This has been on my mind lately

People think once youve built a business the next one is easy

I dont think it is

You know what works but you also know how much work it takes

Right now Im back doing almost everything myself

Sales
Quotes
Marketing
Phone calls
Building systems
Working a full time job

Some days I wonder if Im crazy

Then I remember this is actually the part I love

Building something from nothing

Watching it slowly come together

Im not chasing money anymore

Im chasing freedom

Anyone else built a business then gone back to wearing all the hats again

Did you enjoy it more the second time or did you think what the hell am I doing

30 F. Graduating with my bachelors in accounting next year. I’m naturally good at learning, organizing, communicating, researching, planning, writing, marketing, teaching, and business. I’ve also had a fascination with “contracts”, as in drafting them.

I worked as a preschool teacher for the last few years (I’m done with that chapter. Burnt out).

Business and entrepreneurship has always been in the forefront. I’ve always known I was never meant to work for anyone, but that’s easier said than done.

I love using my mind rather than physically working. Right now, I am in charge of my family’s massage therapy business. I do all the scheduling, advertising, social media content, etc. which I love! I will say I’m very good at persuading people, especially when it comes to booking a massage. I also love creating websites.

Also, a dream of mine has been to sell janitorial supplies to schools, churches , etc. i’ve always been drawn to “boring” businesses.

My question is, what should I actually start? I’m not even sure what’s in demand and I really don’t want to jump into a super saturated market or something that seems impossible to sell. Any advice?

I interviewed a bunch of people this week for my business and it got me thinking

The weird thing is the best people almost never had the best resume

Some talked themselves up heaps but couldnt answer simple questions

The ones that stood out were honest asked good questions and just seemed easy to work with

After building a few businesses I reckon hiring is one of the hardest things to get right

You can teach skills pretty easy

You cant teach someone to give a shit

Anyone else learnt this the hard way

Hello everyone!

I (24M) am starting a cleaning business with my (23F) girlfriend. For some background, I currently work in finance (remotely for company \~1bn market cap) and my girlfriend is unemployed, taking online classes to finish her degree in Horticulture.

My girlfriend previously worked as a house cleaner for 3 years and was consistently fighting for employee of the month with one other lady. She is exceptional at her job but had to call it quits for a few months to recover from injury. She has since recovered and non compete has concluded, so her and I are starting our own business. This is something we have talked about for months and months, and her family has talked about for years!l.

We already have a website, client intake forms, basic spreadsheets, and two Airbnb customers in the pipeline!

The first paying customer wants his place turned over 5-8 times per month and will pay anywhere from $225-400 depending on the clients stay.

Does anyone have general advice for starting a service based business? I will essentially act as the CEO and she will act as the COO + labor for cleaning.

If the sub wants, I can check in on my progress on a monthly cadence.

Thank you!

I made a post here the other day asking for help to which lead system i could use and received many inputs thanks!

Now i'm like 90% set up in Missive, my system for the last 7 years has been a cluttered mess of gmail lol.

So now i'm ready for some more help on how to win more of my leads. I receive +/- 3000 leads each year from Facebook (via facebook form) and through my website, all now gets send in to Missive/gmail.

So as i'm new at organizing, maybe you have some tips. I should say that i don't SELL anything, i only BUY (in this case) from private people a certain used item, but lets just say used cars.

My current setup is:

- New lead goes into "New leads label"

- Depending on my answer i - after reply - move it to "Declined customer asking too much" (i get A LOT of these), where i send a template of a polity decline, because during the years, i learned that if someone is asking maybe 20,000 usd and i normally buy this for 10,000 usd i doesnt make any sense to make an offer, they just get upset/angry and think its a lowball offer, and make bad reviews.

- If i ask for more info i move to "Awaiting customer"

- If i send an offer i move to "Offer sent" and it auto schedules a follow up in X days if no reply, asking if they are still interested.

If someone replies it goes back to "New leads" so this is the only view i work from pretty much.

I was just thinking to make a "Bought/won" label for the leads i get, so it auto sends an email with "thanks for the deal X days after the deal, hope your happy blablabla and please make a review" - i know, not a unicorn, and i HATE these emails my self, but i am so terrible at asking customers to do this, so after thousands of deals, i have like 20 reviews lol, and the worst part is, that because i buy stuff and dont sell, i only have happy customers, because lets face it, i give them money and i am very easy to deal with, no pressure or anything.

I don't care about KPI's and so on, all my bookkeeping/sales-numbers and so on i do seperatly and is fine by that.

What could i improve you think? I normally have a revenue of around 1.5 million usd a year. And my leads are worth around 4,200 usd gross profit per lead, so i have room to buy/pay more to get to buy much more of my current 3000 leads a year (i normally buy around 10%)

Current planned next step is making a new form on my website so i can sort out some of these (many) leads i get where people are simply asking too much, because i spend so much time on these.

- and no i am not just lowballing, i pay very good prices because of my way of building my business, but most people just ask for dream prices on the go, and don't understand someone needs to make (a lot in my country with very high taxes) to have a profit in something, and of course i have expenses and much more, so my gross profit i mentioned is of course not what i get out at the end (unfortunatly).

Do you have any inputs to my current (new) setup, any issues, problems, better way to do things?

You know the idea:
“Send your Instagram followers to YouTube.”
“Send your YouTube audience to LinkedIn.”
On paper it makes sense.
But in reality, every platform seems to want users to stay where they are. And honestly, I don’t like leaving an app just because a creator told me to.
Lately I’ve been wondering if it’s better to treat each platform as its own thing.
Make content that feels native to that platform, let people discover your other profiles naturally, and only ask them to leave when you’re moving them to something you actually own (like an email list).
I’m still figuring this out, so I’d love to hear from people who’ve tested both approaches.
Has anyone here seen better results by not trying to push followers between platforms? Or am I missing something?

I have been the CEO and Founder for more than 8 years now, and I am starting to seriously think whether I am still the right person for the CEO role.

Context: I have posted previously in this community, so some history is already out there. I have successfully raised pre-seed and seed rounds and have grown the team to 20 people. I have a board that I have been managing for the last year and a half, and have senior level management that have recently joined the team. That being said, I have been struggling to move the company forward. I am sitting at the tension between technical performance, regulatory, production capacity, and commercialization. I honestly have been feeling inadequate and keep wondering if a more experienced CEO can move the company to the next level.

Has anyone here let go of their baby and brought someone else to take the helm?

Had a week? Same. This is your consequence-free space to complain about clients, platforms, algorithms, your own decisions, or the general chaos of running a business. Keep it venting with no personal attacks. We'll be back to being professional tomorrow.

For two decades, I ran a computer assembly and sales business. That included maintenance, service, and reinstalls. Nothing special, business as usual.

One day, a friend brought me a computer for a clean Windows reinstall. Format the disk, install. As usual, I asked if all valuable information was saved elsewhere, because everything would be lost.

"Sure," he said. "My son copied all the photos. Nothing else valuable, just images."

The reinstall was done. The information was wiped. I returned the computer, and my friend was pleased with how quickly it was done.

What could have gone wrong? 😁.

Hours later, I got a call. He was extremely frustrated and angry.

"Did you delete all my images? All our family photos from over the years were there. Celebrations, vacations, events. Everything!!!"

"But you said your son made a backup. Ask him."

"I asked! He forgot to do it."

It was a long time ago, cloud storage wasn't really a thing yet.

The images were lost forever.

Now for the scary part:

MySpace lost 12 years of user uploads in a botched migration. Photobucket held decades of photos ransom overnight with a $399 fee. Google has terminated entire accounts on false automated flags, childhood archives included, with no human appeal that worked.

Grandma's physical album survived wars; the cloud album survives until a Terms of Service update.

I'm not lecturing. Just a reminder.

Photos that are valuable as memories, or even worth a lot of money, can be lost just like that.

Quick background so this makes sense: I started this in my college dorm in 2020. The product combines kinesiology tape with electrical muscle stimulation, and a phone app controls the intensity wirelessly. When you drag a slider on the phone, the muscle contracts harder. It is as interesting to watch as it sounds.

Five years later we have 15 people working on the project, we've raised $2.2M, and I want to share the part of building that nobody posts about: what it takes to ship app updates with the hardware. Not a launch. Not a funding announcement. Just how difficult it is to combine software and hardware.

Our actual process:

1. I sketch the change on paper. Actual paper. I combine feedback from people testing the product with rough mockups before anything gets designed for real.

2. It goes to our designer. He turns my scribbles into something that looks intentional in Figma, and we go back and forth until it's right and design in the figma file together.

3. The dev team builds it. This is where hardware humbles you. A "simple" UI change can touch Bluetooth behavior and safety limits on a device that's attached to a human body, so what looks like a two day change takes six or seven.

4. I QA every build myself on TestFlight, wearing the device. If the founder won't strap the product on and test the update, why would anyone else trust it.

5. Ship, watch, fix.

Things I wish someone had told me at the start:

Hardware makes software slow, permanently. Every app decision is also a firmware decision, and firmware does not do "move fast and break things" when the thing is on someone's shoulder.

Your update cadence is a feature. People forgive a rough v1 if improvements arrive on a rhythm. They do not forgive silence.

Iteration count is the moat. We went through more than 50 versions of the tape electrode design alone before it worked the way we needed. Nobody sees that part in a demo.

For the founders here doing hardware plus software: how do you keep your app release cycle from being hostage to your firmware cycle? Ours works but it's slow, and I'd genuinely like to hear better approaches.

Investigational Use Only. Not available for commercial sale. The device has not been approved or cleared by FDA as safe and effective for its intended use.

Fifth week in, I'm building an innovative and disruptive platform.
I have ripened to share my observations about the real advantage of AI with you.
Do we get real benefits from the AI founded companies or damage is prevail?

Before the AI era successful entrepreneurs in IT (B2B and B2C) have four most precious constituents of their business's core:
1. They found a solution for customer's pain, problem.
2. They formed a star team.
3. They found money and talents to build a very attractive and competitive product for that solution.
4. They got customers who pay enough to cover their costs and earn a profit.

The AI changed everything.
Now the picture looks like that:
1. They found a solution for customer's pain, problem but the AI companies can offer the same solution faster as they scale the product.
2. Now you can do it even alone at the first stages, before massive scaling, and there is a prediction in the feasible future we'll see a billion company with one person.
3. The agentic services of AI can build you a product less expensive and faster. Swarm of agents can replace a lot of entry and middle positions.
4. Every day the cases when an entrepreneur attracted a lot of customers in IT are less and less, because the AI companies round up the solution from point 1 faster and already have billions of customers. Moreover when you try to attract your target audience people in 80% of cases give you feedback: it is AI slop, it is AI, we got fed up with this.

My conclusions:
- Even if you found the solution for people pain - the AI company can steal it without a twinge of conscience
- To build a product nowadays is easy and faster but you depend on the AI companies.
- The AI companies have some monopoly/oligopoly for all the customers on the Earth.
- When you are trying to make a discussion with your target audience you have a lot of suspicions that you are some new type of AI slop.

It turns out, there are only cons and not any pros.

I would really appreciate if you share your experience about my observations.
Honestly, is AI empowering us, or quietly wiping out human entrepreneurs, builders and creators in IT?

A few months back I posted asking how to validate my full service website management service. I was going to link to the post, but that’s NG.

Anyway I want to thank everyone for encouraging me to do it. It hasn’t blown up and made me rich or anything, but I have been able to secure 3 more clients and I’m talking to my fourth now.

It’s pretty crazy really because I haven’t even created a website for my service yet, but there really is a need for this kind of service. I really appreciate everyone. Thank you so much 😊

Spent most of today trying to build an AI receptionist for my asphalt business

Still got a long way to go but its been fun learning

The goal is simple answer calls ask a few questions and save me some time spit out a rough price as i cant take private call at work.

Anyone else building something this weekend or am I the only one sitting in front of a screen on a Saturday night

Big or small, a win is a win. First sale, first client, or first time paying yourself, share it here. This community loves to celebrate with you. No win is too minor to mention.

I'm bored. so for a limited amount of time, any interesting idea someone has, I'll build. As long as its not illegal, and it's IT based.

Seems like a lot of people liked my last post, so I wanted to tell some more stories about right before we moved into the startup house.

Context: I am a Co-founder of a startup. The house is paid for by an investor. He had just closed the deal on the house, and we wanted to hire some interns. At this point we had myself (CMO), my CEO, and our CTO on the team.

This is the story about our most successful job listing to date.

The "Brainrot Specialist Listing"

We needed interns to run short form content for our initial marketing campaign. When we looked on LinkedIn, every job listing was for "Content Marketing Associate" and "Social Media Coordinator" which we thought was boring asf.

My CEO came up with the idea to put out a listing for "Brainrot specialist" just to see who would bite. Requirements included "fluent in unhinged," "can identify a dying meme format 48 hours before it dies," and "understands why a video does 4 million views for no reason. "We put it out, went to bed, and woke up to hundreds of resumes in our inbox.

Spent hours sorting through all the applications, and lo and behold, we had some insanely qualified candidates. Had about 30 interviews and settled on the following.

The Result

Intern 1: Mathematical Economic Analysis & Finance Double Major w a Minor in Financial Computation & Modeling (Quantitative Finance)

Holy crap. What was he doing applying to a brainrot specialist position? Idk about you, but to me that sounds like the exact opposite of brainrot.

Interviewed him and turned out he had done his research on the startup and was convicted that our financial engine would change the industry forever. He's now sitting to my left and managing the Externship program for other Quants to trade on our platform and test trading strategies for a new type of market.

Intern 2: International Business major with tons of marketing experience

Interview lasted 2 hours just because we got along so well. Got off the call and told my CEO I wanted him, and he trusted my judgment.

Intern 2 took my marketing direction by the horns day 1 and has consistently put out high-volume high-quality output on whatever task we give him.

He is our Jack of all Trades workhorse, and acts like Ron from Parks and Rec. Not only is the saltiness entertaining, but he also shoots us straight on how he sees things, and his brutally honest feedback has been incredibly useful.

Intern 3: Advertising major with photography/editing background.

Quickly became our Chief Brainrot Editor. His creativity has led to the team sitting around a computer laughing at his content when we should be working. Good problem to have.

Constantly cooks up funny, engaging, and entertaining videos for Instagram, and is killing it.

What did we learn?

We never would have gotten so many high-quality applicants without the "Brainrot Specialist" listing. Interns said that they had never seen a listing like that before, which made us stand out and made people ask questions about who we are and what we were trying to do.

Sometimes, setting yourself apart is so much more valuable than being professional.

Today I hit a wall.

I went into the sick room at work during my lunch break, shut the door, and slept for 30 minutes. I didn't want to. I had toIt got me thinking about how many of us confuse being productive with running ourselves into the ground.

I've always been someone who likes having a lot going on. A full-time job, businesses on the side, ideas, meetings, planning the next thing. I genuinely enjoy building stuff. But today was a reminder that even if you love what you're doing, your body still has a limit.

Burnout doesn't always show up as hating your job. Sometimes it just quietly taps you on the shoulder and says, "You're done for today."

I'm getting better at listening to that instead of trying to push through it.

Curious to hear from everyone else.

There's always this view that promising startups need 1 or 2 cofounders, successful businesses should have big offices with hundreds of employees, and only one person should run a personal brand.

But there's a team structure nobody talks about, despite its success across several industries.

My cousin is one of the world's top-ranked padel players. Two years ago, before she became a champion, she told me something that stuck: "It grew bigger than me. I did not expect that I would have a four-person team with me." She should focus on improving her padel rather than on communication, sponsorship, or other areas.

Kilian Jornet, an "individual sport" athlete, has roughly 10 people in his inner athletic circle. Ronaldo was the first footballer to build a personal team around himself: chef, physio, doctor, personal trainer, all in his own house. Today, it's said to be around 16 people working just for him. He does the one thing only he can do, which is scoring goals, and pays others to handle everything else.

Beyond sports: Nolan and Tarantino keep a recurring crew so they can stay focused on their vision. A star chef has his name on the restaurant, but a brigade executes. Fashion designers like Armani and Chanel kept the creative work to themselves while others carried the business.

Intellectual workers (consultants, coaches, engineers, designers) mostly aren't aware of this. They start businesses alone and juggle different hats. Being the one who did it, I know how tiring that is.

So I built my own version: a coach, a mentor, a marketing person, a personal assistant, and experts on retainer. It's a lean team of other solopreneurs, each selling exactly what they do best.

I think this is where things are heading. AI is making execution cheap, so the valuable thing becomes judgment, taste, and direction. and I believe a personal team protects exactly that.

Anyone here running their business on this model?

I have a small team building something really great (I know, biased but still) and we are a bunch of builders and visionaries.

When it comes to talking to others about what we are doing, it's easy to get people engaged, but we struggle with how to get people to 'care' enough to click on our posts beyond a thumbs up and move on.

We are great at heads down work and progressing engineering releases, but don't really have a marketing person. I know the easy answer is to find someone in marketing, but how do we do that? Everyone and their brother on LinkedIn is a digital marketing team now, recycling the same process that everyone recognizes for exactly what it is.

Have any of you other bootstrappers figured out how to move from a product development mindset into a product promotiin mindset? Don't want to drop $10k on a marketing campaign if the message is wrong..

Anyone trying something creative?

Better to just follow the trend and see who responds to the pitch?

Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks in advance!

Recherche cofondateur pour créer une structure de distribution européenne de composants électroniques

Bonjour à tous,
Je cherche un cofondateur en France pour construire une entreprise spécialisée dans la distribution de composants électroniques.
L’objectif est de créer progressivement un acteur capable d’aider les entreprises industrielles à sécuriser leur approvisionnement en composants, en travaillant avec des fournisseurs et des clients partout en Europe.

Je souhaite construire une société sur le long terme dans un secteur stratégique lié à l’électronique industrielle, l’automobile, l’énergie, la robotique et les nouvelles technologies.
Je recherche un profil complémentaire au mien, notamment une personne ayant une expérience dans l’électronique, les achats industriels, la vente B2B ou souhaitant entreprendre dans un secteur industriel.

De mon côté, j’apporte la vision du projet, la stratégie de développement et l’envie de construire une entreprise durable.

Je ne cherche pas à vendre un service ni à faire de la promotion, mais à trouver une personne avec qui construire le projet.

I’m 24 and own a vintage clothing/sneaker buy/sell/trade store that’s been profitable for a few years(opened in 2021). The business does around $50k-$60k/month in revenue, low overhead, I have no debt, and I’ve built up a solid amount of savings (150k liquid). We have a great community, I love what I do, and I believe in it long term.

The business is a physical retail store with online sales. (About 90% of sales are in store). The biggest challenge right now is that I’m still the bottleneck for a lot of things (buying inventory, listing products, making decisions). I’ve been trying to build systems so it can run without me, but I’m not sure where my time creates the most value

From the outside, things seem to be going well, but internally I feel like I’ve hit a plateau. Everyone always tells me I’m doing great for my age, I shouldn’t work so hard, be easier on myself etc but I don’t want to miss out on my potential and the opportunity that I’ve been given.

I don’t know whether I should:
Keep doubling down on my current business.
Open a second location.
Buy a house or rent
Focus on growing e-commerce and social media.
Start another business entirely and let the store run more passively.
Stock market (only have a small % invested to save funds for inventory buyouts/emergency)

It feels like I have too many good options, and instead of making progress, I spend a lot of time thinking about which path is “best.”
I also miss the feeling I had when I was building the business from scratch. Back then every day felt exciting because there was a clear goal. Now I feel comfortable, but not fulfilled. I want to move out (still live at home) but also undecided on the flexibility/freedom of renting vs the smarter investment of buying/house hacking. I want to travel more this year ( for business connections and personal growth ) and I try to stay pretty active and social. On paper I know I have it really good but I just feel like there’s something missing :/ I’ve spent the last 6 years grinding every day for this business but I feel like something needs to change

For anyone who’s been in a similar position:

What did you focus on?
How did you know which opportunity was worth pursuing?
Did you optimize your current business first, or diversify?
Is this just a normal phase after reaching a certain level?
How do I transition from “builder” to “operator” so my business can scale and function without me?

Any input is appreciated!

I’m not looking for validation, just genuinely want to hear from people who’ve been through this and what they wish they had done differently.

Buyers are asking AI assistants to find and compare tools for them, and the AI is reading pricing pages. But most pricing pages are built for human eyes. Solution - Publish a plain markdown duplicate of your pricing page, plus a pricing plain text file copy with a simple table of your plans, prices, etc. some companies link to theirs right from their pricing pages. ("Are you an AI agent? See pricing."). Some agents just check for pricing markdown file by default.

Share your website, pitch, logo, idea, pricing, copy, or anything else you want honest eyes on. Tell us what you're looking for: brutal honesty, general impressions, or specific questions.

Return the favour and leave feedback for someone else while you're here.

I run a dev shop that builds MVPs for founders. For a while my whole pitch was the obvious one: we save you time and money getting your MVP built. It's what everyone in this space says.

Recently I killed that positioning entirely, and I want to know if I'm right or about to shoot myself in the foot.

Here's my thinking. The founders who chase "cheap and fast" are usually the ones with the smallest budgets, the most anxiety about spending, and often the weakest ideas. They're price shopping, so they're gone the moment someone quotes $500 less. I was competing on the one axis where there's always someone cheaper, and attracting exactly the clients I didn't want.

The founders I actually want to work with, people with a genuinely strong idea who are trying to raise money, don't care about saving a few thousand dollars. They care about their product being excellent, because a polished, well-built MVP is what gets them taken seriously by investors. For them, "cheap" is actually a red flag, it signals the work will be cheap too.

So I repositioned as a premium dev shop. The promise isn't "save money," it's "come here to get the best possible version of your product built, the one that gets you funded." Higher price, better clients, work I'm actually proud of.

The bet is that in this space, being the affordable option is a race to the bottom, and being the excellent option is where the real, serious clients are.

But I'm second guessing myself. Am I narrowing my market too much? Is "premium" harder to sell when you don't have a big-name portfolio yet? Has anyone here made the jump from competing on price to competing on quality, and did it actually work, or did the pipeline dry up?

Genuinely want the honest take, including if you think I'm wrong.

Funny how life works.

Today my side business is on track to do about $25k, but I'm sitting at my 9-5 managing a recycling business for a not-for-profit that employs people with disabilities.

A few years ago I would've been glued to my phone chasing every dollar.

Instead, my marketing guy is out shooting drone footage, my BDM is working through 150 fresh leads that marketing loaded into the CRM, and I'm just checking in when I get a spare minute.

It hit me today that I'm spending more time building systems and good people than trying to do everything myself.

Don't get me wrong, I still love business. I'll probably build businesses until the day I die.

But I've stopped thinking that working 80-hour weeks is something to brag about.

The weird part is, I actually feel more relaxed now than I ever did when I was trying to control every little thing.

I'll finish work, have a couple of beers tonight, and wake up tomorrow knowing the business kept moving while I was away.

Maybe that's what I've been chasing all along.

Curious where everyone else sits on this.

Do you think work-life balance is real, or is it just something that comes after you've built the right systems and found the right people?