New here! Hi.

I own a gift shop and was thinking about doing a May the 4th/Star Wars Day event in an effort to bring people into town. I've asked a couple other businesses around me if they'd also participate.

We don't sell any Star Wars merch, but I was wondering what I could do to bring people in without putting a ton of money out. I'll do some Star Wars related giveaways. Was thinking about a discount, but what could I do in relation to Star Wars? What in-store activities or events could I do?

What are some things that I can give to new businesses that are just starting out? What do you wish you had when you first started your business? for example, names of local CPA's? local credit union contact? Discounted business cards? Thanks!

Hey all!

I own a small business called Miribel Naturals.

I get most of my business from word of mouth and influencers, but, after some recent feedback, it seems my website and products may be confusing to a cold audience.

I’m wondering if anyone would be able to check out my website and see if they can tell what I sell and if the products seem confusing?

Https://miribelnaturals.com

Hello there, I'm not a US resident; I live in Turkey. I have a US LLC company. My citizenship is Syrian.
I tried to open a business bank account with many banks (Mercury, Relay, Neo, etc ..) and got rejected due to regulations about my citizenship or residency.

The only online bank I could use was "Wise," and it is good, but unfortunately, it doesn't support cards anymore, and I can't run my business without having a card to spend money on ads! or even withdrawing my money!

Any recommendations?

Thanks

I have a small business. Started 5 months ago with $10K Selling all types of timber used in constructon. My target audience at the moment is DIY homeowners & small carpentry companies. I want to start selling directly to carpentry companies however I can’t really compete with bigger wholesalers prices. I’ve turned over 150k since the start. 100k of that being in the last 10 weeks. I have a very good website & using just google ads at the moment. It is bringing results. I’ve secured a loan which will allow me to purchase everything cheaper in bulk so my prices are going to be competitive now. I’m trying to figure out ways I can market the business better. How to get more sales. I’ve considered cold calling businesses, i have a list of business who took prices/ qoutes off me in the past few months (a few of them have purchased) There is definitely a huge market with loads of potential.

Hello everyone,

I run a small boat rental business, and I take great care in maintaining our fleet to the highest standards. We regularly have a mechanic check them, and I'm gradually upgrading both their appearance. I hope to buy newer boats eventually, but for now, I'm working hard to save up for that.

Recently, I upgraded the bottom cushions on one of our boats, and I plan to do the same for the top ones once the season slows down after May. Nonetheless, overall, the boats are in great shape, and most customers are happy with them.

However, I had a tough situation with this customer recently. He was calling the boat junk and trash. We offered him another boat but he also refused that boat. Keep in mind we have to trailer these boats in from a storage unit. He was quite aggressive and threatened to destroy our company online. I tried to sort it out calmly, but he wouldn't cooperate. He wants to have a private meeting so he can understand our company and he also wants a new boat to be rented out to him otherwise he will destroy our company online!

As a small business owner, I strive to maintain professionalism and provide exceptional service to all customers. I am seeking advice on how best to handle such situations in the future while ensuring the continued satisfaction of our customers.

Any recommendations or insights would be greatly appreciated.

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Edit: I forgot to mention that I have 46 Google reviews, with a rating of 4.7 stars. Among them, I only have 3 negative reviews, while the rest are 5 stars and one 3 starts.

I had an employee casually drop that they were intending to go into the industry I’m in but in a different state. This person started with us with no experience in the industry just 3-4 months ago. They knew nothing at all about the industry. Since then I have taught them a lot and also disclosed a lot of proprietary information so they could do the job.

At hiring I have everyone sign a Non-disclose/Non-compete. I’m not sure this person knows that they’ve signed it, I explained what it was, but the person is young and naive. I’m wondering has anyone enforced one successfully?

This is a young person with likely an unrealistic dream of excelling in the industry with the knowledge acquired from my training. I do not feel threatened by the person. I’m not against someone going on their own and becoming successful, but we have some proprietary processes that result in unique products that I know no one else has in this industry. We have developed a lot of products, spent hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars, and many years (10) building this all up. The person knows how we do what we do, and the procedures to do it because I taught them.

My worry here is they take this info and give it all away to another company to get a job. We intend to remind said employee that they signed a legal document but should I terminate employment now to avoid them gaining more info? They have already given notice they will quit soon. I honestly don’t want to deal with this and it was sprung on me a few weeks ago. Since then they have made several comments including some that lead me to believe they’re intending to use everything they have learned to get employment or start their own business.

What would you do?

Last year we took a huge risk by taking out a home equity loan and 2nd mortgage to purchase a rental property. I did not want to do this but agreed to do so to support my husband’s dream and vision. I viewed this as a difficult compromise you have to make sometimes when you’re married and was willing to take the risk because of my husbands high paying job of over 10 years. Fast forward to today where my husband and I both lost our high earning jobs in the past couple of months. Instead of pursing a job in the field where he has high earning potential he wants to float his severance package (7 months of pay), cash in his 401k and buy a small business in an industry he has zero experience in. When I said I don’t support this decision for a number of reasons: risky to take on additional debt given our existing financial obligations, I can’t handle the stress of going down another financial rabbit hole the second time in a year when we just barely have our heads above water before losing our jobs, I supported his dream last year when I wasn’t comfortable doing so and now he needs to support my desire to stay the course until we stabilize financially, etc etc. he said he doesn’t need me to do this and is not going to do the type of work he has been doing because he is done doing the corporate thing. I’m like um tough shit because we already shot our shot with this investment that was HIS idea and now we need to hunker down. My head is spinning and I am at a loss of how to navigate this.

I'm opening a brick and mortar high end floral boutique and received a couple of quotes from marketing services. The one I really want to work with is kind of expensive and am making me sign a 5 month commitment. It is 22k over 5 months without ad spend. It includes packaging design, grand opening promotion, SEO, emails and social marketing and some other things.

Do you all think this is too much? What percentage of revenue should I be spending on marketing?

Funds are limited. Should I be spending this much on marketing?

For context; I’m a freelance marketing designer and am wondering what type of information or approach could convince you to hire me?

1. A phone call, email explaining where your marketing and design is outdated and an overview of competitors with better strategies?

2. A mock up of a redesign of your website?

3. An overview of data, explaining the ideal metrics of how a website, email newsletter etc should perform? “Is your website hitting x percent of conversion rates? Are you keeping long term customers/clients engaged online, with rentention rates of at least x percent?”

4. something else?

Hey Reddit!

I am running a web app development agency for last 2 years focusing on MVPs, SAAS products and websites.

We are getting clients from network, referrals and freelancing platform but now I want to scale and attract high paying customers.

As I have experience in running google ads and I have been thinking to run google ads for my web app agency.

Before investing in this funnel I want to hear your thoughts if anyone have success in getting leads/clients from running google ads

Will be grateful for any advise/insights you can share.

What aspect of social media if you could get help with you would?

I'm starting e-commerce and I have a real shop and stock but they are empty 😢 I want to use them as stock and start e-commerce but the products are nightmare I can't find anything 😭 help me by some ideas

What do i need to have in order legally or whatever else you could think of to cover myself as its my first time doing this, its for artificial turf installation.

He sent me that HE'S worker comp exempt + has general liability, and is a LLC ^ unsure about his crew though.

His company seems legit has lots of photos of work, website, facebook reviews, etc. any tips?

Hi all,

I recently started my own business. I have approximately 20k in starting capital and need to hire/have on standby 3-4 staff members to actually start operations. My actual hiring process has been developed and implemented but sourcing the staff is costly.

To compete in the field on indeed for a new hire would cost approximately $100-$200 per day for a posting. This amount may not seem expensive with a 20k budget, but avoiding undue expense is critical at this stage of operation. Additionally it costs approximately $100 for any new hire training. So the true onboarding cost is quite high when accounting for the cost of a job posting on indeed or similar site and the cost of onboarding.

Any ideas on how to source staffing cheaply or with limited to no capital available?

Do you guys have u unique operation in your business for example a person I know has to deal with the following: He has 100s of toolboxes ,a contractor inventories each toolbox b., there are contracts with technicians who work at different OEMs where the main guy has to supply such toolboxes to the technicians for the duration of contract , during the job if a technician loses or break a tool , the contractor has to go replace it . At the end of the contract the technician and contractor perform exit inventory, and if extra tools are missing which weren't flagged earlier are then made accountable for by the technician. The person I know used cognito forms for it and it was clunky , not user friendly, hard to administer etc. and it wasted quite a lot of time of his.

If you guys have any such unique operations how do you deal with them?

Hello all! I'm a 22yo college student whose pipe dream has always been to open a small breakfast/brunch/lunch spot. Unfortunately, I am not well versed in the industry (I worked at a grocery store in high school, as a cook at a fast food place for about 2 years in college, and most recently as a waitress at a pub, but never in a nicer restaurant), nor have I been able to save much money (I currently have about 15k saved, but that's it). I love to cook, and have often fantasized about what foods I'd serve, and how I'd decorate, but am completely uninformed on first steps I'd need to take to turn my dream into reality.

I know starting a small business is extremely difficult, and that turning a profit is even more so. Realistically, I don't believe I'll ever succeed, but for my own ease of mind I'd love to hear from y'all just *how* unrealistic this dream is, haha, and what first steps I'd hypothetically need to take?

Hey everyone,

​

I'm currently looking for some businesses I can start where I don't need an office space and can come directly to the customer.

​

Stuff like mobile car detailing, some trades...

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I live in a pretty small town so I believe that I won't be able to do things like car detailing and cleaning since I just believe there isn't a big enough market for that.

​

I look forward to hearing your suggestions, thanks in advance!

I've been exploring web development with ReactJS, Next.js, and MongoDB, aiming to break free from the 9-5 grind and start my own agency. But before taking the plunge, I have a few concerns:

Target Audience: Should I focus on small businesses preferring WordPress, Shopify, or hand-coded sites?

Saturation: Is the web development market oversaturated, making it tough for new agencies to thrive?

Resources: Can anyone recommend courses or videos detailing the journey of building a web development agency from scratch?

Any insights or advice on kickstarting this journey would be greatly appreciated.

Hi all, I am a budding entrepreneur setting up a shop to procure, process and export spices from India to abroad. I already have some ready buyers willing to order in bulk post-sample check. Feel free to connect with me if anyone has any leads. I appreciate any help you can provide.

What has been the main challenge for you and how did you overcome it?

I have only been selling on TikTok shop for a little while but I’m fed up with the discounts they give to customers and although they said i would be reimbursed for the discount as it’s from TikTok - I haven’t been and trying to get somewhere with a human to rectify this has been a nightmare.

For example- shipping costs me £2.70 upfront and after sale price minus discounts from TikTok and shipping minus TikTok discounts the order total came to £2.85 so that leaves 15p which most definitely is not profit or even comes close to cover costs for anything.

I’m now thinking of shutting my shop as it’s more hassle and actually costing me money - but there seems to be a zillion criteria’s you have to tick before they’ll allow you to shut it- so for now I’ve deactivated most of my listings.

If I was to cancel this order would I get bad feedback? I know I’m shutting shop but obviously sell in other ways so don’t want a bad reputation?

Or am I missing something and usually this is a smooth process?

I’m running a custom furniture business and I can’t ease the anxiety when I try to sleep. EVERYTHING has to be written down, and it’s driving me crazy

Not sure if this post is suitable for here, I can't post it on r/ecommerce as I don't have enough karma.

I have a legacy Linnworks account which has everything unlimited (channels, products, features). It also has desktop.

I'm in a lifetime contract of £200 p/m including vat, which would now cost easily over £1000 per month for the basic version.

We no longer require it, but if anybody wants it, please contact me.

Hello everyone,

I need some ideas on what to do with these data sets, or suggestions on where I could sell them.

I have extracted over 100k+ total data items from yell.com, spanning across the following 11 categories.

1. Solar Panel Installers
2. Car Dealers
3. Chinese Restaurants
4. Estate Agents
5. Fish and chip shops and restaurants
6. Indian Restaurants
7. Italian Restaurants
8. Pub Restaurants
9. Restaurants
10. Solicitors
11. Takeaway Food

​

I consider myself proficient in scraping data from any website, and I am currently building my SaaS, anyscraping.com. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks for your time!

I am a Ph.D. chemist with a 2-year-old small business. I have formulated and produced natural hair care for curly hair in Germany. All products handmade in quality glass packaging. After 2 years I am getting evermore positive feedback and more returning customers.

I recently had a talk with a well-known curly hair stylist about having them use my products in their salon and recommend me to their salon customers. They liked the products so much that they said they want to introduce me to their community of curly hair stylists and want to have financial benefits from this referral. The salon's partners might be interested in bulk purchase or might just send their customers to buy my products. I think the second is more probable.

I have absolutely no such experience or anyone with such experience. Here are the scenarios I could come up with help from chat GPT. PLease help me further:

a) "one-time referral payment to the first salon that introduces me to their partners." Is this common/fair? if yes, how high should the referral payment be? I like this idea because it's a one-time thing and my transactions with the new partners become independent from the first salon.

b) "Paying a commission to the first salon for every sale I make to the new partners." This sounds common and even simple for the case where the partners purchase in bulk. But if the partners send their customers to buy products from me individually then I have to pay a commission to the first salon on top of a commission I pay to the partners for sending their customers to buy my products, plus a small discount for the new customers...

c) "a fixed (small) amount set per product sold to the salon's business partners as royalty payment." Apparently it's called royalty payment. I don't like the idea at all since it demands tracking every transaction and number of products and my transactions with extra work to disclose how much I sold to the new partners and accordingly pay the royalty payment to the first salon.

I really appreciate any help/idea/experience.

Hello! I am currently working on getting my BA in finance, with aspirations of one day starting my own business. I have a wife and three kids, with one on the way. I have a class right now where I must write about a community, and how members may benefit from them. I’m going to ask several questions below: any/all answers would be greatly appreciated! What drew you to this community? How often do you get responses in this community that you find appropriate/fitting? Have you found other means to communicate with members of this community? Have you found lasting contacts that have helped further your and/or other people’s personal growth? Is there anything in this community that, generally, you wouldn’t normally discuss with others? Are there any general pieces of information that you wouldn’t wish to share with members of this community? Do you think this community has been ultimately beneficial to you, or has the benefit been trivial/minimal? Are there any facets of this community that you would wish to change? Lastly (because this is a small business community): what did you see in your market that drove you to start your particular business? Were you able to find a true market necessity, or did you start a business doing what you know?

I’m currently using Google Voice but it stops us from sending too many texts in a row. On busy days, it’s really annoying.

I’m looking for an app that a few employees can log into the same account at the same time and send text messages customers.

Nothing special, just regular texts with links to our website.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dear business owners/enterpeneurs!

I have a little idea that popped into my head while showering. I roughly fleshed it out but don’t have anyone to share it with to get feedback so I’m trying this.

Here are the main points..

The service: a monthly subscription offering tailored made list of daily post and reel ideas + 2 versions of caption for each.

Add-ons:

• creation of templates or designs for each
• filming and editing (locally sourced contractor)

Pricing could be something like.. $99 per month $899 per year

This monthly collection of post ideas and captions would come in a downloadable document and would include simple filming resources and tips.

Nothing else. No implementation, strictly the ideas and associated captions for business owners who want to implement it themselves or pass it on to an in-house employee.

I would design a simple website that would use clever branding (I’m a graphic designer as well), clear cut “Apply Now” that quickly gets contacts and specs; approach as many local businesses directly with some free content at first until I get credit cards on file, then use initial profits to kickstart Google and social media ads etc. Possibly promote on Etsy or something.

There are a few big companies that offer social media post scheduling, data analysis etc across platforms but don’t actually provide a way for the business owner to get the ideas for the posts which does take up a lot of time (from experience). For those who have never and don’t want to think about it and don’t want to blow $3000+ for social media management per month right off the bat.

What do you think? Would you buy this?

If so tell me for what business type/industry are you in! Thanks!!!

Why would they invite me to their POS? So weird.

The email says:

Welcome from (their business LLC), This business has invited you to access their Point of Sale and their Square Dashboard. Create your account now to get started.

CREATE MY ACCOUNT Thanks,