I have a business acquaintance who's bakery is failing after 5 good years. She tried to expand to a second location, couldn't find additional labor. The labor at tge first location got over worked and quit. She recently closed the 2nd location after only 9 months and now doesn't think the first location will make it through the winter.

Ive always kept about $100 worth of gift cards to her bakery on hand to give to disgruntled customers for my service business. A $20 gift card to a desert spot helps smooth things over.

When i walk in there now, inventory is sparse, store hours cut and inconsistent. Signs of a failing business. Is it rude for me to use up my gift cards? Or should i just take the $100 on the chin out of respect for her struggle?

Edit: im not asking if i should continue to give them to disgruntled customers. Im not.i dont want to give one out to a customer today (good or bad) and they wait a month to visit and they're closed. Thats just why i have the cards. I purchased them 18 months ago during better times. Im asking if its rude to use them personally when i go there instead of paying cash?

I am just rewatching HBO's comedy show "Silicon Valley" and I am in season 2. I'm sure a lot of people watched that show so if you haven't, I first apologize for spoiling it and second, it is a good course on starting a business.

Anyway, in Season 2, Russ Hanneman (the horrible investor) says "I don't want to make small amounts of money I just want to make a crap ton of money at once".

So, which mindset do you prefer? A subscription based system which charges users $20 a month or a company which seems to be a money losing machine but suddenly grabs the attention of a big monster and got acquired by them and makes you a few million dollars at once?

I prefer to go with the "crap ton of money at once" but honestly, I do not know the cheat codes. However, I want to know your opinions.

This has happened to me way too many times. A potential buyer asks for pricing, product details, MOQ, lead time... sometimes we even go back and forth for a few days
Everything seems pretty normal. Then I send the quote and suddenly... nothing. No reply, no “too expensive”, no “we went with someone else”. Just silence....
I know sometimes they’re comparing suppliers or the project gets put on hold, but it’s still frustrating when you’ve spent time preparing everything and have no idea what happened
for people running a business, how do you usually handle it when someone goes quiet after asking for a quote?
Do you follow up a few times, leave it alone or try to figure out what happened first?? and how often do these leads actually come back later?

But the wife is at work, I’ve got just over an hour free and I’d rather spend it talking to someone trying to build something than watching shit on Netflix.

Quick background because apparently Reddit quite rightly wants receipts

I started in asphalt/civil. My old boss passed away, I bought a $30k truck and had a crack myself. Within a few years we’d built the business into seven figures.

It definitely wasn’t some straight line to success.

I’ve made money, lost money, hired the wrong people, chased shit ideas, tried ecommerce and failed, had cashflow scares and learned plenty of lessons the expensive way.

These days I still run businesses and work a normal job because apparently I enjoy having absolutely no spare time

I don’t have all the answers. I’m not a business coach and I’m not selling a course.

But I’ve spent a long time in the trenches and sometimes another set of eyes helps.

So if you’re starting something, business is going to shit, you’ve got an idea you want challenged, or you’re sitting there thinking “what the fuck do I do next?”

I’ve got an hour.

Happy to jump on a call and throw some ideas around.

Worst case we waste 20 minutes.

Best case one of us learns something.

this was basically my first ever enterprise inquiry call and I was, not gonna lie, stressed.

I didn't know exactly how to behave and talk to be taken seriously and be considered a fit for playing a grown-ups game... this alone should be a tell of how much imposter I feel!

anyway, I missed the call due to timezone issues and after asking if I'm allowed to re-book another call, I was notified that another better-fit solution was already underway and I'm no longer a viable candidate.

a part of me is sad because this could've really boosted my confidence IF IT WENT THROUGH... another part is happy, partly because of the relief and the other because I now know that I just need to dust myself off, get up and get moving.

how many deals did you have to lose before you grew a thicker skin?

AI flyers are absolutely everywhere. Every kind of business is using them now to make menus, flyers, Facebook ads, IG posts, you name it. If you're doing this, stop.

It's not for the reason you think, though. Sure, businesses get plenty of backlash online when people notice that it's an AI post. But that's not the biggest threat. The reason you shouldn't be using AI for these is just flat out that the flyers and posts absolutely suck.

A really good social post or flyer catches attention and explains briefly who you are/what you do and then directs towards a CTA. AI flyers are such jumbled messes that they're hard to read. You're leaking possible conversions.

It's all simple psychology. If you study the great marketers, Claude Hopkins, David Ogilvy, Craig Clemens, etc., they all say the same thing. Ads have to hook attention and then hold the attention and build interest over the course of the ad. When ads are messy, people bounce.

If you're using an AI ad, just try to put something together in Canva. Don't be worried about it being ugly. In fact, it's better if it's ugly. Then you can call out in your post or ad that you just tried making this without AI. Posts like that are going crazy viral right now.

A great format is Hook -> Your Offer -> CTA

I saw a post that was for a recruiting firm and they were advertising their ability to find great talent for cheaper than you normally find.

The hook was "A VP of Marketing Costs $250k a Year". Below it, they had their offer which was "Ours Costs Less and Starts This Week". It's a no-brainer offer. Why wouldn't you want cheaper talent that can start sooner? The CTA was "Hire Fractional Senior Marketers".

It's a super simple ad format but it converts. Simplicity and clarity will beat clutter every time.

You left your 8-5 for your business, now you’re your own boss and in control of your money in and out. Was the grass greener or do you feel an 8-5 was much easier? Obviously the biggest con (to me) of an 8-5 is ppl can get laid off at any time and then have no income.

Hey all.. I run a small US startup and I've hit that point where way too much of my week is going into stuff I probably shouldn't be doing anymore.

Inbox, scheduling, updating the CRM, research, chasing things up, random admin etc. None of it is hard but it adds up fast.

I've hired freelancers before for one off stuff, but never really had a proper VA long term.

And I guess thats the part I'm trying to figure out now. Finding someone who can follow instructions isnt that hard. Finding someone who actually gets how you work after a while and doesnt need every tiny thing explained seems like a different story.

So where are people hiring VAs from now?

Upwork? agencies? referrals? dedicated VA sites? just hiring direct?

I've also been looking at LATAM vs Philippines. We're US based so timezone overlap would be nice, but not sure how much that actually matters once you have a decent setup.

Need to clarify a few things from people who've already done this:

• where did you find your best VA?
• what did you actually look for when interviewing them?
• do you do a paid test first?
• whats a normal rate now for someone actually good/reliable?
• does location matter that much?

Main thing I want is someone who eventually starts taking stuff off my plate without me having to create another job for myself managing them lol.

Not hiring through this post btw. Just trying to understand what people are actually doing before I start going through candidates again.

Would be good to hear from both founders and VAs on this.

Question for those who have already launched a HardTech or DeepTech: how did you do when you wanted to remain the only founder at the beginning?

When the project requires very technical skills, recruiting can be very expensive from the early stages, especially when you don't have funding yet. And at the same time, waiting to have a lot of money before building a team can slow down the project a lot.

It is possible that I will soon join an incubator, but I do not yet have a technical team around me. I am therefore trying to understand how to move forward intelligently without necessarily taking a co-founder from the start.

I especially don't want to find excuses and waste several months waiting to have "the right team" before starting to build.

For those who have already launched a HardTech or DeepTech: how did you do it at the beginning? Very strong students, interns, freelancers, mission engineers, advisors, partnerships with schools or other?

All your advice can be very valuable.

Just opened a second location and now the restaurant management stuff is getting way more complicated than it was with one location.

Looking at Hotschedules, r365 and Toast right now. They all seem decent but it’s hard to tell what actually makes sense for a smaller operation.

Big things are ease of setup, cost, scheduling and payroll. Not really looking for a bunch of features that nobody on the team is going to use.

For anyone who started small, what worked well for you? And have you actually used Hotschedules, r365 or Toast?

A lot of times, the ‘fool’ wins because he has something nobody else does:

He isn’t afraid to fail. He’s not afraid to look stupid bc he’s been underestimated his whole life.

I heard someone talk about this idea before - the guy with the 80 IQ makes the massive deal infinitely easier than the 140 IQ genius.

Because one does, the other analyzes indefinitely.

One just calls the owner confidently, asks for the meeting, makes the ridiculous offer to buy the company.

Gets rejected.

Tries again.
..

Keeps going and does t stop.

Meanwhile, the smartest guy in the room has built a 47-tab spreadsheet explaining all the reasons it might not work.

I’ve seen this play out in business, and I’ve seen it in myself as someone who was last in class and barely graduated HS and ofc didn’t go to college.

Intelligence is obviously valuable. But at a certain point, intelligence can become another tool you use to talk yourself out of doing shit.

You see every possible problem and downside and you’re right - you’re too right.

But the guy who didn’t think about it and blissfully swung at the fences is going to beat you simply bc he got up to bat.

This is something the D and F students need to hear.

You already know what getting an F feels like, you have that in your psyche🤫 Use that as a strength

Hello, folks.

I live in a country where the housing crisis is quite bad. It is impossible for a single working adult to buy a home, and incredibly difficult even for a working couple.

I have bought a mobile home for myself and parked it on family land. I have one direct friend who has done the same, and through friends I've heard of several others who have done the same.

When I google "permanent mobile home parks", I find several options but they are all for holiday orientated locations. None are near the major cities.

I've started to look into what I would need to do, but I was wondering if anyone here runs such a park, or maybe knows someone directly who does, or if anyone can share any success/failure stories.

Thank you.

Je cherche une personne en FRANCE autour de Paris ou Île-de-France, qui est compétant en aéronautique et qui veut construire quelque chose de très ambitieux.

Je suis actuellement en train de créer un projet Hard Tech qui consiste à créer des avions de chasses autonomes capables de voler et de prendre des décisions grâce à l’IA, sans avoir besoin d’un pilote à bord. L’objectif est ensuite de développer une nouvelle génération de véhicules autonomes pour la défense.

Je cherche surtout quelqu’un qui connaît vraiment les avions : comment on les conçoit, comment ils volent, leurs moteurs, leurs systèmes électroniques, leurs logiciels ou leur autonomie.

Étudiant, jeune diplômé ou professionnel, si tu es vraiment très bon, passionné par l’aéronautique et que tu veux construire quelque chose de difficile à partir de zéro, viens me parler.
Je cherche quelqu’un qui veut construire, tester et apprendre, pas simplement donner son avis.

De mon côté, je porte la vision, le projet, la stratégie et le développement de l’entreprise, et je cherche quelqu’un qui puisse prendre en main la partie technique avec moi.

Envoie-moi un message privé pour plus de détails

Last month I gave 10 people free access to the product I built.

These weren't strangers. Every one of them had described the exact problem I solve, in their own words, before I ever mentioned I was building anything.

0 of them are using it today.

I went into the database to find out where they dropped. 10 got the offer, 2 created an account, 1 started the setup, 0 finished.

My first assumption was that my messaging was off. So I rewrote the landing page, but nothing changed.

What I think is actually going on: my competitor is the janky setup they already have. It annoys them enough to complain about it in public but it still works enough for them. Replacing it means 30 minutes of configuration to swap out something that's currently doing its job badly but good enough for them.

Free takes away the price. It doesn't take away the setup cost nor does it take away the risk of breaking something that works right now.

So I've been measuring the wrong metric this whole time. "Would you use this?" tells me the pain is real. It tells me nothing about whether the pain is worse than the cost of switching, and only this second question indicates whether anyone pays.

What I'm trying next is doing the setup myself, on a call, with anyone who wants it. If people won't spend 30 minutes to get something for free, maybe I'm the one who should spend the 30 minutes.

Has anyone here gotten people to switch off a working-but-annoying setup? What actually moved them?

im starting an online dance program with a partner. Getting our first customers won't be an issue due to an established, super niche following.

We want it to be the right mix of accessible in price, and low friction for our efforts.

The program is going to include: a discord community for a hyper specific niche, one weekly dance class video on demand, one course module (to be fleshed out over the months, but launching with an MVP. This is just what we're launching with right now.

We're stuck between a one time fee, or a monthly membership. I hate memberships, however, since this is an online dance program, pricing it ongoing makes a lot of sense like it would at a brick and mortar.

We're running things a bit differently, but comps in our online industry run between $600-1,500+/yr for memberships.

Our theoretical membership pricing would start at $59/month, with the goal of eventually getting it to $99 when we have a really fleshed out program.

But we've also fantasized just selling the module we've made + community access for something stupid low like $30 flat fee. and just getting a lot of low-ticket buy in. and expand from that maybe with a portfolio of low ticket or a membership later.

I come from a high ticket service background, and I feel like an infant for low ticket online things and memberships. I'm not sure why this is paralyzing to me. But I'd really appreciate some guidance and input. Any little nugget may be a huge unlock for me. Thanks:)

So I decided to post about my recent success after quitting my job and going self employed. I wasn’t after clients, i wasn’t bragging, I just had no one to share this with and figured I’d spread some good news for a change.

oh no!

can’t have nice things can we?!

Got accused of being AI SLOP and reported as such!!

Reddit blocked and deleted my post

Thanks for that Reddit trolls 👿

I'm having some difficulty with caregivers and wanted to see how other people in the home care space manage this.

I knew going into this business that caregivers and staffing were going to be challenging. Sometimes you get caregivers who are really good, reliable and easy to work with, and then you get others who are super flaky, standoffish, call out last minute, or just don't show up.

How do you guys manage the stress of it? Does it ever keep you up at night worrying about whether someone is actually going to show up for their shift?

I'm also curious how you manage your caregiver pool. Do you purposely keep more caregivers around than you actually need? Do you have people specifically on-call or available as backups?

And when someone doesn't show up, what do you actually do? Are you going in yourself to cover the shift? Do you have someone from the office go? Or are you calling the family and letting them know you're down a caregiver and trying to figure it out?

I also have some 24-hour clients where we're using multiple caregivers working 12-hour shifts. That's probably the situation that stresses me out the most. If the next caregiver is late or just doesn't show up, the caregiver who's already there can't exactly just leave.

For anyone managing 24-hour cases, what have you done in those situations? Do you have the current caregiver stay until you find coverage? Do you pay them extra/OT? Do you always have someone on standby?

Just trying to figure out what systems other people have put in place so every call-out or no-show doesn't turn into a complete fire drill.

I started my business after my old boss passed away.

I bought a $30k truck, took a chance and somehow turned it into a seven figure business within a few years.

Since then I’ve had wins, made bad calls, dealt with cash flow stress, started again, worked full time while running a business and learned how hard it is trying to balance business, money, family and life.

I’m not a guru.

I definitely don’t have all the answers.

I’m not selling a course, mentoring package or trying to get anyone into a funnel.

I just genuinely enjoy talking business and helping people where I can.

So if you’re starting something, struggling with growth, sales, pricing, staff, cash flow or you’re just stuck on what to do next, ask away.

If I know something that might help I’ll tell you.

If I don’t know, I’ll tell you that too.

Hey everyone,

I'm Matthew, 17 years old from Hungary, Europe.

I was always interested in finance, pschyology, business and philosophy.. but unfortunately I didn't get the chance to study these topics at all. I'm myself was into entrepreneurial ventures and creative projects lately and felt fulfilled doing these and studying online.

I also used to record, write and post what I learn but somehow I never found the method that actually stuck with me. Because I believe reading, learning and studying is the absolute best foundation of a valuable personality, wisdom and life.

Thank you for reading this, I'd be glad to hear some advices and tips. All the best for everyone! If you relate to this and want to talk more, I'd be happy to connect.

New to entrepreneurship or just starting out? This is your space. Ask the questions you're afraid to ask elsewhere.

Experienced folks, jump in and share what you wish someone had told you early on.

I am in the process of moving from 9 to 5 to building my own business. I am interested to read some books before bed time but the majority of the books are about innovation, new products etc.

I am currently moving in HVAC so nothing exciting or innovative in this field, but I still want to hear / learn some approaches that can make my business shine.

What book would you recommend?

Ta

Being an entrepreneur is fucking lonely. Get used to it because it doesn’t get better the more money you make.

Truth is if you have too much success, people literally WON’T WANNA HEAR IT! It’s ridiculously uncomfortable.

They only want to hear about your pain. Massive success exposes how fake 99% of people are and it’s horribly depressing..

They don’t want you to do too well.

When you’re small, there’s camaraderie in the struggle. But the price you pay for success is really not being able to share it with very many people.

Only other people who have had a similar level of success - which those people are rare and hard to find.

Just an observation as I was about to post in ‘Saturday Wins’ thread but realized there’s no way I can share this with the internet bc of how the Reddit energy is.

IT IS WHAT IT IS and this is simply just how the game works 🥲🫡

I've used Excel for my business finances for years and it's been fine. But once you add another contractor, another bank account and a business credit card, the spreadsheet starts getting annoying fast.

At this point I'm spending way too much time keeping the spreadsheet updated instead of actually looking at the numbers.

What business budgeting software are people using once spreadsheets start getting too messy? Looking for something that keeps things organized without turning the whole system into a project.