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America's Amish, with their simple clothing and culture, have set themselves apart from modern society with strength and purpose.

But that doesn't mean they frown upon the rest of us or are somehow aloof from the world.

Far from it: The Amish are savvy marketers, manufacturers and businesspeople.

As North Carolina author Erik Wesner explains, the Amish have a remarkable success rate in their businesses when compared with the rest of the nation. While half of all new American businesses fail within the first five years, 95 percent of Amish businesses are still running.

Wesner, a Raleigh native and UNC-Chapel Hill graduate, suggests that the hard work and simple principles of the Amish are transferable to any business today.

Still, theirs is a success rooted in the three-century-old Amish culture in America.

"Concepts such as personal advancement and a high-consumption lifestyle," Wesner writes, "factor less prominently, if at all. Rather, Amish tend to keep in mind that business is first a means to realize core goals, ones which don't usually come right to mind when thinking 'business prosperity.'"

In "Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive," Wesner presents his lively characters as average people trying to support their families and solve business challenges while finding the time to enjoy their lives.

Wesner first met the Amish as a young traveling book salesman. The Amish, a Germanic people who have lived in America for three centuries, were an especially good market for the Family Bible Library that Wesner sold because they needed a reference book to keep in their homes.

Later, he studied Amish culture at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster, Pa., which, along with Holmes County, Ohio, are the largest Amish population centers in the country.

Wesner portrays a group rooted deeply in Christian faith. It's that faith that guides, but does not impede, canny business management.

About 9,000 Amish-owned and -operated businesses are thriving, even during the recession. And Wesner's book shows this is leading a kind of latter-day industrial revolution, with many companies making products sold around the nation. Some have contracts with big buyers such as Kmart or Ralph Lauren. Others may build upscale kitchens. Many even have national networks of retailers and dealers.

Whatever the individual's business, however, Amish rules of daily life, called "the Ordnung," along with Bible teachings, require a vision for enterprise, Wesner writes.

That vision must consider how the product's quality and price affects the company's relationship to its owner's faith and relationships with family and customers.

Wesner's interviews, stripped of clichés about black clothes and bonnets, reveal people who describe their trials and challenges as any American would -- in their own modern, honest language.

Amish are historically farmers, rooted in agriculture and simple living. Their children are not educated beyond the eighth grade.

That does not mean learning stops there, however.

"As one Amish builder put it, 'One of the employees &ellipses; made a mistake (on the job). He said, "I'm still learning." I said, "The day you tell me you're not learning anymore, I think we've got a problem." You are always going to be learning. That's how it is for me.'"

To keep their learning alive, many Amish businesspeople do not shun modern business books. They are bright, curious readers who find ways to meld faith and finance into a set of rules for doing business that might elude people outside the Amish world.

Most Amish people are not allowed to drive cars or use many modern devices that proliferate elsewhere.

The simple life they pursue is not their indictment of the rest of us, but a way to focus the Amish life on their deep Christian faith and family.

But that very faith and family has been challenged in recent decades as the Amish, especially in their Pennsylvania and Ohio communities, find that their large families have overwhelmed the farmland available.

Business is a way to change the Amish way of making a living while keeping the families close.

Wesner describes the Amish business ethic as having a cradle-to-grave involvement for every person in the culture.

Children are exposed to chores and work at a young age. Elderly entrepreneurs work carefully with younger generations to keep business flowing.

Wesner uses a smooth narrative, with heavy reliance on real characters, to tell his story, yet incorporates attractive, informative tutorials.

Clever organizational tricks keep the book lively, allowing subjects to speak for themselves and focusing key anecdotes with concentrated bold type and adding summaries of key points in lists at the end of each chapter.

"In order to avoid work in non-Amish environments and to simulate the at-home dynamic of the family farm, small business has become an attractive option," Wesner writes. "A home business typically requires less start-up capital than a farm, and can be operated part time while still receiving a steady paycheck."

And many Amish choose businesses that emphasize their traditional skills: woodworking, home building and other labor-intensive craft skills.

But they branch out into less traditional services like physical therapy, bookkeeping, horse training, auctioneering and even tourist-oriented businesses "in an example of an unusual meeting of cultural worlds."

Wesner treads the line between making this a rustic portrayal of a humble people and an academic analysis of the Amish business subculture.

At his best, he lets the characters do the talking and keeps the analysis simple.

But it's the secret of Amish business success that is the core of this book.

It turns out that secret may be hiding in plain sight and is, for the most part, available to any businessperson willing to take a slightly altered view of ruthless American capitalism.

That's because the Amish grapple with the same day-to-day problems and challenges everyone faces: not enough hours in the day, economic ups and downs, managing less-than-perfect workers, ornery customers and remembering that faith and family come first.

Yet, because Amish shun traditional marketing methods -- television, radio and other electronic media -- getting the word out about their businesses can be difficult.

That's why their trading circles are often more limited, their satisfaction coming from selling a good product through word of mouth.

So how, in the end, do the Amish succeed in business, and what can the modern everyday businessperson learn from that success?

Wesner does not disappoint in his explanation.

Toward the end of "Success Made Simple," Wesner lays out "Ten points on the big picture." They conclude with: "Becoming the richest, biggest, or most powerful may not necessarily be the best reason to open a company. Hopefully, it's about more than just ego."

Wesner quotes one businessman, Alvin, who says, "When I die, what is gonna be the number one thing that people are gonna say about me? That he had a lot of money? I hope not. I hope that's the last thing they say about me. He had friends. He believed in God and he had friends. That's the main thing I want people to say about me."

Richard M. Barron covers business for the News & Record. Contact him at 373-7371 or Richard.barron@news-record.com