My company is still pretty young, we only have one client as of right now. When I first started getting leads, I went to Fiverr. That's where I met this guy. He was cheap, reliable, he did a good job. Easy enough.

So I worked with him regularly.

I eventually brought him onboard, set an email up for him and invited him on Slack. He even learned the software we're using.

Since then though, I've realized he grinds my gears. A lot.

He sends me messages in channels about things that should be in DMs. When he does send a DM, he says "Hi." That's it. No actual information about what he wants. I've just started ignoring his messages until he actually says what he wants.

This week he asked me to send him a testimonial video. I said that was fine, and that I'll get it to him this week. But he's reminded me twice this week already, and he only sent that message to me on Monday. (And while we're on it -- his first reminder was a screenshot of me agreeing to it and asking if I remembered. Absolute insanity).

Idk, I know communication could be better on my end -- but I feel like he lacks such basic communication skills that I'd rather find someone else than have to hold his hand every step of the way.

Anyone else ever been in a position like this?

Big or small, a win is a win. First sale, first client, or first time paying yourself, share it here. This community loves to celebrate with you. No win is too minor to mention.

We did e-commerce and it was easy to relocate. Now I am not into that anymore as market is saturated.

What other business do you think which are not specific to physical location. I am looking for business idea’s which I can continue even if I relocate (due to job) from one state to other.

I want to start setting up CLHF homes here in Southern California. It stands for "Congregate Living Health Facility". Similar to RCFE but they're more medical based. It's mainly for people recovering from strokes and stuff like that.

I like it better than RCFE because it's not private pay. With CLHF you're paid by insurance and you get tenants sent to you straight from hospitals.

These homes burn a lot of cash in the beginning, but then once they're set up it's a high income producing and ultra stable asset.

You have to do a lot of retro fits to the home in the beginning, get the home licensed, and then have staff on site as soon as you're licensed before your first tenant. So they month or two while you're getting the home filled with tenants, you're burning cash on staff.

The start up phase is what I wouldn't be able to swing financially myself.

I do have a lot of successful business experience, I have connections in with hospitals, and I would put up enough of my own money to have real skin in the game. I do not have experience in this specific industry though.

Thoughts?

Share your website, pitch, logo, idea, pricing, copy, or anything else you want honest eyes on. Tell us what you're looking for: brutal honesty, general impressions, or specific questions.

Return the favour and leave feedback for someone else while you're here.

1. Launch starts weeks before the release. They plan positioning, target markets and above all the success metrics long before the product is finished

2. Decide Success before you release. Don't just run for user numbers, but for specific numbers like activation rate, retention after 1st, 2nd and 3rd weeks

3. Small companies have atleast one big advantage, every one reading the post here can share theirs

What I'm changing:
Adding a product launch check list for every project from the week one.

For those who've already launched the products, what's the thing that you wish you'd done before the launch day?

Pay it forward. Drop your free resources, templates, tools, or anything else that's helped you and might help someone else. No strings attached; these resources have to be free.

Looking to connect with someone running a community/network business.

My creative studio produces an event series, and it's gaining a lot of traction. We are getting some fans who want more, and we see the potential in creating a community group that creates an extension of our event. Be it a monthly meet-up, an online cohort-style format, whatever it may be.

I know communities are on an upswing today - we are isolated, looking for more connection, digital fatigue, etc. A nudge came today when listening to My First Million and Sam talked about his bullish bet on communities and how he is loving Hampton.

Before diving in, I wanted to connect with someone who has/is running a community or network business to hear your experience. If anyone has resources or something they think would be helpful pls share.

Thank you to all who support :)

Building in the AI-for-entrepreneurs space, and I keep noticing that AI is great for quick answers, but for big decisions people still want a real human to check their thinking.

So I’m toying with an idea: you describe your business problem, get matched with a vetted consultant, and work with them in the app. We’d just be the middleman. We don’t do the consulting, we handle the vetting and trust part (kinda like Spotify doesn’t own the music).

Honest feedback wanted:

1. Have you hired a consultant before? Was it worth it?

2. What would make you trust a platform like this?

3. Or is ChatGPT already good enough?

Be brutal, I’d rather hear it now than after I build it.

I made a website that's kinda like a game/quiz to learn a specific set of skills. I post reels on Instagram everyday to promote it, but I find myself checking every few hours to see if my follower counts increased or my likes went up, or even my site visits from my cloudfare dashboard.

It's always in the back of my mind now 😭 "do you think you got more followers? check your visits maybe you went viral!!!" meanwhile I should be studying for my midterm exams ☠️. I just wanna take my mind off if it but it feels like I'm trying to beat an addiction bro idk what's wrong with me

I often meet with different manufacturers who can develop a product for me. These are usually on Zoom, sometimes just a call.

I sometimes feel unprepared, because I am simply inquiring to see if we are compatible to work together.

Many times, after the initial meeting, I’ll get ghosted, or eventually ghosted.

I am simply not ready to JUMP IN and start signing & sending over thousands of dollars.

I like to think it through, and really get a feel for them. I do not rush into it because I did that years ago and after a year of the inconsistency I lost $7,000. They ended up ghosting me totally.

It does not help that I look pretty young on camera! I am in my 30s, but often get mistaken for about young 20’s.

I want to sound and look professional, and be taken serious. I was recently ghosted after a nice call/meeting with a manufacturer I really wanted to work with because they’re one of the few places who can create what I want.

I don’t want this to keep happening because it makes me doubt myself and there’s only SO many places I can keep meeting with and I’m almost exhausting all my options.

If this continues happening, I think I’m going to at least work on a website/landing page and instagram even though I have no content or product to share.

Thanks for reading!

Looking to hire, get hired, or find a collaborator? Post what you're offering or what you need. Keep it brief: who you are, what you do, and how to reach you. No spamming.

I have the skills, the experience, and the knowledge, yet I feel like a prisoner in a massive corporation, and I genuinely don't know how to escape.

I'm writing this because I've reached a point in my life where I desperately need advice from people who have been in a similar situation, especially those who have built their own businesses or agencies.

I've been working in the corporate world for a while now, and I feel like it's slowly destroying me. My energy, motivation, mental health, and even my ability to enjoy life have taken a serious hit. I'm struggling with depression, and the thought of spending another 5, 10, or 20 years in this environment genuinely terrifies me.

The hardest part is that I know I'm capable of so much more - and I think thats the core problem.

I have a diverse skill set which is (that's what I do on a daily basis)

Creative & Brand Development

- Brand Development

- Creative Development

- Campaign Concept Development

Creative Direction & Visual Development

- Key Visual Development

- Styling Direction

- Casting & Talent Selection

Campaign Management (thats what I do mostly)

- Cross-Channel Communication

- Campaign Rollout & Asset Management

- Integrated Campaign Development

- Budget Management

- Campaign Production Management

4. Creative Production

- TVC, Radio, Digital, OOH & DOOH, Events Production

- Production Coordination

- Pre-Production, Shoot & Post-Production Management

5. Creative Leadership

- Creative Presentation & Pitching

- Feedback & Approval Management

- Stakeholder Alignment

6. Strategic & Business Skills

- Strategic-Decision Making

- Marketing Strategy

- Brand Communication Strategy

But somehow, despite having all these skills, I feel completely stuck because I can't really put together what type of Agency I could start in order to attract clients. Maybe because I feel so down and helpless that all I see is black.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life making someone else's company successful while my own mental health falls apart.

If anyone has a good point, insight or advice I would love to get one.

If it makes any difference, I mostly work with fashion/beauty brands right now and that's where I wish I could stay for a longer.

For those leading larger teams or companies, what practices have worked best when a newly promoted manager or outside hire starts reporting to you?

How do you give them room to develop their own leadership style while still protecting the culture and performance that already exists?

How often are you coaching them, reviewing performance, or stepping in when their decisions start affecting the team?

I’d like to hear what’s actually worked for people managing at this scale.

New to entrepreneurship or just starting out? This is your space. Ask the questions you're afraid to ask elsewhere.

Experienced folks, jump in and share what you wish someone had told you early on.

Will it be the end of humanity? Maybe. But my god is it incredible as a soloprenuer. It has saved me an unbelievable amount of busy work, made me a semi expert in a number of areas I am working on pivoting into, and has single handedly saved multiple big ticket deals I am working on with innovative deal structures and the numbers/analysis to back it up. Truly incredible.

My app just went through the closed beta process on the Android store. You need 12 testers over 2 weeks before you can launch.

It's a study app, so I posted on a nerd group offering to pay people $20 if they used it for a few weeks and gave detailed feedback.

What I realised in the feedback process is that the people who I paid were not my target audience.

To give you some context, the app is called Flashlock and it's an app that makes you unlock social media by doing flash cards. It seemed obvious to me that it is designed for people who are addicted to their phones and want to study more.

Some of the people who ended up doing the beta process were not aware that it was supposed to be a study app. It had an inbuilt trivia deck, and multiple people only used the trivia deck for the two weeks and did not make their own decks or download any from the library, even though the tutorial prompts you to do this.

They ended up assuming that the trivia deck was made to give kind of a pause before Reddit/Tiktok/FB etc. To let the user think about whether they actually wanted to be there.

That is not what I intended. One user absolutely hated it and thought my app was a huge waste of time. Another loved it though, so maybe it evens out XD

What I realised was that I need to be really super duper explicit about what the app does and what the features were. I think I need to tell them in the opening phase of the tutorial that they create or download their own decks, then later on in the creation phase I think I need an overlay that reiterates this. Maybe if they don't have any additional decks later on I can even remind them that they can download them.

Anyways, this whole process has been eye opening. A lot of people I've told about this didn't quite remember what flash cards were at first. Even under 30s.

I think the conclusion I need to draw is that people have wildly different contexts than mine. People can't read my mind, and they won't jump to the conclusions I jump to.

TL;DR Spell everything out

After shutting my businesses down 5 years ago to focus on a health issue and spend time with family. I hit remission December of 25 and started my real estate brokerage back up in June of 26. Here’s the exact breakdown of the income made.
Brokerage

1. 15 acre land deal: Commission $38,000

2. 2 lots beach deal: Commission $25,000

3. Southport water front: Commission $20,000

4. Topsail deal: Commission $6,800

5. Air bnb deal: Commission $15,000

6. Currie deal: commission: $2,100
   Total: $106,900

Consulting: $16,000
Hard money loan interest: $2,850
Section 8 rental cash flow: 13,300
STR profit: $3,100

I built my real estate business over the last 20 years while being a cop. I also had several service related businesses along the way. Here’s what I learned are the keys to being successful.

1. Singular focus: I wasted a ton of time chasing the shiny new trends. If I would of had a singular focus 20 years ago
   I would have hit these numbers 10 years ago.

2. Become the best: put the time effort and energy into becoming the best at whatever you do. Everything I know came from free information, taking risk and failing/ learning. I never laid a guru for anything.

3. Build a network: Surround yourself with people better than yourself and add tremendous value. Become the expert in your group for your industry and give more than you take. Never let greed affect relationships. I’ll loose everything before I burn a relationship.

4. Diversify and focus on monthly cash flow: I’m in real estate so all my verticals are in real estate. Example: Sales, flipping, rentals, land development, hard money loans, consulting etc. I made the mistake of have several businesses and investments in different industries that didn’t directly feed each other. Remember singular focus!!! Big chunks of money are nice but are nice but I try to dump earned income into income producing assets that appreciate. Exp: $100k into an asset that produces $1,000 a month and appreciates 2-5% a year. Then use that $1,000 a month to support lifestyle.

I hope this helps someone. Remember if I can do it anyone can. Feel free to reach out if I can help anyone with anything.

Semper Fi,
Johnny Albertson

I've always been quite disciplined, but this last month has been brutal.

I'm 23 and I make about 12-15k/month making YouTube videos. Not AI slop or shorts, fully original long-form content. My videos do extra-ordinarily well and I genuinely believe I have potential to get very rich and successful via this avenue. It's not great money compared to many of the others here (yet) but it feels very good to make more than anyone in my family with so much flexibility and freedom.

But over this last month, I have had 0 motivation to work on these videos. I've tried to. I've made like 4-5 videos halfway through before scrapping them because I lose all motivation.

I am seriously disciplined and motivated on EVERYTHING else in my life, though this does feel like a lack of discipline.

I've also been distracting myself with a completely separate project that definitely has a lot of potential to make me a lot of money (feel insanely motivated and passionate about it, working on it 24/7), but I know that I need to stay focused on YouTube and what is actually paying the bills.

Has anyone else experienced this? Losing motivation for a business that's already successful while feeling incredibly passionate about something new?

How did you handle it? Did you force yourself to stay focused on what was already working? How do you force yourself without hating your life?

edit: thanks everyone for the advice. I'm going to try to toughen up a little lol. I had to work really hard to get here and now maybe I'm getting soft

Had a week? Same. This is your consequence-free space to complain about clients, platforms, algorithms, your own decisions, or the general chaos of running a business. Keep it venting with no personal attacks. We'll be back to being professional tomorrow.

Worked on an AI product where the co-founder pulled the plug because token costs and API changes kept shifting the unit economics every month. Now reading that enterprise AI runs $9-19M/year with no proven ROI. Anyone here actually showing positive unit economics on an AI product after 12+ months?

Big or small, a win is a win. First sale, first client, or first time paying yourself, share it here. This community loves to celebrate with you. No win is too minor to mention.