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.

Brittney Cabrera

The biggest challenge to profitability in the furniture refurbishing and restoring industry is finding your ideal client. When I first started out in this industry, I was still learning along the way. I was desperate to get my name out there so any client that wanted my services, I would say yes to. I would say yes to their price reductions, all of their needs and wants, and completely forgot to take into consideration the time and effort it takes for a project to be completed. Furniture restoration is hard work. You put in hours upon hours of work to get the piece just right. Read more>>

Erin Keam

I believe it is women undercharging and underearning – basically messages we receive about money as women and sexism. I have rarely seen a webinar about “imposter syndrome” aimed at men, or have had men introduce themselves as a father first when asked what they do, or had a man worry he was charging too much. Read more>>

Camila Velez

I think the biggest challenge is the concept that Corporate America (in the restaurant industry) has created. While yes, bread (specifically) has. a low product cost, the intense labor, that goes into making good, quality, healthy bread goes above what the consumer has gotten accustomed to paying for, because of the commercialization of bread in the US. Specifically since the sliced bread concept became a retail product in grocery stores. Read more>>

Victoria Jones

This is such a great question and is a topic of much discussion within the field! In my opinion, the biggest challenge to profitability within the cottage home bakery business is the cookie artists themselves. Being profitable as a cottage home baker making custom decorated cookies is a huge challenge. The challenge comes from an array of areas. The ever increasing cost of ingredients, the amount of time to decorate the cookies for an order (it typically takes me 6-8 hours to decorate a dozen cookies for an order) as well as the time to design an order, make and bake dough, mix and color icing and the costs for all the products that goes into creating beautiful cookies adds up quickly. Read more>>

Ayanna Card

The biggest challenge to profitability in my industry is getting consistent access to people that can convinced to purchase for the first time and then building a relationship so that they become return customers. A small e-commerce business always has to work hard to be visible in a space where there are many similar options. Being unique to set yourself apart only makes a difference when you can get in front of people to show that uniqueness. Because today’s shopper is so reliant on the internet and specifically social media to find the items they are looking for, every company is vying for their attention. It takes the right mix of funding and content to break through all of the noise. Read more>>

Vorise Ladet

The competition is very strong. It’s like in the state of Texas everybody has a lawn service. If you look around on a normal summer day you could probably count the number of landscape companies you see daily. Read more>>

Luke Thornton

General cost of living and basic greed. It concerns me that pursuing music will only be available to those with great means. It’s hard if not impossible to make money off of the music itself, touring and making sufficient living off of it is more difficult without sacrificing quality of life. I know a lot of talented people would be able to go a lot farther with their music if money was less of a concern. It’s a loss to everyone if we make it impossible for good talent to develop and make a fair living. Read more>>

Camilla Pigott

The biggest challenge is finding that target audience that not only respects my craft, but also understand the value in it. There was this moment early in my business when I realized that I wasn’t making any money. I was actually going into my account to finish projects. Which we all know is a HUGE red flag in any industry. I raised my prices and long and behold people complained. It wasn’t expected because I still was pretty cheap compared to my counterparts. I went for a couple months with no orders because those clients were now out of my price range, I wasn’t getting the referrals. Read more>>

Victor Telleria

The biggest challenge to profitability in the music industry are the margins music as a product makes in the digital world. Nowadays, music is streamed 90% of the time instead of actually being pressed and sold as a physical object. This makes the economic model of music much more complicated and difficult to navigate because streaming a song pays an average of .003-.005$ per stream. Yes, you read that right. Read more>>

Tai Hunt

One of the main challenges to profitability in curating local product subscription boxes is the pricing of their products. Other subscription boxes will order from overseas and stack thousands of products in a warehouse to get their product cheaper than we can from local businesses. It’s important for Locally Hyped subscription boxes to work with local businesses to get high-quality products, but this often comes at a price. It can be difficult to find the right balance of pricing to make a profit while also supporting local businesses. Read more>>