Napoleon Hill (October 26, 1883 – November 8, 1970) was an American author who was one of the earliest producers of the modern genre of personal-success literature. He is widely considered to be one of the great writers on success. His most famous work, Think and Grow Rich, is one of the best-selling books of all time. Hill’s works examined the power of personal beliefs, and the role they play in personal success. He became the advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933-36. “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve” is one of Hill’s hallmark expressions. How achievement actually occurs, and a formula for it that puts success in reach for the average person, were the focal points of Hill’s books.
According to his official biographer, Tom Butler-Bowdon, Napoleon Hill was born in a one-room cabin in the Appalachian town of Pound in Southwest Virginia. Hill’s mother died when he was ten years old, and his father remarried two years later. At the age of 13, Hill began writing as a “mountain reporter” for small-town newspapers in the area of Wise County, Virginia. He later used his earnings as a reporter to enter law school, but soon he had to withdraw for financial reasons.
Hill considered the turning point in his life to have occurred in the year 1908 with his assignment, as part of a series of articles about famous and successful men, to interview the industrialist Andrew Carnegie. At the time, Carnegie was one of the most powerful men in the world. Hill discovered that Carnegie believed that the process of success could be outlined in a simple formula that anyone would be able to undAlexander Graham Bell, George Eastman, Henry Ford, Elmer Gates, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Charles M. Schwab, F.W. Woolworth, William Wrigley Jr., John Wanamaker, William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft and Jennings Randolph. Hill was also an advisor to two presidents of the United States of America, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The original version of The Law of Success was finished by Napoleon Hill in 1925 and released as a limited hand made edition consisting of only 118 copies. Each of these distinctive editions were comprised of 15 booklets and given to many of the most successful businessmen of the day, self-made billionaires, inventors, Presidents, and others who shaped and built modern America; all of whom had contributed to the book’s content. People like John D. Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Alexander Graham Bell and many others. Hill interviewed over 500 people in all, but reserved the 118 copies for individuals who had been particularly important to his research.
I have used the principles laid out in “Think and Grow Rich” since my early 20s. I have shared and taught those same principles since my early 30s and have seen first hand the effect they have had on many people.
As far as I am concerned, the concepts of “Auto-Suggestion” and “The Mastermind” are two of the most powerful concepts I have learned in my adult life. Auto-Suggestion is absolutely the easiest way for one to change themselves and utilizing the concept of The Mastermind is the easiest way to build any type of organization!