How to Always be Profitable

By Cass Jacoby, RCS Reporter. 

Advice on how to smartly deal with inflation and a volatile stock market. 

In this episode of the Roofing Economic Outlook, Mischa Fisher, chief economist at Angi, and RCS President Heidi J. Ellsworth discuss how to handle rising prices and protect your business from inflation. 

Contractors are continuing to see price increases, material shortages and long delivery times, we are all aware of how this has affected overall profitability. So how can contractors financially weather the storm? Mischa says the key lies in protecting your business from inflation. 

“Inflation is the cruelest tax, that's what economists call it,” says Mischa. “That is because, in part, you don't see it. You don't know how much it's impacting you. So if you are used to a certain set of pricing and the pricing of all your inputs goes up, but you're keeping a lower increase in what you're charging your customers, all of your profit can evaporate and you won't even necessarily see it coming, because all of those things compound and it's easy to lose sight across all those inputs.” 

Mischa reminds contractors to stay cognizant of how much raw materials are part of your final profit and factor it into your overall calculations.  Even if you are raising prices and running everything more efficiently, inflation can make your profits vanish if you don’t keep an eye on it. 

“It's important to protect your bottom line,” says Mischa. “If you're operating costs go up, you've got to make sure that you have a strategy to handle that and you build a process in. Even if this time you choose not to raise your rates, you should have a process in place where if costs go over a certain threshold, you do raise them.” 

Watch the Roofing Economic Outlook episode to learn more about interest rates and how to protect your bottom line in the current economic climate. 

Learn more about Angi in their RoofersCoffeeShop® Directory or visit pro.homeadvisor.com.