u/Big_Nebula_2604

Did a rough time audit last month. Just supplier communication, not including internal ops, not customer service, just the back and forth with suppliers. Came out to about 11 hours a week.

Broken down: about 4 hours on follow-ups that should have been resolved the first time but weren't because the supplier replied with a vague answer and I had to reclarify. About 3 hours on quote requests and comparison. pulling info from emails into a spreadsheet to compare. The rest was ETA tracking, exception handling, and the occasional dispute.

The frustrating part isn't the volume, it's how much of it is reactive. I'm not doing anything strategic in those 11 hours. I'm moving information from one place to another, over and over.

I've started offloading some of this. The follow-up and ETA tracking is now handled through Accio Work. I use it as my general business AI assistant, but it's been surprisingly solid at running these specific follow-up sequences automatically and escalating to me when something is genuinely stuck. That's knocked maybe 5 hours off the weekly total. The quote comparison piece I'm still doing manually because I haven't trusted any tool enough to hand that off completely.

I know some of you are running much higher volumes than I am. How are you handling this at scale? And for anyone in the 200-600 orders/month range what does your supplier communication workflow actually look like?

Not looking for a solution pitch, genuinely curious what other operators have figured out.

Genuine question from someone who just ordered online for the first time.

Background: I've always gone to an optician, always paid whatever they charged, never really questioned it. Recently tried ordering online for the first time mostly because the price difference was too hard to ignore my last pair from an optician was $340, this one came to $20 total through Eydology.

They feel right to me. No headache after a full day of screen work, no eyestrain, everything looks sharp. But I realize "feels right" isn't exactly a scientific measurement.

At the optician there's always that whole process, the chair, the machine, the "better with 1 or 2". and at the end you walk out with some confidence that someone checked everything. With online you're kind of just... trusting the process and hoping your prescription was filled correctly.

So how do you actually verify? Is there a way to check at home, or do you just go back to an optometrist and have them measure? Has anyone had an experience where the prescription was clearly off and how did you know?

Asking because I want to keep ordering online but also want to make sure I'm not slowly damaging my eyes by wearing something slightly wrong.

Genuine survey question because I'm curious how different this is across business types.

For me, the answer has always been supplier communication. Not because it's hard because it's relentless. Every reorder cycle, every new product launch, every quality issue: follow-ups, follow-ups, follow-ups. It never ends.

I've tried automating this a few different ways. Basic email templates worked until they didn't. CRM tools, too much manual input required. The first thing that's actually moved the needle is using Accio Work as an agent to manage the supplier communication queue. It tracks outstanding replies, drafts follow-ups based on context, and flags anything time sensitive.

Not magic. Still needs oversight. But it handles about 80% of the queue without me touching it. I'm curious what other people wish they could fully offload. Guessing it varies massively bookkeeping? Inventory? Customer service? Social media?

So I need someone to tell me if this is normal because I feel like I've been scammed in reverse.

Background: I've worn glasses since I was 19. Always went to an optician, always paid whatever they told me to pay, never really questioned it. My last pair was $340 after the "basic" lens package. Before that, $280. I just assumed that's what glasses cost and moved on.

A few weeks ago I was venting about it to a friend and she mentioned she'd been buying hers online for like $10–15. I assumed she had a very simple prescription or very low standards. Mine is -3.50 / -3.00 with astigmatism in both eyes, which has always been used to justify the higher price at the optician ("your lenses are more complex").

I ordered a pair anyway. Mostly as an experiment. Told myself if they were bad I'd just have a funny story.

They arrived in about 2.5 weeks. Came with a hard case, cleaning cloth, the whole thing. First thing I noticed is the frames feel more solid than I expected — not premium, but not "I paid $11 for these" either. Put them on. Prescription feels right. Wore them for a full workday in front of a screen. No headache, no eyestrain, nothing.

It's been three weeks now. I've worn them daily. They've survived being sat on once (my fault). Still fine.

Here's the part I can't get over: the total came to $20.something. Frames plus lenses, shipped. I have spent more than that on lunch.

I'm not ready to say "everyone should do this" because I genuinely don't know if I got lucky or if this is just... how it works and nobody told me. That's actually why I'm posting. Has anyone else tried this? Is the quality consistent or did I just get a good batch? Would be curious to hear from people with stronger prescriptions too.

Slightly embarrassed about how much I've spent on glasses over the years but here we are

So my company just rolled out ChatGPT Business accounts for the whole marketing team, and honestly, I’m feeling pretty conflicted. On one hand, I’ve been waiting for this because I know how much time it can save. But on the other hand, I’ve got this nagging anxiety that if I use it too much, my manager is going to look at the logs and wonder why they’re paying me a full salary if the AI is doing the heavy lifting. I don't want to come across as the person who’s just outsourcing their entire brain to a bot, but I also don't want to be the dinosaur who works twice as hard for no reason. I’m struggling to figure out where the line is between being an efficient marketer and looking replaceable. Right now, I’ve been mostly using it for the tedious stuff like cleaning up messy CSV data from our Reddit campaigns or turning long, rambling meeting notes into actual action items. It feels safe because it’s just utility work. But when it comes to the real creative stuff, like brainstorming a full campaign strategy or writing core brand copy, I find myself hesitating. I’m worried that if my boss sees me asking ChatGPT for a content strategy, it’ll look like I don’t have any original ideas of my own. I’m curious how those of you with corporate AI accounts are navigating this. Do you just lean into it and show off how fast you’ve become, or do you keep your AI collaboration a bit more low-key? I really want to use this tool to actually get better at my job, not just faster, but I’m terrified of accidentally proving to my lead that they could just hire a cheaper junior to run the prompts instead of me. How do you decide which tasks stay on your desk and which ones you hand over to the AI without losing your professional edge?

I feel like sourcing got a lot more annoying once freight prices and tariffs started moving around constantly. A couple years ago I could roughly estimate landed cost in my head and usually be “close enough.” Now one bad assumption on freight, duties, or HS classification can completely kill the margin.

The part that’s been eating the most time for me lately isn’t even negotiating with suppliers, it’s verifying everything around the quote.

• Making sure the HS code is actually correct.
• Checking whether tariff rates changed recently.
• Trying to figure out if a freight quote is still realistic by the time production finishes.
• Following up with suppliers across time zones without losing days in the process.

I started using accio work mostly because I was tired of manually chasing supplier replies at weird hours and rebuilding the same landed cost calculations over and over in spreadsheets.

It definitely helps organize things, but honestly I still find myself double-checking almost everything important because sourcing mistakes get expensive really fast.

Curious how other people here are handling this now. are you still calculating landed costs manually, or using tools/workflows for it? And how are people protecting themselves against sudden freight spikes or tariff changes midprocess?

kinda freaking out and could really use a sanity check here. I’m working with an agency on an Instagram creator collab. The creator looked solid on paper most of their posts average ~200k views, engagement seemed legit (comments looked real, patterns didn’t feel botted, etc.), so I felt pretty comfortable going into it.

We paid £27k for 6 posts (+10% agency fee on top)

The first post went live about 9 hours ago… and it’s sitting at ~10k views. Which feels way off compared to their usual numbers.

I know 9 hours isn’t the full picture yet, but this gap is big enough that I’m starting to wonder if something’s wrong.

For those of you who’ve done this before, if this does end up underperforming… what’s a realistic way this gets handled?

Also curious how common is it to rescue performance with paid amplification/whitelisting? Is that just normal practice, or does it basically mean the creator couldn’t deliver organically?

Would really appreciate any real-world perspective on this

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I’ve found that relying solely on gut feeling to choose products can lead to unnecessary losses. On the other hand, tracking too many signals like search volume, competitors, and pricing changes can quickly become overwhelming and confusing. Sometimes I even lose sight of why I was interested in the product initially

Lately, I’ve been sticking to a straightforward pre-purchase check to keep things manageable:

• Are people genuinely searching for this, or is it mainly influencer-driven hype?
• Are top sellers differentiating themselves, or is it mostly price competition and copied listings?
• Can I source this product without long lead times or high minimum order quantities?

To help organize these factors, I’ve been using accio work (not affiliated), which pulls together price changes and trend signals in one place. It definitely helps reduce the chaos, but deciding when a product is ready to move forward remains a challenge.

I’m curious how others handle this on a regular basis:

• Which data sources do you rely on to confirm a product isn’t just a short-term trend?
• How do you distinguish between being early to a market and being too early?
• Are there any clear warning signs that make you pass on a product, no matter how promising it seems?

Looking forward to hearing your practical approaches to balancing thoroughness without getting stuck in analysis paralysis

I don’t know when this started, but lately I feel like half my tasks are just… buried somewhere in Slack or my inbox. Someone asks for something in a thread → I think “I’ll get to it” → it disappears.

Or I star an email and then never look at it again.

At some point it just turns into this low-level anxiety that I’m probably missing stuff.

I tried a bunch of small fixes (pinning messages, starring emails, random notes), but none of it really stuck. So recently I tried forcing everything into one place instead of trusting myself to remember where things came from.

Been messing around with accio work for this (not affiliated), mainly because it can pull tasks out of Slack and dump them into something I can actually look at as a list. Then I group things loosely by project and just try to make a weekly board out of it so I know what’s going on.

It’s definitely better than digging through threads, but it’s not perfect. Sometimes things get duplicated, sometimes stuff still slips through, and I’m still figuring out how organized this actually needs to be before it becomes another system I ignore.

Do you just manually move everything into Notion (or something else)? How do you avoid duplicates when the same task shows up in 3 places?

Feels like this should be a solved problem but somehow still isn’t

I’ve been selling across a few different markets recently (US + a couple EU + one APAC), and one thing that keeps tripping me up is localization. translation part is easy. Making it not feel translated is where it gets messy.

I used to just do pretty literal rewrites + maybe tweak a few phrases, but it still felt off. Conversion was fine but never really clicked the same way as the original market.

Lately I’ve been trying to make this more repeatable without turning it into some over engineered workflow:

1. rewriting selling points + FAQs to actually fit how people talk in that market
2. keeping tone aligned with the brand (this is harder than I expected tbh)
3. avoiding certain words that just don’t land or feel too “salesy” in some regions
4. batching everything, then doing manual spot checks instead of over-reviewing every line

I’ve also been testing pulling parts of this into one workflow (using a tool called Accio Work, not affiliated), mostly to reduce the back and forth and random doc chaos. Still feels like more art than system though. Curious how others are handling this:

How do you keep tone consistent across markets without it sounding forced? trying to hear what’s actually working in the wild

I think I had the wrong expectation. I thought using AI would mean less jumping around between tools. But lately it feels like I’m doing more of it, just in a different way

Prompt somewhere → copy output → paste into docs/sheets → open browser to check → go back and re-explain context… repeat

Tried a few setups, all kinda meh. One big chat drifts. Multiple tools = glue work. Agents look cool but I don’t trust them much yet. Been casually trying accio work as a place to keep things together helps a bit, but I’m still double-checking anything important. Curious how people are actually handling this day to day do you just accept the chaos, or did something actually make it better?