SCOTT: That’s certainly one of the ways I’ve come to know you as well. What is the power of the MasterMind?

JOHN:  Well, I am a great believer in the power of stories and I think maybe the best way to answer your question is with a story about Andrew Carnegie. He came to this country as a very young man with two powerful and unique goals. One was to become exceedingly wealthy in the first half of his life, and the second one was to give all that money away in appreciation to America for all it had done for him. When Carnegie accomplished the first of those goals he began to wonder how it happened. So he made an agreement with a young reporter at the time, a young guy named Napoleon Hill, and they engaged in what we in modern day language might call a joint venture.

Napoleon Hill was to go around and interview the 550 presidents of the largest corporations of America around the turn of the century about a hundred years ago. And basically just ask them one question, “What is it that’s made you so successful”?

It took Napoleon Hill two years to do all those interviews. When he brought all of that research back, they went through it together and Carnegie was able to summarize it in two phrases. He said: “If you would be exceedingly successful in this life: 1) Know very clearly where it is you want to go, and 2) Be a member of a MasterMind group.”

MasterMind is the power Carnegie and Hill discovered and named that helped Carnegie, Ford, Firestone, and all those great men reach such high levels of success. Hill explained: “No two minds ever come together without thereby, creating an invisible, intangible force, which may be likened to a third mind.” The thoughts, energies, and passions of the individual members of each “MasterMind” group unite into a larger energy—the third mind that Hill talked about. The power of the MasterMind comes alive as the individual members of the group bounce their thoughts and ideas off each other. It is a magical, wonderful, and exciting process!