Chapter 2 - Desire Answers

1) According to the most important person in your life, you, what is the greatest achievement of any person that inspires you?

There are many people who inspire me; personal, professional and family members have had the greatest impact. However for the accumulation of wealth I can think of no better example than Andrew Carnegie. Born in poverty in Scotland, he moved to Allegheny Pennsylvania at the age of thirteen. The first year in the new world Andrew started as a bobbin boy, changing spools of thread in a cotton mill 12 hours a day, for 6 days a week.  At the age of eighteen Andrew Carnegie had risen to the prestigious position as the superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Thomas A. Scott, the owner of the railroad, became a mentor to the young upstart. With the help of Scott, Andrew Carnegie invested in the railroad business. Having so much success by the time the Civil War broke out, he was appointed to the post of Superintendent of the Military Railways and the Union Government's telegraph lines in the East.

Carnegie helped to open rail lines into Washington D.C. After the defeat of Union forces at Bull Run, he personally supervised the transportation of defeated troops. No matter what level of success he achieved, his compassion for soldiers and the everyday citizen stayed with him his entire life.

After the war, seeing the vast opportunity in the steel business, Carnegie began to amass his fortune. His two main influences on American industry were introducing cheap and efficient mass production of steel rails for railroad lines and vertical integration of all suppliers of raw materials. Carnegie Steel was the largest steel manufacturer in the World. He was instrumental in working with Charles M. Schwab and J.P. Morgan to create the largest company in the World. He sold his steel company, with his influence and the direction of Schwab combined with the finances and steel companies owned by Morgan, US Steel Corporation was created.  This resulted in cutting costs by reducing duplication and waste, thus lowering prices, producing in greater quantities and raising wages to workers.  Again, Carnegie exemplified a great corporate leader, never forgetting about the backbone of the company, the workers.

As much as his rise to financial greatness is impressive, his work after creating and selling Carnegie Steel to US Steel Corporation solidified an ever lasting legacy. Carnegie spent his last years doing extensive philanthropy works. He established 30000 libraries throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, and other English-speaking countries.  Andrew Carnegie donated $2 million in 1901 to start the Carnegie Institute of Technology (CIT) at Pittsburgh, $10 million in 1901 to establish the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and $10 million in 1913 to endow the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, a grant-making foundation. In today’s World, with the massive change in the value of a dollar, that translates to nearly a billion dollars. Will Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey ever approach this amount of giving? We have yet to see.

Of more importance to the readers of this blog is that he was the genesis of Think and Grow Rich, believing every person in the United States should learn the secret to success. Obviously the current movers and shakers of the World know this in one form to another. Let us ponder what would the World can be like if this book could be taught in some form in all schools? Whatever your mind can conceive, you can create is so powerful that if our country as whole believed this, the nightly news cycle would not be about doom and gloom. It would instead be about the great success that naturally flowing to us. That is what I am all about, starting a revolutionary paradigm shift, to take this country, and this World to a place of responsible abundance.  I am so proud of you for deciding to join me on this adventurous life’s work.