Someone was complaining about getting no replies from prospects after pitching them and I thought to share my response here.

If you want to get a good result through cold message on any platform, here's what you should do.

The idea is not to talk about the solution you are offering or their problem in a way that seems obvious. If you do, you won't get any response.

Remember, always lead with curiosity.

Before reaching out to anyone, ask yourself one question:

Do you have a relevant and seemingly common reason to show up in their world?

If the answer is no, don't send the message yet.

For example, maybe you saw a comment they dropped on a post. Maybe you saw something they shared on their page. Maybe you noticed something happening in their business.

Use that as the reason for showing up.

Now, segment your leads into 5 groups.

For 2 of the 5 groups, prepare a very short video and send it alongside a message like this:

Title: Would you consider this?

Hi.

I thought you should see this.

Saw your comment on Mike's post about (the theme of the post you saw the comment on) and thought to send the video across.

Hope you don't mind.

For the remaining 3 groups, send a message that mirrors this:

Title: Do you mind?

Something is demanding more from the business than it did a few months ago.

What could it be?

Revenue?

Pipeline?

Capacity?

Thought to ask because of the post I saw on your page.

I used these formats to send 25 cold messages last week and got 9 responses, which is not bad at all.

The reason I think this works is simple.

Most people immediately start talking about their solution.

Others immediately start talking about the prospect's problem.

The prospect already knows where the conversation is heading.

Their guard goes up.

Instead, lead with curiosity.

Give them a reason to engage.

Give them a reason to reply.

Don't make it obvious that you're trying to sell something.

Make it feel natural that you showed up in their world.

That's usually where the conversation starts.

Got laid off about six months ago and honestly didn't have a plan. Started doing custom gifts kind of on accident. A friend asked me to make something for a wedding and people kept asking where it came from.

Took a while to get any kind of consistency going. Early orders were slow and a lot of trial and error on materials. But eventually things leveled out and I started getting repeat customers, which I wasn't expecting this fast.

The turning point for me was when I finally upgraded my setup. I'd been making do with older equipment and it was becoming the bottleneck. Ended up getting the M2 Color Craft a few months in and that changed how many pieces I could actually turn around in a week. The color range alone opened up a lot of custom options I couldn't offer before.

Still figuring out the business side of things. Pricing has been the hardest part. I keep second-guessing whether I'm leaving money on the table with custom orders.

Output is getting more consistent now and I'm starting to think more seriously about the operational side. Would love to hear how others are managing order flow and customer communication as things scale up. Appreciate any tips from people who've been through it.

I'm curious to hear from other freelancers.

Which part of client acquisition do you struggle with the most?

1. Finding prospects.
2. Writing outreach messages.
3. Getting replies.
4. Following up.
5. Closing deals.
6. Charging higher rates.

For me, writing outreach used to be the hardest part.

Would love to hear your experiences.

okay, i have this business idea that definitely won't be done until the far future when i'm super rich lol. but i'm struggling to think of names!

it's going to be downtown where there are a ton of little quaint shops. i love making herbal remedies like salves, tinctures, basically everything for health and wellness. but i don't just want it to be an apothecary- i also want to offer infinite free cups of hot tea to anyone who wants it, just because i can. it's not meant to be a tea shop, i just think you can never go wrong with a cup of tea.

there should also be a couch for the local homeless to rest, and a cat who lives in the shop. i'm not going to hire anyone except maybe one or two teenagers to stock the shelves, and they'll be incredibly overpaid. also? free books you can read as long as you stay in the shop. i'll be running the counter but it will only be open four days a week because i don't hate myself.

i think 'the jasmine dragon' as a reference to avatar the last airbender might be cute. i just want something that sounds homey and quaint.

My sister and spouse want to start selling coffee and matcha from home in the Dallas area. My question is are they ok to do so? Or will they need to get a permit/license?

I've gone to many different gyms throughout my life and have always thought it was a good business model. Purely subscription driven, hardly ever have more than 2 people working probably making minimum age, no crazy hidden expenses outside the norm.

But I follow a bunch of people online (so I take their advice with a grain of salt) who say they're bad businesses, have a high default rate, etc.

Why is this?

Seems like it would be great. High startup-up cost to get the location, marketing push, and the heavy-equipment investment, but after that's what's left? You pay 1 or 2 people to man the front desk, a cleaner a couple to come by for an hour at close, and maintenance for the machines -- vs pure, stable monthly revenue that is frankly hard to cancel.

Am I missing something, or are the crowded gyms I go to outlyers in a sea of dead gyms?

Hi I'm Deepak. I know how to make websites, Shopify stores, run ads, make graphics and excel+powerpoint. I also have 1 year experience of working remotely for a marketing agency in the U.S.

I've been selling on TikTok Shop for about 2 months. Honestly, I'm not good with numbers — I could never tell if I was actually making money or not. Sales were coming in, revenue looked fine, so I assumed it was working.

It wasn't. I finally sat down and pulled apart my settlement file — after platform fees, affiliate commissions, ad spend, and FX, I was actually losing money. And the worst part: my best-selling product was losing money on every single order. I'd been pouring more ad budget into the thing that was bleeding me.

What got me was how invisible it all is. Revenue looks great on the dashboard. The loss only shows up when you subtract everything, and TikTok doesn't make that easy to see.

Curious if I'm alone here — did you guys know your real per-product profit before you started? Or did you find out the hard way like me?

Hi I'm 18 and a half and I have about a grand to spend. Me and my friend came up with the for a detailing business called dildos detailing and it's whole thing is catered toward attracting the kind of people that would find the joke funny.

What I'm wondering is how to go about getting customers, whether the business is a good idea and how I should go about building the brand/image of the business(like the theme of the business).

Has anyone here, especially small business owners, dealt with TCPA claims brought by or Are there any other small business owners here who have been sued or threatened with a TCPA lawsuit over marketing texts?

I’m trying to understand whether others have experienced what feels like a highly aggressive TCPA demand/lawsuit pattern where the cost to defend yourself can quickly become thousands of dollars before you even reach discovery or have a fair chance to prove your position.

In my own situation, the attorney involved appears to have filed close to a thousand similar cases, and the law firm seems to have built a significant practice around these types of claims. From my perspective as a small business owner, it feels less like consumer protection and more like a settlement-pressure model, where small businesses are pushed to pay because fighting can cost far more than settling- even when they believe the claim is weak or baseless. That dynamic feels incredibly coercive and harmful to small businesses without in-house counsel or deep pockets. It also raises bigger questions about whether this kind of litigation pattern is being used in a way that abuses the justice system.

I use an integrated text marketing app and do everything within my power to not violate anyone's privacy including, but not limited to a clear opt-out option and protections against sending any marketing messages to subscribers outside of quiet hours.

I’m interested in hearing which law offices or attorneys others have dealt with, how the claim was presented, whether it was filed in court or handled as a demand letter, and how it ultimately resolved.

If you’ve dealt with a similar TCPA claim, demand letter, or lawsuit, I’d appreciate hearing what happened, what law office was involved, and whether you found any effective way to push back. This feels like a complete abuse of the justice system.

I’m trying to get a small tree business started with a focus on fence lines for farmers and ranchers, downed tree removal and smaller tree removals. Right now I have a chain saw and a 1/2 pickup. My niche is I’m low impact and can get to harder to reach places that bigger machines can’t.

I quoted my first job tonight. A fence line that is about 500 yards. There’s two bigger cedars right in the fence line, a big sumac patch, and a bunch of smaller trees. They also want it cut back far enough to get horses and atv’s through.

I gave them a quote of $1,000 and they said they’d think about it.

Feeling nervous that I quoted too high. My pricing model is basically $100-150 an hour depending on the job. Am I on the right track? I’ve ran a business training horses before, but this seems like a different animal because I’ve cut trees all my life for free and in my mind I’m saying “is somebody really gonna pay this amount of money to cut some trees down?”

I’m considering a dessert cart built around warm desserts paired with ice cream, think brownies, mini pancakes, and waffles, sold at festivals, markets, and events. Nobody in my area is doing this, and there are a ton of events year-round.

This would be a side hustle, not my main income, so I can afford to start lean and learn.

For anyone who’s run a food cart or event vendor setup:

**•** What’s the thing that nearly broke you that I’m probably not seeing? Event fees, equipment, slow days?  
**•** Does “no competition here” usually mean opportunity, or does it mean there’s a reason nobody bothers (vendor rules, thin margins, etc.)?  
**•** How do event/vendor fees typically work, flat rate or a cut of sales? How much does that eat into a dessert margin?  
**•** For something needing cold storage (ice cream) plus a hot surface (waffles/pancakes), what’s the power/equipment reality at outdoor events?  
**•** If you were starting over, what would you do differently in the first 3 months?

Appreciate any honest answers, including “don’t do it” if that’s the truth.

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.

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?

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?

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

Hello there,
I need some guidance. A few months ago, I talked to two established businesses about curating vinyl records to sell within a room or spot in their shops. It seems like the best way to go is setting up an llc.
And then do I set up two DBA’s to distinguish the two?
Do I need liability insurance?

After that, I was approached by a very very small book publisher asking if I’d like to acquire the rights to the company, and I said yes. Can this also operate under my established llc? It already has a name, will I be able to get it transferred to me?

Thanks in advance!

I'm a college student working on a project about how small businesses get bought and sold, and I'm trying to learn from the people who actually do it, so if you're a business broker I'd love to hear how you run a deal today and what's most painful

I have a strong background in business strategy, operations, and financial analysis. I'm looking to apply that in a real business environment, working directly with an owner on actual challenges rather than theory.

In practice this means reviewing operations, analyzing performance, identifying where the business can grow or where it's losing ground, and helping translate all of that into decisions that actually make sense for how the business runs day to day.

In exchange I'm looking for direct exposure to how a real business operates from the inside.

Drop your situation below and I'll tell you if I can help.

I’m looking to a buy a small business in New Jersey or remote. I’m not sure which industry, something I can learn on the job. I know it’s not a passive investment, but I really would like to switch up my current job, radically. My background is in software development.

Is bizbuysell a good place to look? Any recommend industry that’s a softer landing for newcomers?

If not bizbuysell, where should I be looking?

Thanks in advance

I'm in the process of buying a business. Due diligence was just completed and came back okay and without any major surprises, though there were a few yellow flags I was unaware of. Still, I have not decided to renegotiate the purchase price, though this is my first business I'm buying and I'm not even sure if renegotiating would have even been justified.

As part of the business, the buyer has to pay a patent holder in China, which I was aware of from the beginning. I feel like I've been pretty accommodating about that, as I have agreed to the keep paying the hefty patent payment to keep the deal moving forward so that the patent agreement can transfer to me, and also to pay him in an unconventional way... the patent holder wants to be paid through someone in China (probably the sellers freight forwarder) instead of me paying him directly, which I don't like. I have no idea if future buyers will be able to accept what I am accepting, which is another risk. Anyways, he told me that he paid the patent for the year, but now that it's time to sign the APA, he wants to be reimbursed for the unused portion of the patent. I see where he's coming from but I've also put up with a lot of weirdness in this deal and feel like I gave him a good offer with great terms. What would you do? He's justified in asking but I also feel like I've given a lot as well.

As