u/Smokeyisdad

So I just found this subreddit today and, wow, I think I found my people.

A little backstory: about 5 years ago, I ran a VERY small scooping business. I only had around 5 customers, but I actually enjoyed doing it. Unfortunately, I ended up having to quit because of my job at the time.

I recently moved to a new area and decided I'd like to give it another shot. I already have the company name picked out and have my services figured out. The basic once or twice-a-week scooping, a yard spray treatment, and some litter box services as well to reach more customers.

I've actually got 2,500 postcards being printed right now. Once they arrive, I'm planning to take them to my regular job (I work for USPS) and use EDDM to have them delivered to specific routes in the area.

Here's where I think things could get interesting.

The area I moved to only seems to have one other person doing this. I hesitate to even call them a competitor because they have a Facebook page, but not much of a presence from what I can tell. There aren't any major companies servicing this area either.

So part of me is thinking... this could actually be my opportunity to become THE local company for this area.

I do wish I had found this subreddit a few days ago, though, because I've already gone pretty far down the rabbit hole. 😂 I've already spent about $500 on equipment and supplies, and the postcards were another $250. The EDDM portion is going to cost me around another $550.

I'm thinking about saving the remaining postcards for another EDDM campaign later, or possibly putting them in the local PO boxes (my boss has already approved that).

I've already got Square set up to take payments, my services and pricing are set up, and I've printed out my service list along with a guide for myself so I don't completely screw up when talking to potential customers. 😂

I also made a Google Form that asks all the important questions so I can get the information I need to give someone an accurate quote.

At this point, I'm too far down the rabbit hole to just give up. But honestly, I'm nervous as hell. I really want to make this work, and I'm worried I'm going to spend all this money and end up failing.

For those of you who have been doing this for a while: what advice would you give someone starting over from scratch? What mistakes should I avoid, and what helped you actually get your first customers and keep them?

Any advice is appreciated. I really don't want to give up before I even get started.

So I’m planning to open my server to the public this weekend, but I’ve been running into some connection issues during testing.

The server is hosted on a dedicated machine at my house (Ryzen 7 5700X, NVMe storage, the whole setup). It’s on a 1Gb ethernet connection and routed through TCPShield for protection, plus I’m using a dedicated IP for a bit of extra security and professionalism.

The issue: Players will randomly get kicked all at the same time throughout the day with the message mentioned above. The server itself doesn’t crash, and they can rejoin immediately, but obviously that’s not ideal for a public server.

I’ve checked the logs and nothing stands out as a clear cause. I’ve also tried some common suggestions like lowering render distance, but that didn’t make any difference. Ive checked all the firewalls and in inbound rules. All looks good. I really cant find much else out there.

Anyone have ideas on what might be causing this?

https://mclo.gs/lblnS0h