Most small businesses are priced for the costs they had two years ago, and the reason is never arithmetic. It is the fear of losing customers. That fear is real and it is also smaller than the thing it protects you from, which is working more hours for less money until a single bad month ends you.

The half people get wrong is not the number. It is the telling. A fair increase announced badly loses customers that the same increase announced well would have kept. This step is both: decide the number, then say it properly.

Know what you make on one unit or one job today. Not revenue, margin. If you cannot say it within a dollar, work that out first, because every decision below moves off it.

Write down which of your costs actually moved and by how much, with real figures from invoices. A rise you can point at is a rise customers accept. A rise you cannot explain sounds like opportunism even when it is not.

Pick the date before you tell anyone. Three to four weeks out is normal and gives people time to feel consulted rather than ambushed.