Raise the price or chase volume?

The discount trap has a mirror image, and it's the most encouraging math in this course: price increases are as disproportionately GOOD for profit as discounts are bad.

Raise the price, lose some clients — and win

Same job as last lesson: price $1,000, cost $750, profit $250. Raise the price 10%:

• New price: $1,100 — costs still $750 — new profit: $350
• Profit per job just rose 40%

Which means you can afford to lose volume. How much? You keep the same total money as long as jobs don't fall below 250/350 of today's count:

$\text{affordable volume loss} = 1 - \frac{250}{350} = 28.6\%$

Lose a quarter of your clients to a 10% price increase and you still come out ahead — working fewer hours, handling less material, with a calendar that has room in it. Almost nobody loses a quarter of their clients over 10%.

The asymmetry, tabulated

At a 25% margin, the same 10% move in opposite directions:

The asymmetry sharpens as margins thin. At a 20% margin, a 10% cut needs +100% more volume — double the work — while a 10% raise still only risks 33% of it:

Chasing volume is the steep side of the hill; pricing is the gentle side.

Why volume feels safer (and isn't)

Volume is visible — a full calendar photographs well. But every extra job carries variable cost, consumes billable hours (a hard ceiling — you have ~1,080), and adds the cash-flow load module 3 is about. Price carries nothing: no truck rolls, no materials move. The profit difference between two shops is more often one brave price letter than a hundred hustled jobs.

The honest caveats: this math assumes your costs and quality stay put, and it says nothing about how MANY clients leave — that depends on your market and how replaceable the work is. What it does give you is the threshold to compare against: if fewer than ~29% walk, the raise won. Measure against that, not against fear.