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.

Sean Casey

Motorsports as an industry is challenging to find profit in. The costs are high, payoffs, even for winning, are never enough to cover the cost of entry. Sponsorship is crucial for sustainable profit generation, but really effective sponsorship is mostly reserved for the highest levels of motorsports, and very challenging to find at club level. Read more>>

Jessica Morrow

This is a great question because there has long been a misconception that musicians make all this money and they go on tour and it’s all great, so on and so forth. Touring, it turns out, is not glamorous by any means. You’re trying to stretch money, sometimes you’re going days without getting to shower or sleep in a real bed. The money that musicians make oftentimes are just from having a really lucrative side hustle, such as selling things on the road. Read more>>

Ale Hickman

Being a content creator there is a lot of assumptions on what creators should and shouldn’t get paid for. There is such a fine line of selling when you are in the “influencer” category. If you are too salesy, you’re going to get unfollowed, if you aren’t advertising enough, people don’t understand what’s going on in your content. It’s serving your community with a clear message without bugging your viewer. In content creation, I have the power to make money many different ways. One way I make money is UGC (user generated content). UGC content is meant to be more genuine than an advertisement. Read more>>

Sean Fogarty

I would say the biggest challenge in the wine industry is big distribution companies trying to corner the market. I am a business of one and the wineries I represent are also businesses of one. Large distribution companies set prices that are inticing to wine buyers making it very difficult for truly low production small wineries to compete. Read more>>

Moneer Mouchamel

Flow arts is a relatively small niche that has steadily grown over the past 20 or so years. Because of this, many well known brands that sell flow tools are handmade or have been around for quite a long time. The general profit margins of many flow tools, outside of some outliers with LED products, is not as high as other industries. So when one factors in the niche nature of the industry, profit margins, handmade goods, and well-established brands, it is difficult to enter the market as a new brand. The brands doing the best are able to mass manufacture their products and/or materials for handmade goods, which requires quite a bit of capital. Read more>>

Stacey Roberts

I think the toughest part of profiting as an artist, is finding the right audience. Most people have this notion that artists work for free, because we love creating, and we have been blessed with talent. Aside from being represented by a major art gallery, being recognized as a professional artist can be tricky. I think that being a strong, consistent self-marketer is the number one thing that successful artists need. Unfortunately, most of us creatives are not the best at it. Read more>>

Greg Henderson

The biggest challenge a small brick and mortar guitar faces is cash flow and inventory management . With the advent of the internet, Ebay, Reverb, Craigslist and Marketplace, everyone and anyone can be a guitar dealer they think. One more thing that never gets mentioned about marketplace and Craigslist is they do not pay sales tax so I know you are helping your personal situation but hurting your community by avoiding sales tax! Read more>>

Fran Matos

As a small business, one of the biggest challenges is cost of goods. We often don’t have credit terms, we don’t buy at the same volume and frequency as larger corporations so we end up paying much more for the same items. Read more>>