Arrive Magazine - November-December, 2006

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Franklin’s autobiography
is like a training manual
for capitalism.

book you need to read is The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

and peppers his book with Franklin anecdotes.

Today’s CEO of Dale

Carnegie Training, Peter

Handal, told me that years ago, whenever people would become a Carnegie associate, Dale Carnegie wouldn’t give them a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People. The book he gave them was The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

Franklin’s autobiography was widely read in the 1800s and early 1900s and has kind of fallen out of favor. The book that surprisingly supplanted it in American business culture is The Art of War by Sun Tzu. I think business people like to have a classic guru and for some reason they’ve chosen Sun Tzu’s 2,500-year-old war manual. Respectfully, I disagree. I

think we have our own, homegrown guru who, when capitalism was being born, lived it and wrote about it, and said this is how it works. Franklin’s autobiography is like a training manual for capitalism.

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Now, 300 years after Franklin’s birth,
which of his business principles are most
applicable?

Number one: Honesty and reputation. In the autobiography he tells story after story about the power of a good reputation versus the power of a bad reputation.