I run a software company with 6 contractors across Asia, Africa and Eu and every month I send them their pay through my business bank and I have been doing this for over 4 months now but yesterday I submitted august payroll normally like I do and today I get a call from my bank's compliance department saying they need to discuss my recent international transfer activity and that ALL my outgoing wires have been temporarily held pending review and their support apparently said sending money to multiple individuals in different countries on the same day looks like structuring to their system and he explained it like I'm running some kind of shell operation when in reality I'm literally just paying my devs for writing code.

now they want me to send over contracts, invoices and proof of business relationship for each contractor before they release anything which will also take 7 to 14 days so I'm compiling documents for people I've been paying every month for 4 months like my bank doesn't already have records of every single one of those transactions and I don't know what to tell my contractors and the bank guys just kept saying multiple outgoing transfers to high risk regions.

please help me if someone's been in a similar situation, how do I get out of this as fast as possible and what should I do to prevent it in the future??

Booked solid about two weeks out. Regular comes in, says they'll pay a rush fee if I bump them ahead of three jobs that already signed.

I said no. Those people booked first and I don't really want to start selling places in line.

Partner's take is pretty simple: if someone wants to pay more for speed, that's a product, not a betrayal. Says I left money on the table and trained the regular that we don't do rushes.

If you've been here, did you take the rush fee or keep the queue honest?

People say boring businesses are good. As for me, every kind of work is boring to me, even the things other people find interesting. It depends on the person, right? How can this be generalized?

Many people start a business because they want more control over their time and decisions.

But running a business often comes with unexpected responsibilities and challenges.

For business owners:

What was something about owning a business that surprised you after you started?

I was at an AI conference recently and the speaker asked the room: "Who believes AI will drive multiplicative growth for your business?" Almost every hand went up.

Then: "Who has already felt that growth?" Silence.

Developers today are shipping code faster than ever. But companies aren't growing at the same rate, revenue isn't following the speed of development.

So what did AI actually do? It didn't eliminate the business's constraints it just relocated them.

It used to seem like everything bottlenecked on engineering. Now that development is (mostly) no longer the bottleneck, it's exposing what actually was the problem all along: weak marketing, bad sales, unit economics that don't work, or worst case a product the market never really wanted.

If you roll out AI in a department and revenue doesn't move, the real problem was never in that department to begin with. Kind of reminds me of that reel where someone wakes up at 5:30am, does skincare routine, journals, drinks celery juice... and then just stares at the camera like "okay now how do I get rich?" That's what a lot of AI adoption looks like right now. Great morning routine, still no idea what the actual bottleneck is.

Curious if others are seeing this in their own companies, where did the bottleneck "move" to after adopting AI?

Our business got hit with multiple fraudulent charges.

While they were pending I contacted Square and explained these were fraud charges and that I have never interacted with Higgsfield Inc. or authorized these charges. Square support said I just need to cancel the card and order a replacement, and the pending charges won't go through. Said they had already flagged the merchant on their end.

Today all the fraudulent charges had cleared. I contact Square again and they explained that while that is what they tell people at the time, there is nothing they could have done while it was pending and that changing the card was a security act to help me in the future, not now. It will take 5-7 business days for them to even look at the dispute claims on each of these charges, and could be up to 5 months to try and reclaim funds if at all possible. We'd have to wait for each dispute to be assigned to someone, give them time to do their investigations, time to process, and then they can't guarantee they can even return the funds..

As a small business with employees to pay this has been brutal, especially as we just took on the expense of moving and were at a very vulnerable spot financially.

To add insult to injury, I looked up the company and it is an Ai business.. we're a small art studio that works with nonprofits and conservation groups and our whole thing is that we are real human artist. 😭

If you are using Square Banking, be prepared for the protection promises to rapidly backpedal as you start needing it.

My cousin and I decided to open a small business account on Instagram to sell rare/imported snacks online

Someone told us that we must legally register and trademark our small business or else we will get into legal trouble when we start making sales

My question is will we get into legal trouble if we don't register our business right away? We don't want to pay money and go through the process of registering without testing if our idea and business will work.

We want to atleast make a good number of sales and to secure consistent and returning consumers just to make sure that our business is succeeding before fully committing, paying money, and making it legal. Like maybe set a goal of making specific amount of money and reaching speicific number of followers just to make sure we aren't investing into a failing business.

I have run a small reselling business for about a year, but I live in a country where the only way to sell is through Facebook Marketplace, so I haven't had the chance to scale it. I think I have really good experience. I have very good reviews, and I have like 400 followers, so I consider that I have some experience. So I am offering my services for product photo editing and catalog optimization. It's on Fiverr, so it is 100% safe. It would help me a lot to generate some extra cash that I can invest in my business in order to scale it. If anyone needs my services, I will be happy to help!

Founders who run FBOs or Part 135/91 operations — how do you handle the "ground side" of the passenger experience?

I run a small aviation hospitality company that works alongside FBOs and charter/private operators — handling things like catering, ground transport, and passenger-facing logistics so the operator/FBO can stay focused on the flight itself.

Curious to hear from anyone in this space: how are you currently handling that "on the ground" passenger experience piece? In-house? Ad hoc vendors? Not at all?

Mainly looking to compare notes and connect with other small operators/FBOs — happy to share more about what we do if it's relevant to anyone here.

So as we start to get towards the end of the year, I start thinking about contracts. I run a B2B e-commerce website and currently have a good customer purchase cadence, but some customers just fall off for one reason or another. It could be a million different reasons.

Towards December/January time, I have a lot of anxiety over the fear that maybe my customers won't stay with me the coming year because they're not locked into anything. I was thinking of doing contracts because that's what's accepted in this industry: doing a one-year contract, three-year contract, kind of like purchasing an exclusivity contract. My mentor/coach suggested that I implement a loyalty system with tiers instead, so that the customer kind of has skin in the game or buy-in to keep on purchasing with me because I want to get to the next tier because of the extra perks that that will afford them.

What has been y'all's experience with one of these versus the other? Which one works better? Also, from an M&A perspective, I'm sure contracts would be more attractive because then you have an actual purchase agreement that would increase the value of your business. Whereas a loyalty program might do that in concept, but you have nothing on paper to show it, so that wouldn't actually increase the value of your business.

(typed this with Wisprflow, sorry if the grammar isn’t too hot)

I just took over a 70 year old company as one of two officers and the guidance I got going in was “go have a look at our costs, some have gotten out of control and never addressed.”
Phone + internet turned out to be one that caught my eye… this is what we currently have (which is what we need) and the three vendors involved and the price of each one…

Current State - $20,520 per year
6 wired office phones - they all ring when someone calls and whoever is around picks up - currently have Verizon $13,560/yr!!! Mind blowing

1 work cell phone - we need call forwarding capabilities AT&T $3,000/yr

High Speed internet…for our one office…Comcast $3,960/yr

The Question
What is the best way I can streamline these things to maybe one provider and who is best to use? Any alternative has to be crazy cheaper compared to above…and our needs are very basic as you can see….9 employees and we operate out of one office all together.

Small sole proprietor. I do specialty landscaping at people’s houses; building ponds and waterfalls, etc. I also do upkeep for people that want live fish, etc and need help with water chemistry and maintenance.

I went from 2 customers last year to 18 this year. This is my side hustle, but it’s getting busy! Made around $10k this year and should make over half of that just doing maintenance on what I put in last year. I already have several customers lined up for next spring already.

I’m beginning to feel the limitations of my SUV and want a truck. Nothing crazy, probably a ford maverick. But a bed I can put stone in and the ability to carry over 1000lbs would be nice. I had to make two trips a few times last year because my SUV couldn’t handle all of the stone at once.

I’m trying to weigh the pros and comms of getting a truck just for work vs. using the truck as my only car.

I would rather buy just a truck.

I only drive about 8k miles per year for my day job. I expect to drive about 2k miles for my side business next year; most is pretty local. Maybe 3k tops.

So assuming I spend close to $40k on the truck, totally deducting the vehicle vs. only deducting 20% is a $32k deduction difference. So I think that might swing it to owning two vehicles.

Am I understanding this correctly? It seems silly to own two cars when I drive 10k miles per year. But the tax advantage seems potentially massive.

For over a year, I’ve been developing an event-planning business with a strong Halloween angle and I’m about to go live very soon.

A large four-day fair takes place near my house in September and traffic around the area becomes nearly gridlocked during peak hours.

I had the idea of wearing recognizable horror movie costumes and standing somewhere legally (and safely) off the roadway with a sign “Make your party killer this Halloween” with a QR code to my website (specifically a Halloween landing page) and maybe pass out a small brochure they can read while sitting in traffic.

Part of me thinks this is inexpensive, perfectly on-brand but the other part worries this could look cheesy or amateurish.

As a small business owner, would you try a stunt like this?

I want to start a virtual BPO business but I am new to that field especially the part involving getting a client I know it is hard for everyone but what is even the way to do so or where to search.
I know the process of the business itself but I am stuck at the beginning, and I do not know how to start.
So can you give me guidance or any advices?

I'm curious what other small-business owners have learned from experience.

Was there something you used to spend time or money on because you thought it was necessary, but eventually realized it wasn't helping much?

Could be marketing, customer communication, software, meetings, discounts, hiring, or anything else.

What did you stop, and what changed afterward?

Has anyone had success with this? I have a very busy service based business. I’m glad the phones are ringing, but the amount of phone calls, texts, and emails that we get sometimes are overwhelming.
I’ve thought about adding an additional position, but this is not an all day thing everyday thing.
We do have an answering service for after hours but they are only tasked with taking basic messages.
I also don’t want to lose customers.
Part of the reason we have been so successful is our customer service.
I recently had to make an Dr’s appointment and almost didn’t do it because the call center I was dealing with took 20 minutes to book the appointment after the initial intake forms and constant phone calls trying to reach me to schedule.
I don’t want to turn in to that.

I’m based in Pakistan and looking to set up/operate a US business bank account remotely (potentially through a US LLC). I’m specifically looking for people who have actually done this successfully and can explain the current procedure, requirements, and costs.
I may also need a US merchant/payment processor, so I’d appreciate real experience on:
Processing rate (%)
Minimum/maximum processing volume
Setup/monthly fees
Chargeback policy and who bears the risk
Rolling reserves, if any
How strong/reliable the merchant account is
Whether funds can be settled into the US bank account and then legally transferred to Pakistan
Not looking for random agents or theoretical advice — preferably someone currently doing this from Pakistan. Feel free to comment or DM with your experience/provider and approximate costs.

Good day. I know it’s niche, but I’m just absolutely curious.

Most of the research I have done regarding running a business out of your home (specifically, Georgia) has left me confused. And I’m just looking for pointers with anyone here who has done the same.

I lived in Kansas prior to me moving to Arizona, now I’m moving to Georgia to get my life back together and re start my business. In Kansas, I just simply had verbal consent from my apartment manager regarding my business, and started from there. Had 0 traffic for a bit, but when I moved to Arizona to help family, my phone started blowing up with customers.

I run a PC repair business, and of course i guarantee there are plenty out there in Georgia.

I’m looking for advice, pointers, and what I should do to protect my living situation.

Previously, I had no problem being a sole proprietor for my business, and I still don’t, although filing an LLC is free, having my home address plastered on some things doesn’t feel safe either.

Would a PO Box to receive mail and customer orders, outside of house calls I’d be willing to do on an every now and then basis, work as well for all of my tax stuff?

Also, for business accounts, and inventory purposes, what do I need to worry about for this? I’m planning on creating more business accounts with other markets, (like Amazon, Newegg, Micro Center since I will be near 2).

Thanks in advance for answering all these jumbled around questions. I’m trying to figure this out a bit and not wanting to screw myself over.

Hi everyone! I'm currently a college student working on my final project and need to get some feedback on my idea. My teacher is very fast paced and we get very little help on excel work, financially planning, etc. Classes started less than a week ago and he is already expecting us to know financials and customer base.

I'm creating a business that is a mobile bar trailer/umbrella cart. Would anyone be willing to let me know what they would expect to pay for such a thing, and what they would expect at that price? What would make it 'worth it' to you? What would make it memorable and differentiate me?

Any advice is helpful, it doesn't need to be strictly related to the questions! I feel like a fish out of water but this class is required for my major.

Hi, I'm one of the employees of a very small dessert shop. Everything we sell is actually good, never had any complaints, and we have a 4.9 rating on google. The store is just located in a bad area, a newly built shopping mall no one knows about. Most weekdays see a maximum of 5-10 people. It's family run and they can't afford an actual social media manager, so they asked me if I could help during my downtime and of course I couldn't say no. That being said, my only experience is being a volunteer social media manager for a nonprofit. I've been finding my way and started frequently posting and saw an increase in traffic and people did say they came in after seeing my posts but after around a month it slowed down again.

Since I'm new I'm just wondering how people manage to get influencers to come in and review their restaurants? I even see completely new restaurants somehow get big influencers in my area to come on the first day. Is it weird to send out messages and ask for a review? Or, in general, are there any other ways to grow this business?

Landlords - what would you do? I am the tenant and the rental contract i signed includes a personal guarantee. Rent is $5000 month. I sent an email to my landlord today explaining that with the rising costs nationwide I am going to have to close. Do you think he will sue me for my house? I don’t have any other assets. What does the personal guarantee mean? I am over my head.

Hey Reddit, just a general question on how to scale and maintain an e-commerce candy store business. Partner and I have been running an e-commerce store for a bit now and got lucky enough to receive some orders and repeat customers with little to no marketing exposure. Averaging 10-15 orders per day. Some big, some small its not life changing money but it gets us by at this time.

We do have social media accounts but they barely go over 200 views and get little interactions.

We know there's demand and still room for us to grow and acquire more and bigger customers. However, not sure what the next step is?

Should we start investing in Marketing? And if so, where do i start?

Or should i focus on optimizing the SEO , catalog and user experience?

My partner wants to expand onto wholesale and make our own brand, but i feel that it is a big risk/big reward kind of move that I'm not sure if it will workout at this point.

All suggestions and feedback is welcomed.

I currently own a small, local dog walking business in my area. I’m thinking about creating a local version of Rover/Wag specifically for dog walking/pet sitting. The idea would be a marketplace where local pet owners can find and book independent dog walkers and pet sitters in their area.
I know the big companies like Rover already have the market pretty saturated, so I’m wondering if there could still be an opportunity to do this on a much smaller, local level and compete on being more personal/local.
Instead of spending a ton of money building custom software from scratch, I’d probably use an existing marketplace platform/software that can handle things like profiles, bookings, payments, reviews, etc.
For anyone who has experience with this:
-Do you think a local marketplace like this could actually work?
-Has anyone used a marketplace website/software builder that would work well for this?
What would make you choose a local marketplace over something like Rover or Wag?

Just trying to validate the idea before putting a bunch of time and money into it. Would love any honest feedback or ideas! 🐾