A flyer showed up in my mailbox one day. It was titled “Thank You for the Memories.”
With an opening like that, you know what’s coming isn’t going to be good.
It wasn’t.
I live in the Pacific Northwest. Pretty much like any town in America, we are proud of our community, the people, its quirks, its characteristics, our sense of belonging, and what makes us different. It’s home, and we love living here.
We have small town mom-and-pop stores—less now than a couple decades ago. Of course, some of them have given way to big corporate stores. Or Amazon has taken over their place in the com- munity. Some, like the business in the flyer, just simply disappear.
This flyer—it was just sad ... and gut-wrenching disturbing.
It starts out: “It has been an honor to serve our community and you for 53 years.” Fifty-three years! Half a century. That’s a looooong time to have a small business. The vast majority of small businesses “fail.”
The numbers are rather daunting:2
The Problem
WHAT IS YOUR EXIT STRATEGY?
Two out of ten businesses fail within the first year (20 percent).
By year three, close to four of those ten have failed. (37.9 percent, which is VERY close to 40)
Then, another one “bites the dust” by year five (50 percent of all new businesses will fail within five years).
On their tenth-year anniversary, only about three of those original ten businesses will exist.
Surviving past year fifteen is almost impossible.
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