I am constantly amazed at what things people can accomplish.  We live in a world where we can achieve amazing things with the proper blend of genius, willingness, and tenacity.  Our world is filled with examples of people who have had the right combination of skills and succeeded despite the doubts of everyone around them.  The truth behind the American Dream is that we all have the power to succeed.  Some of us may define success a little differently, but the truth remains.  Anything can be possible.  Our world is full of examples.

I find it odd that, for the most part, we only recognize a certain kind of success.  We only seem to celebrate success as it pertains to talent: musical, athletic, artistic, acting, and the like.  There are hundreds, if not thousands of newspapers, tabloids, magazines, and web sites dedicated to the study of talented celebrities’ lives.  Each year, there are dozens of awards shows where the best in the entertainment industry are given trophies in recognition of their work and millions tune in to watch.  Athletes have playoffs, championships, all star games, and trophy ceremonies with the same purpose and response.  Our society reveres this kind of success.

Shows, like American Idol, further demonstrate that not only do we worship this type of success, we also think that it is easily and readily attainable.  Thousands of contestants try out for American Idol under the deluded belief that they have what it takes to be the next great singing sensation.  Granted, American Idol may not be the final judge of talent and the amount of talent attributable to any successful recording artist is open for debate, but for the most part, the music industry is comprised of very talented people.  In general, the entire entertainment industry is.  Talent doesn’t come easily, and often no matter how hard a person tries, they can’t overcome a lack of it.

The other kind of success is attainable; it can be attained through hard work and determination.  It comes from setting a goal and achieving it.  It can mean the difference between life and death; it can change the world.  It can lead to massive fortunes, or simply fill you with satisfaction.  It isn’t a hollow, empty kind of success, and there aren’t any awards shows to glorify it.

If you took a poll and asked people which they thought were more likely if they were given a chance: they could become CEO of a major corporation or they could land the title role in next summer’s big blockbuster, how do you think they would answer?  I’d be willing to bet they’d pick the latter.  It’s easy to believe that we were born with some hidden talent that’s just waiting to be discovered.  It’s harder to accept that we were born with everything it takes to succeed if we had only given it our all.  Most of us can cite a celebrity or two who was discovered working in a coffee shop or lounging on the beach.  Fewer can cite a CEO who started with nothing.

Michael Dell started with nothing.  It seems awkward to say “nothing” without clarifying further.  Michael Dell wasn’t born a rich man; he didn’t inherit a fortune.  His parents didn’t own a corporation and he didn’t climb the corporate ladder of an existing business; he built his company from scratch.  If you don’t already know or haven’t already guessed, Michael Dell is the CEO of Dell Computer Corporation.  He started with little more than an idea and turned it into an immensely successful business.  In 2005, Forbes 400 ranked him the ninth richest man in the world with a net worth of about $16 billion.

In 1983, Michael Dell was a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, studying Biology.  His father and grandfather were both doctors and he acknowledges there was pressure to follow in their footsteps, “while my parents didn’t say I had to be a doctor, it just seemed like a good idea at the time.” He was strong in math and sciences, but his interests continued to migrate away from medicine and toward computers which had fascinated him since junior high school.  Realizing an opportunity, Dell decided he could sell customized computers direct to consumers.  The personal computer market was catching on with the general public, but retailers were slow to meet its growing needs.  They sold standardized, generic systems which could only be modified through after-market upgrades available through select fringe publications, a daunting task for all but the hard core user.

Realizing an opportunity was only the first step in Dell’s business model; he needed an inventory of low cost systems.  After some investigation, he found that retailers were sometimes sitting on large inventories of PC’s.  Through some backdoor deals, IBM frowned upon retail sales to resellers, he managed to purchase systems at wholesale cost.  Retailers were able to liquidate their excess inventory and Dell got his systems at significantly reduced prices.

Initially, Dell’s customers came from friends and university colleagues, but soon demand increased through word-of-mouth advertising.  By 1984, he was selling $50,000 to $60,000 worth of customized systems each month from his dormitory room.  In hindsight, it’s clear he had tapped into a lucrative venture, but at the time, his parents saw it as a hobby, a hobby that was beginning to interfere with school work.  Confident and determined, he struck a deal with his parents to attempt the business full time during his summer break.  “The deal was, I would start into business full time in May and at the end of August we would take a look and decide if it was doing well,” he remembers.  He rented an office in town, hired friends to help with the assembly, and incorporated in May 1984 as “PCs Limited”.

When summer break ended, Dell dropped out of school without telling his parents and never looked back.  “After a while they got over it.  It helped that I started the company right away and that it took off very quickly.” He began targeting doctors, attorneys, and small business owners who would agree to pay half the money in advance to cover inventory costs.  Soon, he was able to use these initial customers as references to expand his business.  “We sold $180,000 worth of ‘box’ [PC systems] the first month, then $265,000, and after nine months had sales of $6 million. It was very rapid growth.” By 1985, the company expanded to about forty employees and began assembling its own computer designs.  Dell continued to put in eighteen hour days and often slept on a cot in his office.

Two important things distinguished Dell from his competitors.  For one, he offered a toll-free number for technical support, the industry’s first.  Secondly, he offered his customers on-site support.  Dell handled the difficult task of providing this level of support in his own unique way.  “We had two options: we could train and man a national service force, a very expensive proposition, or we could make a deal with someone who already had such a force and provide training to their people to fix our computers.” He made a deal with Honeywell Bull who provided nation-wide repair service for Dell until 1989, when Xerox took over the contract.

Dell has continued to show his resiliency over the years, adapting his company to the times.  He changed the company name in 1987 to its present name, Dell Computer Corp, to capitalize on his growing image and reputation.  He weathered a drop in memory prices that significantly affected his on-hand inventory costs and delays in 486 chip production that further stunted growth.  Subsidiaries in Europe were also slow to bloom.  “We made some mistakes, but we also had the strength to work our way out,” Dell admits.  Dell’s strength was considerably increased after he began selling his computers over the internet in 1996 which quickly amounted to over $6 million in sales per day.

Through it all, Dell has remained grounded.  When asked about his personal life, he says, “I’m pretty average.” He still lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and four children.  And when asked about his success, he adds, “Everyone has their own definition of success. For me it’s happiness. That’s the most important thing. Do I enjoy what I’m doing? Do I enjoy the people I’m doing it with? Do I have time to be with my family and do things I like? That’s what it’s all about.”

"Talent alone won’t make you a success. Neither will being in the right place at the right time, unless you are ready. The most important question is: ‘Are you ready?’”
Johnny Carson

Some years ago, I shared an apartment with a friend, Mike. Mike and I had a lot in common and were good friends, so becoming roommates seemed like a good fit and that turned out to be the case. One of the things we enjoyed was watching movies at home or at the cinema. At the time, I was an avid listener of a Boston radio station that regularly offered free sneak preview movie passes for calling into the radio station’s contest line. They offered enough tickets to fill the entire theater, and the contest was usually held on the day of the showing, so my odds at winning a pair of passes were pretty good.

It seemed they offered tickets every week, so every week Mike and I saw a new movie for free. The movie cinemas varied and were usually smaller locales than the thirty theater multiplexes we usually attended, so in addition to seeing some good movies, we got a good education on the excellent theaters of Boston. We’d usually have to head out to the theater immediately after work to take the train into town, transfer to a couple different train lines, and walk a few blocks and still arrive at the theater in time. Sometimes the adventure of the trip was more exciting than some of the movies we had seen.

As I said previously, the free preview was usually held at small venues, so we were surprised when a particular movie was held at large cineplex in Cleveland Circle. We were even more surprised to arrive at the theater and find the entire lobby packed with people waiting for the showing. We had arrived pretty close to the designated time, so we had to stand pretty near the back of the crowd. To make matters worse, this particular theater required the radio station to hand out individual tickets to the contest winners which in turn had to be collected at the entrance to the theater.

I had never seen such a packed theater lobby and began to grumble that it would take an hour for us to just get to our seats. Soon, an announcement was made that they were going to start admitting people. Mike and I both took our places in line, if you could call standing in the mob truly waiting in line. Suddenly, the crowd started to move forward and we could see a steady stream of people being admitted to the theater. I nudged Mike and said that the owners must have decided that it was a better idea to just admit everyone, rather than attempt to collect all the tickets from the crowd.

We continued to move forward toward the entrance, as the lobby emptied. When we reached the velvet rope gate, I was surprised to find that an attendant was in fact present, collecting the tickets. He stood firm in front of the crowd, with both hands outstretched, taking tickets from people to his left and his right. More, surprising than merely collecting the tickets was that he was actually separating the stubs and returning them to each patron. He accomplished all this, without missing a beat, by grasping the ticket between his two forefingers and thump, snapping it to separate the two parts, collecting the receipt in the palm of his hand, and returning the stub between his thumb and index finger. His fingers snapped constantly and consistently as he set about his business until the entire lobby was processed and had entered the theater in a matter of minutes.

Several things struck me about this young man. He executed his job gracefully and efficiently. His movements had the rhythm and flow of a percussionist in a salsa band. He was faced with a difficult situation in front of a large crowd and stood his ground. I’ve seen smaller crowds cause terrible destruction and mayhem if provoked or left unchecked. He took a thankless job that many people may even consider beneath their consideration, added his own flair, and improved upon it. I’ve wondered if this snapping technique was something he invented himself or was taught by some ticket-taking guru under whose tutelage theater employees advance out from behind the concession stand. Although, I suspect he was self-taught, because I’ve never seen this performance repeated anywhere else in all my years of attending concerts, movies, sporting events, amusement parks, and haunted houses.

Although I may never know his name and doubt he still works at the Cleveland Circle cinema all these years later, I think he deserves recognition and admiration. I’ve often thought of his example, usually when I encounter a retail employee who looks less thrilled in receiving my money as I feel in handing it over. I know there are a lot of difficult, thankless, and tedious jobs that people nonetheless have to show up for and perform daily, but that’s not sufficient reason to fail to take some pride in those jobs. I also know that people who do take pride in their work, who respect what they do and expect the same from others, usually succeed in whatever job they perform. And, I don’t think that’s a coincidence at all.

"Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.”
Lord Chesterfield

I’ve been fascinated with computers ever since the first time I touched a keyboard.  My sister, Ellen, who has introduced me to so many things in my life is also responsible for introducing me to computers.  I was ten years old and in the sixth grade and Ellen was nineteen and in college.  We were worlds apart, but she still took the time to spend a day with me.

We took the train and then a shuttle bus to her college campus in Boston and walked around for a while before she brought me to the computer lab.  The lab seemed huge to me and was filled with college students busily clicking away. Ellen sat me at one of the Digital VT terminals and logged me in. There wasn’t much to do, but there were several text-based games to keep me entertained while she tended to whatever work she had. I also remember printing out large sheets of ASCII graphics (where simple keyboard characters are used to form a giant picture when viewed at a distance) and taking them with us; one was of Snoopy sitting on his dog house as the Red Baron.  That certainly wasn’t the only thing I took away from that day.  I was hooked on computers.

When my father bought our family’s first computer, a Kaypro II, I quickly mastered everything that came with it.  I learned CP/M, WordStar, The Word Plus, Perfect Writer, and Perfect Calc.  Then I set my mind on tackling Basic.  I read as much as I could from books that I had borrowed from the library, carefully keying in sample programs, and analyzing their results.  I heavily modified early basic programs like Eliza, the computer psychiatrist, and Vampire, an adventure game before I moved on to making my own programs.  I spent hours at a time, punching away at the keyboard.

I moved on to newer and better computer systems and mastered all I could with those, too.  I eventually got into modems and ended up running a very successful Commodore Bulletin Board System (BBS), the precursor of today’s web sites.  So, by the time I had my first chance to use the internet in 1992, I thought I knew what to expect.  I knew about faster speeds, multi-user access, and simple-to-use protocols.  What I really wasn’t expecting was the profound impact it would eventually have on the world in general.  I always laugh when I discover how little some people realize the ways the internet has already changed our lives and some of the ways it will likely continue to change them.

My first internet encounter was through a software protocol called Gopher. The interface wasn’t graphics based like the modern web browser, but had a very simple way of organizing data into menus.  I remember scrolling through different Gopher sites and selecting options which led to new sites and new options when I stumbled across the DNA Bank of Japan.

The previous night, I had watched the move Lorenzo’s Oil with Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon.  It’s an interesting, albeit fairly melodramatic, true story of a couple who had devoted their lives to finding a cure for their son’s disease. Their son, Lorenzo, suffered from a degenerative nerve disorder and the doctors had written him off as a lost cause.  The parents researched medical journals, library materials, and scientific papers, learning everything they could about the disease and possible treatments.  Over time, they would become more knowledgeable about the disorder than most doctors and eventually helped to develop a treatment.

What struck me about the movie was how difficult these people’s task was.  They had as much difficulty tracking down the information as they did in comprehending its meaning.  They spent many hours in the library, attended conferences, and met with researches. Even when they discovered what could very well be their son’s life saving medicine, they had to locate a scientist who had researched the chemical composition of the fatty acids to be able to produce their cure.  They literally spent years of their lives collecting and organizing information.

My first search in the DNA Bank of Japan was for the fatty acids they had repeatedly discussed in the film.  Almost instantaneously, I was looking at its chemical structure.  There were links to even more information.  Although I wasn’t sure that what I was looking at was the exact information that Lorenzo’s father had spent so much time researching, it had significance to me.  I realized the power of the internet.  The internet bridges the divide: the divide between people and information.  I’d eventually experience how it bridges the divide between people and other people, and even between information and other information.

The internet is home to some great people who have embraced the new frontier and provide valuable or interesting information, usually for free.  Although some operators request payment for an expanded newsletter, access to their archives, early releases, posting ability, ad-free content, or simply because they hope you will find worth in what they provide, the cost sometimes only covers their expenses and provides them with an incentive to continue.  When you find a free web site or newsletter that you particularly enjoy, definitely consider becoming a full member and making their efforts worthwhile.

One person who provides a great web site and newsletter is Fred Langa from http://www.langa.com.  Fred is a freelance author for InformationWeek and has been a writer and editor for over 25 years, is very knowledgeable, and a heck of a nice guy.  The couple times I’ve emailed him a contribution to his newsletter, he’s emailed me back directly.  My father has also received response from Fred in reference to some emails he had sent about configuring his PC.  Although I’m sure Fred can’t and wouldn’t respond to every email he gets, it’s nice to see that he makes any effort at all.

Fred’s web site is packed with useful and insightful information about computer installations, usage, maintenance, repair, and upkeep.  He has tips on software, hardware, and networks.  It’s a great place to look to whenever you have a computer problem or need some good advice.  Fred also provides a free newsletter that arrives twice-a-week, containing useful information and Fred won’t sell your email address.  And, if you pay for the inexpensive Plus Edition of his newsletter, Fred donates a portion of the proceeds to charity.  Fred is one of Deezle.com’s heroes.

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
Winston Churchill