ESYB2 099 - Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
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[00:00:00] In this video, I want to go over Napoleon Hill's book, Think and Grow Rich, which is the number one fundamental book in entrepreneurship, and it's a must know and understand for all entrepreneurs. It was written about a hundred years ago, and it still has principles that are extremely important. And we'll see the principles in this course resonate in this book, like the idea that yes, you should plan, but don't overplan because overplanning is just a form of procrastination.

Point of planning is starting well, not to continue planning, which is something that people can fall into. So this particular video used to be a whole section of this course. Students used to say it's a little bit too long. So what I'm going to do in this video is this video is going to be a little long.

But it's going to be shorter than an entire section. And I'm going to try to go through, briskly, through all the principles in that book. There are 13 principles. And it's 13 skills from the most successful people that Napoleon Hill, [00:01:00] he was a journalist and he met some of the most successful people of his era.

And he got their ideas for what made them so successful. And a lot of them tended to be the same things. And these are the 13 principles from that book that we're going to cover now. And this video is going to have exercises for each little things for you to try to do maybe immediately, maybe long term.

So the first principle is setting the right goals, making sure that what you choose to do is accurate because a lot of people have missed goals. So you must tap into your passions and you must want to succeed bad enough because Anyone can say, Oh, yeah, of course I want to do well. Yes, of course I want to be rich.

Anybody would say yes to that. But that cannot be what you do. You must do the thing that you really, really, really want bad enough. Because all the motivation, all the hard work will be so much easier if it's truly what you want to be doing. And if you're finding yourself having no motivation, that's a sign.

Maybe I didn't get into the thing that I truly [00:02:00] want. So what is it that you want? That's your homework for you to decide. Because you will have to obsess and put all your focus into that one thing to do it extremely, extremely well. And the exercise is for you to guard yourself from these life distractions, missed goals, having other people or other organizations give you goals that they want for you but are not ideal for you.

This is something that you do with, you solve with mindfulness and self awareness. It's a lifelong process of getting to know yourself so that you can understand, Hmm, I'm pretty confident in knowing exactly what makes me tick, what I want bad enough. And then you go after it. Then of course, once you're going after it, what's going to happen?

You're going to have all kinds of bad days, self doubt. And so you must build up a belief that you can truly achieve your goals. There's a lot of things you can look into in confidence building. You can even visualize success, daydream. Those actually build up your confidence. And you can also surround yourself by people who reinforce your confidence.

[00:03:00] There's a lot of people who Make you feel less confident about who you are. Pull you away from your goals. And those are the people you want to get rid of, if you can. And then you want to replace them with people who are positive on you, positive to your confidence, positive to your goals, really help you.

The third point is affirmations. There's something specific that's called affirmation. That's basically a practice where you just repeat positive phrases to yourself. Most people, they're not going to do them. So really the idea of the affirmation is to reinforce your belief in success with everything around you.

Like I mentioned earlier, the people, your thoughts, etc. And that confidence in the hard times, that's one of the things that's going to help you keep pushing forward. Now, the fourth principle is what Napoleon Hill calls gaining specialized knowledge. All that means is keep taking classes, don't stop learning, get coached, watch YouTube videos.

Obviously, he didn't have YouTube when he was writing his [00:04:00] book, but in your case, there's so many free resources, YouTube videos, books, coaching, talk to people, have debates, improve how you learn by boosting memory and learning. These are whole topics like how to boost memory, how to become a better learner.

These are topics outside of the scope of this course, but the real core idea here is that you never stop learning. Not only that, you keep on learning better. So, your school, high school, college, that's not the end of your learning. You keep on learning. And specifically, of course, things in your field, but also pure education things, literature, so that you can be a better, more well rounded person and bring more unique ideas to what you do.

Because principle number five is imagination for new big ideas. Because of course, it's great to be focused on the task you're doing, but you also need to be able to take a step back and look at the bigger picture, inject your work with broader ideas that will spurn imagination and [00:05:00] imagination will give you the breakthrough ideas.

And there's a quote in the book saying that man's limitation within reason lies in his development and use of imagination. And many people believe that imagination is one of the highest forms of intelligence because not everyone has that. Not everyone can learn that, but it's magical because it can spurn truly new, innovative breakthrough ideas and steps.

And the exercise for that really is balancing idle time and work because your brain actually works on its own during idle time and that balance at least will help you have Creative new ideas. Now, there's again, a whole field of how to become more creative, how to gain imagination. This is far outside the scope of this course, but if you're interested in that, it's something next to look into.

And of course, you want to use new technologies on top of old ideas, like for example, the taxi industry. Well, there was a phone technology, right, the smartphone, and so Uber became possible. Before the smartphone, Uber wasn't [00:06:00] possible. So sometimes Seeing what new technologies can be applied to old traditional businesses and methods can give you great ideas.

That's just one way. Next principle is organized planning and taking action. So if you're starting a business, your business planning, good, but you need to take action. Organized planning cannot live without action. That's the mistake of a lot of business planning, which only focuses on the theoretical planning.

Good, you have a useless document. You didn't start. You must start. And the exercise is, you don't need to have a formal business plan, but you must plan to start. Starting is one of the core things, and you balance that without over planning. Planning is great, over planning is arguably worse than planning.

Not planning at all, or not starting. And of course, a lot of people make mistakes and it's okay to fail. But as you start, you want to get support, regular coaching, peer [00:07:00] groups. That's kind of a cousin of the idea of masterminds, which is actually something that also came from this book. And masterminds is just a formal way to meet regularly with your peer group and have a more structured way of working on things together.

And of course, starting and doing whatever you're doing long term, that's great. So it all happens with planning. Planning is fantastic. But see, the focus really is on the doing. The point of planning is not more planning. The point of planning is the doing. It's a really core concept and that's why I'm really focusing it because a lot of entrepreneurs, when I ask them, well, so what, when do you want to start your business?

And then tell me, well, next year, in six months, in 12 months. No, you got to go fast and you got to go aggressive. Of course, plan, but you've got to be passionate and intensely focus on the starting. Seven is becoming a good decision maker, which is a part of actually starting, right? A lot of people don't start because they're indecisive.

And the exercise for that is, you know, it's important to [00:08:00] understand that failing cheaply can be infinitely better than never starting, as long as you fail cheaply. If you fail expensively, overspend, then you cannot keep trying. You cannot try new ideas or fix your failure. You have to go back to work or you have to quit entirely because you just lost a lot of money.

But if you fail cheaply In fact, financially, and put a lot of effort into it. Not only will you learn, but it will give you the next steps. And it's infinitely better than standing on the sidelines thinking about starting. And of course, principle eight, we already touched on it earlier, persistence, success is for the people who work hard long term.

Even Einstein used to say, I'm not the smartest, but I'm the hardest working. And a lot of the wealthiest people, they started out poor. They just chose to work, work, work, work, work instead of sulk in their lack of resources when they started out. Most people who succeed are scrappy, resourceful, they find a way, they keep going, they work hard.

That's [00:09:00] the key. Those skills, long term persistence. And of course, One thing to guard yourself against, and that's your exercise, is don't get discouraged and quit early. Keep going. Failure is going to happen. Frustration is going to be a part of it. That's totally natural. Just keep going forward, going forward.

In years, you'll look back and you'll think, Oh my God. I've come such a long way, but if you quit or if you don't start, none of that is going to happen and you'll be in the same place, which is the worst thing. And of course, choosing what you love, that, remember point number one, choosing what you're most passionate about, what you really truly want, that's actually going to give you the motivation to persist.

So a lot of these principles tie together and reinforce each other. Of course, you can also help yourself by focusing on traditional productivity strategies, like building healthy habits. Having good time management, disciplining yourself and so on and so on. These are just core fundamental productivity topics.

And a part of your work is to explore them and become good at them for yourself. Because they will [00:10:00] help you persist and work long term and better and more effectively. Now, point number nine is masterminds. You can think of them as formal groups that meet regularly, but also you can think of them as surrounding yourself with great people.

Joining meetups. And even today you have all kinds of online communities like Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, different forums, where there are many like minded individuals and many even experts who are willing to help you there. So that's something to. Actually take advantage of and always be networking and always be tapping into the advice and resources of your peers.

Principle number 10 is finding the right partners for your personal life and something that Napoleon Hill calls sexual energy. Now, that's not my idea. That's in the book. We're not going to cover that too much because it's really a little bit outside the topic of this course. But the idea here really is don't just be all business, all passion.

Don't neglect your personal life. That's where we're going to leave this point [00:11:00] because it's quite outside the topic of this course. Point 11 is controlling your subconscious mind and focusing on more your positive emotions, things that you can do, things that are going well, instead of letting your mind drift to negative and self defeating emotions and thoughts like, I'm not good at this.

I'm gonna fail. It's so frustrating. I'm not, I'm not smart. I'm this, I'm that. I'm gonna fail. I'm not talented enough. What am I thinking? Don't let those thoughts creep into your mind. Control them. The exercise really is to control the subconscious by the conscious. By number one, of course, surrounding yourself with great people like we already mentioned.

But number two, catch those negative thoughts and realize, No, no, no. I gotta stay positive. I gotta keep moving forward. I gotta be persistent. I will get everywhere I will need to get. If I keep staying persistent, that's the mindset. Otherwise, it's too easy to have self defeating ideas and they ruin everything.

They make you enjoy. You're work [00:12:00] less, they make you do worse at the work, but if you're positive, you'll enjoy it more, you'll do better. And if you're not able to do it, get some help. Coaching, peer groups, all that. They will help to carry you through the difficult times. It's really important. I understand this myself because every time I do something difficult, it's very discouraging.

It's very hard, it's frustrating. So, I just keep moving forward, surround myself with people who will help me along the way, and I get to everywhere I need to go faster and better. And I enjoy it more. Number 12 is associating with smart people. We already talked about it, but here is a little bit of a difference.

What he means by that is when you brainstorm in small groups, he gets into some cookie science that's, I think, a little outdated in the book in this particular point. We're going to skip that and I think the takeaway really is that when you surround yourself with smart people to brainstorm with You'll just get better brainstorming more effective brainstorming and I know that this point I'm [00:13:00] simplifying But I'm simplifying it because the greater point he's making here I think is less relevant now, and if I boil it down to this takeaway, I think it's actually very Easy to understand and actually do.

And it's really similar to other points. So we already kind of mentioned a lot of this. Now the very exciting last point, this is great. Thirteenth principle is that after a while of being persistent and doing things and associ and surrounding yourself with great people. Those core principles after a while, a long term, not, not months, not couple of years.

A lot of people around the 40 year old mark. When they're about 40 years old, they begin to develop like a sixth sense in their industry what's going to work, what's not going to work. That just comes from tremendous experience and that's where their careers tend to really take off and grow because they become like next level good.

They really feel and sense their work better. They know [00:14:00] what decisions to make, how to go about it. And that stronger sense of what will work comes from a lot of practice. Remember, planning is good, but you've got to do, do, do, do, do, so you've got to get to a point, there's going to be an inflection point in your career, where you've done so much, you're so experienced, that you just hit like a next level.

And that's that 13th sense that gets developed. Just naturally it comes to you after a lot of work and that's where most people find the true success they've been after. So if you're thinking, Oh my God, I'm starting a business. It's so hard. I spent a couple of weeks, I spent two months or six months.

Yeah, I know it's hard during those times, but really you've got to persevere years. And then, then if you pursue your most passionate goals, surround yourself with great people. Work hard, work smart, persistently, you'll do great. Those are the keys to success from that book. And actually, they are really core and accurate because you see this time and time [00:15:00] again.

People who do this, they do well. And that's why even a hundred years later, this book is so foundational for entrepreneurs.

