The Amish are perhaps the most successful when it comes to business. Here’s a clip from a recent article:

(CNNMoney.com) — Want to find America’s most successful entrepreneurs? Skip Silicon Valley and Manhattan; head to the rural Amish enclaves.

Amish businesses have an eye-popping 95% success rate at staying open at least five years, according to author Erik Wesner’s new book, Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive.

It’s a statistic he backs up with a variety of academic surveys, drawing particularly on a 2009 report by Elizabethtown College sociology professor Donald Kraybill. Studying several Amish settlements, Kraybill found failure rates ranging from 2.6% and 4.2%; interviews with loan officers, accountants and industry professions in other Amish regions yielded additional anecdotal evidence of closure rates significantly south of 10%.

Compare that to the average five-year survival rate for new businesses across the United States, which hovers just under 50%. So what’s the secret?

More from Beliefnet and our partners
Close Ad