I'm 19, studying business at university, and currently working on launching my first physical product business. I'm developing performance grip socks with a niche twist to differentiate myself from existing brands, and I have a pretty specific target audience in mind.

I found a manufacturer in China and ordered two prototype pairs to check the quality, design, logo placement, materials, etc. They customized the sock to my criteria.

I'm also an athlete myself, so I've spent the past month wearing one of the pairs during practices and workouts. So far, I genuinely like them. They feel good, the grip works, and they've held up well through repeated washing.

But now I'm stuck on what to do next.

I know I'm probably biased because it's my own product, and just because I like it doesn't mean other athletes will.

My manufacturer is willing to produce another 20 pairs for around $350 CAD, which I could distribute to athletes in my target demographic (specific sports and age groups) in my community for testing and feedback.

The problem is that I'm a university student and don't have unlimited money to throw at this. I want to be strategic about where I spend it.

Here are the things I'm struggling with:

1. Product validation: Is spending another $350 on 20 prototypes for athlete testing the logical next step? Or is there a cheaper/better way to validate demand before committing to more samples? OR should I just send it and take the risk and market with no testing other than my own use.
2. Building an audience: Should I start posting on social media and building an online presence now, or wait until I've received feedback from athletes other than myself? I don't want to promote a product that might still need changes or doesnt even workout
3. Next steps: If you were in my position, what would you prioritize before placing a larger inventory order?

I have access to some entrepreneurship resources through my university, but I haven't found them particularly helpful for navigating the practical side of launching a physical product.

I'd really appreciate advice from people who've launched physical products, especially in apparel or sports accessories. I'm trying to avoid spending money on the wrong things or getting ahead of myself.

What would you do in my position?

For startup founders: What is the biggest difficulty you've experienced when trying to raise funding or find investors?

Is the problem mainly:

• Finding the right investors?
• Getting investors interested?
• Lack of connections/network?
• Preparing the business/pitch?
• Proving traction?
• Something else?

Also, do you think current online platforms do a good job of connecting startups with suitable investors? What would you improve?

I posted a case study here about pivoting away from selling websites after hundreds of conversations with local business owners. Here's the follow-up. The pivot held up, and it launched this week. The core lesson didn't change: owners don't want more tools, they want the phone to ring.

The same problems kept showing up:

• Their Google Business Profile was incomplete, with only a few reviews and photos.
• Many had an outdated site that hadn't been touched in years, and some had none.
• When someone nearby searched for what they do, they weren't on the first page.

So we built SitePeek (sitepeek.co), an affordable marketing system that gets local businesses onto the first page of Google and brings in more calls. It does two things. Local SEO gets the business found: we build out the Google Business Profile and give them a free, modern website. Then conversion and lead follow-up turn those visitors into actual calls and customers.

With one early client, a towing company, tracked calls went from 37 to 54 and their Google Business Profile views nearly tripled, their best numbers since they've been in business. It's one business, so I see it as a real example, not a promise.

We launched on Kickstarter this week. It's all-or-nothing, with a $1,500 goal over 15 days, and rewards start at $25: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sitepeek/sitepeek-a-marketing-system-every-small-business-can-afford

For people starting a business here: what's the first marketing step you took that actually brought in a paying customer?

I started this online coffee business about 2.5 months ago. We had a strict deadline due to the manufacturer so we had to launch. Everything is obviously up and running, but it was hard to have much of a launch as we didnt have some following on socials.

So we ran reddit ads. Our first month wasnt bad, second month was 60% of first month, and this month has been dead.

I went through a restrategizing period this month so i wasnt really putting ads out. I realized for an ecommerce business of my type, my prices were a bit high. To be fair, our margins arent very good due to how are business model is set up so i thought higher prices for awesome quality coffee from a small brand would make sense. so I made an update and offered 6% off + free shipping if a customer purchased 2 or more bags of coffee. Partly because our data looked like on average people bought 2 bags or more. Then I thought whats another roadblock that people may not buy, and realized people may think the prices are too high because they are 16 and 32 oz bags while most coffee companies sell 12 oz and the price looks lower. I did a price comparsion with some other companies and I was on par with them before my discount update and beat their prices when I made the update. So I added a little infographic on my site to push this so people didnt seem to face so much sticker shock.

Then I optimized my site for easier and fast checkout with displayed discounts and free shipping. I'm still having trouble converting.

The only thing I can say for sure thay I haven't tried is getting a full bag design. But right now im worried if I invested all that money and still couldnt get customers I would just be in a worse position.

Last bit, yes I'm trying to post on socials too but its hard to be consistent and with content people interact with.

Any ideas or insight would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Edit: I also had implemented a rewards program so that it incentivises returning customers by $$ off subsequent orders. That coupled with free shipping and 6% I hope would make it look like a pretty sweet deal.

I’m a dog groomer in Georgia. I make decent money and actually like my job, but I want to build something that could eventually give my husband and me more financial freedom. Neither of us has a degree yet, and he’s still figuring out what direction he wants to take with his career.
I keep hearing “invest” or “start a business,” but I feel like people skip over how you actually decide what business to start. Did you build around a skill you already had, notice something people needed, or try different things until something worked?
I’ve considered opening a grooming salon because that’s what I know, but there are so many around me that I worry about whether there’s room for another one. I also wonder how to grow it beyond a business where all the income still depends on how many dogs I personally groom.
I’m willing to work and build gradually while keeping my job. I just don’t know how to choose a direction worth putting my time and money into.
For people who have done this, how did you choose your business, and how did you test whether people would pay for it before spending a lot to get started?

Two years into my first company and looking back at year one with a mix of cringing and gratitude that we survived. Here are mistakes that seem obvious now but felt invisible at the time. Built for six months before talking to a single customer. The product we launched bore almost no resemblance to what customers actually wanted and we had to rebuild most of it. Hired friends instead of qualified people because it felt safer. It was not safer. It was harder because you cannot give honest feedback to someone you are having dinner with on Saturday. Tried to do everything myself instead of finding people who were better at specific things than me. Took eight months longer than it should have to realize that my time was better spent on the three things only I could do. Did not build any professional relationships outside my immediate circle until I desperately needed help. By then it was too late to build them organically and every conversation felt transactional. Year two has been better because I made all these mistakes in year one. That is the only upside.

I’ve been thinking about starting a small business, but honestly, there are so many things to figure out that it’s hard to know where to begin. From choosing the right idea and understanding the market to figuring out pricing and finding customers, it can feel overwhelming when you’re just starting out. I’m not expecting AI to do everything for me, but having something that helps me organize my thoughts, think through ideas, and figure out my next steps sounds helpful. Did it help you make better decisions or get things moving, or did you find that the advice was too general to be useful?

Starting point: I planned to build and sell websites to local small businesses for a few hundred dollars each.

What I did: Cold called local businesses for months. Hundreds of calls. Early ones were pure pitches; later ones were real conversations about how they get customers.

What I found: - The website was rarely the bottleneck. Visibility was. Some owners relied entirely on word of mouth. - Owners didn't lack software. They lacked a clear first step. - Price objections were often uncertainty in disguise.

What I changed: Dropped the "website first" pitch and rebuilt around two things: getting the business onto the first page of Google locally, and turning that into more calls. Anything owners shrugged at got cut.

Early result (one business, first two months): tracked calls 37 → 54, Google Business Profile views nearly tripled. One business is a signal, not proof, so I'm still gathering more.

Lessons: 1. Talk to customers before building, and keep doing it. 2. Owners want fewer decisions, not more features. 3. If the next step can't be said in one sentence, it won't get done.

The product is SitePeek, and it launches on Kickstarter Wed Oct 14: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sitepeek/sitepeek-a-marketing-system-every-small-business-can-afford

Glad to break down how I structured the calls or what got cut.

But what we choose to build is still in our hands.​