A recent Hiscox study of over 1,000 small and medium-sized U.S. business owners revealed that those in the automotive services and repair industry (small business owners, not MSOs) are currently facing many obstacles, especially when it comes to funding. One third consider their financial situation to be worse this year than last year and over half (56 percent) of small business owners in this sector are considering exiting their business by 2020. That’s 18 percent more than any other industry.

Some of the reasons so many entrepreneurs in the automotive services and repair industry may be thinking about exiting could be due to some of the below factors:

• The industry takes the least amount of vacation time. Thirty-two percent of business owners in this industry took nine or fewer days. The good news is this number is slowly improving, last year 34 percent reported taking the same amount of vacation.
• Thirty-three percent believe that the availability of bank funding for their small business has become more difficult in the past 12 months.
• Twenty-two percent have remortgaged their house to fund their business (12 percent more than any other industry).

The study is titled DNA of an Entrepreneur and can be viewed in its entirety here.