--- url: 'https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-nobody-forecasts-excellent/' title: '14.0% of Four-Person Businesses Call Themselves Excellent Today. Asked About Six Months From Now, 9.1% Do.' author: name: Samantha Lankford url: 'https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/author/sam/' date: '2026-09-30T15:30:00-04:00' modified: '2026-09-30T15:30:00-04:00' type: post summary: '14.0% of US businesses with one to four employees call themselves excellent today. Asked to describe the same business six months out, 9.1% do.' categories: - Blog Post image: 'https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/founder-nobody-forecasts-excellent-hero.webp' published: true --- # 14.0% of Four-Person Businesses Call Themselves Excellent Today. Asked About Six Months From Now, 9.1% Do. ![The Lonely Entrepreneur](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/TLE_Logo_mobile-490W-26-26.png)Founder Data Report ![14.0% of Four-Person Businesses Call Themselves Excellent Today. Asked About Six Months From Now, 9.1% Do.](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/founder-nobody-forecasts-excellent-hero.webp) Founder Data Report # 14.0% of Four-Person Businesses Call Themselves Excellent Today. Asked About Six Months From Now, 9.1% Do. By Michael Dermer • Updated September 30, 2026 Get clarity — download the free Entrepreneur Survival Guide Summary. [Download the Survival Guide →](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/esg-overview/?utm_source=blog-cta) The Census Bureau asks American businesses to grade themselves twice in the same survey — once for today and once for six months out. The second grade is lower in every size of business, and the gap is a better reading on founder resilience than any survey that asks about it directly, because the difference does not go where you would expect. Quick Answer Asked how the business is performing right now, **14.0%** of businesses with one to four employees call themselves excellent. Asked how they think they will describe the same business six months from now, **9.1%** do. That is a fall of 4.9 points, and a fall of the same kind shows up in all seven size classes the Census Bureau publishes, from one-to-four employees up to 250 or more — between 4.4 and 5.9 points in each. What replaces excellent is not failure. It is average. What the numbers say - The share of businesses rating themselves excellent falls in all seven size classes between the present tense and the six-month forecast — by 4.4 to 5.9 points, and every one of those falls clears the survey’s own margin of error at 95%. - The share rating themselves average rises in all seven, and clears the margin of error in five of them. - At one to four employees the excellent share loses 4.9 points and the average share gains 4.9. The other three answers move a net zero between them. - The bottom of the scale barely moves. At one to four employees, 20.8% rate themselves below average or poor today and 19.9% expect to in six months. - This is a snapshot of one survey cycle, not a trend. Both questions are self-ratings, and self-ratings in this survey step at the annual sample refresh, so they are only safe to read against each other inside a single cycle. ## The forecast is not failure. It is average. That is what resilience looks like when you measure it instead of talking about it. The setback most owners are bracing for is not collapse — it is progress taking longer than expected. Every size class in this survey expects fewer of its businesses to be excellent in six months than are excellent today, and the fall is not small: 4.4 points at the largest employers, 5.9 at the 100-to-249 class, 4.9 at the smallest. Not one of those falls is inside the survey’s margin of error. But the share expecting to be in trouble does not rise to meet it. Owners are saying they expect to keep going, keep adjusting, and keep absorbing the pressure through a stretch that they do not expect to feel like a win. The Data Share rating the business excellent, today and six months from now, by size 1-4 employees- In six months 9.1%Today 14.0%5-9 employeesIn six months 9.7%Today 15.2%10-19 employeesIn six months 10.6%Today 15.4%20-49 employeesIn six months 9.7%Today 15.4%50-99 employeesIn six months 14.9%Today 20.7%100-249 employeesIn six months 11.8%Today 17.7%250 or more employeesIn six months 14.1%Today 18.5% Both dots on a row come from the same sample of businesses answering two questions on the same five-point scale in the same cycle, so the gap between them is a real difference and not an artefact of two scales. Dots sit on a 0 to 25% track and the printed figures are the true ones. Orange is today and slate is the forecast; the colours name which question a dot answers, not which number is better. Every one of the seven gaps clears the published standard errors at 95%. U.S. Census Bureau, Business Trends and Outlook Survey, response estimates and standard errors by employment size class, collection cycle 202619, downloaded from census.gov/hfp/btos/downloads/ on September 27, 2026. Question 3 asks how the business would describe its current performance; question 16 asks how it thinks it will describe its performance six months from now. Both use the same five-point scale and both are asked in the same cycle of the same sample, so the two are compared within the cycle and never across cycles. Answer option ‘Excellent’, all seven published size classes. > The excellent share loses 4.9 points. The average share gains 4.9. ## Where the excellent goes At one to four employees the five answers have to add to a hundred, so a point that leaves one answer has to arrive somewhere else. It arrives almost entirely at average. Excellent falls 4.9 points, average rises 4.9, and the other three answers together move a net zero — above average +0.9, below average -0.2, poor -0.7. Only three of those five moves are larger than the survey’s own margin of error: excellent down, average up, and poor down by 0.7 of a point. The other two are inside the noise and are drawn that way below. The Data How the answers move between today and six months out, businesses with 1-4 employees Excellent-4.9 ptsAbove average (inside themargin)+0.9 ptsAverage+4.9 ptsBelow average (inside themargin)-0.2 ptsPoor-0.7 pts Each bar is the change in that answer’s share of businesses with one to four employees, in percentage points, from question 3 to question 16 in cycle 202619. Bars run left for a fall and right for a rise on a 5-point axis. Orange marks a move larger than the 95% margin of error built from the two published standard errors; slate marks one inside it. The colours name whether a move is measurable, not whether it is good news — a rising average share is neither. The five changes sum to zero because the five answers are a partition. U.S. Census Bureau, Business Trends and Outlook Survey, response estimates and standard errors by employment size class, collection cycle 202619, downloaded from census.gov/hfp/btos/downloads/ on September 27, 2026. Question 3 asks how the business would describe its current performance; question 16 asks how it thinks it will describe its performance six months from now. Both use the same five-point scale and both are asked in the same cycle of the same sample, so the two are compared within the cycle and never across cycles. Businesses with 1-4 employees, all five answer options. ## The bottom of the scale hardly moves If owners were forecasting trouble, the bottom two answers would fill up. They do not. At one to four employees 20.8% rate themselves below average or poor today and 19.9% expect to six months from now — a fall, not a rise. The same holds in every size class where the survey publishes both ends. What changes is the top: the share at excellent or above average falls from 32.6% to 28.6% at the smallest businesses and from 50.5% to 46.7% at fifty to ninety-nine. The two largest classes are the exception and barely move at all. The Data Share rating the business excellent or above average, today and six months out 1-4 employees Rate themselves excellent or above average today32.6% Expect to, six months from now28.6% 5-9 employees Rate themselves excellent or above average today38.2% Expect to, six months from now33.4% 10-19 employees Rate themselves excellent or above average today40.7% Expect to, six months from now37.7% 20-49 employees Rate themselves excellent or above average today43.1% Expect to, six months from now39.9% 50-99 employees Rate themselves excellent or above average today50.5% Expect to, six months from now46.7% 100-249 employees Rate themselves excellent or above average today51.0% Expect to, six months from now50.4% 250 or more employees Rate themselves excellent or above average today50.6% Expect to, six months from now50.9% Both bars in a row are drawn on the same 0 to 60% scale and the printed percentages are the true ones. Slate is today and orange is the six-month forecast; the colours name which question a bar answers, not which number is better — on six of the seven rows the orange bar is the shorter one. Each bar is the sum of the ‘excellent’ and ‘above average’ shares for that size class. U.S. Census Bureau, Business Trends and Outlook Survey, response estimates and standard errors by employment size class, collection cycle 202619, downloaded from census.gov/hfp/btos/downloads/ on September 27, 2026. Question 3 asks how the business would describe its current performance; question 16 asks how it thinks it will describe its performance six months from now. Both use the same five-point scale and both are asked in the same cycle of the same sample, so the two are compared within the cycle and never across cycles. Answer options ‘Excellent’ and ‘Above average’ summed, by size class. Three things this cannot tell you, and it is worth being straight about all three. Forecasting your own excellence is a different act from reporting it, and some of this gap is probably owners declining to promise six months of anything rather than expecting a worse business. The survey reaches businesses, not the same business twice, so nothing here follows one firm from today into the spring. And at businesses of 250 or more the Bureau suppresses the ‘poor’ cell in the forecast, so that class’s bottom-two share of 5.1% is a floor rather than a measurement — the missing cell is worth roughly 0.9 of a point. None of that changes the shape: the top of the scale empties and the bottom stays where it is. The Data Where the numbers land 9.1% of businesses with 1-4 employees expect to be excellent in six months 14.0% of the same businesses call themselves excellent today 7 of 7 size classes where the excellent share falls, all clearing 95% 19.9% expect to be below average or poor, against 20.8% today U.S. Census Bureau, Business Trends and Outlook Survey, response estimates and standard errors by employment size class, collection cycle 202619, downloaded from census.gov/hfp/btos/downloads/ on September 27, 2026. Question 3 asks how the business would describe its current performance; question 16 asks how it thinks it will describe its performance six months from now. Both use the same five-point scale and both are asked in the same cycle of the same sample, so the two are compared within the cycle and never across cycles. ## Frequently Asked Questions Do small business owners expect to be doing better in six months? No. In the Census Bureau's Business Trends and Outlook Survey, 14.0% of businesses with one to four employees describe their current performance as excellent, and 9.1% expect to describe it that way six months from now. Among those same businesses the share rating themselves average rises by 4.9 points. Does that mean owners expect the business to get worse? Not in the way that phrase suggests. The share expecting to be below average or poor falls slightly, from 20.8% to 19.9% at one to four employees. What falls is the top of the scale, not the bottom. The forecast is more ordinary, not more troubled. Is this true at larger businesses too? The excellent share falls in all seven published size classes, by between 4.4 and 5.9 percentage points, and every fall is larger than the survey's margin of error. The relative fall is smallest at businesses of 250 or more, where it is about 24%, and largest at twenty to forty-nine, at about 37%. It is not a clean gradient by size. How reliable are these numbers? Every figure is a published Census Bureau estimate with a published standard error, and each comparison quoted here has been tested against those errors at 95% confidence. The survey is voluntary and the estimates are sample estimates, so small differences between adjacent size classes should not be read as real unless the article says they clear the margin. Can these two questions be compared over time? Not safely. Both are self-ratings, and self-ratings in this survey step by several points whenever the Bureau redraws its sample, which it does once a year. That is why this article compares the two questions inside a single collection cycle, 202619, rather than tracking either of them across cycles. Keep reading [Four-Person Firms and Forty-Person Firms Call Themselves Excellent at the Same Rate. The Gap Is All at the Bottom.](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-grading-your-own-business/) - [83.7% of Four-Person Firms Expect No Change in Headcount. Only 8.7% Expect to Hire.](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-flat-forecast/) - [A Four-Person Firm Almost Always Knows What It Is Doing Today. Six Months Out, One in Four Does Not.](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-the-question-you-cannot-answer/) Part of the entrepreneurial struggle: [Resilience](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/entrepreneur-struggle/resilience/) ![The Lonely Entrepreneur](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/TLE_Logo_mobile-490W-26-26.png) Published by **The Lonely Entrepreneur** — the community and coaching platform for entrepreneurs who are building alone. [lonelyentrepreneur.com](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/) This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional financial or legal advice.