I have been reading the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and binge watching lecture videos and interviews about Cliff Weitzman who is a CEO of a company called Speechify. Being Dyslexic, one of the values that he learnt is to never give up when you are told “no”.
And one key term that he uses when trying to convince people is “Can you please grant me a special exceptions?”. More likely than not, people will listen to you if you use this and if you are friendly. When I heard this, I went “Wow that is a smart move” and went on with my day vowing to use it one day.
That day did in fact come. So here’s the story
I had bought my first apple laptop using Apple’s student discount a month ago. However Apple decides to start offering free AirPods as part of the Student discount a month after I had gotten my laptop. I started to regret all my life choices and scold myself for being too impatient. Oh if only I had waited a month I could have gotten AirPods.
After regretting all my decisions in life, I decided to search online forums and found that people were able to ask Apple Support to send them free AirPods if it had only been 2 weeks since they got their apple product. But mine had already been a month.
I then recalled what Cliff mentioned in his various talks about asking for special exceptions and Dale Carnegie talking about how to convince people. With a spring in my step, I called Apple Support and talked kindly for a couple of minutes and managed to convince them to send me free AirPods.
Now I am using those AirPods to listen to books on Speechify. Thanks Cliff 😁
Never underestimate the value of being kind.
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