In 1848, John Marshall reached into the tailrace of the lumber mill he was building and changed history. He realized that the shiny metal he'd pulled from the water was gold, and with that, the Gold Rush was on.

Between 1849 and 1853, 300,000 people streamed eastward across the Plains and over the oceans, searching for a small piece of the California dream. Most didn't find it, at least not in the gold fields. Mining gold was dangerous, labor intensive, and usually unsuccessful. One who did find his fortune was a German immigrant named Levi Strauss. But Strauss never set foot in a gold mine or picked up a shovel.

Strauss arrived in California in 1853. His brother ran a dry goods business in New York, and Strauss quickly saw the real opportunity afforded by the lure of gold. It wasn't in mining, but in supplying miners with dry goods and clothing. By 1872, Strauss had a thriving business, selling fabric, clothing and other items to stores all over California. One customer, a man by the name of Jacob Davis, had come up with a revolutionary new way of making durable work clothes. He devised a technique that used metal rivets in the pockets and fly seams, and these rivets greatly reduced wear and tear in these areas. Confident that the idea was a good one, but unable to come up with the money to file a patent, Davis turned to Levi Strauss.

Strauss and Davis secured the patent a year later, and Strauss's "waist overalls" became a popular piece of clothing for California's workers. First made out of heavy canvas, the garments were later made from cotton denim fabric, dyed blue to cover stains. The idea was so successful that Strauss was able to build his own factory to produce them. Eventually, he was able to buy up other factories in the area, such as the Mission and Pacific Woolen Mills, which he purchased in 1875.

Strauss realized the California Dream, not by striking it rich in a gold field, but with a keen business sense and the work ethic to back it up. Strauss came to California with a plan. He'd let other people try their luck in the gold fields, while he bet on a sure thing, knowing that every miner would need a tent and a decent set of work clothes. When opportunity came in the form of Jacob Davis's metal rivet design, Strauss's keen business sense had already placed him in a position to capitalize on the idea. It was here, and not in a mine, that Levi Strauss struck gold.

Today, Levi Strauss and Company continues to manufacture blue jeans with a market cap in excess of ten billion dollars. Levi Strauss teaches us that hard work and a solid plan is the true path to financial success, and those who go to sleep poor and expect to wake up rich in some kind of quick scheme will usually end up giving what money they have to the Levi Strausses of the world.