Lately I feel like it’s getting harder to tell what’s actually real; sometimes a business has amazing reviews and it’s great. Other times it feels totally different once you actually deal with them.
As a small business owner, I’m curious how everyone else sees it now.
Do Google reviews still affect your decisions a lot?
The ones worth your time:
SEO
If someone Googles "best [your service] near me" and you don't show up, you're invisible. This is the one channel that keeps paying you back for years. Slow to start, but the best long term investment by far.
YouTube
Make one good tutorial or explainer video and it works for you while you sleep. People watch, trust you, and buy. A video from 3 years ago can still bring in leads today.
LinkedIn
Only if you sell to other businesses. This is where the managers, founders, and decision makers actually hang out. Think of it as a networking event that runs 24/7.
Facebook
Still works great for local businesses and older demographics (35+). The ads targeting is excellent if you know your customer.
Situational picks:
Quora
Answer questions in your niche, Google indexes those answers, people find you for free. Underrated for experts and consultants.
Reddit
Don't hard sell here, people will roast you. BUT it's a goldmine for market research. Read what your customers complain about and use their exact words in your ads.
Instagram
Only worth it if your product is visual (food, fashion, fitness). Reels are king right now.
Pinterest
Surprisingly strong for lifestyle niches (home decor, recipes, travel, fashion). Content lives forever here.
Twitter/X
Hard to turn followers into customers directly. Better for building a personal brand or networking with other founders.
Medium
Write articles, Google picks them up. Easy way to build authority without running your own blog.
Skip unless you have a very specific reason:
Tumblr
Only useful if you sell to fan communities or artists. Low ROI for almost every other business.
TL;DR
Don't try to be everywhere. Pick 2 to 3 based on where your customers actually are:
B2B → LinkedIn + SEO
Local business → Facebook + SEO
Visual product → Instagram + Pinterest
Want free traffic forever → SEO + YouTube
Want to be seen as an expert → YouTube + Quora + Medium
Happy to answer questions if anyone's trying to figure out which platforms make sense for their specific business.
I’m building an AI assistant that not only configures trading bots through chat, but can also analyze and comment on the configuration you just created.
The goal is to make the whole experience simpler and easier to understand, especially for people who don’t want to deal with complex dashboards.
Early testing phase — feedback is welcome.
it was the follow-ups.
or rather i wasn't doing them right. i'd send one email, get silence, send "just checking in" a week later, get more silence, give up.
took me way too long to figure out that "just checking in" is the worst thing you can write. the person already saw your first email. you're not adding anything new. you're just reminding them they ignored you.
what actually worked when i changed it:
follow-up 2: completely new angle. not a recap of email 1. different pain point, a stat, a customer story, something. short. 3 sentences max. should read like you just thought of something relevant, not like you're chasing.
follow-up 3: give them an easy out. something like "if the timing's off, totally fine, i'll stop reaching out." sounds counterintuitive but this one gets more replies than the first email. people feel safe responding when there's no pressure.
timing matters too. i was following up way too fast (day 2) or way too slow (2 weeks). sweet spot is day 4-5 for the first follow-up, day 10-12 for the last.
nothing groundbreaking but it genuinely doubled my reply rate. happy to give feedback on anyone's sequence in the comments if useful.
I made a tool that helps called coldpolish.com
Been noticing a lot of small business owners lately are stretched thin doing everything themselves. Calls, admin work, follow ups, bookkeeping, customer support, scheduling, etc.
Curious how many people here are using offshore staff successfully?
I run a team in Pakistan and honestly one thing I think people misunderstand is that offshore teams are not just “cheap labor” anymore. A lot of the reps here speak excellent English, work US hours, and already have experience working with American SaaS and service businesses.
We’ve seen companies save a ton of time by offloading repetitive operational work while keeping their core team lean.
For anyone already outsourcing, what’s worked well for you and what hasn’t?
Woman business owner here. I’m curious what other small business owners think are the most underrated investments in a business. What ended up being way more important than you expected?
Hi Small Business Owners,
If anyone here is looking for a reliable Virtual Assistant, I’d love to help.
I’m based in the Philippines and currently looking for opportunities to support business owners remotely with tasks like:
* email management
* scheduling
* admin support
* data entry
* social media assistance
* customer support
I’m organized, quick to learn, easy to communicate with, and willing to start with small tasks or trial work first.
I know running a business means wearing too many hats sometimes, so if there’s anything taking time away from your main work, feel free to message me.
Thanks and hope everyone’s business is doing well this year.
I want to target Nationally across all of the US.
It would cost a lot to get a local number in every state/region.
Would you get a local number for one state and use it calling anyone in the US or would approach this in a different way?
The most profitable thing I did for my smallish home decor and furniture store was offer classes.
I did 2 things:
Offered a variety of topics from what I knew well like decorating, floral arrangements and holiday decor, to things I didn’t know well so I asked reps to come and talk about choosing a sofa (8 way, hand tied…) or choosing a rug (which they pre-ordered).
Other stores charged for the classes. I didn’t. I required a gift card purchase and they could use it to shop after the class (or whenever).
EVERY TIME, 90% of shoppers spent 3 to 4 times the gift card amount. Very few only spent the gift card amount while others spent $1k or more.
No matter the type of business, people want your expertise and they want something to do. Just make sure your classes lead to bigger purchases.
Things are pretty bad right and you need to try new things. Start now and OFFER CLASSES!
What should I price them
Took me 2-3 hrs
Will it get sell on etsy??
I've been a one-person business for 3 years and I finally hit the wall. Too much to do, not enough time, and I keep pushing the growth stuff back because I'm buried in admin. And I know its time for me to hire a virtual assistant.
The problem is I've never done this before, I want to hear from people who actually went through it.
My specific needs are email management, scheduling, following up with leads, and some light research. I probably need 20-25 hours a week or maybe more soon.
Where do you find someone decent without going through a lot of applications?
Curious if anyone here would actually want something like this.
Not a big complicated tool, and not another monthly subscription. Just a simple desktop app you buy once and use for stuff like inventory, sales, expenses, invoices, customer notes, etc.
Basically something cleaner than spreadsheets, but way simpler and cheaper than the bigger business tools.
Would you ever use something like that?
If yes, what would you want it to handle?
If no, what are you already using that works better?
Last year in May 2025, tired of being free all the time and wasting time with friends, I thought I should do something. Something that has a scope in the next coming years.
Before that, I was a graphic designer but clearly it seemed that that field had no future.
So I shifted to AI automation & AI voice agents. It is not that easy for a person who knows nth about code, but I was locked in. Every single day, I was learning about it & practicing again & again.
Each time I came across a bug or error, I tried solving through claude or gpt but it didn't help so I continued trying to figure it out myself.
Now, it's been a whole year and the competition is too much. A job post posted less than a day ago, has alr 100 applicants. Everyone is an Automation Specialist or so called engineer now. Ig it's the trend maybe.
Maybe entrepreneurs out there are selling courses and made this a trend but I don't think an automation engineer is even a real role, so I thought maybe, pursuing my career in a different but real field like cloud engineering.
So I started learning python which is just the starting point, there's a lot more to learn. Wish be luck!
If anyone of you is in automation or AI related field, did you guys made some real money or are you guys from those who put fake experience and case studies in their portfolio just to look professional?
I’m the founder of a web design and digital marketing agency, and I’m considering niching down to serve US pest control companies exclusively.
The idea is to offer a productized “growth system” that combines a high-converting website, local SEO, CRM, automation, and reputation management into one subscription-based service.
The offer would include:
- Lead-generating website (15–20 pages)
- Google Business Profile optimization
- AI chatbot and notifications
- Reputation management dashboard
- Missed call text-back
- Automated follow-up
- Customer reactivation campaigns
- Unified inbox (SMS, email, social)
- Lead management CRM
- Analytics dashboard
- Mobile app
- Blog and keyword research
Pricing would be:
- $197/month (month-to-month)
- $497 for 3 months
- $997 for 6 months
- $1,800 for 12 months
The 12-month plan would also include advanced SEO, backlinks/directories, hosting, and 2–4 blog posts per month.
The core promise is simple:
More Calls. More Jobs. More Growth.
My goal is to build a highly systemized recurring-revenue business that could eventually be scaled and sold.
I’d love honest feedback from agency owners, SaaS founders, or anyone working in local lead generation.
Thanks in advance for any insights.
I have started working as a freelance to provide services of developing landing page according to brand language and I would love to work with people please dm me for my portfolio
My last project was mymentallyprepare
Early testing phase.
The goal is to let users configure and manage trading bots simply by chatting with an AI assistant instead of using complex dashboards.
Still rough, but improving every day.
Feedback is welcome.
I've been a realtor here in the Houston area for going on 7 years. I do okay. Steady listings, repeat clients, decent referrals. Problem is every time I try to actually grow, I run face first into the same wall, which is that I'm already working 60 hours a week just to maintain what I have.
Marketing falls behind. CRM is a mess. I'm responding to leads at 11pm because I was showing houses all day. My husband says I'm a workaholic and honestly he's not wrong.
I know the answer is probably get help. But hiring a full agent assistant in Texas is expensive, and I'm not sure I'd give them enough work to justify it full time. Has anyone here in real estate or any client based business figured out a way to grow without burning yourself into the ground?
Open to anything. Books, frameworks, systems, hiring strategies. Just need to hear what worked for someone.
I run a small online side hustle and one thing I struggled with was keeping customers engaged after the first interaction. Social media posts would do okay for a day, then everything died off.
I started experimenting with community-style platforms where customers could actually interact instead of just seeing posts, and it surprisingly helped with repeat engagement and referrals.
The biggest difference was having everything in one place instead of relying only on Facebook pages or email lists.
Genuine question for people running export businesses here.
Has anyone actually tried automating their international buyer outreach? I have been going down this rabbit hole lately talking to trade businesses across different markets and the ones doing it seem to be reaching 4x or 5x more buyers monthly without adding any staff.
Curious if anyone here has experimented with this or if most people are still doing it manually over WhatsApp and email.
Genuinely want to understand how people are handling this at scale.