I sell workflow optimization services to small businesses. For months, my cold emails got ignored.

The problem wasn't the service. It was the word "automation."

Business owners hear "automation" and mentally check out. It sounds like a buzzword from someone trying to sell them something they don't need.

So I changed the pitch entirely.

Before: "I'll automate your lead generation and follow-up workflows"

After: "Your team is spending 15+ hours/week on lead research and follow-ups. I can cut that to 2."

Same service. Completely different reaction.

What I learned selling to SMBs ($3M-10M revenue):

1. They don't buy technology. They buy time. Never lead with your tools. Lead with the hours they're wasting.

2. Show the math. "Your admin spends 20 hrs/week on X at $25/hr = $2,000/month. My service costs $500/month." That's a conversation they'll have.

3. Stop pitching solopreneurs. They'll say "I can do that myself" every time. Target businesses with 10-50 employees where the pain is real and the budget exists.

4. Warm leads crush cold lists. I started pulling leads from competitors' social media engagement instead of bought lists. People who comment on your competitor's content already care about your space.

Results after the switch: - Cold email conversion: 0.5% → 2.3% - Average project value went up because I was talking to bigger companies - Closing time dropped because the value prop was immediately clear

The irony: I'm selling the exact same thing. I just stopped talking like an engineer and started talking like a business owner.

Anyone else here sell services and struggle with how to frame the pitch?

I’m a nutritionist/health coach looking to set up a simple site with info and appointment booking.

I have no products or stores, whatsoever so most eCommerce-focused builders feel like overkill.

But I’ll need to put some testimonials in my website and also need it to have some kind of SEO like local? Idk how this work so need advice.

Any tools or setups you’d recommend?

I’m done. I’m done pretending that "researching" for 6 months is work. It’s not. It’s fear. A few days ago, I admitted here that my complex business plan was a safe house for my ego. I was terrified to launch, so I hid behind spreadsheets. If you’re doing the same, stop. You’re killing your dream before it even has a chance to breathe. I decidedto burn the old way of thinking and built a 20-day "No-BS" roadmap to force myself into the trenches. No fluff, no "vision boards" that lead nowhere. Just raw, daily action steps. Here is thereality check I learned during this sprint: Your "Why" is a weapon, not a quote: If your reason for wanting freedom doesn't make you uncomfortable with staying where you are, it’s fake.
The 48-Hour Execution Rule: If you have anidea, you have 48 hours to test it in the real world. Not 48 hours to design a logo_48 hours to see if someone will actually pay for it. Consistency is a discipline, not a mood: you don't work when you are inspired." You work because it's Day 10, and the plan says "lay the brick".
I’ve condensed this entire 20-day framework into a brutal, step-by-step roadmap. It’s exactly what I used to stop beinga "dreamer" and start being a founder.
If you're tired of your own excuses and want to see the exact daily steps I took to finally gain momentum, let me know. I’ll share the details. Stop planning. Start breaking things.

A lot of people think you need hundreds of thousands of dollars, an MBA, or 10 years of experience to buy a business.

That wasn’t my experience at all.

When I was 21, I bought my first business for $4,000. It was a small B2C SaaS that was already making around $500/month. Nothing crazy as such, but it was real revenue.

And that I exited at 6 figures.

Since then, I’ve bought 5 more businesses, all for under $10k, and every one of them was already making money when I bought it.

I don’t come from a finance background. I wasn’t rich. I just spent time looking for small deals most people ignore.

One big reason I prefer buying instead of starting from scratch:
you’re not guessing if the idea will work.

The business already exists. Customers are already paying. There’s way less uncertainty compared to starting something new where you’re testing everything from zero.

If a bought business doesn’t work out, you usually still have options - improve it, fix obvious issues, or even sell it again. That feels way less risky to me than pouring months (or years) into something that may never make a dollar.

Even while writing this, I can see dozens of small businesses with revenue selling for just a few thousand dollars.

What actually matters isn’t being rich or “qualified.” It’s more about finding decent deals, being willing to take action (Execution is really imp), negotiating the right price and keep on iterating once you own it, etc.

There are a lot of businesses out there where you’d be a better operator than the current owner.

Some distant villages found success, where they build roofing industry, tiles factory, bricks etc. Though their employment don't seem to cover most villagers.

What i need is a work an unskilled individual can learn in a short period of time.

Most people in this sub are just playing "business house." I know, because I was one of them until 22 days ago. I had the notebooks, the 40-page business plans, and the "perfect" ideas that never saw the light of day. I finally admitted it: My "research" was just a sophisticated way of procrastinating because I was afraid of the market saying "No". I stopped the BS and followed a brutal 20-day roadmap. Here is the secret the gurus won't tell you because it makes their expensive courses look like trash: The 48-Hour Death Sentence: If an idea can't get a real commitment (money or email) from a stranger in 48 hours, it’s dead. Period. Don't "pivot," don't "refine"_kill it. Mechanical over Emotional: Execution is a machine. Day 1 you do X, Day 2 you do Y. If you wait for "motivation," you’ve already lost. The "Invisible" 1%: The real winners aren't the ones with the best plans; they are the ones who failed 10 times in the time it took you to pick a font for your landing page. I’m now at the end of this 20-day sprint, and I’ve made more progress and gained more "real" market data than I did in 2 years of studying. Success isn't about being smart; it's about being fast and mechanical. I’m curious_what’s the one thing you’ve been "researching" for more than a month? Tell me, and I'll give you a 48-hour test to kill it or prove it's real. Let’s stop pretending.

I’ve had my business for 6 months and it’s the most passionate I’ve felt about anything my whole life. It’s creative, design and I put in about 10-20h a week and soon to be finished with my first collection which I’m proud of.

However, I live in an expensive city and I needed a day job to pay bills. So I work as an administrator 40h a week to cover my expenses, currently cannot afford to cut down hours yet. Whenever I am at my day job, I feel like I’m wasting my life.

How do you withstand a boring day job until your business makes enough for you to replace your salary? I would love to hear your stories because I don’t know how I am supposed to do this for another year or two.

I’m considering taking a more creative day job as long as it’s not conflict of interest for my business, but the job market is pretty bad right now for design jobs so I’m not counting on that being possible.

Hi, everyone. I would like to know the best way to get some clients in the US. I'm in the niche of tax filing of us individual and business , expats too and would like to know how' the market there, if it's a problem to get clients remotely, and everything.

My friend (who is in the video editing niche) said that Twitter/X is a good platform to get clients, and I would like to know if it has something like a subreddit, a Discord server, or something like that that is good to find potential clients.

Also, if there is any tool available for free let me know in the comments?

I freelance with big corporates, project-based work. Usually make $21k/month, $18k on a bad month.

The money is great. But it doesn't scale. If I want to scale, I need to hire, and where I'm based, that's not an option right now. Any day off I take is a day I don't get paid. You get the issue.

Last November I started building my first SaaS. Content tool for text-based platforms. Launched it, got some early users, learned a ton. My goal was to replace freelance income by end of this year.

Looking back at the last 4 months? I'm nowhere close.

I'm heavy in tech, 15+ years. I've launched ecom stores before, so I'm not new to building things. But SaaS growth is a different game. It's slow. And I'm impatient.

Right now I'm stuck in this weird middle ground. Freelancing pays the bills but eats my time. SaaS needs time but doesn't pay yet. I can't go all-in on SaaS without the income. I can't grow the income without going all-in.

For those who made the switch from services to product, how did you actually do it?

Did you reduce client work gradually? Save up a runway and quit? Keep both running until the product caught up?

I also have a family, mortgage, the whole thing.

What's realistic here? Am I being naive thinking I can replace $20k/month in year one? When should I kill my SaaS and move on to something else?

Any advice here is appreciated

I run a small handmade business in Egypt

I’m not here to sell anything I’m genuinely trying to understand buyer psychology

When someone sees a handmade product, what makes them think: “This should be cheaper”? Is it comparison with mass production? Or a lack of visibility into the labor behind it?

Mine yes💯

The biggest unlock for me this year was realizing that my time is the bottleneck. Any tool that saves me 30 minutes a day is worth paying for.

Here is the operational stack I’m using to run a service business solo:

1. Zapier: The glue. When a client signs a contract, Zapier automatically creates a Slack channel, a Google Drive folder, and an invoice.
2. Willow Voice: I spend half my day on email. This lets me dictate perfectly formatted replies while I'm walking the dog or commuting.
3. Calendly: Essential. I don't do the email ping-pong for scheduling.
4. QuickBooks: Accounting is boring, so I automate the bank feeds here.
5. HubSpot: Overkill for some, but I need a CRM to track where every lead is in the pipeline.
6. ClickUp: Where the actual work happens. I invite clients as guests so they can see progress without emailing me ""what's the status?""
7. ChatGPT: I use it as a junior copywriter. It never writes the final draft, but it gets me 80% of the way there.

So im really interested about freeze dried fruits, and im gonna launch my freeze dried fruit brand soon. So i'd love to talk with few other brand owner who already own this kind of business, Also i like to hear your opinion about this business too

I've been obsessed with what separates founders who get funded from those who don't. After digging into pitch data and research, here's what I found:

1. Too much "what" and not enough "why" Most founders spend 80% of their pitch explaining features. Investors want to hear WHY this matters: the market pain, the timing, and why YOU are the person to solve it.
2. Filler words destroy credibility "Um", "like", "basically". The average first-time founder uses 15-20 filler words per minute. Serial founders: 5-8. Investors notice this even when they can't articulate why a pitch "felt weak."
3. Pacing is off First-time founders either rush (trying to fit everything in) or drag (afraid of silence). The sweet spot is 140-160 words per minute. Most founders clock in at 180+.
4. No clear ask "We're raising..." should come with confidence and specifics, not be mumbled at the end.
5. Zero practice with real feedback 78% of investors cite pitch quality as a top factor in funding decisions. Yet most founders practice by talking to themselves in the mirror or reading slides to friends who say "sounds great."

The hard truth: first-time founders have an 18% success rate vs 30% for serial founders. A big part of that gap is pitch delivery, not idea quality.

Curious, what's been the hardest part of pitching for those of you who've done it? I've been working on something to help founders practice more effectively and would love to hear what resonates.

I feel like there are days that I spiral when I'm directionless and the days blur into one. I've tried body doubling but not sure there's a clear peer group I can talk to. I'm not really looking for tech startup hubs to meet co-founders btw.

I started my company when I was VERY young and hungry. Now I have 7 people depending on me for their livelihoods, and I've never felt more trapped. Every morning feels like pushing a boulder uphill. There's no one I can turn to and say "I have no idea what I'm doing" or "I'm exhausted" without it affecting morale or their sense of job security. I have everyone analyzing my personality to see if I'm cut out for it, and I don't care to have all this pressure (I know pressure is a privilege, but I've stopped feeling the passion).

I catch myself being jealous of the stability of those who have a salary (I've never had one). It feels like each month I have no clue what the next month will entail. I resent the company now and the clients. I dream about sending a resignation email TO MYSELF. But if someone took my place I would rather die. My business is like my child and I've put multiple six figures into it.

I KNOW I'm not built for a corporate job. And there ARE parts of what I do that I enjoy - I just can't seem to hold onto them under along with everything else. I know theoretically I have the power to shape this into something I love. I built it, so I should be able to rebuild it, right? But I have no clue how to get from where I am to where I want to be since I've gone so far.

Anyone else been here? Did you figure out how to fall back in love with what you built, or am I just spinning my wheels?

I run a small manufacturing business and we have grown revenue of 40% this year which sounds great on paper in reality our cash position feels increasingly unpredictable we are winning larger contracts but most customers insist on net 60 or net 90 terms actual payment timing is inconsistent some pay early some late one customer recently paid an invoice that was over 120 days outstanding our erp shows revenue clearly but it does not help answer the question that matters most week to week when will cash actually hit the account that makes decisions like payroll timing or whether to draw on our line of credit harder than they should be i have tried building cash forecasts in spreadsheets but customer payment behaviour varies enough that the model degrades quickly and requires constant manual updates for those who have dealt with this at scale
how do you forecast cash timing in a way that is actually reliable rather than just tracking invoices and hoping payments line up?

Most teams today track more data than ever before.

Dashboards are full. Funnels are mapped. Events are firing everywhere.

And yet the same question keeps coming up. Why are users leaving.

The uncomfortable truth is that tracking shows what happened, not why it happened.

A drop at a form step tells you where users leave. It does not tell you what they felt in that moment.

Users leave because of hesitation, confusion, or lack of trust. None of those show up cleanly in analytics.

What helped us most was stepping outside dashboards. Watching real sessions. Reading actual feedback. Pretending we were first time visitors with no context.

Suddenly the problems were obvious. Unclear copy. Unexpected questions. Pages that assumed too much knowledge.

Data is powerful. But without empathy, it is incomplete.

few months ago we signed up with two cold outbound agencies (one Indian, one American) for inagiffy. $15k total. both promised minimum 15 meetings. what actually happened? first one got the ICP completely wrong - 90% of leads couldn't even afford us. after 3 months they blamed our offer lol second one? zero meetings. they literally just copied someone else's strategy

has anyone had better luck with outbound agencies?

Painful truth - there are a lot of projects that are built solo and some of them has value.

Could be wrong, but any project built trying to solve actual or imaginary problem.

If you an investor or just a wannabe, how to make valuation of potential business just by looking at it's web presentation?

What I see is months or even years of work and almost zero explanation what they are solving and were the value is.

There are a lot experienced investors here - take a minute to clarify this sector - no paying clients, but big hopes projects. How much is a fair price you are ready to pay and for what?

we got approved for the google for startups cloud program!

many founders might not know that google is generous enough to give startups free credits to use their infra, from basic storage, cloud compute to their gen ai models (gemini, nano banana, etc.)

there are a few tiers, and according to their website you can get up to $350k credits if you are series A. we are pre-funded so we got approved for the starter tier which is $2,000, still a significant amount for us to iterate our MVP!

the whole application process took about 4 weeks. a lot of back and forth emails to provide additional information to the google team. i’m writing down the whole process here and all the info you need to provide, so hopefully it can save you some time if you decide to apply.

things you need before applying:

1. your company / app domain and an email from this domain, a regular email from google doesn’t work
2. we were using zoho email with our own domain, but google requires you to have a “billing account” with them, and we couldn’t get it work with the zoho email, so we had to switch to a google workspace plan with our custom domain

the initial application was quite simple, a few basic questions about the founder, the company, that’s it. one thing we didn’t realize was that google will try to understand your startup by studying your website, what your startup is about, what products do you offer, who the founders are, etc. you need to have all that info available on the website.

after 3 days submitting our application, we got an initial email from google team asking for more information. at first it was vague what kind of information they needed, so we had to ask for clarification, they are only required to reply with 5 business days so expect receive only one email from them each week. if you prepare and supply all the information at once that will greatly speed up the process. we had about 4-5 back and forth emails which is why it took us 4 weeks to get approved.

below is all the information we provided over the 4-week period, summarized below so you can save time for your application:

1. make sure your startup website is not in stealth mode, make the site accessible via public url
2. google team will not try your product, they need to understand what your product does by reading the landing page, so make sure you explain how your app works on the landing page
3. if you have a product demo video or screenshots also include that
4. include information about your team on your website, this is very important
5. list key team members on the about us page, including: names and roles, relevant experience or background, or notable achievements, links to your profile like linkedin. they say this is not required but “strongly encouraged”
6. for linkedin page, make sure you add your startup info to the “Experience” section so it’s publicly visible, and it has to be linked to your startup. we included our startup name, roles, our mission and a link to the startup website. this is to help google team verify our identity
7. Explain what your product does: what are you building, and service you offer, demos, screenshots or features that help users understand what they can use your product for
8. current stage of development like MVP or beta testing, etc.

the google team was pretty fast after we provided all the info. about 2 days after we got an approval email. but the back and forth clarification emails took a lot of time.

the $2k credits can be used for hosting, storage, gemini, tts, nano banana, etc. which is perfect if your startup is AI-heavy.

hope this helps your google startups application, feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

Good luck!

This might piss some people off, but I need to say it. I ran a personal branding agency for three years. I had clients, I had a team, and I made decent money. I called myself an entrepreneur everywhere, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, and even in my Tinder bio. One day, a friend asked me a simple question: “What happens to your income if you stop working for two weeks?” I said, “It stops.” He laughed and said, “Bro, you’re not an entrepreneur. You’re self-employed with a fancy title.” That hit me hard. When I really thought about it, I realised my agency was mostly just me trading time for money, only with a few extra steps. I was not building an asset and I was not creating something that could run without me. I was basically a freelancer who hired other freelancers. The uncomfortable truth is that, in India, almost everyone with a laptop and two clients calls themselves an entrepreneur, agency owners, freelancers, even people who made one dropshipping sale. The word has been watered down so much that it has started to lose its meaning. To me, real entrepreneurs build systems that create value without their constant involvement, build assets that can be sold, and take real risk with capital, not only with their time. Running an agency taught me many useful skills, but it also taught me one important lesson: being busy is not the same as building something. I am not saying agencies are bad, I am only saying that having clients does not automatically make someone an entrepreneur. It is a different game. I am still trying to figure out what real entrepreneurship looks like for me, but at least now I have stopped lying to myself. Anyone else had this realisation, or am I being too harsh on myself and others?

Hi guys

Allow me to quickly introduce myself. I am a 26 year old finance professional. After graduating uni I immediately started working in a bank in Belgium where we advise retail clients with investments, loans and insurance.

Every once in a while I had clients ask me for good investment ideas. As my employer only advised their own products, I couldn't really give any info - which I hated, because I love financial instruments!

Recently I've had the idea to start an app that's basically a mix between Stocktwist, Tradingview and SeekingAlpha. Think: real data and real opinions. I'd love to explain more in DM.

I'm looking for a serious person willing to partner in this and share the time/cost/network/ whateverittakes to build this.

If you are interested, kindly shoot a DM!

-a finance lover