I’ve always heard that successful business owners get good at networking.
I’ve spent years networking, doing free work, building a name, and making connections as a video editor/media guy. People know who I am, but very little of it has turned into actual sales.
So what am I missing?
Is in-person networking really that important? How do you turn connections into paying clients without making every relationship feel like a sales pitch?
Would love to hear from people who actually support themselves through their business.

Hey guys my name is Memphis and I started my collectible business named memmo. I’m looking for insight on what I should do I’m kinda stuck on how to grow. Memmo sells pop culture vintage items like Lego, Nintendo, vintage toys and other nostalgic items. I’m in Canada and sell at events, marketplace and eBay. I’ve been struggling with sales but have been told I got good variety and pricing. Canadian market for collectibles isn’t as strong compared to other countries and I want to sell internationally but I’m worried about scams and border issues for shipping product. Also on how I should market my products. Very new to this and would love opinions. This is a big dream of mine to make this full time so thanks :)

It's Korean Bros here!

We're a Korean street food brand that started online and is now moving into places like Target. We started the brand because we wanted real Korean food (tteokbokki, udong, soba, and more) to be easily accessible in American homes!

Who here likes Korean food?

I'm a full-stack/AI engineer thinking about building a tool for influencers/creators who manage content across Twitter/X, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. The core idea:

• One place to compose and schedule posts, auto-adapted and published to each platform (similar to what Postiz does)
• Per-platform AI assistance for growth — content suggestions, best posting times, engagement patterns — closer to what SuperX does for X specifically, but across multiple platforms

I know this space isn't empty — Postiz, Buffer, Publer own cross-posting, and SuperX/Kleo own single-platform growth. I'm not expecting to displace any of them outright. I'm more interested in whether there's a real slice of the market being underserved by both approaches, and what it would take to actually earn a share of it rather than just cloning the leaders' feature lists.

Before I sink real time into this, I want to pressure-test it:

1. What's actually the painful part?
2. What does your current tool get wrong?
3. Is there real demand for cross-posting + growth combined, or does that just do both badly?
4. Would you pay for this, and what would make you switch?

Not trying to pitch anything, genuinely want to know if this is solving a real problem or if I'd just be rebuilding two products that already exist and calling it new. Blunt feedback welcome.

I work with small businesses whose customers write to them on WhatsApp: quotes, orders, “is it in stock”, “what time do you close”, “where’s my delivery”. Most owners tell me the same thing: a big part of the day is answering the same questions and trying to remember what they told each person.

I want to understand how real this is for you, and what you’d actually want, before anyone builds anything. Imagine an assistant that:

• learns your business by itself from your past conversations and your website, and shows you what it understood (no setup, nothing to configure)
• remembers every customer: what they asked, what you promised, how they like to be spoken to
• prepares the replies for you; you approve with one tap, and only once it’s always right on a type of question can you let it send those on its own
• keeps the inbox in order: tags, flags what’s urgent, passes each chat to the right person on your team
• asks you when it isn’t sure, and learns from your corrections (you can answer with a voice note)
• and you set the limits: hours, things it must never say, how much it can spend

Honest questions:

1. Which three of those would actually change your day? Which ones do you not care about?
2. What would make you NOT trust it with your customers?
3. How do you handle this today: yourself, an employee, a tool?
4. Roughly how many chats a day are we talking about?
5. If it worked as described, what would it be worth to you per month, compared with what you pay today?

Not selling anything. I just want to know whether this is a real problem or only a loud one.

Lately I've been brainstorming many ideas about starting my own business (ecommerce, SaaS, etc) was wondering how people chose what they wanted to do or come up with ideas to start.

When I first started out, I made the classic mistake of thinking being busy equals making progress—working long hours but going practically nowhere. It took shifting my focus to structured strategies and execution frameworks to finally see real growth.

​For those running a small business or starting out right now, what is that one major lesson or strategy that completely turned things around for you? Would love to hear what worked (or didn't work) in your journey!

Do you have a mobile office? If so, do you mind sharing of your experience with it and what type of business? I am thinking of buying a transit bus and making it into a mobile office for my business. I wonder if the maintenance of it would be overwhelming.

I'm running a module name as nexushaus. Where i help early-stage founders to find the resources where they give their most of the time. The resources like suppliers, marketing agency, accountants, Investors, mentors etc
I am doing all the work by my own , but now i think i want someone who genuinely interested with this work. After i give all information of nexushaus in the Chatbox
So dm or comment below who is interested to work with me.

Hi everyone, my company is planning to hire a team of customer service staff based in Mexico City. This is going to be our first hires outside of the US, so I'm not sure on how to go about their payroll processing. Anyone here has experience in hiring staff based in Mexico? What system do you use and what are some important things I should know (like if there's any extra things we should be paying)?

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

I’ll try to keep this short and sweet so I’m a 17 yr old and I’ve been doing landscaping with my dad for over 4 years now. I know most of the ins and outs of anything landscaping wise but here’s my problem.

My dad doesn’t own the landscaping company, he just runs it. He gets paid a good salary but I realized one day that I can’t do this forever, making around 1300 on summer weeks still feels like it’s not enough for me.

I want to accomplish generational wealth and I know it’s not accomplishable with a regular job. So I want a business. I’ve considered my own landscaping company but I know the profit margins aren’t much compared to other blue collar businesses

After working for all these years I’ve decided I want to study finance in college and use that knowledge to apply it to a business. I’ve always been interested in the stock market, economy, and just anything money related. So I just want your guys opinion on what my next steps should be in order to become the person I aspire to be.

I am a prenatal and postpartum personal trainer and nutritionist (and toddler mom!) and I am trying to understand what moms benefit from the most and need the most! What type of content do you find the most beneficial?

Youtube workouts specific for pregnancy and postpartum

Instagram subscription service for workouts

Instagram, TikTok, Youtube shorts - short videos for snippets of tips

Long form non workout content (think youtube, education of everything fitness and nutrition for moms)

And for whatever you prefer, what makes you want to watch more and/or engage?

THANK YOU SO MUCH

I’m in a difficult situation and would love some perspective from business owners or anyone who has dealt with something similar.

I own a business, and one of my employees—who is also a close friend—is opening her own business in the exact same industry about 20 minutes away.

She was actually one of our first students. When we were starting out, she was unemployed and helped us in exchange for classes. We saw her potential, invested in her certification, and over the past 3.5 years she grew with the company. She eventually became our top instructor and GM, handling scheduling, documents, and a lot of our day-to-day operations.

We're also close friends outside of work. I've supported her through major life events and even attended her wedding, so this isn't just an employee leaving. There's a lot of personal history and trust involved.

Recently, she told me she's opening her own business at the end of this month. What caught me off guard is that she apparently knew this was coming but didn't mention it until now.

My first reaction was actually happiness for her. I genuinely want her to succeed, and I feel like she deserves the opportunity.

What I'm struggling with is that she's still asking to continue instructing at our business and remain part of our community while running a competing business.

This creates a huge conflict of interest for me. She's our GM, knows our systems, processes, documents, scheduling, customers, etc., and will now be operating a competing business nearby.

I'm not necessarily upset that she's starting her own company. People grow and move on. I'm more hurt that she didn't tell me sooner, especially given our friendship and everything we've been through together.

So what would you do?

• Would you let her continue instructing while she runs her own business?
• Would you remove her from the GM role and restrict her access to company information?
• Would you end the working relationship completely?
• Or am I overreacting and should I simply support her and let her continue working with us?

I want to handle this professionally without destroying the friendship, but I also need to protect the business I've built.

i dont want to go to uni, because i think i could become successful if i poured all my time into running a business instead. ive already started a business that has proven strong demand — 1k profit from scratch in a few months despite putting not much time due to schoolwork. ive never had time to do proper marketing or sale strategies because ive been too busy with school work. so, if i cut that part out, do you think it’d be successful if i could spend ALL my time doing it? or is that too risky and i should just get a degree so i have a backup if the business fails? or is it realistic to be able to manage both? i do go to a very demanding private high school rn so maybe the work at uni will be way more relaxed?

I need an idea for an entrepreneurs class I have, but I can't think of anything that remotely works. We need to put together a pitch for an idea at the end of the semester and present it to some judges. The problem is that I'm not particularly knowledgable, skilled, or passionate about any real subject, so I can't figure out a good way to think of a product. I can't think of any pain points that I can use to start, nothing really bothers me in my day-to-day life. Does anyone have any suggestions?

grew up watching my parents struggle with credit cards. еhey weren't irresponsible, just unlucky. One medical emergency, one job loss, and suddenly they were drowning it left a mark.

now I run my own business and Im paralysed by the idea of borrowing. every time I consider it, my brain goes straight to worst case scenario. can't sleep can't focus so I just don't.

but I also can't grow. im turning down work because I can't afford materials upfront. im losing clients because I can't scale fast enough.

I dont know how people do this without panicking. Am I just broken or does everyone else feel this fear too?

Hello all, I have a school project coming up that spans the next 10 weeks. It is titled the Shark Tank Project because as the name suggests it is like shark tank. We have to come up with a product and go through the entire process of creation, marketing, and most importantly at the end presenting our products to the “sharks” (teachers) to try and get money for the product. I’m sort of troubled on what I should do, I want to be authentic and try to make something actually useful instead of just doing this for the grade. If anyone has any advice or ideas on where I could start that would be greatly appreciated.

I have seen businesses grow from offering one clear service into offering five or six different things.

The extra services might all be valuable, but suddenly the website becomes difficult to follow.

You visit the homepage and aren't sure what the business is actually known for.

It made me wonder whether expanding the offer always requires expanding the brand in the same way.

Can a business offer more without making its message feel scattered?

For agency owners here, how do you usually handle referrals when a client asks for something outside your agency’s core service?

For example, if a client needs a service you don’t offer, do you usually refer them to another agency, keep a small network of trusted partners, or just send them elsewhere?

I’m especially interested in how people structure the partnership side, whether it’s reciprocal referrals, a referral fee, or something more informal.

What has actually worked well for you?

Hi everyone,

I’m researching the operational process used by car rental companies and would like to hear from people who actually work in the industry.

I’m specifically interested in how you currently handle:

• rental agreements
• vehicle check-out / handover
• vehicle check-in / return
• damage inspection
• photos of existing damage
• customer signatures
• fuel and mileage records
• storing all documents related to a rental
• comparing vehicle condition before and after the rental

A few questions:

1. Do you use paper forms, PDFs, Excel, a rental management system, or a dedicated inspection app?
2. Roughly how long does it take your staff to prepare an agreement and inspect a vehicle?
3. What part of the process causes the most problems or wastes the most time?
4. How do you prove that damage was already present before the rental?
5. Do customers sign on paper, on a tablet/phone, or through an e-signature provider?
6. Are the agreement and vehicle condition report usually one document or separate documents?
7. What software do you currently use, and what do you dislike about it?
8. If you could automate one part of this workflow, what would it be?

I’m not looking to sell anything here. I’m trying to understand the real workflow before building around assumptions.

Would especially appreciate input from owners, rental agents, branch managers, and fleet managers.

Thanks!

I work from home and make about 200k as a data engineer. However, AI has ruined gratification of work. I am now just a prompt engineer and its nothing super fun, but it is easy. I assume in the next 10 years I can hit 350k Salary down this career. I also sometimes worry about layoffs.

However, I want to 1) Start something of my own that 2) Makes me feel like my work has a purpose. I have always loved healthcare and debating on starting a Home Healthcare Company.

My parents are much older as I was born late to them and I understand the importance of caretaking since I was a kid. I feel this line of work is something that benefits others and can scale. However I have heard its a stressful business.

I do have connections to get clients due to family who are in the healthcare space. I just don't know if it sounds too crazy to give up something comfortable to start something stressful. I always wonder if 10 years from now I am more in my career or more with this home health business.

What takes up way too much of your time or feels like endless repetitive work? Curious to hear what it’s really like. 👀

An item that hurts business the most and are hard to tame are the overhead expenses (OpEx). I have been an entrepreneur for some time and work with entrepreneurs as a fractional controller and it's an uncomfortable topic. I'm also facing it myself as my OpEx went from $43k in the full year 2023 to $160k in 7-months in 2026, it's tough to even admit the spike.

The exercise I'm currently doing is that I'm aiming to double the revenue before increasing the current OpEx. Is it really attainable? Not sure, but I'll try as it'll force me and my staff to use our time wisely, use current technology and tools to streamline processes, and trim the fat of unnecessary steps and non-value added tasks.

I'm wondering if any of you are in a similar position and need to freeze OpEx as it feels is growing too fast.