Who is Napoleon Hill?

Napoleon Hill can be considered one of the “fathers” of the modern genre of self-help and personal-success  literature. He was one of the most successful writers, teachers and motivational speakers of his time. Not many people know that Hill’s theory was redeveloped by Bob Proctor in the movie “The Secret”. The “Law of Attraction”, which is widely discussed in self-help books, learning programs, and seminars, actually reformulates Hill’s book “Law of Success”, that was written 80 years ago!

The lessons that he taught others have helped thousands of people all over the world. Very often these were the same lessons that he had learnt himself the hard way.

Biography

Hill’s life was not easy. There was nothing grand about his beginnings. He was born to a poor family on the Pound River in Wise County, Virginia in 1883. When he was 10 years old, his mother passed away and he was left in the care of his father. Two years later his father remarried, but the family’s financial situation did not improve much.

So at the age of 13 Hill found his first job as a “mountain reporter” for a local newspaper. Over time he saved money from his job as a writer and was accepted into law school. However, as he could not finance his way through college, he was forced to leave law school and return to work as a reporter. What had seemed as another setback, turned out to be a great opportunity…

Life-Changing Encounter

When Hill was 25 years old, he was given an assignment to interview and write a series of articles about the richest and most famous men of the time. One of these men was a steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. This encounter changed Hill’s life forever. During this fateful encounter Hill asked Carnegie, the regular question, “To what do you attribute your success?” and received an answer that he was not expecting.
This is what Hill himself wrote about this conversation:

“With a merry little twinkle in his eyes he said:
“Young man, before I answer your question will you please define your term ’success’?”
After waiting until he saw that I was somewhat embarrassed by his request he continued:
“By success you have reference to my money, have you not?”
I assured him that money was the term by which most people measured success, and he then said: “Oh, well – if you wish to know how I got my money – if that is what you call success – I will answer your question by saying that we have a master mind here in our business…”

The concept of the Master Mind would become one of the most important keys to success in Napoleon Hill’s theory. But we will talk about it later…

Carnegie was intrigued by idea that the average man could easily achieve financial abundance just by using a “success formula” (that Carnegie believed existed). He challenged the young writer to interview 500 of the wealthiest people in the world and find out what it was about their personality that made them successful.

Hill eagerly accepted the challenge and met with some of the great people of his era such as: Henry Ford, William Taft, Thomas Edison, John Rockefeller, Woodrow Wilson, F.W. Woodworth, and Alexander Graham Bell.

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