The American dream is alive and well but…..

…it’s not just for America any more.

…it’s not just for America any more. My basic understanding of the American Dream is that we’re a country where you can come with nothing and through hard work and perseverance make a better life for yourself and your family. The traditional American Dream about getting a job and working hard to earn promotions and more money along the way is getting harder and harder to come by. However there is a new way of achieving this dream which I see as having far greater reach, much more potential and in a drastically reduced time frame. It still takes hard work and earning it but technology has opened this dream up to the world and anyone who wants it.

If you pay attention to the tech industry as much as I do you hear story after story of someone coming from nothing, developing an app or certain type of technology, getting a ton of funding and then selling it off to Google or whoever for millions if not billions of dollars. When I refer to the American Dream those stories are definitely part of it but let’s face it, for most of us that seems as unrealistic as hitting the lottery. I’m talking about the fundamental aspect and ability to follow your dream and make a better life for yourself and your family.

I just got out of an UberX ride with a guy who got me thinking about this. When I got in the car he greeted me and we had the typical intro banter about how the day was going, the weather, Uber experience, etc. Since we were going to the airport he asked where I was traveling to and then offered up that he was headed to the airport later to go to a convention out in San Diego and would be moving there in the next few weeks. The conference was for the fitness industry and he was a personal trainer. I mentioned what a huge market it was and how many different exercise videos and approaches there were to fitness. He then lit up and started me talking to me about his plan. He had been doing those P90x type training sessions as a trainer since the 90’s and back then had never even considered putting them on video and people paying for them. With a wide open industry, the confidence that his shit was good and a friend who could help him leverage technology he was off to San Diego to make his mark. It was a fantastic and inspiring conversation.

The skeptic in me thinks its way too crowded of a market, there are too many big players, why is his stuff better than anyone else’s and there is no way he is going to succeed. The optimist in me says why the fuck not him?   He’s got a good approach, a plan, confidence and he’s in an industry where technology has leveled the playing field for him to be bigger than himself and reach more people than ever with his message.  If I didn’t think he was going to succeed then I need to adjust my own dreams and find something else to do. The American Dream is still there, it’s just shifted a bit. Go get it.

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