FinTech Friday | Entrepreneurship Month Celebration | Financial Technology Trends, News, & Updates | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast

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 fintech, small business payment processing, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And today is Fintech Friday. Yay! Shout out to Fintech Friday. Um, it's dedicated to everything financial technology, uh, also whatever's in the news, any updates, stuff stuff, uh, we got going on in the office, uh, you know, new developments in the payment processing world. Lots of interesting stuff going on, new partnerships, new places to go, new people to meet, and places to be. So, uh, yeah, man, it's Entrepreneurship Month. Um, shout out to all the entrepreneurs out there. Keep hustling, keep grinding, you know. Don't quit, never quit, as my big bro A-Sun would say. Shout out to you, I know it's your birthday not too long ago. Uh, I tried calling but you didn't answer anyway. Uh, yeah man, so lots of cool stuff going on. Um, November 15th is the actual Entrepreneurship Day, um, so mark your calendars, go spend some money with your local entrepreneur. If you know somebody who's an entrepreneur in your family or a close friend of the family, go support them.

Yeah, or neighborhood business or restaurant, you know.

And support, uh, comes in many ways. It doesn't also always mean you have to, uh, purchase something. You can like the business page, you could share their business page, write a review, write a review if you purchased or had their service in the past. Uh, there's lots of ways that you could pay it forward in that regard. It doesn't always have to come down monetarily. Um, but yeah, man, support local business. That's all I got.

Okay, so we're gonna dive into a lot of stuff that's going on in the, in the news. And you know that I like to bring things to everybody's attention that can affect, you know, small businesses, right? So it's important because, you know, most businesses— so I was looking up today, like Small businesses are responsible for 44% of the US economy.

I have an interesting statistic I looked that I learned today as well.

What's that?

43% of every website is built on WordPress.

Oh, yeah. For WordPress, job security, baby. Yeah, WordPress. I bet it's— I bet it's closer to 50%.

I mean, it was from a survey this year.

I don't know. I mean, okay.

But yeah, give or take, it's probably— you're probably right. 50%. Percent. I wouldn't doubt it, you know. I mean, who knows. No, I mean, 43%, I was like, that's a lot.

Yeah, 43%.

I remember when I first— 10 years ago when I first started, there was like— we were— that was only like 18%.

Yeah. And if you want— and if you need a merchant account and you have a WordPress website, we can save you a ton of money. Yeah, because we can cut out gateway fees and all that on our new website, nationwidepaymentsystems.com. Click the e-commerce, save a ton of money. So one of the, you know, I follow like the National Federation of Independent Businesses, so I don't always agree with everything that they write about, but the other day they wrote an article and then I researched what that was all about and I was not real happy about it. That they want to, they want to have this proposed rule change in the— that's related to independent contractors. Now, independent people don't understand this. When they hear the word independent contractor, they're thinking like that construction worker. No, they just think about it as like one person, right?

No, I swear to God, a lot of people—

you do construction, right? That gets one person. No, but an independent contractor a lot of times can be just a small business or a small company, and they could be more than one person, but their, their relationship with the other company is that they're an independent contractor.

Typically it's one person, right?

But it could be a company, a company that's doing like rewiring your house. We work for companies and we're considered an independent contractor.

Got it.

So it's—

it works—

comes in all ways and it comes in many shapes and forms. So there's a thing called the Fair Labor Standards Act, and they want to propose some new rules. And there's already 20— a 20-point test.

So what's— so, so would this be affecting freelancers?

Yes, it could affect freelancers. It could affect a lot of different businesses because they want to add to the 20 rules. So what they want to add on is And, you know, you have to— and I remember when, when, um, I first started in business, you know, my brother would tell me, who's an accountant, right? I have two brothers, both accountants. So they would tell me, like, you know, oh, how can you treat workers? Like, are they independent contractor? You know, then you could have, like, a contract worker, right? So, like, I had a catering company, so you have people that come work, well, you can't just make them an employee. Sometimes they just work one day every— one day in a month, one day every 2, 3 months, right? So you can just pay them and then give them a 1099. It's just for contract.

Or I'm sure there's a lot of cash going on in that business.

Yeah, there probably is. I don't remember, it was over 20 years ago, right? Statute of limitations has passed. Yeah, you can talk about it.

Allen was paying everybody under the table. No, I'm just kidding.

No, there was a lot of employees, but you had to find, you know, there was a lot of rules to follow as far as still paying everybody and all that. Because, you know, it wasn't like, it wasn't like the people I was doing catering for just handing over cash. They're paying with checks and credit cards and all that. So it wasn't like a big cash business, especially like on the, you know, corporate big, you know, parties in people's houses and stuff. So they added these new factors. The opportunity for profit and loss depending on managerial skill.

I don't even understand what that means.

Yeah. So basically an independent contractor wouldn't be managing your business. Investments made by the worker or employer. So that would mean like if they were supplying you with a computer, right? That would be an investment by the employer. Degree of performance of the work relationship. So were they tracking the person's performance? And holding them accountable. Nature and degree of control—

that's very vague.

Well, they're talking about what's the nature of the work and how much control does the employer have over the independent contractor.

But still, I mean, come on, they're being—

well, that's what I'm saying, they're being very liberal in the wording, and that could— that's why it's opened up for bad things to happen. Extent to which the work is performed, if it's an integral part of the employer's—

wouldn't every business job that you're hiring being considered integral.

Yeah. So that's what I mean. It's not a— it's very bad. So the 20 things are, right, instructions. You know, do you— does instructions— does the person who's performing the service, you know, have to follow instructions?

The 20-point test by the IRS.

Yeah. Training. Do they get training? Or have to attend training sessions.

This is identified to you as a, as a contract.

Yeah, if you, if you're doing— if you fall under these 20, right, just not one of them, you're not an independent contractor.

Just one of them, right?

So like you're required to attend training sessions, then you're not an independent contractor. If you're required— remember, keywords required. We offer training, but we don't require it. If you don't, if you don't attend the training, you can't sell the product. So, integ— and the workers, like, if you're integrating the worker services into the operations of your business, like I'm selling— let's say Justin was an independent contractor and I'm selling websites, and then I'm paying Justin, he's really an employee. Services rendered personally, so is the person doing hiring and supervision, are they Are they supervising anybody or are they paying, you know, have any assistants that maybe you pay that are helping them? Then that they're not an independent contractor. Is there a continuing relationship between the worker and then whom they're performing services?

No, I hate the guy.

Never want to work for that prick again. Well, no, it'd be like if you made a website for Billy Bob's Restaurant. And then there was a— you had a continued relationship with them.

Well, of course you would if you're going to maintain the website.

I know. So there— would it be an independent contract?

How is that even possible?

No, that would be if you worked for— like, I hired you to go do that job.

Well, then I wouldn't be independent, right?

That's what I'm saying. You set the hours. So you tell them, oh, you're here at 9 o'clock and you leave at 5. You, you know, and you indicate where the employer— where you have to show up. Um, the times that they're supposed to work are required. You're doing all your work, performing it at the premises of the employer. Um, then they got order and sequence, which means you're telling the person how to do the job, blah blah blah, right?

So there's a bunch of lists, a bunch more that he can go over, right?

So there's a whole—

where did you get that from?

The IRS website.

And what's it called? The 20-point 20-point test. The 20-point test to find out if you're an independent contractor or not, right? And if you answer yes to any question, you're not an independent contractor.

The basic ones are if you have to— if they require you to do training, if you have to show up at the place of business and you have set hours and someone tells you how to do the work. Basically, those three right there were the three original ones when I went into business almost 30 years ago. That pretty much remains the same. These other new things are leading to a very broad and open thing.

It's just like a disaster, I guess. Then what you could say, you're— if you have a— there's basically like a career coach come in and he's integral. And now, you know, he's not an independent contractor. How does that work for him on his taxes?

I don't know. Well, first of all, it's a really good tax advantage to be an independent contractor. You have a lot of advantages. You could get paid into a corporation. One of the things that I see is that there's this constant barrage of laws that are trying to come through to— of what the— I don't want to say whatever the current people in power in Washington, D.C. call this, this thing they call pass-through income. So pass-through income is income that comes into a business And then, you know, then the person paying taxes, you pay taxes on your income, right? Well, they're trying to add the 3.8% tax to small businesses, which we talked about before, which kind of got—

you got to explain that a little bit more.

Okay. So basically, pass-through income is defined as any business that operates under like a corporation. So you could have a single-member LLC or you could be an S corp. Okay. So in those situations, you file a tax return, right? There's no tax paid on that tax return. It's a zero tax. Then whatever is owed goes on your personal tax return and then you pay taxes. Now they're trying to say they want to add a 3.8% tax on that tax return and force you to pay extra tax, another 3.

Their reasoning is saying that you're, you're scamming. Yeah, like, how are you scamming if you're paying the tax on the money that you earn?

They don't like it. They're calling it pass— they're like, oh, we want to stop people who are doing this pass-through income. And that's what—

so they're basically saying you can't pay yourself, right?

Right. They don't want you to pay yourself. They don't want you to take the— so when you have a business, you can, you take like a salary, right? And then you also take a distribution of profit, right? So they want to cut out for you taking this distribution of profit. They just want to cut that out. Yeah, it's basically what these rules are trying to do. Trying to—

it's like it's trying to make every business owner into a sole proprietor almost.

Well, no, they're trying— no, why not though?

They want you to be in it funneled into— well, I guess not, because then it's, you know, flow of proprietorship. There is only one tax return, right?

But I'm saying they're They're trying to make the tax laws more complicated and make small business owners pay more taxes. That's all they're trying to do. Well, for sure, that's what they're trying to do, trying to screw over the small business, which is 44% of the economy. I say it's probably more.

I think that number is hella, hella low. Yeah, because they don't want the real number to come out, because if people really started to say You know what, I'm not gonna shop at Walmart no more. I am going to shop at Justin's record store, right? I'm only gonna get my laundry detergent from Allen's Convenient Mart, right? He has the stuff I like. He's always in stock. The store is clean, blah blah blah. That's the only way that stuff will start.

That's what we need to do. We need to support small businesses more and not let You know, unfortunately, I mean, the economy is tough to do that right now. I know. Yeah, well, it's tough to do that because those stores have a harder time getting inventory and their prices are typically a little bit higher. Exactly. It's tough in the present economy, but yeah, we need to try our best to support small business.

And like I said, it doesn't take always money. You can always like their page, share their business, write a review, give them, you know, all the publicity that you can. Guerrilla promo is, you know, the number one way of getting businesses shouted out.

So, so yeah, there's just a lot of these rules. It doesn't get taught. The thing that really upsets me about all these rules, it doesn't really get into the news, right? You don't see them talking about this on there.

They're talking about right now is Kanye and Kyrie Irving.

Yeah, they're not talking about—

that's what I'm saying.

Like, they're not even covering this stuff on like Fox News. No, they don't, you know. I'm just saying, like, even Fox News, Max, ABC, CBS, NBC, they're not covering this. They just cover a bunch of garbage. And unless you go read things that I read, you know, I get different emails every day covering the banking industry, covering business, covering financial things, covering payments.

Yeah, don't just get your information from one place, right?

Yes, sign up for a bunch of newsletters, and when you read something, Google it, and then see, you'll see a few other stories pop up.

I like the title. Not word for word, because then that's gonna, you know, the same article will pop up. But, you know, Google the premise of what you're reading and do a little research for yourself so that you can understand what's really going on.

Yeah, so I actually— so in there on this website, the National Federation of Independent Business, where I saw this, I Googled it, then I went to the page that was linked back to the government. There was hundreds of thousands of comments from all sorts of you know, the, the blah blah blah. One of them was some state that had state organization of court reporters, right? So there was like 12,000 court reporters that was in one state, and they were like, this is going to ruin court reporting, this, these rules, right? Because they could say, oh, court reporters can't be 1099, they would have to be employees of all these companies. It would be a nightmare. Not just a nightmare for the— for the—

for—

for them, but a nightmare for all the businesses that hire them.

Well, how would that work for like— would that— obviously that would affect like the drivers, independent drivers.

Well, you know, one thing for sure is, is that, you know, the government has tried to really put the handcuffs on Uber and Lyft.

Not just— I'm talking about semi drivers.

Yeah, any kind of— any kind of independent contractor. You could say no, you You have to hire that guy to drive the truck from here to Oklahoma. Then when he gets to Oklahoma, that person's going to say, oh, well, we have to put you on the payroll to drive your car.

That just makes zero sense.

From Oklahoma back to— I mean, that's what they're trying to say. They're trying to say, because you can just go, oh, well, that guy's an integral part of the business. Now that fails the test because it's too broad. This needs to be stopped. These rules, like This stuff's got to be stopped because they're going to destroy small businesses. They're already putting too much pressure on small businesses. Like, the price of diesel fuel is up. Every— these truck— truckers are just quitting because they can't make money because diesel's too high, or they have to raise their prices to get something.

I hear so many tragic stories about the truckers listening to NPR on my way home from the office, dude. Yeah, like, they call into there and they're just like, yeah, I sold my truck yesterday, or I had to put my truck, you know, I leased it to somebody else because I can't afford it. And it's crazy.

We'll go on to another bill. So another bill, and that this person is— I'm a fan of John Rose, congressman from Tennessee, and another congressperson, Carolyn Maloney from New York.

She—

they have a bill, the Safe Access to Cash, to combat crimes involving ATMs— theft, robbery, assault, anything having to do— like, you go to the ATM machine and you get robbed. Right now, it's, uh, not real— they're not really cracking down on this kind of crime. And, and it's a problem, and people are getting mugged or forced to withdraw money from an ATM. And, or people are going out and smashing ATMs like a a bank outside. I saw recently someone tried to ram a truck into like the outside ATM. They didn't break it. Those things are pretty strong. Yeah, they didn't bust the ATM. But we've had ATMs that were in business.

So what does this do though?

Uh, makes it— it's going to make it a felony. So it's related to like robbing a bank, the equivalent of robbing a bank.

It's not a felony at this current time.

It's not really a It's a misdemeanor, destruction of property. Yeah, it's like destruction of property, right? It's kind of like—

not if you get inside of it, then that's when they say—

yeah, if you got inside and they caught you stealing the money, which doesn't usually happen, then it's, it's just not treated—

well, it would be treated as theft.

They want to—

you'd be right, you'd be a— you— that would be a felony, right?

So they want to, they want to attach it so that it's just like robbing a bank. Yeah, and it should be because then people will stop doing it. You— I—

you know what, maybe so. I don't know. You know, we're a fan.

They're just saying that if it was— if it was— listen, I'm a fan. I'm an ATM and all that, so I'm all for it.

You know, I get it. You know what I mean? Makes people—

they're just saying it's going to deter criminals and protect small businesses and individuals. And it's a step forward for—

if it's attached to a bank and you try to steal an ATM, you should go to jail.

No. Yeah, but if you do one in a business, it's not the same crime. So it should be the same is what they're saying. It's not the same. No.

So it's a felony if you try to break in and out of a bank, right? Regardless.

Yes.

If you just breaking it, like, and you're trying to bust into the ATM and they catch you, that's a felony, right? But it's not at an ATM in a gas station. No, that's just dumb, right?

So they want to change it. Change it, right? Change the bill.

You got Jay's, uh, you know, if I was around to vote for that, I would vote.

So it would just give them more— it would be a federal crime, so it would stop people from doing that stuff. That's it. So, and also, you know, John Rose is behind another, you know, another bill, which is one of my favorite bills, which is the where's my notes— which is the access to cash bill, you know, where, where basically small, you know, businesses— it's called this, it's called the Payment Choice Act, which requires businesses to accept cash. And, you know, and it's bought— it's good, it has support from both sides of the aisle. Even Max— he made a joke when he was speaking, he said, oh, even Maxine Waters says she's behind that bill. She goes, I might not ever help co-sponsor another bill with you, Mr. Rose, but she's on board with that one. So I'm hoping that these bills are going to get to the House floor, you know. And John Rose has also been very critical— we're trying to get him on the show— but he's also been very critical of the banks that are being critical to businesses who deposit— like, let's say you own a convenience store and you're depositing cash in the bank, some banks don't want to really allow that, or they don't want to have you to have an ATM in your business. And he's saying if you— if the person's following the rules, the anti-money laundering rules of the ATM, and the bank can— they can audit that and make sure, like, you took $20 grand in 20s, and they can see in your deposits when you're coming in and getting money, that money— that the money's flowing in and flowing out, and it's correct, it's not off by like a large amount, right? That, you know, the bank should not just close up your bank account because you're bringing in cash, you know, or you're bringing— or you have an ATM in your business. And some banks have been very critical of closing people's accounts down for operating ATMs. Now, some of them, some of them might operate the ATM the wrong way, take money out of the cash register and put it in ATM. Not allowed to do that. No. So you have to follow the rules. You know, so, you know, John Rose is out there. John, if you live in Tennessee, John— I don't know if he's up for election, but vote for John Rose. If you're in the— if you hit Carolyn Maloney, she's in New York, vote for Carolyn Maloney. She's in District 12.

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.

Okay, vote, vote for them. So that's, you know, that's— those are important things that's going on, that's going on in the news right now, the independent contractor thing. I'm not—

that is, it sounds stupid and it doesn't sound like it's going to go much.

Well, hopefully, hopefully it doesn't gain any traction and it doesn't get approved, just like the Dick Durbin thing, right? He tried to sneak it into two bills, his Dick Durbin 2.0, right? He tried to slide it in two bills. Both of them were tied to defense, and then the per— I guess there's this parliamentarian person in Congress. There's a— like, they call them the parliamentarian, and they're the one who reads the bill, and then they determine, like, oh, is there any, like, sub-bills that they put in there— amendments, they call it— in there that don't belong in there, or not in any way related to the bill, right? So they said no, Dick Durbin, forget it, that's not happening. It got kicked out twice. Good. And that bill should not pass. And in fact, Congress, I volunteer, I can come before the Financial Committee or Dick Durbin's committee and do a whiteboard and explain to you how the payments business works. And that competition does exist because that's his claims that there's no competition and there is competition. We've shown it.

All right. What you got for the entrepreneurs out there?

So, oh, so Now let's— we're going to talk about banking.

It's Entrepreneurship Month, Allen.

Okay, well, we're talking about— no, we're talking about what did— what do small businesses want from their bank? How's that? All right, so that's the title of the next section. So, uh, we're going to the Financial Brand Conference here in Las Vegas, November 13th through the 16th.

Gonna—

it's a conference with banks and fintechs, and it's all about, you know, one of the themes of the, uh, convention is, you know, how, um, fintechs should be partnering with FIs, aka financial institutions, like as a bank, right? And how they can partner together to, to help digitize banks, because banks are not moving quick enough in digitization. So one of the things was, is that small businesses say that they want to see their banks partner with fintechs so that they can offer better services. And they said, you know, offer better services like online, you know, good online banking, invoicing, whatever, whatever they have on there. No, but I'm not just— not invoicing, but having services, easy access for their bank account, right? Easy access to bank services, like they have an app and they have a website and they can do a lot of stuff on there and it's easy to, to handle like business transactions, move money from one bank account to another and think, you know, all, all things like that. And like get a merchant account, right? You know, be able to get a merchant account, which they, you know, they don't want to call— people don't want to call up on a phone anymore, right, for the most part, and get a merchant account.

They don't want to go into a branch and fill out a paper application. If they don't want to—

yeah, they don't want to do that. They want to have it quick and easy, you know. So a lot of banks from personal banking have been able to accomplish that. You can open up a personal bank account, you upload a driver's license. Usually they have you take, you know, the— you have to turn on your webcam on your phone or your computer and get a picture, like move your head all around.

Right?

And they get a picture of you and match it to the driver's license and, and use AI to identify, oh, that's Allen, that's Justin, that's Rocky. Oh, you can't get a bank account, the dog. So they were just talking about how banks need to, you know, get better at supporting digital, digital, um, products through the bank so that people can do that, like apply for a mortgage., you know, online, you know, have some— if they need to call, you know, make it easier when people call up on the phone, right? Not wait 2 hours to get a hold of somebody. You know, banks need to do that. Collab— they want banks to collaborate. These were things that they wanted them to do. 4 things people want from their bank: support digital products, collaborate with fintechs. So have fintech type, which is sort of what we're doing with our bank partnership program for nationwide payment systems. Focus on personalization. So personalization— I saw like recently where there are some ATMs or kiosks that can have like a video screen, and then the person could go walk up to do a TikTok, huh?

And do a TikTok.

I don't know if they want to do a TikTok, but go up to the video screen and have a conversation with somebody at the bank from—

that's cool—

from like the ATM or from a kiosk.

Because banks, like a customer support type of deal.

Yeah. So like, so the thing is, is that banks are closing up. Like, they're— a lot of banks are closing up branches. Some banks only have drive-through banking when you go to the branch. If you go inside—

that really, really pissed my dad off.

What, only drive-through?

Oh my God, he, he left PNC so quick when they started closing all the lobbies down. He really didn't.

So these banks—

my dad is a cash guy, right?

But I'm saying, so these banks need to have like some, uh, some transformation, right? And maybe put in these kiosks so someone comes in the lobby instead of you standing there and there's one employee and 5 people. Have 2 or 3 kiosks in there.

And then Wells Fargo's been doing that for a while though, right, with the video screen.

Some of them have it. They have it.

I guess most of the bigger banks have it, like the bigger branches, right?

So, you know, but those kind of things are going to become more affordable. And the same thing, like, you know, how do they, how do they get— like, let's say you're a small community bank, you know, they don't have the, the wherewithal or this, the service reach to have employees that can go out and, you know, put in ATM and go load the ATM and all that. So we're also bringing that to the table with our bank offering where we can say, oh, you need to have managed services for your ATMs, you know, because they might have— they might say, hey, why don't we put it— you know, we can open up more opportunity for banks like, oh, you go to the mall and sponsor the ATM at the mall. And then so that's, you know, so you get that real estate, you know, for like Justin's Community Bank, right? And you have that real estate in the mall. And then now we come in and we help you with getting the ATM there, installing it, programming it, making sure it's working, keep it full of money. And then we have ways— like, let's say that bank has debit cards— we have ways to program their BIN number in there so their cost— their bank customers don't get the fee. Get, get the fee. Plus they could put other services onto the ATM that they don't have right now out of just the basic ATM. ATM. So they could put on there, hey, they could put a kiosk next to it. Oh, you want to apply for a loan? You want to do this? So people could do more at the ATM.

There's a lot of ways, man, those ATMs are crazy.

So there's a lot of ways that banks can transform the way they're giving services to people. And especially, you know, we read a lot about, you know, banks that are, you know, trying to serve the underserved community. And that's a way they could do that. You know, if you're a bank and you want to serve the underserved community, contact us. We'll help you. We have, we have access to a ton of technology. Okay, tons of technology. And, and, and that we could, you know, and you could partner with some fintech companies and accomplish all of this stuff, right? And then offer, you know, put these kiosks out in the community that you're trying to serve., right? And then have them where they have access to cash, they have access to a kiosk to maybe apply for a loan or get information about how to apply for a loan or whatever it is you want to do at the kiosk. Kiosk is nothing but a big box with a computer in it for the most part, right? You know, but you could add other services in there like bill pay. We saw all this stuff at the, at the, at the ATM convention. It's amazing. What could be done. And companies need to take advantage of that. And absolutely, and, and, and look at that and how they can create a footprint in their community. You know, maybe, maybe there's a credit union, right? And it's for a certain bunch of different types of companies, and those companies have office buildings. Maybe you got to put an ATM and a kiosk in those office buildings to service those employees. So they don't have to go drive to the branch.

This makes sense, you know.

There's different things that can be done now. It's, it's pretty old, you know. So that's what people are— it says this is what people are looking for. They want to be able to open a personal or business account online. They want to be able to open a merchant account quickly and maybe not use the 3 people we always talk about, P, S, and S. Right. And like we said, you know, so, and, and 45% of bank customers say they want their bank to partner with more fintechs to offer more fintech-type services. And fintech services are basically a service where you can fill in your information and then get approved for the service, right? That's what they want, you know. And we're bringing all of that to our website, Nationwide Payments This is where first we launched the merchant services. The next product coming, which we should have ready soon, is the nonprofit website, a tool for non-for-profits to run their non-for-profit and get donations. And then we're going to bring other tools into that, uh, into, into, into the website. Hey, Mama! Hey, Justin's mom! So, and then they say, then, and then another thing that small businesses say is that 60% of small businesses say they would move to a community bank or regional bank if those banks offered more digital services. So it's a really great way to get more people to come to your bank, to bring more digital services, because it's important, you know, it's important for small businesses because now everybody, every business is like understaffed. Right? So if you're understaffed, then it's harder for you to go to the bank physically, right? And if you have any cash, you want to be able to go drop it off some, you know, drop it off at the bank. And a lot of banks got rid of that night deposit thing, you know. Now some of them are putting in a new style ATMs where you can drop a pile of cash on it, right, and not put it in one by one by one, you know, stack, and then it gets—

spits it back out at you, right?

So, you know, it's important that banks get to— get— take technology. And we always say this, and I'm think— we talk about it all the time in the podcast: technology is the great equalizer. So investing in technology can help your bank be— look bigger and attract customers who want to work with a bank that is using technology. I mean, a lot of banks, you go to their website, says, oh, you need a merchant account, you have to go and call a phone number, deal with people over the phone that you don't know. Then those customers get— they sometimes say, I don't want to do that. They just go on to PayPal, Stripe, and Square, do it, get their merchant account. So we're giving you the ability to to give your customer that experience that they want. Customers want the fintech experience.

Yeah, they do.

That's what they want. I'm reading about it, like I started reading this new website, The Financial Brand, and getting their newsletter. And you just, every day you just reading all of these, you know, different stories from different places, and they're talking about, you know, digitization of banks. Fintechs, and fintechs are starting to take over a little bit into the bank, taking a bite out of the banks.

They're worried about fintech, right?

Because they're taking a bite out of the banking business. Well, banks need to fight back and partner with the right— partner with fintechs to bring services in. You know, make it easy for your customer to get a credit card, online application. Make it easy for them to open a bank account. Make it easy for them to, to, you know, you know, do video calling, right? You don't need to go to the— you know, they don't— people don't want to come to the bank because they can go online and go find a service to go take care of that. So partner with the companies who can— where you can get these different things, right? You know, add the services on that your customers want and need for their business. So like when they want— like it was a big pain in the butt, like when the pandemic started, right? Right. So I wanted to get PPP. I go to my bank, they're like, whatever. They, they couldn't— they didn't have enough staff to handle it, you know. So then I ended up going to Kabbage, right? Yeah. And that's a fintech. Went online, Some of my other friends went to Kabbage. Other people used a couple of other different fintech companies.

There were so many places you could do it, right?

And then that— and then some of them ended up— there's a bunch of them now ended up in lawsuits because they didn't file the forgiveness paperwork. So I was telling somebody the other day that called me on the phone, was referred to me, and I was like, listen, we don't help with that. I said, I can advise you. I said, the first thing I advise you of is If you haven't heard from the SBA and you got PPP money, or you got any kind of money, you need to go to the SBA website. You need to register your business there, call them on the phone, find out if you have an account there, if you owe any money, because people are finding out now. There was just an article in the South Florida Business Journal about all that, that people didn't realize that they had to file forgiveness paperwork. Or they didn't file it, or maybe they filed it but it didn't get filed by the fintech company in a timely manner, and now they owe money back to the SBA. They don't have the money, or they got money from the SBA and they didn't know it was a loan, or they got too much, right? Or they got too much money and then they sent in their reporting and then the SBA didn't communicate with them. I got some weird note from the SBA because they sent money into my bank account. I said, I didn't ask for that money, take it back, right? Take the money back. So I sent the money back to them, they're like, oh, you owe us $10.83 of interest. So I was like, what? That doesn't make any sense whatsoever, right? So I just paid it and just moved on. But I know somebody else that found out that they owe over $100 grand.

That's tough.

So I'm like, what, how much money did you get? The guy told me, how much you got? And I I was like, well, maybe you got too much. How did you— you need to call up the SBA. Because he goes, oh, I thought it was a fake email. And his friend said, hey, talk to this guy, someone that knows me, that said he's knowledgeable about a lot of different things. So I told— I spent about half an hour talking to him on the phone, and I was like, listen, you got to get on— first thing to do is go to the SBA website, Go on there, call them on the phone like early in the morning, but they're usually pretty good about answering the phone. And get someone on the phone, tell them the name of your business, federal tax ID, say, hey, do I have an account here, blah blah blah, what's the status of my account? And then figure it out from there what needs to get done. Because if you're getting letter from them in the mail saying you owe money, you obviously owe money, and they probably put a lien against your business. That you don't even know about.

Not good.

And yeah, and they— and also they try— they'll do that, you know, Small Business Association loans. A lot of people don't realize this. When you go to the SBA or you go to your bank and they get you an SBA loan, they usually put a lien against some kind of property, like your business property or personal property. So they'll put a lien on your house. So you don't want it to go that far.

IRS will do whatever.

Yeah, the IRS, I'll just suck money out of your bank account, freeze everything. Yeah, they just, they just take the money. If they can't get it, then they'll freeze your account, but they'll just take— I mean, we've seen it where we had a client one time and he owed money to the IRS, and every once in a while they would send a note to the credit card processor and they would snatch a couple of batches, the whole batch.

Wow.

Yeah, and just keep it. And then we would get a call from the You know, we— the first time it happened, I only had it happen to 2 customers. One guy owed like a million dollars to the IRS, and the other guy owed them a couple hundred grand.

Well, I can see then why they were taking the money, right?

So they send a note to the credit card processor, oh, we want money, and then whatever batches come in over whatever period of time they ask, they hold it all and send it to the IRS. And the guy's like, why am I supposed to run my business? I go, it's not going to matter. You can switch credit card processors. They're going to find out where they're, they're monitoring your bank account or something. They're going to find out that you did that. They're going to contact them and they're going to get a portion of your proceeds too. So I always tell people, if you owe money to the IRS, go set up a payment plan, right? So that— and pay them. So they're not going in your bank account snatching out money and all that. The same thing happened with Bitcoin. People had Bitcoin and then they didn't pay taxes on when they sold the Bitcoin, and then they had Bitcoin, and then the federal government went into Coinbase and gave them a list of people and they seized— I don't remember if it was $30 million or $30 billion in, in Bitcoins.

I don't know.

Like a couple of years ago. It was, it was in the beginning when we were doing the pot— when some of the first podcasts we talked about. Yeah. And then, then the federal government went out because they don't want Bitcoin, so they sold it all, right? And they were selling it like for— they were so— they didn't even care what price they were getting. They were just selling it to get the money that was owed to them for taxes. So the, the rule is, if you owe money to the government, make sure you're on a payment plan. Do not ignore the government. No. So yeah, but I mean, I would just say like, you know, make sure that you're monitoring— like, follow— if you're interested in like some of the things that we talk about, you can follow the Financial Committee for the House of Representatives, the Financial Committee for the Senate. If you go to like— I'm not a sponsor of the National Federation of Business and National Federation of Independent Business, NFIB. I don't— I'm not a member of their organization, but I follow the website and get the newsletter. So because they will write about these different laws that are coming in that affect independent business owners, nice. You know, I don't think that there's enough representation because the SBA is not looking out for us. And, uh, I don't see like the Chamber of Commerce looking out for everybody, you know, you know what I mean? Like, there's no— there's not a lot of— there's a lot of small organizations, and you have to kind of like— that's why you have to look at these different things and keep up with what's going on, because you don't want to get caught where all of a sudden they put a law in and then you find out like 'Oh, I hired a handyman and now I have to make them an employee.' Like, I don't know. I hope none of this passes because this is all way too written in a general nature, right? So they're leaving it up to very general interpretation, you know. But I see, you know, these laws are very anti-small business, and we've talked about this. You know, a small business is 0 to 100 and $100,000 to $500,000 is a medium-sized business. And those are the businesses that they're coming after. They're coming after the people that are, you know, if you think about it, if let's just say 50% of the businesses are small businesses, right? It's actually probably more than that. I mean, you just drive down like you come out of the office, right? Right. You drive over here to Powerline Road, go north, go south, right? You're going to just pass business after business after business. In an office park, you know, these in a little office park, there's 30, 40, 50 businesses. Every one of those is a small business, right? So, you know, then you're going to pass BJ's. So how many businesses did you pass before you got to BJ's? A couple hundred, easy, right? So they outnumbered the big businesses. Mm-hmm. That small business outnumbers them. So that's why I say the number, you know, I think the number 43% is low. 44% is low. I think it's more like 50%, but they're saying it's 40% of the— 44% of the US economy, right? So that's possible that that's what they're generating, 44% of the sales in the US economy. I mean, the other 60— the other 56% is big businesses and independent contractors. Well, no, Independent contractors is included in small business. Oh yeah, because it's— yeah, right, because they have one employee. So that's the podcast today. Um, look for us to do, you know, some special— we're gonna have a special podcast each week during November celebrating Entrepreneur Month. And if you have questions for us, or maybe you're an entrepreneur, you want to come on and tell your story sometime, let us know. Write it in the comments, send us an email, go to the website b2bvault.info. Yeah, follow us on social media—

Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter—

@B2BVault. And we're on all the podcast apps that you can think of, anywhere you listen to a podcast. If you have a favorite podcast app and we're not on there, let us know.

Yeah, please do.

And check us—

interested to know.

Yeah, yeah, we can, uh, check us out on YouTube. That way you can see our—

yeah, subscribe to the channel on YouTube.

Yep, subscribe and follow us on YouTube. And you can leave comments or questions on Facebook, Instagram, although I get weird messages on Instagram.

Everyone's trying to sell me an NFT.

No, I— on Instagram, on Instagram I get people, oh, let us promote your page, let us promote your page, uh, we'll get you 10 million followers. I don't know where they're going to be, but yeah, but they're going to get us millions of followers for only $99. Yep. So yeah, I don't fall for that, you know. And the other thing is, is, you know, and we'll get into that later, but we'll probably do another podcast about the— by before the end of the month about holidays. And don't fall for any scams during the holiday season because it's very important. This is when the scammers come out. Scammers come out at night. Yeah, the scammers come out. So peace out, carpe diem, happy Friday. And have a great weekend. Be the beefball. Peace.