[adventured]

Most older, local, small businesses in small to medium markets in the US will never be growth businesses. They're treading water businesses after the market is saturated (some can be very profitable of course).

Being technical about it, a business may keep up with inflation by raising prices, and show nominal growth.

Look at the revenue of a liquor store, insurance business, or tv / radio station, in a healthy but smaller settled market. No market growth, little to no business growth, but the businesses aren't likely to disappear either. This is a very common scenario, there are millions of US businesses in this situation.

[dredmorbius]

They're treading water businesses

More accurately: they're earning normal economic profits. This assumes that economic activity is normally profitable, which isn't unreasonable in certain circumstances, though it's not guaranteed.