r/smallbusiness

I hope I’m posting in the correct place.

I am a Medicare independent agent. I am looking for a cloud based phone system to separate my personal number from my business number.

I tried enrolling in Ring Central but they require an EIN# and a laundry list of items to be able to use SMS. I have none of this because I’m an individual, not a business.

I was going to try to use Google Voice as my cloud based service. I would appreciate any comments, experience etc.. this is my livelihood and I’m worried signing up. Also if you have any other carriers to check out, I would appreciate it.

Thank you in advance.

I run a small remodeling crew. Just had a $8,400 invoice go 90 days past due. Client stopped replying to calls and texts. I know small claims is an option but it's a week of my life I don't have.

What do you actually do when this happens? Do you send formal demand letters? Use a collection agency? Just eat the loss?

Also — do you use any software to text customers when their job is done? I'm spending way too much time on "is it done yet?" calls.

Running a small website which provides users some tools which saves their time, currently charging them for per use, they buy a Coins and spend them to use tools, so my doubt is should i continue this way or provide monthly subscription with unlimited use? what's the proven way in long time?

I have been going around local spots talking about my new cafe i just opened and most people seem so uninterested. While i talk about it and promote it to them, they are like okay got it thanks. Why am i getting so many weird reactions? I just tell them about it, not even shoving it down their throat. I just say hey i just opened a new cafe not far from here, it's called ____. Try to come by! And mid sentence or towards the end of me talking theyll cut me off like okay, got it, thanks. Am i doing something wrong?

I built a small app called Countd and I’d really like some honest feedback.

The idea is simple: you create a group with your friends, choose something you want to track, and then compete with each other over time.

For example, you could create a group called “Running”, choose “km” as the unit, and have everyone enter how many kilometers they ran each day. You can then see a leaderboard and at the end of the month there’s a recap showing who did the best.

But it doesn’t have to be fitness-related. You could track pretty much anything: hours studied, books read, money saved, workouts, steps, or whatever your group wants.

I’m still working on it, so I’d really appreciate some honest feedback.

What do you think could be improved? Is there anything you would add or change? And most importantly, would you actually use something like this with your friends?

I’m not looking for compliments — I’d much rather hear what you think is bad or missing.

Thanks!

You can find the link on my only post.

Hi guys,

Running the small business is suffocating me. I am stressed and drained all day. I run this online store completely myself and it’s overwhelming!

I wanted to start a store to sell authentic product at a good price and give people a good shopping experience because in the area of my business it is lacking. So i started it in April 2026 and everyday is a hassle.

The worst part is marketing i hate it. Google ads suck whatever profit I make and at this moment eating so much that I am making nothing but loss.

Finding suppliers is so much work too. I don’t get good prices to make a some good margin and run marketing campaigns. I have interested visitors at my store but bloody hell it takes so much money to convince someone to buy from you.

I don’t come from wealth so I am running out of funds. My husband has supported me but since early august I started looking for part - time minimum wage jobs. So I can get time to do the business + get qualify for a loan else this venture is out. It will crash and burn and I am struggling so hard everyday. Finding even minimum jobs are getting hard lol.

I am reconsidering where my life is going. I simply am not happy and want to cry everyday.

Anyways how are you guys coping?

I have always had an entrepreneurial itch and have dabbled a bit outside of my day job, but have spent 15+ years in corporate and never made the leap to turn any of those into something real.

I’m at a juncture (driven by personal life) where I’m really craving ownership of my time. I’m considering leaving to create a consultative offering, aligned to my corporate skill set.

I’m a risk averse person but very burnt out and pining for more time with my family during this life stage. I am seriously considering making the leap, but am afraid I’m glamorizing it and will regret leaving the stability (soul-sucking and time intensive as it may be).

People typically only share the success stories and “wish I’d done it sooner!” If you’ve made the jump - either recently or in the past - I’d love to hear how it’s going and if you are happy with the choice and if there is anything you wish you had known in my shoes.

Thank you! 🩷

Looking back at when you first started your business whats something you really wish someone had told you beforehand

Like something about money ,customers, hiring marketing or just the day to day stuff

For me i thought the hardest part would be getting customers but honestly i didnt expect how much time would go into things like hiring people

I’m posting on behalf of my husband and his small construction/landscaping company. It’s a year old, and he only really started focusing primarily on it this past April. He does New builds, remodeling, decks, siding, doors, windows, roofs, and even offers handyman services, as well as yard cleanups (spring and fall). He doesn’t focus on landscaping though.

One of the questions I have, is one of his customers brought him 7 or 8 other customers, and we are trying to think of the best way to thank this customer. We want to come up with something to give back to customers that bring prospective leads, and business.

I am pretty good at coming up with ideas, but I’m completely stumped with this. I know food places give back to customers by offering great deals, but I’m not sure what a construction company can give back to a customer. I was thinking possibly a heavily discounted fall or spring clean up, but they live in an extremely nice neighborhood with well maintained lawns, flower beds, and the like. I’m not sure if that would be beneficial to them.

Anyone have any ideas?

I have ideas for products, I have marketing and branding expertise, but have a huge gap when it comes to the actual manufacturing of a product.

I’ve chucked a few random ideas below - could you give me a step by step of how you’d get the ball rolling to get one (or all!) of these items manufactured, and the considerations to make? (These aren’t my ideas but just a range of ideas to help me get my head around the path to producing a physical product)

1. Alcoholic spirit in non-standard packaging (think engine oil)

2. Linen bedding - a range of different colours and patterns

3. Kids Plush toys - custom design

4. Electrolyte supplement sachet

Do other founders experience this?

I am trying to get a business concept off the ground, and I have realised that some “friends” seem more worried that I am going to sell to them than interested in helping me think through the idea.

I am not asking them to buy anything. I am asking what they think, what is unclear, or whether they have any feedback. Yet I keep getting replies like, “I am not your target audience.”

I already know that. That is actually why I am asking.

In this particular case, the person has a lot of experience in the space and tends to do things themselves, which is why they are not my target customer. But their perspective and experience in the space could still be incredibly useful. They also mentioned that even if they liked what I was putting together, they would not purchase from an untested company.

That is completely fair. I am not expecting them to become a customer. I was simply hoping they might be willing to share their perspective, or at least refer me to someone in their network who might be a better fit to give feedback.

And yet, sometimes it feels like people are more interested in gossiping about what you are doing than genuinely wanting to see you succeed.

To be honest, it hurts to realise this too. You expect that the people you consider friends will at least be curious about what you are building, even if it is not something they would personally buy — or perhaps even help connect you with someone who might be interested. It actually feels like they are waiting for me to fail....

Is this just part of being a founder? Have other founders experienced the same thing? How to remain not bothered by such situations?

Edit: I did not think this post would generate so many comments. Really appreciate the different comments and POV on how to handle such situations going forward. Market research was actually done with POC completed. It was more like being told by a friend that "even if I like your product, I will not buy because you are new" sort of comment. because I am thinking, if a friend who knows me is not willing to buy from me just because I am new, then who will - I am thinking really hard on how to resolve this though, because if a friend is having trust issues, then a stranger will have even bigger trust issues....

Anthropic has explained how its new AI text watermarking system works.

Newer Claude models can embed an invisible machine-readable watermark directly into generated text. Anthropic says the marking can travel with text when it is copied and pasted, and the system is being applied worldwide.

The interesting part is that this isn't a visible “AI generated” label. The watermark is embedded through the model's word choices.

I can see the argument for it: as AI-generated content becomes harder to distinguish from human writing, provenance and transparency become more important.

But there are also questions about privacy, false positives and what happens when someone uses AI only to translate, edit or improve something they originally wrote themselves.

Do you think AI-generated text should always carry a detectable marker?

Or should users have more control over whether their AI-assisted writing is identifiable?

Background:

I'm 39, married with 2 kids. I have a good job, director of engineering at a manufacturing company, and no financial worries, but I am terribly bored at work and looking for more.

To shake things up, I recently decided to start an apparel company that does car giveaways. I did all the legwork: designs, website, LLC, bank accounts, legal, etc. I am at the point right now where I just need to pull the trigger and spend the money on the prize car and inventory.

But now that it's real, I’m having a lot of doubts. There are more companies doing this than I realized. Am I going to be able to generate the interest needed to make it work (I don’t do a lot of social media)? Am I going to have the time to stay on top of inventory and operations? Honestly, even though the apparel side of things makes me nervous, I am generally confident I can figure out any problems that arise along the way. However, my wife is pretty worried about the idea of starting a business, and I think her hesitation might be affecting my mindset, too. If this failed, losing that chunk of money would suck, however, it wouldn't affect my family's livelihood at all.

At the same time, I’ve come up with another business idea that is much more in my lane. It’s a physical product that I would design and fabricate myself. It would need about 6 months of R&D, but I think it would be highly viable and carry much less risk than the apparel business.

My question for you: Do you think I’m just coming up with excuses out of fear to avoid launching the apparel business? Or should I trust my gut, cut my minimal losses now, and pivot to the fabrication idea?

I have looked at dry cleaners , laundromats both remote and onsite , day spas and even Pepperidge farm cookie route , none of the numbers were what they said they were if I could even get someone to return my call and hand me the financials after I signed some ridiculous nda for some business costing a few hundred thousand cause apparently they are famous

I started a small heat-pump cleaning/service business in little old Vermont last year with my brother. We’re a pretty niche business. Mostly cleaning and servicing ductless mini-split systems.

I did 53 jobs my first year and this year I’ve completed 87 with another 13 currently scheduled. Most of the growth has come organically through Google, referrals, repeat customers and relationships with local HVAC companies. I also work a full-time job, so time has actually become more of a constraint than finding work.

I’ve built the website and social media myself and I’m curious what other small-business owners see that I don’t.
Pumppros.org
Insta : pumppros_

Im 17 years old and starting a junk removal buisness with my buddy we both have trucks and equipment and tools, just wondering how to get started and get customers and also pricing, we're new to this but worked in construction for the past year and a half.

hello,

From what I've observed in this sub, almost every one man band operator in technology development is running a pure software business. However, does anybody here run a software business that's related to hardware, or very close to hardware? And I don't mean hardware development as that sounds like nightmare for a one man band operator, but more like IoT, or maybe development of firmware, drivers or high-level software that's communicating with hardware?

I wonder, whether:

• Is hardware related business worth the additional hassle and complexity?
• Are there any rewards due to additional complexity and more deep tech knowledge required, such as better moat and stickiness of clients?
• Is there less competition in such businesses?

thanks

We’re setting up a small agency and are currently creating all the basic accounts Like social media, Gmail/Google Workspace, banking, payment platforms, software tools, etc.

One thing we’re trying to figure out is how to properly manage and store all these passwords.

I have a small business and Im kind of scared of doing something wrong when I create an LLC because Im in California and feel like Im going to get fined if I do it wrong. CA business owners, is there anything special I need to do when Im filing this?

We had just gotten our offer approved to acquire a small business that had been around for 30 years in the community. The owners and my husband and I hit it off. We loved the business concept and it aligned with our careers. Everything seemed to click. They accepted our offer with very little push back. We were ecstatic that after a year of looking this was it. Then we met with the lawyer yesterday to go over everything to get started on due diligence- turns out that because they have a nonprofit that’s pretty intertwined with the business and it’s a sensitive field, the lawyer straight up told us that in 25 years he has never had to “straight up tell someone not to buy a business” but he was doing it now. That was pretty sobering to hear.

I’m heartbroken. I think I had really set my mind on this and being able to leave my 9-5.

Should we get a second opinion or let it go?

Update: the broker (their son) texted us to see where we were at with the deal. We told him we got some legal advice that refused to represent us given the high risk of the deal with how the nonprofit is set up. We told him we would get another opinion (at this point we weren’t ready to close the door just yet) He told us he would get more documentation. We just got this email from him with the AI piece left up top 🙄 welp, folks. That answers that.

Copying just the first part with no names included

Email

Absolutely. The current version is accurate, but it reads very formal and legal. Clarification Regarding Company and Nonprofit.docx I’d make it feel like [owner names] are speaking directly to [potential buyer names] , emphasizing that they genuinely want them to succeed while still keeping the nonprofit distinction clear.

Dear [potential buyer names]
We wanted to personally clarify the relationship between , and more importantly, make sure you both understand our intentions as we move forward together.