Port Workers Going On Strike! Crazy News Stories Of The Week | Biz To Biz Podcast

You are now watching the Biz to Biz podcast with Allen and Justin. Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Jeff Van Gundy of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. What's up, brody?

Thought I was going to be Stan Van Gundy.

Yeah, it's not as cool as—

not as cool as Jeff Van Gundy. Jeff Van Gundy.

Didn't Jeff Van Gundy get caught smoking crack and shit?

I don't know. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. You did? Yeah.

I could be mistaken. I don't want to, I'm sorry. But I know that he was, I feel like he was in some legal trouble that had to deal with either prostitution and a white substance.

Uh-oh. I don't know. I have to look that up.

Yeah.

Do some fact checking, Sean.

Man, real quick, let's have a, you know, rest in peace to Pete Rose.

Yeah, rest in peace. Johnny, what'd they call him? Charlie Hustle.

Yeah, rest in peace Pete Rose and to Dikembe Mutombo.

Yeah.

Man, moment of silence. Rest in peace, brothers. Yep. So that was sad.

Pete Rose, the Big Red Machine.

You know, Dikembe was so young, bro. I mean, he was only like 56 years old.

Yeah, he was very young.

He had brain cancer. No, no, no.

No, no, no.

Dude used to, man, he was, Giannis was working out. You know, he was being coached by Dikembe.

Right. I'll tell you what was crazy, uh, he like blocked Jordan one time and then Jordan dunked on him on the Tumbo. And then after he dunked on the Tumbo, he gave him the—

Oh yeah, I remember that. That was like my— that was when I loved basketball as a kid. I mean, that— it was so exciting, you know. You had John Starks, Reggie Miller, um, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird was still playing, Magic Johnson was playing, Isaiah Thomas.

Oh yeah.

I mean, I can just keep going and going and going and going. Like, literally, uh, you know, yeah, they were great. Karl Malone, John Stockton, Clyde the Glide. You had Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton, Vlade Divac, bro. Like, I— it's just insane to think of, like, all the best. Steve Nash, bro. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Like, the whole, the whole— that whole West Coast, you know. What was the little guy from, uh, Phoenix's name?

Well, Bugsy.

Well, no, that was—

he played for, um, Spud Webb.

Yeah, he played for— he played on it, Charlotte. Dominique, man, he was a monster with the windmill dunk. Uh, no, I'm not talking about him.

Dominique Wilkins and Larry Kevin Johnson. Kevin Johnson.

Kevin Johnson, you know what I'm saying?

There was a lot of good battles back in the day.

Dan Marley from Phoenix. Yeah, you know, I just All of that.

Don't leave out the round mound of rebound, Charles Barkley.

And Barkley, bro, like, then you had Penny Hardaway and Shaq and it was a constant like influx of— Ray Allen, Glen Robinson. Like when I was in like from the late '80s to the late '90s.

The mid, was like the mid-'80s. Like the mid-'80s.

That decade, I mean, I was 5 months old in '85, so you know.

I don't remember.

I want to say '88. Jordan came in '88, bro. Basketball Sunday and Saturday— I mean, Saturday morning basketball, you— there was— that was what was— you was doing. But yeah, man, rest in peace to both of them. Great, great legends. Legendary. You know, it's— it really sucks that Pete Rose never had an opportunity to get into the Hall of Fame.

I think they should put him in now.

That's, but that's whack, you know? And I, you know, there's a podcast called Drink Champs that I watch.

Yeah.

And they're, besides being known for getting heavily intoxicated on the podcast, they also started this thing where they like, they give flowers to people in the hip hop culture.

Okay.

While they're still alive. Okay. You know what I'm saying? And you know, I did see that SportsCenter had them on air not too long ago. So that was really cool. You know what I mean? So, and I did see that there's been like a push to try to like clean him up a little bit. Yes. But Pete Rose is a part— dude partied, you know what I'm saying?

He admitted it.

He loves to party and shit.

So, but he used to have a restaurant down here, Pete Rose's All-Star Cafe. I remember going there and he would be sitting in a booth and if you just walked up, he'd give you an autograph. I think I have an autograph from him.

I don't know if he was a good guy or not, but I mean, at the end of the day, no, but he was— I mean, obviously he was He was just a guy.

No, he was nice to everybody. He lived in Boca. So speaking of basketball, yesterday it's all over the news. There's this two guys, Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes, have this All About the Smoke podcast.

All the Smoke?

All the Smoke.

Is that it? All the Smoke?

I thought it's All About the Smoke.

No, it's not all about anything. With the Smoke or some shit like that. Whatever. All the Smoke. It's All the Smoke. I'm gonna find it.

Okay, so yesterday they had Kamala Harris on there and they're interviewing her and she's talking about, oh yeah, when I was young, I used to go clubbing, you know, and she's talking about like, I don't know if she was underage, but she sort of— All the Smoke. All the Smoke. Okay, so she's like, yeah, I used to go out clubbing and my friend, somebody had a Cadillac Seville, we used to roll up to the club. And then she's like, yeah, she goes, they need to legalize weed. We need to legalize weed. They're like, whoa, that's some old school.

She said weed, not cannabis. Oh yeah.

And then, I mean, you know, now she's whatever. I mean, the— they— when she was a prosecutor, she locked up thousands of people just for smoking weed.

Not true. Okay, that's, that's just, just—

well, she was in charge of the— she was the attorney general. Yeah. So what the hell? You're in charge.

She's in charge, but she's not looking at what— she's trying to get convictions. I, you know, I'm not— FTP all day, every day, you know what I mean? Let's burn it down and start over. I'm with that. But at the end, I mean, the whole narrative of Kamala, like locking people up. It's just not true, and people need to do the knowledge for themselves and stop listening.

Okay, well, she was the person—

let's stop talking about politics on the podcast.

Okay.

Anyway, man, I don't know, did you see the, the big thing in the tech industry right now is, uh, WP Engine? Well, it's WordPress versus WP Engine. Uh, WP Engine is like a hosting platform, right? And WordPress is a content management system, correct? Where, you know, you need them both if you want to have a website in the world today. Well, WP Engine is not WordPress, right? They're not affiliated at all in any way. Um, so the owner, uh, well, like the, the creator, the co-founder of WordPress, uh, what's named Matt— how do you pronounce his last name— Millerweg or something like that. He wrote a blog post earlier in the month basically just shitting on WP Engine as a whole. So like they sell you like it's this—

we have it, don't we? No. I thought we had WP Engine. No. No? Okay.

We use GoDaddy for hosting.

Yeah, but I thought we used some program from them. No. Okay.

No, don't use WP Engine. WP Engine is a hosting platform.

Okay, well, we don't use that.

No, no, we do not. Um, so you just messed my whole train of thought up here. Uh, so, so basically saying like the guy wrote the blog post and he was saying that, you know, you're not buying, you know, WordPress is not affiliated with this, you know, whatever. And they've been benefiting and making money off WordPress because of WP.

Okay, right.

Like, so, and they sell you it like it's this marriage, match made in heaven, right?

Okay.

But they don't tell you that WP Engine doesn't tell the customers that they shut off, um, revisions so that you know, you make an update to your website on any other platform, it stores unlimited revisions, right? So like if you make a mistake and you delete something, you know, you can go back, right? With WP Engine, you cannot. Wow. Unless you call customer support and they turn it on for you, and they only give you 3 revisions. Okay, what that— I don't even know what that means.

That's crazy, right? So I mean, we have like on the— I know like we have WordPress, um, managed WordPress on GoDaddy, and then that automatically backs up everything.

That's not what I'm talking about. Okay, so relax. All right, anyway, um, so that's his other thing. So like the dude from— Matt from, uh, Automattic is the big company. And then WordPress, whatever, whatever. Okay, Matt, uh, he turns off automatic updates for all of the WP Engine websites. So if you try— so if you manage like how I manage websites for us, and if I wanted to go into the backend of GoDaddy and I just started updating it sites through there without logging into the website, which is what I do, right? Um, it's the, you know, it's just way easier. Uh, and so if you do that, you can't do that on WP Engine anymore.

Uh-oh.

So it's really, it's a, you know, kind of messed up because, you know, at the end of the day, a lot of businesses are being affected by it because, you know, there's still a lot in the industry. There's a lot of businesses that may manage the website themselves but host it with somebody, right? You might like me You know what I mean? So they update it, but then whatever, you know, it's just like, it's just a, you know, it's— but then at the end of the day, those ones that don't and they need this site updated and they can't unless they log into it and don't know how, now they're, you know, they're kind of shit out of luck. So what a mess. Yeah, I don't know what's gonna happen. A bunch of cease and desist orders have been sent, uh, by both parties.

So yeah, hosting has always been like a crazy business, and you know, I— whatever, I have my love-hate relationship with GoDaddy, other web hosts and all that.

I mean, GoDaddy's, from when I started this shit, like, has gotten extremely better. But as you know, I use Bluehost for my company, and I, you know, I don't I've like kind of like grown with them, so I had— it's, you know, it's like one of those things with every hosting company, it's just a pain in the ass after a while. Once you get into managing like 25 to 30 websites and up, yeah, you're— it's, it can turn into a mess quick. So, you know, it's really important to have good reliable hosting. And I mean, from what I've always heard, WP Engine is a great, you know, uh, hosting platform to use.

I think we talked about it once.

It's expensive. It is expensive for what we would use it. We wouldn't use it for its capabilities, right? Whatever. But GoDaddy's fine for us. Yeah, GoDaddy is, you know, except when they throttle certain websites, because I know that you— they do, because we're on— that's, that's the whole, you know, because when you're on managed hosting, you're on a whole bunch of— you're on one server with We're not supposed to be, but it's bullshit. Don't believe that.

I know that. That's what I'm saying. You don't know if you get what you pay for hosting. It's in the cloud, it's somewhere else. You don't see it. It's not like they go, oh, here's your machine, right? I mean, here you have a picture of it.

It's just on some giant server in some warehouse in the middle of Antarctica somewhere, or Maine. Oh, somewhere cool. I mean, I know a couple companies that have like, you know, like their own servers. Um, Red Anvil is one of them, I think. I don't even know if they're still in business, but that was one that's— no, I mean, that's like they bought a warehouse and bought a bunch of servers and they host. It's very— they were— it was expensive as hell.

Yeah, it's expensive. I mean, the one that— so, you know, in the financial stuff, there's like this, um, the company that owns Zelle called Early Warning. They had this product that we've talked about before on the podcast called Pays, P-A-Y-S. And now they started enrolling more and more banks into it.

Okay.

I don't know if they've reached enough, but it's supposed to cut— merchants don't need to install anything special on their website. But what it does is if you're a customer and your card is enrolled in Pays, like it sends you a text message so you can like okay your transaction. So it kind of can cut down on fraud.

Like out in Europe?

Yeah, like in Europe. And you know, I don't know why that's not incorporated into all credit cards, period.

I mean, it looks like it's about to be.

Yeah, well, hopefully all the banks start to participate with it because it's going to definitely be especially with the amount of data that's been breached lately. There's just so many, uh, so much stuff out there in the dark.

But I don't think— I think at the end of the day, it's just putting a lot of, you know, pressure on the, like, the cell phone providers. Because what, what makes you— me believe that my shit is safe on my cell phone?

Yeah, the other day.

So I just don't, you know, I think that we're in a really very weird space with that. Yeah, no, definitely. And it needs, you know, people need, you know, I'm sure engineers and people who work for the companies in the telecommunications world are constantly like being hacked and paying ethical hackers to hack and shit and find loopholes. I just seen a guy, he, uh, he got a letter from NASA I follow him on, on X and NASA sent him a letter thanking him for finding the loopholes. He's like, he's a good hacker, right? Not a bad guy. So, yeah, you know, I mean, but yeah, the telecommunications world, you know, I could— when it comes to the finance part of it, it's— that's the part that— because once it leaves there and it's in the, you know, it's traveling through the—

no, it's because I was reading this whole thing about this person that got scammed recently, and then it turned out that somehow the per— the scammer cloned their phone, so when they were getting the text messages from their bank, the scammer also got them. Yeah. They somehow cloned the person's phone.

Right.

I mean, I don't know how that happens. I don't know what kind of phone it was. Didn't go into too much detail, but it was all about somebody that had like hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen out of their bank accounts recently.

And then, so what's PaysUp to? What are they gonna—

so it's just like an extra layer of security. I know Truist just launched it. So I don't really use my debit card that often unless I need to get cash out of the ATM.

Yeah, I have Navy Federal and they, they don't, they don't necessarily have that, but they definitely send you notifications like, you know, there's a transaction or we block the transaction, right? Yeah. So I mean, they're there. Capital. They can— if they, if they're doing that, they're there then, right? Like, so they can, you know, set up a text for you to say yes or no to every time.

Pretty much. I think like something needs to get pushed out of it.

It doesn't need— it could be a push notification because you're— if you're activating your debit card, right? Yeah. Through your phone, right? And it's automatically sending you a text message that I used my debit card, why would they not be able to send you a, you know, a stop first? Like, yes or no, press Y or N.

Yeah, I used to have Capital One as my main credit card, and they did that all the time. They would go, did you do this transaction? Text back Y for yes, N for no. Then if it was no, then you just hit no and they would block the transaction. It was yes. Then, but a lot of times you would have to tell the person, oh, I got this text, you got to rerun my card.

Yeah, I just had a major issue. Well, it's crazy. Um, I had an Amazon seller's account a long time ago, right? But I canceled it, and then like, I don't know, 2 months ago I noticed a charge, right? But I'm like, all right, that could have been anything, right? I could have bought anything because I didn't really pay attention to it.

Okay.

But then I got another one for the same exact this month, right? Well, it turns out it's messed up. It's, you know, bad money management at the end of the day. But I don't know how long I've been paying for somebody's Amazon Marketplace membership? Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! The reseller's fee, right?

That's what I'm saying. You have to pay that—

it's like $28 a month.

That's crazy. And yeah, somebody must have hacked that account.

Exactly.

Yeah, because I did—

'cause I— that shit's been dead. And again, it's coming from Mexico. That's, that's where the charge originated from. I don't know where, you know, who knows where the hell they are. Yeah, that's where the charge originally messed up. And I mean, that's kind of strange that to me that banks can let a trend— I don't live in Mexico.

Yeah, that's the crazy thing. Like, you know, they should know.

Like, I mean, they should know where you are because if I traveled to Mexico, right, they would cancel my card if I didn't tell them that I was in Mexico, right? They would freeze the shit out of it.

Exactly.

I don't know, man. Now, this is Do you see the longshoremen strike?

This is just so wrong.

It's bad.

The government has a way. There's a special thing Congress can enact, but Congress is out of session and I don't know why they're not—

It's very, very, to me, all of this is, it's all right on time.

Hillary Clinton.

Election.

Yeah.

Hurricanes, inflation.

What, so we need more suffering?

I don't— it's just so messed up to me. I just don't understand what— I don't really know the plot twist here in this book. No. What is it? What are those daytime television shows your mom used to watch? Soap opera? Yeah. I don't know the plot twist that's about to happen in this soap opera, man. The Days of Our Lives.

No, what's crazy is Congress has—

there's actually like a 90-day cool-off period.

Yeah, there's a 90-day cool-off period.

Biden can enact it or Congress can enact it and go, no, they got to go back. Did you see what the union lead official from the Longshoremen said?

No, what did he say?

Dude said, I can cripple you. Yeah, I will cripple you. Like, he threatened the shit out of— and he's not kidding. Because we've seen what happened during COVID Yeah. And so this is just going to be disastrous.

The bigger problem is, is people look at that, right, and they don't think—

and they blame the longshoremen though.

No, no, but I'm saying they don't think into the whole thing, like how— what the trickle-down effect of that is. So that's the longshoremen, all the boats, all the companies who are waiting for their stuff, truck drivers, the truck driver's family, the trucks that belong to their companies, then the people who are— then the consumers.

No, on top, you're talking about before the consumers, you got the businesses that rely on the goods, right, to get there, to get there. So then you got the consumers who are going to pay for it the most, right? Because the exact same shit happened during COVID We've seen it firsthand. Ships were stacked up in— on Fort Lauderdale Beach, you could see 10, 15 of them waiting dock, right? In Miami and shit. Well, we're, you know, in between, we're right there, you know, whatever. But yeah, and then what? Then DeSantis, and then what though? That's when toilet paper was $12 a pack for like 6 toilet papers. Eggs were $15 for, you know, I'm exaggerating, it was, you know, $8 a a dozen, you know what I mean? Which it still basically is. They went down like a little bit, but shit, bro.

Depends where you go. If you go to Costco, prices on eggs is way cheaper than—

I don't, I use— than BJ's. No, but I don't, I don't use just regular eggs.

No, I get it. I get the organic eggs at Costco.

You have to have pasture raised.

Yeah, they're pasture raised.

Yeah, that cage-free thing, that's, you know, that's bullshit, right?

Yeah.

They live in a giant house though.

They're cage-free though.

They live in this giant warehouse and they're packed together.

So here's something that's going to affect a ton of businesses—

the longshoremen. That, that—

yeah, the longshoremen thing's out of control. Congress needs to come back into session. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, call everybody, say get back.

I mean, it should— I would think that they would, the way that the—

right before Christmas.

No, besides that, Thanksgiving. Everything besides that, like, the American people are suffering enough.

Exactly, that's what I'm saying.

My mom, like, I don't even want to get into it anyway. Like, so like, y'all need to do something quick. But see, we're going back. Okay, so anyway, man, so here's a shout out to the Longshoremen. We stand with you. You guys deserve it all. You know, they— people were slandering the shit out of them. There's this one lady, how dare you? And then I seen this other a wife of somebody who's there and she's like, "You don't know what you're talking about. The 77% increase on wages is over a 6-year period. It's not like they're asking for 100 times of the money that they're making right now." There's people just, they hear something on the media and they believe it. And that's a problem.

Well, they need to put the 90-day cooling off period in there.

I hope so.

ASAP. But here's something really crazy. Now, this thing, we've talked about this on the podcast before, about businesses who do recurring billing and have subscriptions and all that, right? And over time, you know, the FTC has come out— Federal Trade Commission— you know, they have a special rule for gyms. They've put out warnings, a couple of warnings over the last couple years to these businesses about behaving and have easier click-to-cancel policies and things like that.

Should change, right?

So now California came out and they have this Assembly Bill 2863, which imposes a whole bunch of rules and safeguards for consumers. And this is going to cause a big snafu because when you look at California right? This is a large population there, right? So how— you can't just have one rule for California and one rule for everybody else, right, on your website. You're gonna have to comply to this California.

There's states that you do that though, right?

But I'm saying that's gonna make it—

e-company, you don't have to do that.

No, but I'm saying like if you're running a subscription company or you're running some kind of like recurring billing thing it's going to be difficult to control like where people are. So now more states are saying they're going to pass laws. So canceling subscriptions needs to be one click. They need to have one click. They need to have a toll-free number that's 24/7. They need to have an option where they can click to cancel, to fill out a form or a pre-formatted email., and the law requires businesses to send subscribers an annual reminder about the cost and how to cancel and provide advance notices of price changes.

Sounds like they need to figure some shit out out there. Pay attention.

Yeah, subscription businesses really need to pay attention because this thing goes into effect like the, in the first quarter of 2025.

It's funny you brought a subscription service. I took a industry niche test.

Yeah.

For building what, you know, like what target market I should hit.

Right.

And it's subscriptions. That's the businesses.

Yeah. Subscriptions is a growing business. I just talked to somebody yesterday. It's a big subscription.

Physical trainers and yoga studios, bro. Yeah. Are blowing. Pilates.

Yeah. People are going away from like the big gyms.

Yeah.

And going into these like really niche gyms that have like yoga.

Which is cool.

Boxing, maybe circuit workout.

High-intensity training.

High-intensity training. You know, really, and you see them, these gyms opening up all over the place.

Yeah, but those are the gyms that you, the businesses that we're talking about are the ones that are gonna be affected specifically.

Yeah, but there is already a specific government rule about gyms. I was trying to work with somebody recently with gyms and I was like, you cannot hold, you can make people sign a 12-month contract. If they don't wanna pay you by credit card and they cancel, you have to let 'em cancel. You can't hold them to the contract. There's already a law for gyms. And if you wanna sue 'em, go ahead, take 'em to small claims court and sue 'em. But that's just a complete waste of time.

We got two moons.

Two moons? What do you mean?

You haven't heard that Earth has two moons?

No, I see one moon.

No, we have two moons in our orbit right now.

We do?

You haven't heard about this shit?

No, I didn't see it. Bro, what?

You haven't heard of it? All right, man.

Well, we'll have to do a whole podcast next on two moons and discuss astronomy with Justin.

I'm not much of an astronomer. I do like the, what is it? The planet, planet, you know, I like the art. The universe, you know, that type of universe.

Yeah, okay.

Outer space. My dad loves outer space.

You could go on astronomy.

No, outer—

just talk about outer space.

He loves that shit.

Yeah, I saw— I love outer space.

You guys grew up on like the sci-fi, like, you know, Planet of the Apes, uh, Star Trek, V—

Star Trek?

No, V2. Remember V?

Oh yeah, V2 Victory.

No, V. Yeah, the— with the aliens.

Yeah, the aliens that came down to the—

and only certain people could see that they were aliens. Yeah, yeah, they say that's real.

That could be.

Well, they say that we have two moons because CERN, uh, they— so this conspiracy theory is that, remember last year when they turned CERN on?

Yeah.

Well, we went into like this weird time leap thing.

Okay.

And so they just turned it on again.

Okay.

And so now it's all really messed up. And so now we have two moons. But I Googled— I did my Googles, and, uh, they said this is not the first time that we've had, uh, two moons, and that, um, there's been multiple occasions that we've had this.

I'm gonna have to check out the— check this out.

It's not a big deal. But they say that also that at one point they believe that this— when this happened, this is why the one side of the moon is flattened, because they collided.

Okay.

But yeah, man, that's the podcast. Shout out to the listeners. Subscribe to the channel for us, please. Uh, check us out on Spotify Video if you're, you know, if that's your ting. Um, apparently they're looking for more, uh, video content to be posted on Spotify. They're really pushing people to post that type of content. A lot of podcasters are saying that that's the next wave, is getting— is because, uh, anyway, they're going to start targeting people's, uh, audience.

Okay.