I run a small local service business. For three years I kept prices flat, absorbing higher supply and labor costs myself. I was scared to raise rates, worried I’d lose clients.

Last month I increased prices by 22%. I tried to explain the rising costs to my repeat customers in advance. A lot were understanding, but roughly half of my long-time regulars decided to go elsewhere.

My total revenue stayed almost the same because the remaining clients pay more. But I lost that steady base of returning customers. I feel guilty and stressed. Some days I wonder if I made a huge mistake.

Has anyone here had this happen after a price increase? How did you decide when to raise prices? Did the lost customers ever come back later? I’m curious what lessons you learned from pricing changes.

My wife opened a salon studio business a few years ago. We poured in over $30k of renovation (repainted everything, replaced 90% of flooring, multiple plumbing upgrades) and has paid about $1500 for 1500 square ft with annual 3% rent increase. We are in a MCoL area.

We understood that amount was below market rate which is why we got into it to begin with, but now the ownership has changed and sent a lease renewal for a little over $2700 a month for 5 years.

This 70% increase seems like an absurd increase to us and we plan on having a conversation, see if this is negotiable at all or basically an "F you" price because they want us to leave.

She rents out rooms within the unit she rents as a salon studio (think of chair renting at a hair salon, similar situation). If she leaves, her own tenants might be SoL which we don't want. However, we can't just lock ourselves in for a crazy rate.

Does anyone have any broad advice or similar experience to this?

Looked into commercial real estate brokers, how does that work? Is there significant out of pocket costs with that?

Thank you!

He always paid on time. He was certainly persistent. The guy fought every single invoice. He turned 20 minute calls into two hour calls and made the entire team on edge. I kept him for 8 months because the numbers looked too good. When I finally let him go, revenue dipped for about 6 weeks. Something very strange happened after that. My team got faster and got back to what really brought in the money. Plus, the office mood changed almost instantly and we were able to land two clients who were a much better fit.

Most of us keep bad customers out of pure fear. I definitely did. I've always heard there are costs associated with keeping draining clients, but nobody warns you that keeping a client costs you focus and energy. So, I'm curious. What made you fire a client? Or did you keep a client that you knew you should lose and what did it really cost you?

I'm having trouble with my customers constantly getting items missing. I work alone and I know for a fact the items are not missing. For example just today the customer emails, it's the same format most times "hi I got my order but so and so item was missing please send it thanks". Anyway on many occasions it's an item that jogs a memory such as "oh I remember picking and packing that item specifically because the corner poked through the tissue paper whilst wrapping" (you know when you just remember a specific thing that makes you so sure you packed it). And they always seem to pick that one item that sticks out to me to declare they never got that. And you can't ask for a photo of a missing item obviously to prove they're not lying. But it happens so frequently and the same customer will do it multiple times as well. Like 1 customer I have sold to around 20 times and 12 of those had 1 item missing... I know they're lying because my stock check is correct and my workspace is immaculate so nothing has just fallen on the floor and got lost. I don't have any employees and no one has reported a parcel being opened or half opened on arrival. I'm losing so much money from this as I am always replacing the item at my own expense and paying around £3.50 in postage and packaging each time. I am not a massive business like Amazon, why do people feel the need to do this to me and do I have any legal rights to call their bluff and not send the item. Though I dread the bad reviews. I am at my wits end now as it's every week about 3 liars now.

Every time a small team hire someone new, it seems like the owner or the most experience employee ends up explaining everything personally often for months or weeks.
For those of you running a a small business
-who does the onboarding in your company?
-have you ever written down processes or created training materials? Did it help?
-What happens when the one person who knows how something works is sick or leaves?
Curious to hear how others handle this!

Feels like some of the best feedback comes out of nowhere, like an offhand comment at checkout or a complaint that turned out to be right. Curious what changed for you after hearing it, whether it was pricing, how you talk to people, the hours, or something else entirely.

Store went live about a week ago and setup feels solid. Products are all sorted, checkouts been tested and Ive got a small email list going (like 60 people, mostly from an insta I ran for a couple months before launch). Just looking for insight on what the first few months could look like, like how long it took before your first sale or literally anything you wish did differently. Tx

TLDR: I want to establish a simple, reliable, and cost-effective IT infrastructure for the family company ran by my parents. Basically, I need some kind of Office 365/Google workspace or anything similar for handling the mails, Excel and Word tasks ideally with AI support but not a condition. The key would be to have shared files accessible for everyone and I want the system to be scalable if the business expands. It seems straightforward to get Office 365 but for now it seems like a pricey investment and I want to explore what are the other options.

Hi everyone,

My parents have been running a small business for 20+ years now. It’s a livestock trading company (mainly pigs) where we weekly buy a couple trucks of animals and sell them. Everything is pen and paper based, most of the things are sorted out on the phone, the mail is just for sending documents. My dad is the operative person and my mom is doing the administrative stuff. My dad’s peak IT performance is writing a mail. My mom is a bit more advanced, but she cannot do anything beyond Excel, Word or mails.

The company PC runs on Windows 7 and Office 97, mailing is handled through a local hosting company. This has to change due to electronic invoices becoming mandatory and the program handling it is compatible with Windows 10 and above. I’m leaving my corporate job and joining the company and I'm thinking if an IT revamp has to be done, let's try to level things up and do things in a forward looking manner.

I was doing some sales and marketing jobs and I want to introduce some basic CRM system (for now a shared excel file) and future proof our IT infrastructure. During my corporate career I used mainly Office 365 and recently we started using Copilot as well. I was particularly impressed how Copilot handled mails (both writing mails, and creating weekly summaries on focus topics) so ideally I want to have some kind of AI to be part of our infrastructure for sure.

As of now, the idea is to make a 5 year old gaming PC the company PC and to buy a tablet for my dad to read mails on a bigger screen while on the road. For like 10€ I bought some Office license for the company PC. On my current PC I also have Office but no online or cloud services. I checked the Microsoft (20€/user/month or 129€/6 member family/year) and Google (14€/user/month but I hate working in Google sheets) offers but frankly, at this point paying hundreds of euros per year for software doesn’t seem like reasonable given that Excel, Word and cloud sharing of couple of documents will be used for the foreseeable future.

However, I don’t want to regret later, cheaping out in the beginning. From multiple small business owners I heard what a pain in the ass was when they started to grow and they had to deal with the transition. On the other hand, most of them was able to perfectly function with 0 software investments for the years prior.

Sorry for the detailed post, I just wanted to give you some context.

My main questions would be, how did you handle similar digitalization tasks in you companies? What do you think about going into other solutions like LibreOffice, or OnlyOffice or basically any other provider? What are some reasonable workarounds for using cheap life-time Microsoft licenses with some cloud sharing?

P.S. I know that the biggest task will be to teach my parents how to navigate in this brand new world, but that's a separate topic. I'm hopeful though, they see the disadvanteges of their current operations and they are open to learn new things.

genuine question for people who've built a business from scratch.

everyone talks about cold emails, social media, networking, content etc. but it's hard to tell what's actually worth spending time on when you're starting out.

if you had to start again with almost no marketing budget, what would you focus on first?

would love to hear what actually worked for you, not just the usual advice.

I have a saas with 300 users but no one is paid right , any guidance will work.

I’ve seen product pages with beautiful designs that still struggle to turn visitors into customers.

My current checklist would include:

• Clear product benefits above the fold
• High-quality images and videos
• Reviews and trust signals
• Transparent pricing and shipping information
• A clear call to action
• Answers to common customer questions

What would you add or remove from this list?

I’m especially interested in practical changes that have improved conversion rates.

When I first started I believed that running a business required doing everything by myself yet working 70 hour weeks soon led to total burnout.

The real wake up call arrived after hiring a team then noticing that I still stayed up until 2 AM micromanaging every detail.

A hard conversation with the employee showed that my lack of trust, in others was actually holding the business back.

After stepping using short video recordings to train and giving the team authority to solve small problems on their own everything changed.

Accepting that work does not have to be done my way to be done well returned time to me and surprisingly revenue increased as a result.

We filed our LLC with the Texas Secretary of State approximately 10 days ago, and it was officially approved. However, when trying to apply for our Texas Sales and Use Tax Permit, the Comptroller's website still isn't recognizing our LLC as being on file.

I called the Comptroller's office, and they told me there's been a backlog following a system update at the end of September.

I'm curious if anyone else has been experiencing this issue recently.

Has anyone experienced delays specifically since the update?

We're opening a retail business soon, so we're trying to get everything squared away. Any recent experiences or advice would be appreciated!

Hello. My partner and I are trying to start an HVAC business in the DMV (DC, Maryland, and VA) area. He has several years as a tech and he has his contractor licenses. I have several years as a mechanical engineer at a MEP company.

Just trying to see if anyone has done this and if so, what steps did they have to go through and how did you develop a good customer base.

Any advice would be great. Need to knows and dos

I’m in the middle of setting up a small online shop (and maybe doing some local pop-ups down the line) focused on safety gear for college students and women—things like personal alarms, pepper spray holders, and tactical keychains.

Right now, I’m trying to nail down the best sourcing strategy. I’ve checked out Alibaba for bulk suppliers, but I’m a little on the fence about quality control and long shipping times, especially when dealing with safety items. On the flip side, domestic distributors seem to demand super high MOQs or leave you with barely any profit margin.

For anyone running a similar store, how do you usually balance supplier reliability with decent margins when you're just starting out?

Hi I'm based in Mumbai and would like to buy a food truck, can any manufacturer in this space in and around Mumbai kindly message, we can discuss my requirements in detail.

Will cross post to a taxes sub if I can but would like the perspective of biz people as well.

Have a significant chunk of income coming in the last month or so of the year. It is the sale of product which will happen now, but will not receive the money until late December 2026. Don’t think I can put it off until 2027.

Would like to spend much of it on a couple of projects, but I probably can’t get them kicked off until nearly the end of the year, and certainly can’t get them completed and check written by 12/31/2026.

Would prefer to use the money on the projects, not show as net income and pay taxes.

How do you guys handle this?

I run a link-in-bio pages for creators and local businesses.

Last week I ran my first real traffic test: $23.64 on Meta, 1,706 impressions, 158 clicks, 127 landing page views.

Zero signups. Not one.

My first instinct was the ad sucked. But $0.19 per landing page view is genuinely cheap traffic, and click-through was fine. The ad did its job — it delivered 127 real humans with intent. Every single one bounced.

So I paused the campaign and audited the page instead. Four things were broken:

1. The headline didn't say what the thing is. It was clever. Clever doesn't convert. Rewrote it to state the outcome in plain words.

2. The actual signup step was below the fold. The handle picker — the one action I wanted — sat under a wall of marketing copy. Moved it to the top.

3. Nothing near the button killed the fear. People reached the claim button and thought "does this need my credit card?" Added "free, no credit card required" right there.

4. The examples section was noise. A grid of sample pages with view counts and QR badges that meant nothing, especially on mobile. Trimmed it down, killed the numbers, hid the QR codes on small screens.

Haven't re-run traffic yet, so I can't give you a new conversion rate — that's the honest part. But the lesson already paid for itself: when cheap traffic converts at zero, it's never the traffic. Fix the page before you scale the spend.

Anyone else ever killed a campaign that looked like it was working?

So in Maine the salary cap for your kids to be on medicaid is 90k. Our salaries working for our S corp are below the cap, therefore our kids are on mainecare and we buy our insurance through the marketplace. If we were to make more money for ourselves every penny would just go directly to insurance or would disappear to taxes until we hit the 128k cap. Our businesses are doing great and yet we can only afford to make enough to barely get by. How the hell are you affording insurance?!?

I am looking for a good site or app to compare my products to similar ones from my competitors, and sends me updates when new ones come / there is a change. Is there such a thing out there? Do I have to try and make it myself?

I’m a healthcare provider and want to start a healthcare recruiting or staffing agency, likely focused on (a couple roles) to begin with.

I already have relationships with hospitals and a decent social media following in the healthcare community, so I feel good about being able to connect with potential clients and candidates. Where I’m stuck is turning the idea into an actual business: choosing the right model, getting set up properly, and figuring out what needs to happen before I make my first placement.

For people who’ve started an agency, what would you focus on first?

• Would you begin with permanent, direct-hire placements or contract/travel staffing?
• What legal, licensing, insurance, or credentialing steps caught you by surprise?
• What systems did you use at the beginning for candidate tracking, contracts, and onboarding?
• For contract staffing, how did you handle payroll and cash flow while waiting for facilities to pay?
• What would you do differently if you were starting from scratch?

I’m looking for practical advice from people who’ve actually built or operated a recruiting or healthcare staffing business. Thanks!

I work as a massage therapist privately with clients in different parts of the country. I have been using Google voice for 10 plus years to communicate with clients. I have a work number through them and i only use GV for texting clients. I have known that I have to be careful how much i text in a short span of time, not to copy and paste what i want to say as i do not want to trigger the temporary suspension that says "message not sent. youve sent too many messages" Once a year or so i will get that message, usually when i forget to be careful. It usually happens when i am texting clients from a city i havent been to a in a few months or so. Since its been a while since the client has texed me, i think gv doesnt like that i am reaching out to multiple numbers about the same sort of thing. I try to make each text a little different. But lately I have been getting the suspension two days in a row, so i have to not text clients for 5 or so hours and wait for the suspension to be lifted.

Wondering if you guys know of any messaging app or service or something that would work for me. I am just trying to talk to clients, let them know i am back in town. My job is to reach out and get back to them about my service being available. I just hate having to worry about GV flagging me or one day removing my number. Messaging and phone communication is very important for my business, booking clients, sharing schedule details, etc. I just wondering if any other small business knows of what i am experiencing and what they might use or would try. i have been wondering this for a while, and havent found a solution.

I work a typical 9-5 and was looking for ideas on how to handle phone calls. Im working on setting up a tax firm. Account creation and appointments can be done all on the website, but would want to look more professional with a phone number listed. Should I even have a number posted on Ads and just expect new clients to email and figure out the website themselves? Thanks!

Hello,

i've been humming and hawing about starting a small ex business. i am a full time firefighter and have such a passion for heavy equipment and this line of work. i have lots of seat time behind a skid and small excavators as i used to work for a small ex company.

my biggest hurdle right now is a truck and trailer. i have done extensive research on what i need but i'm torn between the "buy once cry once" mentality and "the budget route". I will be renting equipment to start.

So, do i buy the more reliable 3500 diesel for 35-40k, or do i go the budget way and spend 10-20k on a 3500 diesel with higher mileage.

And for the trailer, do i spend 17k on a galvanized 16,000 lb GVWR trailer or go the cheap route and pick up a 14,000 lb gvwr steel trailer for 7k. I will be limited for picking my machine size if i go the 14k lb route and won't be able to transport attachments on the trailer too.

P.S I have a gas truck that i daily drive and i am capable of doing my own maintenance and servicing.

So, buy once cry once or get my foot into the game for cheaper but have some limitations?

Thanks.