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You’ve probably shaken hands with a multimillionaire without knowing it.
America mints about 1,200 new millionaires every day, and some wild new statistics in Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick’s new book, The Everywhere Millionaire, show they aren’t tech moguls or private equity suits. Far from it.
There are about 3 million “stealthy wealthy” whose average net worth lands around $25 million. Meaning, for every 1 name on the Forbes list, there are 4,000+ private owners worth $10 million or more.
And they don’t own fancy AI apps. They own law firms, car dealerships, medical practices, commercial contracting companies, and regional restaurant chains. All that ownership adds up to 13X more wealth than the Forbes 400 combined.
After spending more than a decade inside anonymized Treasury and IRS records, Zidar and Zwick found that more than half the rise in the top 1% income share since 1985 ran through pass-through businesses. 5.8 of 10.5 percentage points.
Zidar says economists spent 40 years studying "a few redwoods in Silicon Valley" and never saw "the vast forest of American entrepreneurs."
These aren't giant empires either.
Owners in the top 1% run businesses averaging $3.7 million in sales with 28 employees. That’s a 12-truck HVAC company or 3 dental offices and a good office manager. The exact kind of businesses that show up on a site like BizScout every week.
You’re standing in the forest right now, and you don’t even see it!
If you’re reading this, you know I talk about this all the time. You don’t have to be the next big startup founder to build real wealth, because there’s plenty of money on Main Street. And Zidar and Zwick’s findings prove it.
They also found something else I think you should know. But I’ll get to that in a sec.
Take Dick Portillo.
He puts $1,100 into a 6x12 trailer on North Avenue in Villa Park, Illinois with no running water.
By 1967 he's outgrown the trailer, and by 2021 the business is trading on the Nasdaq. Somewhere in there he buys a yacht and names it Top Dog and sells to Berkshire Partners for nearly $1B.
He didn't raise capital at Y Combinator, he just sold hot dogs for 51 years. That's the good news. The path works, and nobody's guarding the door. But there's a downside to being a hyper-driven owner...
Those same economists published the underlying study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and buried inside is something I haven't seen anyone talk about much.
They found 765 businesses where a top-earning owner died before 65. Then they tracked profits after the funeral.
Down 82%.
Okay, death is chaos. Maybe the downturn can be attributed to grief and mourning.
But when they looked at the profits of 5,312 businesses after the owner retired...
Down 83%.
Death and retirement result in pretty much the same net loss. Which means the number was never about the business, it was about the owner. Here's how they put it: "the typical top earner derives most of her income from human capital, not financial capital."
Plain English? They didn't own an asset. They were the asset.
In Own or Be Owned, I call this the Owner Bottleneck.
It's where YOU become your business.
It's the share of your profit that only exists because you walk in the door, and it's one of the most common ways you end up being owned by your business.
So how do you know if you're the problem? Well, you could be like me and wait until you have a breakdown in an airport on your birthday. Or you could do this...
Answer each one as a percentage. Nobody’s watching, so don’t round in your favor.
Average the 5. That’s your Owner Bottleneck Score.
Under 30%. You own a business.
30 to 60%. You own a well-paid job with equity attached.
Over 60%. The business owns you, and a buyer is going to price it that way.
Now, a score doesn't help you if you close this email and go back to answering the phone. So here's a starting protocol. I know this works, because it's from the same playbook I run across my entire portfolio of businesses.
And while it won't fix things overnight, it's a good start. Here's what you do:
Week 1. Write down every decision that had to get your explicit sign-off. Don't fix anything. Just build the list.
Week 2. Circle the 3 that don't really require you. They'll be obvious enough that it stings.
Week 3. Hand 1 of them to somebody with the authority to make the call.
Week 4. Stay out of it.
Week 5. Assess the result and give direction if needed. But don't re-insert yourself as the decision maker.
That's one decision permanently off your desk. If you do this 12 times a year, your score will shift wildly, and you'll find yourself more focused on more important things. You might even open up some extra time for family and friends.
This is the whole reason I wrote my second book, Own or Be Owned.
And if you want the in-depth version of what you just scored, the Owner Score is free at ownerscore.com. It names the exact part of your business that has you pinned, and tells you what to focus on to start making progress. But I’m not gonna leave it up much longer, so take it soon.
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The forest is real. 3 million people found their way to wealth without a pitch deck and without anybody outside their county knowing their name.
That should make you feel pretty good about your odds.
But the same tax records that prove the path exists also show you where most of them stop. They built something valuable that couldn't outlive their attendance. Then they aged out of it holding an asset about 82/83% less profitable without them.
Dick Portillo got 51 years and a billion dollar exit.
Most of the 3 million just get the 51 years of work.
Which one will you be?
- Codie
P.S. Last weekend I launched my newest book, Own or Be Owned, live.
During an epic 3-day event, I handed the same system I use across all my own companies to over 170,000 people.
→ the 12 profit levers to grow your bottom line faster
→ my team's process to create high-converting content
→ our system to find and hire A-players consistently
→ our strategy to price every product
→ our best tactics to close high-paying clients
→ how to build your team so it can run without you
And a lot more.
I answered questions and coached some of you through your business bottlenecks, and interviewed 5 baller founders and investors behind billion-dollar companies.
It was everything I hoped it would be. Thanks to all of you who showed up for it.
If you missed the event and want the book, you can find it here.
And if you learned anything from me or the book, it would mean the world to me if you could leave an honest review.
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Sources: NPR / Houston Public Media, Fortune, Princeton IES Q&A with Owen Zidar, Forbes, UBS Global Wealth Report 2026, Smith, Yagan, Zidar & Zwick, “Capitalists in the Twenty-First Century,” QJE 2019
The information contained here is educational, may not be typical, and does not guarantee returns. Background, education, effort, and application will affect your experience and the profitability of any business. Individual results may vary.
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