Think and Grow Rich for Women

Napoleon Hill published the original in 1937, after decades of claiming to have interviewed rich and successful people across America. The business world of that era was male, and the book spoke to men: examples of executives, miners, and inventors. Sharon Lechter took that same backbone, with the blessing of the Napoleon Hill Foundation, and rewrote each principle for the reality of today's woman, who works, often supports the household on her own, and still manages the lives of everyone around her.

The opening argument is economic: women already move, and will inherit, a gigantic share of wealth over the coming decades. The book even quotes a 2013 statement by Warren Buffett saying that women are the key to a nation's financial success. In other words: this is not a decorative self-esteem manual; it is a manual of goals, planning, and discipline, with Hill's thirteen principles repurposed by someone who spent decades teaching financial education.

The format is twofold: each chapter presents Hill's principle and then hands the microphone to Lechter's commentary, with stories of real women, from science to entrepreneurship, replacing the magnates in suits. Same engine, new seat in the cabin.

Hill's first principle is burning desire, and he makes a point of separating desire from hope. Hope is the loose phrase, like someday I want to have my own business. Desire, in his definition, is a definite goal: an exact amount, a deadline, and what you will give in return.

The story that opens the path is Edwin C. Barnes, who showed up at Thomas Edison's door looking like a drifter but with a decision already made: he would be Edison's partner, not his employee. Years later, the partnership became reality. The point is not luck: the goal was specific and nonnegotiable from the very first minute.

Hill suggests six steps to turn desire into a goal: write down the exact amount you want to accumulate, set the date, list what you will give in exchange, build a plan, write it all on a sheet of paper, and read it aloud twice a day, morning and night. Lechter adds the detail women most often skimp on: their own financial goal, a personal reserve, retirement in their own name, and not just the family's.

Autosuggestion, in Hill's vocabulary, is the habit of repeating to yourself, with emotion, the instruction you want your subconscious to absorb. The idea is that the mind believes what it hears from you over and over: both the phrase I don't understand money and your written goal, reread daily.

Lechter adds the seasoning of experience: many women were raised hearing that they were not born for numbers, that decision-making belongs to others, that they have managed money badly all along. For her, that inner parrot is autosuggestion too, just pointed in the wrong direction. The antidote is choosing the phrase and repeating it on purpose, instead of repeating for free whatever happened to be left over.

The practice fits any routine: the written goal, read aloud twice a day. No magic here: it is focus training, the same thing an athlete does when visualizing the race before stepping onto the track.