Let’s start on a high note: if you’re fully booked, that’s a positive problem to have! It means people love what you do. They love working with you. You’re clearly doing something right, as your reputation, skill, or personal touch is resonating with your customers. 

However, if you’re constantly busy and still not seeing the financial rewards, there might be a disconnect somewhere. We believe that all creative professionals should feel empowered to ask a price that captures the true value of your offering. If you’re fully booked, but still not profitable, it might be that your price isn’t capturing all the potential value. Let’s fix that. 

The Most Common Reasons You’re Not Profitable 

There are several common reasons why you’re not profitable. Most often, it comes down to the price or too complex of an offering. 

Maybe Your Prices Are Too Low 

It’s common to start as an entrepreneur by underpricing your services. The temptation makes sense when you’re starting out and trying to attract clients. However, when your schedule starts to fill up, your pricing needs to reflect your expertise, time, and demand. 

If you’re at capacity and not profitable, this is the red flag. It’s time to raise your prices. You might lose a few clients, but that’s okay. You’re trading quantity for quality, and a sustainable business. 

But how do you raise prices without losing too many customers? Typically, customers are less likely to notice incremental increases in price of 1-5%. Moreover, if you can justify the price increases, such as through increased quality and experience, customers are more likely to find raising prices acceptable. We wrote a whole article diving deeper into how to raise prices without deterring too many customers. You can read it here. 

Maybe You’re Offering Too Many Services 

If you are charging your customers a price that reflects the value of your offering, the problem might not be your price, but the costs of having too many services on offer. Not all services are going to be streamlined and efficient, but if you are a small business owner, you need to focus on a few brilliant services. Because of the limited resources, you are not going to be the expert of everything, which can create more inefficiencies and costs if you spend lots of time responding to service requests that don’t match your skillset perfectly. Streamline your work process for the services that you know how to offer and focus only on selling them. If you end up offering other services as well, you must make sure that the price is high. In these cases, you can afford to lose the business in comparison to offering them at too low of a price.