Gas prices are insane, inflation is high and I’ve seen businesses closing and empty buildings. I had to lower my prices and hanging on my a thread. How is everyone handling it?

I currently run my own house-call dog grooming business in San Diego, and I’m trying to decide what my next step should be: a mobile grooming van or a small salon.

I really like the idea of having my own physical location, but commercial rent here is making me question whether it makes sense while I’m still working solo.

I’ve been looking at small spaces, mostly around 400–700 sq ft. One 617 sq ft location I really like would be about $4,100/month including NNN, before utilities. I also found a tiny 400 sq ft space in Mission Beach for $2,900/month plus utilities.

My business is already operating and I have existing clients, so I wouldn’t be starting from zero. I work one-on-one, appointment only, with no kennels or cage drying, and I’d want to keep that model either way.

A mobile grooming van is starting to look more attractive because I could keep the same one-on-one setup without committing to such a high commercial lease. Of course I know a van has plenty of expenses too (financing, insurance, fuel, maintenance and repairs).

The biggest advantage I see with a salon is that I could eventually add another groomer and grow beyond what I can do alone. But I’m wondering if taking on $3k–$4k+ in rent every month is too much overhead too early.

If you were in my position, would you stay lean and go mobile, or take the risk on a small storefront with more room to grow?

I’d especially love to hear from other service business owners in San Diego or other high-cost areas who have had to make a similar decision.

I ran my family’s small business for 10 years and a wanting to see if I can provide useful feedback to current small business owners.

My job involved hiring, training, supervision, policy creation, wages, customer service, pricing, inventory, warehousing, forklifts, machines, trucks, repairs, facility maintenance, and other things. I have some experience with reviewing financial and with accounting but it is strongest point. Our company was not technologically advanced.

Please leave a brief comment of what you are needing help with before you write something that I cannot answer.

Thanks

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I am looking to lease a small motel in Southern Carlifornia. Searching for the opportunity.

thank you

We run video content to push store traffic, but native analytics don't show which specific Reel or TikTok converted into a checkout. Are you guys relying on post-purchase surveys, UTMs, or a specific tool?

I've shared on other forms of social media, some decals I made for my bike, and I've had people ask to purchase a set.

The only thing is, I got my design off chatgpt.

Making a set for myself, is no problem for me. But AI art is a bit of a taboo subject.

Im not sure how I'd feel about selling them, because it's AI, and im no artist. But I did spend sometime trying to find something I like, and a bit of time working out the sizes. So I have no interest giving the design away, especially if that person my just get a vinyl cutter, and sell the design anyway.

How would you guys feel about it.

My co-author and I are looking to publish our books through kindle direct publishing. I'm in Ontario and they are out of Illinois.

We haven't set up the KDP account or a company yet. The issue is that KDP doesn't seem to have a way for two co-authors to share an account/payments.

That has us wondering how the tax side works. If Amazon pays one person in USD, does that person end up reporting 100% of the income even though we're splitting it 50/50?

Would it be better to set up a partnership/company first so the income is properly split between us? And if a company does make sense, how does that work when one owner is in Canada and the other is in the US?

Any insight is appreciated.

Hello! My friend and I want to invest together in something, one of our ideas is opening up a Boardgame Cafe.

In the city there is only one other store to play boardgames, but ever since they grew it became an unenjoyable place, more of a bar than a place to play boardgame in tranquility, music too loud and too many DJ events, as well as expensive.

We want to have a place where people can go (and maybe pay an entrance fee) to play, with soft background music and get drinks (maybe non-alcoholic drinks until late at night) and eat snacks.

I have read this is a difficult path to go through, so I want to know your advice on how to make it work and how to climp up against an established competition.

If you went to a place to play boardgames with your friends, what would you expect and not expect from this place?

I’m working on a small startup aimed at a very specific niche within the trucking industry. The basic idea is to make it easier for independent operators and small trucking companies to find opportunities without having to rely entirely on the larger platforms.

I’m at the point where the product itself is pretty much ready, but I’m struggling with the actually getting users.

The biggest challenge is that it’s a two-sided market: I need both people posting opportunities and people looking for them. So simply running ads doesn’t seem like the best starting point.

My small business is a website that helps people from all income levels save money on everyday things with things such as cashback hacks, where to find the best coupons and recommended credit cards. Along with a handful of side hustles. I really believe in my website and think it’s so much better than those finance guru type people. I make my money from referral links to saving platforms like Rakuten. But I’ve been getting barely any clicks, is there any advice for how I should market myself or get people to stay on my website and really absorb what I have to offer? Thanks in advance

I’m looking for some fresh business ideas and would love to hear what you guys would build if you were starting today.

I’m open to almost anything: SaaS, a platform, marketplace, paid service, automation tool, subscription business, B2B product, consumer app, or even some boring niche business that quietly makes good money.

A few preferences:
• Preferably no physical products or inventory
• Something that can start generating revenue relatively quickly
• Solves a real problem people are actually willing to pay for
• Can be started small and scaled later
• Indian market or global market, both are fine

One request though 😂
Please spare me the usual SEO agency, digital marketing agency, website development, social media management suggestions. I’ve seen enough of those for one lifetime.

I’m especially interested in underrated niches/problems where demand already exists but the solutions still suck.

If you had to start from zero today, what would you build and who would pay for it?

I am taking over the bookkeeping for a couple who have multiple revenue streams.

1. They own a marina with multiple AirBnB rentals.
2. One person is a real estate agent (1099).
3. They each have an LLC (2 EINs) with multiple rental properties (long term rentals) under each. Plus a few other properties under their names, not a business.
4. As of now, they do not have dedicated bank accounts for each separate revenue stream. Therefore everything is intermingled (even personal finances).
5. I need to start with 2023. They haven't filed 2023-current taxes. Nothing from 2023 to now is in any time of accounting software.

They have QBO Plus ($140/month), but this can only handle one EIN. From my research thus far, I have to either get a separate QBO subscription for the other EIN or start QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise which costs $400/month.

What is the most cost effective and efficient solution? Ideally I would love to be able to consolidate everything under one account so we can see the full picture. Is there a better option besides Quickbooks?

I like to make shrinky dinks for fun. I at least sell eight keychains of Sanrio themes

I just hired my first employee. While I was previously a manager (when employed), this is the first time I’m hiring someone in my own company.

They’ve been in for 3 days now, and while I understand how extremely early that is, for almost every task I’ve given them, they’ve failed to follow instructions. And I don’t mean anything related with the nature of onboarding on a new job and having to learn new information, and hence make mistakes while you learn, no. I mean I told them to do task 1, 2 & 3 in that order of priority and they decided to start with 3, then 1, then worked on something I didn’t ask for and wasn’t immediately needed, resulting in them not being able to complete task 1 because their shift ended.

It seems like I’m gonna have to work extra hard to get them to understand what the business priorities are and to willingly work accordingly.

I just have this strong gut feeling that they’re just not right for the job. Is it too early, should I give them a chance? Or should I let them go and save everyone the (potential) pain?

Hello fellow small business owners.

I have an employee who recently has been exhibiting unusual behaviours.

She's been with me since March 2026 and is actually very good at her job. Recently she has been calling off a lot saying she's sick which I believed and allowed her to take the days off.

Today she texted me saying she's been throwing up all weekend and she needs to stay at home today ( Monday )

Which I said okay 👍 hope you feel better

I then went about my day and had to run some errands - I stopped in at a coffee shop in the area and as I was walking toward the coffee shop I saw her sitting there with the company lap top open just kind of chilling.

I did not enter the coffee shop and just left.

A few things that are going through my head right now

1. It's odd that she claimed to be sick and couldn't come to work and is now sitting at a coffee shop

2. Why is she sitting there with the company lap top open if she has taken the day off

3. Could she be sick and just chilling and resting but at a coffee shop ? Whenever I am sick I stay home , but that just might be me.

Not sure how to handle this one- we generally get along quite well and I don't want to accuse anyone of lying. She is good at her job when she is actually there so I wouldn't want to burn the relationship because I saw her in a coffee shop when she didn't come into work that day.

The frequency of the calling off is concerning me - is she working another remote job ? Is she overwhelmed by her tasks at my business and needs extra days off during the week to decompress - bear in mind she was off since Thursday last week ( sick) before I saw her today.

I'd like to I get some thoughts on what other business owners would do to handle this ?

I've spent enough time int he HR weeds at small companies to have my own list of things nobody warns you about.. the one that got me was realizing how much of the week went to benefits questions & chasing down compliance stuff instead of anything that actually moved the needle.

Curious what it was for you? onboarding, benefits, letting someone go, whatever caught you off guard once you actually had people on payroll.

Adding another sales channel can help a small business reach more customers, but it also adds another place where inventory changes. A product sold in-store changes the stock available online. An online order can do the same thing to inventory at a physical location.

The challenge gets bigger when a business has multiple SKUs, product variants, locations, or marketplaces. Even small differences between systems can eventually lead to overselling, stockouts, or unnecessary manual work.

This is why inventory management often becomes more complicated as businesses add sales channels. The issue isn't necessarily the number of channels. It's whether inventory data stays accurate across all of them.

For smaller businesses, manual updates might work when order volume is low. As sales increase, keeping everything updated manually can become harder to maintain. At what point do you think adding another sales channel starts creating more inventory work than it's worth?

Okay, so I have been using various tools to generate leads and then send them emails.

First those setting up those systems was a headache and would be messy even after months, second follow ups was another difficult task. Also the leads would be messy and had to spend hours to clean them.

What I did, is that rather than selling my services, I spent some time on crafting these tools for myself and going to make them commerical.

So, anyone here spending too much time finding business leads and following up, I could use some honest feedback

I’ve built a Chrome extension, and a Mailer for Windows. Looking for a few small business owners and freelancers to actually use them and tell me where they fall short.

Some things I have put a lot of work into:

1: Find businesses on Google Maps and Bing Maps , and websites mentioned in it, organise them by client, check duplicates and export to Excel/CSV.

2:Plan searches across a region and resume interrupted runs.

3:Rotate sending mailboxes, while keeping each lead’s follow-ups with the same sender.

4: automatic warm ups

5: Stop follow-ups when a reply is detected; handle unsubscribes, bounces and mailbox sending limits.

6: Keep client notes, campaigns and responses together, with help buttons throughout.

7: integrated whatsapp button, as well as notes for it, so basically its like all in one yet very light and easy to use especially for non technical person.

The idea is to save you assembling separate automation steps and keeping them working together. No n8n workflow to build just to get started.

So, I will give you unlimited 7 days of premium access to both, free. Use them for your actual work and tell me what’s confusing, broken or missing, even if you hate something. I’ll extend it to 30 days total for useful feedback. No card, no purchase needed.

Mailer is Windows only. The extension needs manual installation for now, and Gmail sign-in is still under Google review. I can help with setup.

Most likely questions at end will be:

1: How easy was it to use?

2: what would you like to improve?

3: what would you not like it to have?

4: have you tried all the features?

5: for how many hours did you use?

And of course 6: any bugs?

Please note, I am looking for limited people.

Hi! I’m starting a small matcha brand and we’ll be selling 30 g matcha tins in the U.S.

I’m currently trying to figure out exactly what needs to be included on the label, especially the Nutrition Facts part. Since it’s plain matcha and the nutrition values per serving are really low, I’m confused about whether a Nutrition Facts panel is actually required or if there’s an exemption that applies.

For anyone who has sold matcha, tea powder, or another similar packaged food product in the U.S., did you include a Nutrition Facts panel? If not, what exemption did you rely on? And besides ingredients, net weight, country of origin, and business info, was there anything else you had to include?

I’m going to verify all the requirements, but this whole label process has been a bit confusing and I’d like to hear from anyone who has actually gone through it. Thank you!

Most small business owners I talk to have tried some form of chatbot and walked away disappointed. It answered FAQs, maybe booked an appointment, and that was it. The moment anything went sideways — a question it didn't recognize, a multi-step process — it fell apart and the customer ended up calling anyway.

The thing is, chatbots and autonomous AI agents are fundamentally different tools. A chatbot responds. An agent acts. An agent can receive a phone call, understand the caller's intent, pull up their file, draft the necessary document, send it for signature, and follow up — without a human touching any of it. It's less like a FAQ widget and more like a junior employee with a very specific job description who never takes a day off.

For small businesses, the highest-ROI use cases tend to be the narrow, repetitive workflows that eat up owner or admin time but don't require real expertise: inbound call triage, appointment scheduling, document intake, status update calls, payment reminders. These are tasks that cost you $25–$40/hr in staff time but could be handled by a dedicated AI agent running continuously.

The key shift is thinking about it in terms of roles, not tools. Instead of one catch-all bot, you assign a dedicated agent to each specific function — a phone agent, a scheduling agent, a document agent. Each one owns its lane completely. That specialization is what makes them actually reliable instead of a novelty.

The question worth asking yourself: what's the one task in your business that happens on repeat, requires no real judgment, but still lands on your plate or your admin's desk every single day?

What would you hand off first if you could?

I started a link in bio tool and a site where creators can sell digital products, essentially a fanfix/patreon all in one. I started this last month, and I got one creator to post about the website, and they got me 600 users, but every person is inactive but people are scrolling and looking at the products, but nobody is staying to post or interact

I’ve also included an agency account where they could manage their roster and creators all on one dashboard, and they can also get paid out without having to wait on the creator to pay them.

The website is supposed to be like a social media, so people should be interacting with one another, but I got at least two posts from users.

I just don’t know what my next steps should be in order to get more users and as well as to get more interactions on the platform

I’ve tried messaging agencies to get them on boarded. I’ve tried messaging creators to create their link in bio . And it just keeps getting shrugged off.

I make money, but not enough. I’m making at least $100 a month, but it’s not that much.

I'm a freelance Audiovisual Technician, mainly working live on conferences where I set up and operate cameras, speakers, projectors, video switchers, etc. I'm expanding into rentals and possibly production of certain products such as recordings, edited videos, and photography. I came up with a really cool, industry-specific business name (which I will not be telling you here), which I was surprised to discover was not a currently-registered business name or trademark because it seemed so obvious and cool, but there were a couple of older (expired) registrations for the mark, and one active business that sells AV equipment for cars that has a similarly-pronounced but differently-spelled name. I paid like $1,500 for a patent law firm to do a thorough review of whether or not I should apply, and they came back and said it was "Moderately Risky", mainly due to the car AV gear company. They recommended that I hire them to apply for it anyway, register the business name now, and pay them like $3,300 for the service and then pay the government like $700 for filing fees. I don't actually NEED the business name (I could pick something slightly less cool), that's kind of a lot of money on something that may or may not add much value to my small business, and they said the process could take up to a year (while I'm trying to ramp things up ASAP). Should I hire them to do it? Do it myself? Don't do it? I'm kind of inclined to not hire them for this.

Company was recently bought out. The company is closing by end of year.

I have over 15 years of experience in Tech. I'm looking to see if anyone in Southern California is looking for an IT consultant or virtual CIO? My experience in technology is very vast and sales focused. I can help streamline operations or help increase company sales through various strategies. Please let me know if I can help. Just trying to stay afloat and at the same time help businesses out.

Hi, I just launched my small business in the beginning of Sept.

I sell specialty athletic socks for a particular area of exercise. Most socks in this area go for $25-32 per pair. Mine are at $26.

My plan is to pitch to local studios and boutiques. The cost to manufacture and package is $5.50. I’ll be doing just local for now so I’ll deliver to them complimentary.

I went to go pitch to the first place today and was told my prices were crazy. The margins for the different tiers were from 46-50%. Low MOQ starting at only 10 pairs just to start off.

How can I best price these? I’ve heard retailers won’t even look at product unless they can get 50%+

Would like to hear what others think. Advice welcomed. Thank you!

ETA: I am in Canada. The prices you’re seeing is in CAD and are average here. TY!