The other day I had a client at my office and the conversation was about their profitability and their pricing. Probably the most important thing that any business needs to have is proper pricing. You are in business to make money. Sometimes, like in the case of my client the other day, you might not have the ability to control your costs. If you're not on top of your costs going up and in reflecting those cost increases, then you will suffer.

If you're not making money in your business, you might as well go work at Tim Hortons. 

A lot of the time, the main pushback that I get is "Well, if I raise my prices, then my customers are going to use somebody else." And that may be true, but it's not going to be true for everyone. There are a lot of people out there who are looking for quality and not price. Those are the customers that you really want, the ones that are looking for value. They're looking for service, follow-ups, and to know that they're being taken care of or that their professional service isn't substandard.

I would say that if you were to increase your prices and lose half your customers, you could better focus on those customers and remain profitable and likely make more money than what you were making before. If you're breaking even, but you're running your butt off, what's the point of that? But if you’ve got only half the customers and you're still making money, then everyone wins. Your customers are getting good service or product, and you're making profit.

This isn't about gouging customers, it's about making sure that you're profitable. If you've done everything else to control your costs, whether it be your efficiencies, talking with your suppliers to get better deals, etcetera, then the only thing left to do is to increase your pricing or change the way you price. 

Pricing is important. It’s not about ripping people off. That's not the point, but there are costs associated with doing business and those costs continue to increase. If those costs increase, the only people that are losing are the actual business owners.

It's very difficult to own a business these days, but it's not hard to earn money if you know what you're doing.