As a person whose main goal for being in IT is to become filthy rich and make others bow to my will I naturally look to those who have accomplished this task for inspiration and ideas on how to do the same. I am sure that many entrepeneurs out there do the same, we buy books written by self made millionaires, read their blogs, listen to their podcasts, watch their TV programmes and follow them on Twitter, which is a good thing, for the most part. The problem I think is that the wrong ideas are taken away from the success of some of these role models. Every one of the hugely successful systems have all gone against what was thought as convention at the time they emerged as revolutionaries. In my humble opinion though, this is akin to winning the lottery. This analogy was made by David Heinemeier Hansson and I agree with him. If you think about it, this is exactly what has happened to Google, Microsoft, YouTube, Facebook and such. How many people can achieve this level of success? Can you? Or can I? It seems hardly likely, although we can dream and act on those dreams. However, it is still possible to end up sufficiently wealthy so that you don't have to worry about money for the rest of your life by emulating some of the same traits as these exceptional people:
- Be persistent - don't give up on your goal too easily, if you believe in your idea, you owe it to yourself to at least deliver a prototype of your solution
- Small is an asset - keeping your team small and lean in the beginning is a good thing, it allows you to work harder to get things done because there is no one else to do it
- Trust in yourself - it's always easy to say, I can't do it, if you have something that is nagging away at the back of your mind and you can't let it go, take a stab at it, you never know where it's going to go
There are many more good things that can be taken from the journeys and successes of others but it is essential that you are realistic with your goals and don't expect too much otherwise that is a sure way to crash and burn.
