r/smallbusiness: Most Popular Posts Last Month
What r/smallbusiness, a place for owners of small, mostly offline businesses dealing with customers, staff and cash flow, upvoted, argued about and asked for help with in September 2026. Built from every post that stayed up that month.
- Posts
- 2,598
- Posts a day
- 87
- Typical upvotes
- 1
- Typical comments
- 7
4,076 posts were submitted and 35% were removed by moderators or Reddit. Everything below is from the 2,598 that stayed up.
“Typical” is the median post. Updated monthly; this edition: September 2026.
Top 25 r/smallbusiness posts in September 2026
Sorted by upvotes. Titles open the thread on Reddit.
- 1I had to fire a guy today, 4 days after his wife was diagnosed with cancer. People suck. I suck.
Long story short, he was faking it to make it. Claimed 10 years experience and had credentials to prove it. Skill set of 2 years experience. He lost the company a major account last spring due to his inability. He got…
1,292400Sep 28
- 2When I had to pay a lawyer in 5 minute blocks really changed how I hire anybody who bills by the hour
I owned a company when I got divorced. The consult with my lawyer was free. After that it was $425 an hour and it was billed in 5 minute segments. I didn't think much about the 5 minute part when I signed. I should…
1,17192Sep 21
- 3Happily lost a customer today
My wife and I own a bakery in a small tourist-y town. We have a regular customer who is mid 40s single dude. He has recently been coming in more when one of our employees (mid 20s woman) is working. He’s always a bit…
1,03696Sep 6
- 4My little home-based pet care business just crossed $35k in 6 months and I have nobody else to tell 😂
I don’t really have anyone else to tell this to, and I am genuinely just sitting here in disbelief. 😭 Since March of 2026 (so roughly six months) I’ve made just a hair over $35,000 from my little pet care business. I…
842100Sep 30
- 5Money is getting harder and harder to make.
I run a marketing consultancy and I’m noticing a pretty scary trend. Just about every business is making less money month over month. Even for us, I’m noticing how it’s harder than ever to sign clients. And new clients…
466209Sep 29
- 6Doing $500k-1million a month in revenue, but I don’t have an hour to myself and I’m losing my mind.
I have a business doing $500k-$1million a month in revenue, im in 2000 retail doors, but I’m doing everything myself. Ads, email, SMS, product launches, product quality, packaging design, customer support, accounting,…
459368Sep 20
- 7I interviewed someone for a position at my bakery and they left a negative review on Google after I didn't hire them.
I've reported the review, and will appeal once I'm able to but I'm not holding my breath in the hopes that they'll remove it, because they rarely do. I guess the silver lining of this is that we dodged a bullet by not…
43275Sep 25
- 8Client asking for 7am meeting and then not showing up
This client had an 8:30 meeting scheduled yesterday and didn't show up. When I called him he declined and texted me he was in traffic going to the office so couldn't talk. I offered to have the call later that day or…
397118Sep 17
- 9
- 10New hire (friend of my best employee) lied to me in her first week. Fire her or give one chance?
I run a small business. Recently hired a young woman, a close friend of my best employee. That's the main reason I gave her a shot. Her first week: * Day 2, her first day working alone: cameras show her leaving the…
378323Sep 3
- 11Lady wants my 1.5 y/o biz to donate items for auction so she can make down payment on a house.
Here’s the message: “Hi! I’m reaching out to a few local businesses about an online community auction I’m putting together. My family was recently approved for a new home, and we’re working to raise/save the down…
351147Sep 16
- 12My family’s 35-year-old general store is slowly dying after we lost our customers’ trust. How can we rebuild it?
(used ChatGPT to fix grammer) Hey everyone, I’m 17 and I need some genuine advice about my family’s business. My grandfather started our general store in our village on May 27, 1991. It started extremely small —…
293115Sep 2
- 13Is anyone else completely fed up with this new "AI" software?
Every tech bro on the internet is pushing some shiny AI agent that can write marketing emails or pass a legal exam. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here at 8 PM on a Thursday trying to map 5,000 messy supplier SKUs into my…
291139Sep 16
- 14My business failed 5 months ago and im still stuggling to deal with it.
I worked my way from the bottom to the top of the industry I was in and was lucky enough to have an investor who believed in me. On Dec 21st 2021 my dreams became a reality and i opened my first store. For the first 2…
22387Sep 23
- 15Single Member LLC = $44k/year Healthcare Cost?!
I’ve been consulting on the side for some time while maintaining a W2 job. Moving to full-time consulting through my LLC. Wife will be on payroll but no other employees. I don’t get any healthcare subsidies, and it…
198227Sep 28
- 16I write one sentence in my phone after every client call. Nothing else I do pays back this well. What is your one-sentence habit?
This is what I do. One sentence in the contact's notes field, before I put the phone down. *"Wants the garden, hates the commute, decides with his wife on Sundays."* That's the whole thing. Ten seconds. I've been doing…
19537Sep 3
- 17Intuit Quicbooks is a scam
For the love of God, please cancel your Intuit Quickbooks subscription. I literally just spent 2.5 hours of my time trying to troubleshoot a few accounts that Intuit disconnected. I had to troubleshoot with their chat…
17955Sep 11
- 18i raised my prices 20% expecting to lose customers and lost almost none
i undercharged for years out of fear. every time i thought about raising prices i pictured customers walking, so i stayed cheap and quietly resented the work. this year i finally raised everything about twenty percent.…
17733Sep 25
- 19Unpopular opinion: a lot of small business owners create their own employee problems
I run a small contracting/landscaping company and the longer I do this, the more I think owners blame employees for problems they created themselves. “Nobody wants to work anymore.” “You can’t find good workers.”…
16946Sep 22
- 20Started a bottled water business with a friend, he left midway and now I’m stuck with $8–10k of inventory. Clueless about nxt steps.
Long story short, I started a bottled water business with a friend. The original plan was pretty straightforward — I would handle production/sourcing and he would focus on distribution and getting the product into…
168189Sep 18
- 21Buying a pet grooming + retail shop — owner wants $280K, I value it ~$170-190K. Am I missing something?
**Me:** investor/owner, not an operator. I run marketing + systems, a skilled operator runs the floor. Done it before in another industry. **The business** (pet grooming + retail, affluent Canadian city neighbourhood):…
16897Sep 4
- 22
- 23I understand why my supplier doesn’t take cards but damn
We're placing our biggest inventory order so far and I completely forgot this supplier is ACH only. Never bothered me when I was sending them $1,500. This invoice is a little over $13k and I'm looking at it…
16184Sep 11
- 24Update: CPA confirmed my concerns are legitimate. Partner wants to explain everything in person in San Diego
Original post for context: https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/s/61wueUAPB3 Update: I met with a CPA. Now one of my partners wants me to fly to San Diego to go through everything. I figured I owed everyone an update…
149115Sep 11
- 25Getting paid net 30 and paying everyone else now is a fun setup
A bigger customer wants net 30 which is normal but most of the expenses for their order happen way before that money shows up Materials need paying now, shipping needs paying now and contractors definitely aren't…
14598Sep 22
What people asked about or struggled with
Questions, complaints and “is there a tool for…” posts with the most discussion. A post with dozens of replies means many people have the same problem, which is where product ideas come from.
- Tired of running my company
24m opened a power washing company grew it to 120+ 5 star reviews, niched luxury residential & commercial, built strong presence online. About 30-40k in physical equipment / assets & strong digital assets. Custom…
215 replies51Check if it's worth building → - Started a bottled water business with a friend, he left midway and now I’m stuck with $8–10k of inventory. Clueless about nxt steps.
Long story short, I started a bottled water business with a friend. The original plan was pretty straightforward — I would handle production/sourcing and he would focus on distribution and getting the product into…
189 replies168Check if it's worth building → - Is anyone else completely fed up with this new "AI" software?
Every tech bro on the internet is pushing some shiny AI agent that can write marketing emails or pass a legal exam. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here at 8 PM on a Thursday trying to map 5,000 messy supplier SKUs into my…
139 replies291Check if it's worth building → - My family’s 35-year-old general store is slowly dying after we lost our customers’ trust. How can we rebuild it?
(used ChatGPT to fix grammer) Hey everyone, I’m 17 and I need some genuine advice about my family’s business. My grandfather started our general store in our village on May 27, 1991. It started extremely small —…
115 replies293Check if it's worth building → - How do you actually take time off when you're the only person running things?
I've been doing this solo for a while now and I still haven't figured out a real way to disconnect. Even a weekend feels risky because if something breaks, there's nobody else to catch it. I've tried telling myself…
110 replies27Check if it's worth building → - The CEO of a major national retailer wants to talk about an exclusive deal once we can scale manufacturing, but we need ~$1M to build out production. How do we secure funding at this stage?
We recently got in front of the CEO of Ace Hardware, and they expressed serious interest in carrying our product exclusively, with the caveat that we need to be able to manufacture and deliver in high volume first.…
95 replies144Check if it's worth building → - Problem with employee retention
Is anybody else here struggling with new hire retention. I own a small cafe inside of a college campus. Starting pay is 13 an hour and hours are between 15-20 per week. I even specify it's perfect for moms of schoolage…
71 replies0Check if it's worth building → - Facing burn out after almost 22 years
I’m 45 and I have a successful service based business that I run entirely on my own since 2005. Because of a series of life situations getting in the way, I have never taken the plunge on expanding, it’s been too much…
70 replies43Check if it's worth building → - 5 Months Into My Business — How Do You Deal With The Fear Of Losing Everything?
Hey guys, hope y’all are doing well. It’s been 5 months since I started my business, and the growth so far has been: Month 1: $4K revenue Month 2: $5K Month 3: $6.5K Month 4: $8K Month 5: $12K My expenses were around…
63 replies64Check if it's worth building → - How do you handle email marketing for a small business solo?
Just me running a small shop, no budget for a full marketing hire. How do other small business owners actually keep up with email marketing without it eating all their time?
61 replies38Check if it's worth building → - I’m tired of every business problem being “solved” by another subscription
Running a small boutique has made me realize how quickly this can get out of hand. Need better inventory? There’s an app. Need email marketing? Another subscription. Want to automate something you do twice a month?…
58 replies113Check if it's worth building → - Help please! Getting lots of website traffic but no sales!?
Hi all. Looking for some advice please me and another mum have started out small business a few months ago! I know we are fresh , but we make beautiful lowtox prodcuts ... we are not content creators or marketing…
57 replies3Check if it's worth building → - Would you hire a freelance "Funeral Coordinator" to handle the logistics so you can just grieve? Looking for feedback on a business idea.
Hi everyone, I am planning to launch a niche service business, and I would love to get your brutally honest feedback and opinions on whether this is a viable model. The concept is a Freelance Funeral & Memorial Service…
55 replies42Check if it's worth building → - I need help with a website but I don’t like how cheap most of them look
i’m a small business owner and I’ve been on the hunt for genuinely a good quality website, if anyone has had good experience with someone that has a good quality looking website and please let me know. I’m not…
51 replies0Check if it's worth building → - Anyone want to sell me their small business for $5,000? Retiring? Tired of running it? Hear me out 😂
This is probably a long shot, but Reddit seems like the perfect place to try. I have about **$5,000** that I’d like to put toward buying a real, existing small business.**Long shot: Anyone looking to hand off or sell a…
51 replies0Check if it's worth building →
Best time to post on r/smallbusiness
For every hour of the week we checked what share of September 2026's posts reached the top quarter by upvotes (more than 3 upvotes). Small samples are smoothed so one lucky post can't top the list.
Best days
- Monday21% top
- Wednesday21% top
- Tuesday21% top
Best hours (ET)
- 2 AM31% top
- 6 AM30% top
- 1 AM29% top
Best day + hour
- Tue 6 AM45% top
- Tue 2 AM43% top
- Thu 1 PM38% top
“% top” = share of posts from that time that reached the top quarter. Across the whole month it's 20%, so anything well above that did better than average.
Darker = a larger share of posts from that hour reached the month's top 25% by upvotes. Grey = fewer than 8 posts, too few to judge. Times are US Eastern.
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Questions
What were the most popular r/smallbusiness posts last month?
In September 2026 the top post was “I had to fire a guy today, 4 days after his wife was diagnosed with cancer. People suck. I suck.” with 1,292 upvotes and 400 comments. The full top 25 is at the top of this page.
What is the best time to post on r/smallbusiness?
In September 2026, Monday was the best day (21% of posts reached the month's top quarter by upvotes, against 20% overall) and 2 AM US Eastern was the best hour (31%). Treat it as a starting point; a strong title matters more than the hour.
How often is this page updated?
Once a month, a few days after the month ends, so late upvotes are counted. This edition covers September 2026.
Where does the data come from?
Every public r/smallbusiness post from the month (2,598 posts), read from a public Reddit archive. Removed, deleted and NSFW posts are left out.