CONCENTRATION 787There is no other answer to their attainment of great power and
far-reaching success in their respective fields of endeavor, and this
is true despite the fact that none of them may be conscious of the
power they have created, or the manner in which they have done so.
COMMENTARY
Throughout Law of Success, Napoleon Hill often names the same individuals
and companies over and over when citing examples to illustrate how to apply the
principles of success. These were the people Andrew carnegie made available to
Hill, and so when he spoke of how they used these principles he did so from
close observation and personal knowledge.
It's interesting to speculate whom Napoleon Hill might have written about
had he been writing Law of Success at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Which of the leaders of business and industry would he choose as examples of
each principle of personal achievement? Had he known him, what would Hill
have had to say about someone such as Sir Richard Branson, one of the more
interesting and unusual of today's billionaires and renowned for his flamboyant,
often outrageous, business and promotional style?
Like Hill's examples above, Branson's school education was not extensive.
But despite learning difficulties due to dyslexia, he was already coming up with
business ideas while still in high school. In 1968 he and friend Jonny Gems
created a newspaper called Student, selling subscriptions not just to students at
their own school but also to those at several other British schools. And like Hill's
three examples, Branson also had no capital, other than four pounds from his
mother for postage and telephone expenses. But with grand dreams, and articles
written by such diverse contributors as government officials, musicians, and
celebrities, they soon managed to sell corporate advertising.
Soon afterward, when the British government lifted price controls on retail
products, Branson noticed that none of the music stores were discounting
records, so he ran ads in his newspaper offering discounted records by mail
order. Finding that the record sales were more profitable than newspaper sales,