I want to start a shop where I sell car models because it is my hobby, but I've never opened a shop before and would appreciate any advice.

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Thank you, Reddit fam! ❤️

Hello everyone!

I’m a video editor and motion designer from Peru, with experience creating visual content for food trucks, restaurants, and various businesses. I specialize in video editing, animated flyers, content scheduling, and supporting social media needs.

I've always had the desire to work with businesses and professionals in these sectors. I'm looking to collaborate with community managers, marketing professionals, or business owners who need a reliable and creative partner for their visual content creation. If you're looking for someone to handle the visual side of your projects, I’d love to discuss how we can work together. Just send me a private message, and I’ll be happy to share my portfolio.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and thanks to the admin for allowing my post!

I'm a developer and I've built at iOS app - my first - after learning to code over the last 2.5 years.

No one is downloading my app and so now it's time to market the app. It's in a very niche market (safari/animal-spotting) and I did create an Instagram account and tried to reach out to some safari guides and other people on IG but have had basically zero tangible results.

My app is good. It solves a problem. Is it perfect? Hell, NO, but I can't make it better until I get some feedback from real users - hence the need to start marketing.

Programming is very precise: you have a feature you want to implement, so you break it down into steps and you break those steps down into functions and the functions into precise lines of code until you have built your feature. It's like magic and I love that process, even though I am rather slow at it and it can be frustrating at times.

The little bit I know about marketing - the process and the results one gets - feel very random and very hit-or-miss (in my case complete MISS).

Is that correct? Or can one learn to market just like any other skill?

I learnt to program by doing a course on Udemy and then reading documentation and following tutorials on YouTube and built an amazing app. Can I do the same thing for marketing?

Can I study marketing and get consistent results?

I do hope the answer is "YES".

After working with two mentors for about a year now, literally starting with nothing but "concepts of a plan" my friend and I were able to, create two unique products, take them to market via farmers markets and pop-ups. Then, in the last two months opened an itty-bitty plant shop, selling both our unique products and plants and in about 6 fractured months revenues 10k. Our excitement was stifled however when we got feedback from our mentors that, "this probably isn't it."

Sure we have ALOT to learn, neither of us knew anything about business but I thought this wasn't a bad start. Please tell me your failures that led to success, bonus points if they are retail or product development stories 🙏

So I saw this post somewhere and decided to ask this here too. Elon Musk has probably been involved, initiated and successfully executes more ventures in his life than any other tech-billionaire CEO. SpaceX, Tesla, Twitter, PayPal (his company was acquired by PayPal after which it boomed), Neuralink, OpenAI etc. How is it that one single person can find time to do this much in life and succeed in each and every one of them ? It almost seems unreal.

And in most of his ventures, he was always very close to being done once and for all and then somehow always finds a way to climb back up ? The SpaceX's 3 failed launches (back to back), Tesla's near death condition when he took over, Twitter's entire drama with lawsuits and big companies leaving the hands etc. These are all examples of near death experiences he must've had during his journey.

But how does he always climb back out of it ? Is it because of his "failure's not an option" and "never give up" attitude ? Or does he have some very foolproof strategies ?

Also how does one single person do so much in such a short span and yet still have time to shitpost on twitter ?

Also just to be clear I am not a Musk fanboy. I respect him for some of his work and at the same time criticize for many of his actions.

Are there any design founders in here and if so what is the business you started? I feel like there are not a lot of design founder out there.

I'm a product designer of 10 years working on Ralee . co a tool to help with design QA.

I run a design agency. My partner is in charge of the design team. And I am in charge of operations, sales and marketing. So far all our clients came from personal connections. To grow and build a full time business, we need more sales.

But the problem is the idea of cold emails repel me. Sliding into someone’s inbox, unsolicited, never liked the idea. It feels like I maybe am wasting their time. I tried to hire/partner with people to do the sales for me. So far zero leads came from that.

Building a successful business is hard. It will force you to go to the grey area. And sometimes you have to put your values aside. 🫤

I closed more than 10 DEALS in just one week with Instagram Automation

Alright, let me put you onto some game. A client of mine was drowning in DMs on Instagram and they were trying to respond to every message, answer questions, and close deals all by themselves. Spoiler alert: they were burning out AND missing out on sales.

So, I set them up with a super slick Instagram automation bot. And when I tell you this thing was a game-changer, I’m not exaggerating. The bot jumped in like an all-star assistant:

Responded to DMs instantly (no waiting around for a reply) Answered FAQs like a pro Nurtured leads by keeping the convo going Even booked calls on the spot Meanwhile, my client? They got to focus on the real money moves such as closing deals, building connections, and working on the big picture stuff.

The result? Over 10 deals closed in just one week. And the craziest part? They weren’t glued to their phone 24/7 trying to keep up. The bot was working overtime, even while they were asleep.

Now, before you say, “But bots are so impersonal!” let me stop you right there. This isn’t about replacing the human touch. It’s about automating the repetitive stuff so you can focus on what actually matters.

Let’s be real: you can’t scale if you’re wasting time copy-pasting replies to every DM. Automation is the cheat code to working smarter, not harder.

Imagine waking up to notifications saying you closed another deal overnight. That’s the kind of energy we’re on.

If you’re still out here grinding manually, let’s talk. I can show you exactly how to set this up and get results like this too.

To keep it brief, since more recently I’ve come into a really great situation (that I’m personally proud of, but has taken years & years of compounded work, relationships, and building for my self).

During my “full-time” job, I started my own side practice where I would build certain products / consulting for specialized type of platforms.

Years of persistent hard work in this field, and becoming hyper specialized at what I do each day, has created a situation where my own side practice now is on pace to gross close to ~$3m next year.

Two parts of my question:

1. With that, early on I had my good friend (who is as familiar with some admin / ops work) help me out on items when I was out of town on vacation, just to ensure nothing alarming would arise.

Fast forward to more recently, and me forgetting he was on some “communication channel” & even has access to reporting (totally my fault), he was looking around at the numbers & now keeps asking me “hey man, when are going to bring me onboard” & different variations of that.

Part of me thinks it’s selfish of me not to do so, but also, the other side of me is saying how I’ve worked so hard to making this happen (it wasn’t overnight) and right now, there are areas that I could use help on but I need a really valuable specialist that would level up the biz (not just my great friend, who can “do” the job, but I’d have to really be hands on).

2. I’m still working at my FT during a majority of the hours during the day, I work remotely, so this allows flexibility in certain hours of the day (if I manage to get my work / projects done at hand). When I initially came onboard, my total comp package was 90k salary + .95% equity (at the time, I was only employee #4).

Fast forward to today, the revenue of the business has now 2-3x in less than 1 year, we’re about to raise, and now actually debating whether I should stay come a little bit into the new year.

With the trajectory of my own “side” business now, and feeling that my business impact (that can be directly attributed to the 2-3x growth) may not be reflected appropriately in my equity share in the entity.

Projecting out, EVEN IF the biz exited for 80m, I’d receive $760k, for what would be helping to grow the entity into almost 8-10-15x revenue growth. Something about that doesn’t sit right with me.

I know this is a mouthful, but would really love to hear some insight from others into both these situation!!

Thank you in advance.

Good evening,
To those of you running successful B2B business, I'd appreciate insights on how you networked with larger companies when starting out? My business focuses on offering (non-tech) services to large national and multinational corporations, but breaking through and getting an opportunity to pitch seems impossible.

I have a strong business plan and I aim to secure non-binding letters of intent to demonstrate market viability to investors. Knowing there's a genuine interest in ours services would make the path going forward a lot smoother.

If you've been in a similar position, how did you effectively network with larger organisations and get a fair shot? Any advice or strategies would be incredibly valuable.

Hey guys,

Need to get this off my chest and maybe help some of you avoid my mistakes.

Back in college, I stumbled into a pretty sweet hustle: flipping textbooks. Nothing fancy - just buying books for around $20 and finding bookstores that would pay $100+. Was pulling in about $2k/week as a sophomore. Easy money.

Then I graduated and my ego went through the roof.

"If I can make this much manually, why not build an app and become the next big thing?"

Spoiler alert: I crashed and burned. Hard.

The Fuck-Ups:

• Instead of growing my working $2k/week hustle, I got distracted by "scaling"
• Blew money on developers before even proving anyone wanted this
• Tried launching at multiple colleges at once (because why start small, right? 🤦‍♂️)
• Burned through savings trying to look like a "real company"
• Lost a good chunk of my parents' money too (still feel like shit about this)

The app failed. Team fell apart. I spent two years blaming everyone else - the developers, the market, the timing. Everything except looking in the mirror.

Reality hit when I was back at square one, but with less money and a bruised ego.

The Real Lesson? I was a cocky kid who thought success in a simple business meant I could run a tech startup. It's like thinking you can perform surgery because you're good at Operation (the board game).

Now I run my consulting firm, and the irony is my clients keep making the same mistake - trying to run before they can walk. Watching others repeat my mistakes made me realize there's a pattern here.

Happy to share more details about specific numbers, mistakes, or what I learned if anyone's interested. This shit still keeps me up at night sometimes.

For business owners who know the pain. Do you want to support each other on producthunt, clutch, google, etc?

If you're in, comment below and I'll DM.

As asked, i’m like 98% sure it’ll succeed

I have a landscape contracting company (design/build/maintain). I’m raising my rates in 2025.

For clients who’ve purchased a design in 2024, which came along with an estimate for install costs (explicitly stated that the estimate will be reviewed and updated, following design process), should I implement our new rates when I review those estimates & prepare to execute the installation for them?

Not sure what’s right here or if it’s a faux-pas to do that. Probably depends on how much it bumps their numbers, if I think it’ll negatively impact their experience with us, and if it’ll lose us the deal or not. Any thoughts or input is welcome.

What do you hate doing so much in your business that you would literally pay someone to do for you.

Some context:
I've read about the industry and have several good locations to deploy.
Not in the US.
Not my first business.

Anyone has any experience with it? After some research it seems it most feasible in my case to import from china than buy locally. I've seen some videos about it and people are having +60% gross margin which to me seems super high? Anyone has experience with vending machines in malls?

Title is pretty self explanatory. I have started a window tinting business. I am really taking it seriously. Eventually I want to include detailing & wrapping in my business. I have a LLC, EIN, business bank accounts etc. I recently went on Fiverr and had a logo made. I plan to get business cards made soon. The 4 clients I’ve gotten either saw me leaving the auto shop with tint or saw me doing a car. I’ve posted on Facebook groups and tik tok, instagram etc. how do I get more clients?

Also, how do I change my LLC into a c corp? And how do I pay myself from my business in the form of direct deposits?

Don’t get me wrong, I love being my own boss. But sometimes I wonder if the hustle culture has oversold the dream of entrepreneurship.

• "Be your own boss" sounds great until you realize you’re also the accountant, customer service rep, and janitor.
• "Make your own hours" quickly becomes working 24/7 because the business doesn’t sleep.
• "Unlimited income potential" feels more like unlimited stress potential some days.

I’m not saying it’s not worth it, but sometimes I look at my friends with stable 9-to-5 jobs, health benefits, and PTO, and I think… maybe they’re onto something.

What’s your take? Is entrepreneurship the ultimate freedom, or are we just trading one kind of stress for another?

I was reading a post the other day about someone else's launch experience and thought I'd share. Here's how ours went, postmarked 12/4/2024.

We'd been planning to launch our app (link stripped, DM me) for the last 2 months or so. I read a lot of guides and tried to follow best practices. But no guide provides like experience does.

We "launched" on:

• LinkedIn (link stripped, DM me)
• Reddit (link stripped, DM me)
• HackerNews (link stripped, DM me)
• ProductHunt (link stripped, DM me)
• IndieHackers (link stripped, DM me)

What happened?

Well basically nothing.

We got like 3 new signups, and I already knew 2 of the people.

None of them match our ICP.

A dud, really.

Why?

1. A B2B SaaS site management tool requires a very narrow and specific client who isn't readily available from generic public announcements.
2. I failed to build an audience within that ICP so that we had the right narrow and specific client listening to us, because I was focused on getting the product to the market, instead of getting the market to the product.
3. ∴ Not enough people saw it, and those who did, couldn't use it.

This is probably the most common set of mistakes or oversights for startups. I'm far from alone. Here's a post mortem that hopefully can help other startups avoid this problem (link stripped, DM me). I wrote it to be generic to make it easier to adapt to other people's situations.

What did I do about it?

The same thing I always do. Buckle down and put in the fucking work! Ideas don't matter, intent doesn't matter.

Only continuous application of properly directed effort matters.

I rebuilt our ICP. Built a leads list of potential matches. Started reaching out with intensity. Focusing on warm intros to leads from mutual relationships. Developing conversations with the right group.

How's it going?

Hey man it's not even been two weeks! Get off my back! What am I, a superstar?

No seriously, I'll post more about what's happened since then on my Substack (link stripped, DM me) on Tuesday. After all, I have to actually do work at some point, not just shitpost about the work I need to do.

Have a great weekend, see you next Tuesday! (I said what I said 😂)

hey guys,

predicament here. I have worked hard to build a saas for the property management niche. I have targeted a paper-based and very retro process in the space that frustrates both the site maintenance team and the residents. I am 99% sure I have 0 competition however upper managemt and property owners are not interested at all. I mean, the price is very low, too. I'm going for 300 USD per property, this is easily a 1k+ tool. Just so you are aware ts for massive properties occupied by 100+ tenants.

management
am I a bad salesman? Are lower employees lying? whats going on lmao. This is my first b2b business but I've run multiple b2c businesses since a teenager hitting figures I was happy with.

I’m a serial founder who’s been through the highs and lows of starting and scaling many businesses. One thing I’ve always found challenging is the guesswork that often goes into site selection or determining whether a business will succeed in a specific area. I’ve had success in the past using isochrones (e.g., drive-time radii, population density models) to calculate optimal site locations, but I’m looking to take it to the next level.

Here’s what I’m trying to do:

Reverse-engineer market viability by defining the demographic, economic, and competitive thresholds a business needs to thrive. For example, a Brazilian steakhouse might require 150,000 residents within 30 miles earning a median income of $70,000+. Or, a boutique coffee shop might need 25,000 white collar laborers aged 25–45 working within a 10-mile radius with a certain disposable income level. I want to use population and market data to calculate opportunities in underserved areas where businesses like these don’t currently exist but are quantifiably viable.

My goal is to let the numbers do the heavy lifting so that I can invest in and launch businesses with near-zero risk. I’m exploring GIS tools, economic data platforms, large-scale web scraping, and predictive modeling, but I’m curious if anyone here has had success with a similar approach.

What’s something you find challenging or wish was better about website builders? Are there features or tools you’ve dreamed of that would make your experience smoother?

Share your thoughts, I’d love to hear what you think would make the perfect website builder!

On Monday, I woke up to a notification from Stripe saying somebody sent me money. Man...I was so excited I could barely focus on work all day. I even was trying to distract myself with some exercise.

AND THEN, three days later, I made 3 sales in a single day! I still can't believe it and could cry tears of happiness when looking at that Stripe Dashboard.

All that hard work is finally paying off. The grind is fcking real, but it’s worth it. Never give up! Consistency is key.

How are you using AI tools in your business? From my experience, the time and effort savings haven’t been as significant as I expected compared to handling tasks without AI assistance. It feels like these tools are often addressing problems that many businesses—especially small ones—don’t actually face.

I'm looking for practical advice on how to develop my network and attract projects.

My directory is connected to a Google API. So, it validates the addresses for brick and mortars to help us validate their listings. My directory is only for 2 specific cities. Literally no others.

How can I set it up so that the a WordPress plugin or the Google Maps API literally only allows them to enter one of those two cities? I can't seem to visualize it in my head.

Website: valleylocalpages dot com
Theme: Astra Version 4.8.4 By Brainstorm Force

i’ve been dreaming of starting a small online business but feel super lost. there’s so much advice out there that it’s hard to figure out where to begin. i know many people recommend finding a niche and sticking with it, but how do you even choose one? any tips for avoiding beginner mistakes or staying motivated? oh, and if you’ve used resources to help you get started, feel free to share—always looking for useful tools!

Hi, I have Discord servers with 2.6k and 1.5k members and I would like to ask where I can sell them. Any ideas?

should we buy a dog grooming business

so we own a duplex. it's a fixer upper but it has a classic charm. we live in half of it and rent out the other half. the revenue from the rental brings in just enough to cover our property and income taxes. we are queer and live in a red state. we live right outside a very beautiful and diverse city though.

my sister in law didn't want to buy a dog grooming business she was offered because it would require moving back to the USA. she mentioned to my father in law that she thinks it would be a good opportunity for us. he said he's willing to help us with the upfront cost of purchasing the business as to avoid upfront debt from the purchase. this would be stable income and it would double our current income.

we would have to move though. we would be moving to a blue state which might offer more protections if the Supreme Court criminalizes same sex marriage. however we are emotionally invested in our house as it's our first house so we want to avoid selling if possible. instead we would prefer bringing on a gardener and renting out both units. also we currently own the building we live in outright but moving likely means would likely need a mortgage. the state we would move to would have higher tax rates than we are used to as well. idk is the safety of a sanctuary city and the stable income worth potentially having to sell our cute little home, the increase in taxes and the uprooting of our family? what would you do