Chapter two · about six minutes
What you actually keep
The number on your booking app is not your money. Here is where the rest of it goes, and why seeing that changes every decision you make.
The month that looked great
You had a good month. Busy most days, barely a gap in the calendar, and the number on your booking app was the biggest you had ever seen on it.
Then you looked at your bank account, and somehow it did not feel like a good month at all.
If that has happened to you, nothing went wrong and nobody took anything from you. You were simply looking at a number that was never the whole story.
Following one appointment
When a client hands you money, not all of it is yours yet. It passes through a few hands on the way, and most of those hands are very quiet about it.
So let us follow one appointment all the way to the end. Say a client pays you $100.
The card company took its piece before the money ever reached your account, so you never watched it leave. The products came out of a box you bought weeks ago, so that did not feel like spending either.
Neither one was hidden from you. They were just invisible.
That appointment did not make you $100. It made you $85. And $85 is still good. It is simply true.
Then the month sends its bills
Now imagine every appointment of the month, each one followed down like that. Add them all together. That is your pile.
Out of that pile come the things that arrive whether you work or not. Your rent or your booth. Insurance. Your booking software. The card reader. Your phone. These bills do not check whether you had a quiet week. They come anyway.
Whatever is still standing after all of that is your profit. That is the real number. That is what the month actually produced.
A share of what is left also belongs to taxes, and that has a chapter of its own further on, because it deserves one and because nobody should meet it in a hurry.
The part almost everyone gets wrong
Paying yourself is not a business expense. It comes out of the profit.
When you take money out for yourself, that is not a cost of running your business. It is you taking your share of what the business made.
That sounds like a small distinction. It is not. If you treat your own pay like just another bill, the business will always look like it barely broke even, no matter how well the month actually went. You will never be able to tell a strong month from a weak one, because you flattened them both.
Keep the two apart. First find out what the business made. Then decide what you take.
You do not have to change your prices tomorrow
Here is the calm part, and it matters more than the arithmetic.
None of this means you are charging too little. It does not mean you have been doing it wrong, and it is not a reason to raise your prices this week in a panic.
It only means you have been steering by a number that was never the full picture. Once you can see the real one, everything else becomes easier to decide. Whether that service is still worth its spot on your menu. Whether that supplier is worth what they charge. Whether you can afford the thing you have been wanting for the studio.
You cannot make good decisions with the wrong number. You can make very good ones with the right one.
How to start seeing it
When you record a sale, write down the fee as well. Not just the total your client paid.
It costs you about three seconds, and it is the whole difference between a number that flatters you and a number you can lean on. Do it for one month and you will know, honestly and for the first time, what your work actually earns.
That is the entire chapter. Busy and profitable are not the same thing, and you deserve to know which one you are having.