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.

Elizabeth Ashford

Profitability can often go hand and hand with brand visibility, which leads me to one of the most significant obstacles in our industry: shadow banning. Whether it’s related to Instagram ads or our visibility in users’ feeds on TikTok, Instagram & more, self-marketing turns into a completely different challenge. Read more>>

Rick Ochoa

In the industry that we are involved in, post-production, that typically requires so much time/hours for a completed project, may not be profitable on various occasions. Consumers don’t always want to pay the value of what these projects are truly worth, because they don’t always understand how much time is put into them. The level of knowledge we artists have invested to learn these various softwares can be way under valued too. Read more>>

Lindsay Soriano

One of the biggest challenges to profitability in the photography industry is that people often do not value family photography as art. Customers make assumptions that photographers just pick up a camera and take a photo, but it’s so much more than that. It’s taking time to set up everything for a smooth scheduling process, learning about light, composition, editing, spending time editing (and for some photographers this is a lengthy and detailed process) and so much more. I think a lot of potential clients think, if they had a fancy camera they could also take great photos. Read more>>

Nathan Wilson

I produce, write, act and in our last film The Great Nick D I finally got a directing credit, but in the micro budget film world it’s tough to turn a profit. Since the boom of the streaming services it is very heard to sell physical media such as Blu-Reys and DVD’s, which used to be the way to make money in the independent film world. Now the main way to make money is to give your film to a streaming service and get paid very minimal per view of your films. Streaming services pay so minimal that it’s very hard to make back your budget let alone a profit. Before Covid in September of 2018 we had a film Will & Liz which is streaming on Amazon prime, I believe we were getting seven cents per view, which we actually did okay money wise for a bit. Around that time we were in Minnesota filming our next film Loon Lake. Read more>>

Emelly Velasco

My field is about the creative industries I´m working on this already about more than a decade with intellectual property mining de development of text, brands, images, business models, instruction design, graphic design, conceptual events, research, and visual art. Read more>>

Kate Mulleneaux

I have been taking portraits for 20 years – I was born and raised in an era that saw the rise of digital cameras, smart phone technology and the ability to take pictures anytime you want. I think the greatest challenge to my industry is that photography is not as specialized as it used to be. Consumers either don’t need photos because they are perfectly content with the photos their smart phones take or that there are so many photographers in your area that the industry is saturated, and it is hard to stand out. Read more>>

Nathaniel Beaulieu

Studies have suggested that about 40% of contractors end up charging a client more then their initial quoted price at the end of the project. Indicating that for the contractor to make a profit on the project, they need to charge the client more money. If the client refused to pay or the contractor decides the “eat” the extra cost, the contractor is out whatever money that is. The bigger the project the bigger the potential hit on profitability. In my experience, extra charges occurs when the contractor has inadequate expectations about the scope of work needed and the potential issues that could arise from a project. For example, a contractor may incorrectly account for material costs, sub-contractor or other labor costs, and or not account for the unseen problems that have been “covered up” in a home remodel previously. Read more>>