r/EntrepreneurRideAlong

Hello fellow travelers!

I am starting a business renting out indoor plants to offices. I have the wholesale product supply & knowledge locked down but need help with best software tools.

We will be renting out indoor plants, monthly fee. As part of this we will be doing visits every 2 weeks to feed, water, prune, and replace plants as necessary.

I’m in Arizona if it makes a difference.

What tools do you recommend to track inventory, track the product at clients, and also to track that our team members are actually visiting each plant at each client location? (This is my key concern).

Plus integration with a CRM, lead tracking, billing etc. Thanks for your thoughts!

Say your store has a strong sales week, but suppliers need paying before the money reaches your bank. Would you pay more for faster payouts, or keep a bigger cash buffer and stick with cheaper fees?

I work with Whop on content and this is a comparison I’d rather hear about than another feature checklist. For people using Stripe, Whop or another payments platform, has payout timing ever mattered enough to change providers? What made the switch worth it?

I'm building something called LATTICE, and I'm at the point where the product is almost ready for its first real group of users.

The original idea was pretty simple:

What if the professional identity/networking of LinkedIn, the actual conversations of Reddit, and the free education of YouTube existed in the same business network?

But while building it, I realized that it wasn't unique enough.

Combining three existing products just gives you another platform with profiles, posts, videos and a feed...

There has to be a reason to actually come back!

So I've been thinking about the problem carefully;

A professional network shouldn't just know who you are.

It should eventually understand:

What do you know?
What do you need?
What can you help someone with?
What are you trying to accomplish right now?

That's starting to shape what I'm building.

Someone might be:

• looking for a referral partner
• trying to hire their first employee
• looking for someone who understands commercial insurance
• trying to learn local SEO
• able to help someone with bookkeeping
• looking for feedback on a new offer
• trying to meet other owners in their industry

Instead of optimizing everything around "here's more content to scroll," I want the eventual experience to be closer to:

Here are 3 people worth meeting.
Here are 2 problems you/your business could solve.
Here's someone looking for something you provide.
Here's a resource related to a problem you're working on.
Here's a conversation worth joining.

I also think professional reputation online is backwards.

Follower count doesn't necessarily mean someone is useful.

I'd much rather know:

How many people have you helped?
What have you taught?
What questions have you answered?
What introductions have you made?
What do other businesses actually trust you to know?

A brand-new member with 0 followers but 15 years of experience should be able to give an incredible answer and have it reach the people who need it.

Another principle I'm becoming pretty convinced about:

The goal shouldn't be maximizing time on platform.

If LATTICE introduces you to someone valuable, helps you solve something, teaches you something useful, or creates an opportunity and you close the app afterward, that's a win.

I'd rather eventually measure things like:

Questions answered.
Problems solved.
Introductions made.
Relationships created.
Resources used.
Opportunities connected.

rather than "minutes watched."

The first version is much simpler than all of this.

Profiles, businesses, departments, discussions, networking, resources, events, introductions and ways for members to contribute/teach.

It's free, and the Community is intended to stay free.

I'm spending this week fixing the last launch issues, creating the initial resource library, and putting together the first group rather than opening it completely empty.

If anyone wants to ride along from the beginning, I'm putting together the founding waitlist.

But I'm actually more interested in the discussion:

What would a business network have to do for you to actually return to it every week?

Not "what feature sounds cool?"

What would make it genuinely useful enough that you'd remember it exists?

I'm going to use the answers as I build.

Saw a line this week from Paul Warren that I haven't been able to shake:

“Revenue is the goal. Conversion rate is a metric. Most founders set targets on the metric.”

His nightmare version was even better: a quarter where every number you tracked improved and the bank account did not.

I keep noticing the ad-account version of this with the ecom store owners i work with / talk to.

Meta says the campaign had a great month. ROAS is up. CPA is down. The dashboard is green.

Then you look at what actually happened in the store and somehow the story isn't nearly as exciting.

Sometimes there's a perfectly boring explanation. Attribution window, duplicate events, returning customers getting credited somewhere weird, whatever.

But IMO the interesting moment is before you know the explanation:

two numbers you expected to move together... didn't.

When's the last time that happened in your business?

Not necessarily ads. A metric looked great, but the money disagreed.

What were the two numbers, and what eventually tipped you off?

Spent years running ecommerce businesses, hands-on across pretty much every part of it, supply and sourcing, running the stores day to day, social and paid marketing, managing income and margins. Hit a real peak at one point, then went through a stretch where traffic stayed steady but sales quietly dropped. Took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure out why.

Turned out it wasn't one big thing, it was a stack of small ones. Ad creative that had gone stale without me noticing, same audience seeing the same ad for months straight. A checkout with more friction than I realized. Product pages that explained the product fine but never gave anyone a reason to buy now instead of just bookmarking it and leaving.

Since then I've gotten better at spotting this stuff fast, in my own businesses and a few others I've helped since.

If anyone's got a store that's plateaued or just isn't converting the way it should, happy to take a quick look and point out what's likely going on, no charge for a first pass. If it turns into something deeper, that's a separate conversation, but most of the time the real issue is something fixable once you actually see it clearly.

I've been in business for almost 7 years and I've spent almost 2 of them building the company I run now.

The whole time it was a bet. My thesis was that the current leaders in my industry are locked into a model that works against them over time, and that they don't really see it. I designed everything around that.

Now the bet looks right. We're signing partners fast. Nearly everyone in our target group that we talk to decides to move over to us, and most of them say this is what was missing on the market. In the last week 14 out of 20 people said yes. They're really excited about it.

So there's a real shot at becoming the leader in this space and pushing the old players out. From here it's mostly a matter of doing the work.

And that's where I got stuck. I know there's always uncertainty in business, but the big question is answered, and the possible scale is a lot bigger than anything I ran before (I'm in fintech right now). It became real and I freeze, I think about it constantly. There's still a lot to build before our position is really locked in, and I can't decide what to do first.

Excited and paralyzed at the same time which is strange feeling. I know this is a first world problem, but I'd like to hear from people who've been through it. Anyone?

(I used AI to write this post, but its content is real).

Four months ago I launched a speaking confidence app called Magnetic. It has made about $4,000, and I've more or less stopped working on it. I picked the idea because similar apps were making money, not because I cared about the problem.

I posted simple shorts where I act surprised and use a text hook like “25 years of fearing public speaking, and now I find this??”

In the beginning, 2/3 went viral at the same time; I generated 3 million views in one month, and on my best day I got 200 downloads.

But the more I posted, the more the format stopped working.

I then tried new formats, spending hours scrolling Instagram to find the next viral format, but so far have failed to generate anywhere near the same amount of views.

I decided I had enough and listed it on TrustMRR for sale; hopefully someone will buy it and make it more successful.

The lesson for me was to build something you care about. Everyone on X says copy what works but the reality is if you don’t love what you build you will quit before it ever becomes successful (if your like me!).

So now I am starting a YouTube series where I build my next app fully in public; the app is called SearchTok.[app] and it solves the exact issue I had with Magnetic - finding viral outliers! I plan on showing everything behind the scenes, and I am nearly done recording my first video. I posted the landing page with a waitlist yesterday :)

So if you're building an app, try to make it something you care about! It will make the journey a lot more fun

Everyone here, know the importance of sacrifices in order to start and grow its business.

some have taken loans, some had to quit their jobs and some postponned starting a familly until they build themselves.

now imagine sacrificing everything to build the momentum, then a law will halt it for a year. potentially losing everything.

This is what happened to me:

i finally learned the skills i need and put time and effort into starting a new business. all the vision i had was now being realised. the business is doing great btw, at intial stages, audience love the product and find real value in it. im the main guy behind, from technical implementation to sales. i do most of the things.

then I get a mendatory order to join the national military service(mendatory for every young adult).

so you need to either abondon your business for a whole year or you become an insubordinate in the eye of the law. and let me tell you its not a pleasent experience: restriction access, can't travel abroad, can't leave your hometown, a potential police check can get you caught and forces you to go and spend the year.

It could sound like a bitter rent or a low agency. but i only have you my internet strangers to share this with you

have you faced anything like this before?

I run a small business, and my contact form keeps getting filled in by the same guy. Same name, a different Gmail every time, posing as a buyer with a budget and a timeframe, then: "we ran a backend analysis of your website, your SEO steps are incomplete, send us your number for a quick call". Ten times now.

It got me wondering how other owners deal with this stuff. Small or big, any field:

1. What's your first reaction when one lands, and why?

2. What gets it deleted in the first line?

3. Has one ever made you stop and actually consider it? What was different about that one?

Now's the time to let it all out, don't hold back 😄

Hey guys wanted to chat and see if someone can recommend something . So couple of days ago I seen ad where ai receptionist talked like old grouchy man but sounded very very real where it will confuse 99% of people that it’s ai and that was advertising for some company called bland but after going to their website agents sound not too different from what you get on 11 labs etc

I’m in very competitive niche as company owner and my calls are very expensive so I’m trying to set something up which is like real person sound as much as it possible since a lot of people drop call when they realize it’s ai

I already have high level and call rail and wanted to see if someone can advice on settings and voices and all set up to sound it most real to not loose customers

Thanks

The Core Concept: The Blue Ocean Strategy is a framework for shifting focus away from battling competitors in crowded markets, and instead focusing on creating entirely new, uncontested market spaces.

​Red Oceans vs Blue Oceans:

Red Oceans: The known market space. Industry rules are defined, and companies fight fiercely for a share of existing demand. This cutthroat competition shrinks profit margins and turns the water "bloody."

Blue Oceans: The unknown, untapped market space. Demand is created rather than fought over, allowing for rapid, highly profitable growth without direct competition.

Creating "Value Innovation": This is the engine of the strategy. Traditional business rules say you must choose between offering high value at a high cost, or low value at a low cost. Value innovation breaks this rule by simultaneously driving costs down while driving buyer value up.

Reducing Dependence on Competition: To break away from industry norms, organizations use a four-step framework to rethink their offerings:

Eliminate: Remove costly industry-standard features that offer no real value to buyers.

Reduce: Decrease elements that are over-designed purely to beat competitors.

Raise: Increase factors that customers genuinely care about, well above the industry standard.

Create: Introduce entirely new value for customers that the industry has never offered before.

Innovation & Market Opportunities: Identifying a blue ocean requires looking outward. Instead of obsessing over direct competitors, organizations must innovate by analyzing non-customers. By understanding exactly why people refuse to buy from the current industry, companies can build solutions tailored to untapped demand.

The Benefits:

Temporary monopoly-like advantages in a new space.

Higher profit margins due to eliminating expensive, unnecessary features.

Strong brand equity as the undisputed pioneer of a new category.

The Challenges:

Risk of misjudging the market and launching into an empty ocean where no demand exists.

Internal friction, as stakeholders often resist abandoning traditional competitive metrics.

Eventual imitation, as blue oceans inevitably turn red once competitors see the profits.

Key Managerial Lessons:

Benchmarking against rivals simply turns your product into a copy of theirs.

Growth lies in understanding the pain points of the people who aren't buying your industry's products.

Pivoting to a blue ocean requires full organizational alignment; marketing, operations, and cost structuring must move together.

(Note: Written for a university project on business frameworks! What do you think is the hardest part: finding the Blue Ocean, or getting internal stakeholders to stop obsessing over what competitors are doing?)