Profits differ from net income, and no where is there clearer than for small business owner-operators, artists, and creatives. Just because you have a certain amount of money left over after covering expenses doesn’t mean you’ve made profits. Why? Because you have to factor in the cost of your labor and the risk you took and so after factoring that in, millions of small businesses and artists and creatives are operating with little to no profit. However, it doesn’t have to be this way and so we wanted to create a space where sharp entrepreneurs and creatives could come together and discuss the challenges to profitability and potential solutions. If you have something valuable to add to this conversation that can help others achieve profitability, please reach out to us as we want to get your ideas in front of our readers.

Joshua & Jacelyne Jackson

From our observation, the demand for the arts industry doesn’t seem as important in Tulsa as other states. The desire for recreational arts has diminished due to inflation costs, unavailable funds, poor money management, segregation, or the lack of patronization. Read more>>

Samantha Okazaki

I think the biggest challenge to profitability as a professional photographer right now is the fact that everyone and their uncle has a camera! Whether it’s film, a DSLR, or just a really great smartphone, it seems as though everyone has the technology at their fingertips to snap a photo. And I’m no stranger to this! My iPhone camera roll is full to the brim with pictures of my dogs, my daughter, really good breakfasts, and beach sunsets. It’s too easy these days to take a great quality photo – or 400! Read more>>

Max Juhasz

Coming from a digital marketing background, there is a lot more than meets the eye when it comes to getting a good online marketing channel running, A lot of cannabis companies lack the resources and skillset to build their own websites and integrate everything correctly, they are making bad decisions when it comes to who they hire to build and manage their websites. Read more>>

Lisa Steinman

Profitability is always a challenge when you venture in small business territory, but I do feel this is a particular pain point for handmade items. Floral preservation itself is a very detailed and time consuming process as is, and the rising cost of quality materials makes it difficult to produce beautiful pieces at prices most people are willing to pay. Read more>>

Paula Federico

One of the biggest challenges in the flower growing industry is the unpredictability of Mother Nature and other uncontrolable factors such as plant diseases or pests affecting entire crops. For example, a late hard freeze or hail storm on a entire field is about to bloom can cause severe damage and loss, affecting the proffitability for the entire season. Events like these are impossible to prevent and hard to predict. Read more>>

Mel King

I believe one of the biggest challenges in our, if not all businesses, is Government intervention. In the restaurant business, we are very dependent on truck transportation and delivery of product. Intentional reduction of oil production and resulting increases in gas prices has hurt tremendously. A mandated minimum wage has resulted in minimum job growth and is why more restaurants are “employing” kiosks instead of high schoolers for their first job. Read more>>

Anthony Carranza

In the world of illustration, you’re diving into an incredibly saturated market. There is such an abundance of talented people creating amazing stories! The biggest challenge to profitability is really standing out, creating a product that says “LOOK AT ME!” That’s the key to getting your books off the shelf. Read more>>

Emily Galloway

As a small scale (currently hobby) farm, we are faced with a lot of typical challenges. We aren’t the only farm around our area that offers eggs, hatching eggs, baby chicks, and goats. In fact there are a handful of small farms near as well as all over that offer similar things. Then there are the larger more well known hatcheries and of course all the feed stores (family owned and big box alike). Read more>>

Christy LoPresto

With the restaurant industry, it is all about keeping payroll and product costs low. I find this to be the most challenging without sacrificing service and quality. With inflation now and labor cost going up in NYC it is defiantly harder to turn a profit without raising menu prices or sacrificing the quality of service/ product with less labor on board. Read more>>

Ryan Dowden

Over the last 10-15 years, amateur recording equipment has come so far. I remember being in high school in the early 2000s and recording music into my family’s home computer using an 8-channel mixer and plugging into the microphone input of the computer. Everything going into that computer had to be pre-mixed, already eqed to sound the way you wanted it, level balanced, etc. Now, you can get an eight input recording interface for a fraction of what I paid for that analog mixer 20 years ago and have complete control over individual sources of audio after you have recorded them. Read more>>