09.15.26 Ask An Advisor With Wes Moss

The Clark Howard Podcast

In this episode of The Clark Howard Podcast, financial advisor Wes Moss discusses the rise of 'Everywhere Millionaires'—ordinary Americans who built immense

Key takeaways

• 3 million Americans, dubbed 'Everywhere Millionaires,' have amassed $65 trillion in collective net worth through non-tech, tactile industries like franchising and home services.
• Success stories include a hot dog stand owner who sold his business for $1 billion and a chicken restaurant started with $900 that reached a $1 billion valuation.

Main topics

• The rise of Everywhere Millionaires
• Wealth creation in low-tech industries

Notable quotes

"There are 3 million, what the authors call everywhere millionaires, collectively those 3 million folks in America have a net worth of $65 trillion with a T."

Conclusion

Wes Moss encourages listeners to reconsider traditional paths to wealth by exploring

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:04) Welcome to this week's Ask an Advisor. I'm Krista DeVias here with Wes Moss. Speaker 1 (0:09) Hey, Krista. Wes Speaker 2 (0:10) Moss, bestselling author as of last week. Speaker 1 (0:14) All right. I'll take that. Thank you for everyone for your interest in the Retire Sooner Method, USA Today, bestseller list, which is very cool. None of my other books have done that. I have a special place in my heart for USA Today because it really helped me become author. And they did a big profile on my first book many, many years ago. And that was back when they had a bunch of newspapers went out to the country and people read about it. And that it's a big part of my early journey. But yes, thank you. Exciting. So Speaker 2 (0:44) today on Ask an Advisor, you're going to be talking about what you call the everywhere millionaires first, right? Speaker 1 (0:51) We can talk about that first. Let's do that first. Okay. Speaker 2 (0:53) And that is, I won't even tease what that is. And then later on this movement called Coast Fi. It's getting so Speaker 1 (1:00) popular. Right. I even had a kid ask me about it. Happened to Speaker 2 (1:04) be Speaker 1 (1:04) one of my own kids. Hey, what's this Coast Fi thing? And it's gotten super popular. It's not, I think our audience probably knows kind of what it is. It's a great concept. But there's a danger lurking around it. I want to make sure people understand. Speaker 2 (1:19) If you have a question for Wes, you can ask it at wessmoss.com slash ask. That's W-E-S-M-O-S-S dot com slash ask. Speaker 1 (1:29) I think our audience maybe by now realizes that about half of my stories, maybe more. come from the genesis is usually some conversation with my kids because I have four of them and they're high school. So they're thinking about college. I've noticed I've talked a lot more about college this year than I have in past years on radio and podcast. I'm getting pinged from, let's call it the Moss family asking questions. One was about artificial intelligence. How's that? Is my dad, how is this? My GPT is terrible. How is this supposed to take over the world? But this topic. kind of came from two places. One, the Wall Street Journal just did an article about it. And two, I had a conversation recently with my kids about considering low tech in a very high tech world. The world is as high tech as it's ever been. There's worries, headlines this week, worries about artificial intelligence literally taking over and destroying humanity. Everything is about technology. And if you look on social media, which the Wall Street Journal mentions the flair and the glamour is around wealth that comes out of usually tech. Speaker 2 (2:40) The Speaker 1 (2:40) reality is a massive part of this economy is built on low tech. And in some cases. almost no tech. And if you think about when you're competing in the world, and I'm thinking about what are my kids, we all think about that. What are my kids going to do to make a living in America if they're not some sort of computer aligned industry or high technology somewhere? Not bad at all. But what if you're not in that camp? And the answer is that. This term everywhere millionaires, which is a concept, it's very similar to the millionaire next door, but it's a little bit more about how Americans have gained great wealth in low tech jobs and the jobs that are not glamorous that you don't hear a whole lot about. So a friend of mine is very close with the franchising industry and they have a relatively new, I'd say within the last 10 years. food franchise, and it's around the Southeast. And talking about what some of those franchisees make, $100,000, $150,000, $200,000 per store. They may own three, four, five of these. I started to think, wow, what a great way to make a really amazingly strong living in a place that's probably not a whole lot of glamour. And that's the conversation I have with my kids. Like, have you ever thought about having your own little store and having a franchise? None of them have ever thought about that. None of them ever thought about that. That's not what's on the internet. But it's something for, I think, all of us to consider. And first of all, here's some of the statistics. There are 3 million, what the authors call everywhere millionaires, collectively those 3 million folks in America. have a net worth of $65 trillion with a T, which is not a typo. There are a lot of these folks that are in the multi-billions, and they started out in areas that are not Silicon Valley and not Wall Street. They don't have hedge funds. These are unglamorous. They call them tactile. businesses where you actually have to move things and bend things and open and shut things in a tactile way. The poster child of this is Dick Pertillo, who started a hot dog stand somewhere in the Midwest that eventually ended up with 4,000 employees, $9 million a year that he was bringing in. I guess this is a single location can bring in 9 million bucks, which is double, triple what a McDonald's will do. Wow. And he sold the company to Berkshire Partners for a billion dollars in 2014. Wow. That's what they did. They did hot dogs. They profiled another Chicago billionaire, private jet, 12,000 square foot home, also down in Naples, Florida. Oh, this is Portillo. So this is from hot dogs. Then you've heard of the story. Maybe you've heard of Dave's Hot Chicken. They started an LA parking lot with 900 bucks a couple of years ago. Eight years later, so they started with $900 in a parking lot and eight years later sold 70 % of the business to a big private equity food company at a $1 billion valuation. Wow. Talking about chicken. So I want us to just be open to thinking about the areas that don't get a lot of press. We think about HVAC and gutters as a story about someone who started bending their own gutters, the auto parts industry, where they can make extraordinary money. If you look at a map and look at where... Self-employed income is really high in the United States. It's not in the coastal cities. It's not necessarily Wall Street. It's not necessarily in the Northeast. It's spread out along the South, in the Midwest, all over the plains. And people can find a way to make a living in this very high-tech world, I think in a very low-tech way. And I think we should be open to it. By the way, the largest amount of income, this is self-employed income in the country, is Walker County, Alabama, averages $1.9 million as far as their income. These are pass-through returns, which means it's self-employed income. Speaker 2 (6:58) Why that? Why? Speaker 1 (7:00) Do we know? Probably because they're in low-tech businesses in a high-tech world. Speaker 2 (7:04) Okay. Think becoming a plumber, electrician. I've talked to my son about this when he's been thinking about his career. There are so many trade schools, and a lot of trade schools will pay you to go to the trade school and learn a skill, and you can build your own business over time. Let's go to some questions. This one came in from Mark in Florida. Wes, I really enjoy listening to your perspective on financial topics. Here's my question. I hear some financial advisors say as you get closer to retirement that you should have less risk, such as bond funds. There's a certain person on the radio who is a financial person and says to stay in the market full speed ahead because since the inception of the stock