Spotify Fired 17% Of Staff, Bitcoin At $42k & QR Code Mistake at a Restaurant | Biz To Biz Podcast

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 Lenny Kravitz of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And in today's podcast, we'll be talking about some news, trends in technology, business, and other things. So how you doing, man?

I'm doing good. Lenny Kravitz, today's the first night of Hanukkah. He's a fellow, uh, oh really?

I didn't even— hey, we, uh, we switched. We talked about switching up the intro a little bit, and you know, it was getting monotonous the way it was in like, wow, wow, wow, all the sports people. Well, that and just everything, you know, like, well, how the intro would go is like, in today's podcast, we'll be talking about fintech payment, blah blah blah, and we talk about so much more, and and the show has evolved and it doesn't really, you know, whatever. So we thought it was a better idea to—

and it's evolving more for 2024.

Absolutely, absolutely, man. How you doing, man?

Good, doing good. Busy week. Yeah, December is being turning out to be a good month for business, which is, you know, unusual. But as long as you answer your phone, you will make money.

There you go.

So that's what I tell people. If you're gonna slack off, you're not gonna make money. Answer the phone, you're gonna make some money.

There you go, man.

There's still people opening up businesses, you know, every day.

That's true.

You know, they're not on a time clock. How's your week going?

It's going, going by fast.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's the end of the year's coming up.

Yep, sure is. Got two birthdays coming up. So yeah, man, other than that, man, life's good. Can't complain.

All right.

What you got, man?

So we're going to go over— we're going to talk about some stuff that's been in the news and like Spotify.

Yeah, this is tragic.

And our, and our podcast, you know, is on Spotify and other DSPs, as Justin likes to call them. Right. And they're laying off 70% of their workforce, which is 1,500 people.

Worldwide.

Worldwide. But this is the third round of layoffs this year that they've had this year.

And the way that— I don't mean to cut you off, but the way it sounds like it, there's more coming.

Yeah, it sounds— I mean, there's been a lot of layoffs in like the tech industry, you know, Twitter, X, you know, they laid off people. Facebook, Google, Meta, you know, Oh yeah, Google did too. Yeah, and you know, it's unusual because I don't know, maybe they overhired.

Well, that's what they said. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of companies did during COVID During COVID they overhired for stay-at-home, like work from home, customer service, all that other, you know, they just, a lot of companies, huge, lot of tech companies overhired during, and unfortunately that's, coming to an end. People are saying that they don't want to go to the office. You know, some people have those jobs and they're like living all the way across the country or they moved and a lot of people sold their houses and moved. So like, yeah, there is that too. So, you know, I mean, I was talking to a guy yesterday. Par for the course, right?

Yeah. I was talking to a guy yesterday from a comp, a big tech company that's involved in payments. And he was like, oh, today's our first day back at the office.

Really?

Yeah. And they making everybody come to the office.

Yeah, I know a lot of people that are not too happy about that, but it's a mixed bag.

Really? Yeah. I mean, it's a mixed bag in like what some companies are doing and what other companies are doing, you know.

Oh, you mean that way? Yeah, as far as coming back to the office, I think that, you know, like, I like the— I'm, I'm, you know, I like the, uh what do they call it, a hybrid, a hybrid model. Yeah, you work from home for 2 days or whatever day that they let you, whether it be 1 or 2 days a week, and then you come to the office for the rest of the week. That's cool. That's cool to me.

It makes sense.

Yeah.

I mean, as long as the employees are productive, it kind of works out. You have to have a way to manage productivity. So if you don't have a way to manage the productivity, Like a lot of companies have a server, employees have to log into a server. They, you know, they have to come log into a server and then they can see like, okay, this guy was on the server and what—

Yeah, timestamps.

What did they do? If you don't have a way to do that, then it's more like you have to trust people or you have to monitor them or you got to use screen recording devices and things like that.

Right.

And that can be a little bit difficult to deal with.

I hear you.

You know, when, you know, that's— and then a lot of companies—

for a small company, yeah. I mean, that's too much. Like, for you trying to, you know, you obviously, if we all worked from home, I believe that you trust us enough to get the job done. But I mean, we don't do that. But when we do work from home, I'm super productive. But see, I'm different. Like, I was a self-starter, so I had my own digital marketing company. So like, I worked from home for 13 years, right? You know what I mean? So I know what it's like if you don't wake up in the morning and get to work, you're not going to get a paycheck, you know what I'm saying? So for me, it's the same mentality. Like, it doesn't really affect me. But yeah, and it sucks that all those people got laid off from Spotify.

Yeah, it's crazy. But you know, there's tons and tons of— tons and tons of layoffs.

What happened? You know, I was going to ask you the other day, I seen, uh, SHIB was, was trending on, uh, Twitter.

Yeah.

And Bitcoin is— crypto in general is trending.

Yeah.

But I had read something a couple weeks ago, I forget, was it the BlackRock CEO or some other— another— I forget who was like in a huge investment firm. It was BlackRock. Yes. He's— they just bought a half a billion dollars or half a trillion dollars I can't remember, like $500 billion a day invested in it?

There's something going on where, you know, there's some talk of some regulation in the US of Bitcoin because they went to the SEC and Congress went to Coinbase and said, oh, we only want you to trade Bitcoin and not trade any of these other coins.

And they said what Elon Musk said.

Yeah, go pound sand.

To the other advertisers.

They said, go pound sand, Coinbase did. But, you know, look at what else that, you know, we got to look back on the, on the year, on the year 2023, right? We went to the Bitcoin 2023 in Miami, was a giant flop. It was, I mean, I mean, compared to the years before.

Yeah, I mean, I don't, we don't want to make it, we don't want to, well, on the entire—

No, no, but I'm just saying it was 20%.

It was a definite letdown. Yeah, as in comparison, like, you know, like the hype for 2022, well, it was 2022, right? Yeah. It was very, it was huge, man. It was like, you know, it was really, I was looking forward to it. I mean, I was actually looking forward to this one again, right?

Yeah. And so we walk in and it's like, it wasn't even walk in, it was when we got out of the car.

We were like, true, true. We noticed that there too.

Yeah. Because when you walked up the year before, there was like a giant festival in the parking lot across the street.

Food trucks, there was a party.

It was gazillion. Yeah. Bands were playing outside. Yeah. It was crazy. And then this time there was nothing outside. We went in and we were like, wow, where's all the companies?

Yeah, no, there was— everybody was there to see RFK Jr.

Yeah, RFK get up.

And that was the highlight of the— for me, that was the highlight of the conference. Yeah.

And then as soon as he was done talking, everybody left.

What the other part that was cool that got bigger was like the, their little marketplace thing. That market.

Yeah, where they were selling stuff.

That was cool.

Yeah, that wasn't— that was kind of cool. Last time that was inside and outside of people selling stuff. Yeah, there was a lot— there was a lot of people selling stuff. And, you know, and then FTX had the big kaboom, right?

SBF, Sam Bankman-Fried, man.

Yeah, you know, and now they're finding like hidden money that he had and hidden assets and tons of real estate and all kinds of stuff. So yeah, I don't know what's gonna happen. They're gonna probably sell all of that.

Did his girlfriend get in trouble too? Like, I stopped following it, so apparently— oh, so she started— she's cooperating?

Yeah, she cooperated. And then there's you, and then there's another guy who cooperated also. And that's how they found all this real estate. And then they found all this— the guy had, you know, you know, with crypto it's complicated. You have cloud wallet, like it's in the cloud. Then you have what they call hot wallets, right? And cold wallets. And these cold wallets are like on a USB stick, right? That's a cold wallet.

Yeah, that's, that's how you should, that's how you should, that's how you should be storing your crypto, right?

If you know what you're doing, if you're doing a lot, you shouldn't be having your crypto in Coinbase or whatever.

I mean, if you're trading, that's one thing, right? If you're making a trade. But when you, when you're done with that, you should be pulling that into your own.

Yeah, make a copy of it.

What encrypted wallet that you can— you can make them yours. It's not a big deal.

Yeah, you just use a USB stick and you make yourself like a cold wallet, they call it.

I've never heard that lingo, but that's cool. I like it. Cold wallet. What's the hot wallet?

The hot wallet is like the one— the Coinbase wallet.

Yeah, that's— that shit is hot because, man, I'm getting— I get emails all the time. Change your password, set up two reauthenticate your two-factor.

But people make copies of it. You sync it together like if you're doing stuff. So apparently, whatever, there was a few.

And the other guy from—

yeah, Binance, he's in big trouble.

CZ, what is it? What is his name? ZZ? I forget what they call him. I forget his nickname. What is— I forget his name.

Yeah, CZ or CX or something. XZ.

I forget. Whatever.

That guy's locked up in jail, right?

They locked him— no, no, no, no, no, no. They He—

they took his passport.

They did say that he can't leave, that he can't leave the US. I mean, he's so rich, he is a flight risk. Like, regardless, he, you know, he's like— where he's from, we don't have extradition, so we can't extradite him back into the United States if we wanted to. I mean, at the end of the day, to be honest, what I'm— what, like, you know, everyone always tells me to lay off the conspiracy theories, but dude, like, all these Isn't it weird that all the coin, like, the, the crypto, like, CEOs and, you know, these, the, the, the guys who started all this, isn't it weird, like, they're all, like, either dead or in jail, bro?

Yeah, a bunch of them. Yeah, they're dead, in jail, but also, like, tons of, like, but there's millions and billions missing. That's the crazy—

that's the other thing.

And all the politicians, yeah, took money from them.

So it's like What is really going on?

Exactly.

And, uh, that had— I have a lot, uh, you know, there's a lot of unanswered questions. A lot. My dad, he, he laughs at me when I start talking about it. Like, he's like, dude, you got to relax.

It's a conspiracy. No, and then also you had all these Bitcoin ATM things, right? And one, one company got robbed out of millions of dollars. Yeah, someone busted— someone put a USB stick in one of theirs. Kiosks, got into their system and then got in and got a hold of a bunch of wallets in there and emptied them out.

Yeah, man. Something that I had seen in the news that, you know, 'cause I'm the digital marketing dork around here, you know, and I sit there and I read articles from Neil Patel and Search Engine Journal and Moz and whatever. Um, and Google, but one thing Google doesn't do like that I thought was really weird last month was they had a core update, right? And for people who don't know what that is, that's like, that's a major algorithm update for the search engines, you know, for it. And it really affects businesses in general. Traffic changes, your ranking for keywords change, everything.. And Google had in the past would never do something like that before the holidays, right? Because that can really affect small businesses, right? And so that happened. And then another one came out in November, right? And that's when I started really like, yo, what is going on, right? Like, what's happening? Because I mean, of course, like, you walk into my office, you see the Google Search Console and Google Analytics up all the time.

Yes.

Because I need to know what's working and what's not. And, and so like, November came and I'm like looking at the— everything is negative, negative, you know, like the percentage of everything, all the analytics is just down, dropping. I want to heck, and then they did it again. And it's like before Black Friday. Not saying that it affects our business much at all, right?

Right. Shopping business, it's gonna—

but I know it, that's what I was getting into, like, right? Like, so on top of the, like, so they have two core updates in, in a two-month time.

But also, you know, Microsoft did updates on their browser and on LinkedIn, and they've done like three or four on LinkedIn in the last just a couple of months.

Yeah, I like, I like where LinkedIn is going. But back to Google, I mean, so then I start, you know, they don't tell you what these out— what the updates are for, right? They don't tell you until it's done and rolled out.

Um, yeah, then you gotta scramble. That's the crazy part.

Yeah, right. So the, the latest one was for like your, your reviews, right? So they're targeting spammy reviews fake reviews, which— so at the end of the day, Google's never trying to hurt small businesses, right?

Right.

But if the small businesses are using shady tactics to, to, to get higher rankings in the search results, would it— whether that be, you know, having your entire family make you fake, uh, reviews, or, you know, just, you know, there's a lot of different things that that you can do, but you still— like, it's old school thought process called black hat SEO. That is dead. Like, you know, if you're still trying to do that, you know, shame, sorry for you, whatever. Um, I'm sure there's still some things that work, right? You know what I mean? That they have. But yeah, so when Google does these updates, it's the— it's to help people like businesses like yours who can't compete with Google who— or not with Google, with PayPal, who has farmed out reviews, who does find a farm out directory reviews, right?

Yeah.

So I mean, hopefully that, that's the type of stuff that they're targeting, right? The first one, the first one I didn't, you know, the— I didn't— I forget what the, what the first target with the first algorithm update was for. But, you know, at the end of the day, man,. It was really surprising that they did that right before the holidays. And I hope that it, it, it didn't impact too many, too, too many businesses too severely. But if it did, you know, if you got a little marketing budget before the end of the year, this would be the time to spend it on, you know, on some advertising. And if that's too much for you, then I, I would highly suggest you to hire a content creator to get you an Instagram account. Or something to get you, you know, some views back to your website, because everyone in the entire digital marketing world is feeling the drop-offs of traffic on their websites.

And now, speaking of Instagram, now Facebook is gonna disconnect Instagram and Facebook, the messaging, the messaging service.

Yeah, they were saying that, um, it has to do with the encryption No, the lawsuit that they were going up— was it in Europe?

Yeah, they got a bunch of lawsuits going in Europe now against all the tech companies are being sued.

Yeah, for whatever they're saying. Anti-Information Act. I don't know, whatever it is.

Yeah, they got some crazy stuff going on in Europe. I can't even follow along with it because it got very convoluted as to what it's all about. You know, people's identity and the sharing and this and that.

I'm kind of cool with the disconnecting the two platforms. Yeah, I mean, of the messaging, the messaging side, because for me, Instagram is my only artistic outlet left. So that isn't— it's for me and my, my people, you know what I mean? Like, so like, I don't know if you follow my Instagram account. If you do, like, it's not suitable for work. That's all I'm gonna say.

Oh, I've seen some unsuitable things.

Exactly. So I mean, Like, but that's like, so like if there's any social media left in the world, like let that be mine, right? Like if I don't post anything else, anything crazy.

No, but it's weird. Like you can't have like a business Facebook and a personal Facebook unless you just use two completely different names, right?

So, but you would still need to have the profile.

Right, but I'm saying, and then they, yeah, but then you can't like connect it to the same email address and the same phone number. And it got so complicated.

Oh, if you want to have like an alias type of thing. Right, let's say you want to have a private, I mean, you can have a private Facebook account, you can turn your profile to private, right? That definitely affects— because some people look at that, and they try to, you know, know who you are before they do business with you.

Exactly. They're looking at Facebook, they're looking at your LinkedIn.

I remember one time I had every one of my profiles on private, and one guy came up to me, he said, dude, how is anyone ever gonna learn about you if they gotta like go through a maze and then go find a treasure map and then figure out who you are, dude. You gotta open up a little bit.

It's like Microsoft. You, every time you get a computer, you got to put an email address in the computer. You got to make a new email address. You can't connect.

That is pure bullshit.

You can't connect. Sorry. No, no. So like, I have my email that I've had forever, right?

How Google— how, how did— how, how easy is it to do a Google— how to log in with Google?

Oh, it's a pain in the butt. No.

I got Chromebooks for all the kids, right? Once they log into their Gmail account, right?

But I'm just saying, then you got to have a Gmail. But if you're not using Gmail, then you got to make a Gmail.

But you don't need a mo— you don't— you— if you get a new laptop, you don't have to start a new life, right?

Exactly.

With the Microsoft thing, that is just bananas, bro.

Yeah, I don't know what they're doing.

That is crazy.

Like, if the fact that you can't like just disconnect that email from No, like I used to have all the computers in the office on one email address, right?

Like logged in. That makes sense.

But you can't do that anymore. So when we bought new computers, we had to make all these—

Actually, no, that doesn't make sense. No. When I think of it at a secure level, that doesn't make sense at all.

Well, I know, but I'm talking about from a management level.

On a management side, it makes a lot of sense. It's very easy.

To manage. Yeah, but they don't have a— they don't differentiate between like business computers and personal computers. And then, you know, Let's say you have someone working here and they go set up a laptop or they have a problem with the laptop and they go in, they create another live account. You just got to make sure before they leave, you get all the passwords. Otherwise you got a brick.

He's not lying.

And that's not happened to us, but I know people that it's happened to.

For sure.

One of my friends.

I mean, I know Hanukkah, I don't know, there's a gift every day, right?

Well, it's the 8 Hanukkah. The story is, We'll get the Maccabees. So you have 8 gifts? Some oil. Well, for the kids.

Okay. So every day they get a gift.

A small gift. Right. Or you give one big gift.

I mean, it's a holiday. So do you, in your family, does it, is it like, what are we going to get Dad? Because you're like, I mean, because I don't want to call you a nerd, but you're, you know, you're kind of nerdy and you know what I mean? You can only like sports. I don't, you know, like you like music.

My kids, I tell them, don't even worry about buying me stuff. Like, I know, I get it because I say the same thing, but my son bought me a Miami Dolphins, uh, hoodie.

Something that's useful and practical, right?

Yeah, something. Yeah, buy me something. I'm gonna get a shirt.

So like, for me, you know, like, I don't celebrate, but whatever, Hanukkah. And then we make—

we got to make special food. So tonight I'm making latkes and brisket.

Nice.

We have our special little food.

My kids are always like, we never know what to get you, Dad, right? Because I'm very particular. Like, if I have a hoodie, I'll wear this hoodie for 6 years, right? Like, and that's the— that's it, okay? And like, so like that's the type of stuff. So if you guys are listening, I had, I came up with some gift ideas for tech people in general. Like, and I, you know, like everyone that I know would use these types of things. You know what I'm saying?

Okay.

What are they? First thing was Moleskine notebooks. You know, like the little notebooks, the Moleskine notebooks. I mean, not little ones, but the little ones are nice too to have.

Yeah.

The notebooks. Okay. Markers and pens, like nice markers and pens.

Okay. Nice pen is always good.

Sketchbooks, the nice sketchbooks, not— I don't like the— I like something that I can actually like write in, you know what I'm saying?

Like, it's so 11 by 17, 8.5 by 11.

It's a nice binder, you know, like all— like everyone that I— everyone that I know has one of those, you know what I mean? It's almost like a journal. But you can still draw in it. If you're like with a client, you can map out a sketch out a website.

Okay.

You know, brainstorm, put that type of stuff. Not a huge sketchbook. I'm talking like a notebook.

Yeah.

But it's a—

that's what I'm saying, 8.5 by 11, 11 by 17 would be like a large size, right? Um, I mean, I'm, you know, you know, they got these new tablets, like, and these like LED tablets you can draw on it, but you can't email. Like, it would be cool if you could draw on it.

I think it sends it.

And then send the email.

I think you can, I think there is a couple of them where it takes a screenshot.

Yeah, that would be pretty cool. I like that idea.

Toys for the desk. Everyone, you know, on their desk, everyone likes stuff for their desk. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then like, I threw in two things for myself. Comic books. Kids, my kids, yo, come on. You know, a comic book. I will, you'll pull every heartstring I have. And then a drone. I saw one for $99 on Amazon, Justina.

I've seen some at Costco for less than $100.

No, I want the, I don't want to.

You want one with a camera on it?

Yes.

Yeah, Jacob's—

'Cause then I feel like I'll be more cautious.

I had a Star Wars drone in the house and Jacob took it. Flew it around and now it went into a tree, so that's gone.

Shout out to Jake.

Don't do that.

Get better, dude.

I heard you feel better, Jacob.

I heard your knee is all jacked up. Jacob needs to go get some— go get some steroids from your local LA Fitness.

So the— so that's the—

so that's real quick, you know, for, for some technical gift guide. Yeah. And if you really want to spend some money get them a laptop, iPad, iPad, like some nice Beats headphones.

You know what I saw that was cool? I saw on Facebook— I don't know if it's real— some guy was selling, you know, like—

can I— yeah, before you say it, before I forget, the one thing you don't get— don't get them a backpack.

How about no underwear and socks either?

That's funny you said that because I was putting on my socks today and I ripped them and I was too lazy to get a new pair out, so I got a pair of holy socks on.

Well, you need some new socks.

Don't me socks. I'll buy my own socks. I'm very particular, man. 100% organic cotton or nothing.

No, so I saw this table and then supposedly you could play Monopoly on it, but it was all electronic.

You hit the button, roll the dice. Those are cool.

It was like $50. Yeah, I was like, that's a pretty cool gift. Keep your kids off their phones. Had Connect Four.

I almost bought— huh, you just reminded me, last year I almost I was thinking about buying one of them big-ass arcades for, you know, those games that like the old school ones.

Yeah.

But it was reprogrammed. So it had like 1,000 games on it. And I was like, dude, this is so cool, man. I was like, my wife said, where are you gonna put that? You're gonna put that in the living room?

Yeah.

She said, no, you're not. So yeah, that, that was a All right, so let me—

so here's the last story. Last story, I'm looking through, you know, my stuff this morning. The New York Post posts this. These people were dining in a hotspot restaurant in South China. What is—

I was going to ask you, what is a hotspot?

Like a, you know, a hot spot.

Oh, it's popular. Popular restaurant.

Now, I've heard of this happening before, but this was to an extreme. They posted a picture of their food. When they posted the picture of the food, the restaurant has a QR code on the table, right, that you order from, and it places the order, but you don't have to pay. Well, after they posted the picture of their food, all these scammers on Facebook— now, a lot of people tie, like, um, you got to be within a certain, uh, uh, a certain, uh, area, like close to, like in the restaurant, to use the QR code. But they didn't have that setting on. People ordered over $60,000 worth of food.

Whoa.

Because it was on Instagram and whatever, right? TikTok. People got the QR code and started ordering up orders of squid and all that. Now of course the kitchen starts getting all these orders and they made the food. No, they, well, they started to, but then, you know, after they were—

They were bringing it out to the table.

They brought like one order out to the table, and then all of a sudden they saw more orders coming in and they were like, whoa, whoa. So they had to turn off the QR code, move the people to a different table. 'Cause it's like one of those tables, like you order like small plates and stuff.

Yeah, like at Adam and Joe's up the street.

No, like you order small plates.

Oh, like dim sum.

Right, small plates of food. So they ran up $60,000 worth of stuff. They didn't make all the food, they made a couple of orders. Wow. Orders were pouring in and messing up the kitchen, right? Because all these orders are coming in, right? And they had to figure out which ones were real and which ones were fake. So don't post pictures of QR codes from restaurants. And if you have a restaurant, make sure you have the setting on that people have to physically be in the restaurant, like a distance thing. Like even when we send out an application to people, it'll tell you like, oh, you sent it to this zip code, right, 33309, right? It'll tell you, was the person in 3309 or were they in a different zip code when they signed it, right, from the DocuSign. So, you know, if somebody signs it and they're in Nigeria, we know, like, okay, you're a scammer, right?

Right.

So don't try to fool us.

Just like yesterday, the guy who sent— filled out the app, and shout out to you, the, the guys out there cloning websites, man. Jeez, you guys are Sick.

Oh yeah, they just clone up somebody's real website and then try to get a fake merchant account. We find you and we don't—

it's so obvious. Like, all you have to do, like, I'm not even— I mean, I'll tell y'all, copy some text on the website, enter that into Google, and all of that content will come up on in Google search if it's like regurgitated or copied. Uh, yeah.

And also don't put like the phone number the way it's not formatted in the US.

Yeah, that was— that's also—

that's a dead giveaway right there. Like, you put in +1 blah blah blah, or 1 plus— no, we know you're not from the United States when you're doing all that.

Well, yeah, man.

Well, that's the pod.

Thanks for listening. We appreciate you guys. Tune in every Monday— I mean, Wednesdays and Fridays. You know the deal.

Peace out.

Carpe diem.