Beautiful Products. Broken Profit. A Bookkeeper's Tale

Maria made beautiful candles. Her customers raved about the scents, the packaging, the experience. Her sales were steady, and her shelves were always stocked. She charged $18 per candle, thinking she had a solid profit margin because each one cost her about $6 to make.

But when she came to me, she couldn’t understand why the money kept running out.

So we did the math.

$6 covered wax, jars, and fragrance. But it didn’t include the hours she spent testing batches, rent, utilities, insurance, marketing, sourcing supplies, labeling jars, or handling customer service. It didn’t cover the cost of her website, shipping materials, gas for markets, or her time packaging each order.

When we recalculated her true cost per candle, which included hidden and indirect costs, it actually cost her $17.63 per candle!!!  She was only making .39 profit per candle!!! Suddenly, her $18 price tag didn’t feel so profitable anymore.

Maria wasn’t under-selling her product. She was underestimating the cost of being in business.This is an important distinction.

We recalculated her pricing using my EPI™ Formula:
Expenses + Profit = Income.

We raised her price to $25 per candle, not to gouge her customers, but to reflect the real value of her time, tools, and talent.

And guess what?
Her customers still bought.
Because the value had always been there.

If you’ve ever looked at your sales and thought,
"Why am I still broke?"…this might be your answer.

You don’t have a pricing problem. You have a math problem. And that can be fixed.

👉 Ready to run the numbers and actually pay yourself this year?

Grab my STOP Method Budgeting Workbook - the exact tool I used to help Maria go from barely scraping by to building real profit into her prices.

Because sustainability isn’t guesswork.
It’s strategy.
And it starts with one formula: Expenses + Profit = Income.

Lub you,
Crystal 🦄