VA here means virtual assistant, not Veterans Affairs.

Interested in hearing from people who own clinics, private practices, therapy offices or any type of healthcare business.

For those who have hired an assistant for admin, scheduling, insurance verification, patient follow ups or billing support, what was the hardest part of getting started? Trust, compliance worries, finding someone who actually knew healthcare workflows and HIPAA rules?

And for those who considered it but didn't go ahead, what stopped you?

Trying to figure out why healthcare is different compared to other fields.

Thanks, for sharing stories, positive or negative.

running a small u.s. ecom store (just me and one va). a few vendors started asking for e-signatures while doing contracts recently so its probably time to actually start using something instead of doing it manually.

not sure what actually matters here beyond the obvious stuff. pricing, doc limits per month, storage, templates, anything else worth checking before picking one?

what are you all using for your stores and would you actually recommend it?

I've been thinking about writing something for people who want to hire virtual assistants but I'd rather ask than make guesses.

For people who have hired an assistant what was the most difficult part? Finding someone who already knew your tools figuring out what to pay concerns, about trust and quality something else?

For people who looked into hiring one but didn't go through with it what stopped you?

Trying to understand where people have trouble instead of just giving general advice. Thank you for sharing experiences.

I'm realizing that online banking for small businesses means very different things depending on the bank. For my contracting firm, managing all the details surrounding payments takes the bulk of my time. I need to separate the payroll and business operating funds, reserve cash for quarterly tax payments, provide my office manager with limited access and review purchase activity on each credit card. My bank can do all of that but its cumbersome. I have to transfer money between accounts, request and download reports from the bank and so on. Id like to learn more about small business bank accounts but almost all comparisons are discussing fees and interest rates. I'd like to hear from business owners what banking features they have found to be time saving.

I run a two-person shop and I've had someone at about 20 hours a week since last fall. She's good and there's clearly more work than she can cover, but the months are uneven enough that I don't know if I can promise 40 through a slow stretch. I keep pushing the decision to next quarter and it keeps being the same decision.

For the people who made that jump, what did you look at before you were willing to commit to the full salary?

Well, I run a small marketing agency here in the US, and the issue of having the right marketer is becoming much more of a mess than I initially thought, see what I have done so far, looked for the right talent on hiring platforms, looked at their profile, and most of them are over-selling meaning they just lying on their resume/portfolio, few of them are experienced, but trust me when I say this, they over-promise and under-sell, and about the rest, they are way too under-experienced for me to hire them.

I have been looking at the talent profiles endlessly, and yet to find out the right fit for my role, so anyone of you business owner's reading this, where do you find the right fit for your role(s) without burning out.

When you’re starting out, it’s easy to spend money on things because everyone says you need them — websites, software, ads, branding, consultants, subscriptions, etc.

What’s something you paid for that you eventually realized you could’ve done without?

And what would you spend that money on instead if you were starting again?

For founders who started their company while working another job, how did you decide when the startup was ready to become your full-time focus?

I want to try something different this week.

I’m going to build 7 websites for 7 businesses/startups - completely free.

No free trial.
No $0 now, $999 later.

I’m doing this because I want to experiment with how quickly I can take a real business idea and turn it into a website that actually looks credible, communicates what the business does, and is built to convert.

What you get

→ A custom-designed website
→ Mobile responsive
→ Modern UI/UX
→ Your branding + content
→ Contact/CTA sections
→ Basic SEO structure
→ Deployment
→ No payment required

Who I’m looking for

Small businesses, startups, solo founders, creators, local businesses, SaaS ideas, agencies, e-commerce businesses, basically anyone who has a real business but either has no website or hates their current one.

One catch 👇

Because I can only build 7 this week, I’ll have to choose the projects based on:

1. The business/product is actually real.
2. The website would genuinely help.
3. I think I can make something significantly better.
4. You’re actually ready to work on it this week.

Business:
What you do:
Current website (if you have one):
What you hate about your current website:

Let's see what we can make.

We’re trying to avoid spending months building something that nobody actually needs. What methods have you used to validate an idea before investing significant time and money?

I’m building a small operations app for home service businesses, and I’m trying to make sure we’re solving problems owners actually deal with day to day—not problems that sound good on paper.

We’ve got a working beta and I’m looking for a few real US home-service business owners who'd be willing to test it in their actual business and give us honest feedback. HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, landscaping, etc.

If you run one, what’s the part of the business that eats up more of your time than it should?

I run a small cafe and about a third of my weekday regulars have quietly stopped showing up since spring. I haven't changed the menu, the prices, or the staff, and new customers are roughly covering the gap so the monthly numbers still look fine. I've asked two of them directly and got the polite version of nothing.

What's usually behind a drop-off like that?

So i am exporting leather bag to usa and this is my 1st order which payment method should i choose to be on safe side

We’re trying to understand how startups can realistically acquire their first customers without having a large marketing budget. What worked best for you in the beginning?

Hi. I’m currently working under as a sales associate for this new idea called “bestinmiami”. To give some detail, it’s a protected site launching in September, it’s one business per category for all of Miami, totaling 75 categories, so 75 businesses. It’s structured based on back tracking from ai. The whole design is for ai to pull the answer already from our source when someone goes and asks chatgpt, Gemini, or Claude- “Who’s the best [category] in Miami?” See when someone asks that today, it’s pulling from pages on the web that already answer that question. And almost every page that exists is a top 25 list with 25 names on it so it doesn’t even know what it’s working with.

My difficulty is selling this to owners. Right now everything has been mostly digital. And almost half the time nobody is ever interested and don’t wanna hear some guy call them trying to sell something over the phone to them. I’m wondering how can break through that barrier because not only is it difficult but I feel like this business could be very useful and help smaller businesses and comes with many other benefits.

Any help?

Hey everyone, new business owner here.

I just bought my domain on GoDaddy for my business - I sell chemical sanitation / janitorial supplies (B2B).

I saw GoDaddy has its own website builder included, but I've also been seeing a lot about Base44, Dorik, and Framer.

My question is:

1. For a simple supply store site (just need to show products, get leads/calls, not a huge e-commerce store yet) - is it better to just build it with GoDaddy or go with one of the other builders?

2. The monthly fee part confuses me - if I build my site how I want it and then I stop paying the monthly subscription, what happens? Do they take the site down / delete it, or does it just stay live as-is?

Thanks for any advice

I am wondering how important this is for an LLC? I will be selling jewelry supplies through shopify and not even sure where to start my research what all is needed?

Curious how the whole process works. How did you handle hiring, payments, banking, taxes, and day-to-day operations? Any tools or tips that made it easier? Would love to hear your experience!