I have a business with 1 client, they pay me to run fitness classes and give maybe 1 extra class a year in the seniors niche and the seniors pay a small fee.

How tf do I scale from here

I’m running a glorified smma agency - helping small business owners with web presence, seo, social media, and marketing and sprinkling in ai and automation. I have one solid client at $500/mo and I’ve gotten some bigger projects under my belt - $5k, $1.5k, $2.5k, $1.4k etc. but it’s feast or famine. I’m having a hard time getting clients to agree to monthly services. That’s 16.5 over about 1 year of trying (moved twice during that time and I’m a mom of 3, youngest just recently started going to daycare more frequently but still part time). I’ve gotten to pitch to some big corporations recently on ai consulting, but that’s a long cycle, was approved for a student association for ai in my mba program (global program), and I’m revamping my networking strategy. My clients refer people to me, but also that’s slower growth, and they send the people my info instead of connecting me. Totally dependent upon the person. Also reconsidering my marketing strategy and doing more affiliate marketing showcasing of tools, “built this business with ai from scratch” sort of videos, etc. To the point though - finances really hurt right now. Thankfully my husband is able to cover our needs, but I can’t keep justifying working on this at 16.5k from a year. Can I? One of my clients attributes a lot of his success to the consulting and work I have done for him and we’ve been in business the same amount of time. He’s now at 6 figures. 🫠 Am I being dumb? I’m considering taking what I know about marketing and applying it to another industry, like power washing, cleaning, hvac, construction supply sales, or something else, and finding a part-owner operator to work with me on it. Maybe even ask that client for help to transition. I have a part time job interview coming up on the 6th that would help alleviate the strain I feel and it’s in a consulting space I’m excited about. But I have 3 steps left to go in the process including this interview. I’m also doing market research for two business models and I’m connected to a community in my city that could help me find a job but they’re unlikely to become my clients.

Alright, squad, let’s settle this debate once and for all. When it comes to launching something new, what really moves the needle—having a killer product or flexing your marketing game?

On one hand, you’ve got the die-hard believers that a bomb product speaks for itself. Like, if you’ve got a quality item, people will find it, right? But let’s be real—how many times have you seen a mediocre product blow up just because the marketing was on point?

Think about it: viral ads, TikTok trends, influencer partnerships—they can take something basic and make it seem like a must-have. But if the product sucks, people are gonna bail once they try it. So, is it really about the hype, or does a solid product always win in the end?

I wanna hear your takes! Have you ever bought something just because the marketing was sick, only to be let down? Or do you think the real MVPs are the brands that focus on product quality over flashy ads? Let’s get into it!

Basically the above my partner and I, both Australian and not resident in the US own a US based llc that has 3 years worth of history (around $100k pa/ $300k total revenue going through our US bank acc which is one of the smaller fintech ones eg Mercury/Relay).

We have an EIN and ITIN's for both of us. Basically, we've come up against the wall that a lot of small business face...capital and would like to explore getting a business credit card each. Now the main hurdle I can see is that we obviously don't have FICO scores personally. Does anyone know of banks that would look at the business revenue instead as a replacement to that requirement?

Thanks in advance

Built a SaaS that lets you share control of a PPT - but you have to upload your deck to the platform, and it can't support animations, builds, or embedded videos. 

Pro market I thought would get excited seems to be pretty meh about it, because internet based. (I actually work in live events, everyone I showed it off to in person loved it...or did they? Lol)

Trying to figure out a more prosumer market thats less detail oriented, but would still pay. Someone like internal corporate teams, conferences teams, etc?

Any thoughts on who might be a good market and how to reach them? 

I own a start-up in frozen foods. I have an opportunity to sell my product at an upper middle class gated community. (First time) What has worked for others in this space?

Working on flyers to distribute in the community to create awareness.

Suppose a client preorders, but is not immediately available to receive their order on the day the company van arrives to do deliveries. What are my options at that point?

Royal

I’ve founded 2 nonprofits, 1 for profit, and a consulting biz, all in social impact, and I’m trying to find a Reddit space to hang with like minded folks - is this that? If so would love to hang and share.

Hello everyone, I’m think of starting a new business but I am still in the early days, I am looking for difficult problems that SMEs might have that could be solve using technology. It could be things like simple organizing problems to really complex ones like provider realtionships. Feel free to share them here and people might give you great advices!

Hey all, I could really use some advice on a big decision I’m facing.

My family owns a property development firm, and they’ve been dissatisfied with their current property management. They’ve offered me a unique opportunity to bring the property management in-house by having me start my own property management company to manage the family’s portfolio.

Here’s what the offer looks like:

• 6% commission on approximately $750k/year in rental income (~$45k gross annually).
• They already have a solid network of contractors and service providers that we’ve worked with to build our properties, which could be a huge asset.

Now, here’s my situation:

• I was recently laid off, and if I go back to work, I could likely land a job making around $230k.
• I have other part-time income sources that bring in $2-3k/month.
• Health insurance for the family isn’t an issue, and I’ve got a few months of living expenses saved up.

The big question: Should I go all-in on starting this business?

$45k obviously isn’t enough to live on, but I’m thinking that if I can leverage the in-house contractor network and pitch this value proposition to other property owners in the area, I could scale this up quickly.

Here’s what sets us apart: Many property management firms focus on keeping tenants happy at the owner's expense, sending out overpriced contractors for simple issues to maintain good Yelp reviews, etc. My approach would be different. I can offer cost-effective, reliable maintenance using our trusted contractor network (who typically quote us at a fraction of the cost because of the volume of business we provide and our long-standing relationships). Plus, I can handle simple fixes like changing a lightbulb myself—no need to bring in a contractor for that.

The goal would still be to keep tenants happy and encourage renewals, but my primary focus would be on maximizing value for the property owners, who are ultimately my customers.

Has anyone here made a similar jump or have any advice on whether this is worth pursuing? Appreciate any insights!

Hi there. - A company has approached me for buying a part of my product.

Problem

• Keep a track on daily changes across marketplace and regions for your brand as well as your competitors
• Using scraping solutions is not scalable as it needs constant maintainence and data accuracy is very bad and for each region you need to develop your scraping solutions
• track competitor and your brands daily movement in marketplace for taking better informed decisions in case of out of stock, price changes, deals, best seller rank movement etc...

Product

• I have made a product that helps brand and d2c sellers in taking informed and data backed decisions on amazon ads. I have found a solution for getting listing and product page data via API's for amazon marketplace across all regions. It can easily fetch data for approx 50k-70k asins per day
• I have also built a decision engine, that will give you un-targetted highly relatable with your asins that you are not tagetting but your competitor has high sales for that keyword

Ask

• What are my options
• for how much should i sell and what should be the conditions

PS

• my product involves two parts a data engine which feeds data from Amazon all regions and a decision engine which runs analytics on thr data given. Now decision engine rules changes from time to time and it's more hit and trial case
• they only need the data engine because it's stable and am not looking to service based solution where I charge them monthly
• the company has not said any number and they want me to come up with a number
• the product is 6 months old till today and am not generating any revenue. I partnered with same company for experiment purposes and one of their brand campaign saw 200% increase in roas and became 6th largest spending campaign

Thanks

Hey guys, currently I just started a distribution company that tailors to providing supplements to gyms for lower rates then they can afford; my goal is too provide all the extensive background work for them while providing affordable supplements for these gyms, leaving them with no work to do in the long run except purchase these supplements from myself. I have created a proposal and business plan already where I planned to market to them however I ran into some big issues when I realized that some of my margins on my projections are great, but most of them were not good due to having some variables in the projections that were not fixed such as a 12 qty protein bars being sold for "x" amount of dollars, or wanting to stick to a single wholesale supplier to keep the reliability and a strong relationship. This has really been a road block for me. In addition the risk reward doesn't add up buying 15 different supplements with a 1000 order minimum order quantity from manufacturers, nor is there any trust form a small fish contacting these large manufacturers. I plan on taking a 60% cut from the gym for providing them with the software and payment systems needed to run flawlessly but this too just slices through the margins. If anyone here has any experience along the lines of this please let me know. At the end of the day I need to find supplements at the lowest rate possible, closest to manufacturer rate and somewhere that accepts my low moq. Considering all of this I have thought about the idea of marketing the supplements to local supplement stores first and have less risk in buying bulk then slowly pivoting back to my first goal. I appreciate any insight from anyone. Everything helps, thank you!

Hey everyone,

To give some context I have now been running a food truck in California for almost a year now. It has gone decently well and we average about $15,000 revenue per month (This can increase if I worked the truck more but at the moment we only open 4 days per week.) My goal has always been to open a restaurant and I simply used the food truck to test the market for my product and see how the market responds (It's authentic Neapolitan wood fired pizza). I self funded the food truck with my savings and opened it for a low cost because I built it out myself. I have no debt on my books except I guess a private loan to myself that does not need to be paid back.

I have been strategically parking in a location near a new retail development in a "high-end" part of town that would be cohesive to my product and restaurant concept. My goal from the beginning has been to grow a following and brand recognition in this area to act as a launching pad into this exact retail space. Recently I sent in a proposal to be selected to be a tenant in this new retail space and I was accepted. This happened sooner than I was expecting so I am kind of in a scramble mode to get into this new development which will inevitably do very well in driving traffic.

To create the restaurant concept that I have imagined, it will cost around $500,000. I have found a partner who is willing to come in with $250,000 for 49% of my business while I retain 51%. This means that I need to come up with the remaining $250,000. I thought this would be relatively simple with my business that is cash flow positive and has no debt on its books but as I have quickly found out, if you do not have 2 years of tax returns to show, lenders won't even look in your direction.

One of the other primary problems I am running into, is that my food truck honestly caps out at making $250,000 a year gross income if I were to work it 7 days a week lunch and dinner, and I am honestly afraid of burn out because of how labor intensive my product is. It would demand me to work 12-16 hour days every day for a year. This is simply not feasible with my situation. Finding employees and offering them full time is equally as challenging at this point in time, and its hard to retain part time employees.

The thing is that if I were to open a retail location, our revenue would be easily that of 1-1.5 million on the low end. It'd be full service with drinks, our pizzas, appetizers and open for lunch/dinner 6 days a week.

Is there a way to get access to funds based off projections like these or banks will ultimately just see you as a startup and not give you money?

Thanks for any help or ideas.

I am trying to create a digital visiting card to be shared online with folks I meet. Where can I create it so that it wil have my social media links and contact details included which can be accessed easy?

What’s the best piece of business advice that you’ve gotten from a mentor, YouTuber, competition, etc?

Hey everyone!

I'm curious to hear how this community approaches choosing SaaS tools, especially when trying to maximize ROI. As entrepreneurs, we all know how overwhelming the decision-making process can be with so many options out there.

Recently, I came across a platform called Sprout24, which provides vendor-neutral scores and expert insights on SaaS products. The goal is to help buyers make more informed decisions based on contextual data rather than just features or price. They even analyze user reviews and provide detailed ratings.

I’d love to know—how do you usually evaluate and pick SaaS tools for your business? Do you think a platform like this could help streamline your decision-making process? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Let’s share some strategies!

We make custom software for companies, so this is b2b sales where we meet with a manager from a department and see if they can use our services.

Typically our meeting comes in 2 forms:

They already want our services and have a proposal for us. This happens like 30% of the time. Easy win.

We show them 20 ideas from similar companies, try to listen to them, and... What? Propose something? Let them propose something?

This is what I'm running into. Sometimes the company comes up with their own ideas, great. However, many times they listen, engage, but our last minute is: "Let us know if you need our stuff".

In the past I have tried to listen and make proposals for software, but this hasnt worked yet. It seems this needs to be driven by their needs.

Given this, I either need a better way to propose, or push them harder to think about applications.

What does this look like? Should I have my sales person push to schedule another meeting just to stay on their mind?

I have a contractor, they didnt do their job for 7 days and didnt respond to messages. However, their job is low low priority so I never called, just sent text messages. She has always responded to phone calls.

She didn't give an excuse.

She did similar 1 other time.

I'd move on, but this person is extremely affordable and has technical skills that are great for the price. The position is low priority and is more of a support staff role. I also didn't call.

Anyway, so what are my options? I can't just let it go, there needs to be some punishment. I have our regular 3 strike write-up system, maybe thats good enough.

I’m a 21-year-old Indian BTech student, and I recently decided to start my own clothing brand. My dad has been in the garment business as a wholesaler for the last 30 years, so I’ve got good contacts with manufacturers through him. The brand feels like something personal to me and my family.

Here’s the problem: when I talk to friends for advice, they start acting like they want to be a major part of the business.

For example, I mentioned my plans to one of my classmates who has a good sense of fashion. Instead of just offering some advice, he immediately started saying how he could be the creative director, has contacts with investors, can design silhouettes, etc. It was overwhelming because I don’t want anyone taking a big role in the business—especially when it’s so close to my family.

Another friend, who’s a rapper and has done a couple of professional shoots, reacted similarly. I asked him how much models and shoots cost, and he started saying how he could take care of everything, be the model, handle the promotion, and “make the brand big.” It’s great that they’re excited, but I’m just looking for advice—not partners.

How can I get guidance without people assuming they’re going to take over or expect a bigger role? I’m not looking for co-founders, and I don’t want to hurt my friendships over this. Any advice on how to handle these conversations?

Hey, I’m 17 and currently planning on building an app but before diving too deep in development i need to validate the idea first. I understand market research is a critical step, but i want to make i’m doing it as efficiently as possible without wasting too much time and resources.

I’m looking for advice on tools or platforms i could use, methods that have worked for you and any tips and tricks to validate market demand.

If you have any experiences or strategies that have worked well for you i would love to hear them! I am new to this sort of business but have created online stores using shopify in the past. I am keen to learn from experience, thanks in advance.

Hi everyone! As busy individuals, we all know how important it is to make the most out of our time. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the challenges we all face when it comes to staying productive, especially with the never-ending stream of repetitive tasks that can eat up our time. How do you all manage to keep your focus and efficiency throughout the day? Do you have any go-to strategies or tools that help you automate or simplify your workflow? I’m curious to hear what works best for you, especially for those non-technical solutions that anyone can use. Looking forward to learning from your experiences!

I never really post on socials nor have I ever really used Reddit all that much. I thought i'd give it a try and to mark down my experiences on the way during this journey. My best friend and I (who've recently graduated high school and went right into working full time) have started up our own clothing brand. I have never met an individual who's so passionate about the business field and making something of ourselves like I. Our brand is called 4Nova, nothing crazy special at the very moment. We do have a catalog of t-shirts, made a few ads, and my friend who's amazing at creating things with what he has. Me on the other hand, I'm more of the managing kind of side and constantly researching about the business world. I love looking into marketing and everything that went into growing that business. Definitely something I've been falling in love with.

My friend and I are planning something real big, I haven't ever been more excited for something in my life. unfortunately, our website is down. This is so we don't have to pay it while we work real hard on planning out this next drop. I'll say this, we aren't experienced but I know for a fact, our dedication and the way we fuel each other to work harder, will one day get us there. I don't know exactly when this could be, but I just know it will be one day.

If there’s any advice anyone might have for a startup brand, anything is appreciated. I’ve been meaning to start connecting with like-minded individuals who love this field, maybe even succeeded well in this field. Once again, anything is appreciated. I love to learn and want to take in anything I can to mitigate our risks in our journey.

Thank you for anyone who shares!

I have an idea for an app i want to create but i feel like i cant do it alone as it will be rather complex so i am thinking about looking for investors or a partner to help make this work, there is market for it i just need to get it going. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or are interested i’m more than happy to discuss the app!

1. I'd like to know if my tool collects the user's email and if I have a team in charge of reaching out to these business owners and closing deals, is this the way to go?
2. What works for you?

I'm considering outsourcing our sales efforts to virtual assistants and would love to hear from anyone who’s done this successfully. Specifically, how did it impact your sales performance and overall business operations?

Did you notice improvements in lead generation, customer outreach, or conversion rates? Also, how did you go about finding qualified virtual assistants? Where did you source them from, and what criteria did you use to ensure they were a good fit for your sales team?

Any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated as we evaluate whether this strategy is a good fit for our business!

Hey there everyone!

I run a real estate business that focuses on photographic optimizations and 3D renderings for property listings. A major part of what we offer includes photo editing, virtual staging, 3D renders, and property outlining on aerial photos. It’s important to note that we do not take the photos ourselves, we work with images provided by our clients.

Our current challenge is that prospecting takes up 90% of our time, and the results haven’t been great. Here’s what we’re doing:

• We rely heavily on cold calls and cold emails, where we offer potential clients a sample of our work. The samples we provide have a large watermark and cannot be used unless purchased.
• We also use social media efforts, but the return has been minimal so far.

Another big hurdle is that our primary clients, realtors, often aren’t organized and we find ourselves having to follow up with them repeatedly to get a deal closed.

We’re looking for suggestions on how to speed up the growth of our business, particularly in terms of more efficient prospecting or handling follow-ups.

If anyone has ideas or strategies that have worked for them, we’d love to hear from you!

Here’s what we offer:

• Virtual staging
• 3D renders
• Photo editing
• Property outlining on aerial photos

Feel free to check out our website and Instagram for more details:

• Website: studiosnimar.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/studiosnimar
• TikTok: tiktok.com/@studiosnimar

Thanks in advance for your insights!

Hey All,

I currently work with a B2B software company and we are undertaking an acquisition strategy that I'm in charge of. I've been working on acquiring API companies for a while now, mostly through the usual route like cold emails and LinkedIn outreaches. While this approach has been effective and I have connected with a lot of founders who are open to being acquired, I'm looking for new ways to find API's/API companies, connect with their founders or CEOs and see if they're interested in an exit valuation now or in the near future.

I am looking for API businesses that generate a minimum of 10k MRR or 100k ARR and far beyond. I'm open to all categories but finance, weather and verification APIs have shown the strongest ARR potential. I figured a lot of people here might have had previous experiences and I might find out some new strategies I might have overlooked.

If anyone has any strategies, experiences or advice with things that helped with prospect outreach/ research please share! I would love to learn more about different approaches that might open up new opportunities for a productive conversation.. Also, if anyone has an API business yielding that revenue and might be interested in an acquisition opportunity I'm open to connecting. 

Looking forward to hearing your insights!

Hey, is here anyone with experience of partnering with Universities or Scientists during your R&D stage while developing a tech startup? Care to share your story?

Specifically, I’m looking to learn about:

• what made you understand you want to enter this kind of partnership, what stage were you at?
• briefly, what did it look like? Were you a co-author?
• did it live up to your expectations?

I’m now trying to answer this question for myself, and I don’t know any similar stories firsthand so I’ll appreciate your sharing whatever experience or thoughts you have.

Hey guys,

Many agencies and b2b biz I talk to rely on referrals, word of mouth and networking to get clients.

Problem is that it’s inconsistent. And ads and cold outreach are a hit or miss.

So I have come up a with a way to partner up with the right companies in adjacent industries and building a network of them to consistently generate 10x more referrals.

Its not a networking platform or saas. But an active service where I handle the communication, deal negotiation, targeting, etc.

I want to test it out for someone for minimal costs.

(Please don’t comment if you have no case studies and zero budget and are totally new)

Would also appreciate your thoughts on this. Im currently looking for an experienced consultant who has done something like this for big companies.

I have a virtual assistant business and I will be participating in an upcoming tradeshow. Other than flyers, brochures and demos, what other things can I display. Grateful for some tips on how I can l make a fun and interactive booth.

Being an entrepreneur can be quite demanding. There usually isn't set hours, and working 7 days a week isn't unheard of. But it is important for an entrepreneur to plan for time off and be prepared for it.

There can be many reasons why an entrepreneur takes some time away from there business, it could be for a much needed vacation, dealing with family issues, or unfortunately to deal with health care.

So let's talk about anything and everything that an entrepreneur needs to deal with when taking time off.

Do you have systems in place so that your second in command can run the business smoothly without you? Is there times of the year that are better than others for your vacation? Do you have a partner that you can trade time off with? Do you have a plan for an emergency? What kind of vacation do you feel is best for an entrepreneur, maybe you want to drink fancy drinks on the beach, or maybe you want an adrenaline filled week of big mountain skiing? How do you mentally disconnect from your business so that you can properly enjoy your time off? Or anything else related to taking time off from your business.