Excerpt: Why do small businesses struggle even when funding and information are available? The Acceleration Project’s Jack Murphy explains how mentoring, financial guidance, and peer support can help entrepreneurs make better decisions.
Key Takeaways
- Access to capital doesn’t automatically solve problems with pricing, cash flow, operations, or business strategy.
- Many entrepreneurs seek help for one problem, only to discover that something else is holding their business back.
- AI can help with research, financial planning, and marketing, but experienced advisers can provide context, challenge assumptions, and offer accountability.
- Business mentoring is particularly valuable when owners lack an internal management team or advisory board.
- The Acceleration Project’s new TAP Into Community platform combines peer connections, business resources, and free consulting support.
Small-business owners are constantly being told where to find money. There are articles about business loans, grants, crowdfunding, investors, and government financing programs. There are also countless tools promising to help entrepreneurs write business plans, manage their finances, and market their companies more efficiently.
But what happens when an entrepreneur has money available and still doesn’t know what to do next?
Or when a business is bringing in sales but the owner can’t understand why there never seems to be enough cash?
These are the kinds of problems that don’t necessarily disappear with another loan, a new software subscription, or a few hours spent researching advice online.
Jack Murphy, Vice President of Programs and Partnerships at The Acceleration Project (TAP), sees these challenges regularly.
TAP is a nonprofit organization that provides free consulting and mentorship to small-business owners, particularly those who have limited access to professional business advisers. Its consultants work with entrepreneurs on financial planning, marketing, operations, strategy, and increasingly, artificial intelligence.
In written responses to questions from PowerHomeBiz, Murphy explained that the problems entrepreneurs bring to TAP often go much deeper than the need for financing.
Many business owners, he said, struggle to forecast cash flow, have mixed their personal and business finances, or have been charging too little for their products and services for years. Others are trying to manage nearly every part of their companies themselves, without anyone to challenge their decisions or help them see a different approach.
Getting more money may temporarily ease the pressure, but it won’t necessarily address those underlying issues.
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Why Funding Alone Isn’t Enough to Grow a Business
Imagine a business owner who is struggling to keep up with expenses. Sales are coming in, but there’s rarely enough money left over after paying suppliers, employees, rent, and other operating costs.
The owner may conclude that a loan is the answer.
Yet if the business consistently underprices its products or collects customer payments too slowly, borrowing more money could provide only temporary relief. Eventually, the company may find itself facing the same problems, this time with loan payments added to its expenses.
That is why Murphy believes entrepreneurs need to understand their financial position before seeking capital.
He points to cash flow forecasting, pricing, and the separation of personal and business finances as areas where entrepreneurs often need help.
These issues are closely connected. A business might appear profitable on paper while struggling to pay its bills because customers take too long to settle invoices. Another might generate substantial revenue but earn very little after accounting for the true cost of providing its services.
As we explain in 7 Common Cash Flow Problems Faced by Small Businesses, delayed payments, thin profit margins, excessive overhead, and poorly managed inventory can create financial pressure even when a company has customers and sales.
The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends keeping accurate financial records and regularly reviewing revenue, expenses, assets, liabilities, and cash flow.
For an entrepreneur who has spent years concentrating on getting customers and delivering services, this kind of financial analysis may not come naturally. But it is essential when deciding whether the business can afford to expand, hire people, or take on additional debt.
A Business Owner Who Thought She Needed Capital
One example Murphy shared involved Nadia Fountain, founder of Go Juicy, a cold-pressed juice and wellness beverage company.
Fountain had grown her business from a farmers market operation into a company generating more than $200,000 in revenue. She believed additional funding would help her move to the next stage.
But after examining the business, TAP’s consultants found that financing wasn’t the only issue.
Go Juicy lacked a formal marketing strategy and a customer segmentation plan for expanding beyond farmers markets. It also needed financial projections to determine whether moving into its own production and retail space would be viable.
Instead of focusing exclusively on finding more capital, TAP helped Fountain develop a brand strategy, analyze competitors, identify potential customer segments, and create a multi-year financial model.
The organization also recommended a new website, paid social media marketing, and influencer partnerships to help the company reach customers through additional channels.
According to Murphy, Go Juicy’s monthly sales increased from $16,000 to $20,000, and the company added direct-to-consumer sales and hired two part-time employees. TAP also reported that the business maintained profitability in the 30% to 40% range.
Those outcomes were provided by TAP, and they don’t establish precisely how much each recommendation contributed to the results. Nevertheless, the example illustrates why understanding the underlying business problem matters.
Fountain had been looking for money to support growth. What she also needed was a clearer strategy for reaching customers and understanding the financial implications of expansion.
It’s an important distinction for entrepreneurs considering a major investment. Before borrowing to open another location or launch a new product, they need to know whether demand exists, whether the economics work, and whether the company is prepared to manage the expansion.
Entrepreneurs Have Plenty of Information. What They Often Lack Is Perspective.
One of the more interesting questions raised by TAP’s work is why entrepreneurs still need business consultants when so much information is freely available.
An owner can find templates for financial projections, watch tutorials about marketing, and ask AI to evaluate different pricing strategies. Many tasks that once required considerable research can now be completed much faster.
TAP itself is encouraging entrepreneurs to use these technologies.
Murphy said that through AI workshops conducted with the New York City Department of Small Business Services, TAP has trained more than 375 small-business owners to use AI for sales, finance, marketing, and operations.
But the organization encourages them to treat AI as a junior assistant whose work still needs to be reviewed.
That distinction matters.
An AI tool can help you create a cash flow forecast, but the forecast is only as useful as the information and assumptions behind it. It can generate marketing ideas, but those suggestions may not reflect what customers in your particular market are willing to pay for.
It can recommend raising prices without knowing how sensitive your customers are to price increases or whether a competitor has recently entered your market.
As we discuss in How Small Businesses Can Successfully Adopt Generative AI, small businesses can benefit from AI when they start with a specific problem, keep people responsible for important decisions, and measure whether the technology is actually producing useful results.
Experienced advisers can offer something different. They can ask questions about the business’s finances, customers, competition, and long-term goals. They can challenge an owner’s assumptions and help evaluate whether a proposed solution makes sense under the circumstances.
Human advisers aren’t automatically correct, and their recommendations should also be evaluated carefully. But a productive advisory relationship can help an entrepreneur think through problems that cannot be settled simply by finding more information.
Sometimes the First Problem You Identify Isn’t the Real Problem
Murphy says entrepreneurs frequently come to TAP asking familiar questions: How should I price my services? How can I improve cash flow? How do I grow?
Those are reasonable starting points. But the consulting process often uncovers more specific issues that the owner hadn’t considered.
A business owner who says she needs more customers may actually have a customer retention problem. Someone who is overwhelmed with work may need to change the services being offered or improve internal processes. A company that wants to hire employees may first need to determine whether its current pricing can support the additional payroll expense.
Identifying the real problem is particularly difficult when you’re the person responsible for running the business every day.
Owners can become so accustomed to the way they operate that certain problems begin to feel normal. They may accept late-paying customers, spend too much time on unprofitable work, or continue using processes that no longer make sense as the business grows.
Someone outside the company can sometimes see those issues more clearly.
For example, an entrepreneur struggling with pricing might benefit from reviewing customer acquisition costs, profit margins, and the value of different services before deciding whether to raise prices.
Our article on using AI to set better prices without losing customer trust discusses why profit margins, customer retention, and carefully tested pricing changes matter more than simply increasing revenue.
The lesson extends beyond pricing. Business owners benefit from understanding how different decisions affect one another instead of treating every challenge as an isolated problem.
Why Small-Business Owners Need Their Own Support Network
Large companies rarely expect one person to handle every major business decision alone. They have accountants, marketing departments, operations managers, legal advisers, and sometimes boards of directors.
Small-business owners often perform all those functions themselves.
The same person may spend the morning responding to customers, the afternoon preparing invoices, and the evening deciding whether to invest in advertising or purchase equipment.
When a difficult decision arises, there may be no one inside the business with the experience needed to offer useful advice.
That is one reason TAP relies on a network of volunteer consultants.
According to Murphy, the organization works with more than 200 vetted consultants who bring expertise in finance, marketing, operations, strategy, and AI. He said 62% hold professional degrees, while 38% have operated small businesses themselves.
TAP recruits consultants through professional networks, corporate partnerships, and referrals. Consultants receive initial training and ongoing professional development, and entrepreneurs are matched with advisers based on the challenges and industries involved.
For a business owner who cannot afford an outside management consultant, this kind of support can provide access to experience that would otherwise be difficult to obtain.
Other organizations offer similar assistance. SCORE provides free business mentoring, while the SBA’s local assistance network connects entrepreneurs with Small Business Development Centers and other business support programs.
The important thing is to seek help that fits the problem. A mentor with experience in marketing may be useful when evaluating customer acquisition strategies, while tax, legal, and specialized financial decisions may require appropriately qualified professionals.
TAP Into Community: Making Business Advice Easier to Access
In October 2026, The Acceleration Project announced TAP Into Community, a free digital platform designed to connect U.S.-based small-business owners with consultants, peers, and business resources.
The platform brings several services together, including discussion forums, free webinars, small-group coaching, one-on-one sessions with consultants, educational materials, and live Ask Me Anything events.
Members can also use a directory to connect with other business owners.
The idea is to make assistance available throughout the life of a business rather than only when an entrepreneur enrolls in a particular program.
That may prove useful because the challenges a business faces change over time. An owner who needs help with pricing today may face a hiring decision next year. Another who has resolved a cash flow problem may eventually need guidance about expanding into a new market or selling the company.
Murphy also acknowledges a challenge common to online business communities: people often join enthusiastically, then stop participating.
TAP hopes to address this by organizing the platform around real business decisions and keeping consultants involved so members have reasons to return when they need help.
Whether the platform can maintain that engagement over time remains to be seen. But its design reflects an important principle: business owners are more likely to use resources when those resources help solve problems they’re currently facing.
Peer Advice Can Be Valuable, but It Has Limits
There’s something reassuring about talking with another business owner who has dealt with the same challenge.
Someone who has hired their first employee can share what surprised them about managing staff. A retailer who has opened a second location may offer practical insights into inventory, staffing, and managing operations across multiple sites.
That firsthand experience can be useful, particularly when it comes from someone who understands the pressures of running a small company.
But what worked for one business won’t necessarily work for another.
An entrepreneur in one state may face different employment regulations from someone elsewhere. A pricing strategy that succeeds in a busy urban market may be unsuitable for a rural business with fewer potential customers.
Peer advice is best treated as an opportunity to learn from another person’s experience, not as a substitute for professional guidance.
TAP says its platform combines discussion forums with access to consultants and educational content reviewed by its management team. When questions go beyond peer experience, members can seek more specialized assistance.
For entrepreneurs using any online business community, it’s worth asking who is providing the advice, what experience they have, and whether the recommendation applies to their particular circumstances.
How Do You Know Whether Business Mentoring Is Helping?
One of the concerns with business support programs is how success is measured.
It’s easy to count people who attend a webinar, download a worksheet, or register for a community. It’s much harder to determine whether those activities make businesses stronger.
Murphy says TAP evaluates outcomes after consulting engagements, including whether companies remain open, maintain or increase sales, and create or preserve jobs.
According to figures he shared, 89% of TAP clients remain open a year later, 91% create or preserve jobs, 86% maintain or increase sales, and 95% report greater confidence.
These are TAP-reported results, and the interview did not provide the underlying study methodology or a comparison group. They should therefore be understood as program outcomes rather than proof that consulting alone caused those results.
For TAP Into Community, Murphy says the organization intends to look beyond membership and participation to outcomes such as revenue growth, customer acquisition, financing readiness, and business survival.
Small-business owners can apply a similar approach when evaluating outside advice.
If you work with a consultant to improve pricing, look at whether your margins actually improve. If you receive marketing guidance, measure qualified leads and customer acquisition costs rather than just website visits or social media engagement.
Advice should ultimately help you make better decisions, not simply give you more tasks to complete.
Where Should an Overwhelmed Entrepreneur Start?
One of Murphy’s most practical observations is that many business owners wait too long before seeking advice.
Entrepreneurs often believe they should be capable of solving every problem themselves. They may hesitate to ask questions because they think they should already know the answers, or because they’re unsure what kind of help they need.
But waiting until a business is facing a serious financial problem can limit the available options.
If you’re feeling stuck, start by writing down the decision you’re struggling with. It doesn’t have to be an elaborate business plan.
Maybe you’re unsure whether to increase prices, worried about inconsistent cash flow, or trying to decide whether you can afford to hire someone.
Gather whatever information you have, including recent sales figures, expenses, customer feedback, or project costs. Then look for someone qualified who can help you examine the situation.
You might begin with a bookkeeper or accountant, a SCORE mentor, a Small Business Development Center adviser, or a nonprofit organization such as TAP.
You don’t have to know the solution before asking for help. You just need to be willing to examine the problem.
Better Decisions Can Be More Valuable Than More Resources
Funding remains important for small-business growth. Entrepreneurs need capital to purchase equipment, hire workers, develop products, and take advantage of opportunities.
Technology also has an important role in helping smaller companies work more efficiently and gain access to information that was once difficult or expensive to obtain.
But neither money nor technology eliminates the need for good business judgment.
An entrepreneur still has to decide which customers to pursue, how to price products and services, when to expand, and which opportunities aren’t worth the risk.
TAP’s experience suggests that business owners often benefit most when someone helps them examine those decisions before they commit additional resources.
For an entrepreneur who has been trying to manage everything alone, that outside perspective may be the resource they’ve been missing.
And sometimes, the best next step for a business isn’t another loan, a new software tool, or a bigger marketing budget. It’s having a conversation with someone who can help the owner understand what the business actually needs.
About this article: Jack Murphy, Vice President of Programs and Partnerships at The Acceleration Project, provided written responses to PowerHomeBiz in October 2026. His comments and TAP’s reported program results have been incorporated into this article alongside additional business management guidance.
