The Untold Truth of Napoleon Hill - History's Most Beloved Con-Man.

ladies and gentlemen welcome to another episode where i keep my hair today we have throwback thursdays hope you have something to drink uh something a little stiffer because we're talking about a very serious topic today napoleon hill guys this is uh sort of the moby dick of gurus he's the big white whale that most people don't even know is lurking under the surface he's influenced more business gurus than you could probably imagine in fact tony robbins it's one of his top five books of all time uh he's influenced dan lok have you read the book tai lopez have you read this book bob proctor you see this is the first book i ever read think and grow rich by napoleon hill i'd never read a book before that chances are if you have a business guy you follow he's read napoleon hill and he thinks he's the absolute just listen to this youtuber summarize sort of the popularized story of napoleon hill what's going on guys as many of you know one of my favorite books in personal development is think and grow rich that book was catalyzed as a result of napoleon hill the author meeting andrew carnegie who was the wealthiest man in the world at the time carnegie basically charged napoleon hill with interviewing a number of successful people almost 200 people and extracting the principles that allowed them to do their life's work right that's pretty amazing actually you have this guy who was broke at the time napoleon hill a journalist apparently who got allowed into the inner chambers of andrew carnegie for a long three-hour interview and he ends up basically committing napoleon hill with his most important work passing down his knowledge napoleon hill repeats the same story when i first heard andrew carnegie describe this natural law which makes it possible for you and i and everyone else to write his own price tag in life and attain it my search led me to the study of the spiritual forces with which all of us are blessed and it was in this field that i came upon a cliff entertainment while i was being coached by andrew carnegie during the organization of the science of success philosophy i had just finished telling mr carnegie that i feared he had chosen the wrong person to give the world the first practical philosophy of personal success because of my youth my lack of education and my lack of finances an incredible american story of somebody from a high billionaire business class reaching down and lifting someone up who is an unknown writer to pass on his greatest wisdom except it probably never happened [Music] okay so why do i say that how could i claim that this man whose entire life's work is built off of this incredible chance meeting with andrew carnegie passing down all his information how could i claim that he did not meet him well for starters they apparently met early in the 1900s but he didn't start telling the story until after andrew carnegie died he didn't share the story that they had met together and the proof of andrew carnegie actually meeting with him well apparently he had all their letters together but uh according to his own biographers they got lost in a fire unfortunately all the letters yeah they burned away now at this point i'm getting a little bit of evan luth revives if you guys don't know that's someone i interviewed before who claimed he was mentored by steve jobs was he your mentor or not let's just answer that question with yes or no i think i would like to say yes later when i pressured him on this he admitted that actually he had never talked to steve jobs at all and instead he mentored in the sense of he had been inspired by steve jobs i have a little trouble believing that because on our call i think yesterday you said you were not mentored by steve jobs and that you never said that i never said steve jobs was a mentor by the way it doesn't you don't have to talk to somebody all the time to consider them your mentor i would like to believe that the internet has been my biggest mentor that's kind of like napoleon hill it seems because there's absolutely no evidence that he ever met with andrew carnegie even if you believe that it was lost in a fire we can compare napoleon hill's writings about andrew carnegie with andrew carnegie's own writing in fact andrew carnegie's own biographer doubts that they ever met at all he says let me put it this way i found no evidence that the book was authentic so this man built an entire career on this alleged meeting of the minds with andrew carnegie and all these wealthy people but there's no proof of it and andrew carnegie's own biographer says yeah it didn't happen but guys we can reach deeper than that we don't have to simply rely on this guy's opinion who is he just the biographer of andrew carnegie so we have two books we're gonna look at one is napoleon hill's account of his conversation with andrew carnegie and two we're gonna actually look at andrew carnegie's biography and we're gonna look at one of his little mini books called the gospel of wealth see andrew carnegie actually wrote a lot despite what these ideas say that andrew carnegie needed a reporter to transcribe all his ideas down for a guy who was gonna let someone else do the talking he sure wrote a lot so let's compare these two in napoleon hill's account of andrew carnegie carnegie comes across like he's really doesn't really feel bad for people who are poor because really there's no injustice because just like the law of attraction states which of course i think you guys should know by now is what napoleon hill came up with and think and grow rich you guys don't know that's what the secret was based off of that's where all this stuff is inspired by but he says here understand this truth and you will note that there's no injustice in connection with the difference between the fortunes which men accumulate in other words whether you're andrew carnegie or you're the guy working at mcdonald's you deserve what you get they are where they are and they are drawing the wages they receive solely because of the limitations they have set up in their own minds in other words look everybody could be rich look literally everybody there's no problem with that you just have to think about it it's your mindset your mindset's bad have you heard of that but according to andrew carnegie who sounds much more like a businessman than a self-help guru in his own book gospel of wealth he says that competition naturally creates inequality under the law of competition this employer of thousands is forced into the strictest economies among which the rates paid to laborers figure prominently and often there's friction between the employer and the employed between capital and labor between rich and poor sounds a little bit different right and wait a minute that completely conflicts what napoleon hill says over here i never set the wage scale of any man who works for me that's supposedly andrew carnegie right there talking right there you see that but andrew carnegie in his own book laments the fact that he's forced to pay the strictest economies basically the lowest possible rate for the most amount of work which is how capitalism works you want to pay as little as possible for the best amount of work and then competition is foreign for who you can hire based on that additionally it is categorically false that andrew carnegie ever thought that everybody could just be rich by thinking that way he thought instead like a business person would think that people who excelled at things of scale would inevitably make more money than people who didn't in other words if you can own the cloth factory you can make more money than the person who sells the cloth or creates the cloth one by one there must be great scope for the exercise of special ability in the merchant and in the manufacturer who has to conduct fares on a great scale that that this talent for organization and management is rare among men is proved by the fact that invariably secures enormous rewards for its possessors in other words either andrew carnegie completely changed his beliefs by the time he talked to napoleon hill and between when he wrote this book or somebody's lying here so what else do we know about napoleon hill that could push us one way or the other does he have a pattern of lying or is he telling the truth well i'll let you decide from some of his incredible stories according to him president wilson even though he was broke decided he wanted to put all napoleon hill on the government payroll at a rather attractive salary now how did he meet president wilson well apparently of course andrew carnegie really wanted them to meet so they go ahead and they meet but for once in my life i had the privilege of vetoing the president of the united states now he instead though broke made it essential he goes the extra mile without no thought of what he might receive for his services in other words he didn't charge the president of the united states a penny to work for him this is all despite the fact that napoleon hill's life up to this point has been solely for the purpose of accumulating riches but when it comes to the president he doesn't want to impose other features of this incredible man's life is that apparently later on after woodrow wilson had moved out of the white house he got to know another president franklin delano roosevelt apparently although his record of a real relationship proof is surprisingly scant according to his biographers but in conversations and in some of his papers he'll sometimes claim to have coined the historic remark we have nothing to fear but fear itself and claim to have written a number of roosevelt's fireside chats that's right guys while not meeting with the billionaire business magnate andrew carnegie he was busy consoling america consoling america and making sure that everyone felt okay by drafting the fireside chats according to napoleon hill he supplied the president with a steady stream of suggestions for topics and fully aware of his own powers of persuasion he was never bashful about supplying a script that would help the president make his point oh the original fake guru guys this man is claiming to have mentored two presidents i mean at this point he's mentoring them and he personally got self-selected by by andrew carnegie to be plucked from poverty and to be suddenly made the number one writer what a lucky guy i've gotta say as wilson's suddenly deciding whether he should uh have an armistice for germany and napoleon hills in the room and the first person he read the decoded message to was of course napoleon hill which wilson's face turned white as snow when he finished reading he handed the document to napoleon hill that's right top secret decoded information who do you give it to napoleon hill you leave it with that person apparently the president was gone for 15 minutes when he returned he handed me a couple of sheets of paper on which he had written his reply to the germans which ended with three questions related to the terms of the armistice after i read his reply he asked if napoleon hill had any suggestions to add to it hey napoleon would you like to help in world war one huh now if all of this is starting to sound increasingly improbable and it seems like the whole thing is made up just wait the story is just beginning because napoleon hill also faked being an attorney at law i don't know if you guys can see that he wrote that uh he's napoleon napoleon hill attorney at law michigan avenue his own biographers who at this point have found it credulous and included as fact that he has been an advisor to woodrow wilson and fdr they call this a highly exaggerated claim aka a lie but all of this pales in comparison to the fake college this man set up that's right napoleon hill not only started the fake testimonials the fake mentorships you know just lying about who you met lying about their advice he also coined something else the original course guys this is i'm serious you guys know thinking grow rich but you guys don't know the automobile college of washington where he supposedly trained chauffeurs and car owners to drive and prepare mechanics told assembly line jobs in automobile plants that's how his biographers talk about it now and this is well borne out in the actual newspaper clippings that this man was the president of the automobile college of washington but what his biographers coincidentally don't mention is this this is an old-school coffeezilla back before back before uh coffeezilla existed this is the original thing some guy wrote pointing the easy route to get rich quick land which was an expose on napoleon hill i'm not even lying this man during his life was exposed for running a fake course he got zilla look at this okay i'll only read you the most important parts okay so they make fun of the fact uh that they call this the greatest school of expert automobile engineering in the united states does that not sound like a caleb maddox line the greatest opportunity of our era literally nothing has changed and that's the i really believe that the yta method is the greatest opportunity of our era additionally this thing says the catalog ought to be worth its weight in gold to the dyspeptic for there's a good laugh on every page which is you know old town speak for this guy is a clown and they're talking about the automobile college of washington apparently the whole scheme was a big plan to get free labor from college students so you would pay in and they would get free labor how it worked is you'd go into the school and while training you you worked for them you paid to be trained while you worked for them and they had partnered with like an automobile manufacturer and supposedly at the end you were supposed to get the sales job where you could make you know thousands of dollars at the time none of that was true see napoleon hill was also the first person to uh make big income claims our course prepares you to earn 4 800 a year or more briefly the plan is all that those who attend and become a student of this college will get a job in this college become sales agents guys you can be a high ticket closer for napoleon hill see he was the first one to do it right and why am i showing you all of this why are we going through so much detail well guys you might have been mystified before when somebody who has as good of a reputation as napoleon hill could produce such sleaze bags as people like you know your locks of the world you're uh tai lopez's of the world how how does that square away but when you actually look at napoleon hill's life and then you look at the life of people who are inspired by them you go oh yeah they're the same person this guy used the tactics that modern day fake business gurus are using before it was ever a thing and then he wrote their bible are we really surprised but wait guys there's more there's also a multi-level marketing side to this whole whole scheme and by the way remember this is a paper from back in the day this is all historical okay so i'm not making any of this stuff up it's all factually either in napoleon hill's biography newspaper clippings andrew carnegie's biography so don't get mad at me this is not me saying it it's like the fault of everyone who's read napoleon hill up to this point and never bothered to look any further than simply think and grow rich now not only does napoleon hill do all of that he also made it an mlm this college he says the very day you enroll you may begin to send this to the names of young men who you might be you you think might be interested in our course and you got commissions for it guys [Music] i can't stand this this man is a con man and he says oh you're gonna pay for your course several times over in this manner now this author of course points out that if everyone did this then of course the entire district of columbia would soon be required for the campus obviously this stuff grows exponentially so these people back in the day back in the 1900s realized this guy was a con man but through the power of just kind of whitewashing history little by little people forget that these things exist this man has managed to make a reputation for himself of being some genius in business in reality even by his biographer's account who are super generous with him who believe all his stupid claims he was constantly broke constantly in debt even went to jail oh yeah i forgot about that did i tell you that he went to jail for a stock scheme which is why he got arrested for blue sky stuff which is in illinois law about unlicensed securities he was arrested and released and you know what his excuse was hill claimed that he was simply a forceful writer guys let me stop for a second and just ask you have you heard that before have you ever heard a marketer who i'm calling a fake guru go hey i just like to aggressively market you know so what i say you're gonna make a million dollars it's just aggressive marketing this is where it all comes from this is why again he's at the center of the board this man is the con men of all khan men and nobody knows it actually there's one great article about this uh paleofuture.gizmodo.com incredible article i'll link it below a lot of the stuff you're seeing here is from that although i went and hunted up the sources myself just to make sure they were legit but this is why he's at the very center because despite maintaining an attitude and a reputation of perfection the truth about napoleon hill is that is that he lied about who he was talking to he lied about who he was being mentored by he invented wild claims he invented the first mlm pos i don't know if that's the first mlm but it's one of the first mlms ever he invented a course like every move that you see of the modern guru it's all taken from napoleon hill he's the king he's on top and he's on top for a reason because damn he was ahead of his time i mean let me be very real with you and the truth about him is just really not known people think he's some savant some genius who talked to the great minds of america but the truth is they never knew him they never heard of this guy which can be proven by the fact if you read andrew carnegie who's written his own books he didn't need someone to write them for him they're so wildly different than napoleon hill napoleon hill's andrew carnegie and the real andrew carnegie are two completely different people one is some self-help person with a bunch of puff and fluff the other is like a practical businessman who talks like a businessman who understands competition who understands market forces who understands that not everything is just about your mindset right so what do we make of the napoleon hill story now that it's all out there well it's interesting just like i think napoleon hill was sort of the original guru i think we can learn a lot of lessons from both his successes and his failures because obviously his fraud was very successful because millions of people have bought his books a million millions of people have bought into this idea that he was you know some oracle of the rich and famous but the truth is when he died he died most people suspect penniless he had been bankrupt many times he had been run out of towns he said there was an attempted assassination on his life fraud accusations of fraud it all just follows the familiar path of our confidence men they achieve a little bit of success because scams do but ultimately they're constantly undone by their own design he was constantly spending too much money spending more money than he could afford chased by creditors this man is not someone you want to look up to even though on the outside all that glitters is gold the truth is that something was rotting at the heart of napoleon hill's story you know i know that this might seem weird for me to say at the very end of all this but i do think there's good things in think and grow rich about positive thinking about goal setting but the problem is that think and grow rich takes it too far it makes it into some gospel of success that positive thinking is all that you need that you don't need luck that you don't need talent that any person can just wish themselves into a trillion dollars and if you don't have that trillion dollars yet well you just must not be thinking about it enough you must not be desiring it enough that is completely ridiculous and leads to a toxic system of punishment for people who haven't achieved their dreams as my friend james johnny would later say in his series on the law of attraction so i'm not saying throw out your book of think and grow rich if you want to keep it if it helps you hey i think that's fine but you should know who napoleon hill was you should know what the end of his life looked like and you should know who he really talked to and who he really didn't thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next one you

Channel: Coffeezilla

Views: 791,336

Keywords: coffeezilla, fake guru, scam, make money online, get rich, get rich quick, napoleon hill, think and grow rich, bob proctor

Id: iEDzb9ZplX0

Length: 21min 19sec (1279 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 07 2021