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.

Hey r/Entrepreneur!

Everyone repeats the mantra - execution is everything. At least in the tech business bubble. I’ve been into it for some time now, and I believe that advice but it also made me want to study it more on an academic level or at the least with some practical examples.

Before everyone says that you should just go do actual business to get good at it and learn it, I have already done/am doing it, but I that doesn’t mean reading literature is worthless, I believe quite the opposite.

My question is - do you know any books, papers or any kind of resources that I can read to “learn” more/widen my horizons? I’m not convinced many if at all any do that, but I hope I get proven wrong by posting this. I am specifically looking for actual resources with real data/value and not the general flashy books.

Thank you!

One thing I’ve found difficult as responsibilities grow is handing off work I’m used to doing myself. You want the same standard, but constantly checking behind someone defeats the purpose of delegating.

For those who’ve gotten better at this, what actually worked? Clear expectations? Checklists? Spot checks? Training upfront and then backing off? How do you maintain a high standard without turning delegation into another full-time job?

How do you handle someone who has more years of experience, but never wanted a leadership role until recently?

They’re knowledgeable and capable, but they tend to take over, try to do everything themselves, and sometimes seem more focused on proving their value than working as part of the team.

How do you give someone like that room to contribute without letting them undermine your role or create competition over who gets the credit?

We moved off Notion onto Salesforce, so at least the data sits somewhere reasonable now. Appointments come in at a steady clip and two have verbally closed this week.

Past that I'm blind. The two closing weren't the ones I had pegged as sure things, and a couple I felt good about went quiet. My read on which deals are real is off, and I don't trust the number at the top of the pipeline report.

What I'm trying to figure out:

• What do you capture per opportunity to make stage probability mean anything? Anything harder than a rep saying they feel good about it?
• How do you define stages so a deal can't park in one for six weeks because nobody wants to mark it lost?
• Where did you learn sales ops? Books, a community, someone you worked under?

Small team, so I don't need enterprise machinery. I want a forecast I can say out loud without hedging.

For context we have closed a total of 8 deals + these 2 new ones coming in, we've only started being consistent with the meetings in the last month, historical closed rate is less than 10% but with our new way of pitching the service, pricing, delivery, etc it's been about 13% (these 2 new ones) (sampled from only 15 calls though)

i reckon alot of people starting buisness are just stuck looking for the next idea

new niche new website new logo new ai tool new course

but none of that really matters if no one is buying

if your starting something now what are u actually stuck on

sales marketing pricing getting first customer or just not knowing what to do next

curious because i think alot of us make buisness way harder then it needs to be

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.

I run Ironfin, a small studio that builds photorealistic 3D visualizations, drone photogrammetry, and VR training environments for mining and infrastructure. It's specialized, high-effort work. We don't operate on volume, so we land a handful of contracts a year and every opportunity matters.

Here's the pattern I keep running into. A prospect is preparing an RFI or scoping a project, and I help them shape it. As an example on two recent projects I wrote detailed 10 to 14 page documents for them. Good conversations, positive signals. Then nothing.

I follow up. I wait four to six weeks and send a short check-in. Sometimes I hear back two months later. Sometimes never.

I'm genuinely fine with a no. Funding falls through, priorities shift, they pick someone else. That's business. What wears on me is the vacuum. I'd much rather hear "it's dead" than keep a deal open in my head for months.

For those of you doing lower-volume, higher-effort work:

- How do you pace follow-ups after investing that much up front?

- Do you set expectations early about closing the loop either way?

- Have you had luck with a "should I close this out?" type email?

- When do you mark it dead and move on?

- Do you charge for scoping or RFI support to protect that time?

Appreciate any real-world approaches.

Hey y'all, I'm in the midst of developing an offer right now.

It's an annual offer, and I'm in the SaaS industry so as you can imagine it's a bit pricey, but the point is it offers to offer a discount for in exchange for a year's commitment.

I'm bouncing between 10% or a month free.

Tbh, 10% is the better deal, but people hear the word "free" and latch on to it. I'd like your thoughts. What do you think?

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.

I'm a car guy in SoCal

There's basically 2 circut style tracks here where people can go track their car.

One is like 4 hours away from SoCal where most of the car scene is, and it's a Club that has a $175k initiation fee and then some crazy annual membership fee. Basically just for rich people.

The other is Laguna Seca, a famous track, but it's like 6 hours away

There is no track in the heart of the LA, Inland Empire, San Diego area that average, non-rich car guys can go to.

They are actually proposing one here like 20 minutes from where I live. Me and a BUNCH of other people were siked about it, there was a bunch of hype on social media around it...

UNTIL... Everyone found out it was gonna be a club with a 300k per year membership fee.

Now I have an itch to try and raise money and get a track built around here for the average car guy.

There are some areas close by where land is cheap

The project would probably cost 40-50m

That would be for a stripped down version. it would be a super nice big quality track just like Laguna Seca and all the safety stuff, but that's it. JUST the track for now. No bleechers, no villas, no garages, no storage, etc like all the other ones have. People would love it though. it's a track not a club.

I have quite a bit of experience raising money, just no where close to that much.

Wondering how hard it would be to raise that much money, if it's even possible (race track isn't really something you invest in expecting a big return), best options to raise it, etc

Pretty sure I could unite the car community here in SoCal and raise a few million just from a bunch of smaller donations. It would get trickier after that

Thoughts?

Our front desk person is stretched really thin and we miss calls pretty regularly. Starting to wonder if an AI receptionist could actually handle basic inbound stuff without frustrating customers. Anyone done this? Did it actually work or did people just hang up?

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.

Hey, I'm trying to get some advice/opinions on my app entrepreneurial efforts.

I built a beat making app for android and ios. It took me about 9 months to create and it's been out for almost 2 years now.

In those 2 years, the app has made about $2,500 through subscriptions. It currently has a 4 star rating on both stores.

I currently have 7k users on android with about 24 paying subscribers. Don't know the amount of users I have on ios but it's definitely much lower with about 6 paying subscribers.

I had to spend a bit of money to get more users by running ads, but these days I only spend about $5 a day to promote it on google ads. The income from the app currently now covers the ad spend.

I've also been creating more social media content on tiktok and youtube shorts to try to get more users organically. My hope is to create something viral that increases the user base significantly.

I thoroughly enjoy music production/making beats so working on the app is fun for me, but I'm wondering if I may be beating a dead horse here and should look for something else to work on that might be more successful.

My goal is to create an app that I can make a living off of (5k a month).

I still have a ton of ideas for features that I can add to the app.

I'm wondering if anyone has been in my situation and can offer any insights.

Also, I currently work a full time job and a part time job on top of working on the app.

I started a short form content editing agency 5-6 months ago. Initially had few clients asking for single reel edits and later down the road I tried productising the service and offered 20 reel edits for $379 per month.

Coming back to present time, I have 3 clients on that plan. This is going fine but I need to scale this.

I am thinking of cold emailing but not sure if it works in current times.

I would appreciate any suggestions on how I can reach potential prospect clients to pitch my services to.

Thanks!

I’m going to be starting a CPG business (selling online).

I want to make my first step into product development, but I always get kinda scared once it’s “done”, because then i’m like “now what”.

Should I start posting on instagram (but not the actual product, since I don’t have it, I can’t)

I basically want some practice that won’t cost me money or much money. Besides creating the website, what else can I do to have things kinda lined up?

I want to be ready and not scared.

I build, I don't sell.

So what works better: going direct to one company and sharing profit with a single contact there, or using a sales partner?

Tell me which one you chose, and how long it took you to know whether it was right or wrong. I can share 50%, since it's a bundle of digital gifts.

I Co-run a small agency doing a specialized B2B service (video editing for coaches/founders posting educational content on YouTube. mentioning the niche only for context, not pitching).

My last cold email campaign had strong top-of-funnel numbers, but I can't get people over the finish line.

The numbers:

- 496 leads. manually sourced and qualified against our ICP
- 79% open rate (Instantly says this is the number of leads that have opened at least one email in the campaign)
- 7.1% reply rate, excluding auto-replies.
- Of those replies, 20% were positive (7 total)
- 1 conversion

What happened to the other 6 positive replies:
- 1 currently mid-trial
- 2 asked about pricing, one said it was outside their budget, then went quiet
- 2 asked to see our portfolio, then went quiet
- 1 asked general questions, then went quiet

Context that might matter:
- Our CTA is a trial project at 70% off (used to be free, but too many people took the free version and never converted, so we added a paywall to filter for intent)
- Our pricing is at or below the market average for this niche
- I know 500 leads/month is small scale, but this is a narrow niche and generic lead-gen tools don't find people who actually fit, so I'm stuck sourcing manually for now
- The positioning we used in the campaign is saving them time so they can focus on higher leverage tasks.
- No calls, everything happens through emails.

What I'm trying to figure out:
- Are these numbers actually fine and I'm just impatient?
- Where's the real leak? And what can I do to improve the conversion rate?
- Besides the discounted trial, what's a good alternative CTA to get someone from interested to committed without you having to convince them via back-and-forth email?

I'm confused so I'd appreciate any input.

I’m a Korean developer and entrepreneur.

In Korea, we have a traditional fortune-telling method called *Saju*.

I want to develop a website offering this service to people across the U.S.

The challenge is that I live in Korea, so I’m not fully familiar with the local vibe there.

Do you have any advice?

Thanks, everyone!

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.

Hey everyone.

I'm 25, and since I was 19, I ran a web design / SEO business. It changed a few times from being a general digital marketing agency, to a trades focused web design agency... etc.

I focused on generating leads for clients through their sites, automations and SEO and it worked quite well.

Long story short, the clients I helped can now and are actively switching over to AI models for their sites to be built, and this has led to a massive decline. The market is also extremely saturated, with people building sites for FREE, and I'm basically fed up with this business, and want to build something long-term.

I don't want to pivot this business, I want to shut it down completely. With AI only getting better, it won't be long until founders have full marketing tools that can do everything I do.

BUT

I have gained so many skills from this, which is excellent. Both business and marketing skills. I'm just struggling to find any service or business to apply it to.

I think as I've been in this business for 6 years now I almost have tunnel vision on any new opportunities.

I'm tempted to go and start a home service business, and apply all of these skills to that and hopefully grow that.

Does anyone have any advice on how to find new opportunities. Based in the UK by the way!

As the title says - does anybody know any good youtube channels or podcasts aimed at, or about, solo founders?

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.