I have found his business online! Garro Law Group in kananta/Ottawa Ontario

I’m posting this because I honestly don’t know what else to do.

This past Sunday, a client urgently asked me to put other jobs on pause to repair his pool cracks. My team and I spent 12 hours working, only to discover the job involved foundation repairs.

We invested approximately $3,000 in materials, plus labour, and sacrificed our only day off to get the work done. I even missed valuable time with my kids to help this client.

He asked for one week to pay, and I trusted his word. Now, he’s completely disappeared. No answers to calls or messages.

We work hard to support our families and run an honest business. All we ask is to be paid for the work we do.

It’s disappointing to give someone your time, effort, and trust, only to be left chasing payment for work already completed.

If anyone has advice on how to handle this situation, I’d appreciate it. And if the client sees this, please reach out so we can resolve this professionally.

On the small business community, seeing a lot of confusion about this from the filing side, so a short summary of what actually changed.

For payments made after December 31, 2025, the general reporting threshold for 1099-NEC (nonemployee compensation) and 1099-MISC (rents, other income) went from $600 to $2,000. So a contractor you paid $1,850 in 2026 does not get a 1099-NEC.

Things that did NOT change, which is where people get caught:

- Royalties still trigger a 1099-MISC at $10.

- Direct sales of $5,000 or more are still reported.

- Backup withholding has no threshold. If you withheld federal tax on a payee at all, you report it at any amount.

- The $2,000 figure is indexed for inflation after 2026, so it will be a different number for tax year 2027. Don't hard-code it.

Also worth knowing: this doesn't change the W-9 question. You still want a W-9 on file before the first payment regardless of amount, because you don't know in March whether the year's total will cross $2,000.

Disclosure: We are a 1099 e-file platform. Happy to answer questions in the comments, not here to pitch.

I've owned a small, family-operated retail and installation business for over 20 years, and there's something about the credit card dispute process that I find incredibly troubling.

A customer can purchase thousands of dollars in materials, receive the products and services, and then initiate a chargeback. The merchant is suddenly put in a position of having to prove they deserve to keep money they already earned.

Meanwhile, the business has paid suppliers, employees, installers, overhead, and operating expenses. Those costs don't magically disappear when a cardholder disputes a transaction.

What frustrates me most is the apparent imbalance in the system. Credit card companies like American Express promote cardholder protection, but where is the equivalent protection for the businesses accepting their cards?

I'm not suggesting that legitimate consumer disputes shouldn't be protected. Of course they should.

But what happens when a merchant has contracts, invoices, payment records, documentation, and evidence that the transaction was legitimate, yet still loses the dispute?

Who holds the card companies accountable for how these decisions are made?

For a large corporation, a chargeback might be a rounding error. For a small business, it can mean thousands of dollars lost, legal expenses, and months of unnecessary stress.

At what point does protecting the consumer become unfairly shifting the financial risk onto the small business?

I'd genuinely like to hear from other business owners who have experienced this, particularly with American Express. Were you able to challenge the decision successfully, or were you simply left absorbing the loss?

$10,000 just showed up in my square account. No idea how it got there. It wasn’t received as a payment. Customer support told me to refund it. I told the person that they should be fired immediately since they don’t recognize a common scam and gave me horrible advice. I was transferred to someone with a brain who understood the problem and said a ticket was created and it would be looked into on Monday. Can anyone who’s had this problem tell me what will happen? Will they easily reverse it for me or is this a long fight? Will they close my account?

Hello everyone!

I'm planning to start a small business on the side to make some extra money by providing services in developing automation software to perform repeated tasks such as file manipulation, cleaning up data and generating reports.

The biggest problem is how to get my first clients. I don't want to use sites like Fiverr or Upwork because of the competition, and I want to keep this a part-time gig.

If you've already created a small business like mine, how did you find your first clients? What methods proved to be especially effective when you had no clients at all?

everyone says never but i feel like most people do it anyway

What were the steps to start and how difficult was it?

Many business owners I know who are getting their clients from social media, either copy their competitors or if you look at their competitors page and theirs you don't see any difference. I feel that is the reason why clients haggle on price. What do you feel?

Hey everyone,

I'm a small business owner from India, and I'm trying to build my own footwear brand called Flipoza. I sell slippers, slides, and clogs on Amazon and Flipkart.

I'm doing almost everything myself — product sourcing, listings, product photos, pricing, and marketing. I genuinely try to offer good-quality products at a reasonable price, and I'm putting a lot of time and effort into this business.

But honestly, I'm struggling.

Despite all the work, I'm not getting the number of orders I expected. I even hired a company to help me grow my sales, hoping they could bring some results, but they couldn't generate even a single order.

As a small seller, spending money without getting results is really frustrating. I don't have a huge budget, so every expense matters.

I'm not here to complain or promote my brand. I genuinely want to understand what I'm doing wrong.

For those who have experience selling physical products online, especially on Amazon, Flipkart, or other marketplaces:

- Is the main problem usually product demand, pricing, listing quality, or visibility?

- How can a new brand compete with established brands when it has very few reviews?

- If you were starting a footwear brand from scratch today, what would you focus on first?

- How would you figure out whether a product is worth continuing with before spending more money on ads or agencies?

I'd really appreciate honest advice, even if it's something I might not want to hear.

I'm willing to learn and improve. I just want to figure out the right direction instead of wasting more money on things that don't work.

Thank you to anyone who takes the time to help.

I realized many businesses fail because of legal fees. As a livestreamer selling temporary tattoos, I take the risk of being public and front facing mascot for my brand.

Right now I had an incident where a private mail store man code name Rob in silicon Valley "accidentally"purchased with their private debit card my ten year domain name without my permission. He did this by asking me to set up an account in his new mail crm. When I clicked to buy a domain, the thing never asked for my card. I went in to get a mailbox and came out with a legal claims case.

I'm not dumb. If I didn't give permission for your card to buy my domain then ur messing with my biz. One day he'll come to court with a receipt and ask me for 10k to own my own domain. No, my domain needs to be purchased with my business bank account. I'm not playing no games with this fake Ai scamming crm. Lesson learned. Setting up all llc and ein on my own. Be careful who I give my data to.

I decided to send a demand letter and rebrand with a new name so I can avoid being in frivolous lawsuits in the future. People want to steal your company and scam you and steal your product, create fake accounts, drop ship. I'm also going to be in the dj twitch program as a female cosplayer.

Rip to my inbox.

When do you know bullying harassment stalking is worth to be addressed?

What issues should I prepare for. Are there special insurances?

I'm trying to do alot of research before launch.

Earlier this summer my business was struggling and I was dipping into my savings to pay for my mortgage, car, and kids pre-school. I was just sitting on my hands waiting for the phone to ring and email inquiries to come through. I was often thinking "maybe I should just call it quits, go back into the corporate world, collect a steady predictable paycheck and not have to worry about where, when, or how much my next payday is"

But I dug deep and desperately reached out to my network, worked on my marketing, and updated my website SEO and long story short I have MORE work than I can handle and multiple leads are coming through daily.

It's exciting and thrilling but also scary because it's easy to see over the ledge. It's easy to see the day I cannot pay my mortgage and bills. It's scary to see my bank account decrease each month with no money coming in.

People see the glamour of being my own boss but fail to realize the risks we have to endure.

I'm looking hard at buying into a healthy-food franchise; my local community has seen a big rise in gyms, young families, and HYROX. (Toastique + Crisp and Green is top of my list, also weighing a couple of juice concepts) and trying to get past the FDD before I commit

For anyone who already owns one what actually caught you off guard in year one, good or bad? Specifically curious about:

- how real the corporate support turned out to be

- labor and hiring for a small cafe team

- how much your location determined the outcome

- anything you wish you'd asked before signing

Not looking for "it's great" or "it's a scam," just the in-the-weeds stuff. Trying to make a decision before I sign FDDs.

Before starting a business, I had so many assumptions about how things worked.
But actually running one has challenged some of those beliefs.
I’ve realised that being good at what you do and being good at getting people to pay for it are two completely different skills.
And sometimes the hardest lessons aren’t about money. They’re about people, expectations and how differently things work in practice.
I’m curious.
What’s one thing you were absolutely convinced about before starting your business that experience proved wrong?

Hi everyone,

I'm planning to start a small business in Morocco, but I need to figure out how to finance the initial stage before I can begin selling.

I'm comparing different possibilities, such as saving gradually, crowdfunding, small business grants, and support from individuals who want to help new entrepreneurs get started.

For those who started a business with very little capital, what actually worked for you?

Are there international funding opportunities that someone based in Morocco could realistically apply for? I'd especially appreciate suggestions that don't require giving away equity or paying large upfront fees.

I'm looking for realistic experiences rather than get-rich-quick advice.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

I build AI voice agents. The biggest thing I’ve built is a phone system for a healthcare network in Italy. It books appointments across 6 regions and handles 1,500+ calls a day. I built it end to end: the voice pipeline, infrastructure, monitoring, analytics, and data encryption. It’s been live for months and has passed their security audit.

The problem is I don’t own the client. A vendor sits between me and them, holds the contract, and charges per minute. I get a flat monthly fee for doing all the work, and the client thinks the vendor built it.

I’m not trying to steal that client. I want my next deal to be direct.

For small businesses I’ve been cold calling and cold emailing, and it works but slowly. I know the real money is in companies with multiple locations and high call volume, and those people don’t respond to the same playbook.

For anyone who has sold to mid-size or enterprise companies:

• How did you get in front of the actual decision maker (owner, COO, head of ops) without going through an agency or reseller?
• Did LinkedIn, referrals, events, or something else actually work for you?
• If you were in my position, with a working system at scale but no brand and no network, what would you do first?

Open to any honest advices. Thanks

Hi everyone,

I’m a full-stack software developer based in Strasbourg, France. I’ve built several functional web/mobile applications, SaaS products, and custom automation tools for clients.

Despite having a solid portfolio, fair & competitive pricing, and delivering clean, reliable code, I’m finding it surprisingly hard to consistently land new clients (especially local or EU-based small businesses).

As small business owners and founders here:

I’d really appreciate your candid feedback, suggestions, or insights on what business owners actually value most when hiring developers.

Thanks in advance!

I own a small company. I have had several complaints about one subcontractor. I have sent friendly reminders about being professional but this issue continues to happen and I’m afraid it’s a liability. They have no new projects for 2027 so I’m not sure if I should just stop booking them and slowly phase them out since technically they aren’t an employee or should I formally tell them we are parting ways. I did have them sign a freelancer agreement that says I only need them on an as needed basis and I have the right to terminate this agreement at any time if the agreement rules aren’t being followed. I also have documents of receipts of complaints and dates. Anyone else in a similar situation and how should I approach it?

Hello everyone! I own a boutique both online and in-store in Los Angeles. I started as an online only / pop up vendor and worked flea markets around Los Angeles for 3 years. In March of 2024 I opened up my brick and mortar store! Throughout the last 2.5 years of running the business it has been fairly seamless, slow times every now and then but overall I was always able to pay my bills and continue new inventory flowing in. I have a pretty large community of customers as well that love my brand. I don't have any student loans so I decided to take out 35K to open up my brick and mortar store, which I got paid down to 19.5K by July of 2026.

Then late July happened, my business sales took a turn for the worst. As most in Los Angeles know it's been so warm down here and gas prices are through the roof. I had to refinance my loan back up to 40K (used 19.5K of this to pay off the old one), just to keep getting by. I had some health issues in June that drained my savings as I had to be gone for awhile so I had to spend more in payroll. Ever since late July, my business is down 15K every month from where it was before, I keep pulling more and more of the savings I put aside from this loan to just get by. I work my shop a lot to keep my payroll really low. But at this point it's mid October and I don't know if I can take the stress and anxiety of running the brick & mortar store. I don't want to completely close down, maybe just downsize back to flea markets and online only while I get a full time job in the fashion industry which I feel like I am fairly qualified to do given my experience in my business.

It feels like I'm giving up on a dream, I wanted to have multiple locations and continue growing but at this point my mental health is so bad and my anxiety is through the roof constantly worried about how I am going to keep this business going. Please any advice for what you think I should do. My godfather and husband both think I should just ride it out and keep going, but I'm afraid I'm eventually going to run out of savings and then be really screwed. Thank you.

I’m a product manager at a small company, and I’d like to get some perspective from people with management experience on a situation involving a colleague on our procurement team.

He joined about six months ago after working in supply chain delivery at a large corporation. His current role involves finding suppliers, getting quotes, arranging samples, and coordinating with manufacturers.

I’ve been having some difficulties working with him, mainly around following through on tasks and taking initiative.

For example, I’ll send over product requirements and ask for quotes, boms, or sample updates, but often have to follow up several times to find out what’s happening. Sometimes there’s no clear timeline or explanation of what’s holding things up.

Another issue is how he handles problems with suppliers. When a supplier says something is too expensive or difficult to manufacture, he often just passes that information along. I usually end up being the one asking why, whether there are other options, or what we should try next. I don’t expect him to solve technical problems, but I would expect someone in sourcing to investigate further rather than stop at the supplier’s response.

I’ve tried being more specific about what I need, including the expected deliverables and deadlines, but I haven’t seen much improvement. I still spend quite a bit of time following up on tasks that fall within his responsibilities.

I brought these concerns to our team leader because I wanted to find a way to improve how we work together.

She felt that my feedback was too subjective and suggested that I might not have communicated my requirements clearly enough. She also mentioned that my colleague is sensitive and that I have a strong personality, so he might feel uncomfortable asking me questions or telling me when something goes wrong. But I was actually pretty friendly and patient with him at first. I only started getting more serious after having to follow up on the same issues over and over again.

I’ve shared specific examples from our projects with her, including the original requests, follow-ups, and outcomes. She hasn’t really gone through them, though. I understand she may see things differently, but I wish we could discuss what actually happened rather than focus mainly on our personalities.

For those of you with management experience, how would you approach a situation like this? What steps would you take to understand what’s going wrong and help improve things? I’d really appreciate any advice or experiences you could share from handling similar situations.

Lately social media marketing campaigns not driving much attention, tried UGC campaigns as well. Numbers looks fine but I don’t feel it really bringing customers. My friend (also runs similar business in another city) suggested me to go on IRL advertising specially on campuses which my target audience are young individuals. Anyone tried it before, did it work?

I’m based in Portugal and run an established educational website. We’re about to start selling downloadable PDF teaching resources directly to consumers.

Our audience is mainly:

UK

US

Australia

Canada

smaller numbers across the EU and other countries

Products will be relatively low value: around £2.99 for individual resources and £13.99 for bundles.

I’m trying to decide between:

1. selling directly using Stripe and monitoring VAT/GST/sales-tax registration thresholds myself; or

2. using a Merchant of Record such as Paddle or Stripe Managed Payments and paying the higher transaction fee in exchange for them handling international indirect taxes.

One complication is that our PDFs may qualify as zero-rated electronic publications in the UK, which would make paying an MoR fee on UK sales less attractive.

For anyone selling digital products internationally:

Do you use Stripe directly or a Merchant of Record?

If you use Stripe, how difficult is it actually to keep track of VAT/GST/sales-tax thresholds in different countries?

Has anyone used Stripe Managed Payments?

Has anyone negotiated Paddle’s microtransaction pricing for products around £3/$4?

At what level of revenue did the convenience of an MoR become worth the extra fees?

Are there any tax/compliance issues you wish you had considered before starting?

I’m particularly interested in experiences from small businesses selling ebooks, PDFs, templates, courses or other low-cost digital products rather than SaaS subscriptions.

I run a small residential pool service company in Florida. I've been in the industry since 2020. I'm a state-certified Certified Pool Operator, fully insured, and I own my truck and equipment outright.
The technical side is my strength. I balance water using the Langelier Saturation Index (LSI) instead of just checking chlorine and pH. I document every visit, and I tell customers what I did and why. The result is clean water, protected equipment, and no surprises.
My problem is the other half of the business. I have 3 independent clients and I want to get to around 100. I don't know how to get there.
The usual advice is to start with friends, family, and neighbors and let referrals snowball. I can't do that. I'm building in an area where I don't have a personal network yet, so I have no circle of friends to tap and no word of mouth to ride.
What I have so far:
A live website
A Google Business Profile
Business cards
A dedicated business phone line
Three happy clients, one of whom found me almost by accident
What I'd love help with:
If you built a local service business from near zero without a referral base, what got you your first 20 to 30 customers?
Should Google Business Profile get most of my effort early on? What moved the needle for you there?
How do you build reviews and a reputation with only a handful of customers?
What do you wish you'd known when you had 3 customers?
I'm not looking for a growth hack. I'd rather grow slowly and do it right. I'm not posting my business name or a link. I just want honest advice from people who've done it.
Thanks in advance.

Looking for advice from anyone who’s dealt with a 50/50 LLC partnership dispute in New York.
Our business is approximately 8 months old, with less than $2,000 in physical assets. We have a few thousand followers on each of our social media platforms.
I’ve personally invested a significant amount of time building the branding, marketing, and social media presence, along with handling much of the tax-related work, filings, and administrative responsibilities to keep the business compliant.
The business has been inactive for approximately two months, with no upcoming bookings, but we’re still incurring expenses such as storage.
I’ve offered to buy out my partner’s 50% interest because I’d prefer to continue the business rather than dissolve it. However, we haven’t been able to agree on a price, and my partner would prefer dissolution.
I’ve contacted a mediation center twice and requested mediation, but haven’t received a clear response from my partner about participating.
We have a basic operating agreement, and I’m trying to find the most cost-effective way to resolve this without spending more on legal fees than the business is worth.
Has anyone dealt with something similar? Would you pursue mediation, consult an attorney, or agree to dissolve?
And if the business is dissolved, what happens to the social media accounts and branding when one partner has done most of the work building them?
I’d really appreciate hearing about your experiences or any practical advice.