I honestly don't ever look at what my competitor's prices. I don't know if this is naive or not but I don't think it's information that's helpful. Like ... AT ALL. If you can't cover your expensive and you don't give yourself money to grow as an operation... why does it matter what your competitors charge? Who's to say they have a good handle on their numbers also?
I think maybe if I was in a small town like you I may think about it more but your primary objective is to stay in business. Something you can't do with no money. You also need to be pricing in things like:
Thanks! I agree with this. A lot of these are lessons we’ve learned, many the hard way, and I’m sure plenty are still left to be learned.
It took us several years to learn how to pay ourselves properly, and that alone changed how we look at pricing. Competitor pricing can be interesting, especially in a small market, but it can’t be the foundation because we don’t know what their numbers actually look like.
The future cost part is huge too. Equipment replacement, licensing, training, insurance, storage/shop space, and owner pay all have to come from somewhere. If we don’t build that into the pricing, we’re really just undercharging now and creating a bigger problem later.
