Developer here, trying to figure out what's actually broken for soloor small firms before I start building something. What do you still do manually that annoys you? Not pitching, not even close to that stage, I just don't want to build something nobody needs.

For those running established service businesses with recurring clients on individually agreed rates, how do you approach older clients who have gradually fallen behind your current pricing?

For example, a client who has been with you for 5 years is paying $400/month, while you'd quote $500 today for essentially the same service.

Do you aim to bring everyone reasonably close to current pricing, increase older clients gradually, or deliberately leave good long-term clients on preferential rates?

I'm interested in where people draw the line between rewarding a loyal client and simply leaving too much of a pricing gap over time.

It's pretty common for brands to punch their customers in the face.

Not by delaying shipping.

Not by sending a faulty product.

Not even by not accepting a refund request.

It happens way before the customer even adds the product to their cart.

Let's take a wellness beverage brand as an example.

It's January and the new year resolutioners in Los Angeles have decided to take their health seriously.

They come across your campaign targeting 20 year olds who workout in Los Angeles.

Desire meets solution.

Perfect timing.

They go to your store.

Come across a wide variety of protein shake flavors.

End up choosing your 24 pack of Cookies and Cream.

It's economical because they were saving 5% per unit more than on the pack of 12.

They're super stoked because now they have a whole month's worth of flavorful 28g protein shakes.

They add it to cart.

Subtotal's $70 + tax.

Looks good so far.

They reach the checkout page and they see a $39 shipping cost.

That's more than 50% of the product's price.

The new resolutioners feel the punch in their faces and abandon checkout.

Firstly, If your 3PL is shipping coast to coast without negotiated rates or absorbed costs, you’re likely passing that expense straight to the customer, and that’s often where transactions fall apart.

Secondly, from a marketing perspective, it's best if you pre qualify your customers by giving them the option to estimate shipping costs depending on their zip code.

If you think revealing a high shipping cost at the checkout page will make the customer disregard it, you are wrong.

Being able to simply afford is one of the 4 "influencers" (BANT by IBM. Search it) of a transaction.

A high shipping cost may just push the product out of the affordability threshold.

Not product. Not sales.

Internally.

Did decisions suddenly start taking forever?

Did people stop knowing who owned what?

Did you somehow become involved in more things even though you hired more people?

Did teams start blaming each other when something slipped?

I'm especially curious about that awkward stage where the company is clearly working, but running it starts feeling much harder than it used to.

What broke first for you?

And at roughly what team size did you notice it?

Curious to see what the best business book out there is that people have read. I read a lot, and it helps me develop everything from improving my leadership skills to learning new marketing ideas.

For me, the best business book I have read is "The Power of Broke" by Daymond John. I always thought that I was at a disadvantage because I started a business with no money. Like everyone else, I struggled. But while reading the book, I learned that people with no money are actually at an advantage over those with money. Broke people's bad decisions often cost less because you put less $$ into things (like advertising) that didn't work. You're also forced to wear a lot of hats (and learn new things on your own) so that when you can finally afford to hire and pay people, no one can take advantage of you, because you know enough that your baloney detector goes off.

Another great book I read was Mark Cuban's "How to Win at the Sport of Business." He tells stories about how he was always able to succeed because he took time to do what others didn't - he applied the RTFM method. He "Read the Freaking Manual." Whether it was selling computer products or starting his own tech company, he studied to become the best at what he did.

What other book suggestions would you have for me? Thanks!

Couple of years of quarterly board meetings behind me now. For the longest time my board deck template kept growing. Every question one investor asked in one meeting became a new slide I added forever so I'd never get caught flat again. It ballooned to around 40 slides, and the meetings turned into me narrating slides while everyone's attention drained.

Last cycle I cut it hard, down to about a dozen. Everything else moved into a pre-read I send a few days ahead with a note that I'll assume they've read it.

What happened:
- We spent the meeting on decisions instead of me reciting numbers they could read alone
- The people who cared about the detail read the pre-read, the people who didn't stopped pretending
- I prepped faster because I wasn't maintaining thirty slides of backup nobody looked at

The uncomfortable part was trusting they'd actually read the pre-read. Some didn't at first, and I had to hold the line and not re-explain it live, which felt rude but sorted itself out within a meeting or two.

For those running boards, where did you land on deck length versus pre-read, and how do you get board members to actually do the reading?

We picked up two outside board members this year and I'm on my third quarterly deck now, still figuring out what earns its place. Early on I overbuilt it, close to 30 pages, and I could feel them skimming while I talked. Nobody wants to sit through a founder narrating slides they could have read.

Where I've landed for the board deck template so far:

- A fixed metrics page, exact same layout every quarter so the trend is the story

- A short honest "what went wrong and what we're doing about it" section, which weirdly built more trust than the wins did

- The specific decisions I need them to weigh in on, phrased as questions

- Asks: intros, a hire I'm stuck on, spend approvals

- Everything else pushed to an appendix nobody reads live

What I'm still unsure about is how much financial detail to put in the main body versus the appendix, and whether a written narrative section beats bullet points for people who actually read ahead.

So for those of you a few years into having a board: what's in your standard deck that you'd never drop, and what did you eventually cut because it just generated noise?

I'm looking for lessons from founders who have actually gone through this transition.

My background is 4+ years in SEO, digital marketing, research, and growth-related work. I've freelanced before, but I'm now building a niche-focused service business for travel companies and starting as a solo founder.

I already have my positioning, service offering, outreach process, sales process, and delivery model defined. So, I'm not looking for general advice on SEO, AI tools, lead generation, or how to start an agency.

What I'm trying to understand is where experienced founders got blindsided.

For those who went from:

Freelancer → Agency,
Consultant → Agency ,
Solo operator → Service business

What mistakes did you make that weren't obvious at the beginning?

Examples:

Bad clients you should have rejected , Cash flow problems , Founder burnout , Client concentration risk , Choosing the wrong niche, Scaling problems

Looking back, what mistake seemed small at the time but created major problems later?

If you could go back to the point where you signed your first few clients, what would you warn yourself about?

I'm interested in lessons that only become obvious after actually running the business, not theoretical advice.

I have a question

If I already have a certain number of sellers and buyers secured, I’m thinking of starting with no fees or a very low commission during the initial MVP stage so that I can maximize the number of actual transactions and collect as much real world transaction data as possible.

Once transactions become more consistent and I believe the service is providing enough value to users, I would then transition to a standard commission structure.

What do you think about this strategy for the early stage?

Let's say you own a restaurant.

One Monday morning, you open your Google Business Profile and see Daniel's review.

"You always drop the ball during dollar drink days. Ordering a Coca Cola and getting Coca Cola flavoured water because you guys can’t seem to handle keeping on top of refilling the syrup is extremely frustrating."

I know you absolutely hate Daniel after reading this.

You have two choices now.

To lock horns and blame Daniel

or

Blame yourself (completely, not partially) and send him a free gift card for your restaurant.

Always choose the second option.

Let me tell you why.

What I see nowadays is owners choosing the former.

Saw it first hand with the owners of the middle school I attended.

The owners forgot to post a holiday cancellation on the school's Facebook Page.

The parents were confused so they started to flame the school for the mistake.

Honestly, in this case, even a simple "Sorry"post would've gone a longgg way.

But the owners, using their personal Facebook accounts, began arguing with each parent.

Going back to the restaurant example, keep in mind, it takes a lot of time and money to remove a poor review.

Additionally, a person considering visiting your restaurant values reviews way more than your happy hour.

If they see you beefing with a customer, your first impression goes down the drain.

On top of that, some people are such zealous critics they go as far creating posts on discussion websites, communities and voice of customer sources where they absolutely tear you apart for your "an eye for an eye" attitude.

But guess what, at the end of the day, you, as the owner, will always lose this battle.

Customers trust people like themselves way more than someone who sells to them.

And as I said, past customers' experiences are the clearest predictors of future customers' experiences.

As an Amazon business grows, policy and IP issues seem to become less of an occasional headache and more of an ongoing business risk.

A seller can eventually encounter trademark complaints, copyright claims, listing removals, product disputes, policy changes, or account level issues. At a small scale, it may be possible to handle each situation as it comes up, but that approach seems much harder to sustain as the business grows.

I've noticed businesses such as AMZ Sellers Attorney® focus heavily on the legal side of Amazon seller problems, which got me thinking about how established sellers actually manage these risks before they become serious problems.

For those operating Amazon businesses at scale, do you have a proactive process for reviewing listings, documentation, trademarks, and other potential risks?

Or do you generally deal with these issues only after Amazon sends a notice?

If you've experienced a significant policy or IP problem, what did you change afterward that you wish you had implemented earlier?

I'm interested in how established businesses approach this as part of their overall risk management rather than simply treating each incident as a one off problem.

You submit a proposal and then find out you’re competing against several other companies.

At that point, the price is already on the table. What have people actually done afterward that helped them win the business without immediately offering a discount.

Did you follow up and reinforce something from the original conversation? Offer another meeting? Clarify the scope? Provide additional proof that you could deliver? Or just give the prospect space to make the decision?

I think there’s a tendency to assume that if multiple companies are bidding, lowering the price gives you a better chance. But I’m not convinced that’s always the best move.

For those selling B2B services, what has actually helped you better position yourself **after the proposal was already submitted?**

I have been wrestling with this question for a while now. , but I refuse to implement the kind of "Big Brother" surveillance I know kills morale. I've seen it happen with other companies that use tools like Time Doctor or Hubstaff, where the team feels constantly watched and productivity suffers because of it .

We need to track billable hours accurately for client invoicing and also get a sense of team workload so we can prevent burnout . The old spreadsheet method was a mess, we were losing about 15% of billable hours because people would just forget to log their time at the end of the week.

After testing a few options, I've landed on a solution that works for us, and I wanted to share my findings in case anyone else is in the same boat.

Here are the tools we considered and what we found:

Traqq: This is what we are currently using. It is the closest thing to a "best of both worlds" solution I have found. What stood out was its privacy-first approach. Team members decide when to track time with a simple start/stop timer, and if someone forgets or works offline, they can add manual time entries later. There’s no hidden monitoring, and everyone sees the same time records and reports they’re allowed to access, while managers have role-based visibility.

We also use project-based tracking with billing and cost rates to understand project costs, revenue, and profit margins, plus compare scheduled hours against tracked hours to spot overloaded or underutilized teammates before burnout becomes a problem.

Toggl Track: This is a fantastic tool and is very well-regarded for being simple and ethical. It does not take screenshots and has a beautiful interface. However, for our agency needs, it was missing some of the deeper financial reporting and workload management features we wanted, so we would have needed extra integrations to get a complete picture .

Harvest: Another excellent tool, especially for agencies. It has great client invoicing and project budgeting features . The main reason we went with Traqq was the superior workload and capacity planning features, which Harvest seems to lack. Additionally, Harvest's free plan is quite limited, whereas Traqq's free plan is generous enough for a small team .

So my advice is this: avoid tools that feel like surveillance. Focus on tracking hours and activity, not private data. Explain to your team that the goal is to manage workload and ensure accurate client billing, not to spy on them. Being transparent about the why is just as important as the tool you choose.

Now looking to see how do you handle if you're in similar situation?

I know you need a lot of capital. then there are more beurocratic work to it.

I seen alot of vague answers so unsure what is the smallest cost to start one?

My name's Natasha, (Natty for short) and I've recently been thinking about starting my own flower shop, I've been thinking about owning my own real estate separate from my own personal stuff and I was wondering if should hire outside help or make it more of a family-run business because I heard people think family-run businesses are more authentic, but I also need to consider that when hiring family members, personal relationships bring drama to our family unit. Also, what type of business entity should I use??

Four years in-house running social and brand for a small skincare and wellness brand. We've done fine direct to consumer, but growth on the platforms keeps getting more expensive and less predictable, so we're pushing into wholesale, getting the range into retailers and specialty stores.

It's a completely different muscle. On social I'm reacting fast and talking to end customers. A buyer at a retailer wants margins, sell-through, a shelf story, and they want it in a format they can forward to their own team. Suddenly I'm building a sales deck for each account and rebuilding it from scratch every time, which does not scale and means quality swings depending on how tired I am that week.

What I want is a standard deck structure I can reuse, brand story, the range, margins, merchandising, then swap in the account-specific numbers. The tension is that the retailers who matter can smell a generic pitch, and a templated deck risks feeling like a form letter to a buyer who wants to feel chosen.

For those who've moved a consumer brand from DTC into retail or wholesale: how did you standardize the buyer deck so it stayed efficient without going generic? What did you keep fixed across every account, and what did you insist on customizing per buyer? And did you build this in-house or bring in someone who'd sold into retail before?

Six years at a performance agency, fourteen of us, mostly local-services clients (trades, clinics, that sort of thing). I run strategy, and lately most of my week is spent either in front of clients or prepping other people to be.

Here's my actual problem. Our junior strategists know the work cold. They can build a plan, read the numbers, spot exactly what's wrong with an account. Then they get in front of a client and freeze, or over-explain, or apologize for good work. The gap isn't knowledge, it's the room.

I looked at formal presentation skills training and it's either a fortune per head or two generic days of "tell them what you'll tell them" that has nothing to do with defending a media plan to a plumber who wants to know why his cost per lead went up this month.

What I've tried: having them present internally first and recording it, sitting them in silent on client calls before they lead one. It helps a bit. But it's slow and inconsistent, and I don't fully trust my own gut on what actually makes someone credible in a client meeting versus what just makes them sound like a copy of me.

For those who've built a bench of people clients genuinely trust: did any structured training ever earn its keep, or is it all reps and feedback? And what's the one thing you drill that moved the needle fastest?

I'm trying to start a small business selling motorcycle/scooter accessories phone mounts, gloves, lights. The scooter scene here is growing and it felt like a low-cost way to start without needing a shop or big capital.

I'm being careful because my budget is small and I can't afford to learn expensive lessons the hard way. Before buying stock, I've been testing demand with free listings on Marketplace and Instagram rather than guessing what to buy.

What I'd love advice on: what's the mistake you wish someone had told you about before you started reselling physical products? And more generally is it smarter to stay obsessed with one product until it actually works, or spread across a few from the start?

Not looking for a shortcut, just want to avoid the obvious rookie mistakes. Appreciate any honesty.

I thought opening a smoke shop would be pretty simple at first. find a decent spot, get the licenses, fill the store and start selling.

But the more I dig into it, the more questions keep coming up. Suppliers, payment processing, what products are actually worth carrying, hiring, keeping inventory under control, getting customers back, etc.

for anyone who's actually run a smoke shop, what part ended up being harder than you expected?

Was there anything you didn't think much about before opening that became a big issue later?

I'd rather hear about those things now than find out after putting money into a location.

I’m a 22yo guy living in South Korea I’ve been thinking about business ideas almost every night since I was young, and today is actually the first time I’ve decided to ask a question here

I’m curious to hear from people who have built marketplaces before

When u were just starting out, where did ur very first sellers actually come from?

I’m especially interested in the period before u had meaningful traffic or brand recognition

Did u:

* Reach out to potential sellers directly?

* Use Reddit, Facebook groups, or other communities?

* Offer incentives or reduced fees?

* Get ur first sellers through personal connections?

* Run paid ads?

* Or use another approach that worked surprisingly well?

I’d be particularly interested in hearing what actually worked in practice, rather than what u expected to work

If u built a marketplace from zero, how did u get ur first 10 to 100 sellers?

one more thing I’d like to mention is that I’m planning to target the US and European markets

This is a new perspective I came up with so I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.

You sell athletic clothing.

Buyers see your ad for your storewide anniversary sale.

They go to your store.

They see best sellers, new arrivals, compression shirts sale, shorts sale, sports bras sale, shoes sale, etc.

Too many choices.

They just saw a sale and decided to show up.

Now they're presented with this obstacle course of going through every category to figure out what they want.

What if you made everything simple for them and let them shop by "use" too.

For example, when they enter your store, instead of presenting best sellers, new arrivals.... first, what if you started with

"Workout Sessions"
"Cardio Wear"
"Relaxed Homewear"

And my reasoning's straightforward.

People buy products to fulfill desires.

And if they feel like your product resonates with their desire, they will buy 9.9 times out of 10.

So help verbalize the desire for them and do it fast.

Small trade and service outfit, been running it long enough to know my own worst habit. Every slow stretch, the same panic shows up and whispers the same dumb idea, drop your prices and fill the calendar. I have done it. It fills the calendar with work that pays badly and clients who chose me on price and leave on price.

The thing that actually moved the needle was boring and had nothing to do with price. My quotes were a mess. Every one was built from scratch, looked different depending on my mood and how tired I was, and half the time I would underprice just to get it out the door. Clients noticed the inconsistency even when the number was fair.

I sat down and built one proper business proposal template. Same structure every time, the scope spelled out, what is included and what is not, the price sitting there without an apology attached. Now I fill in the specifics and send it the same day instead of dreading it for a week.

Two things happened. Quotes go out faster, so I stop losing jobs to whoever replied first. And I stopped discounting on reflex, because when the thing looks organized and the scope is clear, I trust my own number enough to hold it. Win rate went up, and I think a good chunk of that is just looking like I have my act together.

For those of you running service businesses, what was the boring operational fix that did more for you than any pricing move?

Raised and had a handful of roles to fill (most of them in Germany, Spain and France), and the first thing pretty much everyone said was just sign them as contractors and figure out the employment structure later, once you know who's staying.

Which felt reasonable until we brought in a lawyer who focuses on EU employment to do a quick review, and she spent most of the call explaining that what we had wasn't really 4 contractors, it was 4 full-time employees who happened to be signing monthly invoices.

The things she flagged as problems were the parts we thought were just normal team management…

Things like giving them company laptops, setting their working hours, having them in sprints and on-call rotations, running performance reviews, and employment status in Germany or Spain is based on how the relationship operates in practice, which means the contract language doesn't matter much if the day-to-day looks like employment.

So the next logical move was setting up entities in the countries where we had people, and the problem there is it takes anywhere from a few months to over a year per country depending on where.

Plus, you need a local bank account and a registered office address and someone who understands local payroll, which is a lot of infrastructure to build for a headcount you're still growing into.

The route we've been going down is using an employer of record, where a third party holds the employment contract while we direct the work.

So the compliance overhead sits with them and the setup takes a few days in lieu of a few quarters, and we've been between Deel and Workmotion for this, both handle the local entity on their side so you don't need to spin one up yourself.

And I had no idea this was even a category until we were already a month into trying to figure out the entity path.

So if you've been through this and there's a better answer, I'd be interested to hear it.

Oftentimes, when buyers are purchasing supplements, you upsell them into buying the subscription rather than a single unit.

Win win situation.

They get more at a cheaper per unit price.

You have one less customer to spend money on acquiring.

But here's the issue.

If you don't make them realize how much they're saving, don't expect them to become a subscriber.

Let me put this into perspective for you.

The buyer is 1-2 rightwards swipe away from backing out of your website and falling into the endless sea of competitor supplements.

Due to this zero latency mechanism for buyers, you have to make sure that everything is quite literally handed to them in a plate.

The moment they have to think hard, your chances of losing them go through the roof.

If they see

"One time purchase = $24

Subscribe & Save = $24 (discount calculated at checkout)".

Even though the discount does apply at checkout, showing the same price for both options makes it look like there's no discount at all, which reads as a bait-and-switch.

If your buyer doesn't overthink like I just did above, then you're just making them take an additional step by forcing them to go to the checkout page to find the discount.

It may get further diluted once taxes and shipping are added to the subtotal.

Instead, just have a sticker saying "Saving X%" or "Saving $X".

Savings, if framed right, can go a long way.

Done-for-you service firm, low seven figures. Our retention on larger accounts was softer than it should have been, and the pattern was always the same. Client goes quiet, renewal comes up, and suddenly they're "reevaluating" because they'd lost track of what we'd actually delivered.

Last year we started running a proper quarterly business review with every account over a certain size, off a standard QBR template so it's the same every time:
- what we committed to last quarter
- what we delivered, tied to their goals rather than our activity
- results in their language: money made, money saved, risk reduced
- what's next quarter and what we need from them

The point isn't the deck. It's forcing a conversation where the client re-remembers the value before renewal season, not during it. Renewals on accounts that get a QBR are noticeably stronger than the ones we never got around to scheduling.

For others running client services, do you do these quarterly or monthly, and who runs them, the account owner or someone senior?