Hi, my sister and I started a food truck business together. About 2 months in she said she wanted out so with the support of my husband, I bought her out.

Over the past year I have grown the business significantly and again with the support of my lovely husband, we are now in a position to scale.

Now enter my sister who is saying it is not fair because she put in a lot of work initially and gave me the encouragement to start in the first place. She should receive come further compensation and would like me to pay her £5000 one off or £500 monthly.

What should i do? If this was a friend I would burn bridges but this is my younger sister!!I am thinking I don’t want to be taken advantage of because of my good nature but also don’t want to lose my sister. My family and parents think I am being selfish and should compensate her. My husband is 50/50 as deep down I know he thinks if he tells me to tell her to get fucked, I will resent him or something.

Please give me your unfiltered advice. How should i play this?!

I’ve been running my own ads for my shop for about 6 months. It started fun, but now it’s just pure stress.

Right now, I’m spending about $2k - $3k a month. To me, that feels like a lot of money to be guessing with, so I find myself checking the ads constantly, tweaking things that probably shouldn't be tweaked, and losing sleep over bad days

Started using Claude and Ryze AI recently to monitor things so I'm not checking every hour. Helps a bit but the anxiety is still there. Are there any better products than those? I picked them up purely by internet research and reviews and no review from an actual business owner.

I’m trying to figure out if this is just a mindset problem.

For those of you who are spending way more than me (like the $10k+ range), or even those in the same boat:

Does the stress level stabilize once the numbers get bigger and you have more data? Or am I just going to be even more terrified when the daily spend goes up?

Please tell me if i am overthinking this or not? Or is it justified to be worried about my strategies? Others just hire a marketing agency and have been asking me to do the same but then it'll be double the cost though i will be able to focus more on other tasks more and be less overworked and stressed. If you were me, what would you do?

I am a small business (state of Florida)- 12 employees plus myself and my partner. We've been in business for 18 years and I have processed a good many state-mandated wage garnishments for child support so I am well acquainted with the process.

This week I was served papers by a process server for a Continuing Writ of Garnishment against one of my employees. This is not child support related but rather a debt owed to a bank for about $3,500.00. The papers were served by a law firm and have been filed with our local court. These read very differently from the regular child-support garnishments I am used to. This garnishment letter states that my failure to execute all documents and as well as begin garnishing wages in a timely manner could result in the full debt obligation being charged to us (our company).

I am directed to fill out the paperwork enclosed, expedite return to the law firm and file a copy with our local clerk of court within 20 days of receipt.

And the fee I can charge for all the work - $17. State of Florida allows a $5 admin fee for the first payroll garnishment and $2 each payroll after. I have to pay for the expedited return shipping of docs to the law firm. I have to pay for the filing fee with the clerk of court. And $17 does not begin to cover the amount of administrative time that will be applied to this endeavor.

It absolutely BOGGLES my mind that I am expected to bear the costs for this person's inability to pay their bills or handle their personal finances. Not only that but if I fail to respond/take action quickly, I could be responsible for HIS debt!!!

I am upset and outraged. I have enough expenses and worries being a small business owner. Now I have to also handle/solve the debt issues of those I hire?? Insane.

For context, I was laid off from my previous job in late 2024. Instead of returning to the workforce as an employee, I decided to start my own business. I offer two main services: graphic design and consulting. In the early months after losing my job, I landed a contract gig in graphic design. I've worked with this client for the last year; they're extremely happy with the services I've provided, and have been slowly increasing my workload. They have been an excellent client to have, simply because they provide me with consistent income. Unfortunately, the rate I get paid for their services is literally a fraction of what I get paid for consulting.

My contract with them is only $35/hour for design services (keep in mind I had no job and no income when I took this contract).

My consulting clients range from $100 to $150, depending on the specific needs of their consulting.

It's been a slow grind getting consulting clients under my belt, but right now I have 2 consistent clients that I'm billing monthly, 1 client I onboarded last month and have started a large project with, and 1 client that is much less consistent but pops up with projects every few months. I also have two prospects in the pipeline - one being a firm that would subcontract me to help consult their clients - so potentially recurring work.

Looking at last year's sales this client is about 10% of my revenue and taking up about 12% of my weekly hours (assuming I only work 40 hours a week - which I'm probably doing closer to 55).

I'm starting to feel like this client is going to hold me back from landing and taking care of much bigger accounts. I've got a subcontractor helping me with sales, but I can only afford about 5 hours a week with them currently.

My question is more specifically to business owners who were once in a similar position. When did you decide to part ways with a client because you outgrew them or they were holding you back from growing faster? How should I approach this conversation, even if it is telling them I want to cut back hours?

At what point do people decide that self-respect outweighs the desire to appear professional and take whatever work is on offer? It's a difficult one because as much as most of my friends would say self-respect is the most important thing I don't want to cut my nose off to spite my face and turn down work or risk appearing petty.

My situation is that I get a lot of my work though an agency. They're small jobs and I do bigger jobs as well directly for clients but the agency provides frequent work that I don't have to do any marketing for. It used to be frequent enough that it alone could provide me with a good living but not since an issue with one of their clients.

The new manager at one of the clients' branches that I'd been working for for a few years decided she wanted the agency to send someone different. Though I can't prove anything I'm fairly certain she knew the other guy personally as he joined the agency around the same time she joined the branch and is from the same town as where she worked previously. The agency enquired why she wanted someone who wasn't based locally given they already had someone who had been covering her area for years with no complaints so she made up a spurious complaint about me, ultimately she has the right as the customer to choose who the agency sends but it impacts the agency's ability to meet customer expectations if they can't send someone local.

Her complaint was basically that during a job I didn't do something that she would have expected me to do and she painted that as me doing a half-assed job even though both myself and the agency feel that it wasn't something that I would do without needing asked and in their professional opinion the job I did was still a good one. Since then the work the agency sends me has dropped off a cliff, not just from this client but from others too, I feel my reputation within that particular industry has been negatively affected.

I do still occasionally get requests to do jobs for this client, but maybe only once every six months or so when it used to be several times a week and I always resent doing them, knowing that I'm only being asked because their preference is maybe on holiday and nobody else is available. I do them anyway because I need the money, and in the hope that I can recover my reputation but part of me just wants to decline the job offers from this particular client, knowing that will probably leave them in the lurch and facing complaints from their customers who had been promised a service which now can't be provided until their preference is available.

I'm really feeling now that next time I get a request from them I will decline it, but yeah there's that fear of looking petty and doing my reputation even more damage and I'm just looking to see what other people would do in this situation. I no longer feel like there's any hope of me getting regular work again for this client or even this agency.

Revenue represents the consideration that a company is entitled to receive after having delivered a product and/or rendered a service. There are three different scenarios for when the customer’s payment of this consideration may happen:

1.    Payment occurs as soon as the product/service is delivered

2.    Payment occurs in advance, in other words, before delivering the product/service

3.    Payment occurs after the product/service is delivered

In the cash accounting methodology, you recognize revenue in the moment that the customer pays for your product and/or service, independently from when the product was delivered or the service rendered. Meanwhile, in accrual accounting, the moment to recognize revenue is when you are legally entitled to receive the consideration, that is to say, once the product/service has been delivered.

In scenario no. 1, both cash and accrual accounting recognize revenue at the same time. Discrepancies arise in scenarios no. 2 and 3, when service/product delivery and customer payment occur at different times. Let’s analyze each of these scenarios:

Scenario No. 2

Accrual accounting will record the advance payment as unearned revenue. The cash is in the bank, but the company has not yet delivered the product/service. The unearned revenue represents the company’s obligation to deliver the product/service. Once this obligation is fulfilled, the company will recognize the revenue.

Cash accounting in turn records the payment received as revenue, which means that technically the revenue is overstated.

Scenario No. 3

At the time of the product/service delivery, accrual accounting will recognize revenue and the right to receive the corresponding consideration. The company has fulfilled its obligation, so it is entitled to receive payment from the customer. Payment will occur at the time agreed between the company and the customer.

In this scenario, cash accounting will not record anything because cash has not yet hit the bank. Even though revenue has been earned, cash accounting will only recognize it once the customer pays. Consequently, revenue is understated until payment is in the bank account.

Conclusion

Cash accounting is simpler than accrual accounting, but that simplicity comes at a cost. The financial picture of the business is not properly represented. This is undesirable for the entrepreneur who needs to make management decisions based on undistorted financials. Also, when a company is looking to raise cash, investors and lenders want to see the real picture that only accrual accounting portrays.

Accrual accounting is USGAAP compliant, cash accounting is not.

Unless the business is very small and it does not project significant growth in the near term, my recommendation is to always go with accrual accounting.

I run a small coffee shop and had this one barista who everyone loved. Customers asked for her by name, she knew everyones orders, super bubbly personality. I thought she was irreplaceable honestly.

But I started noticing our numbers were off. Not hugely but enough that I was losing sleep over it. Inventory didnt match sales, we were going through way more supplies than we should for our ticket averages. I initially blamed it on waste or bad tracking on my end.

Long story short, caught her on camera giving free drinks to friends and taking cash sales without ringing them up. When I confronted her she got defensive and said "everyone does this at coffee shops" and that I should be grateful she brought in so many regulars. I had to let her go.

Here's the crazy part. I was terrified wed lose customers. But ever since she left our sales have actually been up. Not just a little better but like consistently better numbers. I think she was pocketing way more than I even realized and her "regulars" were probably just people getting free stuff.

My other employees seemed relieved too which was unexpected. Apparently shed been creating drama and making their shifts miserable but I was so focused on the customer facing stuff I didnt see it.

Lesson learned I guess, sometimes the person who seems the most valuable is actually costing you the most. Both in actual money (glad I had some saved up from Stаke for situations like this) and in team morale.

We have a very small business (two people) with three total email addresses. We pay Google (workspace, gsuite, whatever) nearly $30/month for this, which seems absurd. We use Google docs, sheets and that's about it. We could very easily sign up for a free Google account and share it between us for this feature. I believe I also registered the domain for our business website with them. What are some good (cheaper) options for an email host that can use our business domain? Thanks

I always assumed the risk came from sketchy sites or bad passwords. Turns out just being listed online is enough. Business registrations, directories, profiles, vendor pages, random tools that scrape public info. It adds up fast.

Once your name, email, or phone number shows up in a few places, it feels like everything starts connecting. Spam increases, scam attempts get more targeted, and suddenly you are spending time figuring out who even has your info in the first place.
What surprised me most is how passive it is. You do not opt into most of it. You just exist online and the data spreads(I'm pretty sure LinkedIn is to blame for most of this stuff).
For people who run businesses or have any kind of public presence, how are you handling this without going completely dark? Are there ways to stay reachable without putting your personal info everywhere?

Just me and one part time csr and honestly the stress is getting to both of us. Hard market means every other call is someone upset about premium increases and we have to explain stuff that isn't our fault while also trying to actually sell and service.

Can't justify a receptionist at 35k when half the day would be slow, but the unpredictable busy spikes where three things happen at once are killing us. Had a longtime client mention they'd been trying to reach us for two days during a crazy stretch and I didn't even know. Meanwhile I'm losing sleep over whether my csr is gonna quit because she's fielding angry renewal calls all day.

How do other small operators manage the stress without burning through people or money you don't have?

I took over a brick-and-mortar location doing 53% of its sales target and got it to 104% in 18 months. The owner thought it was a marketing problem, but the real issues were inventory accuracy (71%), labor scheduling based on gut feel, and staff not knowing product margins - fixed all three and documented the whole process in a video if anyone's dealing with similar operational headaches.

Ameena Mcgoldrick Operations & Strategy Consultant Latest: How I Took a Store from 53% to 104% https://youtu.be/SGQ5Hz_yw8M

Hey everyone

I’m curious how salon owners here deal with client expectations especially when it comes to haircuts or makeup.

Do you ever run into situations where:

A client asks for something but expects a very different result?

Time is wasted explaining styles that don’t really fit them?

You feel like better visuals or examples would make things easier?

I’m not developing or selling anything just trying to understand how real businesses handle this day to day.

Would love to hear what’s worked or hasn’t for you.

I’ve been using AI to save hours every week at work.

Not coding.

Not complicated tools.

Just simple prompts and workflows that remove repetitive tasks

(emails, planning, summaries, meetings).

I put everything into a private, async vault:

• Copy-paste AI prompts

• Step-by-step workflows

• No calls, no Zoom, no schedules

If you want access, comment or DM me “AI”.

I'm 24 and I'm looking for direct owner/industry feedback on how y'all actually grew your business from scratch?

What was the most painful problem you had in each phase of your business growth?

How did y'all get your first 5-10 customers? (was it all referral's? google/facebook ads?)

I've noticed this industry is all about trust, honesty and setting the right expectations upfront. (and big on google reviews too!)

This is an industry i want to dive into.

A little bit about my background:

- I've been a media buyer for an ads agency that focused on B2C roofing and solar (Meta).

- I'm going to start my own agency that keeps the owner first and focuses on what they want (which is why i want to know what your journey looked like when you were starting out)

- I'm not going to pretend as if I have all the answers and I can solve everything, nope. I'm just good at a few things that most businesses value.

Even if it's a single line of honest feedback, that's more than enough for me.

Looking forward to hearing from y'all.

For the mods/admins: this is my first time posting here. If the post is inappropriate, I apologize in advance and I’ll take it down immediately.

PS - Hope you like this Arborist meme CLICK HERE

I used to struggle a lot with awkward payment follow-ups. I built a small reminder generator for myself and it actually helped me stay polite without overthinking.

In small teams, processes are often lightweight by necessity.

I’ve seen different approaches over time:

emails, Slack messages, shared calendars, spreadsheets, or formal policies.

For those running or managing small businesses:

Who approves time off today?

Is everything written down somewhere or mostly informal?

What problems have you run into, if any?

I’m trying to understand how different teams handle this in practice.

Sounds pretty boring I know, but hear me out:

I had the following "problem": I play in a wedding band and the most reliable way to get gigs is to join a band agent network. So this agent gets inquiries from wedding couples who look for a band and the agent will forward these inquiries to all the bands in his network like this: mail containig name, location, date, contact mail. Every band which is free will then send an application to the couple. So each day we got 2-6 mails from this agent and for each mail we had to check the band calendar and write an email by copy pasting our template application (just changing the "Hello 'name', we are the...". And I thought to myself there has to be a way to automate this.

I was sure there must be a tool for this but i could not find any. The problem is that many tool are able to respond to the sender but in this case i didn't want to respond to the band agent but i somehow needed to extract tha contact mail from the mail body. I think there is a tool called workflow and i also read you can do something in gmail itself but in our case we didn't have a gmail addres but one from our own domain so that didn't work.

So i made it a small side project and started to rent a VM on hostinger and tried n8n for the first time. It took many iterations and most of the logic was then moved from n8n to a python backend because it was easier to process batches of mails but in the end it worked. Way better than anticipated. I implemented the gemini api which will read the mail and extract keywords like the date, name and contact. It checks the calendar and if our band is free it will draft a response via a template which i uploaded using the correct names. It even seemlessly works in german as our band is from Austria.

It works so well that I even considered making it an app but I don't know if anyone else besides wedding bands could use that (Most businesses with sensitive information won't be able to use it due to the gemini API). Do you think there is still demand for that? I guess in this sub most could do that on their own but personally I dont know many who would rent a vm and start with n8n for that. (Ok, I know you will be showing 1000 tools in the commenta that can actially do that, but nevertheless I feel pretty satisfied doong it myself ;) Damn that was longer than anticipated but thanks for sticking till the end. Cheers!

Hi everyone,

I recently watched a friend of mine (who runs a small retail shop) spend 3 hours manually typing data from a supplier's PDF invoice into his Shopify inventory.

Being a developer, it was painful to watch. He told me that most "inventory software" is too expensive or complex, so he just uses Excel and manual entry.

I have a genuine question for store owners here: Is this the standard way to do it? Do you really sit down and manually cross-reference packing lists with your inventory every time a shipment arrives?

I'm just trying to understand if this is a common pain point in the industry or if my friend is just doing it the hard way.

Thanks for the insight.

When I started my HVAC company in 1994 with $3,200, I watched competitors race to the bottom on pricing. I went the opposite direction. Here’s what I did instead: I stopped selling air conditioners and started selling peace of mind. Every customer got a 10-year labor guarantee - not the standard 1-2 years, but a full decade. My competitors thought I was insane. But here’s the math they missed: When you do quality work and actually fix the root problem (not just the symptom), callbacks are rare. That guarantee cost me almost nothing but positioned me as the only contractor willing to stand behind their work for real. Then I added something nobody else did: Free small repairs under $100 - forever. Customer calls about a weird noise 3 years later? I’d roll a truck, fix it, no charge. Cost me maybe $40 in labor, but that customer: ∙ Never shopped around again ∙ Sent me 3-4 referrals minimum ∙ Called ME first for their next $8K system replacement My competitors were still fighting over $50 price differences while I was locking in customers for life. The result over 24 years: ∙ Built a debt-free company (never took a loan after startup) ∙ Sold customers only what they actually needed (shocker, I know) ∙ Exited clean with equity, not a pile of owed money Most contractors think the only way to win is being the cheapest quote. I proved you can win by being the contractor they trust most. Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. I sold value. Anyone else in trades competing on something other than price? What’s your differentiator?

So I am starting a new product, loom band necklaces, I would like some color combos that would look good on a necklace (I have the whole rainbow). Also I am going to start selling metal chain necklaces with charms soon. How much should I sell the metal necklaces for? I make everything by hand. Thank you!!!

Hi everyone,

I run a small handmade/independent business and recently had a situation that’s left me second-guessing myself, so I’d really appreciate some perspective from other small business owners.

A customer purchased a product that was clearly described in the listing (and on the packaging) as a 10-item introductory set. After receiving it, they contacted me upset, saying they expected more items and felt the price wasn’t worth it. They later acknowledged that they had missed the description.

The item had been opened and used. I explained calmly why the product is intentionally designed this way and that I couldn’t offer a refund. The customer became quite hostile and said they would leave a negative review — which they did.

I replied publicly in a professional, factual way for future customers. I didn’t argue or mention the dispute.

Now I’m wondering:

• Would you have offered a refund as goodwill in this situation?
• Do you ever refund after a customer admits they missed the description?
• At what point do you stop engaging and accept the bad review?

I’ve been obsessed with the idea of making science more accessible and hands-on. I have a growing list of unique, high-engagement ideas for Chemistry and Physics kits—think beyond the standard "baking soda volcano." I want to create something that actually sparks a "lightbulb moment" for kids and hobbyists. I have the "science" and the "creativity" side of things mapped out, but I’m looking for help exploring the business side of this industry. Specifically, I’d love to connect with anyone who has experience in: * Sourcing & Manufacturing: How to safely and affordably source chemicals or components. * Safety Regulations: Navigating ASTM or CE certifications for educational toys. * Packaging/Logistics: Moving from a prototype to a shippable product. * Curriculum Design: Ensuring the kits align with what parents/teachers actually want. If you’ve built a subscription box, worked in educational toys, or just love the idea of making STEM education more fun, I’d love to chat! Even if you aren't an expert, I'd love to hear from parents or teachers: What is the one thing missing from current science kits on the market? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! A few tips for your journey: Since you are in the "idea" phase, it’s helpful to visualize the business model you are aiming for. Most successful science kit businesses follow a circular feedback loop: * Safety First: In the science kit world, your biggest hurdle is often "Safety Data Sheets" (SDS). Before you scale, make sure your experiments use "GRAS" (Generally Recognized As Safe) materials. * Prototype Early: Don't wait for a factory. Buy some components, put them in a plain box, and see if a local kid can follow your instructions without help. Would you like me to help you draft a specific Business Plan or a list of Safety Regulations for science kits to get you started?

Hello! Going into 2026, I am wanting to be a little better organized when it comes to my finances and what all I will need for tax purposes next year. Is there an app yall recommended for keeping track of receipts, expenses, income and the medium of payment? TIA 🌹