Business Ideas Gone Wrong or Just Plain Insane | Biz To Biz Podcast | Episode 233

You are now watching the Biz to Biz Podcast with Allen and Justin. Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz Podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Matthew McConaughey of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And in today's podcast, we'll be discussing some of the wild and craziest business ideas that we've ever heard. How you doing, man?

I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right, all right, all right. Just like Matthew McConaughey says.

There you go.

He said that in a movie, his first movie. Now I'm going to forget the name of the movie.

Yeah, I don't know.

Dazed and Confused. He played a guy in Dazed and Confused. And I actually saw a video with him and Snoop Dogg. And he said, oh, I got famous because a guy walked in a bar and said, oh, you want to be in a movie? They tried him out for the movie and he was sitting in the car and he goes, all right, all right, all right. And he said it a bunch of times in that movie. And that was the start of his—

I remember that story.

That was the start of his movie career, you know. And, you know, crazy ideas. Matthew McConaughey, he's a pretty wild and crazy guy.

I don't know him. I don't know him personally.

I don't know him either. But, you know, I'm just saying there's always been wild stories about him and Really? Yeah.

I don't know. I never— I mean, I don't follow him.

I don't follow him either, but I like his movies.

Yeah, he's got some pretty good movies.

Yeah.

I'm trying to think of the one movie that my wife and I always watch. It was like he was treasure hunting. Kevin Hart was in it.

You were treasure hunting? I'm gonna have to Google it. Matthew McConaughey movies. Let's see.

Something Gold.

Matthew.

I can't remember. It was a good one though. It was a really good one.

Rocky, come on, stop all that. Crazy boy. Why didn't it come up?

Matthew McConaughey, maybe? Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, man, what's new in the world?

What's new? You know, listen, Crazy, crazy stuff, you know, working hard, doing stuff. Let's see, he was in a bunch of movies. The Wedding Planner, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Failure to Launch— that was a good movie. Fool's Gold, that's the movie you're thinking of.

That was a good movie.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, it's funny. He was in that Lincoln Lawyer movie, which was really, really good.

Never seen it.

Lincoln Lawyer. That was a great movie. He was in a bunch of movies. Wow, Wolf of Wall Street. Yeah, he's in a bunch of movies.

Was he in Wolf of Wall Street?

Yeah, he was in, so he had a supporting role in Wolf of Wall Street.

Oh, he was at the table. I remember he met with him, yeah.

And he was in Interstellar. I like that movie.

I never seen it.

And it's a bunch of other ones. But yeah, he's famous. The first movie he did was "Dazed and Confused," 1993.

I don't remember that movie, but I know I watched it.

It had a lot of good music in it. Like, I'm sure your dad would like the musical score, classic rock.

For sure.

Shout out to Ron.

Happy birthday, pops.

Yeah, happy birthday to Ron. Yeah, my birthday's coming up. It's a crazy day, eclipse day. April the 8th.

Yeah, they say, uh, we should have backup batteries at home. We should have our gas tank full. Lots of schools are closed for the day.

Really? Schools are closed?

The government issued all this, sir.

Really?

Yeah, I don't know if they know something that we don't know, but you know, I'm just— they said that we should have food for up to 2 weeks. And I mean, not in— no one's— DeSantis hasn't said anything in Florida. I mean, that piece of shit. Anyway, sorry. Excuse me. You might want to edit that one out. But yeah, he's a total piece of shit.

Okay, that has to definitely be edited out.

Okay. But we're not going to get into Yeah, anyway, but yeah, so mostly over the, you know, a bunch of states have said that they, uh, that they're canceling schools from California all the way to New York.

That's crazy. I mean, I could see like in the direct line of it, they showed it's like going up one highway, like Highway 75.

Yeah, it's supposed to be going across like 7.

Yeah, it goes across Texas, Cleveland.

Well, it's just saying that there's like a bunch of cities that are all named the same. That it's going to go directly over.

Yeah, that's crazy, right?

That was kind of spooky.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I guess it's going to be another 320-some years before this happens again.

And it's nuts because it's like, I think the Final Four is in Cleveland and then the eclipse is April 8th. Like it's the same weekend. This weekend is the women's Final Four in Cleveland.

Yeah.

And then the eclipse is on the same week, Monday, April 8th. And then like you can't even get a hotel room there between the Final Four and the eclipse. Everything's sold out.

Yeah, it's real crazy.

For hundreds of miles.

I just read like an article this morning. So the Eid of Ramadan is on the 8th, the solar eclipse, and like the, the Jewish community is going to be sacrificing a calf.

No, I don't know anything about—

Yes, it's just was all in the— I just read an article about, about it, and it's— that was insane. I'm like, oh my God, like, it's like the end of the world.

Let's hope not. It's not my birthday. I don't want my birthday to be with the end of the world.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know, man. It's pretty heavy stuff going on right now, and, uh Yeah.

Conspiracy. Is it a conspiracy or what happened?

Oh, I'm saying the article wasn't a conspiracy.

No, I'm just saying what would happen.

Well, facts.

All right. We'll have to see if that all goes down. Well, we'll do— we'll have to do a podcast and talk about what happened on the eclipse day.

Well, the government was saying that if you look back when there was the last time on the 7th, in 2017 or whatever.

Yeah.

There was like mass hysteria. Like people were rushing. It was causing the cell phone towers to crash, et cetera. That's why they're saying to have a backup battery and all this other stuff. To make sure you get gas because people are gonna be traveling to try to see the eclipse in different parts of the states. And you know, whatever.

Well, you can't, it's not gonna be totally visible from here. So we're way off.

We're getting like half of it.

Yeah. So you got to wear special glasses.

Wisconsin is going to get— shout out to my people in Wisconsin. They're going to get a good look at it. And in New York as well.

Yeah. Yeah, I saw like the most— I think the biggest major city it goes over is Cleveland. It's one of the biggest major cities.

Yeah.

So let's talk. Let's go crazy ideas that we've heard of. So a social networking app, so for dogs, for cats, or maybe even cars. Actually, I had a guy when we were making apps years ago, when we made little apps, a guy came here to the office and he wanted to make Facebook for cars. Sean's into cars. He said, I asked him if there was a social network for cars, but obviously I don't think so. Maybe people make a Facebook page for their car.

People have definitely had a Facebook page for a car, right? My wife's cousin had, uh, he's just an idiot. He thinks he's trying to make a group, I guess, I don't know, for BMW people. But yeah, that was insane.

So there's something for everybody. But you know, it's kind of funny, you know, or dating apps, and you date and date and and instead of dating people, you're dating an AI. And I see those around, like you can join, you can—

that's a thing, bro.

Yeah, you can download this.

That's some crazy shit.

You can download this app and it's like $20. I don't know how much it is a month. Let's say $20, right? And then you go on there and you could set it up where you need a friend, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a mentor, right? A business person, right? And then you can interact with the AI, and the girlfriend can actually— I guess you can design what she could possibly look like, but it's a full-on cartoon, right? It's a full-on cartoon. And then she can talk to you, and you can tell the AI to send you messages like, good morning, good night, sweet dreams, and stuff like that. I find that to be like super creepy.

I mean, some people are lonely, bro, so I mean, if it helps them get through life, I'm all for it. But I mean, it's a little strange for me.

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's kind of creepy.

It's very creepy. It reminds me of Minority Report. That's a great movie.

Yeah, that's a great movie. That movie was crazy.

The cognates— what was that called?

I Cognitive people.

Cognitive.

Yeah, they could— the cognitive people floating in the water, and Tom Cruise rescues them, takes them out to the middle of nowhere.

One of them at the—

yeah, one, just one person at the end.

It was just one of the cognitive— was just one. Yeah, it was just the one lady.

Yeah, yeah, she was living after that.

She was like— they tried to set Tom Cruise up or something.

Yeah, they tried to set him up because he found out the truth. That they were manipulating it, right?

I think— I don't know, I can't— I'm not— I don't remember this.

Yeah, they were manipulating the whole thing.

So VR headsets for chickens, bro? What does that even mean?

You know, people come up with stuff. They're going to put a VR headset on a chicken to fool the chicken, maybe convince the chicken to lay more eggs, or the chick is going to see something. I mean, we had somebody send us a spoof that they could turn a phone into a VR headset for April Fool's Day. For April Fool's Day.

As soon as you sent it to me, I knew it was—

when I was looking at it, I was like, this doesn't look real.

Yeah, no, it's not real.

Coming soon.

Yeah, it was funny. It was the old school science goggles. Yeah, I just mounted an iPhone to the front of it. That was good. Shout out to Plug, the Plug, or whatever.

Yeah, Plug, the guys who sell like— they sell Used Apple. Refurbished Apple stuff and they have their own little charger. I think I gave everybody a charger from there.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, for holiday time. This one I thought was funny. Subscription for hair removal. So send you some materials every month for removing hair.

Why wouldn't you just use Nair?

I guess.

Or I remember when I was a kid, I put that shit on my face.

I bet that burned.

Oh, it— I was— I had a burn. I burned myself. You did? Yeah, I left it on there way too long. My face was all red and nasty. My mom was so mad at me.

I remember— I remember when I was young, like, girls didn't want to shave their legs, so they sprayed that stuff on their legs. That was pretty weird.

Spray?

Yeah, it was like a spray.

I remember just like the lotion.

Yeah, it was a lotion or a spray. I think that a spray too.

My mom always had it. So I remember, yeah. I don't know if she remembers that, but yeah.

Now people wax. Waxing's like a big thing.

Waxing, yeah.

Yeah, waxing. Somebody sent me a website yesterday and it was for a subscription service. And somehow you're gonna take like a selfie of yourself and then use some sort of app. And then because you took a selfie of yourself through this app, that it was gonna be able to tell you about like your blood pressure and a bunch of other bodily functions like diabetes and all this stuff just from a picture. So I told the guy, hey, you gotta call me on the phone. Need to get it, you know, log in and try it out because like, where's the medical—

like, that sounds like bullshit. I'm sorry.

Well, I'm just saying like, where's the medical science behind it, right? Like, what's the medical science behind it? Oh, here's another one that I saw recently: a dating app for people with herpes or STDs. And I didn't know this, but there was actually a there— people have a code when they have herpes. They have a code that they put on their, uh, put in their dating app so they can let other people know that they have herpes.

I wouldn't know, I don't have STDs.

I don't have it. I'm just telling you, it was just something I— something somebody told me one day, and I go, that sucks.

I mean, that's that they're able to, you know, have, have that, I guess.

Yeah, they put some code in their— on their apps, some, some— yeah, 437737. If you ever see that in a dating app, that person's telling you they got herpes. That's weird, right?

I mean, it's not weird if they're being honest.

Yeah, they're being honest.

That's good. I mean, if you're out there dating, you don't want to have— I don't know, I wouldn't. Yeah, I don't know what to say about that. Sorry that you have that. I hope there's some medical community.

Well, now they have like pills so people don't even get bothered with it anymore. Yeah, you know, they got whatever, Valtrex or whatever that is. It's like the iPhone for dogs. You clip it on your dog, count how many steps Rocky has— he takes, how many miles did he walk, how many calories is he burning.

I mean, I guess that's important.

It could be if you have an overweight dog like Rocky.

I don't know.

I don't know if he's exact— the doctor doesn't say he's fat.

I don't know, man.

Looks fat.

Just throwing shots.

Listen, he can— he gets up today, he did 2.8 miles. So he's got some, you know, he's got some energy.

It's good for him.

Yeah. Keeps me walking every day, getting my 10,000 steps in.

Absolutely.

He makes sure, you know, I get my walks in every day. So I have my little fitness tracker of— today we're up to 3.1 miles, 9,300 steps so far with them. 'Cause I made one trip around the office or around the office complex, plus I walked this morning.

Yeah, I've been doing my every 2 hours.

I'm sorry. There's definitely like a subscription service for everything. Like I've gotten ones for like air filters for your house. What about one for toilet paper?

That's not a bad idea. Yeah, me and my partner, we're gonna, um, one of my homies back in the, you know, good friend of mine, A-Son, we're literally gonna start a toilet paper company. Yeah, before COVID before all this, we were just— I can't remember what we were gonna call it. I can't remember what. I'm gonna have to call him and ask him what we were gonna call that. But yeah, it was a It was because it's, you know, there— when you think about it, there's not a lot of brands of toilet paper, right? Right. So you got like Charmin, whatever, like there's not a bunch of Angel Soft. So it's actually a wide open market to start your own company, um, and we were going to use organic cotton You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And, you know, there's a lot of studies that are coming out that wiping your butthole with really cheap toilet paper actually can cause— is starting to be linked back to cancer. Ass cancer.

Wow, that's not good.

Yeah, because they put all the bleach and the chemicals and all of the nasty toilet paper And even the stuff that you pay top dollar for is not like Charmin, super expensive.

I get the Costco toilet paper. It's very priced good. It's soft.

As long as it ain't one-ply and you can wipe your ass, I don't really care.

Like a lot of people during the pandemic, because there was a toilet paper shortage because people were buying like 10 cases of toilet paper at a time.

Yeah, that's— man, I wish we would have— hey son, we dropped the ball, bro. We dropped the—

You know what people were buying back then? They were buying— what do they call it? Bidet.

A bidet.

Yeah, they were installing bidets so they would wipe less.

But that's what people use all over the world too.

Yeah, we're the only country where we don't have bidets everywhere. Most places everybody has a bidet.

That's—

I went to some— I was staying at somebody's house one time and I did— they had like a whole control panel like next to the toilet. I was like, oh, what is all this? And then I hit the button and I got like a warm water rinse.

I've never had this experience.

I was like, that was insane, you know? I was like, that was pretty nice.

I mean, the online marketplace for drugs, that's Facebook.

Well, that one guy went to jail. Facebook. What was that guy's name from the— that the guy who went to jail?

We had a whole podcast.

Silk Road.

Silk Road guy.

Yeah.

Went to jail for the thing. I mean, literally, that's what Facebook and Instagram is. So I don't know what— I mean, you can get anything and everything you want on those social apps.

Really?

Oh dude, come on.

I don't know. I'm not in that scene, man. I'm guessing.

I mean, I'm not buying drugs, but I know for a fact that And what about like these, all these wipes for wipes instead of toilet paper?

Like now there's some guys that have a thing called Dudes or something.

Dude wipes.

Dude wipes.

I mean, and again, if you want to put chemicals on your ass, be my guest. But I'm not just, you know, I don't know. I'm not into that.

Neither am I. I'm not into that whole wipe thing.

I mean, I am all, I am into using wipes, you know, use a wet wipe, right, when you're done. You know, you don't want to be walking around with a soggy ass. It's disgusting.

Yeah, it is kind of disgusting. And, uh, this one is kind of funny, this last one, because I actually had— I've had people inquire about this. They want to set— they want to have like a travel business, and then you go to a like some islands, like down in the Bahamas or something. And then people go down there and do psychedelic drugs, some other kind of mushrooms or something.

Toad venom.

Toad, yeah. Like, and they sent it to me and I was like, I don't know. I said, I don't know who's gonna give you a merchant account, like for to cover that.

I don't think you need to, you just don't need to, you need to call it like Trippy Tours or something. Like if you—

Yeah, you need to come up with something generic and not come up with it and then have a more generic kind of a description on the website.

Me and my partner, one of my homies, we're actually going to do something similar, but not for drugs, for cannabis.

Right.

So like you'd be a cannabis tour. Yeah, but you can't call it cannabis tours because most of the places are illegal and, you know, it's tough. I don't know. That's, that's going to, that's going to happen.

Yeah, that's going to happen. Some kind of business for that. But I mean, the liability on that could be insane. Like, what if somebody takes too much mushrooms and dies?

I don't think that's the thing.

I don't know.

I'm just saying that's what you have. The bank would have a really, really heavy trip.

Yeah.

Are you going to barf? I mean, it's just, you know, I don't think—

No, but I'm saying that's what the bank thinks about when you send in a merchant account like that. I mean, I know what you're saying.

Yeah, we're going to take you on a tour to do some ayahuasca and some shrooms and some acid.

I mean, and it's going to be very enlightening.

Yeah. I mean, you got to call it something else. I don't know what you would call it, but it's a good idea. And I would take that trip with you. Let's go.

It is a good idea. I just told them that. I said, you need to come up with a better description of what's going on. You know, it's like people call me up, like yesterday, like two young guys call me, talk to me about they're starting a CBD business, so they want to call it Star Spangled Flower. It's good. So thought it was cool. They're from Washington, D.C., right? So I said, you know, did you make a— they haven't gotten that so far yet. So I sent them some information about how we can help them, and I was telling them, when you go get your bank account, you know, Use a generic name. Don't call it Star Spangled Flower Inc. You know, use some initials or something and then just tell the bank you're a marketing company and don't tell them about your website and you'll get a bank account and that's it. And then, you know, then you set up your billing, make sure you have discrete billing so that you don't go spend money, thousands of dollars on boxes with a marijuana leaf on it. Because the post office, FedEx, and UPS aren't going to deliver your box. They're going to call you and tell you to come pick it up or call the cops. So, you know, you got to be smart when you're doing these different businesses about what you're doing. Like, I had this other guy, so I started posting some TikTok. Shout out to Dr. Chris, who's doing— who has this business called K+ Clinic. Okay. And they give you a light dose of ketamine I don't know what that— it's like a horse tranquilizer.

Oh yeah, you were telling me about this.

And, um, it's, you know, medically supervised.

So the fact that— I mean, that's— I don't know. I mean, I know too much, but yeah. Um, I was surprised they're cutting heroin with now, I guess.

Really? That's crazy. Yeah, I was surprised when I sent it to the bank. They approved it. They said, oh, it's an approved medical, approved medical treatment now for a light dose of this ketamine.

What does it do?

Well, I guess it helps people who are having some issues relax because it's a drip. We have a couple other clients that have those, like they, they drip. They have some guy in Vegas and they have a one of those IV things, like after you go out and party all night, they give you an IV of like vitamin C. That's huge down there.

They got whole—

you can go into the mall, they have it. It's crazy. Yeah, there's one— there's— yeah, there's a guy that has it in— I've seen it in the mall and a couple of shopping centers, these IV drip places. They got all kinds, but they're, you know, they're doing all kinds of IV drips. I'm just not sure We've had a few of them inquire to us, and the first thing we ask them about is, hey, we need to see the medical licenses of the people who work there, that there's enough medical supervision.

Because you don't have to be a— be a nurse.

Yeah, you can be a nurse. Yeah, you have to have a medical professional do when you're doing that stuff. Even Botox is supposed to be supervised by a, uh, you know, you could be a, a nurse You could be a DO, whatever. You don't have to be like a doctor doctor, but you have to have some kind of medical, medical stuff. Even like for the cannabis cards, it has to be the doctor has to write those prescriptions. You just can't have a business and people walk in and just me and Justin are there. Oh, you want to get some marijuana? Sure, no problem. It's got to be.

It's coming.

Well, I think recreational is going to come everywhere.

I mean, they're going on a ballot in November in Florida.

Okay, well, I hope it passes. People, you know, listen, it's safer. People won't be— I mean, there's been a— there was a case here recently last year where some, um, I think they were from, uh, the naval— they were either from a Navy ship or they were from a naval school or something, and they went and bought marijuana from some guy and it had fentanyl in it. And then I think like 1 or 2 people died and a couple of the EMTs almost died because that fentanyl, you know, and then to get that Narcan out. I see that.

That was cocaine.

Oh, it was cocaine?

Yeah, they bought cocaine, not marijuana.

Okay, it was cocaine.

Yeah, and they were snorting cocaine, a bunch of rich kids from a naval academy.

Right. Okay.

Yeah. Dumb as shit. Okay.

That was dumb.

Yeah. And then the guy, one guy fell out. The other guy tried to give him CPR. He fell out. Another guy tried to give him CPR. He fell out. And then the paramedics came, were touching the shit, and they fell out too. So, I mean, the fact that fentanyl is a thing still is insane to me and whatever. So let's move on because it's just going to get me super pissed off.

Well, believe me, I'm not happy about fentanyl. So what other crazy— you got any other crazy business ideas?

I know the only one that I— the one that comes to mind for me, it's not really crazy. It was, uh, it was actually a really good idea, but the people— the school systems thought they were crazy. Uh, a friend of mine wanted to start an app that would track Um, um, school buses.

Okay, that's a good idea, right?

Yeah, but the problem with that was that, um, the parents, right, parents didn't want privacy type thing, right? He got laughed out the door. That's good. The best part about this is though Like 3 years later, right? The school system implemented a tracking on all of the buses. Wow. On all of the buses. Okay.

Yeah, they stole his idea.

Sort of. No, they probably— they directly stole his idea, like for sure. But yeah, man, so that's— that was the one that kind of got away from us.

One crazy business.

If we would have had a million dollars.

Yeah.

And bootstrapped it ourselves, right? And then went to, you know what I mean, right in front of them, we probably would have, you know what I mean, I wouldn't be sitting here.

Could have got the deal.

I'm sure we would have. But yeah, that was a, that was a big project. I was trying to wrap my head around how to do it myself, right?

Like, yeah. Was there GPS trackers around then?

Yeah, it's just like 5, 6 6 years ago.

Oh, so that was already— the infrastructure was there, just needed to be like enough.

Yeah, they just didn't want us to do it. Yeah, they probably had, you know, I don't know, whatever. But yeah, no, it's definitely a thing. Like, they track all the school buses now. You can like, you can call, uh, you know, wherever your kid goes to school and be like, hey, where's my kid at? Um, and they'll tell you like, yeah, they're like 5 stops away.

Oh, okay. They don't have it on an app though for the parents to use?

I think they do actually now.

Interesting. Yeah, we had a client, they started a business where they went to your house and cleaned up your yard from all your, uh, pet poop. Mm. And they made a business out of it for a while, and, uh, then they tried to like franchise it, but didn't really work out because Does a shitty job.

That guy who does the dirty jobs would have loved that.

Oh yeah, the dirty, you know, listen, we need more, we definitely need more people in the trades today than ever before.

We need people, more people to do shitty jobs.

I don't know, they're not all shitty.

No, they're great jobs, but I mean, they're not— I don't know how you would say it.

They're not glamorous.

And yeah, they pay well.

Yeah, they're not glamorous. You're not sitting in an office. You're outside, you know, doing plumbing, air conditioning.

The guys who jump down the sewers in Hazmat, shout out to you guys.

Yeah, that's crazy.

You guys are— that's disgusting. I would not be able to do it with all the creepy crawlies and the poops and the pees. No, no, thank you, sir. Anyway, man, if you got any, uh, crazy ideas or maybe, uh, app that's in progress and you want to chop it up or, you know, get some, uh, payment processing for it, let us know. We'd love to talk about it. And, uh, get involved. But yo, man, that's the pod. Smash the subscribe button, share and like this to your friends and peoples, comment, get in touch. We love to talk with you, man. Peace.

Peace out. Carpe diem.