Think and Grow Rich and the Master Mind: What Napoleon Hill Actually Said

Plenty of people say "mastermind" and mean a networking brunch: a few nice people, a round of wins, a pastry, and everyone home by eleven. That isn't what Think and Grow Rich describes. In Napoleon Hill's 1937 book, the Master Mind is the engine that turns "I want money" into a real plan that other capable people help you carry out.

It's worth going back to what Hill actually wrote, because the original is sharper, odder, and more useful than the version that turns up on social media. One half of it is plain good business sense. The other half is Hill's metaphysics. He presents them as one principle, and it helps to keep them apart.

All quotations below are from the original 1937 text, which is in the public domain. Capitals are Hill's own.

The definition, from the chapter on power

Hill defines the Master Mind in Chapter 10, "Power of the Master Mind" (which he calls the Ninth Step toward Riches):

'The "Master Mind" may be defined as: "Coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony, between two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose."'

Every part of that sentence matters. It's coordination, so people actually work together rather than just meeting up. It involves knowledge and effort, so people bring what they know and also do the work. It runs in a spirit of harmony, which Hill treats as a requirement. And it's aimed at a definite purpose: one goal, not a general wish to "grow".

Straight after that comes the line that ends the lone-genius fantasy:

'No individual may have great power without availing himself of the "Master Mind."'

To see why Hill is so firm about it, look at how he defines power at the start of the same chapter:

'POWER may be defined as "organized and intelligently directed KNOWLEDGE."'

He adds that power, as he uses the word, "refers to ORGANIZED effort", and that organized effort "is produced through the coordination of effort of two or more people, who work toward a DEFINITE end, in a spirit of harmony." Knowledge sitting in your head is only potential. In Hill's words, knowledge "may be converted into POWER by organizing it into definite PLANS and by expressing those plans in terms of ACTION." The Master Mind is how one person's knowledge gets joined to other people's effort and pointed at a single goal.

The two halves Hill separates

Hill says the principle has "two characteristics", "one of which is economic in nature, and the other psychic." It's worth taking them one at a time.

The economic feature: borrow the skills you lack, on purpose

Hill calls this half "obvious", and he's right:

'Economic advantages may be created by any person who surrounds himself with the advice, counsel, and personal cooperation of a group of men who are willing to lend him wholehearted aid, in a spirit of PERFECT HARMONY. This form of cooperative alliance has been the basis of nearly every great fortune.'

His best-known examples are Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie. The details are worth getting right, because the popular retellings tend to blur them.

Ford's courtroom story actually appears earlier in the book, in Chapter 5, "Specialized Knowledge". During the First World War, a Chicago newspaper called Ford "an ignorant pacifist." Ford sued the paper for libel. The paper's lawyers then put Ford himself on the witness stand to prove he was ignorant, and asked him things like "Who was Benedict Arnold?" Eventually Ford had had enough. In Hill's telling, he pointed at the lawyer and said:

"If I should really WANT to answer the foolish question you have just asked, or any of the other questions you have been asking me, let me remind you that I have a row of electric push-buttons on my desk, and by pushing the right button, I can summon to my aid men who can answer ANY question I desire to ask concerning the business to which I am devoting most of my efforts. Now, will you kindly tell me, WHY I should clutter up my mind with general knowledge, for the purpose of being able to answer questions, when I have men around me who can supply any knowledge I require?"

Hill's conclusion is that through his "Master Mind" group, Ford "had at his command all the specialized knowledge he needed", and "It was not essential that he have this knowledge in his own mind."

Carnegie appears in the same chapter:

'Andrew Carnegie stated that he, personally, knew nothing about the technical end of the steel business; moreover, he did not particularly care to know anything about it. The specialized knowledge which he required for the manufacture and marketing of steel, he found available through the individual units of his MASTER MIND GROUP.'

In Chapter 10, Hill comes back to Carnegie and describes his Master Mind group as "a staff of approximately fifty men, with whom he surrounded himself, for the DEFINITE PURPOSE of manufacturing and marketing steel." He also links Ford's fastest progress to his friendships with Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, John Burroughs and Luther Burbank.

The lesson isn't "collect famous friends". It's this: you don't have every skill you need to turn a definite desire into money, so go and find the missing skills on purpose. As Hill puts it in Chapter 5, if you need "much more specialized knowledge than you have the ability or the inclination to acquire," then "you may bridge your weakness through the aid of your 'Master Mind' group."

The psychic phase: where Hill leaves the spreadsheet

The second half is where the book turns metaphysical. Hill himself says it is "much more abstract, much more difficult to comprehend, because it has reference to the spiritual forces with which the human race, as a whole, is not well acquainted." His central line is:

"No two minds ever come together without, thereby, creating a third, invisible, intangible force which may be likened to a third mind."

He compares brains to electric batteries: a group of brains "coordinated (or connected) in a spirit of harmony, will provide more thought-energy than a single brain." And he goes further than that:

'When two or more people coordinate in a spirit of HARMONY, and work toward a definite objective, they place themselves in position, through that alliance, to absorb power directly from the great universal storehouse of Infinite Intelligence.'

You can take that literally, as a metaphor, or not at all. Either way, it's Hill's metaphysics and not something you can measure. One part of it does hold up in plain practice, though: harmony isn't optional. In Chapter 7 Hill warns that "The 'Master Mind' principle cannot obtain where PERFECT HARMONY does not prevail." Ego, envy and competing agendas don't produce a third mind. They produce a meeting that could have been an email.

How the Master Mind fits the rest of the book

The Master Mind chapter doesn't come out of nowhere. Hill sets it up in Chapter 7, "Organized Planning", where he says plainly:

'No individual has sufficient experience, education, native ability, and knowledge to insure the accumulation of a great fortune, without the cooperation of other people.'

His first instruction for building a practical plan is to "Ally yourself with a group of as many people as you may need for the creation, and carrying out of your plan, or plans", and he adds in brackets: "Compliance with this instruction is absolutely essential. Do not neglect it."

Three more instructions from that chapter read surprisingly modern:

1. Decide what you'll offer in return. "No one will work indefinitely without some form of compensation," Hill writes, adding that it "may not always be in the form of money."
2. Meet often, "at least twice a week, and more often if possible", until the plan is worked out together.
3. Have your plans tested. "SEE THAT THOSE PLANS ARE CHECKED, AND APPROVED BY THE MEMBERS OF YOUR 'MASTER MIND' ALLIANCE." If a plan fails, replace it with another, and keep going until you find one that works.

Chapter 10 then names this arrangement and argues that it multiplies power.

So the book isn't describing a modern accountability circle where everyone shares wins over coffee. It describes a small alliance built for one definite purpose, chosen for complementary knowledge, run in real harmony, and used to pool practical effort. In Hill's view it also creates a kind of extra intelligence that no single member has. The economic half is ordinary and useful. The third-mind half is Hill's metaphysics. He treats both as one principle, and you don't have to sign up for the second to benefit from the first.

A modern, practical version of the economic half

If you strip out the 1930s language, the economic half of the Master Mind comes down to a few things:

1. One definite purpose.
2. A small group of people, chosen because they know things you don't.
3. An honest agreement about what each person gets for what they put in.
4. Plans that the group checks, challenges and rebuilds until they hold.

That's close to what a startup group on EquityTake is for. You begin with an idea or early project, the definite purpose. You create a startup group around it. People who are interested join, the group works out which roles and skills the project needs, and co-founders form around it with proposed equity on the table. Hill's "some form of compensation" becomes an open, early conversation about ownership, instead of a vague promise to sort it out later.

It's shaped like a Meetup, but for business. It isn't co-founder dating and it isn't a hobby club. The group exists for one project, and the project is the point.

There's another benefit that Hill would recognise from his "checked, and approved" rule. When you create a startup group around your business idea, strangers can evaluate and pressure-test it until you're surer it will work, or surer it might not. Either answer is valuable. A polite echo chamber can waste months. A clear "this won't hold up" lets you change the idea, narrow the problem, or stop before you spend a season on it.

To be clear, EquityTake doesn't promise a third mind or a direct line to Infinite Intelligence. That's Hill's territory, and you can make of it what you like. What a startup group gives you is the practical half: a small alliance around one definite purpose, where you borrow the skills you lack on purpose and let other people test your plan before the market does.

Where to go next

If you already have an idea, the step-by-step guide to creating a startup group around your idea walks through how to describe it so people can say yes, no, or "not for me".

If you'd rather bring your skills to someone else's project, read how to join a startup group without wasting months.

If you're earlier than that and wondering how ownership starts at all, how to start owning a business from scratch covers the basics. For the ownership conversation itself, see how to split startup equity fairly.

Build your own Master Mind around one idea

Hill's advice was to find the people whose knowledge you lack and point everyone at one definite purpose. The modern version is simpler than a row of push-buttons.

Create a startup group around your idea, or browse groups that are already building.

Once your group is up, how to run the first month of a startup group and how to set a Proposed Company Value cover what comes next.