When I was starting out financially, one of the hot books was The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy by Stanley and Danko, first published in 1996. The millionaires turned out to be small business owners driving Ford F-150s: the plumber with lots of vans, HVAC businesses, auto repair chains, commercial contractors, local real estate landlords.

The bestselling The Millionaire Next Door identifies seven common traits that show up again and again among those who have accumulated wealth. Most of the truly wealthy in this country don’t live in Beverly Hills or on Park Avenue-they live next door.

Well, it’s 30 years later, and the overall idea essentially remains the same. Though $1.5 million in 1996 is more like over $3 million today. The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There by Zidar and Zwick provides updated data and new millionaire profiles.

Most people think the path to great wealth runs through Wall Street or Silicon Valley. We’re told you must be a Zuckerberg, a Musk, or a Jamie Dimon to get rich. But this story is wrong.

Drawing on unprecedented data from a decade of research and vivid real-life stories of entrepreneurs – from a self-made hot-dog stand billionaire to the heirs of an auto dealer – Zidar and Zwick reveal a surprising truth: prosperity is more attainable, more widely distributed, and closer to home than we imagine. A multitude of Americans have built staggering fortunes by running often unglamorous businesses far from the spotlight.

If that sounds interesting to you, check out this WSJ article by the same authors which is basically a short taste of their book: The American Dream Is Alive. And It’s Minting Millionaires. (gift article). Definitely worth a read.

When you own the business, you get all of the upside potential. The new book goes into how improved scaling ability and streamlined passthrough tax structures like LLCs and S-Corps help make the upside even easier to achieve. But of course, you only see the winners. The failed restaurant owners and wannabe real estate moguls don’t have any yachts with funny names.

I do think a lot of it is a personality trait – the willingness to spend 120 hours a week on something that might or might not work out, the ability to fail and get back up again and again, and a strange passion for a particular (often boring!) industry. I wonder if any of my kids will go this route.

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