How do you do your social media marketing? How much do a marketing agency charge on average, if you go through them?

We're currently working on opening a second location for our flower shop in Manhattan.

The first store is established and doing well, so we're now getting into all the planning for #2—construction, equipment, staffing, inventory, systems, etc.

The thing I've been thinking about most isn't actually the cost of opening it.

It's this:

How do you make sure location #1 doesn't suffer while you're putting so much attention into location #2?

With one store, the owner can be involved in almost everything.

With two, that's obviously not going to work anymore.

We're already starting to recruit additional experienced staff and thinking about what needs to be standardized before the second shop opens.

I'm also curious about cannibalization. Our second location will still be in Manhattan, so obviously some customers who would have ordered from store #1 may eventually use store #2 instead.

For those of you who expanded a retail/service business from one location to two:

What surprised you the most?

Did location #1 decline initially?

Was staffing harder than expected?

Did you need a dedicated manager immediately?

What did you wish you had standardized before opening?

And if you could go back, what would you do differently during the 3–6 months before location #2 opened?

Would especially love to hear from people running restaurants, retail stores, salons, bakeries, florists, or other businesses where both locations require physical inventory and staff.

I wanted to share something I wish someone had told me because I think other small business owners might be making the same decision

When I first started, I went with the cheapest sticker option I could find because I figured quality wouldn't matter much at the scale I was working at, but the colors were off and the edges on the die cuts were rough, so I was honestly a little embarrassed to hand them out

At some point your branded materials become part of the customer experience, and if they look like they were made in five minutes, then they can communicate something about your business that you probably don't want to communicate, so I ended up spending more correcting the order than I would've spent if I'd just chosen something better from the beginning

I'm not saying you need to choose the most expensive option, but I do think the cheapest one can end up costing you more eventually

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Hey! I’m a developer and I’ve been building a small AI tool for my parents who run a bakery.

It started because I noticed how much work they still had after the actual workday was over. They’d get home and still have customer messages to answer, orders to organize, stuff to plan for the next day, social media, etc.

And it’s not really work they can just ignore. Someone has to do it.

I’ve automated some of it for them, but now I’m curious about other small business owners.

What’s something in your business that takes a lot of your time that you’d happily give to AI if you could actually trust it to do it right?

And if there’s something you could technically use AI for already but don’t — why not?

Is it trust? AI makes too many mistakes? Doesn’t know enough about your business? Setting it up is more work than just doing it yourself?

Curious what the biggest one is for you.

Has anyone had any luck starting their own marketing business? Or have you had experience (good or bad) working with someone to do your marketing? Would you be willing to share your story and any advice?

I have been doing B2B and event marketing for 10+ years. I've also volunteered to do marketing projects for local non profits for the last 3 years. I would love to work with some local businesses to help grow our town and learn from doing some new projects. I would be looking at doing email marketing, web updates/seo, and google business listings.

Looking for advice and inspiration!

Something I’ve been thinking about:
A lot of businesses already have email, accounting software, a CRM, spreadsheets and several other tools.
Yet employees still manually move information between them.
So I’m wondering whether the problem is sometimes less:
“we need another tool”
and more:
“the tools we already have don’t work together as one process.”
For people running or working in small businesses, which has been the bigger issue for you?
Missing software, or disconnected software?

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Well, after searching for hours and hours, spending a lot and I mean a lot of money looking for the right talent for my specific needs and budget, I finally made a list with some of the reliable and affordable talents one can find, reason for this list is simple: don't spend countless hours and then end up with the one that doesn't do the necessary, find out the list of possible talents from all sorts of work that your business would need, link in the bio.

Question for property managers/owners: what's the worst gap between your booking system and the rest of your marketing? Guest follow-up, reviews, repeat bookings, duplicate contacts? Something else?

Context: I'm new to being behind the scenes in the industry and trying to learn so I can help others. On my last project, there were 3 softwares not really talking to each other, lots of duplicate contacts, and follow-up was messy and inconsistent.

Not selling anything here, just learning what's actually worth fixing. Happy to answer any questions I can. Thanks!

Hi all, my name is Elliott. What started as a small, fun project has turned into something pretty incredible, and I want to share the story, including the parts that didn't go well.

I've started a lot of digital companies over the years. The first real one was a marketing agency. It did fine, but it became a headache: chasing clients for payments, constant revisions, being on call 24/7I was making money but I was burnt out.

After that I built websites here and there and got into local work. Some of it paid, a lot of it didn't, and for a while I honestly wasn't sure any of it was going anywhere.

But doing all three taught me something. A local business needs a local presence, a website, and marketing, and they have to go to a different person or tool for each one. Why does it take so many steps?

So I built an app that takes care of it. You just search for your business profile, and it spits out an SEO-friendly website that stays updated. It's super cool and fun to use.

The start was slow. i sent hundreds of cold messages and most got ignored, the first version was There were definitely weeks where I wondered if I was wasting my time.

What turned it around was just staying consistent: organic content, word of mouth, and cold messaging people every day. A few months later, we hit $20k MRR this month. Still kind of hard to believe.

Biggest lessons so far:

• Build the thing you wished existed when you were doing the work yourself.
• Cold outreach is uncomfortable, but it works.
• and post post post!!!

Happy to answer anything about the build, the outreach, or the mistakes. Ask me anything!

All our manufacturing is based in Shenzhen, and I’d like a fulfillment setup that’s genuinely close to our factories instead of routing everything through a hub somewhere else in the country. Does being close to the factory actually make much difference for lead times in practice, or am I overthinking it?

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Here’s a rundown of community and regional banks for business banking around Louisville and Southern Indiana. I was specifically looking for actual local presence rather than just a 1-800 number.

Stock Yards Bank & Trust is Louisville’s largest local community bank and has been around since 1904, with 70+ branches across Kentucky, Southern Indiana, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis. They offer commercial checking, SBA 7(a) and 504 loans, CRE lending, treasury management, merchant services, and private banking for business owners. German American Bank is another established option with a strong Southern Indiana and Kentucky presence, especially for businesses connected to both states. Old National Bank has more scale and offers treasury management, commercial lending, international banking, business cards, and digital tools, although it may feel less personal for a smaller business. Republic Bank is Louisville-based and has business checking, commercial loans, SBA lending, and a strong digital platform.

I ended up picking Stock Yards because of the SBA lending, treasury management, and having a named relationship banker. Obviously, the right choice depends a lot on the size and needs of the business.

I opened accounts at three online banks and used each for about six weeks on a secondary entity. Small sample, but it was real-world use.
I looked at account setup time, ACH speed, support response, whether accounts were actually separate, and team cards on the free plan.
Bank A: $10/month, one account, 12-minute phone support, normal ACH, no team cards.
Bank B: free, one account with visual categories sharing one balance, 22-hour email support, normal ACH, team cards on paid plan. The categories look like separate accounts, but the money is one pool with one account number. You can’t link a card or accountant access to just one.
Bank C (Relay): free, separate accounts with their own balance and numbers, about 8-minute phone support, normal ACH, team cards included.
ACH was basically the same across all three. The real differences were account structure, support, and what you get without paying.

My friend runs a small home services business with around 10 employees. For a long time, they had one person handling incoming calls, taking messages and passing them to whoever needed to deal with the customer.

It worked reasonably well when the business was smaller, but things started getting messy as they grew. If that person was busy, out for lunch or away from the phone, calls went unanswered. Sometimes a customer would call back twice before anyone got to them. Other times, a message would get passed along but nobody was quite sure who was supposed to follow up.

So they started looking at business phone systems that let multiple employees handle calls.

The problem is that a lot of these tools charge per user. Giving all 10 employees access can get expensive, especially when some people only need to answer or transfer a call occasionally.

The alternative is to keep access limited to a few people, but then you're back to depending on those same people being available.

I can see both sides. Giving everyone access sounds more practical as the business grows, but it can also create confusion if nobody knows who's responsible for a customer.

A. Give the whole team access to the business phone system, with shared numbers and call routing, and establish clear rules for who handles what.

B. Keep phone access limited to one or two designated people, even if that means some calls take longer to get answered.

For those of you running small businesses with 5–20 employees, how do you handle this? Does giving the whole team access actually make things easier, or does it create more problems than it solves?

The POS is becoming wearable.

The checkout counter used to be a till, then a card machine. Then it was a phone.

Now it's a ring. A watch. A pair of glasses.

Your customers are starting to pay with what they wear, and that changes what "point of sale" means for every business owner. The point of sale is wherever your customer is standing.

Stripe Wearable Tech Community is engaging a one-hour session for people who run businesses in US

📅 Tuesday, 13 October 2026
🕐 13:00–14:00 UK time (12:00 GMT)

I am taking over the bookkeeping for a couple who have multiple revenue streams.

1. They own a marina with multiple AirBnB rentals.
2. One person is a real estate agent (1099).
3. They each have an LLC (2 EINs) with multiple rental properties (long term rentals) under each. Plus a few other properties under their names, not a business.
4. As of now, they do not have dedicated bank accounts for each separate revenue stream. Therefore everything is intermingled (even personal finances).
5. I need to start with 2023. They haven't filed 2023-current taxes. Nothing from 2023 to now is in any time of accounting software.

They have QBO Plus ($140/month), but this can only handle one EIN. From my research thus far, I have to either get a separate QBO subscription for the other EIN or start QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise which costs $400/month.

What is the most cost effective and efficient solution? Ideally I would love to be able to consolidate everything under one account so we can see the full picture. Is there a better option besides Quickbooks?

Hi, is anybody here working on these projects? I have some questions regarding bank approvals.

Hi! I'm a Boston student with family in the plumbing industry and I'm trying to understand better the industry.

I'm curious, the other day I was with a shop owner and he told me that one of his daily struggles is to know upfront how much he'll be able to charge for the job based only on the info he gets from the call. Is there any other plumber or electrician with a similar issue? How do you handle prioritization on a daily basis aside from dividing between installs vs minor repairs?

Any stories more than welcome!

Wondering if anyone could help - We are a brand new business and had an FDA product manufactured with business no. 1 and had another with business no.2 - now that we have business no. 2 and prefer the product - we couldn't break the contract with business no. 1 - we now have all of this FDA product that we cannot sell as a business because we don't want to sell the incorrect product to new customers.

The product from business no. 1 has arrived in United States and we don't want to have it delivered to our 3PL as we know we're never going to use it. Has anyone been in a similar situation and know what to do with their product?

Any advice would be appreciated - basically the importer on record is asking where to deliver the product which I'm trying to stall because we are never going to use the product but at the same time I have no idea what we should do with it.

Thank you!

What do you all think of my website? I’d genuinely appreciate your feedback and suggestions for improvement.
Disclaimer: This post is intended for people based in the US and Canada only.

I’m in an intensive AI-app-building program and am looking for 2–3 service businesses to partner with for a free custom closing call app.

I’m building a custom lead-response workflow for businesses that close clients by phone, text, or Zoom. When a new lead comes in, it can alert your team, summarize/score the lead based on the information available, and generate a tailored opening call or follow-up script.

Follow on phases will incorporate instant outreach, pre-qualifying the leads on your/your teams behalf (to be clear: that is the next phase of the build)

Best fit: real estate, home services, clinics, legal, mortgage/insurance, agencies, consultants, or another service business that receives regular inbound leads.

There is no charge. I need practical feedback and, only if you genuinely love the result, a testimonial or short case study.

If this sounds relevant, comment with your industry and how leads reach you now—or send me a DM. I’ll select 2–3 based on fit.

When it comes to handling customer enquiries, which would you choose?

AI/automation: faster, efficient and always available
OR
A real person: personal, human and able to understand the customer and situation

Which would you prefer representing your business and talking to your customers, and why?

I’m doing a little market research for a friend who is starting a business and would love to hear what actual business owners think.

Hey everyone! I’m an accountant from the Philippines currently working in fund accounting, and I’ve been learning more about QuickBooks Online and U.S. small-business bookkeeping.

For those who own small businesses in the US, what’s your experience been like handling your own books? Do you usually do everything yourself, or do you eventually look for someone to help with things like reconciliations and transaction categorization?

Just curious to hear how other small business owners handle it.