The Perfect Storm of Opportunity

By Paul Zane Pilzer

Volume 1 Issue 6 SUCCESS FROM HOME 69
As an economist, I deal with large-scale trends in the economy, often measured in the
billions or trillions of dollars. But people often don’t grasp the meaning of billions
and trillions. People aren’t really concerned about “the economy”—they’re concerned
about “their economy.” They want to know, “What can I do in this new economy
to succeed, to take care of myself and my family?” I wrote The Next Millionaires
to explain where our economy has been, where it is today, and where it’s going—
but even more importantly, to bring all of this down to the level of “your economy.”
Since 1991, U.S. household wealth quadrupled from $13 trillion to about $52 trillion in 2005.
Reading such figures, you might say, “That’s interesting… that sounds like good news.” But it
becomes very personal when we look at what this actually means to individual entrepreneurs who are involved in the most economically vibrant emerging new industries.
There is something very different about this enormous increase in household wealth—something
that has never happened before, and which has significant implications for people’s individual lives:
This growth is occurring not only among an exclusive group of the already-rich, but throughout a
broad demographic that includes millions of “ordinary people.”
I call this the “democratization of American wealth.” Let’s take a quick look at how
this works, and then see some of the most powerful ways to ensure that you can be
part of this exciting trend. The Democratization of American Wealth
In 1991 there were 3.6 million American families with a net worth of $1 million or
more. Today there are more than 10 million such families and we are adding new millionaire
families at the rate of one million per year. While we’ve always had periods
where families of great wealth increased their net worth still further, where the rich
get richer, we’ve never had so many ordinary working-class people become rich.
You can see dramatic evidence of this at the very top echelon of U.S. wealth, the billionaires
on the “Forbes 400” list of the richest Americans. When this list was
released in 1981, it contained mostly familiar names such as Rockefeller, Astor and
Morgan and represented a significant portion of total U.S. household wealth.
Twenty-four years later, only 40 of the original 400 remain on the list, and the wealth
of all 400 combined is only $1 trillion, less than 2 percent of the $52 trillion in U.S.
household wealth. The extremely rich, the top 10 on the list, account for almost 25
percent of the $1 trillion total, but when we look closer we see that all of these top 10 were born
poor or middle-class!

Over the next 10 years, as U.S. household wealth doubles to $100 trillion, at least $10 trillion of
that new wealth will represent new entrepreneurs coming to the table. That $10 trillion represents another 10 million new millionaires.
A great opportunity lies ahead, not for just a chosen few, but for literally millions of “ordinary
people,” individual entrepreneurs who were not born into wealthy families, but who choose to apply themselves in the new and emerging industries where this new wealth is being created.
Two of the strongest emerging industries where this growth will occur are Wellness and Network Marketing.