Introduction

We Americans today dream a very powerful and exciting dream. In this dream, a young man with a good attitude, a great idea, and a willingness to work hard starts a little business. That business grows and grows until the still-young founder is able to leave the day-to-day operations to his paid staff while he enjoys the good life: big mansions, Caribbean beachside villas, luxury cars, and beautiful companions. We call this story a “dream” because we know in our guts that it’s not real. Very few entrepreneurs will create businesses that are profitable, let alone businesses that will be able to hire employees. Most businesses have no employees, and most of them will never have employees. Many businesses are “side hustles,” glorified hobbies that will never grow. Just over one in four businesses actually brings in enough revenue to hire paid staff, which explains why the average number of employees per U.S. firm—with or without a payroll—is just four! Just 2 percent of all businesses have employees, with large corporations being overrepresented as private employers of our nation’s massive workforce.

Even among those businesses that do hire employees, only about one in ten hire twenty or more workers. And the average employee count per “employer-firm”? Around twenty.

Depending on what survey you read, at least half of all businesses are home based, and over 70 percent are sole proprietorships. Most of these business owners are working hard every day, often seven days a week. They are their business. Or, to put it another way, they are not out driving around in their Ferraris, as the late-night infomercials would have us believe.