The usual way to work out profit in this trade is price minus what the products cost. It produces a pleasant number and has almost nothing to do with what a month actually leaves behind.
Which is where the familiar feeling comes from: working constantly, prices that seem normal, and somehow nothing left at the end of the month. The cause is usually not the prices — it is that part of the cost was never counted, because it does not look like a cost.
Four components, not one
- Products used on this specific serviceThe only part everyone counts, and even this gets counted loosely — the expensive visible things are included, the small constant ones are not: disposables, disinfection, wipes, power.
- TimeNot just the time in the chair. Setting up, cleaning down, sterilising, the messages before the appointment. Two hours of work is usually two and a half or three.
- The workspaceRent and utilities, or a share of household costs if you work from home. A fixed monthly figure that has to be divided across the number of services you actually perform.
- Running costs of the businessContributions, tax, phone, tools that wear out, training, advertising. None of it attaches to a particular client, and without it there is no work.
Three steps
What usually emerges the first time
- A long cheap service is almost always loss-making. It looks fine because the products are cheap — but it eats hours.
- A maintenance appointment often beats the original work: less time for a similar price.
- The most expensive service is not necessarily the most profitable. If it takes three times as long, it loses to two simpler ones.
- Discounts for regulars sometimes push a specific service below zero — particularly when applied to something already long.
- Travel time is working time nobody pays for unless you build it in.
None of that is an argument for raising every price. It is an argument for revising the list structurally: shorten what eats time, raise what sells regardless, and drop what only survives out of habit.
The slot that did not sell also has a cost
The least obvious part of the calculation. Fixed costs do not fall because nobody came on Wednesday, which means the empty slot is paid for out of the ones that filled.
One practical consequence: anything that improves occupancy moves profit more than raising prices does. Reminders that reduce no-shows. Booking the next visit on the spot. Being bookable in the evening without a conversation. These are not conveniences — they change the denominator in the formula.
Should my own pay be part of the cost?
Yes. Otherwise your time is free and profit is simply whatever happens to be left. The simplest approach is to price your time through the hourly figure and treat the remainder as the business’s profit, separate from paying yourself.
I work from home. What counts as workspace cost?
A share of household costs proportionate to the space and time the work occupies. Precision is not critical here — what matters is that the number is not zero, because it is not.
I did the maths and my prices should double. Now what?
That almost always means restructuring rather than doubling: shorten durations, remove loss-making items, raise the most undervalued ones and improve occupancy. A sudden doubling usually costs more clients than it earns.