By Rodger Morrow, Editor & Publisher, Beaver County Business
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If you’ve ever wandered into the self-help aisle of a bookstore—back when bookstores roamed the earth—you’ve likely encountered Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, perched there like a brass spittoon in a Victorian parlor. It has sold more than 100 million copies and launched enough entrepreneurial dreams to fill every vacant storefront between Rochester and Leetsdale.
It has also, according to a growing pile of historical evidence, launched those dreams on a foundation made of papier-mâché.
Let’s begin with the legend. Napoleon Hill claimed that in 1908 he was commissioned by the great industrialist Andrew Carnegie to interview 500 of the world’s most successful men and distill their secrets into a single philosophy of achievement. Hill further claimed to have advised Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, which, if true, would make him the Forrest Gump of early 20th-century power.
The problem is that historians, rummaging through Carnegie’s famously meticulous papers, have found no evidence that Hill ever met the man. None. Not a lunch receipt. Not a diary entry. Not even a scribbled note reading, “Met enthusiastic fellow with big ideas about vibrations.”
Biographer David Nasaw and other researchers have concluded that the Carnegie origin story appears to have been fabricated years after Carnegie’s death—conveniently when the steel magnate could no longer rise from the grave to object.
Meanwhile, court records suggest that while Hill was allegedly interviewing titans of industry, he was also busy fleeing creditors, running questionable correspondence schools, dabbling in dubious securities schemes, and associating with a religious movement that believed concentrated thought could render a child immortal. If that sounds like the plot of a late-night infomercial, you are beginning to see the pattern.
And yet—here’s the awkward part—the book itself contains advice that is not entirely bonkers. Hill’s 13 principles of prosperity include specific goal setting, persistence, and the famous “Mastermind” concept—surrounding yourself with capable people who challenge and support you. Modern psychology has, somewhat sheepishly, confirmed that these things work.
Research on grit, social networks, and deliberate goal formation suggests that writing down clear objectives and persisting through setbacks does, in fact, improve outcomes. In Beaver County terms: deciding you’re going to open a fabrication shop in Midland and then stubbornly showing up every morning is generally more effective than waiting for cosmic vibrations to deliver a customer.
But then we arrive at Chapter 11, where Hill introduces “Sex Transmutation.” This is the notion that redirecting one’s sexual energy into business ambition is the secret fuel of wealth creation. I will leave it to our Corporation for Economic Development to decide whether to add that to its next strategic plan.
Hill also maintained that the brain operates as a “broadcasting and receiving station” for thoughts, tapping into what he called “Infinite Intelligence.” This sounds suspiciously like Wi-Fi before Wi-Fi, except without the router or the password. If you have ever tried to will a county grant into existence by pure thought, you already know the limits of this technology.
So how did a book built on a shaky biography and sprinkled with metaphysical fairy dust become one of the best-selling business titles of all time?
One answer is pragmatism. The philosopher William James argued that an idea can be “true” if it proves useful in practice. If believing the universe responds to your thoughts makes you set bigger goals, work harder, and persist longer, then the belief—however fanciful—produces real-world results. In that sense, Think and Grow Rich may function as a kind of motivational placebo. The pill may be sugar, but if it gets you out of bed at 5 a.m. to build your startup, you still get the factory.
There is also the matter of authorship. Historical evidence suggests that one of Hill’s many wives, Rosa Lee Beeland, played a major role in editing and shaping the final manuscript. Hill’s earlier writing efforts were, by most accounts, disjointed and commercially unsuccessful. The polished prose and coherent structure of the published book may owe more to Beeland’s steady hand than to Hill’s supposed communion with Infinite Intelligence. She eventually divorced him and took the royalties, which may be the most practical business lesson in the entire saga.
Here, then, is the ethical dilemma. In art, we often separate the work from the artist. A symphony can soar even if its composer was a scoundrel. But in Hill’s case, the scoundrelry is baked into the product. His authority—his very claim to expertise—rests on fabricated credentials. The Carnegie interviews weren’t just background color; they were the warranty.
For entrepreneurs in Beaver County—or anywhere else—the lesson is not to sneer at ambition or dismiss positive thinking. By all means, set specific goals. Build a mastermind group. Persist like a steelworker in January.
But steer clear of gurus whose credibility depends on stories that evaporate under historical scrutiny. The entrepreneurial world is already crowded with people promising secret formulas, cosmic frequencies, and seven easy steps to riches.
Real success, more often than not, comes from less glamorous virtues: competence, relationships, discipline, and the unromantic willingness to read a balance sheet.
If you must broadcast something into the universe, let it be this: due diligence. It lacks the sizzle of “Infinite Intelligence,” but it has the distinct advantage of being true.
