I run a very small online business selling products on Amazon. Recently, my company was sued in DC over a pocket square that cost only a few dollars.

The lawsuit alleges that the product’s actual fabric composition did not match the material described in the online listing, and that the product did not have the required fiber content and other labeling information. The plaintiff has offered to settle for $10,000 plus additional terms.

I understand that product labeling laws are important, and I take these allegations seriously. I am not saying my company is automatically right. But the settlement demand and the potential cost of legal representation have been overwhelming for a business as small as mine.

The hardest part is feeling that the other side understands the legal system far better than I do, while I may not even be able to afford the legal help needed to defend my company.

I have been struggling with depression while trying to keep my business running and take care of my family. This situation has made an already difficult time much harder.

While searching the DC Superior Court database, I found several other cases filed by the same organization that were listed as open at the time I checked. I also found articles discussing similar consumer protection lawsuits against online retailers and the financial pressure they can create for small businesses.

I am not trying to attack anyone or avoid responsibility. I want to understand my options and hear from other small business owners who have faced similar situations.

Have you ever faced a lawsuit or legal demand where the cost of defending yourself felt almost impossible to manage? How did you find affordable legal help, and what would you recommend to someone in my position?

I would really appreciate hearing your experiences. I hope other small business owners do not have to face this kind of situation feeling alone.

​

I'm a small business owner, and like most of us, I get a ton of cold calls and texts.

Now, I get it. Cold calling is part of sales. I don't have a problem with that. If you call me up and say, "Hey, I'm John with XYZ Company. We haven't talked before, but we offer this service and I think it might help your business. Got a couple minutes?" I'm fine with that. Maybe I'll be interested, maybe I won't. No harm done.

But you know what really pisses me off?

The people who call or text and act like we're already buddies, or worse, pretend we've had some previous conversation that never actually happened.

"Hey, just following up on our conversation..."

"Checking in about that application..."

"Wanted to see if you had a chance to review what we discussed..."

Dude. We haven't discussed shit. I don't know who you are.

And it's usually pretty obvious that they've gotten my information off some list, a credit report, or whatever, and they're just trying to schmooze their way into a conversation.

I'm not much of an extrovert to begin with. I don't particularly enjoy talking on the phone, especially with people I don't know. So when you come at me pretending we're old pals, or just flat-out lying about some previous interaction, all you're doing is pissing me off.

And here's what I really don't understand. You're trying to sell me something, right? Presumably you want me to trust you enough to give you my money.

So why the hell would you start that relationship with a lie?

Just tell me who you are, what you're selling, and why you think I might be interested. I can respect that.

But don't pretend we're friends, don't invent conversations we've never had, and don't act like I'm supposed to remember you.

You're not being clever. You're just making sure I'll never do business with you.

Am I like the odd man out here? Do any of my fellow owners actually like getting these kinds of calls?

Hi everyone, as the title stated, I’m a registered nurse looking to finally launched my sanitary pad business that I have had on the back burner for a while. I finally have the capital to do same.

I have always wanted to bring something different to the market and cater to teen girls who are just starting out across to post menopausal women.

My thing is, I’m now thinking if it’s a good avenue and how am I going to build customers who trust my product.

What would you suggest for someone who is about to start? How to gain customers? How to keep them.

Basically how to not run the business in the ground??

Embarrassingly long post ahead.

I need help figuring out how to manage an employee who seems to be lying about almost everything she says about herself.

My small business sells a product-based service. To preserve anonymity, I'll say that we offer high-end hair extensions and extension installation. We've been open for about 3 years. I was doing all of the extensions myself, with occasional assistance from contractors, until I hired an experienced service provider named Carrie about 6 months ago. 

Our team consists of:

• Me - owner 
• Lila - manages our website, scheduling calendar, and social media; has been with the salon since day 1 
• Carrie - our new service provider
• Delaney - our business/operations manager, who was hired at the same time as Carrie

Working with Carrie is making me hate my business and want to burn it to the ground. We were supposed to have a 6-month review at which I would tell her whether she would be promoted to store manager, and that date is coming up quickly, but I don't see her being able to take on that role for a long time, if ever. I feel uncertain about how to handle her review because my primary feedback is that I think she is lying constantly, and I feel like I can't trust her. But that feedback feels too vague. I also can't decide if maybe I'm just going crazy....?

I think I need a mindset shift, and I definitely need an outside perspective. She is such a sweet person, and I have horrible guilt about my feelings about her. 

Why did I hire Carrie?

1. She had been with her previous employer for 5 years, which is a long time in our industry. She had glowing reviews from her previous manager, and she had a reasonable health-related explanation for why she left that job.
2. This is important: she has experience providing a related service that I really wanted to start offering to our clients, and it's an unusual skill. Let's say it's lash extensions. 

What are the issues with Carrie?

She talks nonstop, all day every day, about herself and her health issues, even in front of clients.

She claims to be an expert in many tasks that relate to the business (and many others that don't), but she embellishes the truth so much about everything that I can no longer trust that she knows how to do the things she says she does.

Examples:

- She is 29. She often talks about her careers before this job, which is a normal topic of conversation, but she would be a thousand years old if she had actually had all of the careers she says she's had. As an example, she reports that she: (a) worked as a professional ballerina for 12 years, (b) was a working cellist for 15 years, (c) was one of the makeup artists for an extremely well known television show that is produced in our area for years, etc. There is a new career added to the list every week. But I have her resume, of course, and it says that she has worked in salons and retail jobs since she finished her associate's degree 7 years ago. That's it. 

Her past careers are frequent topics of discussion with our clients, who have no reason to doubt them. And it seems harmless because nobody actually cares if she was a ballerina or not; they just care if she knows how to do their hair. 

But these past careers do come up often when I am distributing tasks internally because she insists that she is an expert in any and every task related to the salon. As an example, if I say that we are going to have a photo shoot to showcase our new line of extensions and I'm hiring a makeup artist to do our models' makeup, she'll insist that she can do it because she has so much "professional experience" from doing makeup on a TV show. I usually deflect these offers by saying things like "I'll need you to be working on the extensions at the shoot, so I am bringing in someone else for makeup."

But this happens every single day, no matter what we are doing. We need to organize the products in our stock room? Well, it's a good thing she "used to be a professional organizer" and "everyone" at her previous job always wanted her to be the one to organize the stock room because she does such a better job than anyone else. Our social media manager, Lila, models our hair extensions for our social media because that's her job, but Carrie is constantly trying to take Lila's place and model for our social media accounts, citing her "years of modeling experience." Etc. It is exhausting to constantly have to find gentle ways to tell her to stay in her lane. 

- Her health issues are her biggest topic of discussion with our team, and occasionally with clients too. At this point, she has probably told me that she has at least 40 or 50 disorders, including disorders that do not exist. For example (again, making this up to preserve anonymity), she claimed that she got cancer from a bee sting. It sounded so outlandish that I looked it up later, and the CDC, WHO, American Cancer Society, etc. all say that there have been zero reported cases of transmission of cancer through bees in human history. 

Sometimes the things she says about her health seem like they could be disturbing to our clients or team. She wears a lot of rings on her fingers, and she tells people that she has to wear the rings because if she doesn't, her fingers will all pop out of their sockets. Since she is working on their hair with her hands, this seems to me like an odd thing to say. But it doesn't seem like our clients care.

Why I'm writing this now

Two recent incidents have caused me to write this post. 

(1) We were in a team meeting recapping our successes from the previous week. Carrie reported that she was very proud of a particular extension application because the client hadn't originally wanted those extensions, but Carrie offered them as an alternative, and the client absolutely loved them. I was taken aback by this because I had been the one to pull those extensions out and offer them to the client. I knew she had not done it, but she seemed to sincerely believe she had. It wasn't that she was trying to take credit for something, it was clear that she "remembered" something that didn't actually happen. It troubled me. 

(2) I wanted her to begin working on a new service. I had repeatedly asked her if she had ever done this particular service, and she said no every time. While I was teaching her how to do it, I remarked that there are two ways of doing it: by hand or with tweezers (with tweezers being the much more common method). I told her I was faster doing it by hand because I've been doing it for 30 years, but most people did it with tweezers. She immediately responded that she too was much faster when doing it by hand, even though she had told me at least 3 times that she had never done this particular task before. 

After that conversation, I became really concerned about her honesty vis-a-vis this role. I knew she was lying and embellishing about other topics, but I assumed she was simply insecure, and it would go away as she grew more confident in her role at my salon. But these incidents made me feel like I could no longer trust her with job-specific tasks.

At the same time, I am concerned that she's just so annoying to me personally that that is coloring all of my interactions with her and assessments of her. 

What are the benefits of keeping her? 

She does a very good job at the core of her role, which is providing hair extensions. Most of our clients seem to really like her. And that is what I hired her for. I don't have any issues with her provision of services to clients. She is genuinely a VERY kind and sweet person. 

Her comments do not seem to be affecting the rest of the team. They take her at her word. They don't spend much time with her because their roles are largely remote, and they work in the salon on the days that we don't take clients, so Carrie isn't there. 

I have gotten to the point where I have stopped holding our biweekly staff meetings because I spend most of the meeting time trying to come up with creative yet kind ways to shoot down the irrelevant and weird things she brings up. 

My mother has a personality disorder, and I'm really worried that I'm having an excessively bad reaction to Carrie because some of her behaviors remind me of my mom. That's not fair to Carrie at all. 

I would love any insights you may have if you've ever managed someone like this. And if you've read this far, you are a saint!

Hi all! New here! Hope this is ok :) My husband and I are getting ready to launch our own LLC for his construction work. We have a name, hoping to secure an instagram handle and domain for our website. My question is - do I bother making a gmail account? That was one of my first ideas of things to "claim" with the business name, but is that necessary? I did a quick search but most posts were about gmail email specifics, not whether or not securing a gmail email address is necessary.

My partner and I just started a fractional controllership practice for scaling small/midsize businesses, and I'm meeting our first prospective client for a pitch.

I'd love to bring some donuts to break the ice, but my AI keeps recommending I don't because it "gives off vendor/sales vibes" and shifts the power dynamic. I'm wanting some actual human thoughts on this lol.

Background info: As a tech-forward accountant, I'm seeing a lot of redundancies in mid-market businesses where finance departments just bloat everything up internally. They don't have the expertise to set up systems that minimize headcount, so we launched our business to address that. This particular client has had trouble hiring, and the role requires a "builder" profile, which lines up very well with what we're aiming to accomplish at a fraction of the cost.

Do I bring the donuts and just be a friendly human, or walk in empty-handed and act like the stoic consultant?

I am a small bussniess just starting out. Yesterday i just went to my very first craft fair. I thought i was ready but i don’t think i really was. I looked into what other people that make the same things as me what they did. And i realized that my table looked very empty.

I make jewelry, earrings, bracelets, phone charms, keychains. I also make stickers.

Yesterday at the craft fair i only made like 3 sales, and the first 3 hours not a single one. There also wasn’t many people at the event and there was so many vendors that didn’t sell a single thing.

I feel very demotivated. And it is so much money to invest in the pretty stuff that makes your stand pretty. Like storage boxes. I know that’s what i need to get but i dont have the money to invest in that right now.

For example my stand was one stand of stickers, one stand of earrings, and two stands of my jewelry, no boxes no nothing no nothing else. I also did have a tablecloth.

Could i please have some tips? I felt so demotivated and want to give up because of everything. But i’m also not going to. I would just love some help and tips please. I also don’t have a much of a budget to spend in a step right right now either.

Hello,
I’m looking to purchase a pet grooming salon. It’s in a great location. However it’s a few towns away from my town so it takes about an hour drive there. The drive has little traffic as there are 2 ways to get there major freeway or small rural roads. With those who commute this amount of time is it feasible ? Do you hate it ? Does it go fast? Also I’m aiming to go to the place 4 days a week and manage the other days from home.

Mobile load: 6.1 seconds. Mobile bounce: 71 percent.

Two of us, kitchenware, 90 SKUs. Six apps installed, four of which inject their own scripts into every page.

Agency quote to fix the theme as it stands: $4,800.

So: strip the apps and stay where we are, or rebuild on something like Amboras, where page editing is native and three of those six apps stop being necessary at all.

Has anyone got a real speed gain from changing platform, or is it always just the apps?

This is going to be messy, but I need to know before actually doing anything with it.

I'm a 34 year old doctor with a high stake job as a surgeon and PhD candidate as of now. My job takes a lot of time, but the way I relax from my work is by being creative. I love to read, to learn new tasks and learning to play new instruments. This is my form of relaxation most of the days. Some days I find myself watching Netflix, but that is quite seldom.

Now to the topic. I have as long as I can remember made drawings of jewellery I like. I'm not that very well versed in gemology, but am willing to learn. I have made a couple of pieces of jewellery for myself through a gold smith in the middle east. I've for a couple of years thought about opening a business online with my own custom pieces. I would need to be working with a factory to commission my pieces though.

I just wondered if this is something that would be doable? Would I be able to live of this in the future? I see myself working part time as a surgeon in the future. I need all the help and information! Thank you!

For smaller companies, hiring seems like a bit of a catch-22. You need someone to take work off your plate, but finding and screening candidates takes time you probably don't have.

Do you usually post on job boards, ask for referrals, handle everything yourself, or bring in outside help when you need to fill a role?

Would love to hear what's actually worked for you, especially if you've hired remote employees.

I run a small cleaning business on the side (two days a week, about 40 regular clients) and everything lives in one spreadsheet. last month I sorted one column without the others and spent a weekend putting it back together.

I tried a free crm in September and gave up after two weeks because it kept asking me to set up sales pipelines I don't have. a video comparing a few crms for small businesses https://youtu.be/DT-4PO33gwE has me looking at the simpler ones, but it needs to remind me when a client is due, work on my phone and stay under 20 a month.

what do you use when it's just you running it

every time a founder asks me for a redesign i open the site and it's the same story. three buttons fighting each other on the homepage, a slider nobody waits for, a whole section about company values, and a newsletter popup before the page even loads

the design is rarely the real problem. there's just too much stuff and people don't know where to look

but nobody asks for that because "remove stuff" doesn't feel like you got anything for your money. a new look feels like progress

lately i suggest cutting first and redesigning later if it's still needed. half the time they don't go for it lol

I’ve seen heaps of posts about clients not paying and there's no contract in place either, well we seem to have got it the other way around.

We run a monthly subscription for managing client websites. Earlier this month I sent a detailed contract plus a payment link to one of our clients. The client had been super engaged up until then, then went radio silent.

After a week or two of follow-ups they finally replied and paid for the first month’s subscription charges, but they never signed the contract, and since paying they've gone MIA again. I've chased a handful of times to not much success.

We do have a text trail where they agreed to a summary of terms before paying. What would you do here? Can we treat the payment as acceptance and just move on? Or pause the service for the upcoming months until the contract is signed?

Some of the small business owners in our community make a big deal out of Halloween with themed social posts, merch, seasonal product lines, trick-or-treating at the store, etc. But for others, it's lower-priority when there's already way too much to plan in the lead up to the big holiday shopping season at the end of the year (though maybe Halloween is the start of it?!).

Meghan, who owns an accessories brand we work with called Chicka & Co, says fall is her busiest season, and she goes big on Halloween products and social posts. But she loves it, it’s part of her brand, and obviously won’t be as important for others.

Interested to know how you celebrate Halloween, if at all, and if you find it helps with sales, local community building or social engagement? Or is it just fun?

I'm based in Edinburgh and currently working on launching a small coffee brand called Ecosse Coffee Co.

The idea is fairly simple: good-quality, approachable everyday coffee, aimed at people looking to upgrade from instant or supermarket coffee without getting too caught up in the specialty coffee world.

I've found an established Scottish roasting partner who can produce fresh coffee under my own brand, with no minimum order quantity. I'll initially use standard black or kraft pouches with custom labels to keep startup costs low.

I'm bootstrapping the business and plan to launch with a small batch of 30–50 bags of 250g coffee, selling through Shopify at roughly £12 a bag, before committing any serious money.

I've already started doing some market research in Facebook groups, and the response has been surprisingly encouraging. I'm also considering local independent retailers, sampling and eventually a subscription model.

My biggest challenge is figuring out how to get those first 50–100 customers without spending a fortune on advertising.

For anyone who's launched a small consumer brand in the UK:

• How did you find your first customers?
• Would you focus on direct-to-consumer, local retail or markets initially?
• Is there anything obvious about this business model that I'm overlooking?

I'm under no illusion that coffee is an easy or unsaturated market. I'm deliberately starting small to test whether there's something worth building.

Would really appreciate any advice, particularly from people who've launched food, drink or other physical product brands.

I own a small company and we built a new tech platform the help the creative industry get discovered and find new opportunities. I keep making posts on LinkedIn and I'm getting zero views. It's honestly starting to p*ss me off.

Any advice here?

I currently work a full time b2b sales job and as great as it is I hate working a corporate job. Im interviewing to get a promotion to go from SDR to Account Executive. I graduated from a state university and concentrated in entrepreneurship. I've wanted to have a business in the food industry forever. I’ve worked at a highly rated, award-winning fast paced diner before. I don't want a restaurant, I want a food truck. I want to go to events and help people celebrate a little bit better. I want to connect with my community through this and have a direct positive impact on my local community. Plus I love cooking and food.

I'm just so contused on where to start even though I studied entrepreneurship. Food trucks are expensive! I only have 2k in the bank right now (unrealistic to start a food truck with this money but maybe something more small scale is feasible like a food cart or selling on fb marketplace first). I have almost no expenses right now. I'm living with family, don't have to pay a phone bill or insurance, which I feel is the perfect time to attempt a startup and if it fails I can fall back on my degree and go back into sales, or try again.

Everyone I know that has their own business isn't really helpful. Am I crazy for all this lol

I run a small online business by myself and started cold email for the first time this month. I've sent about 60 short, plain text emails to businesses that actually fit what I do, and so far I've had one real reply.

What I can't figure out is how to judge it this early. What numbers would make you keep going, tweak it, or drop the channel completely?

For those who've done this:

- What reply rate did you see at the start, and how many of those replies were actually interested?

- How long did you give it before deciding?

- Did most replies come from the first email or the follow ups?

Not selling anything here, just trying to set a realistic bar so I don't quit too early or keep going on something that isn't working.

I'm helping with my family's small paper factory in China, and honestly I'm a bit lost.

We invested a lot in specialized machinery, so switching to completely different products isn't really an option.

I thought manufacturing would be the hard part, but finding steady customers has been much harder. Bigger companies already have their customers and distribution networks, while we're mostly getting small orders and custom jobs.

I'm trying to figure out what makes more sense. Keep taking whatever orders we can get to keep the machines running, or focus on a few products and try to build repeat customers?

For anyone who's run a small manufacturing business, how did you handle this when you were starting out?

No complaints of our Capital One Spark Card for the first eight years. However this past Saturday they locked all of our company cards without warning. They claim to have sent a letter six weeks ago requesting we submit EIN verification information. Certainly possible we missed it, but no followup letter, no call, no email, no app alert etc.

It was just a tax form they wanted me to fax over, but of course the department that deals with unlocking accounts is only open Monday-Friday... and it takes until Tuesday (at least) for them to receive the fax I sent on Saturday.

Luckily we have a secondary card with another bank, but it's a pain with employee cards, auto-pay etc.

Just FYI if anyone else has something similar!

I turned 25 this past July which marks my fifth year working at a small business.

I recently began engaging with the owner about buying the business. Owner has other businesses and is nearing retirement age and is ready to step back. I have my reservations. My education​ ended at high school because I considered myself a "rebel" and didn't want to do the "norm". I have no formal business training besides what I have learned on my own and through working closely with the owner.

Has anyone been in my position? I know buying a business doesn't require a degree on the LOI, but I can't help but think I might bite off more than I can chew.

What got you to take the leap? I know there are many successful business owners and entrepreneurs that didn't get a college degree. For those that didn't go to school for business, was there a learning curve?

Thank you for your insights!

Looking for leads: I'm after an accountant or small firm who can handle bookkeeping, accounting and US tax filing for a small US-based LLC that works on animal welfare. The annual budget is under $100K, so we need someone reliable and reasonably priced who knows small LLCs, and ideally has worked with mission-driven or international clients. If you've worked with someone good, or know a person who'd be a fit, I'd really appreciate an intro. Thanks.