Some farrier businesses fail because the operators have little or no understanding of business.

According to the United States Small Business Administration, two-thirds of all new businesses survive at least 2 years, but only half of those are still around at 4 years. If you don’t want to become one of these negative statistics, you need to work on your business as well as in your business.

Profits And The Bottom Line

To be successful in business you need to change your attitude about yourself and your business. You need to stop being so protective of your customers’ pocketbooks and start meeting your own economic needs and those of your family. There are three main ways to increase your profits:

1. Invest.
2. Increase prices.
3. Decrease expenses.

This article will focus on increasing profits by looking at how to charge for hoof-care services. 

Some of the pitfalls in trying to increase your profits are:

• Charging different prices for the same service.
• Discounting services regularly.
• Not making regular price increases.
• Worrying too much about potential customer losses.
• Undercharging for your services.
• Obtaining and maintaining customers by setting the lowest prices in your area.
• Rating your customers by an A-B-C method instead of by percentage of profit margin.
• Working harder instead of smarter.

One of the most frequent questions I hear from farriers — whether established farriers, novices or those who are new to an area — is, “How much should I charge?” That’s closely followed by, “Am I charging enough?”  Many shoers charge…