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.

Josh Emerick

As creative, I think we all wrestle with but quietly suffer through this question. I imagine most business owners in general too. Still, I find the creative industry struggles because there are sort of two identities and lots of unhealthy narratives for artists and making money. From the starving artist to the passion-driven sin to charge for creativity ideas and lack of conversations around the topic, I think we’re all left a bit in the dark. Read more>>

Charles James

For us it comes down to finding good help, battling rising food costs and being in the right place at the right time. It’s harder now than ever to find passionate employees in the restaurant industry and the cost of turnover can be detrimental for a small business. As a mobile business we’re constantly doing market research and strategizing how to get the truck in high volume locations. With prices rising on everything from fuel to food, calculating our operating costs is an around-the-clock job for us right now. Read more>>

Tim Conkle

Labor. People forget, but IT is a labor-intensive industry, and while promising the moon can get you a client, if you want to keep that client, you need to be able to deliver the goods. The modern MSP needs to constantly be figuring out ways to spin out more services, better services, faster services — all while keeping costs under control. That’s just what it takes to remain competitive, let alone profitable, in a market as saturated as ours. Read more>>

Jeanelle Ditto

I think the biggest challenge to this industry and lots of industries is matching the customer expectation with what they want versus their budget. Most people, generally have an idea of what they like but aren’t familiar with what their vision may cost. We always want that pinnacle product and end result but try to find ways to stay below pinnacle pricing. This sometimes can create a lack luster or underwhelming experience for the customer because maybe they didn’t have the budget to support what they envisioned. Read more>>

Justin Dickinson

The biggest challenges we face in the photography community to profit is being undercut by beginner or hobby photographers. 1. The notion that photographers will often photograph free for access to events and/or to build their portfolios makes it more challenging to charge what us professionals are worth can drive down sales. 2. As photography becomes more accessible to the public over saturates the market and drives down demand. What I love about sports photography is that it’s almost impossible to get good sports photos with a cell phone. Read more>>

Caleb Schiff

One of the biggest challenges to the profitability in the restaurant industry is creating a sustainable win-win proposition for our workforce thus retaining great people. No matter how good robots become or technology for ordering advances, there is simply no substitute to a great team, both for the employees and for the customer. We need great people but they need to want to stay and find it financially possible. Read more>>

Jana Hester

A huge challenge of being a soap maker is rising costs of raw ingredients, this has been particularly bad during the past three years. This has come in many forms- from rising costs per pound of oil to limitations on the amount you can buy. Sometimes I was not able to find certain ingredients in stock at all, having to shift gears to handle lack of supplies. Read more>>

Taylor Hamill

For the last couple of years the biggest challenge in terms of profitability would be the rapid daily rising cost of materials like lumber. And paint shortages for the last year due to supply lines being disrupted from Covid. And now fuel costs being higher than they’ve ever been. These are all the biggest challenges I face as a business owner for the reason that when costs go up for essential materials, the price of the job goes up. And sometimes by a lot. Customers are often less inclined to accept bids that reflect these higher costs. With the most common response being “we want to try and wait for material costs to come down before we do this job” Read more>>

Ashlee Bell-Williams

The biggest challenge with profitability in the baking industry is charging your worth. As a baker the competition is everywhere; large grocery store chains and all of the other bakers. Sometimes it is easy to undercharge for the work that we do because we are afraid to lose our customers. I have learned that your work speaks for itself. The time and effort I put into a cake is not the same as a grocery store and I have learned to only compare myself to myself. I will stress myself out if I am constantly looking at my competition and doubting my own work. Read more>>