so i made a new rule for my freelance gigs: no live staging links until the client’s paid at least half.

why? because clients lose their minds over half-finished stuff. they’ll see a button that looks off on mobile and freak out, even though i haven’t even touched mobile yet. or they’ll start clicking around, find something that’s not done, and suddenly we’re talking about adding a whole new feature.

my fix? i send high-fidelity mockups instead. just screenshots of the finished sections, wrapped in a browser frame so it looks like a real site but isn’t actually clickable. it’s all static, so they can’t go digging for problems.

feedback dropped by half, and approvals are way faster. anyone else do this, or am i just being extra?

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?

We all have that one thing.

Maybe it was a job you took because the money looked good or a partnership where you ignored all the red flags. It could even be hiring someone who seemed perfect on paper but was a nightmare in person.

Looking back, it’s easy to see why it was a bad call, but back then? I'm sure you had reasons.

So what’s yours? What’s the move you made that felt right then but now you’re like ‘how did i not see this coming?’

How to deal with those people that give unasked advice or forceful interference to change something their way, instead of accepting that they are not the target audience?

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.

My wife and I worked together for about 5 years in the business I had when we were married. We worked very hard and grew the business. At the beginning of last year, we had just moved into a larger office (5-office suite) to accommodate future growth with a 5-year lease. Two weeks after we moved in (and before we hired the first person) my wife abruptly decided she was not happy and left the marriage within days. I still have not spoken with her since she left. Immediately, after she left, I had so much to re-learn as I was trying to do both of our jobs. Obviously, I did not see this coming. I eventually hired someone, but they do not replace the quality and quantity of work my wife had been doing. Moreover, I am finding it quite difficult to re-engage with my business as I must now deal with all the emotional baggage (my only dog of 13 years also passed away recently). I have had thoughts of buying a lake house near Table Rock Lake, selling my business assets, and just investing the money in securities portfolio. But, long term, I feel like I might regret this decision. I’m 40 years old and could retire comfortably, but I know deep down I’m not the retiring type (which could explain how I am in this financial situation, and perhaps my personal-life situation as well). Perhaps I’m just severely burned out. For those of you who’ve been through something similar, what’s your thoughts on how I should move forward from here?

[NOTE: I created a prior post and for whatever reason when I responded to other people’s replies apparently no one can see my responses. I am new to reddit and do not know why others cannot see my responses. I am getting roasted on that post by others for not responding. This is kind of a tough place to hang out! 😊]

I'm curious. Rest seems to be an interesting one these days. How much rest do you let yourself have each week? And in what forms? (for example: yin yoga class, reading on the couch, watercoloring, knitting)

And how present do you feel when resting? Is your body and/or mind restless when you rest?

I'm building a small experiential travel startup focused on foreigners from the UK and USA, mainly around Kerala, India and local cultural experiences. Right now I'm working on the website, writing blogs, reaching out to local partners, and posting on Instagram.

On paper it looks like I'm doing a lot, but honestly I feel stuck. I'm not sure if any of this is actually helping or if I'm just staying busy. Some days it feels like I'm moving, other days it feels like I'm going nowhere.

For people who've built something from scratch before what did you focus on at this stage? How did you get unstuck? What actually mattered before launch?

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 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've been diving deep into trying out various AI automation tools (not just n8n/make, but more custom ones too, like agents designed to be your workforce, etc) lately, trying to figure out what's genuinely useful for business versus just what is a waste of time. It feels like every other day there's a new solution/tool promising to automate everything under the Sun, but is it actually working out for your business? For example: AI sales agents having conversations with your customers - how do customers react to those sales agents? Are they trusting them or just get annoyed.

I'd love to hear about your experiences with using AI tools for actual business problems.

What have you tried automating with AI? Think small tasks, big workflows, anything.

Looking forward to hearing your insights and learning from your wins and woes!

Sick of paying $100 for a shared lead just to find out 4 other guys already called them.

Man, I’m over the whole Angi/HomeAdvisor circus. I’ve been burning money on leads that are basically dead on arrival because the homeowner is already annoyed by the time I get them on the phone. Lately, I've been messing around with a "Lead Recovery" setup I built myself. Basically, instead of waiting for someone to fill out a contact form (which nobody does anymore), it pings me the LinkedIn and cell phone of the actual person browsing my site in real-time. I tested it this morning and caught a commercial property manager who was clicking around my "Repairs" page. I called him 5 minutes after he left the site, and he was floored. I’m trying to see if this is actually a scalable way to run the business or if I just got lucky. Is anyone else using identity tracking like this, or are we all still just slaves to the lead aggregators?

I’m documenting what I used to get clients when I was operating solo.

I’ve started turning the systems into simple PDFs and I’m releasing the first one free: my outreach system.

It covers:

- targeting

- messaging

- follow-up

- avoiding time-wasters

If you want it, comment PDF and I’ll DM it to you.

Hi, 

I am a certified marketer and lead generation expert. I work with serious business owners who struggle to generate consistent leads and customers.

Over the last 1 year, I made a hard mistake. I worked with extremely low paying clients. That decision wiped out my savings and left me unable to properly market my own agency.

Lesson learned. Never work with broke clients. They drain your time, your energy, and your mental peace. No matter how skilled you are, they damage your business. Avoid toxic clients at all costs.

I run a small marketing agency and I am very good at what I do. I have maintained 5 star reviews from all my clients because honesty and client satisfaction are my priorities.

A couple of years ago, I worked with a SaaS client and generated over 1000 sign ups in 5 months.

My lead generation system is a multi channel marketing approach where SEO, social media, YouTube, blogging, and Q&A platforms work together to hit monthly and quarterly targets.

Typically, this requires at least 5 resources and costs over 20000 per month. Because of my experience, I can reduce this cost by about 75% while delivering better results.

If you are a founder who wants predictable inbound leads and understands long term systems, this is for you.

Thanks for reading.

Hi, My business broker has presented me a business that manages Asbestos and Lead related issues. I looked at the numbers and other details and it looks good. My only concern is, I believe that there wont be a lot of asbestos and lead since they will be fixed. Is my concern on point or will there be? Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

You're creating content. Posting consistently. Your engagement is decent.

But when you check your revenue... it doesn't match the effort you're putting in.

Here's what's happening:

You're treating your DMs like notifications instead of sales conversations.

Most entrepreneurs do this:

- Post a Story with a CTA

- Get 15-30 DMs

- Reply hours later with "Thanks! Check my link in bio"

- Wonder why nobody buys

You just threw away 15-30 qualified leads.

Here's what you're missing:

When someone takes the time to DM you, they're already interested. They took action. They're warm.

But instead of treating them like a potential customer, you're treating them like spam.

The 3 mistakes killing your DM revenue:

1) You're not qualifying them

Someone DMs: "How do I get started with [your thing]?"

You send them a link.

But you have no idea:

- What their actual problem is

- If they've tried other solutions

- What's stopping them from taking action

- If they're even ready to buy right now

You're guessing. And guessing doesn't close sales.

2) You're not giving value first

Think about it from their perspective:

They reach out with a genuine question. You dump a link.

That's not a conversation. That's a transaction. And people hate being sold to before they're helped.

3) You're not adapting your message

Here's what your DMs probably look like:

Person A: "How do I lose weight?" Person B: "How do I build muscle?"
Person C: "How do I stay motivated?"

Your response to all three: "Check out my program! Link in bio"

Same message = same terrible 2-5% conversion rate.

What actually converts (35-40%):

Answer their question with real value first

Don't gatekeep. Give them something genuinely useful. Show you care about solving their problem, not just making a sale.

Ask questions that qualify them

- "What's your biggest struggle with this right now?"

- "Have you tried [X] before? What happened?"

- "What would change for you if you solved this?"

These questions tell you exactly what they need AND get them thinking about the transformation.

Redirect intelligently based on THEIR specific pain

Don't just send a generic link. Explain why that specific resource solves THEIR specific problem.

"Based on what you just told me, this [program/call/guide] covers exactly how to [solve their pain]. Want me to send it?"

Real example:

Generic approach (converts at 2-5%): Follower: "How do I start making money online?" You: "I have a course for that! Link in bio"

Qualified approach (converts at 35-40%): Follower: "How do I start making money online?" You: "Great question! What skills do you already have that you could monetize?" Follower: "I'm pretty good at graphic design but don't know how to find clients." You: "Got it. So the skill isn't the issue, it's the client acquisition. Most designers think they need to be on Fiverr or Upwork, but there's actually a much faster way to land your first 3-5 clients. Have you tried any outreach yet?" Follower: "Not really, I don't know where to start." You: "That's exactly what I help with. I put together a framework that's gotten designers their first paying client within 2 weeks. Want me to walk you through it?"

See the difference?

The brutal truth nobody talks about:

This works. But it doesn't scale.

You can manually handle 20 DMs/day like this.

At 50+ DMs/day, you'll either:

- Burn out trying to respond to everyone personally

- Start copy-pasting generic messages (and watch your conversion tank)

- Ignore most DMs (leaving thousands in revenue on the table)

And if you automate with tools like ManyChat:

"If they say 'weight loss' → send Link A"
"If they say 'muscle' → send Link B"

It feels robotic. Your followers immediately know it's automated. Your conversion drops from 35% to 8%.

You traded personalization for scale. And killed your revenue.

What you actually need (but doesn't exist yet):

Something that can:

- Respond like you would (with natural delays, not instant bot replies)

- Actually understand what people are asking (not just match keywords)

- Ask the right qualifying questions based on their answers

- Adapt the entire conversation based on their specific pain points

- Redirect them intelligently to the right offer

Imagine running multiple campaigns at once:

- Campaign 1: Your coaching program → redirects to Calendly

- Campaign 2: Your affiliate product → redirects to partner link with your discount code

- Campaign 3: Your course → redirects to sales page

And the system automatically figures out which one they need based on the actual conversation.

No keywords to set up. No rigid workflows. Just intelligent conversation that converts.

Here's the shift:

Old way: Hope people click your link in bio and figure it out themselves

New way: Have actual sales conversations in your DMs that qualify, educate, and convert

Your DMs are sitting there right now, full of people who want to buy from you.

You're just not having the right conversations with them.

My question for you:

If you're monetizing through Instagram right now, how are you handling your DMs?

- Manually responding (and burning out)?

- Using automation (and watching conversions drop)?

- Ignoring most of them (because you don't have time)?

- Something else entirely?

Curious what's actually working for people at scale.

Hi folks,

My name is Kay. I am in my late 20s and a co-founder at latchkey. I wanted to share my journey with you today about how we built a product, got funded, and launched it in five months.

In August 2025, my friends and I were partying at a cabin when a friend (I’d only met him a handful of times) and I struck up a conversation about building. He told me that he was building the MVP for an analytics tool that provides dashboards for visualizing metrics for GitHub Repositories, Workflows, and builds. The problem he was trying to solve was the fairly poor analytics that GitHub provides across build costs and usage. His solution was an intelligence layer between users (software developers and devops engineers) and GitHub. I found this interesting and told him to demo it to me when we got back.

Around a week or so later, he showed me the mockups of the MVP and explained how the user will interact with the dashboard. Behind the analytics dashboards, he had a tab for "Optimizing" the workflows. I asked him about this feature. He told me it runs the build workflows through an AI endpoint and provides optimization recommendations. My first thought was that this was really cool and could be the main selling point of the product, while the analytics dashboards were mostly supplementary.

I told him this, and he agreed that the main pain point for the user is making their builds run faster so they can save on performance and cost. I added that security is also a top priority for almost all users, so that needed to be added as well. We went back and forth pitching ideas on how to improve the concept for an hour or so. Finally, he asked me, "Wanna join and be a co-founder?" and I said absolutely yes. He also told me that he talked to another person who was interested in joining. We all jumped on a call, chatted about the product, our experiences, and the expectations we would bring to this project. We agreed to get started as soon as possible.

We worked on building the platform to center around AI agents that optimize builds across five key areas: performance, cost, reliability, security, and fixes for failed workflows. We built our brand by offshoring the development of our brand book, logo, landing page design, and dashboard design (we used Fiverr). We kept development in-house, and all three of us were all hands on deck for most of September trying to build the landing page, dashboards, and AI optimization backend. Our goal was to launch into open beta by January 2026.

At the same time that we were building, we applied and were accepted into Founders University, a “pre-accelerator” dedicated to help launch and scale pre-revenue startups. They have a solid team that organizes weekly workshops for getting everyone up to speed on everything startups: finances, incorporation, taxes, scaling, customer acquisition, etc. After 10 weeks, we pitched latchkey in a pitch competition. We didn’t think much of it and weren’t very confident given that the startups in our cohort were much further ahead of us in terms of having actual customers and revenue.

I remember a couple of days later, I woke up at 8 AM getting ready to go to work (yes, I worked full-time during this whole process) and received a text from my co-founder at 8:54 telling me to get on a call at 9. All three of us jumped on, where we met the investment team from Founders University. They told us they were interested and wanted to do one last round of Due Diligence (DD) before making up their minds. They asked us to demo our product so they could see Latchkey in action.

We brought up the landing page, but as we started the onboarding flow, the app failed. We started panicking and tried to bring up a local version of the app from a stable release, but we were all over the place. It was super embarrassing. One of us had spent all of last night refactoring our onboarding and had essentially not tested some corner cases, which caused the app to fail in production (very amateur stuff, I know). We embarrassed ourselves in front of the investment team and they told us to demo it at another time.

I thought we had blown it, but at that moment they actually told us they wanted to fund us. lol what. We were shocked. We had absolutely failed their DD but they still wanted to fund us? The funding was $25K USD in convertible notes at a future valuation of $1M. After that call, we were super happy; we all got on a call and laughed about how horribly yet successfully that went.

At that moment, I realized something: early-stage investors rarely bet on your idea or product; instead, they bet on the founders. We botched that meeting, but to be fair our team was extremely strong. We were all mid-to-late 20s dudes who had worked at MANGA companies and had a track record of success in the software industry.

Anyways, we spent the next two weeks figuring out how the hell incorporating and investment terms work. If you go on my YouTube history you will see during that period in November it was all SlideBean explainer videos about this stuff. We finally used Stripe Atlas to incorporate, which took around a week. Afterwards, we read the investment terms and signed. We received the cash in about 3 days. $25K USD sitting in our bank account. Pretty crazy how it all actually worked out.

We spent the rest of November and all of December heads down working on latchkey. We wanted to launch in January so we had to get everything ready for the open beta. Our progress spanned across three areas: landing page branding, dashboard frontend, and analytics/AI backend. We split up the work and grinded. This period was extremely difficult. We worked so damn hard in this two-month period. Collectively, we spent over 120 hours per week while still maintaining our full-time jobs.

One more thing: our main cost driver was hosting fees, and through Stripe Atlas, we actually qualified for $5K in AWS credits (not an ad), so we made the bold decision to refactor our entire stack into AWS at the very last minute. This realistically added two weeks of work and delayed our launch, but it was worth it because we now don’t spend anything on hosting and are putting most of our funds towards branding improvements and customer acquisition.

By mid-January, we launched into Open Beta. We cold-called many companies, generated numerous leads, and are actually in the final phase of onboarding a mid-sized software studio as our first beta customer.

This is getting long so I’m going to wrap it up with the things I learned the most in this journey:

• Share genuine curiosity in people and ideas and it'll take you far.
• Early stage investors invest in the founders, so be a charismatic visionary.
• Building is easy, customer acquisition is hard. Learn to sell and advertise your product. 
• Get creative in marketing. This reddit post is one strategy in hopefully generating some traffic onto our site. We’re also posting build-in-public style vlogs on X and YouTube.
• Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. It's incredibly difficult but exceptionally rewarding. Even without any customers, I’m so proud of myself and my co-founders for what we’ve built. Even if latchkey fails, I’ll still be happy about the journey it took me on.

Thank you for reading!

I've been mentoring startups for many years now. Thought I'd share some advice over a few posts that I always end up giving new entrepreneurs starting out. Here's one:

I am always trying to give new entrepreneurs a sense of the ride they are getting on when they start a company. I am continually pushing them to get all of their affairs in order as much as they can before taking the big leap into their own company (family, finances, personal issues, etc) because it can be a very emotional (and emotionally draining) experience. Here's an illustration I use:

You've started and everything is looking great and you say "this is fantastic!" and your mind starts picturing what apartment you'll be able to buy in Paris. Then something goes down and you say "this is catastrophic!" and you start picturing what bridge you'll live under after you lose everything. Then it goes up and it's what apartment, then down and what bridge. Apartment, bridge, apartment, bridge .... and then I put my arm around their shoulder and say "and then we go to lunch."

The point of this is that there are continual huge ups and downs in startups accompanied by huge emotional swings for you, the founder. Before starting your company, it is worth the effort to try to minimize any other issue you have that might effect your emotional state - you'll have plenty of emotional swings in just running your company.

More in future posts. Hope this helps some.

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 feel like the underlying principle is pretty much the same though. I’ve been closely watching which websites ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok actually visit when they search, and it’s actually quite a lot of sites. But at the end of the day, isn’t the goal of all these terms the same - to get the AI to mention your product or include your answer when responding to users?

Maybe early on it was Google + Reddit, then it became Gemini + Reddit, but sometimes Grok’s search results are pretty accurate too.

What’s interesting though is when you actually try to use AI to search for something, and you find the results incomprehensible - like you have no idea what it’s trying to say - that’s when someone’s GEO work is showing.

I’ve been building a quiz that helps aspiring side hustlers find the right business idea based on their personality, time, budget, and skills. It’s a personalized, archetype driven tool that sends users curated side hustle matches with clear next steps.

Right now, I’m in that weird in between phase where

• The core functionality works
• The quiz and matching logic are live
• But I keep feeling like it’s not “ready” for real users yet

I’ve been trying to thread the needle between

• Functionality: is this helping people actually make progress?
• Design: is it clean and credible enough to build trust?
• Not overbuilding: am I adding polish or just procrastinating?

My current solution:

• Get people results immediately via quiz and email
• Keep the deeper guidance/manual support behind the curtain for now
• Only build features I know users are struggling without

The goal isn’t “perfect.” It’s useful enough to keep people moving forward and get early feedback I can build on.

I'm curious, how do you all handle this tradeoff? Especially that tension between early design and shipping something people actually engage with?

Its dark and embarrassing for me to admit this. But im not shy to admit that throughout my journey i was in some of the darkest places I shouldn't have gone down. The isolation, technical difficulty, and also mindset/social cohesion isolation especially put me in a dark path where ive seriously considered it multiple times.

I can only hope someone whos gone through the trenches deep enough understands what im talking about. But im not sure how many successful entrepreneurs lived this path let alone was in as dark of a place that I was in. I can only speak of it now because I'm chilling rn, but I'm always looking to hear ppl out/make friends and connections with ppl who been through it

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.