👩‍🏫 Teacher’s Guide

Objective
Students will identify common reasons businesses fail and ways to reduce risk.

Teaching Notes

• Discuss common causes: low demand, high costs, poor planning.
• Explain that failure can be a learning step for entrepreneurs.
• Highlight importance of adapting to customer needs.

🧒 Student Worksheet

Concept and Helping Material

This lesson helps you learn Why do some businesses fail and why money tracking matters in business.

Vocabulary and Definition

• — A plan for how to spend and save money.
• — Money a business spends to operate.
• — Money a business earns from sales.
• — Money paid to the government to support public services.
• — A chance that something could go wrong in business.

Business QA

1. What is revenue?
2. What is an expense?
3. What does it mean to spend less than you make?
4. What is profit?
5. Why do businesses make budgets?
6. Name one common expense.
7. Why should businesses track money carefully?
8. What is a tax?
9. Why do people pay taxes?
10. What might happen if a business does not pay taxes?
11. What is risk in business?
12. Why do some businesses fail?
13. What happens if expenses are too high?
14. How can a business reduce expenses?
15. Why is customer demand important?
16. What is competition?
17. How can poor service cause failure?
18. Why is planning important?
19. What is one reason a business may lose customers?
20. What is one way to improve business success?

Hands-On Experiment or Activities

What You Need: paper, calculator, pretend money, cost cards.
What You Do: 1) Pretend you run a lemonade stand. 2) List revenue from sales. 3) List expenses (cups, lemons, sugar). 4) Subtract to find profit.
Think and Talk: What changed? What stayed the same?

Reflection

• Why is budgeting helpful for a business?
• What is one public service taxes help pay for?
• What is one reason businesses fail?
• How can businesses reduce risk?