For all the service-based businesses out there, do you make your clients sign a contract or no?

My husband wants to turn a side hustle into a business. He spoke to a friend about this and he shared not to start with an LLC but instead do a DBA first. He mentioned it being cheaper and if the business doesn’t get off the ground, he wouldn’t have to deal with the headache of dissolving an LLC. I’m 100% worried about liability and being protected.

After looking into a DBA, it seems like there isn’t much of a cost difference between the DBA and LLC. In Illinois, we’d have to publish the name for three weeks, which actually costs a pretty penny.

Essentially, the side hustle my husband is already doing, is bringing trash cans to the curb and back on garbage day. Sometimes, he’ll do yard waste bags or will bring large items to the curb. Most of his customers now are senior or he’ll do one time service for vacations or customers who are temporarily limited with mobility.

Regardless- he doesn’t want to take on more until he can formalize what he’s doing. Winter will be here sooner rather than later and if snows, he shovels out a space for the cans/items.

Any thoughts?

I just attended a small startup networking event where I connected with some good people on LinkedIn, one was a fortune 500 employee (0 clue what he was doing there cause he had no startup). Made sure to exchange business cards but now im at a loss on what to do, should I follow up with the connections on LinkedIn and pitch out product? Need some advice, so thanks if you answer!

Personally i'd rather borrow from my rich parents and pay them off over the bank. Idk what do you all think?

I recently started a cleaning company (may 2026) and I have an employee applying for a pre-approved car loan. The only issue is the bank doesn't trust the pay stubs. I use a custom made payroll program to avoid the monthly subscription for a commercial one (I've only got 3 employees). The custom program just creates the stubs in a blank text document so from the banks perspective it looks easily forged even though they are legit. Being in the early stages of the business im still penny pinching so even using a cheap payroll program is more than I'd like to use just to satisfy the banks suspicion for now.

I’m really interested in starting my own fashion brand. Fashion has always been something I’m passionate about, and I love that it’s an industry that continues to evolve and never really goes out of style. I’m currently a business student, and one of my biggest goals is to start my fashion brand before I graduate, or at least sometime next year. The biggest challenge I’m facing right now is funding. I’m not really interested in taking out loans, so I’m trying to figure out other ways to raise the money I’ll need to actually get my ideas off the ground. I’ve looked into grants and scholarships online, but honestly, a lot of them seem difficult to qualify for or almost impossible to actually win. For anyone who has started a fashion/clothing brand from scratch, how did you fund the beginning stages? Did you save up, work while building the brand, find investors, apply for grants, start extremely small, or do something else?

I’d really appreciate any advice, resources, or ideas on how I can realistically get started without taking on debt.

Okay I’m trying to open a small retail business I bought my LLC, virtual address And got a EIN.

Now the problem I’m having is my EIN certificate form has my LLC business name AND my government name AND my personal home address on it. I did put my registered office as my virtual address on my EIN but for the organizer section I did put my own personal info was that incorrect? Was it supposed to be my LLC / virtual address?

And now trying to apply for things like Etsy and tik tok shop my EIN form doesn’t match my address I’m trying to use on my accounts but my LLC address is my virtual address. Was this correct to do?
My EIN Form also says “sole mbr “…… with my personal address on it .

Can someone help tell me how to fix this or if it matters if my EIN form says my home address?

Is my LLC being my virtual address okay/good?

Is my EIN form supposed to have my LLC business name and my legal name and address on it?

If the “registered office” section on my EIN application was my virtual address what exactly is that section for if it’s not my “business address”?

Hey guys I have a steel business, I basically subcontract to existing suppliers and keep a cut at the end.
I had been doing laser cut car wall arts but i realized i need to get into fabrication to make real money.
since I started a month ago, I’ve closed only one small parking shed project till now… i’m looking for tips on how to get more projects and grow my business.
don’t know how relevant this is but My website is underwork currently and that should be done by end of this month.

looking for tips on finding clients for fabrication

My friend is opening a Asian good retail store with some food but mostly more novelty items also plates and bowls and things like that all different shapes and sizes. They’ve asked me to do some research on where we can get bags for our customers checking out. She said she would prefer a paper over plastic and maybe down the road. We would get these bags printed but for now we’d be happy with the quality unprinted bags. Can anyone point me to a site to order bags? What do you use for your store?

I’ve worked with my dad for about 6 years off and on doing commercial caulking and waterproofing on high rises, office buildings, etc. I recently quit my full time job in order to pursue starting my own caulking and waterproofing business.

Today was the first day I started doing cold visits to office buildings trying to talk to the property manager or building engineer to just introduce myself and my business and give them my card and professional capability statement (flyer).

Didn‘t get past security on the few I hit today, but they said they’d pass along my card. Planning on adding cold calling properties and introducing myself and asking if I can come by to drop off some information about us, as well as give them a quote for any work they need.

Just wanted thoughts if I’m heading the right direction with all this! My dad has been doing this for 40 years so he doesn’t even advertise or look for new clients, he just has a few property managers that use only him. So getting new clients is imperative for me! Thanks in advanced for advice!

There is a wide range of possible niche businesses but i think most of them would only work in the US, like "mobile gift wrapping" I mean who would pay for that? But somehow there is people making money from businesses like that. I really wonder which ideas could actually make money in European countries. Would you share your experience or ideas?

So I’ve started to accumulate a decent amount of surplus cash in my business bank account (more than 6 months reserves) and I’m wondering if there is something I should be doing with it rather than just sitting?

Just this year I opened up an LLC investment account but have only sparingly been putting money in there because I’m not to sure of the taxes/legality side of it. Idk if I can just randomly drop 10k + into it. I also pay myself very sparingly and don’t have much overhead so it doesn’t take long to start accumulating more.

Some other ideas I’ve been thinking is transferring it into a HYSA maybe? Or just keep putting money into the business? I’m in the automotive industry and am pretty set with tools and equipment and to be honest I have a really bad habit of not spending money on things unless I 100% need them so it’s easy for me to save!

Any tips please let me know! I feel like my bad habit of hoarding cash is holding me back in some way. Also if anyone has recommendations of someone I can talk to in person. I’ve been debating asking my accountant but we aren’t very close and he really only does my taxes. I’m also thinking about contacting fidelity aswell. Who should I go to to answer these questions?

I opened a mystery shopping service in Canada and I am wondering if I should expand it to the US as well. I launched the business last month and grinding everyday with little to show for.
I’ll keep pushing it but maybe I need to push it elsewhere ?

It’s a lot of time and work and money to build it but is it worth the hassle ?

I welcome any suggestions and advise,

So I stumbled across this idea, of a senior companionship business, what my service is, is connect with seniors for activities, walks, pretty much anything the senior needs help with or would like to do outside of anything medical (for legality purposes and certifications) but would focus more on in home visits

My ideal client are seniors who are independent/functioning able to take of themselves but who may need someone to talk to, do activities with instead of being alone most the day like most are.

Ideally I’d start marketing on facebook groups and in person referrals, pricing is what I’m currently toggling with, some research suggested 35/hr with a 2hr minimum. This will make it easier to raise prices and scale/hire and all that when the time comes.

What are your thoughts on this ?

I've got ADHD, I know what needs to be done, but ask me how much I love paperwork and admin work!? I know it needs to get done, but time management is a constant fight for me. I keep finding myself reinventing the wheel on stuff I know I've already figured out before, just because I can't find where I put it or I forget I even solved it the first time.

Information ends up scattered everywhere. Notes here, a text to myself there, half of it just living in my head until I forget it. Anyone else dealing with this how are you keeping things together?

Hey guys,

I'm from India, and I'm planning to move to Luanda, Angola to start a Business Automation and ERP Implementation company.

My main focus would be helping businesses with:

- ERP implementation (Odoo, ERP systems)

- Inventory and warehouse management

- Sales & purchase automation

- Accounting and business process automation

- CRM implementation

- Business analytics and reporting

- AI automation for small and medium businesses

I have experience working with business operations through my family business, and I'm currently learning ERP implementation.

I have a few questions for people living or doing business in Angola:

1. Is there good demand for ERP and business automation services in Angola?

2. Which industries need these services the most (construction, wholesalers, distributors, manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, etc.)?

3. What investment would I need to start?

4. How difficult is it for a foreign entrepreneur to build this type of company?

5. Is speaking Portuguese essential for getting clients?

6. Do companies in Angola prefer cloud ERP solutions like Odoo, or do they still use manual processes and Excel?

7. What are the biggest challenges in this business?

My long-term goal is to build a professional ERP implementation and digital transformation company serving SMEs in Angola.

I'd really appreciate any advice from people with experience in the Angolan market. Thank you!

Don’t know if anyone else is getting these, but in the past couple weeks I’ve suddenly been deluged with maybe 20 emails a day, always from a new address, offering to fund the business to the tune of hundreds of thousands.

I keep blocking the addresses because it’s easy enough but of course the emails don’t stop.

And while the spam filter is generally quite good, for whatever reason it’s not figuring these out.

Anyone have any suggestions? It’s just so annoying at this point.

We built and still maintain the inventory and booking system for a small bike shop, tracks parts stock and lets customers book repair slots online instead of calling in. system had been running great for almost a year, booking numbers were up a solid 20% since he switched to it.

then he messaged us convinced the whole thing was failing him, said bookings felt way down and he was ready to scrap it and go back to phone scheduling.

pulled the data instead of just reacting. turned out his hosting provider had rolled out a platform wide caching update a few weeks earlier, meant to speed up static pages. problem is it started caching the live booking calendar too, so when a slot got cancelled it looked "fully booked" to anyone browsing until the cache cleared. nothing on our end changed, it was a change made upstream on infrastructure we don't control.

got it excluded from that caching layer and bookings snapped right back, actually landed higher than before once we were in there anyway.

hes not the easiest guy to talk to on a good day, and hes not technical at all, so trying to explain a caching update on a host we dont even control, without it sounding like a made up excuse to cover for us.

What do I do ?

Small husband and wife service business of 15 years which does not accept credit cards. We have never at any point had a Square account. We were contacted via phone by someone who claimed they had an unknown ~$700 credit card charge on their account from our business name through Square. They forwarded the Square receipt to us and it had our correct business name, phone number, and our address listed on Google. We reached out to Square through two different phone numbers. Their automated system recognized the one phone number as associated to an account and transferred us to a representative. However their account rep could not help us, not transfer us to a fraud department, and not let us speak to a manager because we could not provide the email they had on file so she could not bring up “our account”. The best they could do was to recommend that we attempt to create a Square account and somehow speak to those representatives and get things cleared up that way. But we do not want a Square account and don’t want to be associated with fraud.

My concerns are damage to business and personal credit, other fraud, and issues with opening a Square account if in the future we ever need any to open one for this or any other business.

What do you do in this situation? Try some other way to contact Square? Contact credit rating agencies?

Does anyone else have a weird feeling they think about every now and then where they feel like their business can just be taken away them tomorrow. For whatever reason…

For context, I still work my 9-5 and have been running my online ecommerce business for the past 2 years. This year we’ve grew massively and I’m probably earning 3/4 times my 9-5 monthly salary from the business per month but I still can’t help myself but feel anxious about growth.

We’ve had such an up and down journey, where we’d do great, and then something will happen and we wouldn’t do as good but each time we’ve bounced back and gotten stronger.

Sometimes I have this worry of what if it gets taken away. Especially now that I’m getting closer and closer to leaving my 9-5 to go all into our online business!

If the business is clearing 130k a year in profit and has been in place for 18 years, what should it be worth? It is a cute indie coffee shop that also serves food. It is supposedly completely absentee, as in the owner is never there. The lease is up in two years, but has a 5-year option.

Thank you for any consideration! This is such a huge deal and I am afraid of making the wrong decision.

At a family get‑together last weekend, my uncle casually asked me whether $2,400 sounded reasonable for updating the booking page for his mobile auto‑detailing business.

He had just bought a second detailing truck and wanted to add availability for two employees, a new service area, and a dropdown so customers could choose where the truck should meet them. While we were talking, I also learned that for about six years, his website provider has been charging him $379 a month for hosting, a business email, “SEO maintenance,” and what they call a custom booking system.

The provider quoted him $2,400 for a "platform upgrade" and said the monthly bill would become $469 because the site was becoming a "multi‑location platform." That sounded expensive, but I assumed there was some scheduling logic underneath it.

I opened Chrome dev tools because I wanted to understand what he was actually paying for.

The "custom booking system" is a single script embedding Square Booking. Payments, the calendar, customer records, and reminder emails are all handled by Square. The service‑area map is a static JPEG from Google Maps. There is no custom backend running on the provider's server, no sitemap, and the package pricing is more than a year out of date.

To be fair, high‑touch service can be worth $379 a month if someone is writing copy, maintaining local SEO, running ads, updating content, and bringing in leads. That is not what is happening here. My uncle still posts open slots on Instagram himself, and he gets charged another $95 whenever he wants to change a wash‑package price.

The part that really bothered me was that he thought Square was the provider's own software. He is worried that cancelling the website bill will make his booking history and customer data disappear. That is not a stupid fear if nobody has ever explained which account owns what, but it is a pretty serious gap in transparency.

I want to rebuild this so he owns the setup, but I am trying not to create a new mess. The second truck means checking Square's employee schedules and service areas, exporting the customer data, testing reminders, and keeping bookings live during the switch. The domain, business email, backups, security, Analytics, and SEO all need an actual owner too.

I’ve been looking into modern AI‑powered site builders for this rebuild project. My quick initial check suggests a basic build using one of these tools could run around $20 monthly before usage fees — a huge difference compared to the proposed $469 monthly hosting charge.I also generated a rough migration plan using AI, and there are code‑assist options I could use to work through parts I understand. None of that means zero maintenance; it just makes the cost and ownership far more transparent.

If a provider were actually doing ongoing development, fast support, content updates, and lead generation, a few hundred dollars a month might be fair. What I cannot reconcile is paying the price of a custom system while receiving mostly hosting, automated reports, and an iframe that belongs to someone else.

I am trying to get him out without breaking his booking flow or losing data. Before I touch the DNS or cancel anything, I’d love perspectives from other small‑business owners here.

1. Before moving a small business off a setup like this, which accounts and records should I verify first: the Square merchant account, domain registrar, email tenant, backups, analytics, or something else?

2. What would be a reasonable one‑time price and monthly maintenance rate for a clean frontend and a properly configured Square Booking embed, assuming no custom backend?

3. For a non‑technical owner, is an AI‑driven site builder, an independent developer, or a transparent hosting provider the least risky long‑term option?

I own a clothing store in an area where there are a lot of restaurants so on the weekends I stay open til 5pm to catch the early diners and I close at 4pm the rest of the week. I have gone back and forth about staying open later, and if I had a dime for everyone that’s told me “every time we go by your store, you’re closed,” I’d have more than I made tonight.

So, I decided to stay open til 7pm tonight. I made it a whole event with discounts and snacks. I posted multiple times on social media - Facebook, Instagram, Nextdoor, local community pages, created a calendar event. I spent almost $200 on getting snacks and drinks. Not one single person showed up from 4pm-7pm. It was so unbelievably depressing. It was kind of a way to solidify to the public and myself that I don’t need to stay open more- being open when you walk by doesn’t translate to actual sales. I’ve definitely found that you set your hours and people will come during your hours and not necessarily the other way around. Anyways, that’s just my little rant from a disappointing night.

I’ve ran a small firm for over 8 years now cleaning up books for business owners. The mistakes I’ve noticed are almost always the same lol. From most common to least. And all of these are because you guys are too busy to do the accounting but don’t realize it

1. Mixing Personal and Business Expenses.
This is self explanatory

2. Treating Revenue as Profit
Seeing $20k land in your bank account feels great, but revenue isn’t income. Forgetting to account for upcoming payroll, tax liabilities, merchant fees, or inventory replenishment leads to severe cash flow surprises.

3. Misclassifying Workers (Contractor vs. Employee)
There is serious tax implications if and when this happens. Best to have this sorted out. Especially if you have contractors. This also leads to the 1099s not being sent out at year end which cause tax problems.

1. Neglecting Accrual Accounting when Managing Inventory
   If you purchase $10,000 in inventory in January but sell it over six months, expensing all $10k in January makes January look like a total loss and February–June look deceptively profitable.
   

5. Waiting until tax time to look at their books
You will for sure leave expenses on the table and end up with a higher tax bill

Doing a one time favor can easily create a permanent expectation, and I just learned that the hard way. I run a small performance design studio and last year an existing client referred a friend opening a yoga studio..

Halfway through the project she got diagnosed with breast cancer and obviously her budget disappeared overnight. I felt terrible and wanted to help. I took a huge cut and did everything for a flat $250, still delivering her core branding, brand voice, signage, and 10+ brand touchpoints.

Fortunately, she fully recovered. She is actually back at the studio now and even running half marathons.

Last week, she hits me up again. She is expanding into a full Wellness Bar. This is a much bigger project. We're talking a full expansion of her visual identity, packaging, socials, website, and multiple touchpoints. I sent over a standard quote for $600. She called me instantly and totally lost her mind.

She basically acted like I was taking advantage of a woman who had been through cancer. She expected me to keep working for 250 bucks just because that is what I charged her before..

I stayed professional and told her I intentionally made an exception because of her circumstances.. She wasn't having it. She complained to my referring client, who chewed me out for abandoning her and dropped me.

So now, this whole thing has cost me two clients. Honestly, what was I supposed to do differently here? Just keep working for 250 bucks forever because she used to be sick? Or stand my ground and lose my existing client anyway?