The year was 1848, when news of the discovery of gold in California spread throughout the world. In total, over 300,000 people travelled to California over land and sea to find wealth. Most were Americans but a large number of prospectors also came from as far away as Latin America, Europe, Australia and Asia [Source: Wikipedia].
What would make someone leave their country, job, friends and family to travel halfway around the world?
A once in a lifetime opportunity as described in this PBS video.
Opportunity – Gold Rush
“What the gold rush did was to give people permission to take risks, to gamble on life in a way they hadn’t been willing to gamble before.”
Although there were significant challenges and uncertainty, people went in droves in search of gold. The potential gains far outweighed the risks and sacrifices.
Resource – Gold
“…gold, precious gold”
Gold is a finite resource. At the beginning of the Gold Rush loose gold and gold nuggets could be picked off the ground. As more gold was collected, it became increasing more difficult and costly to find and retrieve the resource. That being said, tens of billions of dollars worth of gold were recovered. [Source: Wikipedia]
Hope – Gold
“Gold represented the possibility of starting anew, of being a new person, inventing a new self. It’s a metaphor for hope.”
Gold was seen as a way of vastly improving one’s life. Regardless of what status a person held before going to California and being part of the Gold Rush, there was the hope that they too could make an incredible change in their life.
I believe today we are at the beginning of an even larger opportunity than the original California Gold Rush, the Digital Gold Rush.
Opportunity – Digital Gold Rush
The opportunity to create an online business and participate in the Internet economy is massive. 300,000 people travelled across the world to become involved in the Gold Rush, the current number of users on the Internet is over 3,000,000,000 and growing! That is a 1000X difference.
More importantly, you don’t need to travel halfway around the world to get involved, nor leave your friends, family or full time job like those people did. You can take part from right where you. They didn’t have that option.
Resource – Information
Unlike the miners who were mining a finite substance that continued to be depleted, you will be mining an unlimited resource, information. Not only that, the amount of information is increasing daily. Can you imagine if the gold rush were that way? If the amount of gold was actually increasing as they were mining for it?
The Gold Rush recovered tens of billions of dollars worth of gold during the seven years it was active for. By comparison, the Internet economy is $4.2 trillion (Source: Boston Consulting Group) and continues to expand.
Hope – Freedom
The Internet economy and online business gives people, anyone in the world, the hope of freedom to live the life they choose to live. With only a computer and access to the internet it is possible to build an online stream of income to supplement and eventually replace a full time income. I believe part of the reason that “gold fever” spread so quickly was that people heard stories of and saw others just like them succeeding. It gave them hope that it was indeed possible. We are in the same position now, more and more people are becoming aware of the possibilities online and beginning to hope for that lifestyle freedom.
But don’t take my word for it, as one person giving you this information. Here is proof from a handful of internet entrepreneurs who you can research and verify for yourself.
