What's The Biggest Problem For Small Business Today?

The Federal Reserve’s 2026 small-business survey found:

• Top operational challenge: Reaching customers and growing sales
• Top financial challenge: Rising costs for goods, services, and wages
• Next major obstacle: Hiring and retaining qualified employees

Together, these pressures squeeze cash flow: sales are harder to generate, each sale costs more to deliver, and raising prices can drive customers away. The latest NFIB survey likewise highlights labor quality, inflation, taxes, and weakening sales as leading concerns. Federal Reserve Small Business Credit Survey · NFIB Small Business Economic Trends

In plain language: the central challenge is profitable growth—not merely making sales, but making sales that leave enough cash to keep the business healthy.

These are not new issues!  They are the same challenges that have always existed for small business.  In future posts, I will address my take on each of these.  And which of these is the biggest problem?  Well, I think that changes a bit depending upon the type of business you are running.  But in general, I believe it’s “Reaching customers and growing sales.”  I say this because the costs for goods, services, and wages are relative to everyone, and pricing strategy is not that difficult to address.  Hiring and retaining qualified employees is in the same boat, and is addressed fairly easily with setting a good wages strategy. But, reaching customers and growing sales takes a lot of continuous work, and gets very complicated.  As I said, we’ll talk about each of these in later posts.