Have you ever had a friend look at a business and randomly throw out numbers that made it seem like that business owner must be making serious bank? We’ve experienced that many times, and know from conversations with operators and owners in those industries that their real profitability is often far, far less. The reason is often that there are unique challenges to profitability in almost every industry and so we wanted to create a space for entrepreneurs from across industries and markets to discuss the challenges to profitability in their industries.

Robyn Groenewald

This is an interesting question. Most people would look at a business like mine and think well it’s just cake how much can that really cost. I find this so especially with more intricate flavor cakes that I don’t necessarily make often and have to source the ingredients and then people are surprised at how much more the cake will cost. The time and effort to source the ingredients or to make the filling from scratch to maintain the standard and flavor people expect from my business are not always considered by customers. Read more>>

Shannon Hovden

The rising costs of ingredients and supplies. As a small business owner, I am constantly searching for the best deals and negotiating with suppliers to keep costs down. However, certain ingredients and supplies have limited availability or are subject to sudden price increases. This puts pressure on my profit margins and requires constant adaptation and creativity to maintain quality while keeping prices accessible for customers. Overall, navigating economic challenges requires flexibility, resilience, and strong communication and relationships with suppliers and customers. Read more>>

Gisele Silva

For me personally the biggest challenge it’s being a foreigner. You need the big and relevant jobs but the type of visa I have, O1, is not always accepted. So you need to have a green card or be an American citizen, but one of the requirements for foreigners to get a green card is to do big and relevant jobs. In other words, the math is not matching. Read more>>

Daniel Grimsland

The music industry is very difficult to make profitable, in general. It has always been a tough one, but when I joined the band “3”, in 2005, I caught what would seem be the tail end of the days of record company budgets, and maybe even record companies as a whole. “3” was signed to a very successful independent record label, and we were lucky to have recording budgets, and tour support, and a budget for promotion, and even a little money for a small crew to help us on tour, selling merchandise, CDs were huge for us to make money on the road, and also helping us load gear. It’s always tough to have to load gear after you play, and it was so great to have the help. Wow… Read more>>

Brady Outcelt

Biggest challenge would be the ever changing music industry. The music industry is constantly changing and it’s harder than ever to earn a decent profit nowadays. One of the biggest hurdles is music streaming. Apps like Spotify, Pandora and IHeart Radio make it hard to profit from your music. It’s usually a fraction of a penny per play. It’s not like it used to be when playing shows was the sole option to get someone’s music. With the internet today it makes bands almost become a merchandise store, more than being a musician itself to turn a profit. Read more>>

Madeline Yankee

As a small business in an industry that is seasonal as well as flexes with tourism, one of my biggest challenges is how unpredictable the market is. Not only do we see a massive decrease in revenue during the slow season, but year over year it’s hard to predict how the high season will perform. It creates a big challenge in trying to maintain the right amount of staff and pay them well knowing we have significant slumps in revenue. I am trying to create new facets of our business to better sustain through the slow seasons, by producing services that are not reliant on the tourism part of our business. Read more>>

Michelle Kuei

When you’re an outsider looking at the coaching industry, it is too easy to think it’s a goldmine. We hear the soaring roar success of high-profile celebrity coaches like Tony Robbin, and Brandon Burchard or perhaps with the latest Alex Hormozi with popularity dominates across major social media platforms. While it might seem like an easy path to profitability, the reality is far more nuanced. The biggest hurdle? Getting yourself seen, or in other words, visibility. Read more>>

Ben & Sydney Spurrier

There are people who get it and there are people who don’t. Why buy an expensive handmade knife when you can go to a big box store and buy a knife for less than $10? The short answer is, you will probably be back to that big box store often to replace your dull blade. We’ve definitely encountered people who do not understand the intricacies of knife making. Which is understandable because like other forms of art, it is a complex process. We like to say our knives are usable works of art. They add something to your kitchen and enhance your cooking experience. Holding something that was crafted by a single set of hands instead of stamped out in an assembly line at a huge factory, gives you a sense of satisfaction. We love the fact that we are preserving a craft that was first seen thousands of years ago. Read more>>

CHRISTINA DIAMANTARA

A big challenge in filmmaking is that films cost a lot to produce while having very small profit predictability. It’s very difficult to predict what is going to appeal to an audience large enough to actually recoup the money invested in the film. And even if you have the perfect script, so many things happening during production and post-production can heavily influence that script as well as the final result. This seems to be the reason why so many big studios gravitate towards films made on existing intellectual property (Marvel films for example). For them, it’s a way to gain profit predictability because they know that the fans of a successfully published book, for example, will definitely pay to watch the movie. Read more>>

Jamal Martin

The biggest challenge I’ve had when it comes to making profit is being low balled in a smaller city. So many creators in my city charge low so when prices are higher than normal, it’s easy for customers to say “Well I can go to someone a lot cheaper.” This in turn makes it a struggle to make any real income to live off of doing what creators love. Read more>>

Antony J. Bowman

Being a freelance creative is by far the most challenging in my business. As an independent writer & director one has to invest so much time to secure an on-going foothold well before one is even considered – let alone paid! That said, it can work well for (say) TV writers being commissioned into a series or a studio screenwriter given the green light to write or have a spec script picked up. Basically, one is constantly working (unpaid) to feed what you think the current industry desires. Read more>>

Lara Ruggles

The music industry is up against so many factors that make it almost impossible to make a career as an artist. There was a study that came out of Chicago showing that music is a HUGE driver of local economies – every $1 spent on a concert ticket results in $12 more being generated for the surrounding economy on sales at local restaurants, hotels, bars, and retail stores. Yet the US spends EIGHTEEN TIMES LESS on music and the arts than any other similarly developed country. On top of that, music streaming has created a situation where artists can’t generate album sales because almost no-one buys albums anymore, (but it costs more and more to make them) and streaming doesn’t even pay pennies. (Literally, it pays less than a penny per stream – significantly less).  Read more>>