App Empire: Make Money, Have a Life, and Let Technology Work for You

IntroductionHow I Accidentally Became an App Millionaire

THE HAPPIEST PEOPLE ON EARTH

I spent some of the happiest days of my life sleeping on dirt and foraging for food. I hiked through rainforests and saw hidden waterfalls. I hunted wild boar alongside the villagers, and I toasted the tribe's 97-year-old chief with a bitter tonic called kava kava, which we drank from coconut shells.

I was on the island of Savusavu, one of the remotest of 336 islands along Fiji's archipelago. The people there laughed easily, ate simply, and lived off the earth. The island was made up of vibrant green mountains that shot up out of the pristine turquoise waters of the South Pacific.

I chose to spend a week living amongst the villagers there because they are considered to be some of the happiest people on earth. The people of the Savusavu villages seemed about as content and satisfied as one could get, and though their ways puzzled me at times, their smiles didn't lie.

It was refreshing to see how the Fijian people lived, which differed from anything I had ever experienced before. What I learned from this culture in such a short time can be summed up in seven words: Less is more, and love is everywhere.

After leaving the village, I was so inspired that I wanted others to share the experience with me. To my surprise, I found a WiFi signal in a remote shop on the island, and I e-mailed two of my buddies, Patrick and Nadim, to join me. Being spontaneous by nature, Patrick jumped on a plane from South ...