He was assigned to interview Andrew Carnegie. The old steel tycoon gave him a bigger assignment: spend twenty years studying success.
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Who Napoleon Hill was
Napoleon Hill became one of the most influential success writers of the twentieth century. His book Think and Grow Rich has sold tens of millions of copies.
The struggle
Hill was born in 1883 in rural Virginia. His mother died when he was nine. He was rebellious, restless, and often broke. He studied law but never finished. He tried business and failed. He tried journalism and scraped by.
In 1908 he interviewed Andrew Carnegie, who was then one of the richest men in the world. Carnegie challenged Hill to interview hundreds of successful people, distill their principles, and write them down. There was no salary. Carnegie would only provide introductions.
Hill accepted. For two decades he interviewed business leaders, inventors, presidents, and generals — including Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Theodore Roosevelt, and Alexander Graham Bell. He wrote, lectured, went broke, divorced, and kept going.
The turning point
In 1928 Hill published The Law of Success, an eight-volume work. In 1937, during the Great Depression, he published Think and Grow Rich. It was practical, direct, and full of stories. It became a phenomenon.
The book’s core idea was simple: success begins with a definite purpose, backed by belief and persistence. Hill argued that thoughts shape circumstances — not magically, but through focused action over time.
“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” He had spent twenty years interviewing the people who proved it.
The principle
Success leaves clues. Hill’s gift was collecting those clues and organising them into something usable. You do not need to reinvent wisdom. You need to study people who have already done what you want to do.
Apply it today
Find three people who have achieved what you want. Study their habits, failures, and decisions. Then build your own plan around what you learn. Success is less mysterious when you treat it as a craft to be studied.
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