Roughly 50% os small businesses fail within their first five years, and 65% don't make it to ten. About 70% of day traders end up with net losses, and only 1% to 3% are consistently profitable. A study of 26,000 stocks listed between 1926 and 2016 found 51% of them lost their entire value over their lifetime. And only 31% ever beat the market. Over 76% of Instagram accounts have fewer than 10,000 followers. Building real wealth is hard, slow, and lacks the excitement people crave, which is exactly why it never goes viral.
But it’s hard to accept that when you open Instagram and see “Barstool Sports- $500 for $750,000, 12 leg parlay cashed!!! Or “Jake Paul- quit your 9-5 and escape the cog machine, it’s the only way to be successful!!” Does anyone remember the Airbnb craze? "Passive Income" was all over my feed just after Covid. Two spouses on a beach explaining how their rental property portfolio produces $1M/year, yet net profit, and it's all "passive income". But they don't post about the week they had to wake up at 4 am and fly across the country to assess water damage. Or kick out tenets. Or not get paid rent. Or fix the plumbing. Or fix the HVAC. Or couldn't find a tenant for 8 months and burned cash on the mortgage.
The dropshipper who made $800 in three months and quit doesn't make a reel about it. The day trader who blew through $15,000 in six months learning a hard lesson isn't running YouTube ads. You only see the people it worked for, or...the people who are financially incentivized to make you think it worked!
So I guess the takeaway is this- don't confuse what gets attention with what actually works.
The internet rewards outcomes, not process. You see the business that made $10 million, not the hundred that shut their doors. You see the investor who picked Nvidia, not the thousands who picked the wrong stock and lost it all. You see the creator with a million followers, not the millions who posted for years and got nowhere.
Here's what real wealth creation looks like: Years in the red. Scared they aren't going to make it. Making mistakes, solving problems. Adapting. Learning. Improving their product, sharpening their skills, and showing up again the next day to serve their community. Until their marketing clicks, or their product goes viral, or their reputation becomes bulletproof. It isn't glamorous or instantaneous, but that's typically what it looks like.
Thanks for reading. By the way- if you’re selling an appreciated asset (business, real estate, crypto, equities, land etc) we have strategies that can significantly reduce the capital gains bill. $1M+. And if you are earning $250k+/yr, we’ve got some great strategies to reduce ordinary income tax as well.
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business Employment Dynamics survival studies., Barber et al. (2014), The Cross-Section of Speculator Skill: Evidence from Day Trading., Chague et al. (2020), Day Trading for a Living?, Bessembiner (2018), Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills?, Mention (2024), Instagram benchmark Report.