Anyone trying a “Go For Broke” FIRE strategy?

[Ron Scott]

Well, I don’t suspect many of you will be bringing your net worth to the track to put it all on one long-shot trifecta, but that is definitely a strategy!

OK, so maybe you’re not that kind of thrill seeker, but you’re still risk-tolerant and looking to get to the promised land faster than a Dollar Tree lifestyle with an index fund portfolio does it?

My go-for-broke play (exercise and hold stock options and borrow to pay the taxes over a decade) paid off in spades, but when I look back I wonder if I was a prescient player with steel balls or simply reckless with my family’s future.  I can’t say I would do the same thing again if given the chance.  I didn’t anything a lot of entrepreneurs don’t do but it’s a skewed risk-reward gamble.

Would be interesting to hear other go-for-broke stories out there.

Any credit card entrepreneurs?

Anybody heavy into junk bonds or start-ups?

Or maybe you invested the bulk of your assets in Netflix or Facebook before they made it big?

Name your poison.

[Chris Pascale]

As more states kept legalizing cannabis, I was buying penny stocks in that industry. I bought shares in at least 10 companies. All worthless now.

$20,000+ a year now goes into my long-term retirement funds.

I have a new gamble on Fannie Mae - $300 of every teaching paycheck goes into it.
 - Holdings: about 15,000 shares
 - Current Performance: +30%

I'm fairly emotionless about it at the moment. If it goes to $0.10 my strategy is to keep buying. If there's a reverse stock split, I'll stop buying. I have a few sell orders in the event there's a momentary spike. If it does just keep climbing, I can't say how I'll behave bc $15.00 with 200k shares is different scenario than with 20k shares.

[rantk81]

I'd put this in the category of Gambling/Entertainment, not a FIRE Strategy.  :)

[stoaX]

I never had the stomach for it. It seems to me you either have the "go for broke" gene or you don't.

[Chris Pascale]

I never had the stomach for it. It seems to me you either have the "go for broke" gene or you don't.

I've always admired people who are smart enough to be smart. I've only recently begun doing smart things in my career and finances, and it was very hard to stick with because it's not in my nature.

It started in 2016 when I went back to the Fed Gov't. I had it in my mind to stop starting over because had I just stayed there in 2012 I'd have been so much better off. About 3 months into the job I got an offer from a medium sized firm, and the thing that stopped me from accepting it was not my new commitment to stick with this thing I said I would, but how absolutely miserable I'd been in public accounting before.

[Perhaps not] oddly enough, I've never had this issue in my personal life. I'm a pretty good friend, husband, father. 2 things I have lots of room to improve upon are that I eat too much sugar and don't get enough sleep, which I'm going to address as part of my 2024 goals, but I don't think it's something I could just fix without some kind of short-term system that gets regularly adjusted.

[lhamo]

We bought a condo in Beijing at the bottom of the dip in the property market in early 2009.  Paid roughly US$800k, which was scary at the time, but it was a great property and our mortgage was reasonable as we put 500k down. 

Sold in early 2017 for over 2 mill.  Enough to buy a nice place in Seattle for cash and FIRE on the rest (we also had decent retirement accounts, which we still haven't touched).

[RedmondStash]

There's a fascinating thread on the Bogleheads forum about someone doing a go-for-broke run with Tesla:

https://bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=339726

It is truly nail-biting stuff. I'll leave it to you to find out what happened.

[The Beebsta]

We are pretty much in a going for broke situation right now.

SO had a high income with potential to go even higher, with a lot of stability. I was by far the lower income earner. SO quit their job 2.5 years ago to start a company. It was initially going to be a consulting company, so should not have taken too long to get money rolling in. In fact, the first client started about 5 minutes after they finished their job.

This however morphed away from consulting to starting a software company. Work has been progressing on it for over 2 years now. The product is amazing (in my unbiased opinion of course) and we are getting oh so close to launching it. It feels like betting all our money on black. If it goes well, who knows where we could end up? If it fizzles, well we’ve lost 2.5 years of super high income and the raises that would have been received along the way and the investments we could have made.

The upside is that out of necessity I have hugely increased my income. 4x what it was 4 years ago when I was working part time. 2x what it was when I was consulting part time. Despite this, I don’t bring in enough to cover our high expenses, so we are slowly going backwards with our cash reserves.

We own a highly negatively geared IP. We are in Australia, where it’s quite normal to lose money on an IP due to rent being less than interest and expenses, with the hope of selling for a big capital gain in future. We bought this IP when SO was earning the big bucks. Now, it’s just a drag but I am reluctant to sell it. I’m holding on in hopes of those big capital gains down the track. Coming off our fixed mortgage in July saw the interest increase by over $3k per month, ouch! That’s on top of our PPOR mortgage also coming off fixed and increasing by roughly $2k per month. Double ouch!

We have a few more months of runway, then SO has to start bringing in serious money one way or another. And to make it even more nail biting, I am a contractor and my contract finishes at the end of April 2024, when it’s entirely possible we will be a NI2KWAD (No income, 2 kids with a dog) household.

Wish us luck!

[Ron Scott]

We are pretty much in a going for broke situation right now.

SO had a high income with potential to go even higher, with a lot of stability. I was by far the lower income earner. SO quit their job 2.5 years ago to start a company. It was initially going to be a consulting company, so should not have taken too long to get money rolling in. In fact, the first client started about 5 minutes after they finished their job.

This however morphed away from consulting to starting a software company. Work has been progressing on it for over 2 years now. The product is amazing (in my unbiased opinion of course) and we are getting oh so close to launching it. It feels like betting all our money on black. If it goes well, who knows where we could end up? If it fizzles, well we’ve lost 2.5 years of super high income and the raises that would have been received along the way and the investments we could have made.

The upside is that out of necessity I have hugely increased my income. 4x what it was 4 years ago when I was working part time. 2x what it was when I was consulting part time. Despite this, I don’t bring in enough to cover our high expenses, so we are slowly going backwards with our cash reserves.

We own a highly negatively geared IP. We are in Australia, where it’s quite normal to lose money on an IP due to rent being less than interest and expenses, with the hope of selling for a big capital gain in future. We bought this IP when SO was earning the big bucks. Now, it’s just a drag but I am reluctant to sell it. I’m holding on in hopes of those big capital gains down the track. Coming off our fixed mortgage in July saw the interest increase by over $3k per month, ouch! That’s on top of our PPOR mortgage also coming off fixed and increasing by roughly $2k per month. Double ouch!

We have a few more months of runway, then SO has to start bringing in serious money one way or another. And to make it even more nail biting, I am a contractor and my contract finishes at the end of April 2024, when it’s entirely possible we will be a NO2KWAD (No income, 2 kids with a dog) household.

Wish us luck!

GOOD LUCK!

I have tremendous respect for entrepreneurs and their families, and have know quite a few. Betting on yourself is about as pure as it gets.

[partgypsy]

My Dad had the gene, so I think that's why I have no appetite for "gambling". Dad was in the restaurant business. His whole life he did very well- except for 2 times he didn't, and lost it all and then some. He never set aside money for retirement. Instead it was all one pot that he'd pull from to invest when he felt it.  The 2nd time was during the 2008 meltdown, he was in his 70s, no way to come back after that. In addition to his 2 restaurants (that my siblings were working) he lost his cash and townhome. It was awful to see that he worked So hard for his entire life to end up with nothing. He said something along the lines of, you'll never be rich working for someone else. I admit that my retirement will be modest, but I made sure my whole life I set aside money for retirement.

[RedmondStash]

He said something along the lines of, you'll never be rich working for someone else.

I'm sorry about what happened to your dad. But I disagree with that sentiment. You *can* get rich working for someone else if you're able to save and invest. And you can go broke working for yourself, sadly.

[Ron Scott]

He said something along the lines of, you'll never be rich working for someone else.

I'm sorry about what happened to your dad. But I disagree with that sentiment. You *can* get rich working for someone else if you're able to save and invest. And you can go broke working for yourself, sadly.

Oldie but goodie: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2012/0115-one-percent-occupations/index.html

[clarkfan1979]

Well, I don’t suspect many of you will be bringing your net worth to the track to put it all on one long-shot trifecta, but that is definitely a strategy!

OK, so maybe you’re not that kind of thrill seeker, but you’re still risk-tolerant and looking to get to the promised land faster than a Dollar Tree lifestyle with an index fund portfolio does it?

My go-for-broke play (exercise and hold stock options and borrow to pay the taxes over a decade) paid off in spades, but when I look back I wonder if I was a prescient player with steel balls or simply reckless with my family’s future.  I can’t say I would do the same thing again if given the chance.  I didn’t anything a lot of entrepreneurs don’t do but it’s a skewed risk-reward gamble.

Would be interesting to hear other go-for-broke stories out there.

Any credit card entrepreneurs?

Anybody heavy into junk bonds or start-ups?

Or maybe you invested the bulk of your assets in Netflix or Facebook before they made it big?

Name your poison.

Perception of risk is going to be very different from person to person. What is "risky" to one person is not a big deal to another person. Two people can engage in the same investment or business (opening a restaurant) and the risk can be different for the two different people based on their personal situation. One person is under capitalized and more likely to fail. Another person has less time available and more likely to fail. 

I bought a fixer-upper house in Hawaii in 2018. This was my 3rd time buying a fixer. Previous purchases were in 2007 and 2012. I'm not a professional flipper. I'm just a regular home owner that has become more comfortable with basic repairs. I had a handyman that served as my general contractor to help me. He personally thought the house was too big and in too much disrepair for me to handle. After we completed the last project about 12 months later, I thanked him for his hard work and let him know that I was pleased with the final product. He looked at me and said, "Yep, you got some big balls dude." I was surprised by his comment and asked him for clarification. He just reiterated that he was very skeptical 12 months ago and he didn't think I could pull it off. I didn't think it was a moonshot, but I guess he did.

 



   

[Metalcat]

He said something along the lines of, you'll never be rich working for someone else.

I'm sorry about what happened to your dad. But I disagree with that sentiment. You *can* get rich working for someone else if you're able to save and invest. And you can go broke working for yourself, sadly.

Yep, in my industry it was very common to open your own small business, but it was a terrible investment compared to working for someone else.

The owner I contracted for used to fume every time she handed me my paycheque and it was double her take-home for half the work and a tenth of the stress. She used to glare at me and say "I want your job" and I would laugh and say "Yep! Sucks to be you!"

Not all industries make for great business ownership opportunities. There's a reason so many people work for others, because it's very hard to compete as a small business owner in a lot of arenas.

I'm starting in a new industry where yet again I have to decide if I want to start my own small business or work for someone else. So far, again, I'm leaning towards working for someone else as the more lucrative play.

ETA: to clarify, the reason I see working for others in my industry as more lucrative is because of the flexibility and nimble response to changing market forces. Being a business owner is like being a home owner, on paper it usually looks like the better option, but what can't be easily quantified are all of the opportunity costs of owning. Owning things make you less nimble responsive to market forces. If market forces change rapidly, I can adapt as an individual by switching employers, relocating, or upskilling to meet the new demands. If I own and I'm leveraged, have overhead, and depend on staff, I can't just quickly change course.

Many of my owner colleagues have been absolutely pummeled by interest rates, supply chain costs, and staffing shortages. Meanwhile, if I were still working, I could be charging these owners absolutely extortionate rates if I targeted the right businesses under the right circumstances because I could modify the way I work overnight, they can't.

Some industries are less flexible than others, and those tend to be the ones where owning has more pain points during market shifts.

[Jack0Life]

My friend did.
I hung around him quite a bit 3-4 yrs ago right before the pandemic.
He was lounging through life until he got a pretty decent job being a contractor.
He was working his butt off making upward of $150k accepting jobs whenever he could.
He then sold off his house and all of his belongings and went for broke buying cryptos that he got advice from someone. I told him he was crazy. He told me he had a good job and he can always make more money.
Anyway, he had around $400k and he turned it into ~$5 millions, moved back to the homeland and is living the highlife since.
I don't talk to the guy anymore but through friends, he's still living the life.
I got to give it to him for having the balls to go for broke like that.

[clarkfan1979]

He said something along the lines of, you'll never be rich working for someone else.

I'm sorry about what happened to your dad. But I disagree with that sentiment. You *can* get rich working for someone else if you're able to save and invest. And you can go broke working for yourself, sadly.

My dad told me the same thing when I was in my early 20's. I think his true words were, "You can only get rich if you have other people working for you, you know that, right?" My dad was a construction worker and mostly saw wealth exist among people who owned construction companies.

For context, my dad is not great with money and sometimes struggles with basic math. My dad told me just last month that he got a D- in Algebra 1 in high school, but he didn't really pass the course. The teacher took pitty on him and gave him a D-, even though he didn't earn it. He told me that the was grateful for the teacher helping him out. If he didn't pass the course, he wouldn't have graduated from high school. I personally think the teacher did him a disservice by giving him a passing grade. My dad had a high paying construction job, but lived a poor life, mostly because he was bad at math.

I guess the word "rich" is subjective. However, I think I have a clear path to make it to the top 1% for wealth and I will be a W-2 employee my whole life.

[ChpBstrd]

I keep looking for go-for-broke strategies and chickening out. This is informed by some of my past decisions, in which my 100% conviction ideas did not pan out. I've learned a lot about my thought process, and how I have a skeptical / contrarian bias that gets me into trouble sometimes, and causes me to miss out on gains other times. The grass is always greener where the herd isn't grazing.

In 2021 I invested a large chunk of my assets into triple-leveraged ETFs like TQQQ, on the rationale that stimmie checks were going to drive hyper-consumption for another couple of years. This would be correct, but I failed to account for inflation and interest rates.

I got my portfolio up to $1.45M, from $1M, and was about to go back to single-leverage. But we had a spendy year, and my FIRE number was more like $1.5M. So I decided to hold a few more weeks to earn another $50k before retiring with a safely collared portfolio. With that kind of money at that kind of leverage, I was making and losing $50k on typical days! Thus I needed just another quick up day to hit the sell button. That was early January 2022.

Of course, a correction immediately started and I lost $400k in the next two months before throwing in the towel on my thesis and ending up back where I started. The regret really burns with that one, because I played one last roll at the casino, against my better judgement. I came *that* close to FIRE and blew it, lol! But at least I threw in the towel when I did, because more losses would have been on the way.

In early November 2023, I put 90% of my portfolio into long-duration treasury bonds, particularly the lowest-yielding 30y bonds issued a couple of years ago and zeros. My thesis was that the run-up in long-duration yields was going to reverse as either of the following things happened:
1) Signs of a recession appear, or
2) Signs of a soft landing appear.
I also felt the high yields were partially a result of a backlog of treasuries released in a surge after the June debt ceiling political fight. I figured I would hold a year or two to see my scenario happen. Instead the yield collapse happened in two months, and I'm currently selling bond with gains in the 15-18% range. It was nice making $80k in a few weeks with practically no significant down days.

If unemployment starts rising, I'll be tempted to play triple-levered ETFs again - this time SQQQ. But at this point it's my game to lose and the virtue of patience was painfully illustrated to me in early 2022! The flipside of YOLO is you only have to die once.

[Metalcat]

He said something along the lines of, you'll never be rich working for someone else.

I'm sorry about what happened to your dad. But I disagree with that sentiment. You *can* get rich working for someone else if you're able to save and invest. And you can go broke working for yourself, sadly.

My dad told me the same thing when I was in my early 20's. I think his true words were, "You can only get rich if you have other people working for you, you know that, right?" My dad was a construction worker and mostly saw wealth exist among people who owned construction companies.

For context, my dad is not great with money and sometimes struggles with basic math. My dad told me just last month that he got a D- in Algebra 1 in high school, but he didn't really pass the course. The teacher took pitty on him and gave him a D-, even though he didn't earn it. He told me that the was grateful for the teacher helping him out. If he didn't pass the course, he wouldn't have graduated from high school. I personally think the teacher did him a disservice by giving him a passing grade. My dad had a high paying construction job, but lived a poor life, mostly because he was bad at math.

I guess the word "rich" is subjective. However, I think I have a clear path to make it to the top 1% for wealth and I will be a W-2 employee my whole life.

.
Rich is subjective, some of the wealthiest people I know are corporate executives who get massive bonuses that eclipse the fuck out of the wealth of most of the "wealthy" business owners I know.

The richest person I know is absolutely a business owner, most of the world's most wealthy are, because it's true, the max earning potential comes from being at the top of the largest heap. However, at all levels of business ownership there's a lot of survival bias.

Sure, a chef who owns a successful restaurant will predictably make a lot more than a chef who works for a top restaurant, but what about the 80-90% of restaurant owners who fail within a few years?

How many startups go nowhere? Even in construction, owners make so much money because failure among their competition is so high, so a lot of staff don't have the stones to go out on their own because they're so liable to lose everything.

Saying owning a business makes you more money than being an employee is like saying becoming a successful influencer is more lucrative than a typical career. It is, but how many wannabe influencers actually become highly successful?

Succeeding at owning a business is a great way to make more money. Sure, succeeding at anything is a great way to do well at that thing, lol.

[RedmondStash]

The richest person I know is absolutely a business owner, most of the world's most wealthy are, because it's true, the max earning potential comes from being at the top of the largest heap. However, at all levels of business ownership there's a lot of survival bias.

I think the logic of this is what sold me on the mustachian approach to begin with. But instead of owning my own business, I'm using my $$ to ride the coattails of other business owners, putting my "employee" dollars to work. The business owners get a meal, and I get a taste, and the tastes add up over time.

So I guess in a way, I *am* a business owner, just a very small part of a very large number of businesses.

[Bartlebooth]

When I was in my early 20s my friend had a friend who was doing something supposedly very profitable (would double my investment), my friend would pay me back if helped him out, etc.  I had about 20k liquid, most of which I was planning to put as a down payment on a house.  I gave him $15k (money transfers to friend of friend overseas, pretty interesting stuff) and only did $5k or something down on the house, a few months later the $15k was clearly gone.  I have never asked that friend to repay me, and am still decent friends with him 10+ years later (was just his best man this summer).  We don't talk about that dark time lol.

I think that counts as going for broke!

Then a year or two later I bought 150 Bitcoins in early 2013 for average $24 each--$3500 or so total.  I have sold some at various points since, maybe $750k worth?  And still hold about that much.

So I have learned some hard lessons and had some incredible luck.  Fortunately my risky decisions have never really been the sort of thing that would put me out on the streets in case of failure.

[Metalcat]

The richest person I know is absolutely a business owner, most of the world's most wealthy are, because it's true, the max earning potential comes from being at the top of the largest heap. However, at all levels of business ownership there's a lot of survival bias.

I think the logic of this is what sold me on the mustachian approach to begin with. But instead of owning my own business, I'm using my $$ to ride the coattails of other business owners, putting my "employee" dollars to work. The business owners get a meal, and I get a taste, and the tastes add up over time.

So I guess in a way, I *am* a business owner, just a very small part of a very large number of businesses.

You definitely don't get the max earning by owning index funds, but you certainly get to sit in the roo of a pretty good heap of assets that perform well on average.

The people who win big also risk big. I was just reading the history of PayPal and it's incredible how fragile that business was. They pulled back from the brink of total failure so many times, it's like a cat with 9 lives, and all for a  final product that was a throw away side product that they never even wanted to make in the first place, which they only developed after their main ideas failed absolutely miserably. And the entire time, a minor ideological shift at eBay could have crushed them, dead in their tracks at any second. Their entire business survived because a bigger company that wanted them gone chose not to kill them the easy way.

The line between great success and great failure is gossamer thin and almost entirely arbitrary.

We tend to see success stories as the results of inevitability thanks to the talents and ingenuity of those who succeed, but they're usually playing with fire while covered in gasoline trying not to get burned. A lot of specific successes could just as easily have never happened, or have happened to someone else.

[MaybeBabyMustache]

There's a fascinating thread on the Bogleheads forum about someone doing a go-for-broke run with Tesla:

https://bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=339726

It is truly nail-biting stuff. I'll leave it to you to find out what happened.

That was like a car crash - couldn't stop reading!

[Ron Scott]

The richest person I know is absolutely a business owner, most of the world's most wealthy are, because it's true, the max earning potential comes from being at the top of the largest heap. However, at all levels of business ownership there's a lot of survival bias.

I think the logic of this is what sold me on the mustachian approach to begin with. But instead of owning my own business, I'm using my $$ to ride the coattails of other business owners, putting my "employee" dollars to work. The business owners get a meal, and I get a taste, and the tastes add up over time.

So I guess in a way, I *am* a business owner, just a very small part of a very large number of businesses.

You definitely don't get the max earning by owning index funds, but you certainly get to sit in the roo of a pretty good heap of assets that perform well on average.

The people who win big also risk big. I was just reading the history of PayPal and it's incredible how fragile that business was. They pulled back from the brink of total failure so many times, it's like a cat with 9 lives, and all for a  final product that was a throw away side product that they never even wanted to make in the first place, which they only developed after their main ideas failed absolutely miserably. And the entire time, a minor ideological shift at eBay could have crushed them, dead in their tracks at any second. Their entire business survived because a bigger company that wanted them gone chose not to kill them the easy way.

The line between great success and great failure is gossamer thin and almost entirely arbitrary.

We tend to see success stories as the results of inevitability thanks to the talents and ingenuity of those who succeed, but they're usually playing with fire while covered in gasoline trying not to get burned.

Not exactly.

LOL I think we can all stipulate there is a key difference between being a “business owner“ because you bought a few shares of company stock and therefore own piece of that business, and being an entrepreneur. The sizable majority of Americans own some stock, while a minority are entrepreneurs.

There are also several flavors of entrepreneurship. Some entrepreneurs go-for-broke, actually go broke, and bounce back quickly. Others not so much.

Entrepreneurs who understand how to build moats around businesses and who have developed skill sets that are highly desirable in the marketplace bounce back. They bounce back by finding a high paying job, or raising money to start another business. It happens all the time. Other entrepreneurs, who start businesses with very low barriers to entry (pizzeria, small clothing store, etc.), can have a more difficult time picking up the pieces after a business failure.

Most entrepreneurs are out there with their pants down, risking a lot and relying on their strength of character to keep it together. They are amazing people in my opinion. Not all of them have an easy time mitigating failure however. Those who do are golden.

[Metalcat]

The richest person I know is absolutely a business owner, most of the world's most wealthy are, because it's true, the max earning potential comes from being at the top of the largest heap. However, at all levels of business ownership there's a lot of survival bias.

I think the logic of this is what sold me on the mustachian approach to begin with. But instead of owning my own business, I'm using my $$ to ride the coattails of other business owners, putting my "employee" dollars to work. The business owners get a meal, and I get a taste, and the tastes add up over time.

So I guess in a way, I *am* a business owner, just a very small part of a very large number of businesses.

You definitely don't get the max earning by owning index funds, but you certainly get to sit in the roo of a pretty good heap of assets that perform well on average.

The people who win big also risk big. I was just reading the history of PayPal and it's incredible how fragile that business was. They pulled back from the brink of total failure so many times, it's like a cat with 9 lives, and all for a  final product that was a throw away side product that they never even wanted to make in the first place, which they only developed after their main ideas failed absolutely miserably. And the entire time, a minor ideological shift at eBay could have crushed them, dead in their tracks at any second. Their entire business survived because a bigger company that wanted them gone chose not to kill them the easy way.

The line between great success and great failure is gossamer thin and almost entirely arbitrary.

We tend to see success stories as the results of inevitability thanks to the talents and ingenuity of those who succeed, but they're usually playing with fire while covered in gasoline trying not to get burned.

Not exactly.

LOL I think we can all stipulate there is a key difference between being a “business owner“ because you bought a few shares of company stock and therefore own piece of that business, and being an entrepreneur. The sizable majority of Americans own some stock, while a minority are entrepreneurs.

There are also several flavors of entrepreneurship. Some entrepreneurs go-for-broke, actually go broke, and bounce back quickly. Others not so much.

Entrepreneurs who understand how to build moats around businesses and who have developed skill sets that are highly desirable in the marketplace bounce back. They bounce back by finding a high paying job, or raising money to start another business. It happens all the time. Other entrepreneurs, who start businesses with very low barriers to entry (pizzeria, small clothing store, etc.), can have a more difficult time picking up the pieces after a business failure.

Most entrepreneurs are out there with their pants down, risking a lot and relying on their strength of character to keep it together. They are amazing people in my opinion. Not all of them have an easy time mitigating failure however. Those who do are golden.

Lol, I spent years working with business owners, I would say the majority are absolutely not "amazing people."

People who own businesses aren't some special breed, they're like everyone else. Some are good at making money, some aren't. Some are ethical, many aren't. Some are smart, some are dumb as a bowl of soup.

What I have frequently found is that a lot of folks who are perceived as great business people are actually just really good at presenting themselves that way. I've pulled back the curtain on a lot of highly respected businesses just to find rampant criminality, fraud, mismanagement, and often a lot less profit than people believe.

[Ron Scott]

What I have frequently found is that a lot of folks who are perceived as great business people are actually just really good at presenting themselves that way. I've pulled back the curtain on a lot of highly respected businesses just to find rampant criminality, fraud, mismanagement, and often a lot less profit than people believe.

You and I share few opinions and run in completely different social/business circles. What you describe above is anathema to me as I don’t deal with the same people as you.  Most of my experiences with business entrepreneurs stem from my work years. A major exit strategy for them is to be acquired by a larger institution and I was in a position of seeking them out and vetting them for fit in my company. This process could take 1 lunch or literally last for years.

I also know a bunch of mom-and-pop types: restaurants, real estate, independent contractors, a sizable landscaper, doctors, lawyers, etc.

The entrepreneurs I’ve met (100+) are fascinating people who are intelligent, believe in themselves, persevere in the face of adversity, and work really hard. You apparently find a lot of them to be…crooks? OK.

Next…

[Metalcat]

What I have frequently found is that a lot of folks who are perceived as great business people are actually just really good at presenting themselves that way. I've pulled back the curtain on a lot of highly respected businesses just to find rampant criminality, fraud, mismanagement, and often a lot less profit than people believe.

You and I share few opinions and run in completely different social/business circles. What you describe above is anathema to me as I don’t deal with the same people as you.  Most of my experiences with business entrepreneurs stem from my work years. A major exit strategy for them is to be acquired by a larger institution and I was in a position of seeking them out and vetting them for fit in my company. This process could take 1 lunch or literally last for years.

I also know a bunch of mom-and-pop types: restaurants, real estate, independent contractors, a sizable landscaper, doctors, lawyers, etc.

The entrepreneurs I’ve met (100+) are fascinating people who are intelligent, believe in themselves, persevere in the face of adversity, and work really hard. You apparently find a lot of them to be…crooks? OK.

Next…

My exposure to business owners is largely through working for a financial firm that specialized in working with high net worth folks, mostly business owners, I specifically worked in the medical professional division, but the business worked with a range of business owners, and we were seeing how their finances are managed both personal and professionally. And yes, there's A LOT of fraud out there.

ETA: to be clear though, I never said the majority of business owners commit fraud, I just don't think that entrepreneurs are a special class of people who are somehow superior. They're just normal people, some are awesome some are assholes.

But yes, I have found that a number of "amazing" business reputations have been based on good PR and smoke and mirrors. This is the same among impressive employees too, there are plenty of "superstar" executives out there who are fucking terrible, but really good at convincing people they're great.

That's just humans, all groups of people have a range of types in them.