r/mybusinessgrowth

A few local wellness brands and activewear pages have started to reach out to me for instagram collabs. Practically it seems useful in a way that it would get me more visibility online and help me get more students, but the moment they start to discuss on the deliverables and negotiations, the payoff they offer does not feel worth my time and energy.

Are such collabs worth saying yes to when you have just started out as a startup?

I read a bunch of AI news this week & these 3 felt useful for small businesses trying to scale:

• AI tool pricing is getting tricky: GitHub's Copilot has just moved to a usage-based billing system and some users saw the costs spike too much. Better check limits and billing before a cheap tool turns into a big monthly bill.
• AI video editors are getting even better: This means that you can market consistently and grow your reach without paying an editor every time (Y Combinator founder launched Palmier Pro that lets Claude edit videos).
• "English is the new coding" (Nvidia's CEO's words): Plain prompts can now build basic workflows and automations yourself, so no developer needed (excited for this one).

What would you try first?

For business tasks, what are you leaning more on: AI tools or an actual virtual assistant?

AI: cheap & instant but needs a lot of babysitting
VA: costs more but owns the work

What is working for you? I will share mine in the comments.

I would like to know what business owners have experienced. Please share

• General best practices
• One important thing which has created impact
• Hiring best practices

I run everything solo and honestly I cannot keep up with posting yoga content everywhere.

I am sort of on Instagram, YT and Facebook, but they all want different things with their respective algorithms and I really do not have time for that. I am teaching all day, so by the time I sit down to post, I am all tired and end up doing a bad job on all of them.

I cannot afford to hire someone just to manage my social media for now, so I am the one managing it manually. Part of me wants to pick Instagram, put all my energy there and let go of the rest. But then I worry if I will miss out on people who might have found me on others.

Will being on every social media platform realistically help me or is it better to pick one and do it properly?

I run a small travel advisory business and my customer base is mostly families, couples and busy professionals who want customized trips without handling all the planning themselves. So most of then prefer quick WhatsApp communication over long email threads.

As an individual handling chats, once there are 25+ active chats it gets messy fast.

I came across the launch of whatsapp plus / updated whatsapp version and I am really interested to know if it can help my business scale and also sending itineraries & managing client chats easier?

A potential client reached out to me with a complicated trip for their leadership team. It was 5 people, multiple cities and a conference in the middle. I spent around 3-4 hours working on it, finding better flight routes, improving the schedule and making sure that they were not wasting half the trip in transit.
I sent them the full plan, ready to book. They replied saying, “This is exactly what we needed” and then they stopped responding.
A week later, I found out that they booked the same itinerary with another agency since it was about $20 cheaper per person. Honestly, I know this is partly my fault as I shared the full plan before anything was confirmed because I thought it would build trust.
For other travel agents, how do you handle this?
Do you charge a planning fee upfront, only share a rough outline first or just accept that some clients will do this?