The table below displays the number of businesses in the United States between $1 and $100M in gross sales. It demonstrates how many of these businesses grow, and categorizes, in a broad sense, the major hurdles that all organizations face that impair growth.

At a glance, your attention may be immediately drawn to the fact that very few businesses advance beyond the $5M mark. There are many reasons for this. We have attempted to group the bulk of them into four categories to provide a context for the discussion that follows.

If you have not considered these things before, you may find this information initially striking, and then quite useful. I hope to draw you into the “useful” stage.

First, let’s briefly consider the data.

1. As of mid-July, 2019, using the Reference USA database, we find that there are just over 11,400,000 businesses in the United States between $1 and $100,000,000 in gross sales.
   1. Around 72% (8,300,000) of these businesses are under $1M in sales and the majority of them will never exceed the $1 million mark.
   2. Around 21% (2,450,000) manage to make the leap into the $1M to $5M sales category.
   3. Only 3% make it past $5M in sales.
   4. Only 2% make it past $10M in sales.
   5. Only 1% make it past $20M in sales.
   6. Only .03% make it past $50M in sales.

I have been following this for the past several years and noticed three things:

1. The total number is shrinking. In 2014, there were 12,700,000 businesses in the same range.
2. The number of businesses in the lowest range, $1 to $1M, is growing.
3. The number of businesses in the highest range, $50M to $100M, is shrinking.

You may find it encouraging to learn about the things you can do to move your business to the right on this table. That is what this book is about.

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