15 Tips for Running a Successful Small Business

In the United States, small business is big business. Just as we have seen corporate America “downsizing” we see the rate of small business “start-ups” growing.

There are now approximately 23 million small businesses in America and they account for 54% of all U.S. sales. They provide 55% of all jobs and 66% of all net new jobs since the 1970s. Since 1990, big businesses have eliminated 4 million jobs but small businesses added 8 million new jobs.

But, as promising as all that sounds, the reality is that many start-up businesses, about 25% of them, will fail in their first year. By the fifth year, the failure rate is 55 percent.

What is more alarming about these numbers are that 46% of small businesses will fail because of finance related issues including:

Emotional pricing and no knowledge of pricing, living too high for the business, nonpayment of taxes, lack of planning, no knowledge of financing and no experience in record-keeping.

I have written this book with contributions from Dan Norcott because for many years we have worked with both successful and not-so successful businesses. And what we noticed time and time again is that the successful businesses are the ones that understand their finances. They may not be able to create a balance sheet but they certainly know how to read it. They understand that sound business decisions can only be made with accurate financial information.

Many of our start-up clients have asked us the keys to running a successful small business. So, we’ve thought about it and decided we’d write down a few ideas. But, as we started listing them we found that there are more than a few and they are all just as important as the other.

We’ll mail you a free copy of our book! Just complete the form below and it’s in the mail!

To your success!

Dolores and Dan