Who are the Main Street Millionaires? Extensive Compiled Data

 In a forthcoming book, “The Everywhere Millionaire: Who is Really Rich in America…,” Zidar and Zwick balance data and anecdotes to reveal who the Mainstreet Millionaires are, and how they came to be. It’s an enthralling take on the hidden wealth of business owners, mostly those with S-corporations, LLC or Partnership ownerships: the “pass-through” population of businesses that are not taxed at the corporate level but the income is taxed when it “passes through” to the individual owners. These businesses are in the service industry, car dealerships, restaurant franchises, smaller healthcare operators (dentists, doctors, chiropractors, et al.) and so on. Unless they spend in “conspicuous consumption” (Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class), most millionaires, mega-millionaires and sometimes billionaires from Main Street could be your next door neighbor, driving a mediocre vehicle and living in a regular house (not a mansion). 

The authors had access to enormous income and tax data, which allows them to discuss the business practices, origins, demographics and composition of some of the wealthiest individuals in the US that you’ve never heard of. They also note the policies that accelerated the increase in wealth—tax policies and such—as well as some of the owners’ mechanisms for sharing their wealth with the people who help make them successful: profit sharing, Employee Stock Ownership Programs (ESOPs) and political candidate support. 

While providing helpful analysis of the data—e.g. just who makes up the top 0.1 percent of wealthiest people in the US—they also show that entrepreneurs are not the Stanford Business School or Harvard Business School grads most of us think it takes to start a successful business. You don’t launch with a brilliant idea and sell out in a year for millions. Along the lines of David Sax’s “The Soul of an Entrepreneur,” Zidar and Zwick emphasize that most start with their own capital (sometimes meager, unless it’s inherited), pour profits back into the business to keep it growing and struggle with having time for family and friends in the initial phases of growing the business. These business owners recognized a need they had or their community had and filled it.

This book is a bit too heavy on the anecdote side. While the numbers reveal financial condition, the anecdotes try to put some stories behind the numbers. The danger is thinking that the anecdotes are guaranteed recipes for success. There may be millions of other entrepreneurs who did the same things and didn’t make it. Most businesses fail in the first five years. Did they do exactly what the featured business owners in this book did? Perhaps, and maybe so, and most likely. So is business success like playing the lottery? Your numbers just have to be randomly selected to win. We won’t know. The authors didn’t track the business owners of “pass through” corporations that disappeared and exactly why they disappeared.

Still this is phenomenal addition to the entrepreneurial studies. I would recommend it as a must-read for any entrepreneurial classes in universities.

I’m appreciative of the publisher for providing an advanced copy.

Ends Justify the Means?

 If you have a good reputation, you can get away with anything…maybe. Depends if you think Machiavelli was being satirical in his writings or serious. Strange that Machiavelli’s writings are meant to be advice when he warns against giving advice. In an upcoming publication, “Machiavelli 4 Everybody” Carol Darr does a masterful job of impersonating Niccolo Machiavelli in this volume summarizing and collating his various writings. What is clear from this is that Machiavelli studied history of power and identified patterns of behavior, decisions and policies that worked and didn’t work in the long run. As the book admits, in Machiavelli’s voice, his writings may appear to be contradictory but in many ways they are sound from this premise: everyone lies, cheats, steals in order to get ahead because we’re selfish, jealous and greedy. So, did Machiavelli do the same in this writing because he too suffers from these vices? The last chapter may give you a few hints and perhaps maintain the mystery. The writings were created after he lost an influential position with a district ruler.

Be wise and seek wise advice is one of the dicta. But if you distrust everyone, why would you? As one executive told Marshall Goldsmith after being advised to seek the input of his staff, “I got here without listening to them. Why should I start now?” And while the writings purport to be honorable and seek agreement, all the advice seems to be framed from the objective of self-service. There is no room for altruism or morality. Yet, of the five ways to solve a conflict, agreement is preferred for family, neighbors, allies and other people close to you; a fight should be the last resort and reserved for enemies or distant connections. This seems to make sense in a practical way but, idiomatically, all government forms work if everyone is an angel, and none work if everyone is a devil. If Machiavelli’s world, who would you really trust—except to believe that everyone is out for themselves? Then the normal appear weird and the weird appear normal in this slanted perspective, one that Darr summarizes as the “author’s” perspective.

If you want to dispel some Machiavellian myths or understand what Machiavelli really wrote, Darr’s book is an enlightening and amusing read as the author has made sense of some disparate advice and rhetorical conundrums in the original writings.

I’m appreciative of the publisher for providing an advanced copy.