I have seen many rich people's interview and when they are asked what skills should someone learn in today's world they often say learn AI ad as someone who is from non-tech background what does learning AI mean? Should I learn like Machine learning , computer science , coding and all of these?

I build full-stack products solo backends, desktop apps, web dashboards. Done a few personal projects (an AI assistant runtime, a Windows automation tool) and I'm looking for my next real build.

Rather than picking something in a vacuum, throwing this out to people actually running businesses or dealing with day-to-day ops pain what's missing that you've never found a good tool for?

Curious what people actually do in practice.

I used to send one — whatever the platform auto-sends an hour before. Attendance was around 30%.

Started experimenting. Went to 3 emails. Hit 41%. Then tried a completely different approach — instead of reminders, I sent actual value before the webinar. An insight post 7 days out. A poll asking the audience something real 3 days out. A short case study the day before. Then a clean join link 1 hour before.

Attendance jumped to 58-62% on the same audience.

The thing I noticed: people aren't forgetting your webinar. They're losing the reason to care. A reminder doesn't fix that. A reason does.

What's your current approach? Single reminder or full sequence?

What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?

Needed something to help with lead follow-ups for my business last week. Ended up with 11 tabs open, three "best AI tools 2026" listicles that were clearly SEO garbage, and a spreadsheet comparing pricing that I gave up on halfway through because half the sites don't even show pricing without a demo call.

What got me was how much of it felt priced for a completely different market. Saw a decent tool, got excited, then saw it was $99/month which is a real chunk of change once you convert it and think about what that means for a small business here.

Is this just me? How do you guys actually find AI tools when you need one — do you have a go-to method, or is it always this messy? Genuinely curious if I'm missing an obvious resource everyone else already knows about.

everywhere i look it's the same thing - grind 24/7, sleep when you're dead, hustle culture. and i bought into it for a while. woke up at 5am, worked till midnight, skipped weekends. thought that's what it takes to make it

couple months in and i was completely burned out. like not even functional. could barely look at my laptop without feeling sick

heres the thing nobody tells you - running a business is a marathon not a sprint. but the whole internet makes you feel like if you're not growing 100% month over month you're failing. it's exhausting

i've been trying to work smarter not harder lately. actually started automating some of the boring repetitive stuff instead of just pushing through it.

still feels weird not being always on tho. like i'm guilty for taking a break. but i'm trying to unlearn that

anyway if you're in the same boat - it's okay to not hustle every second. building something sustainable is way better than building something that destroys you

I am looking for a co-founder who believes in the vision building a clean snack brand especially for the youth.

Because a lot of artificial flavours slowly and slowly compound and affect the health and homones.

Prevention is better than cure

Nutrible is a beand which focuses on clean label and millet snacking - removing the junk but tasting nothing less.

All the approvals branding ia done. Now i just need help in investment and scaling to next level.

Our invoices started stacking up around 120/150 a month and that’s when everything went wrong even though it was the same vendors same process but suddenly things were getting paid late and we had no clear view of what was outstanding.

Nothing broke in an obvious way i think it was just invoices in email and tracking in a sheet thats off all the time and now it feels like we're doing the same work twice and still missing things.

When we were around 80 vendors things felt manageable and then somewhere past 200 it stopped scaling even though it's the same process just more volume now we're stuck chasing approvals and even double paying a couple times without catching it right away.

I know for sure that nothing about the workflow changed it simply couldn’t handle the volume since more vendors meant more problems and more back and forths now we have to spend hours every week just to keep things moving.

I just started an online networking platform called CollabCanvas. It's designed for content creators, influencers, photographers, videographers, models, Hair&Beauty, health, businesses, brands agencies, production companies and the adult industry. It's location based discovery, offers all types of features for building strong connections. Not sure if I can post the website address here, but what would be some good ideas to bring people in to sign up for the free membership at least?

Debating whether physical birthday cards for clients are still worth doing. Emails feel easy but pretty forgettable, while a card feels more personal and like a simple way of showing you actually value the client and want to keep the relationship going long term. There’s something about someone actually receiving a physical card in the mail that feels a bit more thoughtful than another inbox message they’ll probably skim past.

If you do send them, how do you keep it from becoming a monthly admin headache, and where’s the best place you’ve found to buy decent quality cards that don’t look cheap?

I’m considering transferring to the University of St. Thomas because of its entrepreneurship program. I have a business idea that I believe has strong potential, but what I really need is help building a talented team, finding mentors, and eventually securing funding.

My question is: can a St. Thomas’ entrepreneurship program realistically help with those things? Have any of you had success finding co-founders, mentors, investors, or other valuable connections through college?

I used to think college was mainly about getting a degree, but if it can actually help launch a business though connections, that changes my perspective. I’d love to hear your experiences, especially if you’ve been through a program like St. Thomas’s.

My brother and I run a junk removal company out of Farmington, MN. For the first stretch we priced every job the same way most guys do: stand in the customer's garage, look at the pile, sweat, and throw out a number.

Some weeks that worked. But when we started writing down what we actually charged vs. what the job actually took, the pattern was ugly:

• Two nearly identical half-load jobs, quoted $110 apart, because one customer sounded more price-sensitive on the phone
• Hot tub removals we did for basically free because we forgot to account for dump fees and 3 hours of sledgehammer work
• Jobs 25 minutes away priced the same as jobs 5 minutes away

The fix wasn't complicated, it was just discipline. We sat down and built actual cost-based pricing:

1. Load tiers with a real floor — min load, quarter, half, full truck, each with a low/high range based on our actual dump fees and time
2. Flat surcharges for the items that always burn you — mattresses, fridges, pianos, hot tubs, tires. The stuff that's a pain to dispose of gets its own line, every time, no mercy pricing
3. Drive time priced in — miles × 2 × a per-mile rate. Sounds obvious. We weren't doing it.
4. A markup % we picked once, on purpose — instead of re-negotiating with ourselves on every lawn

The part I didn't expect: quoting got faster, not slower. Customer calls, we ask three questions, number comes out consistent every time. Close rate went up too — turns out confident numbers close better than nervous ones.

Eventually I got sick of doing the math on my phone calculator standing on lawns, so I built it into an app for us (and got carried away — it does photo quotes with AI now, which honestly works better than my own eyeballs on garage jobs). A few other operators use it now. Not trying to pitch it here — happy to share how the pricing structure works either way, most of the value is in the discipline, not the software.

If you're running any service business off gut-feel pricing: track quoted vs. charged for two weeks. The gap will make you sick, and then it'll make you money.

Happy to answer anything about junk removal pricing, what we charge for specific items, or the dumb mistakes we made.

Just shipped my first real product solo, and the biggest surprise wasn't technical, it was how much harder distribution is than building.

Building had a clear finish line: features, ship, done. Distribution has none. You aim in the dark, try a channel, get crickets, try another. And for a niche audience (mine is job seekers in a specific field), the places they actually gather either ban promotion or bury you in noise.

A few things I've learned the hard way:

- Being genuinely useful in the right communities beats broadcasting to everyone. Slow, but it's the only thing that's worked.

- "Free" can be a distribution wedge or a revenue trap, and I'm still not sure which mine is. I made it free for one segment of users to drive adoption, but I keep second-guessing whether that just trains people never to pay.

- Cold outreach with no audience and no reputation goes straight to ignored.

For those further along: what actually moved the needle on distribution early, and how did you decide between a free wedge and charging from day one?

(Happy to share what I built in the comments if it's useful, not trying to make this a pitch.)

I never got any mentorship or guidance from anybody What I did till now is from my own experience learning, intuition, try & error method. I don't belong to any business background or exposure to such an environment.

I am an artist/ textile designer, and wanted to have my own brand so I started soon after graduating. I started with the women- Western wear segment, used Amazon, got few sales but no profit only loss, due to their non-transparency in transactions. I was paid way too low according to what was expected. Then i switched to my own website and social media. And a saree section. Got no orders through the website only a few through social media/known contacts/ few new customers. It's been 2.5yrs since I started. I have seen 1-2 orders in 7-8 months or no at all..crossed only 75-80 in total till date. The same sarees are in trends and sold by other small businesses at higher prices.

Problem with me -

Low budget- I can't invest in inorganic marketing -meta ads - Google ads. If I do, I cant put a large amount or sustain in it. Neither I can invest regularly on inventory for monthly launch. My restock depend on bootstrap.

Tried organic- i tried to be consistent and I am the only person who handles a-z, from sourcing/payments/website design, update/ shoot/edits/content creation/planning. Still lower reach 100-300 views, no engagements stuck at 200 followers.It exhausts me after sometime that breaks my consistency. & Not to forget personal problems in between-health,family, marriage pressure, dependency, permission to live according to my wish. Ugh.. No result has demotivated me. Still I choose to come back because I do not want to be dependent. I tried for jobs in between but it didn't work out for me either. And on other hand, Khud ka business, hit differently for me.

Dead stock have increased my stress level. This year my health has been effected due to high stress too. Where I choose art to peace me out.

When conversation happens in any gathering about my business b/w family/aunties/uncle's/formal contacts/friends. It lowers my self esteem as I am being seen as a business owner but the reality is I am not gaining profit from it. I can't feel confident because I haven't created/designed what I am selling especially when that was my educational background.

I always have this calling for art in between to start something with this, no inventory stress, made to order. It's peaceful but there too I need to have orders to full my pocket. Because made to order is high price value thing for a customer.

It makes me feel time is ticking. I don't have much time left to prove myself. I panic. I need to care about my health too.

I tried for jobs, but due to 5yr gap & no experience in design industry failing to land me one. As I was into curated business. I haven't design because of limited resources. But what I learnt doesn't matter to them. That job hunt with interviews same questions, same silence, was struggling & exhausting on another level.

I need expert advice here. To guide me where I am going wrong. Which direction should I choose? Or is heavy business not my cup of tea?

One thing I’ve noticed from working with businesses is that many founders wait far too long to let go of certain tasks.
I completely understand why. No one knows your business like you do, and in the beginning, you’re wearing every hat imaginable.
But there comes a point where spending three hours on admin, emails, scheduling, or chasing people around for updates costs more than it saves.
I’ve seen business owners spend weeks trying to do everything themselves while the work that actually grows the business keeps getting pushed back.
I’m curious…
Looking back, what’s one task you wish you’d outsourced or created a system for much earlier?
Or if you’re not there yet, what’s the one task you secretly dread doing every week?

it's almost 1am and i'm lying in bed doing "one more thing" in my head for the fifth time. i don't even mean working, i mean my brain just refuses to close the tab. i'll be watching something with my family and halfway through i'm somewhere else thinking about a client. i used to think this was just a busy phase but it's been like a year now. and the weird part is i actually like the work, so it's not stress exactly, it's just always on. do you guys ever fully switch off or is that just gone once you start something. asking because i genuinely don't remember what a quiet head feels like anymore

Hi professionals,

I have recently joined my father's 6 years old radiator and cooling systems manufracturing business in the UAE and navigating through the below points is getting impossible for me. I need some free/paid advice on the following -

- How do i deal with changing the orthodox ways of working of my father

- I want to start another branch in India. Is it the right step?

- My father is niether ready to give control nor salary (i used to earn good salary as an employee earlier somewhere which i have given up to contribute to this business) what do i do?

and some more generic questions.

A little about me - I am 26 y/o basically from india and have been an employee into HR strategy from 4+ years and did my masters in business from uae and have been working passively with my dad for 6 years. Joined in person 1 month back and we are already having alot of differences.

Please DM or comment to help as i am open to paying a fee for this if folks are genuine.