Most people seem to start with the same 'field of dreams' vision; build an app and they will come. Stephen Orth, however, seems to have the reality pegged.
Over time, I’ve begun to realize something: I was searching for the wrong thing. It wasn’t the app’s success that mattered, but the success that came in the journey building it. The app never turned my business into a product-based powerhouse with a hockey-stick growth chart. Instead, the app gave me the skills to build another sort of business: a business where I call all the shots, where I decide my own schedule, where I can be truly present, every day, as my boys grow up. And, I still get to create things and use my brain to solve real problems. I’ve even released a couple of other apps. But most of all, the business has let me live a rich, simple life. One that reminds me of my favorite Thoreau quote from my American Lit days:
“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods