Digitizing Your Business & Preparing For 2023 | Financial Technology | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast | Episode 130

Hey, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy Allen Kopelman, and we'll be providing you educational information about small business fintech, payment processing, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, we'll be discussing how to digitize your business for 2023 and beyond. Um, there's so many changes that's happening, and your business needs to stay on top of them. And why not, uh, take advantage of all the new technology, which makes your job easier, easier for the customer to pay you, easier for you to get paid. Yeah. So I mean, let's just hop right into it.

Okay, so, you know, so, you know, I think that businesses today need to look at, you know, a couple of different things. You need to look at technology, and then we also need to look at, hey, do we need to— you know, it's been a few years since the pandemic, right? And do we need to get back to like the basics of, you know, what they call guerrilla— not the ape, but guerrilla marketing, you know— and, and, and get into things like handing out postcards, physical business cards, and get— you know, I think that too many people became dependent on digital posting on Facebook and all of that, and, and ads on social media and Google have gotten very expensive, right? And I think that today you can use technology in your business to get people to leave reviews for your business, you know, if you have the right kind of point of sale.

What Allen's trying to say is not don't not use social media, but what he's saying is to use social media in smart ways like creating content for your business, creating reels, stories, adding polls, creating giveaways, questions, questionnaires, all kinds of things. There's lots of different ways of using social media, but also as opposed to just using it for ads, right?

But also incorporate back like the in-person kind of stuff that you used to do, like, you know, how many people are going to go to a show in 2023, go to an expo. Like, now I see like all the local—

like, people are back outside, so I don't know. I think the people are going to start going outside more and more and more, right?

But I'm saying like, now I see like before there was like the farmers markets and the little outside fairs where you could go set up a table for your business. Like, those had gone away, and now I see like every week more and more of them are popping up. You know, or local, like, biz to biz trade show that goes on down here where there's different localized trade shows.

Absolutely.

And they're starting to pop back up with more frequency, you know, more than like once every few months, being more frequent. And I think that people need to look at that and say, okay, well, how can I get— you know, don't get complacent with what you've been doing and go back to what you were doing before, you know. And reviews seem to be very big, like it's in the news all the time, you know.

Well, I'm super, you know, I'm always trying telling you to get reviews for the business, you know. And you have to be careful when you're doing it in Google because Google doesn't like when you say you send out a mass email to 50 people, uh, 50 clients of yours asking for reviews. Well, Google doesn't like that. They think it's unnatural that 50 people went to your, uh, listing on, you know, on Google and left a review for you. They feel like it's spammy, so you won't get them. They will never show up. They'll— they— you might see them on the back end in your, you know, when you're look, you know, uh, in your console. Yeah, no. When you're in the dashboard of the, uh, you know, Google My Business, you might see them back there, but you won't— they won't be live. So what you want to do is, for Google anyway, is you want to slowly, you know, reach out to like 3 businesses a week. Um, in reality, the best practice for that in is the, you know, for me, I'm, you know, out of the 10 years I've been doing this, the the best way of doing it is immediately after you've completed the project or whatever you're doing. Like, if you sold them something or whatever, you're in your store shopping and they're in you and they're in— they're done. The best way of doing that is, you know, getting it right then and there, right? If that's possible, right? Like, you know, you know, like when you're at a boutique or somewhere like that it's pretty easy. Like, hey, do you think you could leave us a review before you leave the store? You know, you know, you know, they'll pull it up from whatever. But like a large, you know, like a larger, I don't know, Publix or something like that, right? Like, leave us a review. It's not that one.

Like, one of the cool things I saw one of my clients doing before the pandemic was they've got a banner stand. And then they ask people to take a selfie like in front of like a step and repeat kind of thing.

Like, that's a great way of bringing Brad in, right?

And it had their, you know, had their logo on there. And they were like, oh, please, you know, on your way out, you know, shopping, hold up your shopping bag, give me your phone, let me take a picture of you, or shoot a selfie in front of our step and repeat, and then tag us on social media, right? So there's great creative ways how to get people to do that. You know, like restaurants I think have it easier because they use Yelp or OpenTable or, you know, uh, different like reservation apps.

I hope their businesses aren't still using Yelp.

Well, they— it's kind of weird, like if you go on OpenTable and you'll make a crash. Yeah, but you go on OpenTable, it's really weird, and you make a reservation.

I don't—

somehow— well, I do that when I go out at night. If you go and going out, you know, and you have plans with a group or something. You can't show up at restaurants anymore. A lot of restaurants don't have enough help, so they try to— they try to stagger the reservations.

A lot of restaurants don't have enough vegetarian options for people like me, so I don't care. I get it.

Even for me, like, I try not to have like gluten and stuff, you know, heavy things, right? So you have to be careful where you go out to eat that there's options that are not, you know, loaded up with pasta and bread and, and all that. Like, it's only sandwich. The sandwich place doesn't have a way to get a lettuce wrap sandwich or a salad. So, you know, I'm careful where I go to eat, but I'm just saying, you know, looking for healthy options. But it's kind of funny that I made a— the last time I used, uh, OpenTable, I made reservation, and then afterwards I'm getting like a thing from Yelp. Oh, you ate at blah blah blah. I don't know how they know I ate there. Unless somehow they're— unless they're connected to each other. But it's also, you know, but also when people do leave you a review, it's important to answer them, acknowledge them. Oh, thank you for coming in the store. Thank you for dining at the restaurant. You know, not just—

well, Yelp, I'm sure—

can—

does Yelp integrate into point of sales?

No, not really. I don't think they integrated the point of sale. But people use it so they know that you, like, maybe you clicked on the restaurant. Maybe the location services know you drove by the place. I get suggestions from them all the time.

Yeah, I don't use Yelp, but it's, you know, I don't use Yelp because they do shady things.

Yeah, people complain about them, about people like trashing a business, and then Yelp doesn't do anything about it, which I think is wrong. Like, somebody might have had a bad experience I don't think that, you know, they can't— and you know, that's, that's just a small—

right, what I'm talking about. No, I know it's a small thing.

Yeah. And then, you know, it's—

you have to pay to get reviews on there. They will not show them if you're a small business and you got a competitor and they're—

well, that's the one—

they're getting paid for their ads. Yelp is whack.

But that's what that same thing we talk about, like, you you know, there's no parity. So like on Google, let's say we want to advertise, we can't afford to advertise. There's companies that are 100 times—

we can afford to advertise, but we can't, we can't compete against the ad budget of these huge corporations, right? That's what I'm talking about, trying to aim for the same keywords, right? So we have to be smart and agile and pivot and know that, okay, these are the, these are the, the keywords that all of us are trying to acquire, you know, we want to be found for. So these are the, you know, the low-hanging fruits, like, you know, no, but that's gonna say them because they listen.

No, but that's what I'm trying to talk about is that small businesses are at a disadvantage against like whatever, Target, let's say, or let's say you have a mom-and-pop restaurant. And you know, your competitor is Pizza Hut, you know, Domino's, you're getting into a conversation that like, really intrigues me a lot.

And I'm, it's cool that I'm happy that I'm starting to see it more because businesses are starting to understand how important search engine optimization is. Before, I would get laughed at when I would send them a proposal for, you know, $1,500 a month, $5,000 down, you know, yeah, they would, they would look at me like, what? Like, I'm not paying you that. And you can't, you can't tell me when this is going to show me right results. And absolutely not. It's not how search engine optimization works.

No, but it's—

you can't pay your way to the top, right? You have to create content and you have to follow through. Otherwise, you'll never, you'll never, you'll never obtain the goal, you know, that whatever you're trying to do, you won't, you won't reach that goal. You have to do it. You have to create content. You have to hire SEO guy. Finally, I'm just, it's just, I'm just happy that, you know, businesses are starting to understand that digital marketing is more than advertise, you know, right?

It's just part of your, this is part of your business, you have to figure it out. But sometimes, you know, like, When I had my restaurant, guerrilla marketing worked great. You just did, you know, newspapers were around so you could do different things.

But as far as digitizing, right?

Yeah, but digitizing, you got to just have active profiles on the internet. Make sure your Google My Business is up to date. Your Facebook has posts, you know, a few times a week. You know, you just got to keep your, you got to keep your digital presence up. You know, that's what you got to do. And then let's talk about business technology that people can use. Like, you know, do you need— do you have a cash register now and you need to move it up to like the next level? Or you have just a credit card machine sitting on your counter and maybe now it's time to, you know, get a smart terminal, which is a little bit different because it sends— instead of most credit card machines just print out a receipt, right? But the Smart Terminal, you can text or email the receipt, and then you can communicate with text, email, or print, right? Text, email, or print. But most people today don't want—

they don't want to text, they don't want to email.

Yeah, they want a text or an email. They don't want the printed receipt. So I don't—

I usually go for the text. I don't know why. I don't I don't—

I like a text receipt.

Not necessarily a fan of giving—

well, then I just—

my email.

No, then you just see it on your phone, you go, okay, great.

And then it also block—

but it also gives you the opportunity to, if you wanted to run a text campaign, you could get a bunch of these text messages and run a campaign, or emails and run a campaign, things like that.

So it's, you know, I mean, before we move on, again, man, just the number one thing, if you don't have a website, Duke, And you know, we're talking about digitizing your business, and you don't have a website in 2022 going into 2023, close your business.

Don't say that. Get a website.

No, get a website.

Yeah, get a website, even if it's a one-page website. Yes, even if it's one page, it has the name of your business, a bunch of pictures.

And this goes for everyone— artists, uh, creative people who pottery people. I don't know, man. Like, stop using these services like Etsy and Shopify.

You could direct people from your one-page website to your shopping engine, but you don't need to do that, right?

You can set up a WordPress website. It's like, it's more easy today than it's ever been before.

That's true.

I'll just leave it at that, right?

And there's also other things you can do. Like, there's certain point of sale software we sell, right? Different, different point of sale software where once you put all— you, you get the retail point of sale software and you put all your items in there, and then you put all the pictures in there. And once you have it all loaded up, you can sign up for an additional service that gives you basically like a shopping cart, and then it's all linked to your point of sale, all linked into your inventory. Right? And then you can really do some crazy stuff because with that, with this website linked to your point of sale, this is like next level, right? And then the big buzzword, omnichannel, omnicommerce, or just commerce in general, right? Just commerce. This enables you to have like, you have your store, you have your point of sale, now you have your website. And on your website you can offer the same services that all these huge stores You can ship the item to the person. You could have them do an in-store pickup. You could do a curbside pickup. You know, you can— all you got to do is put a little cone outside your business, your front door, and put a sign on it says curbside pickup. Because there's people, let's say, you know, listen, there's a percentage of the population that, you know, we're— this whole thing been going on for the last 2, 3 years. Listen, there's a restaurant by my house have like 2 spaces outside, curbside pickup. There's bigger restaurants. We've talked about Olive Garden. They got 5, 6, 7 spaces outside, curbside pickup. Because a lot— some people, they're just not going to go into a restaurant to eat, but they want to eat your food, or they want the t-shirt you sell in your shop, or they're buying, let's say, business cards from your printing store, or they're buying, um, whatever it is. Maybe you sell jeans, right? And then they want to come to yours, they want to buy it, like they know their size, they want to buy it. And then if you don't offer a way for the people to do it, they're not going to call you on the phone, right? Right. This way they can go to your website, buy the product, do a curbside pickup. The person pulls up outside, right? Boom, you bring them out their bag. They already paid anyway, and you bring them out the bag outside, boom. Or the person goes, oh, ship that to me, right? Ship it to me. You ship it to them. We had a client, it was a crazy story. The guy had a business in New York and they were making, um, belts and wallets, and the guy was put out of business because of COVID right? No, he couldn't have his store open anymore. So by chance, his— the guy's dad lived in Florida, so he decided, oh, I'm going to move to Florida, right? Because his lease was up. Closed up the whole shop that was there for years. His parents ran it, grandparents ran it.

But it's such a terrible story, right?

So, but the more— but let me tell you what happened. So the guy moved down to Florida, boom, no store. No nothing. People still needed the belts and the wallets that this guy was making. People would come there and buy these like custom items, you know, that the guy was making. He put together a website, we get put together the credit card processing, right? And bam, he was back in business.

Nice.

Selling everything. Yeah, that goes to show like ingenuity.

Just— no, I mean, good for him, right? Yeah. But unfortunate that he had to even go through that, right? That— why would you have been in 2020 without a website?

Yeah, he didn't have a website. He had like a one-page website.

No, he doesn't. No, he didn't have a website.

He didn't have—

you can't buy something from, from him. He didn't have a website. All he had was a probably an HTML link, like a—

yeah, just let a landing page—

that's it. Looked like a pamphlet from back in the '90s, I'm sure.

Yeah, there was just a couple of pictures.

So yeah, man, I mean, that's, that sucks. But I'm glad it worked out for him. But I mean, that has to be— so that's just an example of— I mean, I can only imagine how many people that happened to, right? And that's just one little—

yeah, that's just one small guy that took advantage of that, right? And he, and he popped up, you know, and then, and then he started— he was lucky that he had email addresses for these customers in New York. He started emailing them, yeah, you can still get these great product, buy it online, buy it online, right? You know, and they ramped back up.

Did he get— did he open a shop back up?

They're thinking of opening a shop up now in Florida, not New York.

It's cheaper than out here, I'm sure.

Yeah, it's not gonna do that. So there's a lot of— it's cheaper down here. Well, we talk about, you know, well, it's— there's a lot of vacant space, so we gotta pay state tax. No state tax here. But I'm saying rents are dropping now. Commercial rent—

I don't want to talk about rent. Commercial rent is rent. Yeah, I don't know.

Anything about that. No, but the— well, I don't know. There's a lot of empty commercial space, so it's a problem.

We're locked in.

Yeah, we're locked in. But that's, that's that. But it's also hard to find small space. Big space is everywhere, and there's a lot of companies moving into the area.

You know, but let us cut a hole in the back of the office right there to do what?

Put a window. That would be— I don't know, I guess we could. You'd have to— I don't know if I want to spend— I don't know if I want to spend money upgrading someone else.

Just saying, man, there's no windows in this place. Allen's got us locked in a vault for real.

Okay, we're in the vault. It's the—

literally, literally a vault.

Okay, so, you know, 2023, that's the time. Like, if you're not doing e-commerce, do e-commerce.

If you have products please, you know, and we say this all the time, there's two forms. I joke around, you know, whatever, I don't know why. If you don't— if you have questions about how to set up a WordPress store, or anything related to digital marketing in general, web design, graphic design, we have a fantastic graphic designer by the name of Samantha. I'm sure she'd be happy to answer any questions that you guys had. Yeah, I would love to answer.

We make logos for people.

I do consulting on the side, so if you need some help, you know what I mean, you can always say, hey, Jay, man, I really need some help with this website, you know, you think you got some time? I sure do. Uh, my kid's birthday is coming up, they're turning sweet 16. I need, I need every $16 billion penny, any, everything I can get, man. Hello everyone, we'd like to take this time to thank our sponsors, Nationwide Payment Systems and NPS Printer. We'd also like to shout out the listeners and everyone that subscribed to our YouTube channel. Thank you for tuning in. If you'd like to reach Allen or myself, head over to B2BVault.info where you'll find two forms, one to contact us and another if you're interested in becoming a sponsor. If you'd like to sign up for a merchant account, Click the Apply Now button located at the top of the page of B2BVault.info, where you'll answer a few questions, and you'll be on your way to processing payments in no time. The podcast is available on Spotify, iTunes, Pandora, and other popular streaming networks. Thanks again for listening.

No, so if you don't have a website, you got to get a website. Maybe your website needs to get upgraded, maybe you need to add e-commerce. Add curbside and in-store pickup options to get more business. You got to get more business. The big box stores are doing it. You have to do— technology is the great equalizer. You know, I had a business owner, you know, he tells me, goes, oh, you know, $80 a month, it's too much for point of sale. What do you mean it's too much for point of sale? You got to be kidding me. You get some point of sales cost $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 with right? We have it where you could just be monthly, you need a minimal amount of equipment. So, you know, you could get a point of sale for— this depends what kind of business you have, but you can get a point of sale and then create a shopping cart in there and link it onto a website. You can do all kinds of crazy stuff. So, you know, we always talk about like, you know, what platforms are you going to use for your like social media game, you know, You got Facebook, you have Instagram, you got, um, LinkedIn, Twitter. Although Twitter is like a big—

always in the news. I love Twitter. I don't care what anyone says.

No, no, I'm saying it's always in the news.

Not a fan of Elon Musk, but I love Twitter.

Okay, hopefully he figures out how to make it better.

Hopefully the people that hire— that he hires, right, the people who are like smarter than him Well, I think that he's good at doing that. Well, I don't know what he's good at.

He's making more elect— he's made more elect— I don't want to argue, but he hasn't made anything. He— the two people that founded the company, those are the two people who started Tesla.

Okay, he didn't do anything, Allen.

Stop defending that guy. Okay, I'm not defending him.

He's a good businessman, maybe, right?

Maybe. Let's just say this, the company Tesla that's made more electric cars than any other manufacturer. Electric cars, that's it. That's, that's their claim to fame. Whatever it is, the guys involved in running these businesses— SpaceX, let's move forward, man.

Okay, forget about him. All right, I hope he does well and his children are well taken care of.

And then, you know, everybody's talking about TikTok now. Should you be on TikTok, not on TikTok.

You should be on TikTok if you know how to TikTok.

Yeah, if you know how to dance.

It's not all about dancing.

I know, joking.

You're hilarious. I love that.

Yeah.

Anyway, so I mean, TikTok is for like— it was created for the youth. But I think how businesses can utilize it, it can be— you can bring brand awareness to your products. You know, if you have And it's not all about like the, the jazz, you know. Don't, don't get caught up in it, man. Be natural. Be your natural self. You know, look, I'm sure your children are on TikTok, right?

So also, I think it depends on like what's the age group of your customers, right? So like younger customers is probably on TikTok, younger demographic.

My father's on TikTok.

Okay, well, you're on TikTok. That's true.

So you, you just— whatever you—

a lot of interesting things on TikTok.

Everyone is on TikTok. It's fun, it's, you know, it's quick, it's 30— you know, you don't have to sit there, you can scroll, scroll, scroll. So like, how I think brands should use it: if you have a product, it's great for that. You, you're already— I'm sure you're taking pictures of your product, blah blah blah. Post it to TikTok, put some music behind it. Yeah, it doesn't have to be a video, you know what I'm saying?

Hire a part-time, like, maybe a high school student or a college student. Maybe you can hire somebody one day a week. They come in, they produce a bunch of videos, use a social media scheduling tool, right? And then, then it all just rolls out. Then you have the person come in the next week, do the same thing again and again and again and again. And you post a couple to, you know, couple of posts a day. But it could all be done in like a day or two part-time.

Maybe the person comes in Because I mean, Facebook has the, the planner where you can plan all your posts for Twitter— I mean, for Instagram and Facebook, um, right from there. You can post to your groups from the planner inside of the Business Manager for Facebook. So I mean, the, the social media tools that you have in front of you now are, you know, the possibilities are endless. You could— one, so me and Allen, we were just talking like you know, I think a lot of businesses forget that you're local, you're a local business, um, and you don't care if people from Tennessee see your profile when you're trying to sell physical products in Chicago, right? So this is where SEO comes in play, um, and This goes back to what I was saying earlier. You know, I'm glad that businesses are starting to understand.

What's that other thing we use, that Moz Local thing?

It's just— that's SEO, right?

But I'm just saying, like, you can get tools like that. Yeah, Moz Local. There's one— stay away from that one— Yext. Too expensive.

Yext is expensive, very, but it's effective, right?

If you have a store, it could be more multiple locations, right?

Um, it's very effective.. But yeah, right, if you have a big local SEO, keep your mind on local. If you're, you know, your county, run, run, you know, it's like they would say, like, if a record label was, uh, looking to, you know, you, you think you're a popular singer or something and you go to a record label and they're like, well, are you popular in your hometown? And you tell that guy, you know, the record label owner, and you're like, nah, not really, you know. They're gonna be like, well, why not? Because, you know, you have the most reach right now. Like, you're that— if you're right here, you can get all this. So focus on what's, you know, around you and then grow. Don't, don't go for the big bag right away, you know. I mean, you can blow your whole budget and, and really miss on a big opportunity if you—

and also be careful when you're posting on social media, make sure you put in a budget You don't just leave it wide open. No, you have to set your budget on— if you're talking about running ads, yeah, if you're doing an ad or boosting a post, make sure you're putting a budget in. Because I spoke to someone the other day, they boosted, they didn't put in a budget, they get all of a sudden $1,000 bill from Facebook.

That sucks.

Yeah, so you got to be careful when you're doing that. Know what you're paying for, right? Know what you're paying for. So the other thing is, is, you know, what are— what other ways can you, can you, can you bring in business, you know, or get paid? So another thing that's become very, very popular is a payment portal or electronic— or using electronic invoicing instead of just sending somebody a paper invoice or emailing them an invoice, and then you don't have a way to collect electronically. You got to really step up your game like that. I mean, I have some company I do business with, I didn't even know I owed an invoice from like June of this year, and I was like, oh, sorry, I didn't get it. You know, they, they— I don't know how they sent it to me, but I had no record of it in my email. Yeah, we got the delivery, so we paid the invoice, no big deal. But right, if they had an electronic way to collect the invoices, I would have probably got the email because it's a pain. You have to call them on the phone, give them the credit card over the phone, you know. I'm not doing that, right? That's what I'm saying. So like, you know, sometimes I call them on the phone and then I'm on hold for 10 minutes and I'm like, whatever, you know, hang up the phone, move on.

I say I'm not doing that, although I would do it for certain circumstances. Like, I just tried to buy a part for my wife's car and you had to physically go into the dealership, they don't take payments over the phone.

Crazy. Yeah.

How are you with—

yeah, they should have—

how are you a Toyota dealership, like a big— this is a huge Toyota shop, right? Don't take—

yeah, they should have electronic invoicing, send you an invoice, you click the link and pay. I don't know, something that's just become— a lot of businesses need to have that so they can electrify.

Is that because they don't want people to come and buy the parts?

I have no— I probably want you to come get it fixed, put the part in themselves and charge.

I'll make you harder for you.

So no, but I think that a lot of businesses don't know that they can, you know, do electronic invoicing. They don't know how to use it. Once we show people how to use it, they're like, wow, it's that easy. And with the electronic invoicing, uh, features we have, there's actually two-way communication with the customers. You can send them an invoice, then they pay, then you can send them a message, thank you. Then you could send them a place for— you want to get a review, let them review you, right? Whatever you're using. Like, we have one company, they use Trustpilot. They put the link in for Trustpilot. Oh, let it give us a Trustpilot review, you know. So it's really, you know, other ways to bring in business is like we talked about, going to conventions, going to those local Chamber of Commerce, like tabletop shows, and getting the name of your business out there. Or even at like— I was shocked, I went to this farmer's market.

When you're doing that though, I mean, do it when it makes sense though, right? Like don't waste your time and, you know, go to some place that's not for your niche, right?

No, no, I was at a farmer's market the other day. I went last week to a farmer's market. I was surprised there was a few local like clothing stores and a new, new restaurant that opened up. And that's smart. They put up a tent. It's probably minimal, like $100, right? They put up a tent and then they were out there. The clothing store was— had some of the items. They probably sold a few things, handing out business cards and coupons, you know, getting back to basic, basic stuff. Yep. You know, another way to bring business in, depending on what your business is, is, you know, can you establish partnerships with you know, schools, nonprofits, as a way to promote your, you know, promote your business, or partner with another business that maybe does something similar to you, or something like that, to establish like a partnership to get referrals. Like maybe you do power washing and you power wash people's roofs, and then you go to the And then you see like, oh, Justin, there's a few broken tiles on your roof, you need to get it fixed. And Justin's like, you know, and then instead of like that, leaving it just like that, you could say, hey, we have a, you know, I know this guy who's a roofer, and you do a little partnership with them.

There you go.

You know, and then you say, hey, take this guy's business card. Then when, you know, he calls Allen the roofer, I go over, I fix your roof, and maybe throws you know, you have like a partnership and you're sending business back and forth to each other, you know. So you got to look at things like that in order to grow your business.

Absolutely.

You know, that's like back to basic networking I learned in like BNI, Givers Gain. You know, you gotta— you go, you know, you do things back and forth with different businesses, man.

I couldn't tell you how many things I did for free.

Yeah, right.

No idea. You know, everybody's got a free website from Jay. I hope it's still up.

Okay, and another thing is, another good way to promote your business or to get your name out there is to do things like, you know, maybe participate in a charity, um, donate to a charity, then post pictures on your Facebook and your social media and on your website, you know, because that's one thing that I've been reading a lot about is, is You know, what's the purpose of your business besides you have a business? You know, so now a lot of business—

if you're just thinking about that, you're in tough shape.

No, no, no, but I'm just saying we were reading when I was—

we were talking about it. I'm just saying in general, if you got to think about that, you're in bad shape.

No, no, no, but I'm saying like now you see a lot of businesses— we're talking about it, we're going to put it on our website soon— a purpose statement, right? So a lot of businesses are starting to do that because people are interested in, you know, oh, what do these guys support? You know, what is this business? What are they— what's their, you know, you know, what are they doing for the community?

Oh, you mean finding that purpose, right?

Like, what's the purpose? Are you— are you—

a lot of that is just BS too, you know that? Like their whole thing, oh, we're for the children.

Yeah, but you got to do more than just say it. You got to do something.

I get it.

Yeah, so you gotta, you know, a lot of businesses have all kinds of statements on their website, save the planet, right?

He's dumping his RV juice down.

Well, we don't—

river.

I'm just saying that you don't want to post something that's just self-serving as saying a statement like save the whales. Like, what are you really doing?

I seen that the other day. Literally, this guy got caught. He's like super whatever, you know, trying to do the living on the— in the camper thing. Yeah, he was dumping his waste into the local river.

No, that's no good. That's so bad.

The guy got caught and all he said, I'm sorry. Yeah, no, but I'm calling the cops.

No, but I'm just saying, like, a lot of people— a lot of companies have these weird statements on their website, but what are they— what, what's actually going on, you know? So that's right. No, I think it's a great thing. I think that if you, you know, legitimate companies who are doing it.

Like, the one— there's this one company down here, like, their purpose is to save the turtles. So like, every bracelet you buy from them, they're giving like $5 to whatever ocean organization to save sea turtles, right? So that's like what you're saying, like the purpose-driven type.

Yeah, purpose-driven thing.

And then, you know, that's definitely a a business model that is sprouting up.

All right. And I saw it when I was at the Financial Brand Conference. They were talking about that for banks. Banks need to have like a purpose statement, you know, show that for every new bank— bank—

person who comes bank with us, we open a bank account in a third world country. I don't know.

I don't know about that. No, no.

But they were just talking about like the bank saying like someone gets to go to school.

No, no. But they were saying like the credit unions, they were like, oh, you want to be like part of the community?, right? And that most of the banks there were like smaller type regional, state, local banks, right? And credit unions. So they were just— one of the, one of the talks, you know, there was a lot of sessions, right? So one of the speakers was saying like, you know, your bank should have like a purpose statement. So to show like you're involved in the local community, like we're involved, our company, we're involved with the city of North Miami, with Police Athletic League, with other charities in the area, other charities around Fort Lauderdale. Hey pal, you know, so we're, you know, so we—

I can't believe the police have one.

Pal, I know.

Hey pal. Sorry, no, but, uh, this is funny to me.

No, but the, uh, the, you know, they do good things. The, the PAL in North Miami does good things. They do that, kids off the street. They have tutoring. Free tutoring at their building. So kids can come there, they can get involved in sports, all different types of sports, and they get coaching and they get tutoring. So the people—

that's important—

they need tutoring for school, they have somewhere to go to get tutoring. That's, you know, subs, you know, that don't— people are donating, like the Miami Dolphins, the Miami Marlins, the Heat, all donate there to give donated money to the first— so that kids can get free tutoring. Very good. I mean, it's not a very great neighborhood, so North Miami, is it? Yeah, there's a lot of, you know, I don't know, under— whatever, it's underserved. Let's just put it that way.

I'm a local, but I don't— no, I'm just traveling outside of Fort Lauderdale.

No, no, I'm just saying there's underserved, you know, it's, you know, kids— some kids need that. They need tutoring. They can't get it at school, maybe because it's not available at school and they need something more. So, oh, they go to tutoring and then they go do sports at the same place.

And also, like, down here it's just really tough to, like, map what's a bad neighborhood and a good— you can't tell.

Well, no, I'm not saying it's a bad neighborhood. No, I'm just saying you can't tell though.

I'm just saying, even if you travel into it, like, I can't tell because coming from where I come from, you can tell, right? Like, I just entered a war zone, right?

I get it. But I'm saying this is that sometimes So many kids need tutoring in school, right? And then they don't, you know, the parents don't have anywhere to send them. So at least with PAL, that's like they combine different things like sports and tutoring. Good for PAL, you know. So, you know, you guys are doing great things for the community.

Thank you, keep it up, we appreciate it.

So it's important. So, you know, think about the things. What are you going to do? I tell Justin every year, probably, and throughout the year I always remember the book Who Moved My Cheese, right? And it's a, you know, it's a great book. Should read it. And it's a business— more of a business story than about—

you should set up an Amazon affiliate profile so that you— because you plug that book a lot, right? Probably make a little bit of money.

Maybe. It's a cheap book. It's like $3. Oh yeah, it's— I don't really— it's like $3 or $4. No, but it's a great—

what you could do is you could buy him out and then raise the stock— I mean, the price.

Maybe then you can make some money. I don't know, maybe we can do a partnership with Who Moved My Cheese. No, but Who Moved Your Cheese is the business lesson of, you know, hey, you have to look at your business. Maybe you're selling a lot of, you know, I remember, remember those spinner things, people, fidget spinners? No, you got to look at like, hey, oh, people are buying this kind of pants or this type of shirt. And you just gotta, you know, you gotta look at your business and go— like a lot of clothing stores during the pandemic, all of a sudden everybody's wearing like workout stuff, right? Workout clothes, stretchy. No, I'm just saying people were dressing more casual stuff. No, no, but people were dressing more casually is my point.

Oh yeah, so I've always dressed casually. I'm, I'm the guy that would come to the suit and tie event in a pair of fatigues and a graphic tee shirt.

So I'm just saying, so you just have to, you have to look at like, what is the, what are the trends and go with the trends. So, you know, think about that. We'll put a, maybe we'll put a link to the book in the podcast notes. Maybe not, whatever. I will. Okay. Peace out, everybody. Carpe diem. Thank you for listening to B2B Vault. You can always text the word book to 954-827-9818 and get a link to set up an appointment. Visit the website b2bvault.info. You can click Apply Now, you can contact us, you can do everything you want to do there. And everybody have a great day. Peace out. Peace.