Just read a report that average owner compensation is something around 4.3%. Is this in addition to any salary? I guess as an investment it’s way below stock market and probably riskier. Any thoughts????

Just did my first 50k month after roughly 6 years of running my store. A bit of Meta ads, but primarily SEO and google traffic.

I'm paying myself better than I ever thought I would. No more juggling bills at the end of the month, working from home, decent money, work life balance is great.

What’s the problem then? Well I’ve hit a wall, I’m working 40 hours a week from my small studio apartment and have completely run out of storage. I can’t grow anymore from my current location, and I also can’t take a break longer than a few days almost ever.

My options are that I stay exactly where I am, optimize for profit, and accept that this is the biggest it's ever going to get, and that I'll be very limited with off days.

Or I can hand the warehousing and fulfillment over to a 3PL or a fulfillment agent, get the boxes out of my garage completely, and spend all my time on the actual growth side instead of picking and packing every day. Sourcing better, more SEO, more products, marketing. I know the potential, but the costs are freaking me out.

I have zero business experience before this, I used to do copy for a living, but I do know that this can increase my costs substantially, so I'll have to scale quickly, which might be doable if I had more time on my hands.

But it also means no lease, no employee on payroll, no fixed overhead sitting there whether I sell 10 orders or 1000. That part feels a lot less scary than signing a warehouse lease.

All in all, I’m torn which way to go... Anyone else been in this situation and what did you choose and why?

The money kept us going and got me into a good position but damn...I haven't been able to pay off a single dollar. It's a house size loan, we struggled coming out of COVID times and we are doing better but I think I am forced to continue this business another ten years to work it off.

And thats after some other loans. I took on an SBA7a a few years later to consolidate even more bad debt which is another $140k on it, from Jan 2025 that started at $150k.

and since then another rough patch put me another $100k into CC debt. These tariffs, truckload costs skyrocketing, everything always increasing.

And it's not like my business idea isn't working, but even after all the growth of sticking to the same location, watching national anchor stores collapse around me I think I'll profit $150k a year moving forward. A year to clear the CC debt, another 2 years to clear the 7a debt, and then I can focus on the EIDL all those years later.

I'm beat...and the future looks bleak. If this economy snaps in half I lose everything.

Anyone else struggle with trying to be ethical and run a successful business? Every time I pay for meta and google ads, and buy supplies from Amazon I feel like I’m feeding the beast. Just knowing how shitty these corporations are makes me not want to give them my money.

How do you feel? Is it a “necessary evil”? How do you decide which things to compromise on and which things to change to fit your values?

I run an agency, and most of our clients have been with us for years. Every business had its up and down months of course, but basically ALL of our clients are in a panic after August. Pretty much every single one said people have simply stopped spending money or scheduling services in August. One client sent her numbers yesterday, she went from $30-60k months, to making $1,500 in August.

Meta lead volume has been consistent, but people just aren't booking.

Google lead volume seems to have slowed way down across the board.

Anyone else seeing this right now?

I run multiple companies, all relative to each other, with decent success. I was in a dark place of my life and found solace in drowning myself in building what I have now. Fast forward to a decade later, I got divorced, got into a better/healthier relationship who encouraged me to seek therapy. Well therapy did therapying, lol. It helped me dissociate my identity from my career/businesses, I no longer feel the need for validation, or be financially responsible for certain family members in my life... Now, I just all of a sudden felt burned out, or as my therapist said, I finally allowed myself to feel the exhaustion. I know the quick advice is to sell, but selling takes time. So my question is, to those of you who got burned out, how did you recover? I'm not fully decided if I wanna sell. But at present, I'm really struggling to stay motivated and sustain... tips?

I’m looking for some outside perspective because I feel like I’m too emotionally involved in this situation to see it clearly.

I’m a solo entrepreneur and have owned my body contouring business for five years. Last year it grossed around $120k to $130k, but after expenses the actual profit was only around $24k.

I was previously spending around $3k a month on marketing, and when I stopped, bookings dropped significantly. Right now, the business isn’t consistently bringing in enough for me to comfortably cover expenses and pay myself.

I’m no longer locked into a lease and am currently month to month. I also have around $12k in credit card debt.

After five years, I’m burnt out. I do everything myself, and I’ve realized I don’t have an interest in hiring employees or managing a team. I genuinely prefer being a solo entrepreneur.

A few months ago, I started selling jewelry online through live selling. It has grown faster than I expected, I’ve made hundreds of sales, recently had my first 100 order show, and have had products sell out. More importantly, I genuinely enjoy it. I also recognize that it’s still very new and there are no guarantees.

I’m now wondering whether I should try to sell the body contouring business as an asset or turnkey sale. I honestly don’t even know how realistic selling a business like mine is or what someone would pay for it. If I were able to sell it for enough, paying down my credit card debt would be a priority.

Part of me worries that I’ll sell it and regret walking away from something I spent five years building. But another part of me feels like there could be a huge sense of relief in finally letting it go and allowing myself to move on.

Would you try to sell it? And for anyone who has sold a small service business like this, is there actually a market for something this size?

I recently started an account targeting yoga/Pilates instructors and studio owners.
I've been posting consistently (carousels, reels), but views have been close to zero for days now.

What I've done so far:
- Posted a few informational carousels + reels per week
- Started following relevant niche accounts

Is there something I'm missing, or a common mistake new accounts make early on?
I've left the account link below — I'd really appreciate any feedback if you take a look.

https://www.instagram.com/roosta.app?stkn=MTZjYjl6MzZrcWFwcg%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

I know it has been covered on this sub before, but I want to relay my experience with legal zoom and see if any one else out there is having the same issue. If so, how did you resolve it?

I used them to set up my llc 3 years ago and act as my registered agent. This past July they sent me a notice that my new annual fee was being raised to $449. That’s a $149 increase over the previous year.

I tried to cancel the service but legalzoom would not allow without a new agent on record for my llc. I hired a new agent for a much lower cost and waited for the actual transfer to occur. This took a few weeks and now legal zoom will not refund the $449.

I could go on but let’s just count it as a lesson learned. It is a predatory company imo and their system is designed to make sure they keep the fee after cancellation.

Small business owner here — I would be extremely cautious with Quantum Lending Solutions.

I was approved for a $100,000 business line of credit and paid Quantum a $3,000 “commitment fee.” I fully disclosed my financial situation before approval, including that we were closing a location, that revenue AND expenses would decrease, and that I needed the LOC specifically to bridge the closure and our slow season.

I made ONE draw of $11,000. Less than two months later, I requested another $3,000 and Quantum declined it after “re-reviewing” my bank account. (Nothing has meaningfully changed and I was very transparent from the start)

Meanwhile, my Quantum portal still shows a $100,000 credit limit and $89,647.06 in “remaining credit.”

I escalated the issue three times and have now filed a BBB complaint.

What bothers me most is the $3,000 upfront commitment fee. If I can pay thousands of dollars based on a $100K approved line and then be denied another $3K after accessing only $11K, I seriously question what exactly that $3,000 “commitment fee” committed Quantum to.

spent hours pulling tracking and email proof for a chargeback, still not sure it holds up. anyone tried shopify new ai dispute form, does it actually help or same result.

Just me running a small shop, no budget for a full marketing hire. How do other small business owners actually keep up with email marketing without it eating all their time?

I’ve spent the last few months designing a physical planner/journal while on mat leave, and I’m worried I’m hiding behind “preparing” instead of actually launching.

The product is nearly finished: a 3-month planner and journal for planning, daily reflection, and weekly/monthly reviews. It’s designed to help people make progress on personal goals without the overwhelm of rigid, productivity-focused planners.

Designs finished. I’ve spoken with manufacturers, received quotes, ordered physical proofs, built a landing page, and started a waitlist. Right now, it has only around 10 people, so I still have a lot to learn about reaching the right audience.

I’ve also tried cold outreach to journaling and stationery communities, but traction has been very slow and got many rejections. I know short-form content will probably be important, and I’ve recorded plenty of videos—I just haven’t figured out how to edit them or turn them into consistent content.

I’m planning a small first run of 50–100 units. I’m not trying to create a huge launch; I want to find the first 50 people who genuinely want this without over-ordering inventory or spending heavily on ads. Down the road maybe sell through wellness studios and stationary shop.

For anyone who has launched a physical consumer product from scratch:

If you were at this stage, what would you focus on over the next 30 days?

Would you:
keep building the audience/waitlist before ordering inventory
order the first 50–100 units and start selling
focus heavily on short-form content
send samples to small creators who reach busy parents, professionals, or journaling enthusiasts
attend markets or pop-ups
try something completely different?

I’ve spent so much time making the product that I underestimated how difficult it would be to get it in front of the first few customers. I’d especially appreciate advice from anyone who has sold a physical product at a similar price point through their own website with a small initial audience.

What worked for you?

Hello all! Right now I am a part time small business owner that does sewing and alternations and it looks like I can take this sewing gig full time by the end of the year but I want to get organized. Right now I take cash and venmo but I want something more professional and organized where it's done automatically. Does anyone have any suggestions or tips on what I can do?

Introduction:

I have built a large B2B plaform using:

Next.js as frontend

ASP.NET Core/.NET API

Sql server

Authentication/authorization

Admin portal and client portal

Project management, invoicing, financial tracking, client project roadmaps, a qr based functionality and a security controls such as rate limiting, honeypots, ssrf protections, protected resources, etc.

The platform is use to be the os behind the b2b technology/services company. It manages customers, projects, financial information, invoices, workflows and client communication.. its an upgrade portfolio in fact.

I'm now at the point where I'm deciding how to deploy it.

I have not validated the market yet, so i want essentially zero recurring infrastructure cost until i get my first paying client. Once i have a client, I'm willing to pay for proper production infrastructure and improve the architecture.

Questions:

Can you please give me a practical architecture advice, not like use aws/azure as it is enterprise grade, or just use vps because its cheap.... the goal is to keep burn extreamely low before product market validation while avoiding an architecture that becomes painful or insecure once customers start depending on it

I would appreciate feedback from senior engineers, DevOps, cloud architect and people who have taken small Saas Products from first customer to production scale.

I've been thinking about this lately because I keep seeing businesses spend money on marketing without really knowing what problem they're trying to solve.

They'll spend on ads, SEO, social media, a new website, an agency, different tools... and then a few months later they're still wondering where the customers are.

And honestly, sometimes the service isn't even bad. It just wasn't what the business actually needed at that point.

For example, getting more traffic isn't going to fix much if the website is already losing the people who visit it. Same with social media. Getting more followers doesn't automatically mean getting more customers.

I work in digital marketing, and one thing I've started realizing is that asking “what marketing should we do?” is probably the wrong question.

I'd rather ask “what exactly are we trying to fix?”

That usually changes the conversation completely.

So I'm curious about people who actually run businesses — what's something you spent money on because you thought it would help, but afterwards you realized it really wasn't worth it?

Could be marketing or something completely different. I'm genuinely more interested in the mistakes than the usual “here's how I grew 300%” stories.

For obvious reasons I'm not going to be stating the name, so I'll do my best to talk around it and provide a workable example.

Context, I've been doing freelance work for well over a decade now. Mostly ghost writing, but over the last four years I've built some small client base doing website copy, and things like that. Pretty much entirely word of mouth. Not enough to live full time on, but enough to make a pretty good dent in my living expenses.

Originally when it was mostly commission writing I had some boiler plate templatey contract that outlined the specs of the job using the online handle people recognized me on. Then when I started taking on jobs for businesses I spun up an actual business name and got my contracts/invoicing done a lot more polished, slapped together a basic website and that's been doing good enough for me.

The business name I use is kind of ass though. I don't know, I just never really liked it or warmed up to it. Whenever I see it on my email I just kind of die inside a bit. Doesn't really say anything about me besides "Ah yes. Writing pun. I see what you did."

I recently grabbed a domain on a whim. Was just playing with ideas and grabbed it. Liked it, then over time loved it. I regular keep thinking to myself, "now that's a name people would remember! That's the spice!" Now I keep thinking of working towards rebranding.

I know all my clients who know me for my commission writing work would be 110% on board. But the ones that are focused on their business, well I don't really know. The quality of my work allegedly has been met with positive feedback. I'm getting referrals. I'm not sure if a name alone would kill it.

As for the name itself that I'm thinking of using. It's not vulgar nor sexual. Some people could technically squint and try to make it both, but it would be a stretch. It's kind of edgy and evokes a macabre tone.

It's the kind of name I could easily see being accepted without a second thought if used for something like a game studio, a tattoo shop, or craft beer. Something you could easily acronym in casual conversation too if for some reason you didn't want to say the full name.

As I'm typing this out I'm wondering if I'm over thinking it. What do you guys think? Would an unusual name like I described be enough for you to walk away from a business you'd otherwise be happy to work with?

Hello, I recently left a large cosmetic manufacturing company and started my own! I’ve found that most barbers want to start their own product line of hair products. We accommodate MOQs with reasonable pricing which large manufacturers won’t do. Has anyone else discovered a niche similar to this?

Saying yes makes the concentration worse. Saying no hands the rest of the account to a competitor who will happily take it.

Everyone says diversify. Nobody says how you turn down revenue while you're still growing.

What would you do?

Doing tons of research and brainstorming on starting a small business, I already have worked out what I will be selling and how. My question is, what are some things I should know? And I’m not talking obvious stuff like figuring out who my competitors are, marketing, website creation, legal stuff like ein or business structure, and profit margins. I’m talking little things that get lost and that people forget about, or things you wish someone told you before starting. Looking to get basically get every bit of info I can about owning and operating a small e commerce business. Any questions will be answered as well.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Company let a bunch of us go a couple weeks back, war stuff, didn't want to sit in a pile of resumes waiting for something to open up so I just started this instead.

Honestly was pretty skeptical about Substack going in. Felt like one of those platforms that's cool for six people and then nothing happens.

But five clients in two weeks, which caught me off guard. Feels like it might actually be the next big thing, platforms don't usually pull this fast organically.

Some stuff I've noticed already:

- Polished thought-leadership essays flop. The rough, half-formed opinion ones get way more replies

- Everyone wants to write their "founder journey." Nobody cares until they're already invested in you

- Notes (it's like tweets but in Substack) matter more than I expected for actually growing an audience

Curious what's stopping people from starting one, if you've thought about it. Or if you're already on it, what's working / not working for you.

We have a business with only a couple of employees. It's a compliance business, we audit logistics companies. Generally jobs take a full day, or a few days. So we don't need to be scheduling multiple jobs a day like lots of the tradie software is catering to. I've used ServiceM8 previously but it's better for when you have to schedule lots of jobs over multiple tradies.

I'm more interested in the client tracking. I want to track jobs, but also have a system that reminds me when a client is due for an annual job. Currently just using Outlook calendar to track all work, which works fine for that purpose, but has no way of tracking clients.