r/smallbusinessowner

I run a small local service business and basically everything happens on WhatsApp. Inquiries, orders, confirmations, complaints, follow-ups. It's all in there.

The problem is there's no structure. I have no easy way to see which orders are confirmed, which are pending, which customers I still need to follow up with. I just scroll back through chats and hope I didn't miss anything.

Last month I realized I'd completely forgotten about a customer who messaged three days earlier. She'd already gone somewhere else.

I've tried moving things to a spreadsheet but keeping it updated manually feels like a second job. Most CRM tools I've looked at are way too heavy and honestly built for desktop, not for someone running everything from their phone.

Curious how other small business owners handle this. Is there something simple that actually works, or is everyone just winging it like me?

So I'm 24 and I made an agency 2 years ago and I made decent money but sadly as soon as it was picking up it was destroyed by artificial intelligence sadly, so I had to ditch it and I upskilled in Shopify, google ads and digital marketing for about 6 months, I talked to founders who created Shopify stores making over 600k over 3 years, I've worked and connected with 3 big founders and I basically found a way to be making at least 7k monthly in 3 months, amazing right, what is the issue then if I can get that much money? I can't do it without investing ideally $2700 upfront for the first 3 months which will generate some sales but will only manage to cover the invested amount and I'll have to work for free just to build it and improve it over the next 2-3 months.

so yeah I can't really work for free and also invest from my own savings that will ruin my financially because I've only got savings to cover me for 5 months while also working part time an actual job and full time on this new business.

I have the skills, education and connections to build it, I just don't have the money to invest it, I've never took a loan before I don't even have a credit card I'm scared of spending money I don't have but I'm open to taking an investment and giving 30% of the business, I do all the work, someone invests in me and I give them 30% of money the business makes, we can figure out the legal work and contracts with that person.

I've started a successful business before but I sadly got into something that got obliterated by artificial intelligence so I have the skill to build something I sadly just don't have the funding.

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?

Hi everyone,

My family is in the early stages of turning our idea into a small business – we want to design and build foldable / collapsible food vendor carts for local customers. The carts will be made primarily from steel sheet, with multiple panels that need to fold down for transport and storage.

We’re complete beginners when it comes to metal fabrication, and we’ve hit a wall trying to figure out the best way to cut our steel sheets down to size. The sheets will be used to make the flat rectangular panels that form the main body, shelves, and work surfaces of the carts. The thickness we’re looking at is around 2 mm (could be mild steel, but we may need to use stainless for hygiene – we’re open to hearing how that changes things).

We’ve been researching tools, but we’re honestly drowning in options and would really appreciate some real-world, practical advice. The main choices we keep seeing are:

• Manual or powered metal shears (bench shear, foot-operated guillotine)
• Rotary shears / slitting shears
• Hydraulic presses (or maybe we’re confusing hydraulic shears with something else?)
• We’ve even heard mention of nibblers, angle grinders with jigs, and metal circular saws.

What we’re trying to understand:

1. Which type of cutter makes the most sense for a small production setup – cutting multiple identical rectangular panels over and over, with straight edges and good repeatability.
2. What’s the difference in edge quality, squareness, and safety between these methods? Food carts need clean edges that won’t cut someone or trap food scraps.
3. Is it realistic to get accurate, square cuts without spending a fortune? We’re willing to invest in the right tool, but we can’t go straight to a full industrial laser cutter.
4. If you’ve worked with 2 mm stainless steel sheet, does that rule out certain tools that would be fine for mild steel?

We’d also love any other guidance you think we should hear as first-time metalworkers: jigs we should build, bending solutions, welding tips – honestly, we’ll take anything you’ve got. We’re a family that’s great with ideas but totally green on the fabrication side, and we want to build something safe, durable, and professional-looking.

Thanks in advance for helping us find our feet!

I’m sorry if this post is all over the place, i’m just not sure what to do. I’ve set up the whole operation when it comes to website, warehouse, insurance, you know the whole 9 yards. I’m planning to mainly work with smaller brands as that’ll be a good work load for me and my partner as we build a workflow and test things. I’m currently in the hole as I am having trouble getting clients and the fees are eating at my start up reserves. I was thinking of a getting a storage unit to reduce warehousing cost but still have something climate controlled and big enough for operations. If i were to make content out of the storage unit showing our operations would that be taboo? again sorry if this is all over the place, i’m just trying to find a cost efficient way to save a bit of money while still being credible and functional for future clients. If you have any other tips that could help like lead generation or cost effective materials/software that could help. Anything could help at this point!

so I wanted to know is it normal as a buyer not to know how to pay your baker? I asked and they never responded to the question only told me pick up and location? please tell me if this is a stupid question

My wife and I started a short-term rental cleaning business in the Southeast. We have a growing list of clients and employees. It started as a side gig, and we communicate with the owners via text messaging and schedule the cleanings on Google Calendar. This is no longer sustainable. We don't need one with payments, as QuickBooks seems to work fine. Also, we don't necessarily need one that finds new clients as well. We are new, but it appears most in our area aren't on the larger hosts but get connected by word of mouth.

We struggle with all of the direct back-and-forth communication with the owners about scheduling.

Do you have any recommendations on CRM software?

AirBnb Owners: What have you found as a helpful way to interact with cleaning companies?

im running a small business and need a clean custom website with easy contact forms booking options and basic seo so it actually brings in customers. nothing too flashy just something professional that works well on mobile and is simple to update myself.

has anyone used a good agency that delivers quality work without crazy prices or delays? what exact features should i ask about when reaching out

I got moved into an enterprise role from a channel role and it will be the first time I have had to cold call and cold email in several years. Back then I was doing 50 to 100 calls a day, using Sales Nav and ZoomInfo, with sales cycles ranging from one week to a month.

From what I have read, just hitting the phones is no longer enough. You need an omnichannel approach covering voicemails, emails and LinkedIn to get prospects attention, with cold calling still being the best shot at actually connecting. My org has embraced this but is still figuring it out.

What is the meta for enterprise prospecting right now? Cold calls feel much harder to connect on than before, and social selling and value add content seem to be getting a lot of attention. But I have not seen real numbers backing up what actually works, and I would rather be closing deals than running experiments.

Hiya, my family is opening a Turkish bakery. We currently sell online through our website and have been building an Instagram following while finishing our shopfitting. We're planning to open in June/July.

When we open it won't just be baklava, we'll be running a bakery with sandwiches, pastries and coffees. Baklava is quite niche in the UK. There's very little competition in Birmingham apart from cheap international corner stores which sell baklava but they use cheap ingredients and don't look appealing, which makes it a opportunity and a challenge.

I want to start pushing reels and TikToks properly in the run-up to opening. We have a great product and I've got an idea of those viral cross sections, ASMR crunch videos etc but I'm not clear on the viral hooks to use and making content that actually reaches new people rather than just existing followers even though they dont really engage. I have ordered some backdrops and a light for photos and already have DJI mic mini for my own personal use.

Would be helpful if anyone can give their opinions or what worked for them.

Any tips would be perfect, specifically for a bakery I'd suppose. We want to build momentum for our opening and have people coming to our weekend opening.

Hi guys,
I recently took over the Sushi restaurant over, from my parents in Germany. It is not like I don’t have any hospitality experience, but taking over and renovating everything, plus coming up with a new concept for the back kitchen ( not sushi) is kinda daring. I worked as a bartender/ service for 7 years
With some kitchen experience when I needed to fill in. I also took over some managerial task since our manager did kinda a bad job. We at the end face of renovating right now and want to open on the 2nd of June. Do you guys have any tips for me. I fear that I forgot to do plan in one or two steps. Since I need to basically take care of everything myself except renovation.

Thank you guys so much for any advice you give me.

I’ve been trying to figure out what actually helps people stay consistent and grow, because there are so many tools out there it gets kind of overwhelming. Some people swear by scheduling apps, others focus more on analytics, and some just keep it super simple and do everything manually.

If you’re managing multiple accounts or running content for a business, what’s been your setup? Are you using anything for planning posts, tracking what performs well, or just organizing everything so it doesn’t get messy? Also curious, what’s one tool that actually made things easier for you, and what’s something you tried but didn’t really stick with?

For me it became non-negotiable to pair whatever inventory tool I was using with a sourcing setup that could actually respond when the signal fired, and that's where kanary solutions changed how I was thinking about this whole problem. The software tells you when to reorder but if you're locked to a supplier running at their own pace with a 10-week lead time that isn't moving, the alert is just noise.

Platforms are designed around the assumption that you have clean velocity data sitting behind your SKUs and that assumption breaks immediately when you're running paid ads that can triple your weekly sales or launching products with no history to work from. The reorder suggestions stop meaning anything useful pretty fast, and the component-level sourcing approach means there are more levers to pull when you need to move quickly, which is the piece no inventory platform is going to solve on its own.

I ran things through go ship pro for a stretch too and the fulfillment side held up well, but when demand spiked and I needed a faster production cycle the sourcing flexibility wasn't comparable. Good for what it does, just a different priority set.

What each comes down to:

Kanary solutions: best when production speed and sourcing flexibility matter as much as the reorder number itself, especially for ad-driven or launch-heavy SKUs

Go ship pro: better fit for stable product sets where fulfillment consistency is the main variable and demand doesn't swing as hard

I have been watching a lot of instagram reels, youtube videos, random internet articles about how AI agents have made people's life easier.

Some people are getting clients, left, right and centre by deploying an AI agent that is selling for them 24/7.

I am genuinely curious if any of you have experience with AI agents and has it helped your business?

Im running a small service business, 6 clients, and the admin is starting to eat my whole week. Invoicing, emails, follow-ups, scheduling. None of it is hard but all of it takes time I don't have.

I've been trying to figure out the best way to hire a virtual assistant and I'm stuck between two paths. One is going directly through a platform like onlinejobs.ph where I find and hire someone myself. The other is going through an agency that does the sourcing and vetting for me.

For people who've done both, is the agency premium actually worth it or is it something you can skip if you're willing to put in the time upfront? Also, does the answer change if I want someone long-term vs just for a specific project?

I have a brick & mortar business that I've built over the last 6 years and in a year I need to either end it(aka sell it) or add on five years. Five months from now is when I need to begin paperwork for selling, after I see most of 2026's actual sale data since growth is so speedy.

Revenue is on target to be a million this year for the first time, about 70% retail and 30% online split. I have gone into much debt building the retail portion but the foot traffic, loyalty, branding, location, all of it took time and growth has been exponential. 30% YoY, hitting and beating sales goals every quarter. Good reviews, many many customers I've seen weekly for years.

But the debt...a EIDL, then a home refi, a SBA7a, and short term stuff adds up to $750k ($600k in business related debt, $150k added onto the house equity) if I where to zero out everything and go back to before it all started. The early debt and missteps meant I truly didn't get things under control until last year. The retail portion was a real bitch to build and only started about 4 years ago and only 2025 was profitable at $850k in sales.

Presently, without a need for more hires, overhead without debt payments is $390k/yr for rent/labor/bills and then about $260k for inventory. My debt payments are around $6k/mo and hopefully in a year and a half, pay off two terms of debt and handle just the two large payments EIDL/7a which is $3.7k/mo going into the second 5 years.

Issues: Inventory is non contractual. The source, singular, could poof out of existence, but is unlikely and has been around for a long time and their existence is contractual.

Pros: I am not there day to day. When I am it's enjoyable work. But I can choose not show up for a month and everything be fine.

2026 could exceed expectations and hit $1.2m as a stretch goal without more inventory, just more customers and turn over.

Million dollar revenue and $650k in overhead I think is solid for selling. I think I could get out from underneath the debt from a sale IF 2026 is favorable and offer the 5 year extension to the buyer. Staff is trained, self sufficient.

If I do continue, well, all the hard work is over and by the end of 2032 I'm debt free. Probably do $150k in 2026 and 2027. Get debt payments down to that $3.7k/mo and do $200k/yr after. Bring in $1.3m total by the end of it all in 2032 maybe more as growth continues beyond 1m/yr in sales. Even after taxes on that assumed profit, I'd be at zero debt. I'd enjoy the work and build out management more and more.

But of course, shit could go sideways. Right, nothing is a given. But I'd enjoy life I think

I’m available for part-time or full-time work and can help with:
• Lead generation & prospect research
• Data entry and list building
• Social media management
• Canva graphics & content creation
• Content scheduling
• Email outreach support
• Administrative tasks and organization

Feel free to message me if you’re hiring or need support. Thank you!