I know what success means to me. What does it mean to you?

The problem today, in this information-overloaded digital world, is that we only see the Google's and Facebook's in the news and they set the bar high, don't they?! So naturally, any college graduate fresh out of school, who is eager to flex their programming skills, knows only to shoot for building a billion dollar startup. What they don't realize, is in the real world (NOT MTV), there's a huge area of potential in between a $12 per hour dead-end day job and creating Facebook.

So what does Markus Frind (PlentyOfFish.com), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Evan Williams/Jack Dorsey (Twitter) all have in common relating to achieving their success?  Answer: LUCK.  And as far as luck goes, you would be better off buying Power Ball tickets each month instead of trying to build the next Twitter.  The magic isn't in building the best looking website (PlentyOfFish.com is proof of that).  In fact, there isn't any magic - there isn't a site in any of those three that is abnormally remarkable, as far as web development goes.  Markus Frind happened to do a chain of things at the right time and ended up with a $10 million per month business. That lucky bastard.  I'm sure he never expected that to happen just like we don't expect to win the lottery after buying a ticket.  And he's so paranoid of losing his lucky venture, he won't even update the look of his website!  You superstitious Markus?

I don't know about you, but I find working for someone else and making them rich is not a very rewarding experience. So, step one. Take your radar off of $1 billion dollars and point it at the bare minimum it takes for you to survive without having to work for someone else. Let's say you can live off of $40k per year, running your own startup. $40k is more attainable than you might think and it's 200 million light years away from $1 billion dollars. Ok, you've made it to a level where you can work on your own terms and support your lifestyle and family with your minimum value. Now just think how you can embellish your life with double that? In my example, $80k per year.  So, now you've got double what it takes to live on and plenty extra to spend on wants and wishes.  You're still light years away from a billion dollars, you aren't working for anyone else (can you say PRIDE?), and I would be willing to bet, you jump out of bed each morning with a smile on your face.

What does success mean to you?  Well, to me, success is being able to make a living doing something you feel passionate about that helps others in return.

The moral of this blog post, is for you to evaluate what you want in life - be reasonable, yet push for a legacy. And if you get lucky along the way, then consider yourself in the minority.

I came across a developer job ad this morning that has an interesting requirement. Gave me a nice chuckle while drinking my coffee.

To all of you laughable sapling spammers who get off on filling the world's inboxes with terabytes of your digital rummage, if you want to feign like you are Google, try using the spellchecker next time.