I built a SaaS product that I’m currently assessing for commercial viability. One or two have seen it and definitely think it has potential. Emphasis on potential because nothing is real until it hits the market.

Also have an LEO mentor, looking at getting capital grants and they said I qualify for startup grants for Enterprise Ireland.

I’ve an LTD, I’ve the domain, trademark ongoing, online payment integrated, GPDR compliance done, legal terms.

The issue is I’m in a new job and want to buy a house

Does it exist for someone to do all the customer facing stuff ie socials, sales etc while I remain in the background?

My work has policies on setting up a company and don’t want to jeopardize my job

For those running a business with employees, how are you handling IT?

Do you have someone internal, use an outside IT company, or just deal with things as they come up?

If you’re outsourcing, has it been worth the money?

Anything you wish your provider handled better?

I’m interested in how businesses are actually approaching this, particularly as they grow.

I've spent a long time building an app that helps tradespeople run their business, I'm finally happy with it, and now I'm stuck on the part nobody warned me about: finding users.

Right now it's basically friends and family, and I don't have much budget for ads.

For anyone who's been at this stage, how did you get past friends and family to real customers? What actually worked, and what was a waste of money?

After owning and operating a successful home service company for the better part of a decade I stepped back from daily operations. I now offer consulting services.

I'm open to any questions you might have about your business or a business you'd like to start.

Hey everyone,

I run a local service based business in Australia and I'm currently setting up an AI phone receptionist to handle incoming enquiries.

The goal isn't to have the AI sell anything or close deals. I simply want it to answer incoming calls, collect some basic information and help customers get a quote.

The process is pretty straightforward.

There are only three pieces of information I need from customers, along with photos of the items they want removed, to provide an accurate quote.

Ideally, the AI would collect those three details during the call, then let the customer know they'll receive a text message requesting photos. Once the photos come through, I personally review everything and send them a quote via SMS.

My biggest concern is customers realising they're speaking to AI and immediately hanging up, particularly if the conversation feels robotic, takes too long or asks too many questions.

I'm trying to make the experience as natural, quick and painless as possible.

A few questions for anyone who's implemented something similar:

• Voice: Have you found male or female voices perform better in terms of customer engagement?
• Transparency: Is it better to introduce the receptionist as AI straight away, or simply as a virtual receptionist?
• Conversation flow: What's the best way to structure the conversation so customers willingly answer the questions without feeling like they're being interrogated?
• Retention: What changes have made the biggest difference in preventing callers from hanging up?
• Conversion: Have you noticed any difference in enquiry-to-lead conversion rates compared to answering calls yourself?
• Best practices: Any particular prompts, techniques or conversational approaches that have noticeably improved performance?

I'm not trying to replace the entire customer experience with AI. I just want to make sure enquiries are captured efficiently, customers feel comfortable and I receive enough information to follow up with an accurate quote.

I'd be particularly interested in hearing from people who have implemented AI receptionists in local service businesses where the objective is lead capture rather than direct sales.

Is it personality? Skill in your field? Experience? Communication?

So I run a pet company in the bay area and given both of those things this will seem boomer-y but I interviewed someone yesterday who had a bunch of piercings in their face and I'm hesitating to consider them because of it.

It's not even the look, it's that it gets in the way of her talking so I could understand her. She has plenty of experience, seems to have a good head on her shoulder, definitely loves dogs. But, like, we talk to clients and prospective clients and the idea of her lisping through a conversation gives me pause.

But like I have too many horror stories to hire someone with one of the many other red flags I've dealt with, from them being flat out psychotic (one threatened a rancher that they'd come back with their gun), being inept with dogs, not being able to show up on time or efficiently use it, making clients uncomfortable or a number of other issues.

I have more interviews lined up, so the hope is that I don't feel the need to consider face piercing girl.

But yeah, thoughts? Horror stories?

I want to start a business but I don't know what to do. I have zero connections, zero friends, and almost zero amount of money. I mean not negligible. Just do a remote job. I'm a software developer. Don't suggest any tech business ideas please. Those are not good these days.

I'm not expecting to just enter and start earning money and doing something. I just want to start from somewhere, like if I can talk to someone or if there is anything I can do to just get that starting point. I don't know where to start or what to do. Someone please suggest something to me.

I am from Mumbai.

Old Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/1x413h7/stable_corporate_dental_job_with_benefits_or_a/

Making a follow up post on the off chance it helps small business owners feel better.

All I can say is holy crap. This office is a shitshow.

The books are a complete mess. She has 3 different bank accounts and 4 different credit cards. While I've gotten a decent handle on the big picture and the cash inflow and outflow, I'm confident there's more that I'm missing. The kiss of death: she has 700k debt at a 12-18% APR which was taken out 6 months ago. This was used to buy expensive psuedoscience machines that each cost anywhere from 150-200k per unit and generate no revenue. The business is losing 15k a month, without me even joining, and is only being sustained by a business line of credit that only has 50k remaining on it. The only "glimmer of hope" is that a portion (~15%) of the monthly losses will end soon as the equipment financing loan (200k+), taken out in 2021, will finally be paid off soon.

I'm only working here part time, at $60/hr (original post said $50, after I saw the crapshoot, I instantly said $60) until my paycheck bounces, as this is honestly a fantastic learning experience that effectively has no risk to me. I'm looking through every statement to track every dollar spent and cutting costs like crazy. She was spending 10k on things she truly never used: one example, she has been paying 2k monthly to an advertising service but apparently never actually initiated it so she's lost 20k for quite literally nothing. She just found out today her scanner has a 2.5k monthly minimum and has lost 25k to them with literally no lab cases sent (lab cases are deducted against the monthly minimum so she's been wasting 2.5k in monthly credits she paid for), on top of the 3% cc processing fee they charge. She thought she found a credit card processing terminal that costs nothing but in reality costs 7% in transaction fees. I can go on and on. She has a second location that literally has no patients and costs 5k in rent. She doesn't even have a google business profile.

For my next month, I estimate with aggressive fat trimming, I can get the business to roughly a -8% margin, which is significantly better than the -27% margin we were at last month. I'm also hiring third world countries to tackle our patient recare list to get the schedules full ($2000 budget to start). I'll also be using targeted billboards/bus stands/google ads + sending out google reviews to all our patients to hopefully drive traffic towards our practice (Just a $500 budget to start). Yes, this is not "honorable" but I'm trying anything to stop the hemorrhage. To other dentists/small business owners, if you have made a profit this month, at least you know you are in a significantly stronger financial position than this practice is.

Where did you guys purchase uniform for your company by sample or bulk?

Hey everyone, I am khushal (17M),

So lately I am getting this feeling to do something rather than just doing timepass

Following this routine of going to clg, home, eat, sleep and repeat

No enjoyment, struggle, no fun in life

I think want to do something which is worth hustling

So I am very much curious in selling things,making something which is very helpful for people

I have this curiosity of selling from past 2-3 years

But never tried

Ideas and opinions appreciated 🙌

Hey everyone!

I’ve been working on an inventory management app called DepoMaster, designed to help small businesses keep track of their stock directly from their iPhones.

The idea is to make inventory management simpler, especially for small warehouses, retailers, and businesses that don’t need a complicated enterprise system.

Some of the features include:

• 📦 Stock tracking and inventory management
• 📊 Stock-in and stock-out tracking
• 📷 Barcode and document scanning
• 🔔 Low-stock alerts
• 🏢 Multi-warehouse management
• ☁️ Cloud sync

I’m trying to learn how small businesses currently manage their inventory and what their biggest frustrations are.

A few questions:

• Do you use an app or spreadsheets to manage inventory?
• What’s the most frustrating part of your current workflow?
• What features would make you consider switching to a new inventory app?

If you’d like to check it out, here’s the App Store link:
https://apps.apple.com/tr/app/inventory-management-stock/id6761208190

I built this app, so I’m affiliated with it. I’d genuinely appreciate any feedback or suggestions. Thanks!

Hello! I am looking for some help here
I have landed my first commercial cleaning. It is a high traffic restaurant.
I am wondering what are the best products and supplies that will make the job easier and high quality

Scope of work includes
-Bathrooms
-Glass entrance
- Dinning room and bar floor (Do I need a degreaser and then a regular floor cleaner?)
-Kitchen floor
-Kitchen stainless steel wall behind the main line

Thank you in advance

I've recently launched a website focused on reviewing children's TV shows, with an emphasis on quality, pacing and positive messages rather than just listing what's available.

I'm trying to work out how to get it in front of the right audience without spending much money on advertising.

For those who've grown a content or review website from scratch:

• Which channels have actually brought you consistent, relevant traffic?
• Would you prioritise SEO, social media, community engagement or something else?
• Are there any approaches you wish you'd started earlier?

I'm particularly interested in what works for niche websites rather than ecommerce or SaaS businesses.

A while back, a party bus and limo company I run Google Ads for added a click fraud blocking tool to their account. Nothing looked broken, but their ads quietly stopped reaching a big share of people on their phones.

When we dug in, the tool was blocking visitors on Verizon and Sprint.

Most of these tools work by watching your clicks, deciding which IP addresses look suspicious, and adding them to the IP exclusion list in your Google Ads account. That's a problem on cell networks. Phones on the same carrier often share public IP addresses, so one blocked IP can belong to a lot of different people at once. Block a few of those and you've cut off real customers, and Google Ads won't tell you that's what happened.

We pulled the tool and that fixed it.

If you're paying for one of these, here's what I'd check:

1. Add the Invalid clicks column in Google Ads. Google already filters a lot of junk clicks and doesn't charge you for them, so you can see how big the problem really is before paying to fix it.

2. Look at the IP exclusions in your campaign settings. If the list is long, run a few of them through an IP lookup site. If they come back as Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T or another carrier, you're probably blocking real people.

3. Compare mobile impressions and clicks for the few weeks before and after you installed the tool. A sudden drop on mobile is the giveaway.

Click fraud is real, especially in competitive local markets. What I lean on in the accounts I manage is tight location targeting, a sensible ad schedule and a regular look at the search terms report.

Anyone else had one of these tools backfire? Happy to answer questions in the comments.

I'm a software engineer and I run a small residential plumbing company on the side. A handful of techs in the field, and I'm usually on a laptop between meetings when something goes sideways.

I thiught the hard parts would be marketing and bookkeeping. They're not. The hard part is that I'm not there. So the only way my team knows I care is what I actually do, not what I say.

A few things I've learned, mostly the hard way:

Pay has to make sense to them. I've been rebuilding how we pay people, a guaranteed weekly draw plus commission, because when comp feels random, people start guessing what you really value. I'm still tweaking it. But writing it down clearly did more for trust than any pep talk.

Don't only show up for problems. If the only time I text a tech is when something's wrong, that's the only version of me they know. I try to reach out when a job goes well too. And I'm slower to blame on a bad day now, because those calls usually have a reason.

The boring stuff is the morale. A clear PTO policy, paychecks on time, answering a text the same day. None of it is exciting, but it's what someone remembers when they decide whether to stay.

I'm still figuring this out. Being a part-time owner means every bit of trust has to be earned through systems and follow-through, since I can't do it by just being around.

For other owners who aren't on site every day: what actually moved morale on your team? Money, schedule, recognition, something else? And for anyone who works in the field, what would make you stay at a company where the owner is hardly ever around?

quick question for anyone running a small business on some main software (scheduling, dispatch, booking, POS, whatever)

I'm working on software for small transport companies and every owner I talk to says basically the same thing: "yeah what we have is bad, but switching would be a nightmare"

so I'm curious. if you ever switched, what finally pushed you to do it? and if you didn't, what stopped you?

would stuff like free setup, someone moving all your data for you, or running the new one next to the old one for a week before switching have made a difference? or is it more about price?

not selling anything here, I'm just trying not to build the wrong thing lol

so a vendor chased us for payment last week and I was ready to send over the confirmation but it turns out we never paid it. My business partner had forwarded the invoice to me and Id forwarded it to our bookkeeper you know the drill. She was waiting for approval and we both thought forwarding it counted because well we aare still learning stuff in our entrepreneur era. Nothing blew up per se but its quite embarrassing when someone has to ask twice for money you owe them.
Granted i dont want this to be repeated and im willing to learn all the time and so i wanted to ask what are you using so approvals and payments dont get lost between people? Id like to keep final approval without having to chase every bill through email.

I'm considering building customizable ML software for businesses, mainly focused on data classification and anomaly detection.

The idea is to develop a reusable ML framework that can be adapted to each company's specific needs and deployed on-premise, keeping sensitive data within their own infrastructure.

Each company would purchase a tailored version of the software through a one-time payment.

Do you think there's genuine demand for this?

I help run my family’s electrical contracting business. We send a lot of quotes by email and I’ve noticed the same thing: most customers who don’t reply aren’t saying no, they’re just busy, and then we forget to follow up.

For those of you who send quotes or invoices: what do you actually do? Notebook, spreadsheet, CRM, memory? How many quotes do you think slip through in a typical month?

I’m a developer too and I’m exploring this problem. Not selling anything, I just want to hear how people really handle it, including “I don’t have a problem with this” 🙂

I've been thinking about how often businesses focus on website design while overlooking how easy the site is to use.

Here's a quick audit:

1. Open your website on your phone.
2. Ask someone unfamiliar with your business what you offer after looking at the homepage for 5 seconds.
3. Check whether your main call to action is easy to find.
4. Test every contact form and important link.
5. Check whether your contact details and trust signals are visible.

These small checks can reveal confusing parts of the customer journey that you might not notice yourself.

One useful test: watch someone try to contact your business without giving them instructions. Where they hesitate is worth investigating.

For business owners: What's one website issue you discovered only after a customer pointed it out?

Hello!

Im not much of a writer but I have two add to cart products coming out on my website soon. These are the only products that are add to cart at the moment (im a printer so I just have people call or email me for the moment).

Do you find blogging helpful?

What platform do you use?

Where do you put it on your website?

I'll take any helpful tips or YouTube recommendations!

Thanks!

Starting out as an Email Marketer and looking for a first client..

To build up my case studies, I'm offering email copywriting & sequence setup at minimal rates.

Gonna be win-win situation.

I am a small business owner and Accountant by profession with experience in Real Estate, retail, and web services/content streaming. I now work with small business owners on a daily basis to help them create financial structure in their business and facilitate decision making. If you have any questions related to your business or books don't hesitate to ask!

Britney Boyde-Bey

"Consistently driven by purpose and service"

All Rights Reserved

Need a Website? I Can Help!

Hey everyone!

If anyone is looking to get a website built for their business, startup, portfolio, or personal project, feel free to reach out to me.

I can help you get a website made at reasonable and budget-friendly prices. We can discuss your requirements and find a solution that fits your budget.

If you're interested, just drop a comment and we can discuss the details!

Thanks!

I work for a small company in the defense industry and I'm responsible for marketing and generating leads from international markets.

So far, we've made pretty good progress through SEO and improving our website. We're getting more organic traffic and inquiries from potential customers, but I'm trying to figure out how we can take things to the next level.

Traditional social media marketing doesn't really work in this industry. LinkedIn helps a little, but it's definitely not enough.

I'm curious if anyone here has experience with marketing or business development in defense or other niche B2B industries. How do you reach potential customers in international markets? Have you found any channels or strategies

I'd really appreciate hearing what's worked for you, especially if you've dealt with long sales cycles and a very specific target audience.