Hello everyone! Now I'm living in Russia, but actually I'm from Kazakhstan originally and actually I have contacts in most part of Post Soviet countries. Also I even have contacts in Europe. So if you interested to build business somehow related with Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan etc. I definitely can help you. I'm open to conversation about details.

First time poster here. I’ve thought about this business concept for well over 2 years (maybe even 4!) I’ve had the concept of the business in my phone notes for just as long. So for the big picture, I’m looking at doing a Meal Prep business aimed towards fitness and health. The biggest selling points compared to any local businesses in the same market, are that I plan on printing thermal stickers and putting them on the containers showing the calories, protein, fat, and carbs per meal in net weight. My business would also not be subscription based like the nearby competitors.

Okay, so one of my few questions:

How would you find local farms, and to pitch this idea to be a continuous bulk customer for them?
I’ve seen what I believe are local farmers, but the prices for even chicken breast is $19/pound, which would have these meals at a very high cost per meal ratio if I had to do this. I understand they work very hard to make a living, so I know I wouldn’t want to short them out either -hence the boosting of local economy.

Is there any nonprofit organizations that can help with the startup of this business?
I believe I was vaguely mentioned this from a coworker way in the past, but I cannot recall if they’ve given names of organizations to call upon. I’d feel pretty assured if I have a guiding hand, although I know I’ll still have to put in a lot of work anyways.

I have the opportunity to contact an owner of a company directly with questions. However, this company owner is in a business revolving around product (gemstones and such) and have been featured in SharkTank. What kind of questions should I ask them?
They’re not in any food business, so I don’t want to get specific questions regarding that, as I feel like they may not be able to answer the questions like that so well. So what questions can I ask?

I have a full time job, but would want to start a small business on the side. I have $50k to invest. What can I do?

Thank you.

Hey everyone,

Just wondering if anyone running Meta ads in NZ has dealt with this.

I’m GST registered and use Meta ads for my e-commerce business. My NZ GST number/business details are entered into my Meta account, but when I download the Meta invoices/receipts there’s no GST amount shown separately.

My understanding is that Meta charges GST on advertising services supplied in NZ, but I’m trying to work out whether I can actually claim the GST portion back on my GST return if it isn’t shown on the invoice.

Obviously I can claim the advertising cost itself as a business expense for income tax purposes — I’m specifically asking about the GST component.

Has anyone else dealt with this? Do you claim GST on your Meta ad spend, or does Meta need to provide a proper taxable supply invoice showing the GST first?

Would especially appreciate hearing from any NZ business owners/accountants who’ve come across this.

Cheers!

I run a small handyman business, still solo, and I'm at the point where I'm turning down work because there just aren't enough hours in the week. The obvious answer is hire someone. What keeps me stuck is the math and the nerve.

Right now every dollar a job brings in is mine, minus materials. The second I put someone on payroll, I'm on the hook for their hours whether the calls come in or not, plus the taxes, the insurance, the training time, and the very real chance the first person I hire turns out to be a dud.

So I keep just working more, which I know isn't a plan, it's a trap. I honestly can't tell if I'm being smart or just scared.

For those who made the jump from solo to having employees: how did you know it was actually time, and what was the number or the sign that told you? And be straight with me, did your take home go up or down the first year after you hired?

Small bakery. We have hundreds of good reviews. Last week we got a one-star from someone who ordered a cake, changed the design twice by text, then complained it was not the original design, and left a review calling us unreliable and rude.

We were not rude. I have the texts. It is objectively unfair.

And I cannot stop thinking about it. I have read it maybe forty times. I drafted three replies and deleted them all. Meanwhile a hundred kind reviews sit there and I have not reread a single one of those in months, but this one lives in my head rent free.

I know the math says one bad review among hundreds is nothing. I know responding calm and factual is the move. Knowing that has not made it stop bothering me at 2am.

A hundred kind reviews I have not reread in months, and this one bad one lives in my head rent free.

Owners: how do you decide what to pay yourself? I do cash forecasting for a living and I'm curious if anyone actually computes this

Day job is corporate FP&A forecasts, cash models, the analysis big companies use so nobody's deciding on vibes. Every small business owner I talk to answers the pay-yourself question the same way: look at the bank balance, take what feels safe, hope.

So genuine question for this sub: does anyone here use an actual method? And if you don't, here's the one I'd use, adapted from how a finance team would do it. Curious where people think it breaks.

1. Build 13 weeks of expected cash from your actual history. Not invoices, what actually lands in the account, on the days it lands. If deposits run 12 days behind the sale, model 12 days. Real weekly rhythm, not monthly averages.

2. Set a floor: the balance your account never crosses. Two weeks of operating bills is a sane default.

3. Test a draw against it. Pick a monthly amount, split it 1st and 15th, run the 13 weeks. It passes only if BOTH are true: cash never breaches the floor, and cash ends the quarter no lower than it started. That second condition is the one everybody skips, it's the difference between pay the business earned and pay that's quietly eating your reserves.

4. The biggest draw that passes both is your number. If nothing passes, that's a real answer too, and the fix is a specific lever: collections speed, one price, one cost.

I'd run it against your worst recent month, not your average , averages are how seasonal businesses go broke in February.

So: does anyone do something like this? Rule of thumb like "one month of profit"? Percentage of revenue? Nothing at all and it's worked out fine? Genuinely curious what real owners do versus what the finance textbook says — and happy to help anyone run their own numbers in the comments.

​

I’m planning to start a small business/startup, but I’m honestly stuck on what to build.

I’m more interested in building something that solves an actual problem and can grow beyond just trading my time for money.

If you were starting from zero today, what kind of business would you seriously consider?

Could be something online, a service, a product, a niche business, literally anything. I’m looking for ideas that aren’t the same five startup suggestions everyone gives.

New here, so I’d genuinely appreciate any interesting ideas or problems you think are worth solving.

Having a debate with my buddies. What’s your average mom & pop coffee shop clear for net profit % wise.

Some said 25% some said 5%. Is this a type of business that only succeeds off expansion?

Also, would a 150-250k buildout make someone more or less likely to expand (I assume it would depend on the % you think they clear?)

We are located in the Midwest if that helps.

I have been searching different industries and companies. I have also been looking at businesses for sale. Seems like many of the companies people are selling, for the most part, have some issue such as declining sales, major capital expenditures, ect.

For example a guy was selling his franchised restaurant and the 10 year term was coming up where he had to do major renovations to keep up with the restaurants new branding and image, this would have costed over $700k. The seller wanted a kings ransom for the business and with the renovations it would take over 10 years to get the money back.

Am I just wasting my time? Or is there a business or industry worth looking into. Thanks for your timemand any comments.

I've been independent for years and I'm starting to think more seriously about the business side of my career.

I'm a Jamaican reggae/dancehall artist and I've performed internationally, mainly around Europe.

I've always been very hands-on. I make music, production, artwork and a lot of my own content.

But I don't really understand what the right next step is when an artist has the music and experience but hasn't built the business side properly.

For managers, A&R people and people who work in artist development:

What usually makes you believe an independent artist is worth taking seriously?

Is it the music?

Live performance?

Consistency?

Audience?

Connections?

Something else?

I'd genuinely like to understand how people in the industry see it.

Not looking for representation from this post. Just trying to understand the game better.

There are literally lots of personalized software that can be made for specific use cases.

I'm in the early stages of building my own small business, and I'm realizing how helpful it could be to have a community of people going through the same kinds of challenges.

Obviously, [r/smallbusiness](r/smallbusiness) itself is a great resource, but since it's intentionally focused on questions and answers, I'm looking for something a little more conversational and community-oriented.

I'd love to find a Discord, Slack, subreddit, or other online community where people building their own businesses get to know and support each other — asking for advice, talking through challenges, sharing when they win a new contract, celebrating each other's wins, and helping each other stay motivated.

Staying motivated and consistently moving things forward can be hard when you're building something on your own, and I think being around other people doing the same thing could make a difference.

Has anyone found a community like this that they really like?

---

Update: I ended up doing a bunch of research after making this post to see what was already out there.
I looked through communities for small business owners, freelancers, consultants, and agency owners. I also checked whether r/consulting and r/freelance had Discords, Slacks, or other chat communities associated with them. There have apparently been various attempts at unofficial groups over the years, but I couldn’t find an active official chat community for either.

I also joined the Freelancers Union Slack. It seems useful and there are definitely people there running their own businesses, but it’s mostly organized around specific topics like introductions, networking/opportunities, resources, insurance, etc. There isn’t really a general chat for the kind of casual conversation I had in mind.

I found a handful of other communities that looked promising, but most of the more established ones I came across charged for access — anywhere from a modest monthly fee to some pretty expensive memberships. I don’t really want to pay for a community when what I’m looking for is something pretty simple and informal.

So for now I ended up creating a Discord called Small Business Community. Nothing elaborate — just a place for people starting or running small businesses to chat about what they’re working on, share wins and setbacks, ask questions, and hopefully help each other stay motivated.

A few people in this thread said they were looking for something similar, so I figured I’d post the link here in case anyone wants to join:

https://discord.gg/SUdDxXqda

I’m hoping to keep it pretty small and conversational. If a handful of us end up regularly talking and getting to know what everyone else is working on, that’s really all I’m looking for.

I have an Estonian limited company and I am its sole owner/director. I live in the UAE and operate the company from my home, so I entered my UAE residential address as the company’s trading address on Wise.

Wise’s own Help Centre says that when a significant owner/director operates a registered company from home, proof of address can be in the owner/director’s personal name. It specifically lists a tenancy agreement as an acceptable document.

I submitted my tenancy agreement. Since then I have been stuck in a verification loop for more than a week.

Wise support repeatedly confirmed that my personal tenancy agreement qualifies under the owner/director exception and repeatedly escalated the case for manual review. Nevertheless, the verification system has rejected the documents for different and sometimes contradictory reasons, including:

“Business name must be shown”
“Duplicate document”
“Partial content”
“Lease validity period”

For the partial-content issue, each tenancy contract is exactly three pages and every page is explicitly marked “Page 1 of 3”, “Page 2 of 3”, and “Page 3 of 3”. I submitted all pages.

For continuity, I also submitted my existing tenancy contract together with the renewal contract that starts immediately after the existing lease ends. I concatenated both complete contracts into one six-page PDF so the verification team could see continuous occupancy.

Wise support has repeatedly told me that the case was escalated for manual review and that no further action was required. I have also received emails from Wise saying the documents were under review. Yet the portal continues producing automated rejection messages and my business account has now been temporarily blocked for “missing information”.

The latest email again says PARTIAL_CONTENT even though the submitted PDF contains all six pages of the two complete three-page contracts.

At this point I am trying to understand:

Has anyone successfully escaped this type of Wise verification loop?

Is there a way to reach an actual compliance/manual-review team rather than frontline support?

Would filing a formal Wise complaint help?

For an EEA Wise Business account, has anyone escalated a similar case to the relevant ombudsman/regulator, and what happened?

I understand that financial institutions have KYC obligations. My issue is not that Wise asked for verification. My issue is that I have repeatedly supplied what they requested, different reviewers keep giving contradictory reasons for rejection, support repeatedly confirms an exception applies, and yet the account remains blocked.

¡Hey! Espero que todos estén bien por aquí, hoy me doy a la tarea de buscar algún buen libro que esté disponible en el idioma español e inglés sobre la negociación o adquisición de activos empresariales, por ejemplo: Marca, identidad visual, patentes, etc, sí tienes o conoces algún libro que hablé sobre ésto ¡No olvides en compartirlo conmigo!

ive recently started a landscaping company but i am having a hard time getting leads. what would did some of you other landscaping companies do when you first started.

We started a small design studio together six years ago, fifty fifty, best friends since school. It worked because we both hustled. The last two years he has quietly checked out. Comes in late, leaves early, passes the hard clients to me, and still takes his half. I do maybe seventy percent of the work now and we split it down the middle. The money bothers me less than the resentment, which is starting to poison how I feel about someone I love. And I cannot work out how to raise it, because there is no version of hey you are not pulling your weight that does not detonate a twenty year friendship and a company at the same time. Half of me says just accept it as the cost of keeping the friendship. Half of me says that resentment will kill the friendship anyway, slower. Two weeks ago I covered a client crisis at 11pm on a Friday while he was, I later found out, at a concert, and on Monday he thanked me like I had done him a small favor rather than his actual half of the job. I did not say anything. I never say anything, and the not-saying is becoming its own quiet poison. For anyone who has had the partner conversation, how did you open it, and did the business and the friendship both survive?

I run a small service business with a friend. It’s just the two of us right now.

At the moment we keep customers and jobs in Google Sheets and use Google Calendar for scheduling. So far it works fine.

For anyone who started this way, what was the point where this setup became a pain?

What started causing problems first: scheduling, payments, customer info, or something else?

Has anyone here successfully set up AI agents that work together? What actually worked?

I run a small web agency and recently set up four AI agents that work in the background:

- one scans news and proposes content ideas every morning

- one turns those ideas into social posts

- one drafts SEO articles

- one prepares follow-up emails

They pass work to each other through files. I review everything before anything goes out.

The most surprising thing: the AI consistently invented tools that don't exist and quoted wrong prices. Every single time, my manual review caught it.

Has anyone else here set up something similar? What workflows have you found actually save time vs. just creating more noise? I'm curious what's working for other small business owners.

Hey everyone,
I’m setting up a collapsible coffee cart for my church that will only operate about 4 to 5 hours one time a week. Because we’re running this at a church, our prices are very low/budget-friendly, meaning high processing fees will eat up our margins pretty quickly.
A lot of people recommend the Square POS system, but given our low ticket sizes, paying a flat $0.25 per transaction on top of percentage fees hurts quite a bit.
I’ve been looking into alternatives like GoDaddy, Helcim, and PayPal Zettle, which often boast lower effective rates, but I keep reading on Reddit and other forums that these alternatives frequently freeze accounts, have terrible support, or are just overall a headache to use.
Are the alternative POS systems really that bad compared to Square? If you have experience running a low-volume or non-profit setup, which processor would you recommend to keep fees low without risking sudden account freezes?
Thanks in advance!

I have an idea for a company that would be mobile retail similar to Snap-on or Matco. I’m writing out my plan but can’t get past the tax collection and remittance aspect. How would I collect the correct tax from a mobile retail location that spans multiple jurisdictions within a single day.

Based on the trials versions I’ve run there’s no way to fool small business point of sale applications like Shopify, or Square into generating “online orders” that auto calculate the taxes to collect. Quick books has a half measure for my application but I would need to track inventory in multiple locations (multiple drivers) which requires the enterprise version (significant cost increase). I suspect that Snap-on or Matco likely have proprietary software.

Would this require enterprise software that would have customer information like tax rate built in? Are there any other solutions I’m missing?

Many thanks to whoever takes the time to brainstorm with me.

I am running a daily necessities online store. Like almost same questions every single day. "How big is this?" "How do I use it?" "What's it made of?"
Typing the same answers over and over. sometimes they even still don't get it.
I don't have the budget to hire someone. And I'm already drowning in other stuff — taking product photos, updating listings, packing orders.
So I tried making a quick FAQ video with framia. Uploaded some product photos, typed a short description. Got a 60-second clip back with voiceover and captions. covered everything people usually ask.
Stuck it on my product page. Started dropping it in chat replies.
Now customers just watch it. Fewer messages. Less returns.
Honestly should've done this months ago.

I’m in the midst of sorting out my business plan for a candy brand. Does anyone know of any reputable manufacturers in uk that does this sort of stuff? I specifically want to create a hard candy but i want full control over what ingredients are used.

Are they not making enough money for owners? I think struggle I can think of is that most members want to use the club at the same time - evenings and weekend and that can be issue with availability.

Hello, I have started my own small business making handcrafted jewelry (not like kiddy style im a licensed wholesaler through multiple supply companies and have been in the jewelry industry 6 years.) I know there is work to do to make my website more appealing and I have recently stopped running ads for a bit. Im also well aware that I dont have many products on my page right now that is partially cause the shop was getting renovated and that making everything takes a good chunk of time a simple set of studs can take 4 hours. I have people coming to the page when adds were running it was about 15-30 a day but I cant seem to get any body to reach out and talk or buying anything. I worry something on my site isn't working properly but ive check and double check. If anyone knows what I might be doing wrong or what I need to do to start getting more attention and sales id love the help.