I started a Christian jewelry business which I posted on Etsy 2 weeks ago. So far I’ve had no sales. I don’t even know where I’d begin with market research to understand my audience and speak to their wants and needs. But I’m not sure if I should make the effort, or if my products just aren’t all that. How would I know whether I have a product worth fighting for or whether it’s just not a good product?

A prospect emailed me a screenshot with one line highlighted: “Why does ChatGPT say this about you?”

It was quoting a forum post from 2021. If you google our brand now, that thread is buried. You get our site, LinkedIn, recent articles, reviews. Of course nobody would look that up manually, they’d just ask ChatGPT for a summary and get a version of us that is several years out of date.

So I started looking into how to manage what AI says about my company. Most of what I found was agencies saying they could “fix ChatGPT,” which didn’t tell me much. I decided to run the same questions myself for a month and see what actually changed.

I used four prompts in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews: brand name, “is X legit,” “X reviews,” “X vs competitor.” Saved the answers, dates and whatever sources were visible. I missed one Perplexity result on the first run, which was enough to make the whole comparison messy, so after that I kept everything in one sheet.

The old forum thread showed up in two models. Another pulled from an outdated third-party profile. One was using an About page we owned that still described the company the way we talked about it before our last product change.

We updated the pages we controlled, claimed the profile, fixed some old bios and published one new page around the question the forum thread was answering. Left the forum post alone.

Thirty days later, Perplexity had stopped using the old profile. Gemini was picking up the new About page. ChatGPT still mentioned the forum thread, just not as high up. AI Overviews looked almost the same.

That’s all I can really say with confidence. Some outputs changed. I can show what they looked like before and after. I can’t prove every change happened because of our edits, and I definitely can’t say we “fixed” anything.

If anyone here is tracking this regularly, what do you actually keep? Same prompts? claims that repeat? citations? source changes? I’m trying to make this repeatable without turning it into another dashboard nobody trusts.

I’m in the middle of starting my first business. I’m e-commerce, selling a beauty product. I am still in the formulation and development process but I’m trying to build up my social media following in the mean time. Sharing my personal story, educating everyone on my mission and what my product is/does. My product isn’t ready yet but it will be very soon. Need some more opinions..

Hi, I’m from Belgium. I have a podcast on books that is working pretty well and I am developing a podcast on movies. Not a review-podcast but a community podcast where 3 people talk about a topic on books/movies and the conversation unfolds. We try to have as much interaction with the audience as possible.

Now I’m feeling that there’s more to this concept, business-wise. What else can I do with this community? I’m thinking something like Letterboxed or Goodreads, where people can make lists and recommendations, maybe also buy some books or movie tickets and merch? Idk how far can I take this? Maybe some live events? Book fairs? Movie festival? Are there any other ways to generate some extra income?

FYI I’m not the host, I’m the owner of the (small) production company behind it.

Hey all,

We built Rendrio, a tool that turns a store or product URL into a short promo video: motion graphics, voiceover and subtitles, made from your own product images, colors and copy. Not a generic template with your logo pasted on.

It's live since the start of the year, already used by paying customers, but before Black Friday we want to see how it performs for real Shopify stores, so we'll make a free ad video for the first 5 stores that reply.
How it works:
• Comment your store or product URL (or DM us if you'd rather not post it publicly)
• Tell us the format: vertical for Reels/TikTok or square for feed
• You get the video within 48h. It's yours to use however you want, no strings

What we'd like in return:
• Honest feedback. Would you actually run it as an ad? What feels off?
• Permission to share it as an example. If you'd rather we didn't, just say so, and the video is still yours.

Disclosure: Rendrio is our product. Nothing to buy in this thread.

Something I've been thinking about with niche products is how to understand people who seem interested but don't take the next step. It's easy to assume the problem is marketing, when sometimes the product is difficult to understand or the value isn't clear enough.

While working on TradingView Hub, which helps traders automate trade execution, I've been thinking about the gap between someone understanding what a tool does and seeing why they'd actually need it.

One thing that seems worth trying is looking at the questions people ask before they leave. If several people get stuck on the same point, that might tell you more than simply increasing traffic.

For those who've experienced this with your own business, how did you figure out what was stopping interested people from becoming customers?

Im the IT manager at a manufacturing org. our innovation team is outgrowing the software they've been using for the last 2 years. the collection and voting features are fine, but they hit a wall when it comes to implementation tracking, stage gate workflows, and reporting on actual business outcomes per unit.

they asked me to help them evaluate alternatives that can do the full end to end lifecycle. if any other IT managers here have gone through a switch like this... what platform did you end up going with? just trying to figure out what the IT lift is going to look like for a migration.

I've noticed that getting more leads doesn't always translate into more customers. A business might generate 100 leads, but only a handful respond, book appointments, or actually buy. At that point, spending more on advertising doesn't seem like the right solution. I'm curious how other business owners approach this. Do you focus on improving lead quality, changing the follow-up process, or fixing the sales conversation first?

Revenue has been steady but flat for the last few months and I’m starting to feel the pressure on both the product and the sales side. I’ve been debating whether to raise a small round so I can bring on a couple key people, or just keep bootstrapping and hire one person at a time as cash allows. Both options feel risky in different ways and I keep second-guessing which move actually gets the business moving again.

I spoke with Brian Coryat a while back who has taken a company public and invested in a lot of early-stage startups. He didn’t push one path over the other, just asked a few questions about how I was thinking about the next 12 months and what success would look like if I stayed lean versus if I raised. It cleared up a couple things I hadn’t put words to yet. How did you decide between raising and hiring when growth stalled? What made the difference for you?

Most people buy lead lists. You don't need to. If you sell to local businesses, you can build your own list for about a dollar. Here's the setup.

What you need:

• Claude (the desktop app or Claude Code)/ChatGPT
• A DataForSEO account. New accounts get $1 of free credit, which is enough for a few Google Maps searches. Just signup and get the $1.
• A Hunter account. The free plan gives 50 credits a month to find and verify emails.

Step 1: Connect Claude to DataForSEO.

DataForSEO has an official MCP, which lets Claude use their data directly. Their help centre has a short setup guide. Search "Connect Claude to DataForSEO MCP". You paste in your API login and password and you're done.

Step 2: Ask Claude to pull the businesses.

Something like: "Using DataForSEO, find [your niche] businesses on Google Maps in [your city]. Give me name, website, phone, rating and review count in a table."

Step 3: Find and check the emails.

Take the websites and run them through Hunter. It finds the email on each domain and tells you whether it's safe to send to. Don't skip the checking. Sending to dead addresses is the fastest way to get your domain flagged.

Now the bit that catches everyone out: be specific.

Someone asked me for a list of artificial turf installers in San Jose. I searched "landscapers in San Jose" and got 50 businesses. 19 of them were tree services. Only 11 of the 50 mentioned turf anywhere on their website. If I'd sent that list, I'd have been emailing tree surgeons about synthetic grass. How to avoid it:

1. Search the exact trade, not the category. "Artificial turf installation", not "landscaper". Google lumps loads of trades together.
2. Check each website actually does the thing. You can ask Claude to visit each site and confirm it. That's where most of the junk gets caught. If Claude is scanning the About Us page or their homepage, and it mentions the name of the founder/owner of the company, then grab that as well.
3. Expect shared inboxes. Out of 36 real turf companies in my experiment yesterday, only 9 listed an owner's name and 2 had a personal-looking email. The rest are info@ or [office@](mailto:office@). Write your email for whoever opens the shared inbox, not "Hi Dave".
4. If your city is small, widen it. San Jose alone didn't have 50 real turf installers. I had to include the wider Bay Area. Obviously if you're searching for something more general, like cafes or dentists or something that there's going to be more of, then you're going to get more than 50 leads, which is great.

After fixing it, the list was 36 real turf companies, 22 that mention turf on their own site, and zero tree services.

If you'd rather skip all that: I run a saas to help people send cold emails, and we built a tool that does all of the above for you: searches, checks each website, removes chains and junk, and verifies every email.

Put in your niche and city and it emails you 50 leads as a PDF and a spreadsheet. It's free, one list per person, and you confirm your email first: pipefire.ai/tools/free-leads

Would love to get some feedback on anyone who uses my tool.

I have 12+ years experience in-house/agency/freelance, and have never been asked for this before. I’m the spirit of flexibility I’m happy to work something out, especially given the economy (for all parties).

The package would include:

- a mini brand kit (custom type-based wordmark, colour palette, type pairings, very simple brand guidelines — I have a one-pager I repurpose for this). I can usually squeeze these out in 24h of work +- revision cycles
- Instagram template probably made on canva
- a landing page, likely designed in figma vs in a drag/drop site builder
- packaging mockup tbd whether the actual mockup is available or I need to make the entire thing myself vs put a label on an existing file

Hourly would be for social media content management: creative brief creation, crowdsourcing imagery, image processing (editing and maintaining an archive), and content strategy (!!!)

This project is self-funded by the client, and she is choosing between me or an agency. There is potential for more work so I’m okay with a bit of a loss leader here if necessary, within reason.

My initial thinking is: $5k for the brand pack, template, landing page (is this high?) and reduce my usual $80/hr to $60 or even $50. My concern is the immense amount of experience required for strategy/consulting work. I also have a deep service/systems design background, and have a reputation for building brand systems that are easy to use, outlive trends, and scale easily.

I don’t want to underprice myself and I don’t want to start the relationship off with the expectation that I’m her cheap option.

Does anyone have experience with this or similar? Please let me know. Thank you!!!!!

Small service business, 5 of us. Customer history lives in WhatsApp chats, a notes app and my memory. It worked when we had 30 clients, now we’re past 150 and things slip: someone gets quoted twice, a follow-up never happens, a new hire has no idea who’s who.

For those who went through this, what was the moment you set up a proper system, and what did you start with? A spreadsheet, a CRM, something simpler? Curious what was worth it at this size.

We used to have one person doing every post and flyer, then it got split across a few people and things started looking different from week to week. Same shop, but the photos and the fonts and even the cream colour drifted.

I never wrote anything down beyond "use the usual colours", which clearly wasn't enough.

If you've had more than one person touching your socials or print stuff, what actually kept it looking like the same business? A short checklist, shared folder of examples, someone approving everything, or something else?

I've been thinking about how everything in life has a beginning and an ending. Time passes so quickly, and sometimes, things change without us even realizing it. People come into our lives, become part of our stories, and sometimes leave. We make memories with them, but eventually, some memories become harder to recall.

This idea actually started with my grandma.

Imagine your grandma giving you a necklace. Of course, you would cherish it because it came from someone you love. But have you ever thought about what happens when time passes and that person is no longer around? What if, one day, you can still remember their face, but you can barely remember their voice?

That thought made me wonder: What if a necklace could preserve someone's voice, too?

Instead of having the usual pendant with just a picture inside, what if we could add a QR code to it? When you scan the code using your phone, it opens a recording of that person's voice. It could be their laugh, a simple greeting, a message saying "I love you," or even a few words of encouragement.

Imagine missing your grandma and being able to hear her voice again, even for just a few seconds. You could open your necklace, see her picture, scan the QR code, and listen to a voice that once made you feel safe and loved.

And I realized that this idea could mean something to other people, too.

Think about families with OFW parents. There are times when they feel homesick, and even though they can call their families, they cannot always be together whenever they want. What if they had something small they could carry every day that lets them hear a loved one's voice and see their face whenever they miss home?

Or think about college friendships. We meet people who become part of our everyday lives. We laugh together, struggle through deadlines, share our problems, and promise to keep in touch after graduation. But life happens. We get busy, move to different places, and sometimes become strangers again.

What if we could keep a small piece of those moments with us?

The same goes for romantic relationships, childhood friends, parents, siblings, and even people who helped us during difficult seasons of our lives. Some people may not stay forever, but that doesn't mean the memories we made with them were any less meaningful.

I know that listening to a recording cannot bring someone back or replace being physically with them. And maybe it sounds a little sentimental, but I think there's something comforting about knowing that, whenever you feel alone or need a little encouragement, you can hear the voice of someone who once reminded you that you were loved.

I imagine the necklace having a simple, vintage design that opens like a locket. Inside, one side holds a photograph of the person, while the other has a QR code engraved directly into the metal. The pendant stays close to your heart, almost like a reminder that even when someone is far away, they can still hold a special place in it.

I'm thinking of calling it a voice-memory necklace or something similar.

But I want to know what you guys think.

Would you wear something like this? Would you find comfort in being able to hear the voice of someone you love whenever you miss them?

What would you want to preserve: your grandma's voice, your parents' messages, your best friend's laugh, or a voice recording from someone who is no longer here?

I'd also love to hear your thoughts about the idea itself. Do you think it would be meaningful, or would it be too sentimental? And what concerns would you have about a product like this?

I'm genuinely curious about how other people would feel about it.

My content process used to be: open Claude, type "write me 5 Instagram captions about X", get 5 generic captions, rewrite them. The AI wasn't the problem. The brief was.

What worked, in order of impact:

1. A brand file the AI reads first. Who you are, who you talk to, what you never say, three posts you're proud of. One file, reused on every call. Generic output dropped immediately.

2. A job, not a request. "Reel script, hook first, 30 seconds, one idea, end with a question" beats "a reel idea". A job has a method and a checklist; a request has vibes.

3. A check before publishing. A short list of things a post must have: one idea, a first line that stands alone, no claim without a source. It catches most of what used to embarrass me later.

4. Hooks as a library, not inspiration. A few hundred hook templates sorted by what they do (sorting question, confession, mistake call-out) means the first line stops being the slow part.

I turned that process into Nexin (nexin.si). It's an MCP server with one tool per channel (Instagram, Threads, X, YouTube, Pinterest, blog). Each tool is a set of jobs with the method attached, plus brand files per profile. One-time purchase, from $27 a module.

But the four points above work with no tool at all. Start with the brand file.

Need some content captured on site, which changes where I can recruit. I'm planning to hire a social media manager for a small business and want to separate that local work from remote editing and publishing.

Would you hire one local person or split the roles? I welcome hiring routes and questions to ask before agreeing on a package.

Working in a product to help small business owners grow their brands / businesses through advertising. I would love to hear honest experiences and pains that you encounter while growing your business through marketing? Will not self promote, won’t DM you.

Hi everyone!

We run a family-owned tiles and sanitaryware retail business in Kerala. We source most of our tiles from Gujarat through freight and own our showroom and two warehouses. Our team consists of 6 sales staff, 1 accountant, 1 billing staff, 1 cashier, and 1 manager.
I want to increase sales, attract more customers, and grow the business.

What are some practical strategies to:

• Increase walk-in customers and sales?
• Build relationships with contractors, builders, and architects?
• Improve employee productivity?
• Use digital marketing to generate actual sales?

If you were in my position, what would you do to grow the business over the next 6 months?

i’m attempting to get HOA leads that need websites specifically. how do you guys go about getting a good amount of leads for cold outreach? doing the maps thing takes hours and hours just for half of them not to pick up. do you guys use AI, scrapers? any recs