Many small business owners (especially service providers) use their mobile number for everything — calls, appointments, WhatsApp orders, enquiries, etc. It works fine at first, but there’s a big downside: your mobile becomes your business hotline, and suddenly you’re “on call” 24/7.   If you’ve ever had late-night messages, people calling at odd hours, or your personal number being shared around without asking, you’ll know exactly what I mean. A simple fix that more business owners should consider is: Keep your mobile number for yourself, and use a landline for WhatsApp Business. Here’s why it helps and how to set it up. Why Separate Your Personal Mobile and Business WhatsApp? Using a landline for WhatsApp Business allows you to: ✔ Keep your personal mobile number private and use what's app for your friends. ✔ Avoid late-night calls/messages on your personal phone ✔ Present a more “established business” contact number ✔ Keep boundaries between personal and business time ✔ Allow customers to message your business number on WhatsApp ✔ Still manage everything from your mobile device A lot of customers now prefer messaging over calling, but you shouldn’t have to sacrifice your personal life just to make that convenient. With WhatsApp Business, your landline becomes your public number, while your mobile stays your private one.  Using a Landline with WhatsApp Business: Yes, It Works !!! be patient!!!! WhatsApp Business does support landline numbers, but there’s one key detail that catches people out: Landlines can’t receive SMS verification codes. So during setup, WhatsApp will send an SMS first (which will obviously fail), and only then will it offer the voice call verification. 📌Setup Instructions (Important Steps) Install WhatsApp Business (blue icon) on your phone. Enter your landline number in international format (e.g. +44 1473…). It will attempt an SMS verification first. Wait for it to time out — don’t cancel it ----wait keep the app open!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! After ~60 seconds, tap: “Didn’t receive a verification code?”   You will probably get wait one hour !  then if so wait an hour but you should see "did not get a verification code ! Click that and you will get the option to request a voice call.  select that ! Now choose “Call me”. WhatsApp will call your landline with a 6-digit code. Enter the code into the app — done. Your WhatsApp Business account is now tied to your landline, but you still manage it from your mobile. ⏱️ If You See “Wait 1 Hour” If you retry verification too quickly, WhatsApp rate-limits you and shows: “Try again in 1 hour” This isn’t a landline issue and doesn’t mean it won’t work — it just means you need to wait for the timer before trying again. After that, follow the steps above without rushing. ✨The End Result Once it’s set up: ✔ Your business WhatsApp is linked to your landline ✔ Customers message that number via WhatsApp ✔ You reply from the WhatsApp Business app on your phone ✔ Your mobile number stays private ✔ You control when you’re available It’s a small change with a big impact on work/life balance — especially for sole traders, florists, beauty professionals, trades, therapists, and anyone who doesn’t want to be “always on”. If anyone needs a more detailed walkthrough or has issues with verification, feel free to ask — happy to help based on real experience with the setup.   Good luck trying this - If you have a system in place as we do - where the landline diverts to mobile - turn the divert off  as you will have to press key pad #9 have a paper and pencil ready. then hey presto you mobile number is yours again!     Also Great if you use the "chaty" add on for your square online site. https://chaty.app/    ... View more

So it looks like Square is finally going to allow credit card surcharges to be applied to in-person transactions. It’s a beta and limited to just a couple of their systems like Square Point of Sale and 1 other. Doesn’t work for Square for Retail but it’s progress on a much requested feature. Here’s the link to the support article so people can check it out  https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/8580-set-up-and-manage-credit-card-surcharges?utm_medium=web&utm_source=dashboard ... View more

Sharing our next live webinar, Emerging 2026 trends: Insights and predictions from local business owners, here. Hope you can tune in!   Please register at the link here if you're able to join. See you there. 😎 ... View more

What are you doing to bring customers in on slower holiday days?   Flash sales? In-store specials? Last-minute gift promos? Events or extended hours?   Always fun to see what’s working for everyone during the holidays—drop your ideas below! 👇✨ ... View more

With AI becoming more and more common, have you started adding more photos to your items? We used to just add one photo; now we are adding more, especially AI models wearing our clothing. Over the holidays, I would like to add video, but Square doesn’t offer that feature in the photos, and the only way to do it is to add a YouTube link in the description. I want to play around with it to see how it looks.   Do you think adding more photos helps to sell the item better?  ... View more