How do I raise my prices without losing customers?

The fear is that everybody leaves. What actually happens, over and over, is that a few grumble, one or two go, and the rest pay it — because finding somebody reliable is harder than paying you five dollars more. The customers you lose to a fair increase are usually the ones costing you the most anyway.

The play is short. Tell them before it happens — thirty days is plenty. Put it in writing, one paragraph. Name the new price and the date it starts. Don't explain your fuel bill, your divorce or the price of blades; a business raises its price, it doesn't file a hardship petition. And thank them, plainly, for their business.

Do it on a schedule — once a year, same month — so it's a policy instead of a crisis. The shops that never raise a price aren't kind; they're just quietly going out of business at last decade's rates.

Set the price you can still do good work at. That's the whole test.