u/kobestarr

I'm very much a beginner here and I recently bought a Padel racket from Vinted for £15 because I didn't want to have to spend £4 every time I went to play. I have very quickly saved that money.

I can't help but think that a lot of the stuff around padel rackets is a bit smoke and mirrors, especially as a beginner. I'm currently at around 1.6 and apart from injury which stopped me playing for about 6 weeks i have been playing pretty much every week since the start of this year.

I'd love to know your experiences, guys, of changing rackets and testing rackets and finding how much of an improvement or benefit or non-benefit you noticed or felt.

I'm not interested in particularly knowing what brands you have so don't make this a brand pile on to say X is better than Y for example. I just love to know, without mentioning brands, how much of a marked difference different rackets can make to your game for better or worse.

The the reason I'm asking is because a friend of mine recently dropped £330 on a brand new racket. In my head I'm like, "that's quite a lot when you don't know how to play the game yet!". With that same amount I could have 30-odd games around here (Manchester UK) and maybe a coaching session or two and feel that would improve my game a lot more.

NB the racket I bought from Vinted was nothing special. The listing said it was worth around £75 brand new. I never checked tho! I partly bought it because it is a bit battered and bruised and it means that I don't worry about damaging a brand new racket when going for shots near the glass or cage! I might always buy a second hand racket for this reason!

I go to the cinema all the time and love it, and see it as a core part of my kind of downtime.

I know a lot of friends who haven't been to the cinema for a while and came out recently for both Odyssey and the new Spider-Man film.

It got me thinking: what actually gets you to the cinema? What stops you going?

A few people say they don't like being in the room with other people or they would go if other people would behave themselves.

I do get that to some extent, but then they're still coming out when the screens are the busiest. maybe it just needs to be an undeniable event film?

I'd love to know what your thoughts are

I’m biting the bullet. I’m closing my old account with 26k “subscribers” and starting a new one. Any advice is welcome

Ok - I let myself down and succumbed to the siren song of the Google Ads bod who said “we can get you lots of subscribers to your channel.

It DID work in terms of subscribers. But those subscribers are ghosts. I didn’t pay much and actually forgot for a few months that I was paying and the growth happened and I was quite impressed by that vanity metric. I stopped it all a few months ago though when I realised and wanted to see if I could get any growth organically.

I could not! 🤣 in fact I LOST 150 Subscribers!!!

I say vanity metric in this case as When I upload a video without paying for the attention. I get super low views.

But the slightly encouraging thing is that the views I do get organically are WAY WAY longer than the paid traffic.

So my job this weekend is to shitcan/sunset my current channel and start a brand new one and re upload a handful of the videos that I uploaded in the past few weeks.

I’d love some advice from you about how I should best go about it. Any common pitfalls I should look out for?

I had seen in the past here about not paying for subs or views as it’s all super low engagement. That was after I’d already started though so I decided to stick my head in the sand and hope that it wouldn’t happen to me.

It did.

So I’m here cap in hand looking for other sage advice that I will follow to the letter so I’m not back in a years time telling you all about another slash and burn 🔥

TIA

I’m biting the bullet. I’m closing my old account with 26k “subscribers” and starting a new one. Any advice is welcome

Ok - I let myself down and succumbed to the siren song of the Google Ads bod who said “we can get you lots of subscribers to your channel.

It DID work in terms of subscribers. But those subscribers are ghosts. I didn’t pay much and actually forgot for a few months that I was paying and the growth happened and I was quite impressed by that vanity metric. I stopped it all a few months ago though when I realised and wanted to see if I could get any growth organically.

I could not! 🤣 in fact I LOST 150 Subscribers!!!

I say vanity metric in this case as When I upload a video without paying for the attention. I get super low views.

But the slightly encouraging thing is that the views I do get organically are WAY WAY longer than the paid traffic.

So my job this weekend is to shitcan/sunset my current channel and start a brand new one and re upload a handful of the videos that I uploaded in the past few weeks.

I’d love some advice from you about how I should best go about it. Any common pitfalls I should look out for?

I had seen in the past here about not paying for subs or views as it’s all super low engagement. That was after I’d already started though so I decided to stick my head in the sand and hope that it wouldn’t happen to me.

It did.

So I’m here cap in hand looking for other sage advice that I will follow to the letter so I’m not back in a years time telling you all about another slash and burn 🔥

TIA

I’m biting the bullet. I’m closing my old account with 26k “subscribers” and starting a new one. Any advice is welcome

Ok - I let myself down and succumbed to the siren song of the Google Ads bod who said “we can get you lots of subscribers to your channel.

It DID work in terms of subscribers. But those subscribers are ghosts. I didn’t pay much and actually forgot for a few months that I was paying and the growth happened and I was quite impressed by that vanity metric. I stopped it all a few months ago though when I realised and wanted to see if I could get any growth organically.

I could not! 🤣 in fact I LOST 150 Subscribers!!!

I say vanity metric in this case as When I upload a video without paying for the attention. I get super low views.

But the slightly encouraging thing is that the views I do get organically are WAY WAY longer than the paid traffic.

So my job this weekend is to shitcan/sunset my current channel and start a brand new one and re upload a handful of the videos that I uploaded in the past few weeks.

I’d love some advice from you about how I should best go about it. Any common pitfalls I should look out for?

I had seen in the past here about not paying for subs or views as it’s all super low engagement. That was after I’d already started though so I decided to stick my head in the sand and hope that it wouldn’t happen to me.

It did.

So I’m here cap in hand looking for other sage advice that I will follow to the letter so I’m not back in a years time telling you all about another slash and burn 🔥

TIA

I had been thinking of making my own but there seems to be one dropped here every day it’s very likely there is one better than what I had in mind!

I’m biting the bullet. I’m closing my old account with 26k “subscribers” and starting a new one. Any advice is welcome

Ok - I let myself down and succumbed to the siren song of the Google Ads bod who said “we can get you lots of subscribers to your channel.

It DID work in terms of subscribers. But those subscribers are ghosts. I didn’t pay much and actually forgot for a few months that I was paying and the growth happened and I was quite impressed by that vanity metric. I stopped it all a few months ago though when I realised and wanted to see if I could get any growth organically.

I could not! 🤣 in fact I LOST 150 Subscribers!!!

I say vanity metric in this case as When I upload a video without paying for the attention. I get super low views.

But the slightly encouraging thing is that the views I do get organically are WAY WAY longer than the paid traffic.

So my job this weekend is to shitcan/sunset my current channel and start a brand new one and re upload a handful of the videos that I uploaded in the past few weeks.

I’d love some advice from you about how I should best go about it. Any common pitfalls I should look out for?

I had seen in the past here about not paying for subs or views as it’s all super low engagement. That was after I’d already started though so I decided to stick my head in the sand and hope that it wouldn’t happen to me.

It did.

So I’m here cap in hand looking for other sage advice that I will follow to the letter so I’m not back in a years time telling you all about another slash and burn 🔥

TIA

A few months back I posted on here about rebuilding my window cleaner's website as a favour. He's been at it 35 years, brilliant at the job but his site was a state. I did it partly to help him and half to test everything I'd been reading about AI search for the last year.

I wasn't sure it would do much. Four months on it's done more than I expected.

The site now shows up on ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google's AI answers for his trade across south manchester in the UK. He went from invisible to getting named by the tools people actually use now. For a one-man band that still feels a bit mad.

The slight downside is that working too well!

His last message was asking me to take a load of it back down, because he's getting calls from all over the place he can't physically cover. A bloke who was worried about being quiet a few months ago is now turning work away. 🫣

What it's taught me is how low the bar is for local businesses right now. The website is not doing anything clever. He's just findable, and almost none of his competitors are. The opportunity feels genuinely huge, and most people running these businesses have no idea it's there.

The thing I'm still working out is what he does with the overflow.

I'm tempted to set him up passing the far jobs to other cleaners for a cut/referral, but I don't know if that's a business or just a headache.

If anyone's turned "too many leads" into something useful instead of just saying no, I'd like to hear how.

I’m trying to share the same content that I produce on LinkedIn across other platforms. The idea being to kill two or multiple birds with one stone and keep LinkedIn as the main one that I write for

Mainly Substack to start.

Has anyone here had any success with their content on multiple platforms such as substack?

Would love tips on what works and doesn’t. I haven’t got the lay of the land yet!

I posted in this sub 4 months ago about rebuilding my window cleaner's website as a favour, and him texting me not long after to say the phone wouldn't stop ringing. It did better on here than I ever expected and a few of you asked me to follow up, so here's where it's got to four months on.

Here's the link to the initial post in case you want to check it out:
https://www.reddit.com/r/juststart/comments/1sgnfda/i_rebuilt_my_window_cleaners_website_three_days/

It's still working well and it's and it's caused a problem I genuinely didn't see coming.

The AI search stuff actually worked

The whole reason I did it was to test what I'd spent about a year reading about AI search. Built it on WordPress, nothing clever, but I put in the things that are meant to matter now:

- an llms.txt file at the root so the AI tools can read what he does and where

- a short TLDR and an FAQ on every page

- proper schema behind every page and post

- a fun little interactive widget on the homepage so it wasn't just another dead site

Four months on he comes up on ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google's AI answers for his trade across his area. For a one-man band with no ad budget, that still feels mad to me.

The Problem

He's now getting more work than he can physically do, and a big chunk of it is from places he can't cover. His last message was asking me to strip a load of the location stuff back out because he's getting calls from all over. So someone who was worried about being quiet in the spring is now turning jobs away.

I don't want to just delete those areas because I'll cut off the boundary customers he does want. So I'm after ideas for how where he keeps the reach but filters the enquiries, and I haven't cracked it yet.

Any ideas from you guys would be much appreciated

I think a key takeaway is still that most local businesses are still completely invisible to these tools. The bar is on the floor. So if you get the basics right and an ordinary tradesman can outrank companies ten times his size in AI search, and quickly.

The thing I'm still chewing on is whether the answer is a referral setup so him passing the far jobs to cleaners in those areas and taking a cut of their first job. Has anyone actually built something like that, or is it more a pain in the ass than it's worth?

OR

maybe just accept that you cannot help with some proportion of the new interest and just politely decline?

Mine is getting refurbished hardware directly from the supplier.

I was talking to some friends yesterday. One was in the market for a new MacBook Air. I told him to go on the Apple site and search the refurbished ones.

No one knew what I was talking about!

On the Apple Store you can get refurbished computers, iPhones, iPads etc for much cheaper than if you bought them from brand new.

The only difference is people have bought them new but then returned them. Usually in the same condition as new and then the Apple bods check them out.

They have the same warranty as the brand new one and you’ll save a few hundred quid in some cases.

The main downside is that you can’t specify what you want. But in some cases for me I have bought higher spec kit for less so I’ve never had an issue.

I’d love to hear your tips especially relating to holidays and travel!

Took the family to Alton Towers yesterday and spent most of it in the CBeebies bit, the toddler-to-about-eight end of the park where the big thrill is Hey Duggee waving at you and nobody's screaming 'because they want to go faster", they're screaming as they got the wrong colour Ice Lolly! 🤣

I genuinely lovely part of the park and the staff were faultless.

We're in the queue for the new Bluey ride (which is brilliant, do it). It's 55 minutes long according to the app. Around 10-15 minutes in, my six-year-old announces the toilet situation, so my wife takes him off while I hold our spot.

Now, the toilets aren't super close, he dawdles, gets distracted, does the full tour, and they don't get back until I'm basically at the front. So they wait to the side and rejoin me there.

The staff member running the queue very politely says that strictly they'd have to send us back to the start, because from where they're standing two people have just appeared at the front who they never saw queue.

No attitude, totally reasonable, just doing the job. Honestly they were great about the whole thing.

And I get the problem. They can't tell my genuinely-needed-the-toilet kid from a family who wandered off for a Mr Whippy and drifted back.

They look identical from the gate. But it's stuck with me because in that part of the park it feels like a shared thing. Every queue is knackered parents with distractible toddlers, and I don't think I've stood in one for 20 minutes without a parent having to peel off and rejoin. When people have gone past me, either direction, I've just thought "yeah, go and do your thing." If someone's polite about it I couldn't care less.

And yeah, before anyone says it, I know this is a completely different conversation if we're talking Nemesis or Oblivion, a queue full of adults with every incentive to skip. I'm specifically asking about the little-kids end, where basically everyone's there with a young kid in the exact same boat.

I'd love to know your thoughts on this:

↳ Does holding a place still count if they're gone most of the queue, or is there a point where it stops being fair on the folk behind?

↳ In the family zone specifically, where everyone's wrangling a toddler, does that change the rules at all, or a queue's a queue no matter who's in it?

↳ Should the parks just have an actual family break policy so it's not left to an awkward gate decision, or is that overthinking a wee?

Not looking to slag anyone off, the staff were brilliant. Just curious where the CasualUK jury lands.

For context - I went to a wedding in Liverpool recently where it was a buffet.

I couldn’t get my head around what the lovely serving people were asking me when they asked if I want some “Scouse” whilst hovering a ladle over what I thought was Lancashire hotpot.

I asked the poor guy to repeat himself 3 or 4 times. My wife who was next in line was mortified!!!

It’s clear that I’m an ingoramus- but I spent the rest of the night laughing my head off (by myself) at my recent “discovery” that the Scouse refers to a foodstuff and a people.

I should point out that I consider myself to be a Manc but grew up in Liverpool in my early childhood and support Liverpool Football Club.

I was laughing mainly as I SHOULD have known this…

Did you know Scouse was also food?

What have you guys recently learned about any part of The UK which is common knowledge? I’m certain there’s stuff that I’ve missed and would love to learn from you all…