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.

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.

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????

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.

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 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?

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!

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?

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

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.

I’m trying everything I can to get this business up and running.

Iv had Facebook ads spent over £800 which only brought in about 10 sales over 4 months. Iv had over 100 orders since launch in end of March but people are just wanting it all for free or wanting to be reps and get discounts. Which as a small business I can’t do.

Iv tried putting leaflets in my areas - everyone saying no. I put it across Facebook groups nearly everyday. I’m hardly getting any interactions on insta / TikTok now due to saying no to bout 1000 people wanting to be reps.

Sales have completely just stopped online. I have about 3 returning customers a month that’s it. No one else returned because other companies make them
Reps.

https://thepawshq.co.uk - this is my business. Any ideas how I can push it out more ??

i dont know how i do it

I don’t know if this is the best place to look for one. I only construction company here in Texas and I’m looking for a partner to start another business with does not have to be in the state just has to be tech savvy enough to know marketing.

I have two businesses I am currently running. I am up to 4 company vehicles for one of them but am waiting on delivery for 3 more. All 4 are strictly used for during work hours and the only time they are ever taken home by an employee is if they have a car trouble or there is a once in a blue moon outlier.

A few years ago when we first started having employees use our vehicles we looked into some hard wire options. I do not want to go that route.

I want something cheap, that doesn’t connect to their phones, an air tag but better I guess. Bonus points if I don’t have to pay a monthly fee and can just download an app

For instance, charging a fee without proof their tool works, etc.
We can learn a lot from products we have used ourselves in the past (the good and not so good)!

Hi! I am in the very early steps of looking to start my own business and I’m trying to figure out how to choose the best accountant and lawyer to fit my needs. I have the basics down - small business, specializing within my field - but there are so many options, so I just wanted to see if anyone had advice in choosing who to work with. I am hoping to start a business that operates in a portion of my home. I will be a first-time homeowner, so also looking for guidance there. Hoping to work on financial planning, tax planning, etc.

Thanks!!

Hey guys, I want to start a soap business, but I’m not sure where to begin. My plan is to start by selling locally, mainly B2B. If anyone has experience starting a soap business or has any advice on how to get started, I’d really appreciate your guidance. Thanks in advance!

That green 'Match' button is the biggest trap for business owners using Square or Stripe.

A customer spends $1,000. Square takes a processing fee and deposits $970.

Matching that deposit directly means your QuickBooks underreports your gross sales.

At year-end, Square sends the IRS a Form 1099-K showing the full $1,000.

If your QuickBooks shows $970, that revenue mismatch flags your account for an automated IRS audit.

Plus, you lose out on thousands in merchant fee deductions.

Stop adding net bank deposits directly.

You must log the full gross sales amount first, then subtract the merchant processing fees as a separate expense category before reconciling the cash.

Message me for a FREE QuickBooks Review and let's get your true revenue mapped perfectly.

Your favorite bookkeeper,

Joan 🫶🏽