FinTech Friday | Entrepreneurship Month | Financial Technology News | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast

Yo, 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, payment processing, small business, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And today is FinTech Friday. Yeah. It's also Veterans Day. Happy Veterans Day. Thank you to everyone that has served. We appreciate you. Thank you very much. Very much.

Shout out to Justin's dad, my grandfather, my uncles, all of you. Thank you for your service. I have my, my, my mom's brother, he served in World War II.

Yeah, with my grandpa.

So he was there blowing up Nazis. I'm sorry. Anyway, I know many other veterans and veterans that own businesses.

Yes. Support veteran-owned businesses. My ex-barber, that back in Milwaukee. He's a veteran. He owns a barbershop, King's Barbershop. Go check him out. Support local businesses. Also Entrepreneur Month. Whoa, yeah! Shout out to all the entrepreneurs out there. We love you. Yeah, man. Bunch of stuff going on. Allen's on his way out of town for a convention in Vegas. He'll be gone next week.

Yes! No, I'm kidding. Uh, we'll try to do a live broadcast from Vegas.

Yeah, we'll be, uh, trying some stuff out to see if we can get, uh, get, get, get it right. Um, I don't see why we wouldn't be able to. Yeah, we're gonna just see how they make it. Actually, I wouldn't do it live in the thing, man, you know.

Yeah, we won't do it live live, but we'll record it.

Yes. Uh, I'm talking about inside of the event. Don't— it's too loud, you know, we won't be able to hear you.

Yeah, so we're gonna be— yeah, gonna be at the Financial Brand Forum conference. Which is a global banking and fintech conference, and we're going to be there to talk to banks about how to capture more business from their customers by enabling them with our new Nationwide Payment Systems website so that they can digitize the merchant service experience, fintech experience, for their clients that, that bank with them, because basically then we find people don't want to call up on the phone.

And yeah, I mean, they don't want to deal with it, right?

Unless they need something like very specialized, you know. For your everyday merchant account, we have our system, 10 questions, and in 5 minutes you're approved.

For the most part.

For the most part, yeah. I mean, if there's something that doesn't match up, then they ask for additional information, so on and so forth. So, you know, so there's a lot of stuff going on for the rest of the month of November. So let's talk about, you know, we have November 16th, Entrepreneurship Day, which is the official day.

That was the 15th.

The 15th? I thought it was— I thought it was the 16th. We got— then we have coming up at the end of the month, very busy, all in a row. Right? November 25th, Black Friday. I'm sure everybody's gonna be out shopping.

No, I won't.

I won't. I don't go shopping on Black Friday. I think it's a little crazy.

But some, like, I did one time in my life and, uh, never do it again.

Yeah, some stores already have like their Black Friday deals out.

Yeah, you can do it on Amazon.

Yeah, Amazon's having special sales.

Walmart has it. Target has their thing going.

So yeah, yeah, so So there's a lot of stuff going on now. And then we have the 26th, Small Business Saturday. So that's the day to go out and support small businesses. And when you support your small business and you use an American Express card, which I'm not a huge fan of, but businesses get extra benefits from that.

That's cool though.

So that's cool. And then November 28th is Cyber Monday. When all these websites are going to have amazing deals on their websites. Hey, Mama! Hey, Mom! Justin's mom. And then on November 29th is Giving Tuesday. So that's usually where, you know, non-for-profits are trying to pump up their—

oh, they're giving to the—

yeah, yeah, their end of the year donations. And we can also help nonprofits. We have different ways to help nonprofits with a regular merchant account or with our nonprofit giving platform, all on the website. So you can check that out. And then starting off in December is Write a Business Plan Month. So that's pretty interesting.

I'm gonna write my new business plan.

You have a new business plan?

I don't know.

Okay, well, maybe we'll come up with a— come up with a good podcast to go over, like, what's going on with making a business plan for people that want to start a side hustle, you know, which we talk about all the time, and then take your side hustle to the next level and create a business. So one of the, you know, so some of this stuff in the news— there's a lot of crazy stuff in the news this week, but probably one of the biggest things that's going on is what's going on with Twitter.

Shout out to Twitter. I like Twitter.

Yeah, so Twitter—

not a huge fan of Elon Musk.

Yeah, I mean, I'm—

I don't know, it just seemed like he's a rich kid who bought a couple companies. It's not like he's like— he's smarter than Einstein.

He's smart enough to surround himself with people smarter than him.

There you go, that's it.

And put— and, and he's smart enough to put it all together and make it work. I mean, you see NASA—

just not impressed with that guy at all.

No, no, but I'm just saying, you know what's impressive? SpaceX. Right? He's putting rockets in the— in, in space on a regular basis. NASA, that, like, they can't even get one in a year.

Is he or is his engineers?

Well, obviously his engineers, but I'm saying that it's his company, right?

It's his company. I get it, man. His money— he's got a lot of money. I don't— I mean, that's it. Like, he— his, his brain— it's not like he's this huge inventor. He hasn't—

I mean, he was one of the guys that helped start eBay. And then they call it PayPal, PayPal, PayPal. And then he owned a bunch of other like dot-coms and they kicked him out.

Yeah, but because he wasn't smart enough to run the company. No, no, but I'm saying, so I don't know, like, I don't want to talk about Elon Musk.

Okay. Twitter though.

I love Twitter. Hopefully it doesn't turn into a racist dump, dumpster, like it's already turning into lots of negative comments on Twitter. Um, that weren't there previously.

Well, I think people need to have a little bit more decorum and stop— you know, everybody's entitled to their opinion. If you don't like someone's opinion, don't leave a— my mom used to say, if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all. Yeah. And that's my, that's my theory on that. I don't try to get into a war of words with anybody, right? What I believe, or you believe, or they don't believe, or whatever.

It's not worth it.

But what do you think about this, you know, blue check mark thing where he wants to charge $8 a month? I like it.

I mean, it was 3 bucks previously. I mean, Twitter Blue was, I don't know, I don't remember, $2.99, something like that, right?

Yeah.

But you still didn't get verified, right? You know what I mean? So the only way you were getting a blue check mark next to your, your name were like you were some celebrity.

Yeah, like my daughter has that.

Well, she works for a news station, right? So she's like she's considered a journalist. So like, even then, I just— because of the network that she was able to get that checkmark, right?

They took— they actually had to go through the process.

Exactly. So, you know, now, you know what I mean, the, the idea of it is, is so that when— it's not so that you're some status symbol or influencer, it's just that you're a verified human being, right?

Not a bot.

And I, and I'm all for it, you know what I mean? Like, I, I, I agree with it. Um, I think that, you know, free speech is one thing, but like, you know, racist talk, they need to figure that out. Like, I, I don't think that— whatever. But, um, but yeah, man, the blue check thing is—

yeah, like on Facebook, to give you an example, I made it.

You can't get one.

No, no, but I'll tell you a funny story. So I opened my Facebook this morning, right? Post something about Veterans Day, and I see I have a warning from Facebook. Oh, so I scroll down, I look at the warning, and I'm like, are you kidding me? So what is the warning? I had a post from a few years ago, several years ago, because I don't remember the last time the Miami Hurricanes basketball team went to the Elite Eight. Oh, that was a while ago, right? So they flagged my post because I was giving out bad hurricane information about the hurricane. Like, they don't know the difference between the Miami Hurricanes and basketball team. And from a post from years ago.

So that could have been a lot of things too, man. That could have been one of your competitors trying to find anything to get you kicked off of Facebook.

Well, I don't know.

I'm just saying, man, like, people are weird.

I know, it's—

people flag your comments Someone could have flagged it.

Yeah, that's why I don't make— that's why I don't fight with people on social media, because that's why I don't comment on anyone's post anymore.

I don't even really post on Facebook, like, uh, like something like a free thought. Yeah, because I don't like Facebook, you know. You don't— you— the thing about Facebook is, man, people don't realize is like all of that, you know, like people, especially like people who are writers and people who are creative thinkers they write all that content on Facebook, and Facebook owns it after that. So I mean, I'm— if I tell people all the time, especially my family, like, if I didn't have to be on Facebook and have, you know, interactions with business, I would delete Facebook from my phone. I wouldn't have it.

Yeah, look at Instagram. Like, today we made—

I don't know, stupid—

like, getting all these weird posts about, oh, DM me, DM me. Then they're trying to like sell you a bunch of stuff.

They just want to sell you their crypto and their NFT.

Yeah, their NFT. Or they want you to pay them and they're going to get you 10,000 Instagram followers that good old Zuck is going to take away from you in 2, 3 weeks anyway, you know, right? Because they're not real.

Exactly. So I mean, I don't know, man. I think Twitter is— the whole point of the verified thing is it is absolute Uh, I think it's a strategic way of, of, you know, filtering out all the fake accounts and the bots and just spammy stuff in general, right? Um, he wants that place to be like the town hall of the United States, which I thought was very interesting. I like the, the idea of it because I always been an advocate of Twitter because it's immediate, right? Like, it's one of those things where you know, if, if you tweet something and, you know, someone retweets it, you don't have to be following that person to see it. I mean, Facebook, you don't kind of have to be like that, but if someone has their profile private, you won't be able to see it. So there's this— Twitter, in a way of communicating to the masses, is awesome. Like, it's one of the greatest tools I've ever seen in, in, you know, social media.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean, you know, if you can get your you know, some kind of trending hashtag. It's, you know, it's interesting. I mean, the same thing, like, I think Facebook has way too many controls on it. They're, you know, they control everything over there. They're collecting a ton of data. What, Twitter's collecting our data? Yeah, but yeah, everybody's collecting our data. Google, Twitter, your phone. That's what we talk about all the time.

A lot of people say that's what, um, Elon Musk really bought Twitter for?

What, for the data? The data? Well, yeah, everybody wants to own the data, man.

Imagine—

think about Amazon, how much data.

Just imagine of all the ideas and all the stuff that people have said on, on Twitter, right? You know, like you send somebody through there and you comb through the, through the posts properly, I'm sure you can pretty— you find some interesting things, probably with a, a robot. That's what I'm talking about. Things.

And yeah, go in there and search all around. But it's just like You know, all these companies are like big data companies— Square, Stripe, Shopify. They know what you're buying, you know, when you're buying it, when you're buying it, where you're buying it, targeting you with it with retargeting ads and all that.

Over in— it's like missiles hitting you.

Yeah, it's crazy. Like, you search on your phone for something and then, and then the next thing, like, when you go on Google, you're seeing ads for that.

Yeah, unless you hop into an incognito window searching for something, you have some sort of private, uh, you know, DuckDuckGo maybe. I don't know if you, you know, if you're into all that. But yeah, man, as soon as you search for something, especially if you search for something on like in Facebook, like say you search for— oh yeah, pet stores or something, it's a wrap. You're gonna get hit. You're gonna get— it's gonna be like World War III. Spamming, right? You know, pet products or whatever you're looking for. Hey, Christian, how's it going? On the blue check, persons could also make a ton of loot from the platform they are using. So an $8 kickback— thank you— isn't a stretch. I agree, bro. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, I think he wants to, you know, Facebook— Facebook was smart. They would verify users on Facebook because I can't tell you, like, today I got 5 friend requests and they were all cloned accounts. Yeah. And I've also seen that. I haven't seen that very much on Twitter.

Instagram.

But Instagram, all the time. So, I mean, that was spam.

The thing with Twitter was like, like, Elon, his whole thing, it was like, it was a lot. That's why I stopped using Twitter a while ago. I, you know, it was just nuts.

No, no.

But a lot of them, they did it, you know, they did a, you know, like a refresh, and it got better and better and And it's— I, I've haven't really had any bots on Twitter, but on Instagram, Facebook, all of the other ones, TikTok, you know what I mean? It's like the same profile picture. Even LinkedIn. LinkedIn is extra spammy.

Yeah, like LinkedIn like got really bad because one of the things that happened with LinkedIn, which I don't like— okay, I like LinkedIn, the platform, like you put your stuff out there, people can see it. But one of the things is, is, you know, Microsoft owns it now. I believe that's who owns it, Microsoft. Yeah, I think that they own— look it up on your phone.

Who owns LinkedIn?

Yeah, who owns LinkedIn? I believe it's Microsoft. But, you know, they had the, you know, they had like LinkedIn Premium. The price went way high, right? So, and then they took away tons of the search features, right? Uh, Microsoft did. And they took away tons of the search features, right, on, on, um, LinkedIn. LinkedIn. So now you can't search to see like, oh, is the profile active, not active, right? So is it an active profile, not an active profile? Because people don't go on there and then they don't do— then I get like tons of messages. So I started basically like deleting the messages, delete— deleting the messages where the profile had no picture.

Oh yeah, for sure.

So what was weird is it's like, and, and I think like, you know, people are using these, uh, we always talk about this, but they're using these like virtual assistant people in another country, and those people are just like creating a profile for some other, for some whoever they're working for, right? Then they're going in there and then they're just sending you all kinds of spammy messages. Oh, click here, set up an appointment with this guy. It's all for the same stuff. Oh, we're gonna promote your podcast and get you 10,000 listeners.

I love the meme. I love the meme that I've been seeing lately on about LinkedIn where it's like, you accept, you know, someone invited you to your network. And it's like, underneath there, it says 5 minutes later. Yeah, they're in your inbox.

Yeah, they're pitching.

That escalated so quickly. Like, yo, man, like, oh my God.

God, who are you?

I don't even know what's going on here, right?

Yeah, they're pitching you, they're pitching you like to sell you, to sell you advertising, digital advertising, digital marketing.

I love it when they's like, yeah man, you need help with web design? Like, dude, did you even read what I do, bro? Yeah, like did you read the title that it says up there?

I've had people ask if we want to— if I want a merchant account. Oh, do you want to start a podcast for your business? Dude, we have a podcast. Yeah, exactly, right? We don't need a new podcast.

Do your research, man.

Yeah, do your re— they're just sending messages to everybody.

Yeah, then you shouldn't be able to do that.

And then I see the profile, like one, you'll see the profile, I have a picture, or you'll click on it and then it'll say, oh, this profile has been removed. Yeah, by LinkedIn, because they're removing the profile. No, because the person's going in there and they're just spamming, sending spam messages everywhere. And I think like some of these companies should think about like, oh, is this a verified profile? Yeah, you know, just like Twitter's doing. Oh, is this a verified profile? Whatever you have to do, like put your face up there and do a face thing, right? Or, you know, or use like Real ID, you know, which is that company that's verifying everybody. Yeah, for your taxes, your driver's license, and now everything uses the real— the thing, Real ID.

Yeah, I guess, you know, that would— I wouldn't mind that, honestly. I mean, I'm not a huge big guy of like Big Brother being like having all of that access, but when it comes to, uh, when security of social media and stuff like that, like You know, got to be careful.

Yeah, someone's commenting your mom about— see a profile and then there's no pictures. And people can set their profile to private.

Yeah.

And then unless you're their friend, then you can— then you can see all the pictures they have, right? But a lot of people have restricted information, like they have restricted information, like you can't see what city they live in, you can't see—

yeah, I'm not accepting this.

I mean, for— I think for like a business person, or let's say you have a podcast, or whatever, it could be a scam, you don't know. Or you see it like a friend, then you get another request from this friend you already have, just delete that. Yeah, but you know, I think as like when you have a business and you want to promote your business on these, per, on these social medias, I think that they should verify like, oh, that's a business, you own the business, get your picture.

I mean, Google makes you do it for Google My Business, right?

Yeah, Google My Business, they used to send you a postcard.

They sent you the email, like, a bunch of different—

well, no, they remember they sent us the postcards.

Now the only way to get verified is through a postcard.

Yeah, they have to send you a postcard, and then you got to get all that, you know, all of that set up in a postcard, right? And they send you the code, then you got to put the code in and verify that you actually, you know, you actually exist at that location. But I think that, you know, these things should be verified, like, even when people make a review, like on Google, like they should verify, like, oh, that was a real person, you know, did they have a real account?

They're right, they're right. The way that they do that now is if you don't, you know, if you don't have— if you're not signed in through Google, it's the verification process is going to take— I don't even know if that review will even show up.

Oh wow, that's crazy. So yeah, yeah, because we had a couple people say they gave us a review and then it never showed up.

And again, this is just word of wisdom. Like, if you're out there trying to get reviews for your company, you don't want to send it to 100 businesses, you know. Send it to 3 of them a week, because what Google says is if, if you get a whole bunch of reviews at one time, they'll think that it's spam, like it's a bot, it's not real. So then you'll just never see— and other people use stuff like Trustpilot You know, yeah, I mean, there's tons of different services, but even with that, it still is not 100%. You don't want to send out like this huge marketing campaign to get reviews on your business because Google will flag it. They won't feel like it's—

oh, definitely. No, I'm—

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Just saying, it's an interesting— yeah, it's interesting how everything works. And, you know, and there does need to be some verification online because I think people should have— like, we have this guy who has a business called dateid.me.

Right?

It's a great idea. You go on their website and you can verify yourself, and then when you go on a dating site, you could give people there that you have a Date ID account, and then they can verify that you're a real person because they take your picture. You have to take— upload your driver's license, hold it by yourself.

What's the— what's the catch? What's wrong?

Oh, they haven't had like a dating site, like really like take a hold of it yet, like some big dating site to, to kind of like verify.

I mean, I don't— well, you don't know, but I'm just saying, like, so like, yeah, Tinder, I've never had a Tinder or whatever the hell all that other stuff.

If I see you on Tinder, that'll be big trouble. I don't look at that on Tinder, but I'm just saying, like Tinder and Bumble, some of that make you take a picture and hold your hand up a certain way. So they see like the pictures match the actual person. Okay. And there's somebody's on the other side doing a fake, you know, they probably got a bunch of employees doing, yeah, that picture and that guy in that picture looks like the same guy. So they know that that's a real thing and they send you an email and you have to click it, verify your email, and they're able to do that with all this AI. Yeah, for sure. But I think the same thing, like, I think Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn needs to start— needs to get some better control over—

did you ever see the, the AI selfie? Did you see that?

No.

Is the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life.

No, no. So the— so what an AI selfie looks like, it's the last recorded—

so someone asked an AI generator, right, to generate the last selfie. Okay, and it was the spookiest.

That's crazy. Oh, I think I did see that picture. No, so the thing is, it's like with all of these social platforms and everything, and especially LinkedIn, you're trying to do business or something on that, you know, you're trying to do something. They basically— Microsoft destroyed the whole platform because like the groups don't work the way they used to work, the profile doesn't—

you can't edit an event, you have to delete the event and create a new one. What?

To—

what is that?

Yeah, come on, man. And then you can— then you have to go in, you have to share it, like, and you can—

what if people subscribe to your event? I don't know. I've had so much beef with LinkedIn, it's crazy.

No, no, I'm just saying, just the way it works, it's— it's— it— it's just like, it doesn't work. It doesn't really work as well as it should work. No, you know, for— and if I was—

if I was— if I was LinkedIn, yeah, I would have tried to sell my company to Facebook.

Facebook.

And I would have said, I want the exact same structure and layout. Yeah, the same everything, right? Right. Except I don't want kids. Like, I don't want to—

if that would really work. I think that—

I think the same thing.

I just think, like, the way you go run an ad, even on Facebook, when you go do it—

well, Facebook, Facebook, running ads is super easy.

Yes, Facebook running ads is really easy, but running an ad on LinkedIn, that's like a science project.

It is a definite— there's a lot.

It's really difficult. It's not easy. I mean, come on, Microsoft, figure that out. I mean, it's easier to run an ad on— what's that, Bing?

Super easy on Bing, right?

Like, make it easy like that to run an ad on your, on your platform. I mean, here we are, we're talking about like challenges that entrepreneurs have to take on. Like, when you're—

one challenge is not trying how to figure out how to spend some money on your platform.

That's a fact, right? So no, but I'm just saying, like, I think like the hot LinkedIn Premium, the highest one that gives you Sales Navigator, is like $90 a month. That's way too much money. And then it used to be 100 messages a day, then it went to 100 messages a week, and then now it's 100 messages a month. And it's like, you know, that's if you're on the premium though.

Right, I can't send 100 messages. I think—

well, no, you can send to your connections, you can send as many as—

no, I'm saying 30. I think I can only send 30.

No, but that's the new people, right? Right, I'm talking about like if you have a lot of connections, like I have like 14, 13, 14,000 people.

What are you talking about? I'm talking about I don't have a premium face. I know, but I'm saying I can't send multiple.

No, no, that's to new people, the 30 messages. I'm talking about if you have existing people.

I have— yeah, my context is crazy, right?

You can send as many as you want to existing people. Yeah, just saying, they limit it. They give you very limited to get in touch with new people. But they also— like the groups, right? The way they have the group set up, that's something they should copy with like Facebook, because it's hard to go and navigate the groups, and then you don't see when something new is posted in the groups anymore. The groups are there, but they're not being used the way they were being used a few years ago on LinkedIn. A few years ago, you could put a post in a group, and then once a day you receive— let's say you were in 10 groups, you got some kind of digest, and it showed you like what was posted in the groups that day, right? Then you could go in there, oh, there's something interesting, let me go click on that. So you can't really, you can't really do that. And there's just a lot of unverified, um, users on there.

Posting a bunch of, you know, a bunch of different development companies trying to have you sign up to their white label PPC.

Yeah, there's tons of that. Yeah, all day I get messages for promote your podcast, digital marketing, pay-per-click advertising. Oh, let us message people on LinkedIn for you so you can get new customers.

Let us promote your podcast.

Yeah. Yeah, that's the big one. And they're from like every country in the world, right?

Except the US, right?

Except the US. So the, you know, so the thing is, is like this, you know, when you're a business owner, it's hard, you know, like we were talking the other day about like, you know, one of some of the most effective marketing is the guerrilla marketing, you know, is, you know, getting old-fashioned down in the trenches, you know, handing out there, handing out postcards, going to networking events. Collecting business cards. And, you know, as you have your business, shaking hands and kissing babies, right?

And, you know, COVID is over, you know, that still would be careful with shaking hands, right?

But I'm just saying, you know, you, you sometimes you have to look at, you know, like, oh, how can I promote my business? Well, instead of, you know, trying to spend money on all these platforms with ads, right, unless you have some kind of automated thing where you know, people are buying something, you know, like you're advertising, oh, buy my coffee, buy this t-shirt, buy this hat, right? You know, you, you have to, you have to get out there and, and do some, you know, in-person stuff at the Chamber of Commerce or networking events.

I mean, this is local time of the season for that, right? Like, I mean, there's going to be how many, uh, events for those small business, uh, you know, like those markets, bazaar markets, and small things. Like, there's, you know, I mean, this is just a time to really utilize all the different events that are happening.

Yes, I see a lot more businesses like going out to like farmers markets and stuff like that. Yeah, even though they have a store, they're going to the farmers market to set their stuff up, even if it's not like—

brand awareness is key, man. Like, you want people to— if you aren't— if your reach is small, right? Like, if you don't know— like, if you if you don't have social media reach, right? Yeah, no one knows about your business. Well, you got to do some extra work, right? You have to get out there. You have to make people aware of what you do, what you have to offer, where your business is, what your business hours are, how to get to you, what is it that makes your business unique, you know. Focus on those qualities. Um, you're talking about ads before small businesses— like, this is word of advice I've been in digital marketing for over 10 years. I've seen a lot of businesses throw tons and tons of money away into the— into paid advertisements. And it, you know, they didn't have it set up properly. They didn't know what they were doing. They didn't have the focus area, you know, the, the area where they wanted their ads to show up, right? They didn't know the demographic. They didn't know the age group of people. You know, there's a lot of variables that could come into play when it comes to creating advertisements. And I always tell businesses to just be really careful before you start throwing money out the door, because that money is literally— you don't know where— after you set that budget, you really don't have a, you know, a valid, uh, ROI unless you're really seeing a return on investment, right? Right. Like, you really don't know how that money's being spent if— unless people are calling you. And if you're not being called and if no one's buying your product, then you literally are throwing that money into the dumpster. And you could be spending it on a lot of different things, like the guerrilla marketing, buying flyers, paying for an ad in a local newspaper or a local newspaper.

It's kind of hard. And magazines.

Yeah, but I mean, that's still— it's still there, right?

It could be priced right.

Yeah, but I mean, even if it's like partnerships with the, like you said, the, the, the local Chamber of Commerce.

Yeah, going to their meetings, going to their meetings, going to other local networking meetings, going maybe say, oh, I have a clothing store, but hey, why don't I go to the farmers market? Because there's 5,000 people walking around at the farmers market and it's a few hundred dollars, right? You go put up a tent, you go get a tent which are not that expensive, you know, like a tailgating tent. And you get a table and a couple of chairs and you put your stuff out. And then people are walking by and say, oh, I have this clothing store. Maybe you have some samples there, and, or you, you know, and then you're giving out your business card and a postcard and a coupon, you know, and try to use that to drive traffic to your, to your business. You know, it's important to think about when I had my restaurant. I'll tell you a funny story. So I had my restaurant And I said, oh, you know, I'm going to come up with a really crazy way to promote my restaurant. Okay. Right. So I went and looked like what was in my area. So I saw there was a Merrill Lynch office, there was a Charles Schwab. I forget some of the other— there was 3 or 4 of these like investment places. Of course, they have, you know, 50, 100 or more employees in those offices. And I saw there was a whole bunch of real estate offices over there. Right. There was a newspaper. You know, the Boca News, and they had a huge office with a lot of people, right? And I was like, oh, you know, I'm gonna go each— a couple days a week, I'm gonna go take like some desserts, cut it all up, you know, or some little, uh, type of appetizer, you know. I'm gonna make that, and then I'm gonna go, go put them in like little cups You know, put in a— I put in a little cup with a lid, you know, you don't— you don't want to be crazy, you know, and a fork. And so I walked into Merrill Lynch and I go— here I come walking in with like one of my waitresses or a waiter. The guy's dressed in a tux, I'm in my chef uniform with my big hat, right? And I go in and I say, hey, I wanna— you know, from a local restaurant in the area, want to walk around and hand give everybody some free dessert. So they just let me walk into Merrill Lynch. There's like literally probably more than 100 people in there. So I walked around, gave people— I had menus, the waiter was giving menus. I'm like, here, try this cake. Oh, what do you want? I have apple thing, a cheesecake, a chocolate. And I'm handing it all out, right? Well, literally all those people wanted to come to the restaurant, you know, because we gave them something free. We said, oh, you get a free you know, come in, free dessert, right? So, you know, you got to get people to come in. And I started doing that a lot through PlaySmart. So like, you know, if you have a restaurant, sometimes that's a thing to do. Like, you go to this farmer's market, you're handing out like samples or something like that and a coupon, and you can, you know, you just got to make sure it's the crowd that's going to come, come and eat there, right? You know, and I did that all the time. And, and the other thing I did was they used to have an art show, big art show in Boca. So when they used to have the art show in Boca, they had it on the street that was literally right out the front door of my restaurant. You know, there was a big parking lot, but the art show was over there. So I put up tents outside, and I was just selling— and I just had like a giant thing of waters, and some of the— you know, so I was selling waters for like a dollar, right? I don't want to be crazy. Right? So I saw waters for a dollar, and then, and then people were asking for like, oh, can I get a sandwich and this and that. We had a limited menu that day because you want to make sure, you know, you got hundreds of people coming by, you don't want to be over the top. You don't want to be like, oh, some guy wants a shrimp pasta, blah blah blah, right? You're back there trying to whip it up and put it in something that they're going to be able to eat like while they're walking around, right? So we just made like sandwiches and salads.

Smart.

That day, smart, like 5-item menu. And then people were getting food and everything, and the waiters were coming back, and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You know, we made it easy. So you got to figure out opportunities where you can. And then people remembered like, oh, I went there and I got a yummy sandwich. Yeah, you know. And we gave it— made sure we had menus for people and business cards and all that. You know, back then there wasn't even website. There's no— there was no such thing when I had my restaurant. It was, uh, 19— 19, uh, I moved here in '90s, so like '96, '97, '98. It really wasn't like that. The internet wasn't back there, but it wasn't—

people weren't using it, right?

But what's crazy was like a computer back then, a basic, basic computer was like 2, 3 grand.

Yeah, for sure.

So it was kind of crazy, you know. And, uh, no, but that's what you have to do. You have to think outside the box. You got to look— I remember I went to this class, guerrilla marketing. It was probably one of the most interesting classes I took. It was like a one-day thing.

And we had a business. Our business, yeah, was called Guerrilla Promotions. And we would do promotions for all the clubs in Milwaukee, local artists, businesses, um It was actually our inn, so we would do the promo, but then we would also do the flyer design. And, you know, so later on it turned into the— that's how we were shooting videos, that's how we were, you know, doing the club promos, shooting the videos, doing the music CD artwork and pressing up the CDs for distribution. Yeah, man, you know, gorilla promo. GPI was the name of the company. Guerrilla Promotional— in Guerrilla Promo International, also known as Get Paid Instantly. That was the— that was the— that was the crew, man. Still the crew. What up, fellas?

No, so it's something that businesses should consider, you know, especially if you're on a budget. You gotta, you know, because sometimes you can't outspend all your competition.

You can't outspend it. Me and Allen fight it. We don't fight, but we discuss, we discuss ideas and ways to, to, to, you know, go to war with these, uh, with the large payment processors. And, you know, we will— he, you know, we don't have $10 million.

Yeah, that's why we're going to the Financial Brand Conference, put our company name out there, show what we're doing, show them how they can take fintech, incorporate it into their bank so that they can help their customers get the financial technology for payments that they need to run their business, you know, not just a little credit card machine. They can do it. People can do a lot more. Anytime.

Every time I'm going to South by Southwest, we might— I don't know, that would be cool.

So we'll have to see, you know, how that works out, how this convention works out, and then we'll see what other ones. South by Southwest is like a real big tech Yeah, it's a big tech music. It's a really different kind of a—

it's tech and music and, you know, to mesh together, you know. And then I want to go for the tech. I don't care about new and upcoming artists. Shout out to you guys, much luck, but I want to learn about—

and then the last thing we'll touch on since it's FinTech Friday is there's a whole big thing going on with the crypto. So with FTX, we're not going to report on it because I kind of feel bad for that guy, but I, you know, I mean Well, he went from worth like $100 billion to like $1 billion.

Yeah, I mean, and that sucks. I mean, he was trying to help out a bunch of other companies. Yeah, Celsius, you know what I mean? And the other guy from Binance said, uh, nah, I don't want to deal with you. Yeah, um, he put out a statement this morning saying why he wasn't going to deal with them.

So it's, it's very— if you have crypto on FTX. It's gonna—

I feel bad for you.

Frozen.

You got 99 problems, son. It's a big crypto's one.

And, and also, you know, the House Financial Committee put out a statement about their— Miss Waters, Miss Maxine Waters put out a statement about FTX.

Does she even know what crypto— cryptocurrency is?

No, they're just—

she haven't even used it before.

No, but she even—

even ever set up an account on Coinbase? Who knows?

I highly doubt it.

I mean, shout out to that, that woman, you know, she's probably very intelligent and she probably knows a lot about the government for a long time. She's a dinosaur.

No, but what I'm saying is, is they put out a statement and then, you know, oh, what's the CFPB, my favorite, you know, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, those guys, you know, what are they doing about it? How are they going to control, you know, this whole crypto market? You know, the government I mean, I hate to say it, but the government put in all the rules in that they put in for the tax rules on the crypto was partially what went on with the— probably contributed to the failure of what's going on there. Plus, you know, also, you know, we're not— we don't know, but they were talking about they were taking people— like, let's say you had all your crypto there, they were like investing it with some company. I don't even understand how that works, or I'm assuming it was like we said, it was in like the terms and conditions, right? So you don't know. So the whole thing, and Tom Brady is involved, and his wife, or future ex-wife, that's probably why she really divorced his ass. Yeah, they supposedly invested millions of dollars. He was a spokesperson for them. I think the Gronk too, right? Wasn't the ground? I don't know, I don't know.

But there was a lot of huge big, big celebrities, a bunch of celebrities. Matt Damon, wasn't he a part of that?

No, he was on Crypto.com.

Oh, Crypto.com.

You don't even hear about them anymore. That dialed back. Like, oh yeah, all those Matt Damon commercials.

And then the Super Bowl commercial.

And that's here, right? And then Miami Arena said they're looking for somebody, a new name for the Miami Arena already, because I Well, FTX, they're not, you know, they lost their— oh, that's right, that was the Miami Arena where the Miami Heat plays. That's right, the concert.

I know, I've only— I've haven't been in the arena, I've only seen it a couple times.

So that's, you know, that's what's going on. So FinTech Friday, we're celebrating Entrepreneur Day. Wish all the entrepreneurs great luck for the rest of the month, you know, celebrate Entrepreneur Day, make some sales for Black Friday.

Real quick, I have a challenge. Okay, what's the challenge for everyone for the rest of Entrepreneurship Month? Go support a business that's on your block or within a couple blocks. Just go and support them, man. Find a— you know, I wouldn't say try a new barbershop. I'll tell you what, that's, that's sketch. But, you know, stop in there, spend a couple bucks. You'd be surprised.

Also tag your business like on our LinkedIn, tag your, you know, put your business website or your Facebook page on our LinkedIn page or on our Facebook page. We have the B2B Vault community group, like put your business in there and then we'll, we'll shout out your business, right? So, you know, we can help you like promote, promote your business, you know, like absolutely. We do every other Friday we eat food from local restaurants and we give them a shout out because because we had their food. So it's, you know, that's it. Support local business, everybody. Peace out.

Peace. Have a good week.

Friday, thanks for the live guests that, uh, popped in and asked some questions. Everybody have a great weekend. Okay, so we'll shoot this