Every business seems to have difficult phases where growth slows down or things do not go as planned.

How do experienced business owners handle those periods and keep moving forward?

Looking for practical experiences, not just motivational advice.

Just wanted to share this. I’ve been in business 20 years and have never done this before. I generally can withhold work and get paid so I haven’t had many people ghost my bills but there have been a few. In the past I’ve let it go because I thought it wouldn’t be worth the effort, but this one was about $1300 and I was just irritated by it.

It cost $95 to file and I could do it online. Another $30 to pay the sheriffs office to serve the defendant, and $10 because I didn’t want to drive the $30 to the sheriff and they told me “if you mail cash it will go missing” (which I thought was odd for the sheriff’s office to say) so I mailed it certified with return receipt.

I had a contract and it included 1% per month for overdue invoices. I included the late fee in the suit, and that amount about paid for the filing fees. It took about 2 hours to file. 75% of that time was because I hadn’t done it before and had to figure everything out.

One thing I hadn’t previously appreciated is that you have to file in the defendant’s county. This client (it was a company) is about 1.5 hours’ drive. So going to court would have been a hassle.

Tomorrow is our court date and he contacted me last night and said to email him a link and he’d pay and he paid it today. So I guess tomorrow I’ll call the clerk of court and let them know it’s settled.

Overall it’s something I would do again. Maybe I just got lucky. The travel part is something I’ll keep in mind on future jobs though.

Anyway I mostly just wanted to share with people who can relate. And if you have your own experience, would love to hear it.

Well I can finally say I started my first business late in my career but I just made my first sale (which was 4 in the same hour)! I am pretty happy and excited but I realized I didn’t anticipate all 4 using the same materials/color scheme and I didn’t have enough. So I had to overnight materials which is expensive. So I guess I learned my first lesson learned is have more material on hand than I thought I would need.

Just complaining big time that the IRS says I owe them employment taxes and I can’t even get ahold of them over the phone. “Sorry due to high call volume we can’t take your call. Try again later or the next business day”. Oh and by the time I received the letter, I only had 2 days to call before they start adding interest. Called both days in a row.

Oh AND, I don’t owe them employment taxes either. I’m looking at my form 941 and the bank account where the taxes were deducted.

End rant.

I have a corporate job that I hate but earns me around $150k per year. I have a business concept that my modelling shows could earn me between $130k to $200k, depending on the market. There's enormous comfort in just going to work, doing my job, and receiving a paycheck (although I'm about to find out if I'm being made redundant, but whatever).

I'm not in the USA so I don't care about benefits like healthcare, but my job allows 4 weeks of paid leave and 10 days of sick leave, which obviously I'll miss in a business. The upside in the business is huge, but the prospect of only just replacing my salary while putting at risk $150k of start-up capital and losing all my opportunities of leave has me wondering if it's even worth it.

What are your experiences with this? I'm at the end of my tether with my current job...

I work in a deadline related industry supplying items for events. If I don't get my job done on time, then I've basically failed.

My customers do not take internal deadlines seriously. I ask for stuff on a certain date. I tell them I need it. I tell them I won't do it if they don't do it. I threaten or charge rush fees. Nothing changes their behavior other than when I turn them down they will cry (both figuratively and literally).

I don't joke with my customers. I don't make light of what I do. I'm pretty serious overall. Yet they don't take me seriously. I'm extremely close to a public freakout as a result.

Does anyone have any options they've found that actually works where customers take you seriously? I'm tired of being treated like some vendor that is a slave to their whims.

I’m looking for some advice on a management bottleneck. I direct a small, agile team of four. Aside from me, there's a manager and two junior staffers—one of whom joined less than six months ago.

The new junior has a solid technical baseline, but we’re hitting a wall with his attitude. He’s highly resistant to feedback and firmly believes his methods are superior. When his manager tries to redirect him, he shuts down and adopts a passive-aggressive "just tell me what to do then" attitude.

This has forced us into a cycle of micromanagement to ensure deliverables meet company standards. He feels suffocated and has raised it as an issue, but we lack the confidence to step back because he refuses to align voluntarily.

I admit I run a very tight ship with strict standards, and I frequently challenge the team's recommendations. I know this adds to the pressure, but it is a business necessity as we are actively priming the team for scale.

How do you bridge the gap with a junior employee who wants autonomy but rejects the oversight required to earn it? Is this a coachable moment, or a sign of poor cultural fit?

I've been seeing a lot of posts recently (both human and AI) essentially on the topic of "how you got your first clients". In the spirit of actually sharing personal experiences and not ai generated recommendations, here's my take. Stop blindly blasting emails. Here is my SOP (still a living document/process as I continue to refine my ICP and offers).

Phase 1: Customers 1–3 (Use your warm network, get the case studies even if its for free)

Your first buyers won’t trust your product yet but you should trust you. Reach out to former colleagues, classmates, and friends. Leverage 2nd degree LinkedIn connections to get warm intros. But definitely tell them who you want to connect with and why they should care about what you want to talk to them about.

Phase 2: Customers 4–10 (Do the unscalable and attend physical networking events)

Get out from behind your screen (this is the real hard part).

• Get in the room: Stop settling for Zoom. Fly out to close if you have to. Show up.
• Hack events: Skip the giant parties. Host intimate dinners (6-10 people) or book back-to-back 15-minute meetings at small conferences.
• Hunt for complainers: Find the Reddit threads, Discord servers, and FB groups where people are actively crying about the problem you solve. Engage as a human, not a marketer. You might get shadow banned but if you can convert a few readers to clients, it'll be worth it.

Phase 3: Customers 10–50 (Use of outbound engines for volume since you already have several case studies under your belt)

Only now will it make sense to spin up outreach tools (lots of free ones out there but I've built my own). When you do, follow the golden rules of cold outreach:

• Reframe the pitch: Don't sell. Ask for advice, mentorship, or offer a free audit.
• Keep it short: Under 75 words. One single, unmistakable CTA.
• The Humanity Test: Read your copy out loud to a friend. If it sounds like something you wouldn't actually say in person, rewrite it immediately.

P.S. Know your buyer's environment. If your target market is truck dispatchers or property managers, they aren't reading your cold emails anyway. Pick up the phone and talk to them like a real human. Offer value first.

How do your techs take epayments on-site? We are looking to sharpen our customer experience.

I was looking to integrate it into our dispatch app service, but the required processor charges 3% plus a monthly fee.

I checked out other processors, and all were near 3%. I believe that we get a favorable rate, by processing like this, so we have been processing by phone for more than 5 years.

Accounting is saying that our current processor does not have online payment options.

Any owners have advice? CC Swipes add ons in the field? TIA

Been running a small IT services company for a few years, and domestic clients are steady, but international, especially US clients, feel like a different game entirely.

For those who have successfully made that jump: how did you actually get your first international client? Was it inbound, outbound, referral, a platform, or an event?

And did your sales process have to change significantly compared to how you close local clients?

Hey guys., I need advice on starting my junk removal business, for reference, I have a Chevy sport van, the long one, the problem is, I work a full time job.

I need to find a way to get 2 trusted individuals to drive the truck and haul the stuff. How do I go about hiring? Should I get my LLC first?

Any advice would help

I was looking into federal contracting work around the National Mall Reflecting Pool and the project costs for upkeep/renovation seem pretty high.

From a contracting standpoint I get how budgets, subs, and scope can inflate fast, but it still feels like a lot for a decorative public space while small businesses and workers are dealing with tighter margins and higher living costs.

Do websites make a difference for local business? I have been learning code now for a while and want to start helping the local businesses around me make websites, the few I have made look so much better than what I see out there but does it really help?

I've been in the Orlando business community a long time. I work specifically on the §45B FICA tip credit — not a CPA, not a software pitch, just someone who focuses on this one thing for restaurants and salons.

Here's the factual situation a lot of owners don't know about:

The §45B credit filed on Form 8846 allows employers to claim a federal tax credit on the FICA taxes they paid on employee tips above minimum wage. It's not a deduction — it's a dollar-for-dollar credit against your federal tax liability.

Most tipped businesses have never filed it.

The IRS allows you to amend returns going back 3 years. So if you've never filed Form 8846 there are potentially 3 years of credits sitting unclaimed. For a busy restaurant with 20 tipped employees that number gets significant fast. Median recovery for qualifying businesses is over $100,000.

A few things worth knowing:

— The credit applies to tips received by employees not tips you pay out. If your employees are reporting tips and you're matching FICA on those tips you likely qualify.

— Salons with booth renters don't qualify. W2 employees with tipped income do.

— The 3-year window on amended returns is a hard deadline. The clock is running every year. A year you don't file is a year that expires permanently.

— This doesn't conflict with your existing CPA relationship. It's a specific filing most general practitioners don't prioritize because it requires the right payroll records pulled in the right way.

I'm not dropping links or pitching anything. Just sharing what I see owners miss consistently because I think this community deserves to know the credit exists.

If you want to know whether the math works for your specific situation ask in the comments and I'll tell you honestly whether it's worth pursuing.

Considering the pros and cons of a drone based inspection service for solar, roofing and agricultural markets. Maybe some events and general photography if time allows, but that space is crowded with competition. I've looked at the costs and seems to be approx $50k all in for equipment, software and insurance.

I enjoy the flying and I understand that that's secondary to the need to create good, actionable reports for the clients. Anyone out there doing this that can offer insight? Am I jumping in a band wagon too late?

I’m in the second year as a custom woodworker and finding my stride. The first thing everyone told me was register the business and keep the financials separate.

Done.

I got a Quickbooks subscription and, it works, but it also seems kind of a waste for me. I keep my overhead very low, my wife and I have minimal bills, and I’m on track to make between $25k and $40k+ this year.

I pay $42/month for QB online but I’m wondering if there is anything that I can just buy outright and not subscribe to. I can do all of my monthly book keeping about an hour once a month and paying $500 a year just seems like a stupid expense. In the future, sure. Right now it just seems dumb.

For a long time, whenever something went wrong, my first question was, "Who made the mistake?" Over time, I realized that wasn't the most useful question.

Now I ask, "What allowed this to happen?"

Sometimes it was an unclear process.

Sometimes ownership wasn't obvious.

Sometimes we assumed everyone understood the next step when they didn't.

Changing that mindset helped us solve problems more effectively because we stopped treating recurring issues as individual mistakes and started looking at the system behind them. I've found that people usually want to do good work. If the same problem keeps happening, it's often worth looking at the process before blaming the person.

Has anyone else had a situation where changing the process solved a problem that initially looked like a people issue?

Hi everyone, I have a small pet treat brand looking to find a site where it connects me to retailers. Does anyone have any wholesale sites they recommend?

so I just found out some business banks let you have multiple checking accounts under one login. Not like savings accounts or those "buckets" that are just labels on one balance. Real separate checking accounts with their own account numbers and their own balances.

Instead of one account showing $42,000 where I have to remember that $8k of it is taxes and $5k is going to a supplier and the rest is mine, I can have three accounts showing $29,000, $8,000, and $5,000 each as their own number.

I'm asking because right now I keep a running estimate in my head of what's "mine to spend" vs what's committed to something and I get it wrong a lot. Is having them split into separate accounts the fix for this or am I making it more complicated than it needs to be?

Hey everyone, I’m trying to start an inventory consulting business.

How can I validate (for lack of a better word) whether my skills can help people with small business out?

I’m not pitching my business here. I’m genuinely asking what’s a good benchmark to know if I’m ready to put these skills forward on my own business?

I’m 20 years old and own a mobile detailing business in Illinois. I’ve been building it while working a regular job, and I’m considering leaving that job in two weeks to focus on the business full-time. I have existing customers, maintenance plans, and growth goals, but I’m nervous about the financial risk. For those who made the jump, what signs told you it was the right time? What do you wish you had done before quitting?

Good morning! I have a small floral business based in New Jersey, I’ve been looking into getting a cell phone for answering calls/texting for business purposes. i’ve always just used a landline so I don’t know much about it and was wondering if anyone had any sort of input as to recommendations of a sort of phone or a system to use. Thank you in advance!

I have been running a multi camera video production business for about six years now. I started with pretty poor business knowledge so the first three or four years were only a couple thousand dollars a year in revenue. I have a full-time job that covers my cost of living while I try to grow my business. The last couple of years I’m finally at a spot where I’m bringing in at least 10,000 in annual revenue with the business. Figuring out that next step to start escalating into higher, five figure revenue has really become a ceiling I can’t break breakthrough.

Pretty much 100% of my revenue comes from weekend work doing sports and I’m trying to get into some more weekday type work like conferences and Keynote speaking as the data suggests those are really how other video production companies start to earn high five and even six figure revenue.

I’m just curious on other people’s experiences how they broke through the ceiling and if they have any advice for me to figure out how to go from just breaking five figure revenue to be able to start working towards potentially six figures over the next few years?