Merchant Account Secrets | Digitizing Payment Processing | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast | Episode 127

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're going to be giving you some merchant account secrets presented by the Merchant Account Wizard, Allen Kopelman himself. Ta-da! Um, yeah, so, uh, you know, it's also Entrepreneur Month, um, so we thought we'd, uh, you know, double back, kind of, uh, dumb it down a little bit and, you know, answer some questions about merchant account services that you might not know. Um, there's a lot to cover when it comes to setting up a merchant account. You got lots of different places you can go, a lot of different services, different things that you may or may not need that you don't know about, uh, your SIC code, uh, I mean, yeah, uh, I don't know, there's just a lot. Um, so we thought we'd, uh, cover it on the podcast.

So Yeah, take it over. It's the, you know, day before Thanksgiving. Oh, and it is also the day before Happy Thanksgiving. You know, enjoy the— enjoy your feast.

Indeed.

And when you're— and think about something you're thankful for.

Yes.

So merchant accounts, one thing everybody should— the, the few basic— this is basic, right? As basic as you can get. You want to open up a merchant can. So you need to have a legal entity, so whether that's a corporation, an LLC, single-member LLC, you need a federal tax ID number, you need a bank account, you know, for your business. Do not commingle your funds in your personal bank account because you will have problems with Uncle Sam down the road for commingling funds. Those are the basic things that you need to be ready to get your merchant account going. And then you need to figure out, you know, what, what do you— what, what type of business do you have? Is it a retail business, a restaurant, um, a service business? Maybe you need electronic invoicing. Maybe you need, you know, way to send text payment, you know, text payment request or email payment request, which is also part of invoicing. Or you have a website and it's e-commerce and you need to get set up with your e-commerce stuff, right? You know, and then, you know, you can drill down into all types of different specific, um, business types, you know, non-for-profit B2B, maybe you're taking a ton of commercial cards or government cards. You really need to understand, you know, what your, you know, who, what your business type is, and then who, and then understand who's your customer, right? You know, and then are you like a low-risk business or a meet, you know, in the middle somewhere, or high risk? What most people don't understand is they'll come to me and they'll say, uh, oh, I don't understand why my account was turned, you know, was turned down, or why am I having trouble with the particular bank, right? A lot of that has to do with not really telling them, you know, what your average ticket is and how— and, you know, monthly volume. But mostly it has to do with the average sale because the average sale you know, is only $50.

Okay.

Across everything. You mean across everywhere? Yeah, across, you know, the whole Visa, MasterCard, American Express network. The average sale is $50. That sounds about right. Yeah. So might be a little higher, you know, but around $50.

Right.

And so let's say you have a bit— I'll tell a recent story. So we had a customer come to me They went to a company, they got set up. Now their average sale is to give some lessons. I don't want to talk— say who's, uh, they give lessons, right? And this cost for the lessons is $650. Now let's say you have 2 people getting lessons, now it's $1,300. Let's say there's 3 people getting lessons, now you're at $1,950. Well, the person who they were dealing with, you know, didn't really explain that to the, to the processor.

Okay.

All the charges were key-entered because of the way they do business. They're signing people up over the phone, right? Right. And then people come in person for the lesson, usually within 5 to 7 business days. And so they were having all sorts of problems with the credit card processor.

That sucks.

And, uh, they came to me and they said, you know, well, we heard, you know, you, you know what you're doing, and why did this happen? So I explained to them because, you know, they didn't have a copy of their paperwork. They don't. So I was like, you know, what did you tell them? You know, and it just, just wasn't— just didn't go smooth. But now we, we're getting the business. We got that— picked up that client.

Nice.

You know, and, uh, picked up that client, and they're referring us all the people who are also selling their same service. So it's very important that you understand, like, when you're giving that information out, right, what is the average sale, you know, or they come back to you because even that can happen. Like, a lot of people go to PayPal, Square, and Stripe, and they don't realize, like, oh, my average sale's $1,000, or— and then all of a sudden you You know, the transaction goes through, they don't get money in their bank account, then there's nobody to call. Then they're sending an email. That's terrible. And they, they're like, oh, I sell a website, I sell websites. So the person paid me $1,000, $2,000. So you, you know, if you don't have somebody to talk to, it could cause you then you could be emailing back and forth. And if you're a novice in having a merchant account, yeah, you don't know exactly what to tell them, what questions to ask, what, what question— yeah, because they're not communicating, right? So we decided that so many people go to those services, PayPal, Stripe, and Square, and then they don't have a, you know, necessarily have a great experience. So that's why we created the new website that we put up.

Those 3 companies, they don't care what your business is, they just want you to to use— they just want to use you for their processing.

So, you know, right, but when there's a problem, they don't really— that's what I'm saying—

they don't care, right?

They don't care. They have millions of customers.

We talked about this before.

So we set up a company, set up a system. People can answer 10 questions, get approved for their merchant account, and then if there's issues going on with like a high ticket and all that we've been in the business for 20 years. We can, you know, we get the doc, we tell the customer, hey, here's, you know, we need this documentation or whatever, and we get it over to the, we get it over to the, you know, to the underwriting risk department. We get everything cleared up, and then, you know, then the processor knows what your business is about and you don't have those problems, you know. So we kind of did that because, you know, that's the other thing about getting a merchant account. Which direction do you go in? Do you go to your bank, you know, and then your bank's gonna have you call on the phone to a company, and then you're gonna start negotiating with them, and you don't understand like all these different— what the fees are, right? So then what do people do that are kind of new to business, or they don't want to deal with that phone call? They're going to PayPal, Stripe, and Square. But now you have a new alternative.

Nationwide Payment System, right?

So we have a— you have a new alternative and a way to get your merchant account. But people should understand, like, you still need those— the basic things, you know, the basic things that you need to get a merchant account is the same everywhere.

You get your EIN for free, um, you don't have to have an LLC, you know. Yeah, you can file EIN, right?

But you can just file like a with the state. Like, we're in Florida, so it's easy. You go to sunbiz.org.

I don't know how you keep saying it's easy. You did this like 20 years ago, so—

No, I'm saying if you need to get a fictitious name, it's not easy. It's not easy.

No, we went through this already, you and I. We had a whole conversation about this on the podcast. I did it for my wife. It's not easy and it's not cheap. It's not free.

On Sunbiz, it's like $35 or $50. No, not anymore, buddy.

All right, it's not easy. I mean, but it's easy enough, right? Like, we're not trying to discourage you from doing it. You need to do it. So just what, you know, it's not just like a click of a button, you know. You gotta do some— do you do—

you got to do your research, make sure the name is available and all that.

And then you can just have all your stuff ready.

Yeah, you have everything ready because you got to fill out all the documents, you know, fill everything out.

Online.

But if you have— if you're organized, it's gonna, you know, you can get it done. You can, right? So, you know, people need to, you know, you got to understand, you got to have the basics ready. You know, many times I get people that call me on the phone and like, oh, and I don't have a federal tax ID, I don't have a business bank account. You know, you got to have that because you're going to end up with, you know, tax problems later. You know, we've talked about people that were accepting, uh, you know, Justin made a post on social media recently about the Zelle, PayPal, Venmo, and all that. Everybody's going to be up for a big surprise comes— comes January this year when all those companies start sending— you know, they did it last year, they sent out 1099s, and they're going to do it again this year. And people who didn't switch up are going to have a rude awakening because, you know, they're going to get a tax bill from Uncle Sam because all that's going to get reported. And they've raised their rates significantly, those companies, from where it used to be because they have to— now it's crazy— they have to do government reporting, right? So they raise their fees because, you know, that costs them money to do that.

Yeah, it's gonna be, uh, for everyone who's just like using Cash App, you know, like it's a— I don't know, like no one's looking, watching it or something, right? You're, you're tripping. And, uh, basically what they did now is they're just gonna force that right onto your taxes. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, they're just gonna send you a 1099-K, it's called, and you're gonna have to pay taxes on every penny that you had put inside of Cash App, right? Just doesn't— there's no way around it anymore. You, you know, you gotta— they're gonna automatically put that towards your gross income. And if you don't have your, you know, your LLC or your business set up properly, yeah, you're gonna— it's gonna be taxed. There's going to be some issues.

And that's what people don't understand. They take in all that money, right? Then they don't have a proper business entity set up or going into a separate bank account. Now you can't deduct your business expenses, right?

I mean, it's not like the end of the world, right? Like what you're saying, you know, that is a big thing though, right? Like that's the benefit of having an LLC. So for a podcast, right, some whatever, you know, two guys in a— whatever, you have a barber shop, right? And, um, you decide to start an LLC, and then, you know, now you can write off the microphone, you can write off the lights, you can write off your vid— your, your your webcam, your webcam, your laptop. Oh, you, you bought a monitor, you got an office space, you had to pay for a backdrop. Every one of those items I just listed, you can deduct off your taxes. Oh, you flew to Vegas to promote the podcast and you bought an outfit while you're out there and you bought someone dinner. All of those things can come off you for writing, you know, you write those off of your taxes if you have an LLC set up. You know, so yeah, those are the benefits.

Yeah. Or if you have a fictitious name filing and you have a separate bank account, you're tracking, you know, let's say even you're like a small— you're a one-man and you rent a chair in a barber shop. Yep, the same thing. You have your rent that you're paying the barber shop, you have the clippers, the scissors, the combs, the brushes, business cards, product, right, flyers. Right, your flyers. You paid somebody to do some social media for you.

You drive back and forth to the, to the office.

You have a website.

I don't know if they let you do that. Do they let you?

No, it's not less driving anymore. Well, maybe if you're driving to go to appointments and you're driving, you know, you're going— you could still do that. Let's say you're going to—

yeah, that's right, they let you a certain amount of mileage. It's not crazy anymore.

But let's say you go cut hair at somebody's house and things like that. You're driving around, you keep track of everything, you deduct all your mileage. But also at the same time, you know, you're, you're, you know, and it doesn't matter what kind of business. I had a friend of mine, he had a business where he was buying typewriters. Yeah, he took away— fix and then fixing them. And I was like, what are you doing? You're, you're, you're getting all this income and you're paying tax on 100% of it. So he said that, you know, he listened to what I had to say and he talked to his account. He had an account, you know, with the H&R Block. Explained to him what to do.

Nice.

You know, file the DBA, and he saved thousands of dollars.

Absolutely.

Because he was selling quite a bit of typewriters, especially during the pandemic. For some reason, people were interested in typewriters. I don't know, you start talking about typewriters, I get excited.

I like type, I like writing.

Yeah, so if you're writing and somebody— maybe somebody's writing a book where they're— they want to do it the old-fashioned way.

Yeah.

Right? And it's on a piece of paper and everything. The way I learned, right? I remember taking that class in high school. Yeah, you know, we talk about this all the time about, you know, what kind of skills, like, when we went to high school was important. Learn how to type, it's an important skill. Now it's still an important skill, right? I don't think they teach it. No, they don't teach touch typing.

You know, touch typing, I mean, but I'm sort of saying there's a keyboard though, and even on a laptop it's the same Right. In the same— nothing's changed as far as that goes.

No, no, it's touch typing. So you can just type without doing the hunt and peck. Yes.

That's a skill. That's something that no one taught me how to do that. I just got good at it.

Yeah, you get— you'd learn how to do it, or especially when I'm angry.

Or I can type with very, very little mistakes as well.

Oh, that's pretty cool. Now it's easy.

It's just like my brain is just like connected. Like, obviously it is, but it's just like, flowing through my fingers.

No, I get like that too. You get in the zone, like when you're writing a blog article or something, you get in that zone.

Boom.

No, so you have to understand, like, what are, you know, what are you, what are you going to do with that? And then what type of payments do you need to accept? You know, credit cards, debit cards, you know, you know, with pin debit, you know, who's your customer? You want to put pin debit? Yeah. You need to have a tip line. Right? Do you want to do the cash discount, dual pricing, surcharge method where you're passing the fee to the customer, which I see lots and lots of businesses doing, you know, all the time?

You check the link out I sent you about the pay with cash online thing, the pay by bank.

Yeah, pay by bank. Yeah, that's something that's coming out there. Companies are— companies are doing it. I looked at that one company And, um, I don't know if it's 100%. I think it's in a beta. Oh, I don't know. Yeah, but the pay by bank is definitely going to become an option, I think, in the next year. This is not the first website I've seen it on, uh, no, but, uh, it's, it's kind of, it, it's sort of like, I think it's really new, right?

And that's why you got to call it beta, right?

Right.

It's not like it's— yeah, they've definitely tested it and it works fine. It's so it's the websites that are incorporating it, you know, can call it what they want, but right, it's pay by bank.

Basically you go to the shopping cart, it says $50, you hit you want to pay by bank or whatever the name of that app is.

Yeah.

And you're going to click that button, it's going to actually take you to a page, you're going to choose your bank, and then you have to log into your bank account and navigate that, and then it's going to take the money out of your bank account and send it to the to, to the merchant, the business, as opposed to, you know, like, because like the big thing is buy now pay later, right? Right.

So like obviously the banks are, we're like, how can we combat this, right? So they're, the incentive is instead of you buy now pay later, you pay for everything up front, they give you something. Like, well, that one place was like $25 in store credit, you know. I don't understand how that can—

yeah, I don't know how that—

because the product that I was gonna buy was only $35, so they were gonna give me $25 of in-store credit to pay for the $30. Well, whatever, you know, I was— I didn't want anything else. I didn't see anything else I wanted on. It was something for my wife. But so I, I don't know how that's really gonna work.

I didn't understand that business model when I saw it. You know, but, and also the other thing with pay by bank is some of the companies, they're just, they're depositing the money one transaction at a time. Yeah, we're talking to a company that has pay by bank and they can deposit everything in a batch, right? So it's going to be pretty interesting to see what these products are. I mean, I saw when I was at the Financial Brand Show, there was a company there called Jack Henry. It's one of the largest companies that does ACH, and they're coming out with a pay-by-bank product to try to rival Zelle because Zelle is getting, you know, beat up by Congress and beat up over fraud issues and all kinds of stuff. And some of it's limited to—

I think Zelle should have stayed in the peer-to-peer, right?

Well, it wasn't that it was stated peer-to-peer, it was like they got— people got scammed from text messages saying log in.

What I'm saying is like when, when Zelle got bigger than it was, when then when you were able to like check out with Zelle, that's when I'm saying stuff got sketchy.

Yeah, they got— yeah, well, I think they kind of stopped some of that now. Check out—

because I mean, it was great when I could send money to my kids without having to use, you know, because it's connected to your bank account, right? So it's better that way for me. I, I never liked putting money in Cash App and sending it to there, to there, to there.

Yeah, I mean, I think Zelle works pretty good. I mean, there was just a lot of scams with you know, getting a text message and it said, oh, log into your Zelle account, there's fraud. And then people were going to those links, logging in, and then the person was going on to their— logging into their bank account on, you know, stealing their credentials, logging in, and then sending themselves a few hundred dollars. And now when you add somebody on Zelle, it sends you a message saying, oh, you added somebody. If you didn't add somebody, call the bank right now.

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.

Although I think they should have like click this button right now and zap, you know, whatever, close that down so the transaction doesn't go through. Because once that transaction—

yeah, I don't know why you can't just do that.

Yeah, I think— no, they got to improve their software, you know, that's for sure. You know, anything these— even the pay by bank, I wanna— you know, I'm waiting to see a demo of exactly how it works to see what the security level is.

That's too much of a pain in the neck me.

No, no, every time you gotta—

so then every time you're gonna pay by bank, so then you're gonna have to go in there and then you're gonna have to, yeah, log into your—

log into your bank account.

I'm never gonna use the money.

I don't know how it's gonna— I don't know if it's gonna catch on.

I mean, even catching— uh, yeah, I'm just saying for me personally, like, I would—

it's a new payment product, so we don't know if it's going to catch on. You know, like, the biggest thing that caught on during the last year is, you know, paying with your phone, you know, right? Tap and pay contactless, you know, taking your credit card out of your wallet, tapping it on the machines. I couldn't tell you how many merchants called us, said, oh, we need a new credit card machine, our machine doesn't do this tap and pay. Like, yeah man, every machine does it, like you just never used it before. Your machine is equipped with it, every machine. And if it wasn't working, we were like, call the help desk and they'll just turn it on, you know, right? Turn it on for you. But every machine that we put out in the last— probably since 2015— had the NFC, near-field communication, for this tap and pay, the Apple Pay wallet, you know, Google Pay wallet, you know. And now when I see receipts come in, when I see receipts for like customers and I look through their like reporting, you see a lot of contactless, Apple Pay, Google Pay.

Oh, I can imagine.

Contactless, contactless, contactless. Everybody's doing contactless.

So my wife uses—

yeah, they just tap the card. I mean, one day I was telling Justin, I left the office, I ended up— I needed gas.

Yeah.

So I go to the gas station, I'm like, oh man, I left my wallet at the office by accident. I have my phone, walked up to the thing, opened my Apple Pay, boop, and it worked.

Yeah, I've been starting to see— do you get— I don't know. Forget it, that's a different question.

Okay, so, you know, people have choices when it comes to getting your merchant account. You can either go the easy route, press the easy button, which I think is going to be a growing trend. Okay, with the pay by bank thing? No, getting a merchant account by going like to our website, answer 10 questions. I think I'm, I'm probably the first company to maybe try to do it. On a self-service platform, you know. And I think we're going to see more and more and more of that as time goes on through—

absolutely—

to, to get people set up with— I mean, you know, QuickBooks does it. You want to apply for a merchant account inside your QuickBooks, you can do it. You just click a few buttons, fill everything out, and then you can get it set up with Merchant Services. So we're bringing that same flavor to and combining it with customer service, live chat 24/7 for merchants. So, but you know, you just got to figure out what kind of technology you want to use, right?

You know, using your web designer, you're not going to buy or lease a point-of-sale system, you know what I mean? You're going to get— you're just going to use the invoicing software, right?

You're going to use invoicing software. You might need to make sure you have you're set up with an e-commerce plugin. If you have a WordPress site, we offer that for free, you know. And then you also want to make sure, like, your SIC code, right? What, what's your SIC code that they're going to use in your business? So you want to make sure, like, even if you use a service like PayPal, Square, Stripe, etc., even us with Nationwide Payment Systems, we want to make sure we're giving you the correct SIC code Because why? Oh, so that you get the correct functionality from the machine. So like if you're a restaurant, you want to make sure you're set up with 5812 so that the tips work. So there's different, you know, SIC codes for every different type of business. You know, you're a barber shop, you want to have an SIC code so you can put tips in and you're not going to be penalized for that, you know. And, you know, the same thing we've talked about, like the tip, the 20% tip, right? You know, you know, now, like, you know, you got to make sure, like, adding the tip at the time of the sale if you have a business and you're taking tips, because people tend to over-tip. Like, here we're coming into the holidays, right? And this is a big problem. Let's say you— let's say you're a barber shop and you go to the same barber every, every month, right? And the haircuts 20, 30 bucks, right? And then comes Christmas time. So usually maybe you leave the guy a $5 tip, right? Sometimes maybe you give them cash, right?

I always pay my barber with cash, right? So I get what you're going, right?

So then let's say now you say, oh, I want to give the barber a big tip. The haircut was $20, I want to give $20. They're not doing tip at the time of the sale. That guy might not get the $20. Tip because why it charged back? Because it's over the 20% threshold that, that your bank sets, right? Well, Visa and MasterCard.

Visa and MasterCard, yeah.

And then your credit card could charge it back and say, oh, that was an over-tip. So if you're using tip at the time of the sale, then it's going to be— you're going to be a lot, a lot easier to deal with from, from that kind of standpoint of doing that. So, you know, let's talk, you know. And that, you know, and you also have to remember, you know, every type of business is a little bit, you know, it's a little bit different, you know. So you have to understand, like, when you have a different, you know, different business types, you want to make— you just want to make sure you're dealing with— like, I was dealing with another merchant and they were, they were on, uh, Stripe and they were having like a lot of problems. Problems. And it wasn't exactly something we can help them with because, you know, they were having some difficulty. So we told them, like, you need to get in touch with Stripe and you need to talk to them and you need to explain to them, like, what your whole business model is.

They're holding money, huh? They're holding—

yeah, they were holding money. And see if they're gonna, you know, they're gonna go along with it and all that. Well, it took them a couple of weeks, and they kept emailing, and then finally they were able to get somebody on the phone over there, and they were able to clear up the issues with what was going on. But they were on the verge of like being put out of business.

Yeah, if you're tired of not getting your money on time, or if you don't know what you need, stop using all those random—

yeah, use a service where there's actually somebody on the other end of line who can answer the questions that you have, right?

Because those people that PayPal, they have no idea. They have— they're, they're all developers. They don't know what you're talking about, what your business is. They're going off with some— probably on some piece of— on their computer. And they're like, okay, you do this, and that's what you're gonna get charged, and blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, this way you can actually talk to somebody explain the business, explain how you get paid, explain your pricing. You know, there's a lot of things that are involved that these other companies, they don't care about. They don't want to know. They just want to take the money and that's it. And so, uh, yeah, you know, sign up to Nationwide Payment Systems. Go to nationwidepaymentsystems.com, get started. Solution Finder.

Yep, Solution Finder. Figure out what you need. If you need help, then there's a way to call us on the phone and we walk you through if you have any questions.

You can also text BOOK to 954-827-9818 to book a time slot with Allen, uh, or myself if you feel like you want to talk to me. I don't know why, uh, I don't want to talk to you. I'm just kidding, I'll talk to you. We can talk about anything— comic books, baseball, football. I don't know anything about football besides Brett Favre Jerk.

Um, uh, yeah, I think he just got— isn't he in some sort of—

he's in a lot of trouble.

Yeah, he got in some kind of pickle, man.

He, he tried to funnel millions of dollars.

He was involved in funneling.

Well, he was telling the mayor, governor, whatever, that you need to put the money into this. So whatever bullying that Brett Favre thought he was going to get away with, that didn't happen.

Yeah, there's some crazy stuff. I was reading that whole story, it was pretty convoluted about who did what, all that. Just like the same thing with this FTX thing. I just get a phone call before, somebody's like, oh, do you want to invest in crypto? I started laughing on the phone. Yeah, yeah, invest in crypto, not a good idea. Dogs, take dogs. It's not a good, not a good time right now. I think the whole scene of crypto is gonna have a massive shakeout here in the next 90 days.

It's gonna go two ways.

What do you think? Two ways?

Either you're just gonna be a bunch of broke people or it's gonna be a bunch of millionaires. Well, no, I'm just saying in the next year— I'm saying this next round, this next round, whatever, buddy, whoever, you know, like however this goes when they figure it out, right? Well, and the people who have all the money still sitting around places. Yeah, the ones that like really stuck it out and like, you know, kind of paid attention to where their dollars were going to be, they're going to be okay.

Well, I mean, it's just going to be interesting to see if the government actually like does a complete crackdown on it or what they do, because they could essentially put it out of business in the United States.

I think there's too much money already involved in it for them to do.

Well, that's what I'm saying. It's going to be interesting to see what the government's just going to create.

They're going to put their dirty little hands in it and then it's going to get all messed up, right?

That's what I'm saying. We're going to see in the next—

I still think that people are going to get super rich off of it.

Whoops, people already did get super rich and they sold out when, you know, when the rules changed. People dumped, you know, dumped all their crypto. And moved on. You know, it was a big dump, how it went from 70 down to like 20. Oh yeah, that was crazy when it did that. That was all the institutional day traders pulling out. But you know, the same thing, like, let's just get back to the entrepreneurial question. You know, now it's like, you know, I always tell everybody, like, now we're coming to the end. You know, we're in the last— we're going to come up to the last month of 2022. Yes, we are. And you got to start thinking about 2023? And what are you gonna do? And from now to the end of the year, are you thinking about taking your side hustle and making it a business? Are you thinking about taking your business and bringing it up a level? You know, are you thinking about your business and what can you do with technology? I mean, when I— like, traveling, whenever I travel, it's always amazing when— how when I travel, I pay attention to like the technology. So I'm going to tell you my technology journey on my trip to Las Vegas and how it changed— how business— how it affects, you know, with business, like how it all works. So, you know, obviously, you know, you, you have your app for your— you know, they sent— they can send you your plane, your boarding pass. You put it in your Apple Wallet. You know, that makes for smooth sailing. And then I was like, to check the luggage was like a whole big mess.

It's called disaster.

That was a disaster. I mean, used to be you just got out of the car, handed the guy your luggage, they threw it on the scale, the guy tagged it up, boom boom, and you're done, right? Now you got to go to the kiosk, scan your boarding pass, get the thing, then wait in a line, then you got to go up to the front at the Fort Lauderdale Airport, they weigh it. Now here's the weird part: on the way there, the weight limit was 50 pounds. On the way back, the weight limit was 40 pounds. More people were on the plane. No, that doesn't even make sense.

More people were on the plane?

No, it was— the plane was full both trips, full, not one seat left. It was just weird.

Why? So I was always told that there was more people, that's why the weight limit changed.

I don't know what I just thought it was strange that it was 50 on the way there, 40 on the way back.

Smaller plane?

No, it was the same plane. Airbus. Big Airbus. So, so then I get to the, you know, I'm waiting for my plane. I get a, uh, an email from the hotel, you know, it's MGM related. Uh, check into your room. So I check in, they ask me for my credit card, my whatever other information I gave them to make sure it all matched up right. And then I got in the— and then I got the, the app and the app for the hotel and it checked me in. And then by the time I got to Vegas, it already assigned me a room. Yeah, that's nice. So then I go to the hotel, you know, I take a taxi because you got to walk far to get an Uber. So I was like, there's a million taxis in Vegas when you walk outside. So I get it and then I get to the hotel and I just asked the people standing by the elevator. I said, oh, I'm already checked in. It was a huge line at the front desk, right? Matt, like 20 people in line. I show them the app, they're like, oh, go to this elevator. They showed me how to use it. You opened up your app, you opened up the app, and to hit the room key thing, put it to the thing in the elevator, and then you can push your floor. Then the same thing, you get to the room, you open up the thing, boom, and it opens up. That's nice because then you don't have to carry a hotel key around with you, right? All that.

So no losing the hotel key.

Yeah, no losing the hotel key and all that mess. So that was really, really, really convenient. And then I saw like in the hotel you could go on an app and you could order food and then go pick it up at the— oh yeah, you can tell me about that. Go to like a bar and eat your food, or go outside, or go wherever. There was places, different places inside to eat.

That's nice, man.

And that was pretty cool because I, I didn't understand that. Like, I went into this, the sports area, the— and they were like, oh, you have to either go into the restaurant and get your food because they didn't sell food. They didn't sell food there, or order it on the app and then go get it. So I ordered it on the app, went over, got my food, came back, went, you know, and ate my food. It was pretty, it was pretty cool. So that was all over, like, all over the place in in Vegas. But it's funny how the different— like, it's so weird, like, when you— taxi cabs get like the premier, like they could drop you off in front of the hotel. The Uber can kind of— the Ubers can't always do that at all the hotels. It's different. Some hotels have an Uber drop-off area and it is not in a very convenient place. Wow. Like it's in the back of the hotel or in some weird spot. But, you know, we— I saw kiosks everywhere in Las Vegas, kiosks to do all kinds of stuff, buy stuff, check, um, you know, you go to the store now, check self-checkout. But, you know, you have to think about these things in your business. Let's say you have a retail store. How can you make your retail store better? Do you have a website with e-commerce? You know, we have a product where you can get a point of sale and, and then you can add on a website sell everything you have in your point of sale on your website. Or you can just use the payment links in our dashboard and create, create links to sell things online. So there's all sorts of things you can do in your business to kind of like level up your, level up your business when you're, when you're doing, when you're, you know, trying to level up, level up your business. You have to think about technology. Oh, do I have pay at the table now? Oh, maybe I need to get pay at the table so that I can get my customers in and out of my restaurant faster.

Absolutely. So if you have any questions, feel free to hit up Allen and myself. You can go to b2bvault.info. There's a form for you to fill out at the bottom. Be sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel at B2B Vault. Please subscribe, turn on the notifications so you know when we're going live. Head over to, uh, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, @B2BVault. Please follow the podcast, share it, doesn't cost anything to promote the podcast. Give us a like and a share for it at one time.

Entrepreneur Month, this is it, Entrepreneur Month.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Think about it. Happy Thanksgiving. Carpe diem. Peace out from B2BVault. Okay.