The Invisible Mentor

Archive for April, 2010

Today I’m going to expand on Napoleon Hill‘s Invisible Counselors and my Invisible Mentors technique, but before I do that, I’d like to say that a few weeks ago I attended a networking event where Anna Rossetti, CEO, CPI Card Group was the guest speaker. She told the audience that today, having one mentor is not enough, we need a team of mentors (Personal Board of Directors) to help us get to where we need to go. I smiled when she said that because I have been building my Board of Mentors, and I plan to Build a Board of Invisible Mentors as well.

Image via Wikipedia

We’ve talked in detail about how to choose Invisible Mentors, so today I’d like to deal with the next logical step. Please also read “What Did Napoleon Hill Omit? Invisible Counselors vs. Invisible Mentors” to understand how Napoleon Hill used his Council of Invisible Counselors. This process involves a lot of research so let the Public Library, Google and Yahoo be your friends. Just a reminder, an invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing and studying them from a distance.

For each of your five invisible mentors find all the information that you can on them:

• Identify and secure biographies and autobiographies on your invisible mentors
• Conduct a video search to identify videos by or about them
• Conduct research to identify speeches and presentations given by and about your invisible mentors
• Read all the information that you have collected
• Identify themes that emerge
• Who were their mentors
• Who gave them their big break
• What are their philosophies
• In what way are they similar and dissimilar to you
• What did you discover that was very surprising to you
• What did you discover that wasn’t surprising to you
• How do they solve challenges
• How do they generate ideas
• For each invisible mentor, identify 10 great ideas from the information that you read about them
• Combine the ideas you extracted, among invisible mentors and identify new ideas
• How can you apply the new information to your work and life
• When you feel as if you know your invisible mentors, refer to “What Did Napoleon Hill Omit? Invisible Counselors vs. Invisible Mentors” and try to follow the Invisible Counselor Technique that Napoleon Hill perfected
• Now that you have read the information, processed and played with it, map out a strategy to get to where you need to go
• Implement the strategy and fine tune as necessary

After you have amassed and read all this new information on your five invisible mentors, you will discover that your body of knowledge has expanded tremendously. With your Board of Invisible Mentors in place, or what Napoleon Hill called his Council of Invisible Counselors, whenever you find yourself in difficult situations, you have more information to draw on to solve them. Because you know these people who you have studied, you are able to think like them and anticipate how they would respond in a variety of situations. You can also find invisible mentors on The Mentors page.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the left side) by email or RSS Feed.

For an electronic copy of Think and Grow Rich, please click here.

Resources to Have in Your Library

Books of Famous Speeches
Books about people who have changed the world
Books about the great inventors of our time

Resources to Refer to

Famous People Their Lives
Biography.com
Biography Online
Famous Speeches

Related Articles

What Did Napoleon Hill Omit? Invisible Counselors vs. Invisible Mentors

Adventures in Learning: DIY Mentoring Program (theinvisiblementor.com)

Book links are affiliate links.

This post is an update to my post on “What Did Napoleon Hill Omit? Invisible Counselors vs. Invisible Mentors.”

I heard from several people who read the post and really enjoyed it, but a burning question they had was if my idea for Invisible Mentors was inspired by Napoleon Hill‘s Invisible Counselors. No I wasn’t inspired by Napoleon Hill’s concept. Yes, I read Think and Grow Rich years ago and it was a painful experience for me. At the time, I wondered if something was wrong with me because so many successful people had been impacted by the book, which did nothing for me.

So where did the inspiration for the Invisible Mentor come from?

In 2007, I wrote my first book Tales of People Who Get It, and at the time I was trying to figure out an apt description for it. One day while walking in High Park, “Tales of People Who Get It is your Board of Invisible Mentors,” popped into my consciousness. The book consists of the interview responses of 34 highly successful people, and most of them are ordinary people like you and me, so you get the sense that you can do what they have done. The significant thing for me is that when I often have a challenge, I remember parts of interviews that I have conducted. I am influenced and sometimes changed by these interviews and I hope that you are too. That’s why I conduct the interviews so that we may learn from the experiences of others.

It took me over 18 months before I did anything with the Invisible Mentor  idea because I mentioned it to a friend and she thought the idea was ahead of its time and I should water it down and take out the word invisible. (Little did we know that a similar idea existed). In other words, she rained on my parade. I know better and should never have listened to her, but nothing is ever done before its time. The lesson to you and also to me is to be careful who you listen to.

Now that it’s a situation of what is old is new again, I realize that all of us are a lot smarter that we give ourselves credit for. I believe in the concept of the Invisible Mentor, and knowing that Napoleon Hill successfully used Invisible Mentors, disguised as Counselors, I know that I am on the right track? If Invisible Mentors were good enough, and even critical to Hill’s success, they should be good enough for us. Have you taken the time to choose your five Invisible Mentors? What are you trying to accomplish? Who has already walked the path that you are now on? If you need assistance in choosing your Invisible Mentors, the Invisible Mentor Toolkit could be your answer.

And, what are you doing to make your mind a fertile ground for great ideas? Take a chance, risk it, because you could produce a seminal piece of work such as Think and Grow Rich. The time is now to act on your great idea. I thought this post important enough to preempt the the scheduled posts.

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the left side) by email or RSS Feed.

For an electronic copy of Think and Grow Rich, please click here.

Further Reading

What Did Napoleon Hill Omit? Invisible Counselors vs. Invisible Mentors

Photo Credit: Wikipedia via Zemanta

All book links are affiliate links.

On Wednesday and Thursday I present Mary Lou Fallis,  and on Friday, I present Lois Fallis, her mother. This is something I am experimenting with.

I am always changed by these interviews because I learn so much by and about the interviewees. In life we face disappointments all the time and it’s often been said that when one door closes another one opens. Mary Lou was in the finals for her auditions at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City but she didn’t win. It was a huge disappointment for her because she had to change her career path, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. As a result, that event gave her longevity, while most of her friends in the business are no longer singing and performing, Mary Lou is still having the time of her life. Read Mary Lou’s interview, I’m sure that you will learn a lot.

One of the things you’ll notice is that I am no longer focusing solely on just business people for the interviews. I think diversity is important, and I also think we can learn from others who are very different from us. After you have read and processed the interview, what are five lessons that you can learn from Mary Lou? How can you apply the information to your life?

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Mary Lou Fallis Tells Us About Herself from Avil Beckford on Vimeo.

What’s a typical day like for you?

A typical day for me today is much different than it used to be because I no longer have children at home. For 20 years I had to get the kids up and off to school, but now for a typical day my husband is going off to school in the morning. He used to be in The Toronto Symphony Orchestra but now he is taking an art course so he gets up and goes to school and I walk my dog Percy, which is a good way to start the day because I get out and meet a lot of people in my neighborhood. There is a gang of us who walk together. It’s always a nice way to start the day, it’s very social and I enjoy that.

When I return home I have breakfast and read the Globe and Mail from stem to stern, it takes about half an hour. I check my Facebook and email at about 10 am, and I take care of most of the personal stuff. And at about 10:30, I go into my office at Trinity St. Paul’s Centre for Faith Justice and the Arts. It’s my church as well, and I have a little cubby hole on the second floor where I have my books, my music and my files, a phone and computer so that I can service all the contracts that I have. A day might also involve talking to my agent. It could be talking to Canada Council about funding, or a choir director about a concert that I am doing. In could be doing things in my library in terms of making music files. I may be writing an article for a newsletter, or I may be updating my website, and I also teach. In a day I’ll teach two classes in the afternoon. Around 4:30 pm I go home and walk the dog again. Unless I am going out for the evening or having a concert, I have a cocktail with my husband around 5 o’clock and we sit there and talk about our day. His is often more interesting than mine because he is doing all this art courses and I guess what I also wanted to say is that I do not have any typical days.

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

I think that it is fairly difficult particularly because you go through many periods in your life and your needs are different. Early on you are very hungry, very driven and have to make an income, and I think when you grow older, and I do not want to generalize, but your priorities change. I know that when my kids came along I was less eager to be away, and I started to do more writing, and there are times when you are not motivated, and you just feel as if you’re doing the same-old, same-old, doing the same concerts for the same people for the same audiences and you do not feel as if you are moving on. I find that new projects motivate me, and I find them for myself, and other times people ask me to do things. I think it’s very important as a freelance artist, by and large, is to keep yourself open to forces that might provide you with the impetus to create and move on, and that’s the only way to reinvent yourself. Look at Madonna, she is one of my heroes.

If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

I’m not sure that I would have done anything differently, although I think I would have concentrated on learning more languages. I would have loved to have a smattering of German, French, and Italian. I would have loved to be able to speak more, and be more fluent in a lot of languages because that gives you access to tons more cultural resources, and ways of knowing the world.

Also, I may have had more children because I come from a large family. I have only two kids and there are some wonderful things about larger families, and I think there is a false dichotomy with my generation of women that you should either have children or have a career, one or the other, so I was in the early stages of feminism so I felt that if I wanted a career I couldn’t have as many babies as I wanted to.

What’s the most important business or other discovery you’ve made in the past year?

I think that I am coming to terms with growing older in terms of my own aging. I am now over 60 and it closes some doors for me, but at the same time I am coming to terms with it and it’s okay. One of the nice things now is that life is good. My husband left the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and is now a student, so our income is much lower than it used to be, and I am finding that less important because he is very happy. We’re comfortable and not suffering.

What’s one of the biggest advances in your industry over the past five years?

I would have to say social media and much more use of YouTube, the internet, iTunes and those sorts of things in dispersing and disseminating music. Classical comedy is what I do, and now you can do a concert by Skype.

What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?

1. Aging, and we live in a youth culture
2. Non-live performances, in other words people are using more and more recorded performances, and I don’t mean the social media aspect. I am talking about things on video and television, or it’s not broadcast anymore, a lot of the stuff that I used to do for CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). Luckily I am still working on things for CBC but a lot of people are not so lucky because frankly the broadcasters are using dead people’s music
3. Changing demographics: There is a shift in demographic of what people are listening to

I am handling these threats as best as I can, I need to do more video for myself. The stuff that I do lends itself to live performances, because it’s kind of like comedy. It’s so in the moment so live performance is best.

What’s unique about the service that you provide?

I guess it’s a service to make people laugh. What’s unique is that very few people in the world do what I do, which is make fun at, and satirize classical music. Not that many people listen to classical music, let alone make fun of it. And the people in the field have not had the extensive training that I have had in classical music. I’m the only one in Canada who makes fun at classical music, who is actually classically trained in music, and there are about three people in the US. There may be 10 or 15 people worldwide.

What do you observe most people in your field doing badly that you think you do well?

I think what I do, or try to do without being intrusive or sucky, is to connect on social networks with the younger generation. I think for a performer and a teacher, that it is very important to know what people between twenty and thirty are doing because that’s where most of the ideas come from. I have been very lucky because when I was on the board of the Laidlaw Foundation, we got plugged into a lot of very contemporary movements – hip hop literacy, and grassroots youth led things. I don’t think that the kinds of organizations that I work with, the Symphony, the Opera, these people are a bit stodgy when it comes to reaching out to the next generation and providing things that are interesting. One thing that I am quite proud of is  the kind of audiences that come to my shows. I have kids who come to my shows, and this makes me feel very good.

Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it.

I was in an audition for the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and was in the finals and didn’t make it, and that was a major disappointment for me because I thought that I was going there. I was really devastated that my career was going to take a different trajectory. My husband was not particularly supportive of me being away at that time, and he wanted kids and all of that, and I kind of realized right then and there that there would have to be some sort of shift in what I was going to do. So gradually over the next two to three years, I made this shift from doing opera to being in a chamber music group which was less demanding. To do an opera you are away for four weeks minimum, and it’s very hard if you have kids, unless you’re going to take them with you. I would go with this chamber music ensemble as a soprano and it was a lot of fun and I did that for a number of years.

When I was about 31 or 32, I was given an opportunity to write a comic and I thought, “I shouldn’t do this, this is awful, my colleagues won’t speak to me, it will be just terrible,” but I took the risk and did it anyway and that was a challenge to not only change my focus this much but to also make fun of what I had done. But what I realized is that when I went to write the comic, I’d always been doing just that, making fun of what I did. But that was a difficult thing for me to do. And I moved from straight stuff into comedy. And it has turned out to be more durable. Here I am at sixty and still performing, while all my singer friends are no longer singing and performing professionally.

What lessons did you learn in the process?

• I think that I have learned that you have to give yourself time to heal because you cannot pull up your socks and say, “well okay that didn’t work, I’ve been given lemons and I’m going to make lemonade.” You eventually do, but at the time it doesn’t feel like that. If you have the wherewithal you’ll recover.
• Life goes on and you bloom. “You end up doing what you do second best.” If you did what you do best all the time you’d be exhausted. You have a bit of room to maneuver if you do what you do second best. I believe that everybody finds their niche
• If you are going to be doing peak stuff, at a peak level, you have to be at the peak, and that’s why performers at the Met get paid so well because they have to be at their best all the time. You have to look physically good, be mentally sharp all those things, and I do not want to live like that

Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

I think it was the Met because I had gone so far in the auditions, which helped me to get hired her in Canada. And the other thing was the CBC had a big talent festival and I won that and it really was the biggest thing. It was around 1974, 75, 76, a good thirty years ago. When you get to that point people start to hire you.

I also did a reality show, Bathroom Divas (American Idol for opera singers and the person who wins gets to sing an aria with the Symphony) for Bravo Television about three years ago which gave me some profile and I won a Gemini Award for it. I did it for two seasons.

Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?

I would say the biggest failure was the Met thing. The first year I was down there I got sick and wasn’t able to sing so they invited me back the next year, in that way it was the timing. It was like gearing up for the Olympics and you go and something happens like you get injured so you cannot compete and they tell you if you re-qualify you can come back the next year, but it isn’t the same.

I was still devastated when I didn’t go on to the finals. I don’t think that I learned any lessons from the experience because I was pretty bitter, mad, frustrated and it took me a long time to work through it, and then make fun of it. I did turn a failure into something successful and have been at it for 35 years.

What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?

I was teaching at Queens University when I had my two children. When I had Ben, I took him down to Queens with me, and my sister looked after him at the house where she was living, when I was teaching. I did that for a 1 ½ years, then I got pregnant with Anna, and I felt that I couldn’t do it with two children, so I decided to leave my job at Queens. I could have had more of a career in academia if I had moved to Kingston instead of staying in Toronto, and I would have had much more to fall back on as an artist. I would have had a pension because they asked me to be Head of the Vocal Department two years after I had started teaching there. Eventually I got another teaching position at another university in London (Ontario), and I taught there for 10 years. My husband and children always drew me back to Toronto. So to answer your question, the toughest decision I ever made was to leave academia. Academia makes for lovely conditions for freelance artists who have their credentials together. They can have a steady supply of students and a steady income.

What are three events that helped to shape your life?

1. My grandfather’s death when I was 16. I was very close to him and I realized that the people you love are not with you forever.
2. Writing the show Primadonna, and having it orchestrated and put on at Roy Thompson Hall with the Toronto Symphony, and being able to tour across Canada was quite gratifying. To look out the window in Fredericton, New Brunswick and see on the marquis Prima Donna,  it’s narcissistic in a way, but quite pleasurable. It was playing your own life on stage for five years.
3. The birth of my children

What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Writing the show Primadonna

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the left side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

Recently I interviewed Diane Danielson for this blog, and during our conversation she revealed that over a period of 10 years, she grew the membership of  the Downtown Women’s Club, which she founded, to over 10,000 members. This level of membership is significant because many association type organizations are struggling, and bleeding their membership at a rapid rate. I was very interested in how she did it, and it turns out that it was done primarily through LinkedIn and Facebook. She recommended that I read Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah from Hubspot.

At 215 pages and large print, it’s a very easy book to read, but it’s filled with a lot of solid content so you can easily get overwhelmed. My advice is that you approach Inbound Marketing the same way you’d approach any large project, and that is to bite off small pieces and implement the recommended strategies that way. The concept of Inbound Marketing is about getting found on the internet using search engines like Google, social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and blogs. It’s about getting your customers to come to you online.

If you are interested in getting found on the Internet, and looking for strategies and tactics, this book is for you because it’s very hands-on with non-technical how-tos. The book is divided into four parts: Inbound Marketing, Get Found by Prospects, Converting Customers, and Make Better Decisions. At the end of the book you’ll have concrete steps to follow.

The authors stress that you find people who are potential clients and start by building relationships with them by serving them. So what would this look like? In the context of StumbleUpon and Digg, friend these potential clients and comment/vote on their articles. I really appreciated this tip because it would never occur to me to look at articles within my area and comment on them. This is something that I do for blogs that I subscribe to.

For Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, start a conversation with potential clients, answer their questions, and post content that you think they would find helpful. Consistently doing this, your potential clients will return the favor. For Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, there are search functions that you can use to zero in on your potential clients. It’s also important to spend some time thinking about the kind of information that would be useful to people in your marketplace.

While reading this book, I felt as if Halligan and Shah were holding my hand, and I appreciated it because I didn’t feel like I was being spoon fed. For instance, while reading the chapter “Get Found Using Social Media,” I was busy taking notes and prioritizing the steps to take, only to discover that at the end of the chapter there is a To-Do List with a summary of the essential steps to take to increase your findability. Examples of some of the steps include:

• If you’ve somehow managed to resist signing up for Facebook, despite requests from your friends and family, go ahead and do it
• Make sure your LinkedIn profile is 100 percent complete. Link your profile to your business website and blog
• Use the group search feature [in LinkedIn] to find the biggest groups in your industry. Join these groups and start participating  in discussions
• Use tools like Twitter Search and the search feature on Twitter Grader (http://twitter.grader.com) to find influential users in your industry. Begin forging connections early
• On Twitter complete your online profile including a brief bio, your location and a link to your website
• When you see an article that you like and that’s relevant to your business, befirend the person that submitted it. If the article is very relevant, review some of the other users that have dugg the article and befriend them too
• When you come across interesting web sites or articles, submit them to StumbleUpon (don’t submit your own yet). Do this by clicking the “Thumbs Up” button in the toolbar when on the page
• Begin befriending those that are submitting sites that you find highly relevant. Start building your friend list

Five + 1 Great Ideas

1. Rewrite the unwritten rules in your industry and don’t be a conformer
2. Create remarkable content
3. Think about the Sacred Cow Rules in your industry and how can you change them – think disruption
4. Pay attention to your customers but do not follow them
5. Think across the traditional boundaries of your marketplace to alternatives or be the world’s best at what you do within your existing market rules
6. Follow the 80/20 Rule – spend 80% of your time getting more visitors and 20% of your time getting higher conversion rates

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important to many of us and the authors explain that, “It’s about creating content that users would want to find and helping Google deliver great search results. The best way to rank well in Google search results is to create content that is rank-worthy.” (For many of my blog posts I use Scribe, an SEO software you can get from Brian Clark at Copyblogger.com. The software has a list of criteria, which it uses to judge the level of optimization in your article and it makes recommendation for improvements).

Other information that I found useful are:

• 7 Tools to Keep Tabs on Competitors
• Making Your Articles infectious
• Tracking Your Progress
• Compelling Calls to Action
• Tips From the Trenches for Headings

I recommend Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs because it’s the kind of book that you will refer to time and time again. As Halligan and Shah says, you have to be consistent and devote the time to implement the strategies and tactics. Whenever you get the opportunity, visit Hubspot and sign up to receive their blog.

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the left side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

All book links are Amazon Affiliate Links.

The Internet has been abuzz over the past few weeks with Napoleon Hill‘s Invisible Counselors, but is this technique different from Invisible Mentors? Are people going to turn The Invisible Counselor Technique into a fad like “The Secret” movie where viewers thought they could visualize a goal and have it manifest without taking action, instead of taking the time to do things the correct way. Is there really an easy way out?

This post is my reaction to the concept of Invisible Counselors. Please refer to Vishen Lakhiani’s original post “Napoleon Hill’s Weird “Invisible Counselor Technique” and Why it Inspired (and Scared) So Many People.” It’s a great post and the video is a great complement to the written information in the post. See the video below. What critical component did Napoleon Hill omit in his technique?

If you cannot view the video click here. I got a copy of Think and Grow Rich because I wanted to go to the source to present the facts to you, and I wanted to better understand Invisible Counselors. Many people have said that Think and Grown Rich was one of the books that had a profound impact on their life. I wasn’t one of those people, and I didn’t enjoy the book when I first read it. However, I thought that Earl Nightingale did a nice summary of the book. I am at the point where I am ready to re-read Think and Grow Rich and see if my reaction is different seven years later.

The Invisible Counselor is discussed at length in Chapter 14, “The Sixth Sense: the Door to the Temple of Wisdom.” I must preface my comments by saying that I do believe in the power of the subconscious mind and the sixth sense. Here is what the book says about Invisible Counselors.

“While I was passing through the age of “hero worship” I found myself trying to imitate those whom I most admired… I followed the habit of reshaping my own character by trying to imitate the nine men whose lives and life works had been most impressive to me. These nine men were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Paine, Thomas Edison, Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, Luther Burbank, Napoleon Bonaparte, Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie. Every night, over a long period of years, I held an imaginary council meeting with this group whom I called my “Invisible Counselors.” [I added in the last name of Hill's nine Invisible Counselors]

The procedure was this. Just before going to sleep at night, I would shut my eyes and see, in my imagination, this group of men seated with me around my council table. Here I had not only an opportunity to sit among those whom I considered to be great, but I actually dominated the group by serving as the Chairman.

I had a very definite purpose in indulging my imagination through these nightly meetings. My purpose was to rebuild my own character so it would represent a composite of the characters of my imaginary counselors….

These meetings became so realistic that I started to be fearful of their consequences, and discontinued them for several months. The experiences were so uncanny. I was afraid if I continued them I would lose sight of the fact that the meetings were purely experiences of my imagination….

I began to add new members to my cabinet. Now it consists of more than 50, among them Christ, St. Paul, Galileo, Copernicus, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Homer, Voltaire, Bruno, Spinoza, Drummond, Kant, Schopenhauer, Newton, Confucius, Elbert Hubbard, Brann, Ingersol, Wilson and William James….”

In the technique, Hill called on each of his nine Invisible Counselor and was very specific about what he required from them. For example,

“Mr Darwin, I wish to acquire from you the marvelous patience and ability to study cause and effect without bias or prejudice so exemplified by you in the field of natural science.

Mr Carnegie, I am already indebted to you for my choice of a life work, which has brought me great happiness and peace of mind. I wish to acquire a thorough understanding of the principles of organized effort, which you used so effectively in the building of a great industrial enterprise.

My method of addressing the members of  the imaginary cabinet would vary according to the traits of character which I was most interested in acquiring at the time. I studied the records of their lives with painstaking care. After some months of this nightly procedure, I was astounded by the discovery that these imaginary figures became, apparently, real.”

Please click here to read Chapter 14 on page 134 of the electronic version. What Napoleon Hill refers to as Invisible Counselors are what I call Invisible Mentors. From the cited text from Think and Grow Rich, the nine Invisible Counselors are people who Hill admired, and he imitated them, which suggests that he studied them, which is exactly what I advocate for your Invisible Mentors. I suggest that you become so steeped in your Invisible Mentors that you could ask and answer “What would Invisible Mentor 1 do in this situation?” You can also find invisible mentors on The Mentors page.

Below is an Invisible Mentor slide that I created over seven months ago. After I finished viewing it today for inclusion in this blog post, I realized that I have to update it because my views have expanded, because my knowledge has grown, which is a good thing. How has your knowledge changed in the past six months?

Many people viewing the video “The Most Controversial Personal Growth Technique Ever,” may think that they can use the technique to mentally call on successful people to answer their questions, or generate great ideas without any initial work. Hill spent decades studying successful people so his subconscious mind had a place to start. From my previous posts on generating creative ideas and creative problem solving, the process is preparation, incubation, illumination and verification/implementation.

So what did Napoleon Hill Omit? Hill did not omit anything from what I have read from Think and Grow Rich, the video neglected to mention that when Hill started using the Invisible Counselor Technique he used nine people whose lives and life works had been most impressive to him. To me, that means he had studied these people. This is a major omission from the video. Also, he practiced the technique each night over a long period of years. This also suggests that Hill practiced the technique until he mastered it. Statistics floating around suggest that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill.

This is an important lesson to always go to the source if you are able to, otherwise you’ll never know what critical piece of information you are missing. What are your thoughts on Invisible Counselors? Which five of Hill’s Invisible Counselors would you choose as Invisible Mentors? Now that you are familiar with Invisible Mentors from reading this blog, would you chair an Invisible Mentor Council Meeting? And if yes, what would you hope to achieve?

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the left side) by email or RSS Feed.

For an electronic copy of Think and Grow Rich, please click here.

Further Reading

The Sixth Sense: The Door to the Temple of Wisdom – The Thirteenth Step toward Riches

Napoleon Hill Did This, And You Should Too

Napoleon Hill’s Weird “Invisible Counselor Technique” and Why it Inspired (and Scared) So Many People