Your Unseen Actions Carry Lasting Significance

I write this as I prepare to release the updated edition of The King of Main Street. I felt it was important to add a new foreword.

Going back through this book has taken me right back to the time when I first wrote it, and to the hope, the weight, and the very personal significance this book carried with me.

At that time, I believed The King of Main Street would be my opus. For me, an opus is the work that captures the essence of a writer’s life. It is the one piece that gathers together all the lessons, the struggles, and the insights, and gives them shape and deep meaning.

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For me, this book felt like that. I had spent more than 30 years collecting the stories, the material, and the personal insights that ended up in these pages. It really was a labor of love. I worked hard to tell these stories in a way that was meaningful, purposeful, and useful both to me and to the reader.

When it was finally published, I thought it might be my breakout book. It almost was. Then the Covid lockdowns came, and like so many other books and lives during that dark time, it was pushed aside.

At the very beginning of The King of Main Street, I included the story of Moby Dick, the great white whale. It is about Ahab, once a great captain, who was destroyed by his obsession.

The whale had taken his leg in a previous voyage, and Ahab gave the rest of his life chasing revenge. He put that obsession above profit, above his men’s livelihood, and in the end, above their very lives. Ahab could not let go, and it consumed him to his very end.

I did not include that story just to retell it. I included it as a reminder to myself. A reminder to give everything I had, even if my book never found its audience.

That was the reason I placed the story of Moby Dick in The King of Main Street. It was a message to me.

The reminder was not only about Ahab’s obsession but about Herman Melville himself. When he published Moby Dick in 1851, it was a complete failure. Only 3,700 copies were sold. He died in 1891, unknown and forgotten.

Seventy-two years after it was first published, and thirty-two years after Melville’s death, D.H. Lawrence, considered the greatest writer of his time, declared it the greatest American novel ever written in his 1923 book Studies in Classic American Literature.

That truth mattered to me. At the time of writing, The King of Main Street was the most significant thing I had ever done. Even if it never found a wide audience, I knew I had to write it with passion and honesty. Because like Melville, the worth of a work cannot always be measured in the moment. Sometimes its meaning is revealed long after we are gone. 

In many ways, Melville was like Vincent van Gogh, the Dutch painter who created more than 2,000 works of art, yet sold almost nothing while he lived. He died in poverty in 1890, never knowing what he had given the world.

Only after his death did people recognize his genius. Both men created works of timeless significance that were ignored while they lived, only to be celebrated long after they were gone.

That reminder mattered to me. The writing had to be for me first. And maybe, with the passion I poured into this book, it would eventually find its audience. If not, at least I would know the passion was real and that the act of writing itself gave me meaning.

That lesson has stayed with me. We make a significant difference even when we are not aware.

The meaning of our work, our choices, and our small gestures often takes years to reveal itself. Sometimes it is revealed only after we are gone.

I had my own reminder of this in 2019, a few months before I moved from Toronto, Canada, to my new home in San Diego, California.

I struck up a short conversation with a young man, a university computer engineering student, while riding the subway. Before we parted, I gave him a copy of The King of Main Street.

Years later, he contacted me. He told me that our brief talk, and that book, had inspired him to chase his dream.

Today he runs a software company that is about to go public.

That story has stayed with me. My book never became the bestseller I once hoped it would be. Yet for that young man, it made a difference that changed his life. And that means more to me than sales numbers or recognition ever could.

I have seen this lesson play out again and again in my career.

Early on, I worked with a business owner who was struggling with succession planning. At the time, it felt like just another client meeting. I gave him my best advice, helped him structure his affairs, and moved on to the next case.

Years later, his son reached out to me. He told me that the work I had done for his father had not only saved their business, it had saved their family. What had seemed routine to me ended up shaping a legacy for generations.

It reminded me once more that significance often hides in the ordinary. A chance meeting. A few words. A simple act of kindness. We rarely know in the moment how far our influence can reach.

So this is what I believe. Every life makes a difference. Every one of us leaves a mark, often when we do not even realize it. That includes you.

You may not see the impact today or tomorrow. You may even doubt yourself, as I often have.

Yet somewhere down the road, someone may look back and say your words, your presence, your example changed everything for them.

That is significance. It is not found in perfection or recognition. It is found in being human, in showing up, and in giving our very best, because it really matters, because it does.

And that is already in you.

Peter J. Merrick, TEP… Aka… Old Fart… San Diego, California

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By Peter J. Merrick, TEP®, Co-author with Adrian C. Spitters, CFP® of the international bestseller In It Starts With Gold™ and their upcoming book, Killing Crypto™, to be released in early 2026.