Harold Hamm, the richest guy in Oklahoma, came by it the hard way. He got involved in the oil business back when oil was $3.50 a barrel and it was considered a steady, if hard, way of making a living. Some people become rich due to oil and those people are the landowners who were lucky enough to be born on the right patch of land. Others, like Hamm, figure out how to get it out of the ground and usually do OK but never get crazy levels of wealth.

But Hamm kept thinking there had to be ways to get all the oil out of the ground (Conventional wisdom says 50% of a find is not recoverable) and he kept working away at it and finally figured it out. Then he had to take what little money he had and try it out. He had a lot of failures until he came up with a workable solution.

Then he would go after oil that others had given up on and make those wells produce. Then he had enough to move into the Bakken field. Everyone knew there was oil there and everyone knew there was no way to extract it. But Hamm figured he had been dumb enough to try new things before and he had not gotten any smarter, so he just went in and made the wells produce.

Then oil hit $90 a barrel and all of a sudden old Harold didn't look so dumb anymore.

A lot of luck and a lot of hard work. Sometimes it does pay off.

And Hamm never reached the point that he wanted to stop working. His company still drills wells that others say are a waste of time and he keeps proving them wrong.

People who know him tell me he thinks the money is nice, but the real thrill is in doing the impossible; in taking what the experts say cannot be done and doing it.

I guess he just enjoys a challenge.