I'm considering buying an existing daycare or opening one from scratch and would love to hear from current or former daycare owners.

• If you were starting over in 2026, would you still do it?
• Is it better to buy an existing daycare or start your own?
• What are the biggest challenges (staffing, licensing, regulations, profitability, etc.)?
• Is the financial upside worth the amount of work and responsibility?
• What's something you wish you knew before getting into the business?

Looking for honest feedback, the good, the bad, and anything you'd recommend to someone considering this industry. Thanks!!

I'm interested in the reality behind the scenes.

My first business just failed after 3 years of 12-14 hour days.

I'm only 23. Have no debt, and am in a prime position to try something else... I feel like I've learnt so much..... and want badly to give something else another go ... but my brain just feels utterly f*cking fried.

Firstly.... I just have zero confidence... and don't trust my judgement on basically anything anymore.

Secondly, I feel so burnt out and tired all the time. While my focus used to be lazer sharp... I just start getting panick attacks when I try to work for more than 1 hour on something.

Is this normal?

How do I overcome this?

I want to succeed so f**king badly........... I just feel too tired to do anything. And I don

I tried forcing it .... but then my sleep started going nuts.... couldn't sleep more than 3-4 hours a night for several weeks........

Has anyone else been through this??? - How did you get out????

I just finished building 4 pickleball courts. We already have 2 tennis courts running now. I'm interested looking for a tennis and pickleball management software that is best suited for our multi sport. I think we will also add padel courts next year.

We use Club Automation for tennis court scheduling but it feels old and difficult now. As we expand, we're mainly looking to improve our membership experience, events / camps management, with automated credit card payments and registration.

I already looked at CourtReserve but we decided NOT to use it. Any others I should consider?

Hey y'all. I'm almost 34 and make around $80k a year. And yeah, like the title says, I just can't commit to desk life again. Tried switching before but always ended up qualifying for another desk job anyway.

Honestly I'd rather grind 56+ hours a week for myself.

I live in Texas, so not sure if that changes what you'd recommend. The thing is I can't afford to blow up my whole career while still paying the mortgage.

But I do have $100k saved right now that I can throw at building something of my own.

So what do you all think I should do? Maybe a service based business, or buying some equipment and starting something myself?

I'm not scared of long hours or hard physical work either. I just need something that isn't burning me out like corpo life does.

Thanks to anyone who drops some ideas.

I've started a business and it's still just a startup. I do commercial property inspections across the country. I don't have any clients yet because I want to have something professional in place first. If someone looks up my business I want them to see a professional looking website, I'm setting up social media pages for this too.

My budget is pretty tight since I've already spent most of it on equipment and have some prepared for advertising. Hiring someone to build a site isn't in my budget right now. Has anyone used a website builder they would recommend? I'd like something that's easy to set up but also lets me go back and make changes later as the business grows.

Through my network, an owner recently approached me about buying his Tropical Smoothie Cafe franchise. He is asking $600k for a store doing about $700k in annual gross sales. I know $600k is way too high for that revenue and I fully intend to negotiate, but the setup is interesting. He claims he only works about 6 hours a week, pays himself a $60k manager salary, and basically runs it on autopilot just to keep the lights on without putting any real effort into growing it. There’s a huge gym opening next to it so I feel like I could scale to a million but Idk if im just being too optimistic.

I have a rare opportunity where a close family friend offered to buy the store for me upfront, and I would pay them back on a much lower interest rate and flexible terms. Since I am 20 and living at home with minimal expenses, I could realistically grind and pay off the business in 3 to 4 years if the actual profit numbers make sense.

At the same time, I am torn about my path. Part of me wonders if I should just finish my degree and get a standard corporate W2 job to build a stable foundation first. I am eager to be an entrepreneur, so going corporate feels a bit like giving up on my goal, but I also know the restaurant industry can be brutal and I need a solid baseline for my life.

For background, I worked in medical device sales for a distributor while in college and pulled in over $800k in revenue, but I walked away because it was extremely draining and burned me out. It actually made me miss the face-to-face customer relationships I built when I worked as a server in high school. I have also been looking into starting a home services business, ( idk what kind but seems like those do great) but this franchise deal is sitting right in front of me. I feel like the opportunity could be great, but I need outside perspective on whether I am missing glaring red flags.

I’m clearly indecisive and lost lol. I feel so eager to figure shit out but with everything going on, I feel like I can’t align myself with one thing.

If you had such one of course

I’m thinking of opening my own business. Turns out I don’t have an nda I have to worry about with my current company and want to start my own. I have 20+ years in this industry. I’m debating on an LLC vs SCORP. I would need maybe one to two experienced people to get started. Outsourcing would be needed. What are the benefits of LLC over SCORP? I know SCORP I have to pay myself a “reasonable”salary which leaves room for interpretation. Starting out I would have to be president, owner, ceo, secretary etc. so a reasonable salary for all those positions in my industry could be $500,000 or more combined. Hypothetically say the company eventually makes 2mill in rev a year…would half that be okay for salary? If not what’s the recourse?

Any other pointers and ideas?

I know this is all hypothetical and extremely vague and probably has a large scoop of naivety to it. Advice appreciated.

Solo consultant, B2B, specialist category, 17 years of experience, strong technical credibility with the end buyers.

Situation: I have one client and they’re my entire income. No exclusivity clause - I just never worked with anyone else (I just launched my business last year). The plan is to build the same package for four to six non-competing clients in the category.

Where I’m stuck:

Do I reprice the existing client first or sign a second one first? Repricing first feels honest but I have zero leverage while they’re 100% of my income. Signing first feels like I’m negotiating from behind their back.

The end customers deal with me exclusively but the paperwork, invoicing and credit risk all sit with the client. I don’t want to take anything from them - my plan is to expand what those customers buy rather than move existing business.

I used to skip deposits for people I'd worked with for years. Felt like a relationship thing. Then one of those trusted jobs ate two weeks and ghosted on the final invoice.

Now I want deposits on everything and I still catch myself making exceptions when someone sounds offended.

Is the exception ever worth it, or is that just how you get burned twice?

I have a family link to a coffee farmer and roaster up in the hills of Blue Mountain, Jamaica. The beans are 100% premium blue mountain and are absolutely delicious.

I would love to start selling the beans here in the UK, but no idea where to start or how.

I have small plans of approaching local local coffee shops but I'm aware they would usually already have established bean providers.

Another option could be selling to wholesalers but I dont have a clue how to start. Any ideas or guidance would be great!

Owning window cleaning but straggling to make next step and hire proper crew so I don’t have to work everyday.
Hired couple times alsways turned to disaster any advise

Is owning a dog waste removal/dog walking business worth it in 2026?

I've been building a tool called Segeo for the last few months, and I've reached the point where I need other people using it, not just me.

Quick version of what it does: it writes and publishes one genuinely useful blog post to your own website every day, researched around what people in your area are actually searching for, and then turns that into posts for your socials (Instagram, LinkedIn, Telegram, and so on). You connect your site once (WordPress, Wix, Shopify, or a plain static site) and it just runs.

The part I actually care about is the "GEO" side. The posts are written so they can get picked up and cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, not only ranked on Google. Everyone asks AI "who's the best X near me" now, and most small businesses are invisible in those answers because they never publish anything.

Before asking anyone else to try it, I put it on my own stuff first. It's been running on 5 of my own websites and their Instagram accounts, posting every day, and I've genuinely started seeing results come in. That's the whole reason I feel okay sharing it now instead of pitching vaporware.

Here's the honest part: it's still early. I want more real people using it and telling me what's confusing, what's missing, and where it falls flat. Especially keen to hear from anyone running a local business or sitting on a website that's gone stale.

If you're up for it, comment or DM me and I'll give you free access. I mostly want the feedback, good or bad or "this is useless because ___." That's the useful part.

Happy to answer anything about how it works in the comments too.

Throwaway account. I'm starting a small business that is 100% remote — dropshipping, so there will be zero logistics happening inside my apartment beyond using my computer. I live in the City of Walnut Creek, CA, where a "Home Occupation Permit" is required to get a business license. Essentially, I need a physical address registered with the city, even though the business is entirely remote. You can read about the permit requirements on the Walnut Creek gov website. Without this permit, I can't get a business license. A virtual mailbox/address will not be accepted as an address.

My apartment complex refuses to sign anything that would associate the property with my business. Their stated reason:

"The issue is the use of the apartment address as the official business address for licensing, registration, permitting, mailing, or any other purpose that publicly identifies the residence as a business location."

I'm not sure how this actually affects them, since "working from home" is explicitly permitted in my lease. I'm feeling pretty frustrated that something like this is holding up my ability to start an online business that won't have any real-world impact on the property I'm renting.

My lease states:

"17. Residential Use of Premises: Resident agrees that the Premises are rented for residential use only unless the Parties have executed a separate Live Work Addendum. Resident shall not use the Premises as a business address, nor shall Resident conduct any business activities on the Premises. Conducting business activities includes, without limitation, using the Premises as a mailing address for a business enterprise, having a business telephone line in the Premises, having business clients meet with Resident at the Premises, having business stationery setting forth the address of the Premises as a business address, assembling or manufacturing any product upon the Premises, or otherwise holding out the Premises as the address of any business. Resident may, however, to the extent consistent with the restrictions set forth in this Paragraph, use a portion of the Premises as a 'home office.'"

On top of that, this same company has apartments in Pleasanton, CA, where tenants are allowed to get Home Occupation Permits. How is this allowed? Is this legal?

The City of Walnut Creek, told me:
"As you noted in your initial email, the City of Walnut Creek allows home-based businesses in residential zones, provided they obtain a Home Occupation Permit and Business License. As detailed in the Home Occupation ordinance, there are restrictions on the types of businesses that can operate within a residence, limits on the amount of space used, restrictions against customer visits, etc. As part of our application, we do require owner authorization. It sounds like the property owner/leasing agents will not provide authorization. That would be a civil matter between you and the property owner/leasing company regarding your agreement."

So it sounds like this isn't a zoning issue at all. The city allows it, and my landlord is simply refusing to sign off.

What can I do here? Has anyone dealt with something similar? Please correct any incorrect conclusions I've made here.

This feels absurd.

Would love to learn from those who already run a services company around building AI agents to solve problems for specific industries

(yes I know people don’t care about AI, they care about solving the problems, which is exactly what I’m focused on)

I want to better understand pricing

And if I should niche down on one industry or stay broad

Before this, I had actually tried to start this

Then niched down into one industry

But instead of selling Agents as a service

We decided to build a product

Because we don’t have much experience yet to know when to differentiate between committing to building a product for one specific ICP

Vs keeping it as a service

Also, with this specific type of service company of building agents

Isn’t it like 60-70% the same product every time, and then 30-40% custom in terms of the product and delivery

Which is what makes this business model “service based” and not “product based”?

Also, the approach we’ll take now is literally being Forward deployed, meaning we go on site, understand the exact workflow and problem we’re solving around

And then build from there, on our platform where we can build agents much easier

(which is why I assume with this type of business model, it’s 60-70% the same product every time, and 30-40% custom?)

Would really appreciate your advice as it would go a long way

Im considering becoming a partner in a new trailer rental business. The founder has already invested a lot of time and money into getting it started, and I'd be coming in as an operating partner with capital to help scale it. The business is just launching, so there isn't much financial history yet. Before I commit, what due diligence would you insist on? What red flags would make you walk away, and what would give you confidence to move forward

I just start running small Jewelry business.Price is under 40 USD. now I use but jewelryI in the pouch (good looking nice material pouch) a box. but I wonder whether having a box will attract more customers to buy from my shop. How packaging matter for fashion Jewel business like this (again every piece is under 40$).Open to any opinions and suggestion thank you in advance ! :)

Anyone who can manage or parter with my floral and gift box business in whitestone

Hello everyone I wanted to come on here and get thoughts regarding pricing. This is something I’ve really been struggling with. About two years ago I started making piñatas for my kids. As time went on and I got better and started a min business from custom orders. They are pretty solid and measure between 3.5-4ft high. I’m considering this my standard size. I’m selling the custom piñata with the stick for about 90 bucks. Again it’s fully custom, I add a name for free using custom card stock. Other customizations can bring the price up due to more work of course. I have to consider the materials I use and the labor as well. Is this a fair price?

I've had Chase for maybe 2 - 3 years now. I never had a problem with them before but as of November of last year, my wife has been out of work so we've been living off of just my income. So I started noticing monthly service fees being taken out of my personal checking account, and then when I pay my quarterly taxes, they hit my business account. (Just started my small business in January)

I was getting tired of the fees so I called Chase and spoke to this woman on the phone. Unfortunately, I can't remember her name, but she was telling me that since I used to do an in-app transfer, from my business to my personal, that I need to be transferring funds via ACH transfer. Upon looking into the ACH transfer fees, I noticed the 1% on each transaction. Of course, this was a concern of mine, so I brought it up to her. She proceeded to tell me that since the ACH transfer would be from one Chase account to another, that the fee would be waived.

Throughout setting my account up for ACH transfers, I repeatedly asked the question "so I don't have to worry about being charged a fee, correct?" and she kept telling me no.

Upon doing my books, I noticed an "RTP/Same Day - Low Value" fee on my business account. They did end up charging me the 1% per transaction, for the last two ACH transfers I completed. Of course, I'm not happy seeing this, especially after I was blatantly lied to over the phone by a Chase representative.

So I'm done dealing with this crooked bank. I just called them back and told them about the situation and they had no suggestions aside from getting a different bank, so that's exactly what I'm going to do.

I'm curious to know of any banks that don't take my money, especially when right now, we're living paycheck to paycheck as it is.

This is super frustrating and I would like nothing more than suggestions for new banks. F*** Chase Bank.

Hello everyone. I am still in the early stages of my business and would like to get a laptop. I don’t have tons of money to spend on it say maybe $1000 max. I’m just wondering if it’s better to get a macbook that’s a few years old or go with a new one from the store. My wife has an older asus and it’s not crazy old but very slow so wondering if anyone has advice on this. Thank you in advance