Looking back at how businesses operate, it's easy to add more tools, spreadsheets, meetings, and steps whenever a problem comes up.

But sometimes the better solution is to simplify the process rather than add another tool.

I'm curious about other founders' experiences:

• What process used to take too much of your time?
• What did you change to make it simpler?
• Did you use a tool, create a checklist, or simply remove unnecessary steps?

I'd be interested to hear what actually worked in practice.

the biggest mistake i see people make when trying to automate agency work is taking a 10 page standard operating procedure document and pasting the whole thing into claude with "follow this step by step."

it works fine for the first two steps, then the AI starts skipping checks, summarizing the output, and hallucinating details halfway through. three weeks later the team gives up and goes back to doing it manually.

the problem isnt that claude cant handle your process. the problem is that human SOPs are written for human brains, not AI context windows.

humans rely on implicit assumptions, past experience, and visual judgment. when you hand a human SOP to an AI, those gaps get filled with guesses.

heres the 4-step framework we use to convert complex, multi-page agency SOPs into production-ready claude skills that run consistently every time.

1. strip out the human fluff and extract the core decision trees most SOPs are 70% filler. explanations of why the task matters, corporate background, screenshots of where buttons are located. AI doesn't need any of that.

read through your SOP and pull out only three things:

• inputs: what exact raw data is needed to start (eg, brand voice doc, client UR L, raw transcript, competitor list)
• decision logic: the explicit rules for how choices are made (eg, "if word count is under 1,500, flag as thin content")
• outputs: the exact structural format required at the end (JSON schema, markdown tables, specific header hierarchy)

if a step requires "gut feeling" or "creative judgment," you have to break down what actually drives that judgment into explicit rules.

1. structure the process into isolated execution blocks dont try to make one single prompt handle an entire 8-step workflow from start to finish. the output quality drops exponentially with every additional task you stack into one instruction block.

instead, split your SOP into small, self-contained sub-tasks within your skill file.

for example, if you are converting a content brief SOP:

• step A: scrape and parse the top 10 search results
• step B: extract headings and calculate average word count
• step C: cross-reference missing semantic topics against competitor outlines
• step D: generate the final brief layout

by forcing claude to execute and validate step A before moving to step B, you eliminate the compounding errors that ruin long-form outputs.

1. encode explicit rubrics and negative constraints telling an AI "write a good email subject line" gives you generic marketing garbage.

to get agency-grade output, your skill file needs strict scoring rubrics and explicit negative rules.

in your skill markdown, write out what counts as a fail:

• "never use promotional hype words like game-changer, revolutionary, or skyrocket."
• "never use structural punctuation like colons, semicolons, or em-dashes in titles."
• "if the calculated word count target exceeds 2,500 words, trigger a human review flag instead of generating the outline."

the tighter your negative constraints, the closer the output gets to what your senior team would produce.

1. provide golden examples directly in the context instructions alone get you 70% of the way there. the missing 30% is solved by providing 2 or 3 "golden examples" of past human work directly inside the skill context.

show the skill what an input looked like, and show it the exact final deliverable your team delivered to a real client. claude matches pattern structure much faster from concrete examples than from abstract rules.

a real world test we ran this conversion on a client onboarding research SOP for an e-commerce growth agency.

the original human SOP took an account manager about 3,5 hours per new client and pulling ad history, analyzing product review sentiment, checking site speed, and drafting an initial strategy deck.

after converting the SOP into a structured claude skill file with clear input parameters and negative constraints, the exact same research process now runs in under 4 minutes. the account manager spends 15 minutes reviewing and tweaking the output instead of building it from scratch.

if you have SOPs sitting in google docs or notion that your team rarely follows anyway, this is the single best place to start automating.

When people talk about starting a business, the conversation usually focuses on finding customers, marketing, sales, and making the first revenue. But running a business also means managing the work behind the scenes -documentation, deadlines, accounting, employee-related processes, and keeping everything organised as the business grows. One lesson I've learned is that having a simple system early can save a lot of confusion later. Even a basic calendar for important dates and a well-organised folder for business documents can make a difference. For other entrepreneurs here, what system or process helped you manage your business better as it started growing?

A couple of years ago I posted here after we helped a client through an acquisition and shared some general thoughts from the experience.

Since then, we have worked through a number of additional deals. There are a few things we pay more attention to now after seeing them come up across different transactions.

There have also been some recent changes around SBA-financed acquisitions, but do not want to make this an SBA rules post. These are more just a few observations from deals we have been working through recently.

Just Believe in the Future and Pay for It Now

One thing I see fairly often is a business being valued partly on what it is expected to do over the next 12-18 months, rather than what it has actually done.

Maybe there is a strong backlog, a few large projects about to start, delayed work moving into next year, new salespeople coming online, etc. Sometimes the story is very believable.

But we have looked at businesses where the historical earnings support one valuation and the asking price really only works if next year's forecast gets hit.

My advice: I would separate what the business has actually proven from what you think it can do. There is nothing wrong with believing the upside, but I would be careful paying the seller upfront for all of it.

More Critical Eye To Earnings [Editor's Note: Which Should Have Always Been the Case]

I talked about addbacks and SDE in my original post, but I think the financial diligence around acquisitions has become more important.

The interesting questions usually aren't whether depreciation or interest gets added back. It is the less obvious stuff.

Does the owner's compensation really go away? Is the rent changing after closing? Did margins move materially? Is something being called "one-time" that actually shows up every year? Does the current year look like the trailing numbers?

On larger SBA transactions, there can also be more formal financial diligence involved now, including QoE work in certain situations.

My advice: Treat the seller's adjusted EBITDA or SDE as a starting point. I would want to understand fairly early what the earnings really look like once the adjustments and addbacks are actually tested, and how a lender is likely to view them.

So....What Does the Owner Actually Do?

This has come up a lot in businesses we have explored with clients.

An owner may say they only work 10 or 20 hours a week, which sounds great initially. Then you find out they hold the license, handle the largest customer, price the difficult jobs, maintain the bonding relationship or are still the person employees call when something goes wrong (but again, they only work 10 to 20 hours a week, right?)

That is very different from an owner who is genuinely replaceable.

The newer SBA rules provide some additional flexibility around seller transition in certain situations, which helps. But especially in plumbing, HVAC, electrical and similar businesses, that does not solve the licensing issue by itself. State and local requirements still matter.

My advice: Don't just ask how many hours the owner works. Figure out what they actually do and what has to be replaced when they are gone.

Don't Try to Diligence the Whole Business Before an LOI (Seriously)

I see buyers go too far in both directions here.

Some want to ask 30 questions and effectively complete diligence before putting an offer in. Others submit an LOI after looking at little more than the CIM.

Neither is ideal.

Before an LOI, I am really trying to figure out whether there is anything that materially changes the valuation, structure or whether we want to pursue the business at all. Once there is an agreed framework and exclusivity, that is when you can spend the time validating everything properly.

Sellers and brokers also have a limit on how much information they are going to provide before they know you are serious.

My advice: Get comfortable with the few things that could change your decision before submitting an LOI. Save the detailed diligence for when you actually have a deal to diligence.

Be Very Careful With the Word "Recurring"

This one comes up more than I expected.

A business may have customers that have used them for 10 years, maintenance work that comes back regularly, or general contractors that send them projects every year. That can all be very valuable.

But it is not necessarily the same thing as contractual recurring revenue.

We have looked at businesses where a large percentage of revenue was described as "recurring," but when you dug into it, much of it was really repeat project work based on relationships. In other situations, the work was tied to a contract, certification or program that needed to be understood in the context of a change of ownership.

My advice: Understand what actually causes the revenue to come back. A long customer relationship is a positive, but I would not treat repeat business, contracted revenue and true recurring revenue as the same thing.

Not All Backlog Is Created Equal

A large backlog can make a business look a lot more attractive, particularly in construction and the trades.

But I have learned to be careful with the headline number.

Some backlog is under signed contract. Some is awarded but not started. Some is really a verbal commitment or work the seller expects to receive.

And even when the work is real, the margins on those jobs may look very different from what the business has historically earned.

We have looked at companies where the backlog sounded great at first, but once you got into what was actually contracted, when the work would start and what the expected margins were, the picture was a little different.

My advice: If backlog is an important part of the story, understand what is actually contracted, when it is expected to convert and whether the economics look similar to the historical business. I would not treat a dollar of backlog as automatically equivalent to a dollar of historical revenue.

Will leave it there for now.

One thing we have seen more clearly over time is that a good business does not always make for a good acquisition.

The company can have good employees, real earnings and plenty of upside, and the price, financing or transition can still make the transaction difficult.

On the other hand, some deals that look complicated at first can still work if the underlying issues are manageable and the buyer, seller and lender are aligned on the path forward.

Would be interested to hear from people who have bought a business recently or are currently going through the process. What has come up that you did not expect when you started looking?

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.

hen starting a business, most founders focus on getting customers, building the product, and managing cash flow.

But there are also things like business registration, GST, employee compliance, tax deadlines, and annual filings that can become confusing once the business starts growing.

I'm curious to hear from founders and small business owners:

• Which compliance task was the most confusing when you started?
• Did you understand the requirements early, or learn about them only when a deadline came up?
• What do you wish someone had explained to you before you started your business?

I think sharing these experiences could help people who are just getting started avoid some unnecessary confusion.

I think there’s a point where getting better at handling an objection can hide a problem with how you’re selling.

A prospect misunderstands what you do. You explain it, they get it, and the call moves forward. It feels like you handled that well.

But if the next several prospects need the same explanation, I’d start looking at what they read before booking.

For example, an agency might say it handles “end-to-end marketing.” A buyer could reasonably interpret that as including everything from strategy to website changes. The agency means something much narrower, but nobody discovers the difference until the call.

The salesperson gets good at clearing that up. Meanwhile, the website keeps creating the confusion.

I’d want to take the explanation that finally makes sense to buyers and put it somewhere they can find it earlier. That could mean describing the actual work, showing a sample deliverable, or being explicit about what the customer still needs to own.

The uncomfortable part is that clearer information might reduce the number of calls you book. Some people will realize the offer isn’t what they need. That makes the change harder to defend if booked calls are the main thing you’re measuring.

Personally, I’d rather judge it by whether the right prospects arrive with a better understanding and whether fewer customers are surprised after signing.

There’s still plenty that needs a conversation. I just think repeating the same clarification deserves a closer look before you treat it as a permanent part of selling.

What explanation did you move out of your sales calls and into your marketing, and did it change the quality of the conversations?

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.

You have to start a remote business with nothing but a pc and an internet connection and yourself. What business would you start and why.

All your bills and expenditure are already paid up for a decade so you can focus on the business.

Rules

• Remote only - no in face meetings.
• You can have a high end PC or Mac of your choice.
• You have to make as much money as you can in 10 years
• Has to be a new business, can't continue one you already have.
• Clients or business can be anywhere in the world but you work remotely from home.

What would you do?

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.

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.

Starting off with a small humble brag: I run a solo consultancy business, doing fairly well, and as such have created a bit of a name for myself in my industry. This year in particular, I've had several people reach out to have coffee for the sole purpose of "picking my brain" to help them as they embark on their own in the same industry. I can't really help but feel a tiny bit annoyed. Flattered, but a little bit annoyed. Having spent ten years building my business and reputation, I am not about to impart my hard earned wisdom over coffee with potential competitors. Or am I being an asshole here? I have never reached out to anyone in this manner, and the one time I have, I made it very clear I would pay for their time in helping me (it was for a book I wanted to write and they had been through the process before) Usually, I say I'm busy with clients and projects and to reach out at a later time. However, I've been toying with the idea of offering Business Development Coaching at a cost just to make it clear what they are asking. And also, there does seem to be a demand for these type of services so why not offer them!

How would you or how do you handle this?

Hey guys like the title says do you guys purchase existing Instagram, X, Facebook, Tik Tok accounts when starting or do you build it from scratch because I see alot of these gambling companies are purchasing existing accounts and rebranding it and turning it into there brand? Like do you guys also do that or nah? And is it worth it or not?

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.

Most software for service businesses charges per user. That means every cleaner you add to the system raises your monthly bill. Think about how backwards that is. You hire more people because the business is growing, and your tools tax you for it.

I switched to a CRM that charges a flat rate no matter how many cleaners I add, and it changed how I use the thing. Cleaners actually get their own logins. Jobs get assigned properly instead of me texting addresses around. Nothing lives in my head anymore because there is no penalty for putting the whole team in the system.

I've spent years building software and I've slowly realized that coding is often the easy part.

The difficult part is deciding what not to build.

You can spend weeks making something technically impressive that nobody actually needs.

The older I get, the more I think good product development is mostly saying "no" to interesting ideas.

Curious if other founders eventually came to the same conclusion.

I know it's a weird question but I ask because sometimes I think I might be more productive that way and curious if anyone has actually tried it.

Right now I work a 'typical' 8-10 hour day. I start at around 8am and work until noon, take a break and then get back at it.

The problem is that from about 1-4 I feel like I'm mostly just putzing around on my computer. I get drawn into social media chats and even play dumb little solitaire video games, and then get another second wind around 4pm until 6 or 7, but even then it's not as productive as the morning.

Sometimes I wonder if I just limited myself to those ~4 morning hours, with maybe an afternoon/evening check in, if I might be on the net getting just as much done.

The problem is I haven't really figured out anything interesting enough to replace those midday hours. I schedule appointments in there and things like that but I'd love to give myself space to go do something fun too.

The other problem is that I'm not really where I want to be financially at all yet either.

Anyways, curious if anyone has done something similar and what your experience was.

Thanks!

Last weekend, I watched Nolan’s The Odyssey. As a Greek, I’d been kind of avoiding it because I had mixed feelings about it, which is why I’m so late to the party.

It was great. But the character who really stuck with me was Agamemnon. I already knew the story, of course. Greek mythology was a big part of growing up. But seeing it on screen brought it back to me in a way I hadn’t expected. He sacrificed his own daughter for favorable winds, and I walked out of the cinema thinking about what commitment actually looks like for entrepreneurs in the real world.

Once I figured out what it looked like for me, I asked my cofounder to meet the next morning. I told him we weren’t at a point of real commitment to our project yet.

I was imagining tons of calls and emails a day, filling up the sales pipeline, turning the prospects we booked for demos into clients, and running their campaigns with maximum effort. Basically, doing whatever it took to get our B2B newsletter marketing agency off the ground.

We met after we both joined the Antler residency in Berlin and decided to try building something together there. For the past year and a half, he’d also been running his own newsletter on the side, which is where the idea for the agency came from.

The newsletter already brings in decent money, which he’s currently reinvesting into its growth. The brands we had been chasing as agency clients were literally approaching him and offering to pay directly for advertising in his newsletter.

I was asking him to make a sacrifice while those same brands were throwing money at him.

Any of us would probably choose the easier, proven path. Understandably, that was the choice he made too. It became clear that the project was over, so we shut the agency down in that same meeting and sent apologies to the prospects already in our pipeline.

That was co-founded startup number two since April, and project number seven since I quit my full-time job a little over a year ago.

The first co-founded startup was an AI tool for customer success teams. We were developing it alongside a specific customer, basically like a design partner. I may have even posted here to complain about it at the time.

They kept reassuring us, “Yes, this is interesting,” “Yes, you should build this,” and “Yes, we’d pay for this.”

We developed the project they said they wanted, but apparently didn’t need badly enough to pay for. They never approved a budget, and we eventually had to kill it too.

The AI tool and the solo projects that came before it didn’t turn into successful companies, but the experience was a big part of why I earned a spot in Antler’s Berlin residency.

The founders and partners here get it. From day one, we were told that teams would change, and our team was actually the first to part ways.

My parents don’t get it, though. They’re scared for my future and don’t understand why I keep changing teams or why no project seems to stick. Honestly, when they call and I hear the confusion in their voices, it hurts almost as much as the startups failing.

I have about 90 days of runway left before I need to start selling assets to keep funding this journey. At the same time, I’ve reached the final stage of an interview process with an incredible company and team for a role offering compensation that is almost unheard of by European standards. And yet, I’m not sure I want the job.

These past 13 months as an entrepreneur have been the life I always dreamed of. I’m exactly where I want to be, minus the “no revenue” issue, of course.

So today, I started again, solo, with an e-commerce idea I’ve had for a while but kept dismissing.

The concept is something I came across a few months ago called “buy now, pay maybe.” Instead of offering every customer the same discount, some customers have their purchase refunded after buying. I spent most of today researching the market and found a specific angle that I think could differentiate it from the existing options available to e-commerce stores. Whether that difference is valuable enough is what I still need to validate. I’ve vibe-coded the marketing website, but I haven’t built the actual product yet.

My previous projects taught me not to confuse “this is interesting” or “I would pay for this” with actual validation. There is no real validation until there is a signed commitment or money in the account.

This time, I’m doing the outreach first and will only start developing if a merchant commits to a paid pilot or signs an LOI with a specific budget and timeline.

Before I make the same mistake again, I want to challenge the assumptions behind the idea.

For those of you who run an e-commerce store or have worked closely with one: how do you decide when to offer discounts? What do you dislike about traditional discount codes? Have you ever experimented with surprise rewards or refunds, and did they improve conversions or repeat purchases, or did they just reduce margins and add complexity?

I have an employee who consistently does good work, but a client has complained and wants them removed from the account. I don’t think the complaint fully reflects the employee’s performance, but I also don’t want to damage the client relationship.

How would you handle it, support the employee or honor the client’s request?

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.

One thing I noticed in Accounts Receivable is that many payment problems start before the invoice. If terms only show up on the invoice, the client sees them as a surprise, and surprises get ignored.

The businesses that get paid on time usually state the terms early: in the proposal, on the kickoff call, and in the contract. Then a reminder is just following what was agreed.

How does it work in your business? Do clients see your terms before they sign, or only on the invoice? And has changing how you present them made any difference to how fast you get paid?

For the love of God, how many times does this asshat have to scam people before they see through his sociopathic bullshit?

The man has been a scammer since day 1 when he started 20 dating sites and filled them with bots, while refusing to let people quit their membership.

How stupid do you have to be to follow this guy and believe he knows what he's talking about?

- Created an NFT scam that lost 95% of value immediately
- Bought the rights to Radio Shack, Dress Barn and a bunch of shitty companies. Used this portfolio to fleece investors. Not one company made money.
- Claimed his sister had experience managing multi million dollar companies. She was a dog walker and interned at a radio station
- Promised 20% returns if people invested in his shitty portfolio of distressed companies

There is an active FBI investigation against him and I cannot wait till the 5am raid where they cuff his ass and throw him in next to Andrew Tate.

I run a small outbound agency that does cold calling for B2B companies. One of my callers is doing ok. He books meetings and he's clearly capable. I like him a lot as a person and I want him to stay.

For comparison, my best caller handles 4 clients and fulfills every one of them properly while making fewer calls. This guy has 2 clients and needs a lot more volume to get there. The main difference is fundamentals. My best caller follows the script, especially the opener, and his conversations go further because of it. The other guy drifts from the script and makes up for it by dialing more.

For comparison on average my best caller gets through the opener 70% of the time while this caller gets through a little under 40%.

He can definitely be good. He's right there. I just don't know how to tell him he needs to be better without it coming across wrong.

I brought in an experienced cold caller to run group training twice a week, and most of the coaching gets met with objections. One of my other team members noticed that when the coach calls him out on something, he always has an explanation ready, like "well, that's because of this" or "that one was different." He isn't rude about it, but the feedback never really lands. It seems like he thinks he's already at his ceiling.

I am afraid if he doesn't adapt he needs to be replaced, which I don't want to do. He is not a dumbssa but the first step is just knowing he needs training.

For anyone who has managed salespeople:

• How do you tell someone who's doing fine that they need to level up, without discouraging them?
• How do you get past the objections when you're coaching? Is group training the wrong format for someone like this?
• Have you shown someone their numbers next to a top performer's, and did it help or backfire?
• Have you had someone like this turn the corner? What made it click?

Would appreciate any advice, especially from people who have run sales teams or call floors.

Wondering if it's common in RE investing to partner with someone who is willing to put up the money for down payments on rentals so we can do higher volume.

The division would look like..

One partner gets the hard money loan under their name to purchase the property, handles the rehab, gets tenants in, refinances out of the hard money loan under their name, and manages the property ongoing.

One partner funds the down payments for the hard money loans.

Obviously capital partner gets paid back right away after it's rehabbed and refinanced, and then whatever other kind of mutually beneficial arrangement they want to work out from there

Thoughts?