There are a lot of stupid numbers flying around. The problem is defining "business" & "failure."

Some businesses are only meant to last a couple of years. Lots of owners start several businesses and eventually focus on one. Most numbers you hear are based on the number of businesses registered & renewed/not renewed, a terrible way of measuring both these things.

Jaxn's data isn't anecdotal -- those numbers were reported in the WSJ earlier this year in an article on franchising.

That's true. They are also in my deck ;)

Anecdata: Walk down a main commercial street in any large metropolis and count the number of completely unviable businesses (these are the ones that turn over their real estate every few months). These are further polluting the statistics.

I am not knowledgeable enough to know whether or not a business is viable just from looking in the storefront.

Though I would argue that as the owner of two retail locations, I am probably better equipped to make that judgement than most.

In my experience, most retail leases are for 5 year terms. I can't imagine that the default rate on those is anywhere near 50%. Most business "failures" likely never got far enough to sign a lease.

My gist was you don't have to be able to know, just walk down the street, then walk down the same street 6 months later, and many of the shops will have changed.

If you're just looking at storefronts, how do you know what's viable and what isn't without making assumptions? Looking at real estate turnover tells you something about the location - and what businesses are appropriate for it - but doesn't tell you much about the viability of any particular business model.