yosemite Forest. We had plenty of unforgettable times and what strives me is how our attitude can modify the way we see the reality.

Having planned the whole trip a few months ago, on the first day in Las Vegas my wife had a perforated ear drum and I was in pain too and we had to go to the hospital. Suddenly, we lost over 4 hours and $1,200 in medical bills. Fortunately, we have good insurance! Anyway, this issue could have affected our entire trip and we could have complained about how much bad luck we had had. However, instead of complaining and blaming others and even ourselves, this incident gave us the opportunity to meet a bunch of local people and understand the culture of life in Las Vegas and in America.

Even with our discomfort and pain, we really enjoyed meeting new people and they were absolutely surprised about how interested we were in them. I think it was not a surprise that we had the best ever experience in a Hospital in terms of customer service. Everyone was really pleasant and they showed a real interest in us as well.


I will be reminded forever of the doctor spending over 15 minutes explaining what was happening as we were receiving treatment.

This experience showed me the importance of the Dale Carnegie Principle number 4, “Become genuinely interested in other people”
Show respect, show interest and you’ll receive respect and interest from others.


Jose Bort
Performance Consultant
www.london.dalecarnegie.co.uk

Dale Carnegie London has a new website!

This week Dale Carnegie has launched its new website! We are really pleased with the it and hope you will be too.

Please click here and have a look around.

You can download whitepapers, find out the latest news, register for programmes and see what job vacancies we have on offer.

So please do go and have a look, we would love to hear your feedback on our new website.

Sophie Whittall
Marketing Coordinator

Royal Wedding - Is it good for the UK

Royal Wedding – Like it / Don’t like it! But has it been good for the UK.

Whether you are a fan of the royal family or not unless you avoided TV, Newspapers and the Internet for the past month you wouldn’t have been able to avoid the hype building up to the big day for William & Catherine on Friday.

I have to admit I’d had enough of people talking about the wedding a week before it happened and resolutely told myself that I wouldn’t watch it. That said come the day I found myself glued to the television in a pub surrounded by friends watching the event unfold.

With ceremony and the kiss on the balcony out of the way our conversation quickly turned to was this a good thing for the UK and in particular a good thing for London. We speculated on that amount of money the wedding had cost and how much would it bring when you added up the impact of tourism, merchandising, advertising and many more possible revenue streams. I’m sure we weren’t the only group of people having the conversation that day.

One thing that particularly struck me though is this conversation started with a group of about six friends and in the end perhaps a dozen more people sitting at the tables around us contributed to the debate. Somehow this event had given everyone something to talk about …. Something unifying! Looking in the papers in the past few days there are many reports of the two thousand street parties across the country and many report the same thing. “A greater sense of community”

On reflection this for me is one of the greatest benefits of this whole event. I’m always pleasantly surprised when people come on communications and influencing skills training with us and they report back as one of the key benefits being better relationships with colleagues and also people from their greater community. By our nature we are social beings and anything that promotes that has the possibility to promote our happiness both at work and at home.

So as we head back into work after another long weekend take the opportunity to strengthen relationships by talking about your experiences of Friday. Even if your experience was to lock yourself away so you didn’t see the event at all.

It becomes a little easier to get a conversation going when you have a common interest or event to talk about.

If you’d like to become the kind of person who can always get that conversation going (even when there isn’t a royal wedding to talk about) then come and join us for a preview of our flagship programme on the 10th May at the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel 6pm – 8.30pm

Free Preview

David Anderson
Managing Director

Value of Introspection in maintaining healthy work life balance

I had the pleasure of attending a live performance last night produced by a not for profit charity called Phakama. The theme of the performance was exploring freedom, expression and self-censorship.

The 90 min show was thought provoking and extremely interactive, which had the audience reflecting on their own values and morals and how they communicate there feelings to society as a whole. It certainly brought about some introspection for myself around how I express my opinions and what i am consciously doing to help somebody other than my altruistic self.

As humans we don’t seem to take enough time out of our busy daily lives for introspection, as we get caught up in the pace of the modern world we live in. Last nights experience only reaffirmed that it is critical that we create these opportunities and experiences to take stock of where we are going in our lives as often as possible. Because if we don’t allocate the time, we might find 5 years down the line that the career / personal path we decided to follow was not the desired path after all, because our values and beliefs are constantly evolving and changing on a daily basis.

So my small little golden nugget of advice in this blog is that over the coming days and weeks, you block off a couple of hours in your diary be it during the week or on the weekend for some “me” time. Make sure you find something to do that will give you the space and freedom to ask yourself some simple yet very honest questions around what’s important to you and what are you going to do about it starting that inner journey to your own self worth.

Equipping yourself with these simple answers, will give you more control of managing your time and attitude both at work and at home. Thereby creating the important work life balance that many people aspire to, but fail to achieve more often than not.

Quote:
“Unless the distant goals of meaning, greatness and destiny are addressed, we can’t make an intelligent decision about what to do tomorrow morning – much less set strategy for a company or for a human life. Nothing is more practical than for people to deepen themselves. The more you understand the human condition, the more effective you are as a businessperson. Human depth makes business sense.” - Peter Koestenbaum founder and director of Koestenbaum Institute


On that note have a great Easter !!


As an organisation we at Dale Carnegie look to assist people through our strong questioning techniques to come to there own conclusion on what changes they need to make to get their work life balance on track

To enquire on this free consultation please contact ……… 0207 379 4323

Mark de stadler
Performance Consultant

An exciting week for Dale Carnegie London

The past two weeks have seen the London office appear in the national media twice, once in the paper and then on TV !

Firstly on 7th April David Anderson, our MD for London, appeared in the Daily Express in an article regarding using connections to help you further your career. You can read the article here.

Then one week later, (14th April) David Anderson was again asked to talk on this subject, but this time on Channel 5's Vanessa Show where nepotism was discussed. You can watch the episode here (the segment is approx 13 mins into the show).

It was an exciting time for us and we hope you enjoy the article/show. We have some more exciting news to share in the next few weeks so please keep checking this blog to find out more.

Helen Mills

Financial Controller

http://www.london.dalecarnegie.com/

Focus On The Customer

There are three strategic imperatives for any business. Firstly, to ensure the shareholder value is increased. If our shareholder, and other stakeholders, do not see a return on their investment they will wish to put their money (and time) elsewhere. Just think about how you feel about your 0.10% interest on your savings.

Secondly, gaining customers and increasing the share of each customer's spend is also paramount. Increasing revenues & profitably is vital if our organisations are not going to stagnate and ultimately die.

Thirdly, costs must be reduced. Now let's be clear this does not mean beating up suppliers for the best price. It means getting the most value from the money we spend and also cutting out waste - of every sort.

When we satisfy these three imperatives we create and maintain a successful and vibrant business. Without we suffer frustration, stress and many other negative emotions.

The easiest way of getting to this beneficial condition of growth and profitability is by ensuring we win more business than we know what to do with and at our competitors expense. Being skilled in the process and relationship aspects of winning business is key. Creating successful relationships with customers will also ensure we streamline our production and delivery systems and processes, this ensuring maximum value form our cost base.

Sign up for our Sales Advantage now and gain an edge over you competition and secure the future of your business and career.

David Pickering

Trainer and Sales Consultant

www.London.dalecarnegie.com