How Boring Businesses Create Billionaires

章节 1：隐形富豪的财富密码与创业之路

📝 本节摘要：

本章揭示“遍地百万富翁”现象，解析专业服务、建筑、金融等行业人士如何通过经营和持有私人企业积累隐形财富。经济学家欧文·齐达介绍财富衡量方式，里奇·金德讲述打造管道巨头的经历，雷与达娜·谢里则分享收购洗手设备企业、走上创业致富之路的故事。

[原文] [Scarlet Fu]: This is a story about your next-door neighbor. They may not look ultra-wealthy, like a Jeff Bezos or a Kim Kardashian, but sometimes behind that unassuming front door lives someone who's found the secret to attaining great wealth. Princeton economist Owen Zidar calls them "everywhere millionaires." Our colleague Scarlet Fu had the opportunity to sit down with both an everywhere billionaire and a couple that aspires to be.

[译文] [Scarlet Fu]: 这是一个关于你身边邻居的故事。他们看起来可能并不富可敌国，不像杰夫·贝索斯或金·卡戴珊那样显眼，但有时，就在那扇不起眼的家门后，住着一个找到了致富秘诀的人。普林斯顿经济学家欧文·齐达称他们为“遍地百万富翁”。我们的同事斯嘉丽·傅有机会采访了一位“遍地亿万富翁”，以及一对正在努力成为这类富豪的夫妻。

[原文] [Scarlet Fu]: You are one of the wealthiest people in America, but you keep a fairly low profile. I know that you are a known entity in Houston, but outside of Houston there may not be a lot of people who know who Rich Kinder is.

[译文] [Scarlet Fu]: 你是美国最富有的人之一，但一直相当低调。我知道你在休斯敦是个知名人物，但在休斯敦之外，可能没多少人知道里奇·金德是谁。

[原文] [Rich Kinder]: And that's just fine.

[译文] [Rich Kinder]: 这样也挺好。

[原文] [Scarlet Fu]: Is that by design?

[译文] [Scarlet Fu]: 这是你刻意为之的吗？

[原文] [Rich Kinder]: That's just fine. Yeah. I wouldn't say it's by design, but yes, I guess it is, in retrospect.

[译文] [Rich Kinder]: 这样挺好的。是的。我不会说这是刻意设计的，但回头看，我想确实算是吧。

[原文] [Scarlet Fu]: Rich Kinder didn't make his billions climbing the corporate ladder. Instead, Kinder created the bulk of his wealth by buying boring yet essential assets and then scaling them into what is now one of the largest pipeline companies in North America, Kinder Morgan.

[译文] [Scarlet Fu]: 里奇·金德并不是靠在企业阶梯上步步高升赚到数十亿美元的。相反，他主要通过收购那些乏味却不可或缺的资产，再不断扩大规模，最终打造出如今北美最大的管道公司之一——金德摩根。

[原文] [Rich Kinder]: I like unglamorous businesses, so it never bothered me in the least to be in an unglamorous business.

[译文] [Rich Kinder]: 我喜欢不光鲜的生意，所以经营一家不光鲜的企业，从来不会让我觉得有什么问题。

[原文] [Scarlet Fu]: Kinder is part of a cohort of high-net-worth, yet unassuming, individuals that economists call the "everywhere millionaires" or, in his case, billionaires.

[译文] [Scarlet Fu]: 金德属于这样一群高净值却不事张扬的人，经济学家称他们为“遍地百万富翁”，而在他的案例中，则是“遍地亿万富翁”。

[原文] [Owen Zidar]: Wealthy people don't answer surveys, and, you know, some of them are covered by the media, but that's only a small slice of what's truly there. There's basically a hidden world of everywhere millionaires.

[译文] [Owen Zidar]: 有钱人不会回答调查问卷，而且，其中一些人会受到媒体报道，但那只是现实情况中很小的一部分。实际上，存在着一个隐藏的“遍地百万富翁”世界。

[原文] [Scarlet Fu]: Owen Zidar is an economics professor at Princeton University who served on the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration. He now focuses his research on tax policy as it pertains to high-net-worth individuals. His research will be published in a book titled "The Everywhere Millionaire" later this year.

[译文] [Scarlet Fu]: 欧文·齐达是普林斯顿大学经济学教授，曾在奥巴马政府时期担任经济顾问委员会成员。目前，他主要研究与高净值人士相关的税收政策。他的研究成果将于今年晚些时候以《遍地百万富翁》一书出版。

[原文] [Owen Zidar]: An everywhere millionaire is a private business owner who is wildly successful, but usually operates under the radar based on the place or the industry that he or she is operating in.

[译文] [Owen Zidar]: “遍地百万富翁”指的是极其成功的私人企业主，但由于所在地点或所处行业的关系，他们通常都在公众视线之外经营。

[原文] [Owen Zidar]: So you should think of a local auto dealer who has a big vacation home and, like, a really nice boat. And there are a ton of them, and they're in basically every neighborhood in America. So the way we measure wealth is two components. We look at assets and people's debts. And so there are five main types of assets. There's pension wealth, private business wealth, public business wealth, fixed income and housing. And so we basically add this all up for different projects. Now on the debt side, most debt is housing debt.

[译文] [Owen Zidar]: 你可以想象一下当地的汽车经销商：他有一栋很大的度假屋，还有一艘非常漂亮的船。这样的人非常多，基本上美国每个社区都有。我们衡量财富时主要看两个组成部分：资产和债务。资产主要有五类：养老金财富、私人企业财富、上市企业财富、固定收益资产和住房。我们会针对不同项目把这些加总起来。至于债务，大部分是住房债务。

[原文] [Owen Zidar]: There's some student loans and car payments, that sort of thing. And what we do is we just take the difference at market values and that's your net worth.

[译文] [Owen Zidar]: 此外还有一些学生贷款、汽车分期之类的债务。我们只需按市场价值计算资产与债务的差额，那就是你的净资产。

[原文] [Scarlet Fu]: According to Zidar's research, top earners derive most of their wealth from equity in businesses they founded or invested in.

[译文] [Scarlet Fu]: 根据齐达的研究，高收入人群的大部分财富，都来自他们创办或投资的企业股权。

[原文] [Owen Zidar]: If you take dentists, dentists have more revenue than the total revenue of every professional sports team in America. So the NFL, the NBA, MLB, all of their revenue combined is smaller than the revenue dentists make.

[译文] [Owen Zidar]: 以牙医为例，牙医的总收入超过美国所有职业体育球队收入的总和。也就是说，NFL、NBA和MLB三大联盟的收入加在一起，都低于牙医创造的收入。

[原文] [Scarlet Fu]: Manufacturing drives almost half of all corporate profits, but it makes up just a small share of the income going to millionaire-owned private businesses.

[译文] [Scarlet Fu]: 制造业贡献了几乎一半的企业利润，但在百万富翁拥有的私人企业收入中，它只占很小一部分。

[原文] [Scarlet Fu]: Instead, these owners cluster in sectors like professional services, construction and finance. What results is a quieter kind of wealth earned through ownership stakes in privately held firms, rather than big publicly traded companies.

[译文] [Scarlet Fu]: 相反，这些企业主集中在专业服务、建筑和金融等行业。他们积累的是一种更低调的财富，来源是持有私人企业的股份，而不是大型上市公司。

[原文] [Owen Zidar]: Most people think you have to be like Jamie Dimon or Elon Musk, these really famous public company CEOs, to be really rich. But when you look in the data, there are a thousand private business owners who have at least $10 million in net worth for every public company CEO. You don't have to follow the traditional white-collar path.

[译文] [Owen Zidar]: 大多数人以为，必须像杰米·戴蒙或埃隆·马斯克那样，成为非常知名的上市公司首席执行官，才能真正富有。但从数据来看，每有一位上市公司首席执行官，就有一千名净资产至少达到1000万美元的私人企业主。你不必走传统的白领职业道路。

[原文] [Scarlet Fu]: Kinder is one of those individuals. After studying law and serving in the JAG Corps, he transitioned to the private sector. He was general counsel of a small energy company that, through a series of mergers, later became Enron. He eventually headed up operations there, which consisted mainly of pipelines. After leaving Enron, Kinder decided to double down on that expertise. You bought pipeline assets from Enron, and at that time, the company treated it as kind of unwanted relics of the old economy. What did you see in the pipelines that perhaps others didn't?

[译文] [Scarlet Fu]: 金德就是其中一员。他学习法律并在军法官部队服役后，转入私营企业。他曾担任一家小型能源公司的总法律顾问，这家公司经过一系列并购后，最终成为安然公司。他后来负责公司的运营，而那部分业务主要就是管道。离开安然后，金德决定进一步深耕这一领域。你当时从安然手中买下了管道资产，而在那个时候，公司把这些资产视为旧经济留下的、多少有些被嫌弃的遗物。你在管道中看到了什么，是其他人没有看到的？

[原文] [Rich Kinder]: Well, I saw that there was an opportunity to take midstream assets, and if you ran them correctly and really watched the bottom line carefully, had a good mix of debt and equity, that you could build those pipelines in a way that would allow your stock price to grow, and then you could use that stock price to make acquisitions of other companies. And that was really our game plan, yeah. We started with really a tiny company. We had a market cap of the company, the value on the stock exchange, of about $150 million, and we had about $150 million of debt.

[译文] [Rich Kinder]: 我看到的是，中游资产存在机会。如果把它们经营好，认真关注利润底线，并保持合理的债务与股权结构，就能以一种让股价增长的方式建设这些管道，然后再利用上涨的股价收购其他公司。这确实就是我们的计划。我们起步时只是一家非常小的公司。当时公司的市值，也就是它在证券交易所的价值，大约是1.5亿美元，同时负债约1.5亿美元。

[原文] [Rich Kinder]: So overall, the enterprise value of what we started with was just a little north of $300 million, and we had 175 employees. We had this idea that we would look for assets, we would run them as efficiently as we could, we would bend over backwards to serve our customers, and we would provide a good return to our shareholders, and that's kind of the mantra that we've followed for almost 30 years now.

[译文] [Rich Kinder]: 所以，我们起步时的企业总价值略高于3亿美元，员工有175人。我们的理念是寻找资产，尽可能高效地运营它们，竭尽全力服务客户，并为股东带来良好回报。这大致就是我们近30年来一直遵循的经营信条。

[原文] [Scarlet Fu]: And you built it through acquisitions.

[译文] [Scarlet Fu]: 你是通过收购把公司做大的。

[原文] [Rich Kinder]: Built it through acquisitions and also just some build-out ourselves.

[译文] [Rich Kinder]: 主要通过收购，也有一部分是我们自己建设起来的。

[原文] [Rich Kinder]: Today, for example, we spend about... between $3 and $3.5 billion a year on building new pipelines. The trick is don't overpay, but do what's fair and right to produce an adequate return for your shareholders.

[译文] [Rich Kinder]: 比如现在，我们每年大约花费30亿到35亿美元建设新管道。诀窍是不要支付过高的价格，但要公平合理地开展业务，为股东带来足够的回报。

[原文] [Scarlet Fu]: Sounds like a very predictable business then.

[译文] [Scarlet Fu]: 听起来这是一门非常可预测的生意。

[原文] [Rich Kinder]: I think it is. It's, you know, no business without risk, and the old saying that it's the unexpected that always gets you. Who could have anticipated what we're going through in the Middle East today? Who could have anticipated COVID? But if your business is built on a solid foundation, you can weather whatever storms come along.

[译文] [Rich Kinder]: 我认为确实如此。你知道，没有哪门生意是毫无风险的，老话说得好，真正让人措手不及的总是意外。谁能预料到我们今天在中东经历的事情？谁能预料到新冠疫情？但如果你的企业建立在坚实的基础上，就能经受住任何风暴。

[原文] [Rich Kinder]: We are partnering to develop a pediatric cancer center that's going to be a new 22-story building.

[译文] [Rich Kinder]: 我们正合作建设一座儿童癌症中心，那将是一栋全新的22层大楼。

[原文] [Scarlet Fu]: Rich Kinder made it into the ranks of the Everywhere Millionaire and beyond. But what about the rest of us? What are the chances we could join him?

[译文] [Scarlet Fu]: 里奇·金德跻身“遍地百万富翁”之列，甚至更上一层楼。但我们其他人呢？我们有多大机会能加入他的行列？

[原文] [Ray Chery]: This was the, I think, second or third place that we saw.

[译文] [Ray Chery]: 我觉得，这是我们看过的第二个或第三个地方。

[原文] [Scarlet Fu]: That's the plan for folks like Ray and Dana Chery. The husband-and-wife team left their corporate jobs a couple of years ago.

[译文] [Scarlet Fu]: 这就是雷和达娜·谢里这样的人的计划。这对夫妻几年前离开了企业工作。

[原文] [Dana Chery]: Popular for general hand-washing.

[译文] [Dana Chery]: 这种设备主要用于日常洗手，非常受欢迎。

[原文] [Scarlet Fu]: To buy a rather unassuming business in the San Francisco Bay Area, Monsam Portable Sinks.

[译文] [Scarlet Fu]: 他们买下了旧金山湾区一家并不起眼的企业——Monsam Portable Sinks。