u/00josa

I run a mid-sized contracting business, and right now I'm handling professional license verification manually, which means digging through state databases and cross-checking expiration dates every time I bring someone new onto a job. It's eating up hours I don't have, and I'm worried something will slip through the cracks and leave me exposed if a contractor's license has lapsed without my knowledge. I need a more reliable way to verify credentials upfront and get alerted before any license expires, rather than finding out after the fact. Ideally this process would also keep a clean record I can pull up quickly if a client or inspector ever asks for proof.

We're juggling speaker outreach, contract tracking, scheduling, and travel logistics across spreadsheets and email threads, and it's becoming hard to keep everything organized as our event calendar grows. I want to find speaker management tools that can centralize speaker profiles, availability, and communication history in one place. Ideally the system would also handle things like contract status, payment tracking, and automated reminders so nothing falls through the cracks. I'm also curious whether these tools can integrate with our existing event platform or calendar systems to cut down on manual data entry.

Does an LLM gateway just sit between my app and the model provider to handle things like rate limiting, cost tracking, and fallbacks, or is it solving a problem I don't actually have yet at my scale? I'd rather not add another layer of infrastructure unless it's going to save me real headaches down the road.

I keep seeing agencies pitch full account management, PPC, listing optimization, the works. Some charge flat retainers, others take a percentage of sales. I'm trying to figure out if any of this is worth it or if it's mostly people reselling stuff you could learn yourself in a few months.

For those who've hired one:
- What did they actually move the needle on, if anything?
- What made you regret it (or not)?
- And if you'd never hire one, what's the alternative when you hit a ceiling on time or expertise?

Not looking for pitches, just honest experiences either way.