Here’s a painful truth: just because you’re landing jobs doesn’t mean you’re making money.

Too many small business owners are winning bids but losing profit. You celebrate the “yes,” but when the dust settles and the bills are paid… there’s nothing left for you.

Sound familiar? Let’s fix that.

Why Pricing Trips Up Small Business Owners

Most business owners I work with fall into one of these traps:

• Pricing to “win” instead of to profit. You drop your price just to beat the competition.
• Guessing at overhead. You forget that insurance, trucks, phones, software, even coffee, eat away at margins.
• Not paying yourself. You build a quote that covers materials and payroll, but your paycheck is nowhere in the math.

The result? You work harder but feel broke.The Easy Math (Don’t Worry, No Accounting Jargon)

Here’s a simple formula to sanity-check your pricing:

Materials + Labor + Overhead + Profit = Price

Let’s break it down:

1. Materials: Everything it takes to do the job (supplies, parts, rentals).
2. Labor: Wages for your crew plus payroll taxes and benefits.
3. Overhead: Non-job costs (insurance, vehicles, phones, admin, software, rent). Spread across all jobs.
4. Profit: Your slice of the pie. (Yes, you get one. Aim for 10–20% to start.)
   
   

A Quick Test You Can Try Today

Grab your last completed job and run the numbers:

1. List what you charged the client.
2. Subtract your materials and labor.
3. Subtract your share of overhead (even a rough estimate).
4. What’s left?

👉 If that number is negative or tiny, congratulations—you “won” a job that lost you money.

How to Price With Confidence (Instead of Panic)

• Stop racing to the bottom. Competing only on price is a losing game.
• Know your overhead. Even a ballpark number is better than ignoring it.
• Build in your paycheck. If your pricing doesn’t cover your pay, it’s broken.

You Don’t Have to Figure It Out Alone

At Crown Consulting, we help small business owners build pricing that works in the real world. That means covering your true costs, paying you fairly, and leaving profit in the bank.

Because the goal isn’t just to stay busy, it’s to stay profitable.

👉 Want more? Listen to Beyond the Bank Balance: Pricing for Profit. Or, check out how we help businesses understand their overhead and build profitable pricing models.

Winning jobs feels good. Profitable jobs keep you in business.