- How peer growth plans can raise your hiring, lending, and ad costs.
- How timing and sequencing decisions can reduce “rush” premiums.
- How to choose capacity gains without automatically adding headcount.
About three out of four small business owners expect their revenue to grow this year. Fifty-nine percent plan to expand. And 43% say they’ll hire, according to Bank of America’s 2026 small business survey.
As the chart above shows, those numbers sound like good news. They are good news. But they’re also a signal that changes the cost of every move you’re about to make.
Think about a beach town the week before Memorial Day. Every restaurant posts help-wanted signs on the same Monday. By Wednesday, the going wage for a line cook jumps $2 an hour because there are only so many cooks in town and suddenly everyone wants one. Nobody did anything wrong. The timing just made the same hire more expensive for everyone.
That’s what happens when 43% of owners plan to hire in the same window. Your Indeed post competes with your neighbor’s. The candidates who do see yours have three other offers to weigh, so they push for more. The same logic applies to financing, ad spend, and vendor contracts.
The question for this year isn’t whether to grow. It’s when you make each move, and in what order, so you’re not paying a premium the crowd drives up.
The Hiring Rush Tax
Picture two owners who need the same role filled. Owner A posts the job in Q2, right when the survey says most peers plan to act. Job boards are flooded with competing listings. Fewer applicants see any single post because they’re scrolling through dozens of similar ones. The candidates who do respond know they have options, so they negotiate harder. Owner A ends up paying $1 to $3 more per hour than planned and waits six weeks to fill the seat.
Owner B posts the same role in late Q1, before the rush starts. Or she waits until Q3, after the first wave of hires has settled. Either way, there are fewer competing listings on the board. More applicants land on her post. She fills the role faster and closer to her original budget. The job is identical. The timing changed the price. If you’re already feeling the squeeze of a tight labor market in 2026, stacking your hiring into the same quarter as everyone else only makes it worse.
Your Loan Application Is Competing Too
Fifty-nine percent of owners plan to expand, and many of them will need financing to do it. Your bank’s small-business lending desk has a fixed number of loan officers. When applications triple in the same quarter, yours sits in a stack. Processing slows. Terms sometimes tighten as lenders get pickier with a full pipeline. The Fed’s recent survey already confirmed that costs are squeezing small businesses hard, so walking into a crowded lending queue on top of that just compounds the pain.
The Owner Who Didn’t Hire a 13th Person
Imagine a 12-person marketing agency. The owner reads the Bank of America data and sees that nearly half her competitors plan to add staff. Instead of joining the bidding war for a 13th employee, she spends a fraction of that salary on a project management tool and a workflow redesign. The existing team handles 15% more client volume without a new hire. She bought capacity without entering the labor auction.
That’s not anti-growth. It’s choosing a different kind of growth when the price of headcount is inflated.
The same crowding effect hits your ad budget. When 59% of owners plan to expand, many of them will also spend more on ads. Google Ads works like a live auction. The more businesses bidding on the same keyword in your zip code, the more each click costs. Meta works the same way. If you haven’t already audited your ad spend for waste, now is the time. Plenty of owners fall into common marketing budget traps that burn cash even before competitors drive up prices.
Five Questions Before You Join the Rush
Your peers’ plans are data. You can use that data to time your own moves smarter. Before you commit to any big spend this quarter, sit with these five questions.
- Am I hiring in the same quarter as everyone else, and can I shift it earlier or later to avoid the peak?
- Have I submitted my financing application before Q2, or am I about to land in a crowded lender pipeline?
- Am I raising my ad budget because peers are, or because my own funnel already converts well enough to justify the increase?
- Which move should come first? If I hire before I have the financing locked in, or advertise before the new hire is onboarded, I’m paying for capacity I can’t use yet.
- Is there a way to add capacity through better tools, clearer processes, or automation, without entering any of the bidding wars at all?
None of these questions are about whether to grow. They’re about the order and timing that keep your costs from spiking alongside everyone else’s.
Optimism Is Real. So Is the Gap.
Bank of America’s numbers reflect real confidence. But other data tells a more complicated story. The NFIB optimism index shows a gap between how owners feel and what their actual sales look like. Reported revenue hasn’t caught up to the confidence in many sectors.
Your competitors feel good too. But their customers haven’t fully shown up yet. Plan for growth, sequence it on your own schedule, and don’t mistake peer confidence for guaranteed demand.
