Want to Be a Millionaire?

Now, with The Millionaire Mind, Stanley has produced a follow-up bestseller by surveying 733 millionaires and learning from them the qualities and choices that matter in achieving economic success. The book is a paean to hard work, risk-taking, and traditional values. It’s also the most compelling defense of democracy and free markets since George Gilder’s Wealth and Poverty two decades ago.

The Millionaire Mind doesn’t read like an apologia for the American model, and I doubt if Stanley intended it to be. It’s not ideological or political. But it is filled with success stories that could have happened only in this country, and it extols character traits that practically every American has or can acquire. On the last page, Stanley summarizes “the eight important elements of the economic success equation.” Inheriting a wad and getting lucky in the stock market aren’t among them. Instead, he lists things like “a balanced lifestyle,” having an “economically productive household,” picking a vocation you love, and working hard with integrity and focus.

There’s nothing novel in those. But two factors drawn from Stanley’s interviews with millionaires are new, and his examination of them lifts The Millionaire Mind well above the ordinary run of get-rich-fast business books. The first factor is brains, grades, and test scores. What’s important is their irrelevance. Forget everything you’ve read about how a meritocracy based on SAT scores and diplomas from prestige schools is taking over the country; forget Nicholas Lemann’s The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy and even Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve. Stanley has discovered, from a few scholars but mostly from millionaires themselves, that grades and test scores “do not explain a statistically significant portion of the variation in wealth or income.”

In fact, academic success is sometimes a hindrance, since it leads to good jobs right out of college or graduate school and reduces the need for risk-taking that can lead to riches. Most millionaires were told, at some point in their lives, that they were not intellectually talented, not a candidate for law or medical school, not qualified to get an MBA, or not smart enough to get ahead in just about any field. Most aren’t brainy “in the analytical sense,” Stanley writes. And because they didn’t receive all A’s or score above 1,400 on the college boards, “they decided not to compete in macho dogfight environments where superior analytical intelligence is a requirement to succeed.” Instead, many chose to employ themselves, The Millionaire Mind points out, hiring themselves “when other employers would not.” Their success was based on hard work, recovering from setbacks, and deflecting “even the harshest evaluations by some of the nastiest critics.”

Stanley gives special attention to what he calls the “900 club.” It consists of millionaires who scored less than 1,000 on their SATs. “A minority of millionaires fall into this category,” he writes. “But the point is that it’s possible to become an economic success with scores that are mediocre or worse.” In school, they “learned to fight” to be successful, “though they were labeled as having just average or less ability.”

“They discovered there are other significant factors in the wealth equation” — and not merely hard work. Stanley says members of the “900 club” rate “being honest” as a significant success factor, along with having a supportive spouse. They often credit a teacher or mentor with inspiring them. They believe part-time work during college taught them they didn’t want to be desk clerks or waiters. They believe competitive sports helped. “Perhaps this experience had something to do with their ability to deal with criticisms of detractors and ‘win games’ they were predicted to lose,” Stanley suggests.

The book offers a special note to parents of poor students: “Far too often parents with good intentions unknowingly condemn their own children to a life of low economic productivity by telling them ten thousand times: You will never amount to anything if you don’t do well in school.” Not only is it untrue, but harping on the subject may condition a child’s mind “to respond negatively to cues concerning wealth-building opportunities.”

The other new factor in reaching millionairehood — new to me, anyway — is what Stanley calls “choice of spouse.” It’s Chapter Six in the book, but I looked at it first and read passages aloud to my wife Barbara. Maybe we shouldn’t have been, but we were surprised at the overwhelming relation between a good marriage and economic achievement. Millionaires, it turns out, have one-third the divorce rate of average American couples. “The positive correlation between length of marriage and level of wealth is very strong and holds true throughout all education and income groups in America,” Stanley says.

When millionaires describe their mates, they talk about how they are “down to earth” and “patient” and “my emotional backbone” and have traditional values. “Most wives in millionaire households . . . feel that the man of the house should be the main income generator,” Stanley writes. “The men share this view.” Millionaire couples operate as a unit, with a division of labor. They don’t marry for money, but they tend to be very frugal. And, Stanley notes, “two out of three millionaires indicated that the moderate drinker or abstainer quality of a spouse was also important in contributing to a successful marriage.”

There are many riveting anecdotes in The Millionaire Mind, including one about a divorced woman in her early thirties named Terry. She had one child and was eager to remarry, but dreaded “going back to the dating game.” She believed in the “traditional family concept” and didn’t relish going to singles bars. She wanted to find a husband with stability, honesty, self-discipline — all traits Stanley has come to identify with potential millionaires. “If she were your friend, sister, or daughter, what would you suggest that Terry do?” Stanley asks. “I told her to join a church group. I believe one is likely to find better prospects in a church than in singles bars . . . Where is the higher concentration of people with traditional values likely to be found? I’ll pick the church environment over any singles bar.”

For all its virtues, The Millionaire Mind is too long, a bit repetitive, and lacks an index. Stanley is modest about his own ability as a writer, and he has reason to be. But this is more than offset by his expertise. He’s the world’s greatest expert on American millionaires, and he’s not afraid to endorse the square values that produced their economic success. If you doubt America still works, your qualms will dissolve as you read this book.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.