Napoleon Hill — Think and Grow Rich, The Law of Success, Foundational Prosperity Teacher | Self Growth Videos

Oliver Napoleon Hill was born October 26, 1883 in a one-room cabin in Pound, Virginia — Appalachian poverty so complete he was described as wild and illiterate by the stepmother who finally taught him to read. She got him a typewriter when he was thirteen. By fifteen he was writing for local newspapers. By twenty-five he was a young journalist doing a freelance interview assignment that would change American business literature permanently.

In 1908 Hill was sent to interview Andrew Carnegie — then one of the wealthiest men in the world, three years into his long philanthropic retirement. The scheduled three-hour interview stretched to three days. Carnegie, at the end of it, made Hill an unusual offer: spend the next twenty years interviewing the 500 wealthiest and most successful men in America on Carnegie’s referral letters, find what they have in common, and write the first practical philosophy of success. Carnegie would provide the letters of introduction. He would not provide a salary.

Hill accepted on the spot.

Over the next two decades, with Carnegie’s letters in hand, Hill interviewed Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, F. W. Woolworth, George Eastman, William Wrigley Jr., Theodore Roosevelt, and hundreds of others. He took extensive notes. He refused multiple high-paying job offers along the way in order to finish the project. He also went bankrupt, lost businesses, and at several points came close to quitting. He did not quit.

The first full output of the research was The Law of Success, published in 1928 as an eight-volume set. The commercial version — written specifically for the Great Depression audience of 1937 — was Think and Grow Rich. It became an immediate bestseller during the worst economic crisis in American history and has remained in print continuously for nearly ninety years.

Hill’s thirteen principles of success — Desire, Faith, Autosuggestion, Specialized Knowledge, Imagination, Organized Planning, Decision, Persistence, Power of the Master Mind, The Mystery of Sex Transmutation, The Subconscious Mind, The Brain, and The Sixth Sense — became the grammar of nearly every subsequent teacher in the field. Bob Proctor read the book every day for sixty years. Earl Nightingale built his audio empire on its principles. The Mastermind Principle in particular — the idea that two or more minds working in harmony produce a third mind more powerful than either alone — was directly adopted by every peer-group methodology in the century that followed.

Hill continued writing and lecturing through the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. He founded the Napoleon Hill Foundation in 1962 to preserve and continue his work — the foundation still operates today, still publishes his back catalog, and still licenses his teaching materials to programs worldwide. He died in 1970 at age 87.

His core teaching, compressed: everything begins with a definite chief aim. Thoughts are things. What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve — provided you combine that clear vision with organized planning, persistence past the point of ordinary defeat, and a mastermind alliance of people who want you to win. Wealth is a byproduct of alignment between what you want, what you do, and what you believe is possible for you.