“Think And Grow Rich” – The Mastermind And The Spirit Of Total Harmony

Reading time: 6 – 9 minutes

I’ve read “Think and Grow Rich” several times. The first time I thought it was kind of old-fashioned and, well, kind of goofy.

On subsequent readings I’ve softened my opinion and now it’s a book I keep by my desk and thumb through often.

How To Get “Think and Grow Rich” For Free

First off – if you’ve never read it, and you want to know what this is all about, you probably should. You can download a public domain edition here

I recommend you procure yourself a printed copy because a book is easy to carry around and read anytime, and mark on and dogear too.

Considering how many copies of the book are said to have sold, I would expect to run across used copies more often than I do (I am an old book freak). My favorite is the 2005 Penguin/Tarcher edition revised by Arthur Pell. Dr. Pell added more than he took away in the edition, including stories which illustrate the principles featuring currently famous luminaries such as Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, and Oprah Winfrey.

The update also eliminates or at least tones-down the racist and sexist undertones I see in the old editions, which, after all, dates from 1937 and was written by a white dude. Actually Hill may have been a bit more progressive in his views of gender and racial equality than the average white guy of his time, but the bias is still there I think and it’s softened in the later edition.

What’s So Great About “Think and Grow Rich”

Well, for one, it’s something of a standard in personal development literature. We can all get our hands on a copy easily enough, and enough derivative works have been written to make it a certifiable classic. There are other, more contemporary books I could write about with more enthusiasm, but for what I want to do here “Think and Grow Rich” is ideal.

The book covers a lot of territory and if you open yourself up to it you’ll find material that inspires you no matter where you are in your development. That’s part of what makes it a classic. Even people who’ve attained a lot of wealth still re-read “Think and Grow Rich” to inspire their hearts and clarify their goals.

The Harmonious Mastermind

Today I want to talk about the Mastermind concept. Basically Hill says that in order to accomplish a big goal, like accumulating a lot of money in business, you cannot do it on your own. You need other people’s ideas and input. You need a council of adviser. These might be partners, consultants, mentors, friends, or people who are working towards similar goals in their own lives.

The key thing is that big success is a team effort. You need others conspiring for your success. They will, mostly, only do so if there are rewards to be earned for themselves as well. While I won’t go so far as to sing the praises of Ayn Rand, I do think that most people act most of the time out of self interest and altruistic motives are over-rated. While somebody might help you out to make themselves feel good and just want that, most people who assist you in accumulating wealth will be most motivated by monetary compensation.

Compensation and Incentive

Compensation is an important in getting most people to do their parts in the work that needs to be done to get your riches. More important, in my view, is that all work together in the spirit of total harmony.

I don’t mean you have to finance everything out of your own pocket. After all, the idea of “Think and Grow Rich” is to acquire riches. Thus the financial rewards to your mastermind team may be counted in other ways. You might, for example, form a mastermind group of people who possess different but complimentary skills. Then you can trade time and skills among yourselves.

Building The Team

This means that people who are unpleasant to work with and won’t get along with the others on your team should be ejected. Of course an occasional disagreement is a good thing, but if a mastermind team member is persistently troublesome, that person will drag down the whole project and may even lead to it’s failure. Thus such a person, if he or she cannot be persuaded to correct his or her conduct, should be replaced, no matter how skillful the person is.

Hill’s thesis regarding total harmony is unforgiving here. Skilled people may always be replaced, but the person who has the virtue of a pleasing personality is much more valuable to your team, provided he or she brings value to the table in terms of skills, insight, or specialized knowledge. Furthermore, it does you no good to work with people who are not passionate and committed to the project.

When To Kick Your Brother Off The Team

In my experience it’s just much easier to get the creative juices flowing is a group when everybody is enthusiastic and wants to progress. You may have to “fire” your brother or sister or best friend from the team if this person is a negative influence undermining teh shared goals of the other participants.

This can be a hard decision, but getting rid of dead weight early on is the best way to do it. Some people have latent talents or are late bloomers. Do not confuse silence or a lack or contribution to the team effort as an inability to contribute. As a leader, it is your responsibility to assess the people working with you both accurately and compassionately, so don’t rush into kicking people who have potential off the team.

Money Getting and Creativity

Money-getting often falls along entrepreneurial lines, and entrepreneurial activity is fundamentally creative. The word “entrepreneur” literally means a person who moves resources from where they have lesser value to where they have more value. In the new economony that translates not to running silk and spices from Asia to Europe on ships, but in developing ideas into valuable products and services which can be offered to the market through the mechanism of advertising and thus turned into money and wealth.

Today lots of great ideas and information are available for free on the internet. The secret sauce in the recipe is harnessing, re-arranging, and packaging ideas to make them salable.

This process of taking ideas and turning them into salable products is made easy today in many ways with the internet… but there is also competition to think about. It doesn’t matter if you had the idea for free video sharing first, YouTube beat you to it and your opportunity is gone now. There is a need for timely, speedy implementation. When you have a team you can rely on fast and thorough implementation will be much easier for you.

Your mastermind, when assembled, will help you to generate more ideas, faster, develop them further and faster, and implement those ideas to turn them into money and wealth faster and better than you could on your own.

Feeling The Spirit Of Harmony

I think you will “feel” it when it is there, when you are on the same “frequency” as the others with whom you are conspiring for success. This group may come together quickly for you or it may take awhile. The important thing is to make up your mind to assemble such a group, even if very loosely at first, and plant the seeds of desire in the combined imaginations of those people in the group.