This is a book about how average Americans get out of bed every morning, go to work, and do amazing things. For these people, success comes down to human beings connecting with each other in ways that make life better and more enjoyable. Sometimes technology makes that easier, but increasingly, the tools that make businesses more efficient are getting in the way of relationships that make businesses successful. In a world where everyone has been reduced to ones and zeros, where everything from our doorbells to our mobile phones define us in the marketplace, a simple handshake and inquisitive conversation with a customer or friend may be the underlying element that transforms a struggling startup into a successful small business. Many small-town business owners have operated this way for decades. They’ve succeeded by building friendships and relationships instead of databases and customer profiles. They practice business in a human and personal way.
Talking with people across Middle America who know the importance of human interaction and have turned that knowledge into a successful small business is meant to be both an inspiration and a guidepost. I believe businesses that strip humans of their empathy and reduce customers to algorithms are harmful to a broader society. Yes, the technology that’s produced by these businesses may make life more convenient. But as millions of Americans quit their jobs in search of something new, we may have reached an inflection point where many no longer seek the kind of career romanticized by past generations. Scaling quality of life is the new priority, even if that means making less money, living in a smaller house, and driving an older car. These American averagists are perfectly happy to let others worry about building digital empires.
But what exactly is an averagist? Well, to be perfectly honest, the definition is somewhat fluid. On the one hand, I consider an averagist to be a professional analyst or researcher; someone who finds new value in considering average things. An averagist looks at everyday occurrences in the same way that a radiologist examines x-rays, an economist studies production and consumption, or a biologist studies organic life. Averagists seek-out, observe, consider, and write about all things average and normal. By writing this book, for example, I am behaving like an averagist.
But I also think averagist could be describing a mindset. When I was looking for a term that accurately describes the people I have met over the last twenty years, I wanted to focus on Middle Americans who think and act like most people in their community. People who are demographically, economically, and culturally like most of their neighbors. The only difference is that averagists see opportunities where others don’t. They’re innovators who rely on common sense and real-world experience to turn disadvantages into advantages. They are exceptional without assuming they’re smarter or somehow superior to their neighbors. They’re individuals who most people want to call friends. In other words, they’re normal Americans living normal lives in positive ways.
Now, I fully recognize that in today’s world labeling any person “normal” instantly raises the hackles of some who believe that even suggesting such a person or group exists is setting the stage for bias and discrimination. When everyone wants to be considered exceptional, unique, and accommodated, calling someone normal might enable members of that group to think they are better than others who aren’t like them. I call bull—t on that line of thinking.
Using commonly available and thoroughly researched data from the U.S. Census, it is completely possible to objectively identify groups of Americans who are considered normal by a majority of the people in their community. Of course, the standards for normalcy will change – sometimes dramatically – from community to community. For instance, normalcy in San Francisco, California is far different than normalcy in Des Moines, Iowa. That’s okay. In fact, it’s better than okay. Different forms of normalcy are what makes America amazing.
The greatest disservice hypersensitive social awareness has inflicted on our society is the belief that every community across America has to have the same values; that people who live in a small town in Montana must think, act, and place importance on the same things that people do in New York, and if they don’t, they’re backwards or something worse. This line of thinking ignores one critical aspect of life in Middle America that’s lost on many who look in from the outside. Middle Americans often live, or have lived, in two different worlds. Allow me to explain using my own story.
Compared with the most talked about demographic groups, I’m a nobody. I am a Gen-X, fifty-one-year-old white man with a wife and three kids. We live in the suburbs and, prior to the pandemic, went to church on Sundays. We are educated, work white collar jobs, and always seem to feel the sting of economic downturns worse than most. Many years ago, I worked as a publisher and consultant in Washington but lived in Hurricane, West Virginia. As the editor of a small defense journal, I was afforded the opportunity to interview service secretaries, members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, congressmen, senators, governors, defense industry executives, hundreds of soldiers, marines, airmen, and even a presidential candidate or two. It was an interesting life. On some days, I’d be doing a one-on-one interview with John McCain on Capitol Hill, and seven hours later I was scooping the cat pan and taking out the trash at my home in the heart of Appalachia.
Despite what’s said by the chattering class, Middle Americans aren’t that hard to figure out. We don’t share the same values as hipsters in New York, Wall Street bankers, media personalities, career politicians, or the lobbyists on K-Street in Washington. That doesn’t make us backwards or somehow shut-off from the rest of the world. Personally, I have traveled to forty-six of the fifty states. I have witnessed the poverty of Central America, and the depravity of man in Bosnia. I have dined at fine restaurants and met with business associates in almost every major metropolitan area of the country. I have also baled hay. I have camped in remote wilderness. I am a veteran. I mow my own grass, fix my own cars, and clean my own house. I have mended barbed wire fences, worked manual labor, and slept outdoors in every imaginable environment including snowy mountaintops to bug infested swamps. I’ve hung-out with bikers, farmers, construction workers, lawyers, soldiers, entrepreneurs, coal miners, billionaires, and doctors, and call many of them my friends. I own a gun and know how to use it effectively, and there have been times in my life when I had to make hard decisions based on who or for what I was willing to die.
I’m not alone in my experiences by any stretch of the imagination. Millions of people like me have lived life on both sides of the chasm that divides rural and urban America. There is a sense here, however, that the people who cast dispersions on us have never experienced all the things we have, and never will. The thought of an urbanite millionaire working on a farm or in a coal mine, or roughing it in the woods, is a recurring plot in dozens of Hollywood comedies (think Ben Stiller in Zoolander for example). But the fact is that Middle Americans who have lived, worked, and travelled throughout both worlds have seen and experienced more things than any of the people who talk down to us while cloistered in their urban enclaves. We’ve seen the normalcy of America and it has nothing to do with race, gender, age, politics, or any of the other things that haters use to divide us. We choose to live where things are slower, crime rates are lower, houses are more affordable, and people tend to get along.
So, as we move forward with our search for American averagists, no matter where we are, finding a normal person by that community’s standards won’t be too difficult. Examining these people, identifying their independent, entrepreneurial spirit, and learning how they use their humanity to create awesome small businesses on Main Street U.S.A. is quintessential averagist behavior. It’s simply discovering someone who gets out of bed, gets dressed, and steps out into the world to make it a better place. No matter where or how they find their normalcy.
