Busy but broke? Markup vs. margin is probably why

Busy and profitable are different things

You can be booked solid all summer and still lose money — and the leak is usually hiding inside the pricing math itself.

Markup is not margin

A job costs $100. You add $20 and charge $120 — feels like 20% profit. But $20 is only 17% of the $120 price. That’s your real margin, and it’s lower than the number in your head. Stretch that gap across every bid all season and it quietly drains thousands — money you earned and never collected.

The triple-the-materials trap

Pricing by 3× materials works on small, material-heavy jobs — and falls apart on labor-heavy ones. A big mowing contract or multi-day install priced that way tells you nothing about crew cost per hour or overhead, and underprices you every time.

The one shift that fixes it

Stop asking “what do I add on top of cost?” Start asking “what percentage of the final price do I need to keep?” — then work backwards to the price. That’s pricing by margin, and it isn’t charging too much. It’s finally getting paid for the time, crew, equipment, and skill already in the job.

Run the math on your last two jobs this week — then let the Job Pricing Calculator do it for every bid from here on.

Watch the full breakdown

Prefer video? Everything in this article, straight from Taucier — and there’s more on our YouTube channel.

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