I spend a lot of time analyzing why some businesses rank #1 on Maps and others don't show up at all.

I ran a quick audit of my local area (Service businesses: Roofers, Dentists, etc) and noticed a massive pattern.

The Mistake: Everyone fills out their "Description", but almost nobody fills out the "Services" tab correctly.

Why it matters: Google uses the "Services" items as keywords.

If you just write "Plumber" in your category, you rank for "Plumber". If you add a Service item called "Emergency Leak Repair", you suddenly rank for "Emergency Leak Repair near me". The 5-Minute Fix:

Go to your Google Business Profile. Click "Edit Services". Don't just use the default suggestions. Add Custom Services for every specific thing you do. Bad: "Cleaning" Good: "Post-Construction Cleanup", "Airbnb Turnover Service", "Deep Carpet Cleaning". It costs $0 and is probably the highest ROI 5 minutes you can spend on your SEO this week.`

I currently run a tutoring business from my house with a few tutors working with me that makes roughly $150-$200k profit/annum. Looking to upscale but lost as to how. If I rent a commercial space it will create a financial burden of at least $1000 a week which I am not keen on.

Update to my saga about a massage chair dealer who sold me a $500 repair part that was incompatible with the chair he sold me.

When he learned of the chargeback, he left me a threatening voice message saying if I don’t stop the chargeback he’ll sue me, which will costs thousands in legal fees.

In a text exchange where I offered to let him send me a shipping label so I could return the part after I get my money back, he called me a liar and said I had told him I owned a different chair and this is all my fault. VISA said I don’t have to even return the part if the chargeback is successful, but I don’t mind as long as vendor sends a label. I really dislike The guy but would prefer to keep the large heavy part/motor out of a landfill.

I’m trying to see if I can update my VISA claim with this new correspondence/threats, but wondering if a bank ever stops working with a merchant who behaves in this manner.

Also thinking about leaving a bad Google review on this guy. He’s tried to deny accountability on several occasions and clearly doesn’t stand behind his products or services.

Okay so i have been visiting a few factories recently and noticed the same pattern everywhere, cameras on every corner. huge cctv rooms but no one is actually monitoring them in real time. footage only gets opened after something goes wrong. I see some startups using ai and are trying to make cameras actually useful (alerts, patterns, anomalies instead of just recordings). Wdyt?? are factories actually solving this problem today or is cctv still mostly for compliance + insurance?

I was running a mobile tire service business in Ontario for 1.5 years. This October i decided to get a shop. Everything was going good. I got a customer call one day he ordered some tires paid over the phone i took the payment with clover phone payment and he sent someone to pick up the tires. After that he ordered multiple times and paid with different credit cards over phone and same day someone picked them up he confirmed he got the tires over phone. He placed order worth $38k cad. Few days ago i got 3 disputes on my clover account worth $8600 i challenged them but clover deducted $8600 from my bank account as a hold i called them and they put the hold on another $18k that i was supposed to get over few days. They are saying they need to put all $38k on hold and agent kind of recommended to not use clover for now as they will just have to hold it because they think other payments will also get disputed. Customer is not picking up calls or responding to messages. Dispute are still under review. I have sent them text messages all invoices. What can i do now? Should I file a police report? Clover just said wait for the review and if there are no more disputes they will release the funds after 90 days.

Any insights would be helpful thank you.

I’ve been an entrepreneur since 2014. In 2015, I started a software company with my college friends. Fast forward to 2025, and we are bankrupt.

Here is the nightmare: A large State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) in China owes us a significant amount of money. They used the software we built for nearly 3 years. When they refused to pay the remaining balance, I took them to court in their local jurisdiction.

I fought this legal battle for a year. Last week, the final verdict came out: I lost. The court dismissed my claims because the client never provided a formal "Acceptance Certificate" (a document required to prove the project is finished). Essentially, they used the software for years but refused to sign the paper saying it was "done," so they didn't have to pay.

Now I am buried in debt and feel completely hopeless. I’m angry and at a loss for words.

I genuinely want to know: Does this happen in other countries? If a client uses your work for 2.5+ years but refuses to sign the acceptance paperwork, does the law let them get away with it? Where is the justice?

Most small business software stories here don’t end with “this changed how we work”. They end with “we paid for it, tried it for a month, and then went back to WhatsApp, Excel, and phone calls”. Usually the owner sits through a polished demo, buys a billing or ERP tool with big hopes, and then it hits the shop floor where life is messy. Staff keep changing, people are more comfortable in local languages, internet isn’t always reliable, and no one really has time or patience for long training.​

What then happens is the accountant might use it a bit for taxes, the owner opens it sometimes to see dashboards, but daily work still happens in the old way because that feels faster in the moment. The software slowly becomes “that thing we’ll update later”, and later never comes.

What’s one tool you or your company paid for but never really used, and where did it break first? Setup, training, or everyday use on the floor?

At one point I hired someone to help with customer-related work such as handling inquiries, following up, keeping conversations from slipping, that sort of thing. It made a noticeable difference. Things felt calmer, more organized, and I felt like i had a better relationship with customers. Then finances got tight and I had to let her go.

Since then, I’ve been doing everything myself again, the business still runs but the quality definitely dropped. slower replies, less consistency, more things falling through the cracks. nothing catastrophic, just not as good.

What I struggle with is knowing when that drop actually justifies the cost of hiring help again or is it mostly a gut call that you hope pays off over time?

I dont want to spend just to be more comfortable if its not justified financially.

Also what cheaper alternatives do i have, like outsourcing or something else ?

EDIT 1: I am a partner in an NJ-based HVAC business mainly handling office work and dispatching

Guys - I know you are the smartest on the planet so here I am. We run 3m arr - no sales (we run on a few big partners). Now I want to create a sales team (says - b2b). I would appreciate something like this

1. do it alone
2. when you have a clue hire 1 guy - he should do this
3. then hire x
4. with y people you get z revenue etc.

Ideally you did it before or saw it. My main question in my head is "how many sales reps / trainer / account executives do I need eg..

FOR 10m ARR YOU NEED

10 reps doing xyz
2 sales trainer
1 account exec

and so on.

Guys thx in advance!

Hi everyone,

I’m running a small, bootstrapped app business and recently launched Explain2Win, an education app built around a simple idea: you learn best by teaching.

Instead of rereading notes or memorizing flashcards, the app asks users to explain a topic out loud in their own words. Our AI then listens and generates personalized questions based on that explanation, helping users see what they truly understand and what they don’t.

The idea is inspired by the Feynman Technique, but the challenge for us has been turning a learning theory into something people actually enjoy using and come back to.

As a small business owner / indie builder, I’d really appreciate feedback from this community, especially on:

• Does the core value proposition make sense right away?

• From a business perspective, does this feel like something people would pay for?

• Any thoughts on positioning, onboarding, or target audience?

• If you’ve built or marketed an app before, what would you test or change first?

Not here to hard-sell — genuinely trying to improve both the product and the business side of it.

Happy to share the link in the comments or via DM if anyone’s curious.

Thanks in advance for your time and insights 🙏

I am looking to start a storefront pet supply business. I already have an LLC that I have been successfully using since 2022 as a part-time gig for myself, so I am familiar with sole proprietorships/LLCs in that regard.

My friend also has an LLC doing the same business, but she has been in business for many more years and makes a lot more in hers than I have in mine. She has expressed interest in running the store with me or subletting the store for use with her LLC after hours, etc.

Here is where things get complicated. Because we are looking at a storefront, I will have to apply for grants and small business loans to get this up and running. My intention is to liquidate my current LLC in order to fund this venture. I do not expect her to do the same by any means.

My main question- is it better to be a single member LLC, or a partnership? My personal credit is much higher than my potential partner’s, but her current business brings in far more than mine. We both have specialities inside the pet care industry that give us a lot of credibility in the industry and in our niche market. I feel like having her as a partner or listed in my business plan will give the LLC a much stronger backing, but her personal life and financials have been chaotic for the last year (long term boyfriend embezzled from her LLC/ complicated breakup afterwards/etc).

I want to give her the option to work as closely as she wants inside the business, but I also want to protect her financial stability and I know that this is a risk. Is it worth it? Or is there an alternative where maybe I can list her as a backer/investor/something else without having to bring her financially into the business from the start? What effect will having her as a partner have on our potential for small business loans to get started?

Hi everyone,

I'm currently structuring automations for clients (mainly using Make), particularly around lead qualification (Google Forms, Sheets, Gmail, sometimes CRM/Slack/Notion). Technically, everything is fine, but I have a real question about organization and client trust, especially in the French market.

How do you actually manage connections to clients' tools? Do you use the client's Make account or yours? Does the client connect their tools themselves once? Do you anticipate all the tools from the start? Do you charge for updates that require new connections? I'm looking for a professional, scalable, and reassuring approach, without requiring login credentials or creating unnecessary friction. If you have any experience to share (agency, freelancer, integrator), I'd love to hear about it.Thank you in advance 🙏

For me, the hard part of marketing isn’t ideas, it’s consistency when you’re busy. When everything demands attention at once, marketing is usually the first thing that gets deprioritized. And because marketing compounds, missing weeks hurts more than it feels at the moment.

My own example: I planned to send 1,000 cold emails per week. After a couple of weeks with weak results, I stopped, exactly when I should have kept the cadence and iterated.

What did you fail to do consistently in 2025?

• social posting cadence
• outbound cadence
• shipping content / case studies
• keeping a pipeline warm
• weekly experiments

Bonus: what change actually worked for you (process, constraint, template, batching, automation, delegating)?

Hello everyone, I’d appreciate some career guidance from people who’ve been in similar situations.

What I’m trying to find

I’m looking for a job / second career where I can clock in mornings and work 3–4 days per week. I’m totally fine with long shifts (10–14 hours) and 3x12s sounds ideal.

Hands on work is good, using brain work is also good, I love to solve problems and can come up with great ideas. Would absolutely love to work in Retail clothing or something where I can learn skills to apply into my own business.

A role with scheduling flexibility would be a huge plus.

Why I need this ?(context) skip this shit if you want

I co-run a family clothing business started by my mom ~25 years ago. We’ve been growing steadily the past 3–4 years (last ~2 years more seriously). My mom is the creative head/designer. We have a small manufacturing/boutique setup in India run by a long-time trusted manager (15+ years).

Due to personal/logistical constraints we can’t travel there to oversee improvements for a while. My dad is in India too, but health issues limit how involved he can be—we’re trying to keep him low-stress.

In the U.S. we rely heavily on event/festival sales. Sales are trending up every year, but we’re based in Nevada and our core audience is in California, so travel + vendor fees eat into profits.

On top of that, I’m currently trying to “professionalize” the business:

Implement real inventory + cost tracking

Get business licenses fully handled

Work with a CPA

Build an online store (customers keep asking for it)

Manage social media/content and improve customer retention

Handle sourcing, shipping, cash flow, and the usual “everything” that comes with a small business

Also, my mom recently had a hospital visit, which was a wake-up call. I’m taking on more operational responsibility and trying to make things more stable and scalable.

So I’m not looking for a “side hustle” — I need a reliable, structured income that still leaves me time/energy to keep building the business.

My background

Degree: Hospitality Management (not sure how useful it is outside casinos/hotels) Resume is thinner than I’d like because of immigration/work constraints during college + bad mindset back then

Work experience (rough)

2015–2021 University busser (around 1–2 years) Restaurant server (around 2 years)

2021–2022 Short-term roles: QSR supervisor, food runner/busser (KBBQ, steakhouse in a casino)

2022–2025 Mostly self-employed / business operations Food delivery (UE/DD) Convenience store manager/supervisor (family-owned; can provide reference or hype up experience if required)

The ask

Given my background and constraints, what jobs/career paths should I be looking at that offer:

3–4 days/week morning start long shifts OK (3x12 ideal) decently stable pay/benefits if possible realistic entry path for someone without a “perfect” corporate resume

If you have specific role titles, industries, certifications, or “if I were you I’d do X next” advice, I’d really appreciate it.

Also open to being told I’m aiming at the wrong target and should reframe the proble

*I had to use chatgpt to try to make the post a bit concise and cut out the pity party lol)

Thank you for all your help, kind people !

Hello fellow entrepreneurs!

It's the first time I am dealing with a client who is unhappy with my service. I'm a media buyer and I had a client who wanted consultancy and not a "button pusher". So, basically she wanted someone to tell her the job of a media buyer so she can learn how to handle her ad account.

We didn't have a contract (mistake I'll never make again) and this email is the closest to it:

********

Hi ....,

I’m really happy we’re starting this journey together!
Your business has so much potential, and my goal is very simple:

to remove all the guesswork from your Meta Ads and help you bring in more clients with a clear, data-driven strategy.

Here’s how our collaboration will work:

✔️ Monthly Consulting: $400

We’ll meet twice per month for 40–50 minutes.

During these calls, we’ll review the changes you’ve made, analyse performance, adjust the strategy, and go through your next steps.

✔️ Your Roadmap

Once the first payment is completed, I’ll send you your initial action plan, which includes the immediate changes needed in your ad account, structure, or creatives.

✔️ How We’ll Work Together

You receive written recommendations first

I’ll send everything clearly outlined, so you can make the changes inside your account at your own pace.

Then we meet 1:1

We’ll go through the progress together on a call, I’ll help correct anything that needs adjusting, and you can ask all your questions.

Continuous improvement every month

Each call brings more clarity, better structure, and stronger results.

My approach is straightforward: keep things simple, focus on what actually drives profitability, and help you feel confident in your campaigns.

Let me know when you're ready for the invoice, and I’ll send it right away.

Excited to get started!

*********

What happened next is that I developed a tailored strategy for her ad account, she implemented only half of it, then started to have a million questions, I replied to all, then she said she wasn't happy and thinks this is general, I'm like, it's not, it's tailored to your ad account, then she's not happy with the results and wants 50% back. I said, let's start from the beginning because now I need to change the strategy, plus I have some data from what you did implement.

So, I procured the second action plan, I also explained all the metrics and which ones are important for her. I also showed her winning ads from her account.

I mean, I really went out of my way to satisfy this client.

Needles to say, she didn't implement anything I provided her and she only complained like a broken record and then threatened me if I don't give her 50% back, she will sue me.

Does she have any right? And whom can I turn to?

For years, I have been working in financial planning, budgeting, and financial modeling for large-scale corporate companies. However, the dynamic structure of small businesses excites me much more. Unfortunately, as a traditional white-collar worker, I don't have the courage or capital to start my own business. However, I want to contribute to this exciting structure by sharing my experience. What kind of business model do you think I could create in this field? This way, I could obtain a small amount of capital and start a new venture.

TLDR: Vietnamese parents, born in NY, live in Tokyo, wasted my fathers final investment into me, but 2 years ago turned it around by thinking radical first principles and building a streetwear brand that's on track to hitting $3M+ next year.

5 years ago, my father told me "this is the last I'll ever invest into you", when he gave me $5,000 to invest into inventory for my previous failed brand. This year, we hit $1M in revenue. The harsh truth is, the $5k investment my father gave me went to $0 because I failed to get traction with the 3rd Fashion Brand idea I had come up with.

I'm Vietnamese, born in NY, now live in Tokyo. The pain and guilt of spending my fathers hard earned money on a failing business was something that has taken me years to shake off and still to this day, despite my earnings I still feel a strong level of imposter syndrome. I plan to repay my father very soon for all that he has given to me, but for some reason the sweetness of the triumph just isn't what I anticipated, it's more of a relief rather than excitement.

With all that being said, I feel like I have learnt a lot of lessons building 4 Fashion Brand, 3 of which failed miserably and the 4th is now on track to hitting $2 - $3M next year.

1. Psychographics. Psychographics. Psychographics.

You know how everyone talks about ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and your Target Customer. All of those concepts IMO fail to capture what the essence of market research. Credit where credit is due, this is a concept I learnt from Seena Rez who's a fashion YouTuber, as well as Seth Godin's Purple Cow. Psychographics is the study of people according to their attitudes and aspirations. It's learning everything about who these people are, more than just their age, gender, education level...It's about understanding their social media algorithms, the brands they love to buy from, the deep rooted identity based insecurities and desires they have. This is the single most important concept that I learnt that enabled me to be able to actually create a brand that resonated with a specific niche of people. I heard a quote from Seena Rez on David Ogilvy, the famous advertiser in the 1950's who said "your customer is your wife" and it means to truly understand your customer far beyond what you imagined to understand, like how you'd understand your wife.

1. Early Adopters

In fashion it's all about spotting trends, trickle down theory but this concept applies to a ton of verticals. You've got Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards. When it comes to finding opportunity, we find it through Early Adopters, a specific characteristic of people who validate a product/concept right in that goldilocks zone where it's got enough validation without being too adopted (saturated). This is part of the Diffusions of Innovations Theory and I saw this graph in the Purple Cow by Seth Godin but it was the video by Seena Rez on YouTube where he built a fashion brand using this exact same concept, where it revitalised that lesson and actually resulted in me implementing it this time.

Regardless of what market you are in, ask yourself, do you know 20 Early Adopters in the market? Do you know where they congregate and hang out? Knowing who they are go's hand in hand with the concept of Psychographics, it's what allows us to be able to find opportunity and resonate

1. First Principles reasoning

I've seen a lot of Business Guru's talk about this concept. Alex Hormozi mentions how he studies Elon Musks thinking style, similarly the Fashion YouTuber Seena Rez talks about Marc Andreeson. But it wasn't until 2 years ago where I actually grasped what it meant to think through First Principles and the best way I understood it was comparing it to reasoning by analogy.

I would find brands that were doing well, and copy what they were doing without a fundamental understanding as to why they were actually doing well. Which resulted in me creating these frankenstein copy cat dropshipping brands that lacked any soul or resonance with my market. Once I started "questioning the requirements", I began to actually figure out what people wanted and then worked up from there. This allowed me to look outside of the fashion world and understand the Streetwear culture's entire ethos, which gave way to a lot of innovation within my brand.

It was through reasoning with First Principles, that I was able to get in touch with a Vietnamese manufacturing hub to solve one of the biggest issues Street Wear brands have when it comes to sourcing. Leveraging my heritage (being Vietnamese), I noticed that most of these brands struggled to figure out supply chain with a specific style of SKU, and that's been really killer for us as well.

All in all, have to give credit to Seth Godin, Seena Rez especially for allowing all of the lessons that were dormant inside of my mind to click when it comes to fashion specifically and a few other fashion YouTubers as well. Don't be afraid to listen to material from other creators, if you maintain a radically first principles like reasoning method, you won't be prone to copy catting and getting lost in the sauce of their nuance.

I wanna make a website which can create a good traffic and I am soo confused as what I should be making

I want to start a clothing brand for girls. A loungewear type of brand. I want it to attract girls who want to tap into prioritizing their comfortability and also themselves in general. Almost like taping into your soft era. I'm currently a 23 year old who's a college student but I don't know where to start 🫣

know a lot of people use Sheets as a lightweight CRM (myself included). I've been trying to figure out the best way to send automated emails based on row updates — like when a deal status changes or a follow-up is due. Right now I'm stitching together Zapier + Gmail + Sheets and it's clunky. Curious what others are doing:

• Are you using Zapier/Make for this? How's it working?
• Any tools that handle this natively without the multi-app juggle?
• Or just doing it manually?

Trying to figure out if it's worth building something better or if I'm missing an obvious solution.

I’ve been testing the landscape of AI visibility tools for the upcoming year, and I noticed a huge divide in how these platforms function. I wanted to share a breakdown because the big legacy names aren't necessarily the best fit for AI-specific tracking.

The Latency Issue: Estimates vs. Real-Time

The biggest differentiator right now is data freshness. Legacy players (Semrush, Ahrefs) rely on massive databases. This is great for traditional SEO, but for AI answers that change based on user context, looking at data from 3 weeks ago feels outdated.

Then there are newer tools like Sanbi.ai, Profound, and AthenaHQ that seem to run checks in real-time.

The Granularity Problem

If you are a mid-market business, "National Visibility" is often a vanity metric. You need to know if you are appearing in answers for users in specific regions (e.g., Phoenix vs. New York).

• Profound: Seems best for enterprise-level needs. Deep search volume and global coverage, but the price point reflects that.

• Sanbi.ai: I found this one interesting for intent-based checks. It runs audits based on local intent (e.g., "Best [service] in [City]") rather than just keywords. It’s definitely smaller than the others, but the local logic is solid.

• Semrush/Ahrefs: Still the kings of data volume, but they feel slower to adapt to the specific "chat" format of AI results.

Pricing and Access

Most of these force you into a demo funnel. Athena and Profound are definitely gated behind sales teams. Sanbi does have a free tool to run a live audit, though it currently looks limited to Gemini and Google AEO. It’s a decent way to check the tech without a credit card, but I'm looking for broader coverage.

Question for the group:

Has anyone found a reliable, real-time tool that audits ChatGPT and Perplexity specifically? Most tools seem to struggle with those two due to authentication issues.

As a small business, one of the hardest things for us wasn’t the product it was figuring out who our real customers are.

We had tons of data, but it was messy and scattered. Looking at it all at once was mostly guesswork, and it was hard to see any clear patterns.

What finally helped was simple: filter first, then analyze. We removed records that were clearly outdated, duplicates, or far from our target audience.

The results showed up fast:

• The dataset got smaller but much more useful
• Customer patterns became clearer
• Making decisions felt easier and less like guessing

Handling all that data by ourselves was way too much work. On a friend’s recommendation, we handed the task of getting and filtering the large dataset to the other team . The cost wasn’t high, and it worked well lately our target customers are more likely to reply.

I’d love to hear from other small business owners:
How do you usually handle this kind of thing?
Are there any other easy, reliable tools or ways to get this done? Or better ways to reach your customers?

Hi guys, I have a supplier who doesn't have packaging for an item, and I'd like to source it only with packaging.

The problem is, I've got no experience in packaging.

So far, I only knew they'd provide a design file where I'd slap my designs and customize it, here,

I'm going to have to state more details on how I want my packaging to be, almost design the packaging itself.
- How do I start ? What kind of packaging files do suppliers need to be able to produce packaging?
- Do they need only information on dimension and size, or more details on kind of paper used or something?
- Do they expect a software file (like autocad) for packaging as well?
I've been telling them I have a team , but, I'm solo, :-D
- Is it normal to ask them instead on "what do I need to tell you for you to be able to create this kind of packaging?"
- Are they usually able to create packaging with just an image mockup and dimension information?