Artificial intelligence is costing people jobs at increasingly fast rates. In 2025, 55,000 workers were laid off because of AI adoption. This year, AI is responsible for 87,714 planned layoffs, representing 22 percent of all announced job cuts in 2026.
With no new industry emerging to offer displaced workers relief, the desire to survive has driven record numbers of people to start businesses. In total, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that within the next year, almost 30,000 new corporations will form each month.
However, 65 percent of these businesses will not survive to their ten-year anniversary. As a sole practitioner of 35 years, I’d like to offer 10 actionable ideas that can increase your chances of success. Many small businesses fail because of completely preventable things, and I would like to give some ideas that may help.
1. Have a Plan
Legendary heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until he gets hit in the mouth.” Nowhere is this expression more true than in business. Having a business plan is an extremely valuable tool to keep you focused on important tasks and show potential investors or lenders you are serious.
Begin with a mission statement, and then itemize a list of critical steps to accomplish on the way to profitability. This is also the time to establish how much working capital you will need to successfully launch. Always overestimate that number. You can look back on it from time to time and evaluate what went well, what you needed to work on, and what was unnecessary.
Don’t be afraid to be specific. Also don’t worry about getting it wrong. An interesting place to start looking for ideas on how to do this is the “lean canvas” method, which is a single-page business model. You can amend it to align with your situation.
2. The Part You Hate Is Probably What You Need to Do the Most
Critical job avoidance can kill a new business. It is vital to be honest with yourself about what you should be doing to keep things afloat. Generally, it’s the part of the business you find most distasteful.
Do not fall into the trap of avoidance by substituting busy work for work that is important but distasteful to you. Successful people find a way to lean consistently into those steps and can acknowledge when they are kidding themselves with busy work.
3. Know Your Numbers
Serial entrepreneur Marcus Lemonis is famous for saying, “If you know your numbers, you know your business.” This is absolutely true. Numbers are the most direct and unfiltered way to evaluate your progress, because they offer no excuses.
What is your cash burn rate, how much does it cost to acquire a customer, how much do you actually make if you sell something? These are the kinds of things your numbers tell you. You should know your balance sheet off the top of your head and have some form of projecting, record-keeping actual numbers and evaluating them on a backward-looking basis. Whether it’s Quicken, a spreadsheet, or some type of ledger, it’s worth the time to log your financial information. Numbers will point to your strengths and, more importantly, your weaknesses.
4. Admit When You Are Wrong and Accept Blame
No one likes to admit he blew it. Most people will go to great lengths to find something or someone to pin a failure on besides themselves.
That’s a mistake. If you don’t internalize the responsibility for failure, it’s impossible to learn from it. Stop short of torturing yourself, but acknowledge that you failed. Then make a point of not repeating the activity that caused you the issue.
5. Try to Be Overcapitalized
One of the biggest business killers is a lack of working capital. There are always financial surprises, but to start an entity that is hand to mouth from inception parabolically increases the chances it will not succeed.
Capital is so hard to obtain for start-ups because this is the period a company is most at risk of failing. Try, if possible, to have some kind of cushion, because it could be the difference between making it and failure.
This might look like friends and family funding, or a bank loan, savings, or selling a percentage of your business. Make sure you have adequate capital, because it’s incredibly tough to get when you really need it.
6. Don’t Be Afraid to Pivot
Adaptability in business is incredibly important. While an entrepreneur must be stubborn, he or she should also know when appropriately reacting to changing circumstances is a prudent long-term bet.
Remember, YouTube started out as a video dating site, Amazon was an online bookstore, and Netflix was a DVD-by-mail business before they became the business tycoons we know now.
7. Assemble your team carefully
You’ll want a good accountant, financial advisor, and lawyer from day one. There are dozens of complicated decisions to make from the moment you decide to create a business entity that you have no business making without the advice of experienced professionals to guide you.
Tax filings, corporate formations, and other things like retirement plans may seem expensive when you have a professional help, but compared to the cost of unwinding a mistake in these sort of areas, it isn’t. These kinds of people will also help with things like estate planning, risk management, and tax mitigation strategies.
Additionally, they have phone contacts filled with incredibly valuable relationships in areas like banking, payroll, and others you will have to grow into. The best advisors are willing to play the long game with your project. Repay their loyalty.
8. Know Your Actual Mission
You need to realize what it is about your start-up that will make it a success. For example: if you want to make shoes for a living, your mission isn’t really about making shoes, it’s getting people to buy them. If you are successful, then voila, you get to be paid to make shoes.
Knowing what exactly you need to focus on for success trips up more business owners than you would imagine.
9. Run Your Business with Empathy
The best businesses put their customers first. Always try to see things from their perspective and go out of your way to engineer good outcomes for them.
Loyal customers and referrals are gold to a new business, and a direct result of how you treat customers. Also, if you listen to them, over time the feedback they give you will help you stay relevant, aware of competition, and remain their go-to provider.
10. Remember to Grind
The people who show up every day are the ones who rule the world. Most of the successful entrepreneurs I know achieved success by working extremely hard in a highly focused manner every day.
There are dozens of other things to think about, but if you adopt these concepts, it will go a long way towards increasing your startup’s chances of survival.
