View from the Trenches: The 2018 Owner / Operator Survey

While scouting potential investment opportunities, we get the opportunity to interact with many owners and operators. These are the people in the trenches, who see first-hand the strength of the economy, changing industry dynamics, and the effects of public policy.

This past fall, we decided to survey owners and operators on the state of their businesses, the issues they’re facing, and how they’re adjusting to new realities. Is business really going as well as it seems on a macroeconomic scale? Do operators feel the “talent crisis” reported in the news? Is an economic downturn likely? What do owners really worry about?

Modeled after the U.S. Consumer Sentiment Survey, we set up a page on our website with 20 simple questions that could be answered in 3 minutes or less by owners and operators of small to mid-sized businesses (targeting companies with under $100 million in revenue). The survey was intentionally anonymous, but we did request title, industry, location and revenue range to help add context to the data. Over the month of December, we collected 128 responses.

With limited controls and 128 responses, the data is not ideal, but the results did bear some noteworthy ideas. The data is presented in the slides below: