Thanksgiving Is Around The Corner and Prices are High! | 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 Nostradamus of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman.

Thank you, sir.

What's up, Brody?

It's, uh, Thanksgiving week.

It is. It's almost time for Thanksgiving and some Thanksgiving foods, until you eating until you pass out on the couch with the itis.

The itis. The itis.

Yes, that's the itis.

And watch football all day.

Yeah, guess who's playing on Thursday?

Yeah, the Dolphins play the Packers.

Go Packers! I hope we pack them Dolphins back to Miami, uh, in little tuna cans.

Little Tua cans.

Little Tua cans. That's funny. Dad joke of the day. Yeah, man. So that's exciting. Get to watch the Pack finally. You know, I was complaining about not being able to watch the Packers on regular TV.

Yeah.

Well, the next 4 games are prime time television.

Oh, nice.

So they got like 2 Thursday night games and then 2 Sunday.

I'm going to have to like measure like food action like throughout the day because You got 3 games.

Yeah, you can't. That—

and it's 8 o'clock game for the Dolphins.

I don't— so for me, I'm gonna plan to eat just like I normally would every day.

Right.

So I'm gonna eat at 2 o'clock.

Okay.

Right? And that's gonna be my meal. Then later, after a couple of adult root beers, okay? I might want to indulge in some because I'm making a salmon. I'm going to jerk some salmon.

Nice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Courtesy of Nationwide Payment Systems. Insert a commercial.

Insert a commercial.

Yeah, dude, I did that. Literally, I got like 3 bags of groceries.

Okay, that's it.

And I had to pay $6.

That's—

I was like, dude, what? A pie, bro, is $8 now? A single pie?

I don't know, you can get a giant pie at Costco for pretty decent.

I don't—

and you can get a big sock.

It's so like, my family's small.

I know I'm saying the salmon's much cheaper at Costco.

It's not wild-caught sockeye.

They have wild— they have wild—

how much was the fillet of a wild?

I don't remember, but less than around $20.

Oh well, this one was $30. Okay, well That shit was crazy. The turkey, I don't even remember. I'm looking at that. A pound of green beans, bro, is, I don't know what's going on, but hopefully.

Well, don't listen to like CBS News. They're like, oh, grocery prices are coming down. I'm like, I don't know what grocery store you're going into.

Bullshit. Bullshit button.

Yeah, it's over there.

Yeah, but we don't need to press it. I had to call it bullshit. Uh, as a person who goes shopping on Sundays religiously to feed my family, I myself go there to pay for the groceries. That's not true.

No, the grocery prices are out of control.

Just like, uh, someone was talking about, you know, they said— never mind, I'll jump down the whole tangent. But real— the— I have a bunch of shit that I got because it was kind of, uh, exciting week in like business and technology already. The one thing that really stuck out to me was the US government funded the Rivian Motor Group or what, motors, you know what I'm talking about? The electric motor, the $6.6 billion.

That's crazy.

Billion.

Why?

Well, one is they're opening a production facility in Georgia.

Okay.

Which is cool.

And second, they're not affordable cars for the general public. So I have a problem with that.

No, that leading into that, because I was confused myself, because I'm like, okay, maybe I thought right away it was the Department of Defense, right, that was investing, which would make sense to me, right?

Okay.

You know what I mean? Because the vehicles that they produce are like off-road, heavy-duty pickup trucks, etc. But so they also gave him the $6.6 million to, uh, billion to the Department of Energy to also develop medium-sized vehicles, which would be much more affordable for the regular people.

Well, that would be—

so that was— that's why they're opening up the production facility in Georgia to produce those types.

One thing I'll say is the government did loan money to Elon Musk and he paid it all back.

Yeah, but this is not that. This seems— this is not a loan. This isn't a— the government is gonna fund it. They're funding.

I don't like that.

Yeah, I don't know if I—

I don't like when the government—

I mean, if the government is like, they should get the money back. I guess, I guess so. Because when I was reading them, I, you know, I— because I was wondering, who the hell is buying these Rivians, right?

You got to be rich.

No, you gotta be mega rich, right?

They're like $200 grand.

Has that company flipped the profit since they started?

Probably not.

They have not.

Well, when Obama was president, he invested in this other company. They were supposed to build a factory in the US. They ended up building a factory in some other country, and they went belly up and lost millions of dollars, hundreds of millions.

I hope this doesn't happen because I really like those cars. Like, I really, you know, like, I don't know if you remember when I was talking about during the hurricane in North Carolina, Right. The one guy owned one and it like got swept away downriver and he found it like a mile away from where he parked it, hopped in, no water, started up and drove away.

Yeah.

That's pretty cool.

You can't do that with a Tesla.

You ain't doing that with a Cybertruck or a Tesla.

Yeah.

Any type of Tesla, any other electric vehicle.

Those things were catching on fire, right? Shit.

Any other vehicle you're not doing that with, right? Maybe a 4Runner with all that extra, you know what I mean? Like mud.

Or a Hummer.

Or a Humvee.

Yeah, for sure.

Old school Hummer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, man, that's pretty cool. Shout out to Rivian. I mean, I hope that works out for them and shit.

And then on electric cars, yeah, Hertz is trying to get rid of their fleet.

So everyone is because they can't insure them.

So they're trying to get rid of them and they're selling them for like around $20 grand. And this is the second time that they've had like a huge sale to offload a hefty percentage of their EV inventory for around $20 grand. They're looking to clear 30,000 EVs from their fleet that range from Chevrolet Bolts, Hyundai Kona, and Teslas.

Do Teslas have a feature that like automatically tap the brake lights when you get close to them? I don't know, because I swear I cannot stand driving behind a Tesla.

No, I don't like— when I drive behind those— what's— there's another one that's called with a P. What's that?

Prius?

No, that's an electric car. It's like by Volvo or something. They sent me— oh, Polestar.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that looks like a regular car.

It's kind of cool looking though, but it, it drives like a brick. Really?

Yeah, I drove one. I went— yeah, I got invited to this, uh, thing one It was a while ago, and I got to drive Tesla, Polestar, about 5 or 6 different electric cars. And then they— you do like a survey and blah, blah, blah. Then there was some like incentive.

What was the best one?

Um, the thing I liked about the Polestar was that you could— it had a setting where you could drive it like a regular car. And it also did have brakes. One thing I did learn about electric cars is like basically to stop, you just take your foot off the gas. And that's also something that can cause a lot of problems because there's no brake light coming on and you're just taking your foot off the gas and the thing stops like a brick. So I do not like that feature.

Yeah, I don't like, I have, I've driven in one before, but I guess I really didn't pay attention how, you know, the ride was smooth, I guess.

Yeah, the ride's smooth in the— I mean, the Tesla truck, it wasn't like the Tesla, not the Cybertruck, but with the SUV looking, right? But I'm saying like, it looks cool, it looks cool inside.

Yeah, right.

So I give it to that, but I don't know, I'm not sold on it. I mean, it's— we have a bunch of Tesla X that I'm talking about. Yeah, the— or the S, I don't remember, there's a bigger one. But also like around here, like in the office complex Besides the other thing we're going to mention about it, people pull up in the back behind in the alleyway and there's at least 5 or 6 people charging different types of electric cars back there all the time.

Oh yeah, the one guy has his Tesla there parked every time he comes.

Yeah, he charges it here.

Yeah, that's smart.

Yeah, I've ever— there's quite a few people that do it. Yeah, because you already have— the thing is, is you already have 220 you know, volts, right, right, right, right, in the office. So it's not that hard to configure that. Like, in your house, you need to—

you gotta buy the whole box, you gotta buy the whole thing.

I'm just saying, here you could just—

but isn't Tesla like giving those away basically for free now?

Now they are. They started giving away the charging thing and installing it at your house.

But also, like, a lot of communities, man, because when I go to the gas station, those people literally are lurking like vultures trying to get in to charge their vehicles, right? The funny shit to me though is, is that there's a giant generator like powering.

I know, that's crazy.

What the hell is— what's—

doesn't make sense. Come on, man, we're using electricity to—

that's literally being powered by the gas pumps that from the gas station.

One of my friends broke down.

Are you shitting me, man?

One of my friends broke down on the side of the road with his Tesla and a guy came with an elec— a guy came with a generator pulls it out of the truck, fires it up, and that's how he charges Tesla. Yeah, enough for him to drive.

I see that all the time because otherwise you have to call a flatbed truck to have it towed because you can't tow them. And they're heavy.

And they're real heavy.

You can't tow them like a regular car.

No, no, and they're super heavy. Did you know that? Yes.

That's— when I was like, why? Because of the way the drivetrain is set up. Yeah, drivetrain is set up. And that, after I— that was just a literally full, a big, big full stop.

California, they have so many electric cars now especially in the city, you know, outside the city not so much, but in the cities of so many people with electric cars that they're not selling that much gas anymore, right? And because they're not selling gas, the gas tax is what pays to keep the roads up. So now they're talking about they're going to have to put a tax on the miles people drive, or they're going to have to stop subsidizing the electricity for the cars and somehow track when people are charging and charging them a fee so that they can get money for the roads because those cars do more damage to the road, too, especially the bit, you know, because they weigh more than a regular car. They weigh 3 times as much as a regular car.

Well, I don't have an electric car. I still do.

I do.

I— so. But you remember the, the automatic? I mean, what WordPress versus, uh, WP Engine thing that's going on.

Yeah.

Do you remember when I told you about how they basically— it's called fork, forking— when they— so you have a plugin, because WordPress is open source, so everyone can plug in, right? Well, just take, download the source code and, you know, either make it better or make their own version of it. So Automatic, the creators of WordPress, did this to the WP Engine Advanced Custom Fields plugin.

Okay.

But when they did it, I didn't know this. They created WP Engine's paid version. Oh, wow. And made it for free.

So I'm sure there's a lawsuit now.

Well, there already was a lawsuit because remember WP Engine is not WordPress, blah, blah, blah. But, uh, Yeah, that's kind of shady. The guy— I forget the guy's name from, uh, Automatic, um, the CEO. But, uh, that's the plot thickens. Jeez, that shit is getting nuts. Those two guys just need to get into like a celebrity death match, like how Zuckerberg—

Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.

Yeah, you know, those two guys, I don't know, maybe something really— there's a— that's a hell of a fight, beef to just they— to jack the whole paid plugin, not to create their own, to say, you know what I mean, right? But they literally jacked the plugin and said that there was security issues, hence the reason why they took it over and redirected the page where their plugin was to the—

so yeah, that's kind of crazy.

It's kind of messed up. I don't— you know, that's not what the community of WordPress is is about. Like, we don't do shit like that, right? I mean, like, it's supposed to be a place where people collaborate and, you know, make the internet better. And I don't think that's really making the internet better by doing that, bro. But, you know, it ain't my business, but pretty shady.

It is what it is.

Pretty shady though. Yeah, pretty shady. Shame on you, as my granny would say. Shame on you.

And then This other story caught my eye this morning where, you know, Capri Sun, that's like a super popular drink with kids, right?

I used to love that shit when I was a kid, right?

Capri Sun. I remember my kids would love it.

When you would get it.

My kids would love it.

'Cause that shit was expensive. It's just like now it's still expensive. Yes. But back then it was super expensive. So there's a class. It's like the rich person's version of Kool-Aid.

Right. 'Cause it was a juice box. But, uh, but a cool one.

It was like an aluminum foil type.

Yeah, type bag.

Yeah. Oh, you have just seen this with the class?

Yeah, so they have this class action lawsuit. Well, now it got like more interesting because the inside the lawsuit kind of came out now. So it said that their natural ingredients are not natural, and they're also finding that there's some cleaning solution that they use inside the, the bag, and maybe residue from that is left in the bag.

Oh yeah, also there's like hundreds and hundreds of videos of people cutting the Capri Sun open, right, and it just being full of mold, bugs. Yeah, all kinds of nasty shit. So there's also that.

It's a little— it's getting crazier. Yeah, uh, food is like definitely under attack because you see the rubber watermelon.

No, like everybody's buying these watermelons and you can just bend them.

I don't— that doesn't seem to be healthy.

And it doesn't—

I wouldn't want to eat that.

How the—

who knows?

Genetically modified GMO food is just out here bad.

I remember when I was a kid, you would go to Disney World in Orlando.

Never been.

And they had this Monsanto thing, right? Monsanto is like— they destroyed—

that's like the, the guy—

they're the worst company in the world.

Monsanto reminds me of— what was that one Disney movie? Fantasia. Yeah, like those are like— Monsanto are like Monsanto. Monsanto are like all the evil people.

Yeah, they're, they're evil. Monsanto is the evil—

they're outlawed in where?

Mexico, Europe, Australia, everywhere.

Central America.

Well, some parts of Central America because that's where And also they had Monsanto also created a lot of like pesticides too that are banned all over the world, DDT.

And they're still using them here in America.

Yep. It's not good.

Messing, just destroying our soil, destroying our soil, bro. You know what? I've been trying to, been working on some stuff. Right? Yeah, some personal projects. And I forgot, you know, Milwaukee means the good land in Native American.

Okay.

And I, you know, and that's because the land is so fertile to grow stuff.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, and that's facts, man, because I mean, in your— if you just dig in your backyard in Milwaukee, you can plant some shit and it'll grow. Okay, that's good. Yeah, it's— that's a fact.

Iowa was like that too.

Yeah, the whole Midwest. The whole Midwest is really good. Both the I don't know, not so much about Iowa anymore. Well, Wisconsin either, because of all the cornfields and all the soybeans is destroying the fuck, sorry, destroying the farmland.

It's, you keep, you can't keep growing the same thing over and over.

Yeah, no, you have to, that's why the Native Americans would grow corn, green beans, and like a squash or something underground, and they called it the Holy Trinity or something like that. Yeah. Because the corn puts the nutrients back, cleans the shit out of the soil, and the beans and the other thing put it back into it. It's genius, and you can't reproduce it. It's like the only way. It's one of the greatest ways to grow. So also on mounds. But yeah, man, I digress. It's not farming school.

No. So here's the subject, telemarketing, right? And telemarketing. And we went to a convention in the beginning of this year, and the one thing they kept talking about was, oh, come 2025, all this telemarketing is going to stop. So you can't do— you can only have like inbound leads and then call the people. You can't just outbound call people anymore. Once 2025 starts, you can call businesses, business phone numbers, listed business phone numbers, but you cannot just call people willingly unless they opted in some way, right? So they had to fill out a form on your site, which is hella gray area.

That's just a hella gray area, right? I mean, how will they— what does that mean if they signed up for a library card?

Who knows? But I'm just saying, that's why everybody—

what about the telemarketing?

And then the other thing about telemarketing is somebody told me today, they're like, man, I came by your office complex, there was all these people outside in hoodies And everybody was smoking weed. And I was like, you can smoke pot. If they have a medical card, you can't stop them.

Well, technically you're not supposed to smoke outside of your house. Right. That's a fact, right? Like that's the law. But, you know, there's no stopping it, bro.

Like, I mean, I mean, I walk Rocky and there's people outside all day.

Which I find kind of—

Rocky, stop that.

I'm 44, right? And I consume cannabis, right? But I also know that not everybody wants to smell that shit.

Right.

And not everybody wants to walk into my smoke.

Right.

Or I don't know, like just growing up the way I did, you know what I'm saying? Like, You just didn't do that. It's kind of like respect your elders type vibe.

It's kind of like you don't want to walk into somebody's fart either. Yeah.

Or walk into somebody's cigarette. Right. I don't want to do that. You know what I mean? And I think like people just need to be a little bit more respectful. Yeah. I mean, I could say that, you know, I don't like the shit. I don't like it either. Right. I'm not a big fan of it. I'm not a fan of the way the cannabis culture has become. This, I would say, like popular, trendy thing to do, right? And like I said earlier, I'm not in high school, right? Like the guy that he were talking about, you know, someone said it, you know, they did, they had assumed it was me, right, right. And first, like, I'm not a child, so I'm not gonna like walk around in a hoodie hiding to smoke. If it was me, I'd stand in front and smoke.

Right.

I would just do it.

Oh, there's people standing in front of the office and stuff, smoking.

That's what I'm saying. But it's just kind of, you know, that's one of those things, like what are you gonna do about it? You ain't gonna be able to, you ain't gonna do shit. What are you gonna do when it does finally go rec?

No, the problem is, is from a human resources thing, they can't really do anything about it. Most of these sports leagues have addressed it. About people smoking.

Me and Sean were talking about the cannabis thing and, you know, it's like they sweat some people and some people they don't. Right, exactly. That's kind of stupid. You know, they're like they can't use a certain strain.

But these guys saw me walking with Rocky, they're making jokes whether Rocky was like a drug dog. Drug sleeper. And they asked me if I was part of the opposition. I started laughing. Like, what?

I could be, you know, don't be an asshole about it. But yeah, no, I, I mean, I, I'm not a fan of it. Like, you know, I tell my children, you know, be respectful. No, but I'm just saying, like, it's kind of respectful, you know what I'm saying?

Like, no, but it's weird. Like, I walk by an office, there's 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 people outside and they're all smoking.

Yeah, I think as a society people kind of need to get used to that one because one, one of these presidents are going to legalize it federally, you know what I mean?

At some point.

At some point, right? You know, there's— that's the inevitable. But again, this is me gonna stand on my ground. I'm just not a fan of that. Like, even smoking cigs, like back in the day when you were a kid, you had to like go around the corner to the back, right? You know what I'm saying? And you just couldn't be willy-nilly with the shit, you know what I mean? And I think that it— that made it so that the kids, first of all, wouldn't be, you know what I mean, influenced by that shit, right? And also, it's like a healthy, healthy thing.

And it's also weird because for a while people were like vaping it. Yeah, they were vaping other, you know, regular cigarettes or just plain terrible. But no, they were vaping cannabis. And then now that kind of stopped. Now it's just out in the open.

Yeah, because you don't know what's in that shit.

Well, that's a whole nother story.

Do you see Zoom doesn't— is changed their name to—

I got—

I wrote this down.

Zoom, the video thing?

Yeah, is, uh, is now Zoom Communications and wants to be known as an AI-first work platform. Uh, Zoom Workplace— they launched Zoom Workplace with productivity tools and AI-powered features. Why?

Well, they're trying to be like, also like, they have a Zoom phone now, so you can get your— hook your whole phone system up through Zoom.

Like a dial-up?

Yeah, a regular phone for your office. Yeah, and then it's linked up to Zoom.

That's kind of cool though.

Yeah, so, but a lot of other places have similar type stuff, like, um, you know, have similar things where they offer video conferencing with the phone service, you know.

And how does that make them an AI-first workplace?

Platform? Who knows? I mean, maybe they're going to buy some company and integrate like a CRM.

They already have bought somebody.

Yeah, they bought a couple of companies, I think. But it's like under the, under the radar. Yeah.

This article that I was reading about didn't mention anything about that. It was just literally talking about the name and that they want to be known as an AI-first company. But it didn't really— who knows what they're talking about. Have you seen any of these productivity tools inside of Zoom?

Not yet. I mean, I don't have a paid version of it, so.

Yeah, I don't either.

So here's the crazy—

why is the point of having Zoom paid version of Zoom?

I don't know. Well, you know, they got to compete with Google, you know, like if you want to get off too, and Microsoft has Teams. Well, here's a crazy story. A guy goes into the gym, he leaves his wallet in the car. The guy's met, he comes out, his window's smashed, and he goes in his car and he notices his wallet's stolen. So he calls the cops. But the whole moral of the story is the guy was broke and none of the credit cards worked. So the thief was like at the gas station trying all the guy's credit cards and they were all declining. And then the cops rolled up on him.

I seen a video. Yeah, I seen a video yesterday. This dude came back to his car and they left him a note and they said, and then the note said, get some better shit to steal. I was like, dude, dude's heart, someone's mad heart.

But yeah, it's a better stuff to steal.

Yeah, it's clearly so. But, uh, I found this interesting as well, um, more on some business good news. Like, since 2022, uh, entrepreneurship has— and starting businesses has more than doubled.

Yeah, of course.

Since just last year, it's up like almost 30%. So I thought that was pretty cool.

Um, no, I think there's a lot of people that are out trying to start businesses, or they have their job and they need more money, so instead of getting another job, they're starting a business. And people are trying to figure it out, you know.

You have no choice.

There's a lot of scams out there though.

Yeah, but you have no choice about starting a business, man. I mean, or getting some sort of extra money because a single income ain't cutting it. But they said the top 5 industries are, number 1 was retail, 2 was tech, 3 was construction, number 4 was professional services, and 5 was education coming in at 22%. So.

Well, I'm surprised coaching's not on the list and definitely anything like—

I think that would be under professional services.

Maybe. Coaching is big time.

Professional services.

And education too.

Consulting and all that.

Because look at school and all these other platforms that sell courses. So there's a lot of that going on where people are creating— you said education, number 5. Right. I'm just saying, creating courses. But I think one of the most underserved industries, period, in the US is anything to do with like fixing stuff, handyman services, IT. Like, come to my office and run a line. I ask a guy to come over here and it's been a week and he hasn't come over here yet. And I'm like, and I called like 3 different people to come do it. Yeah, there's not enough people.

Plumbing, carpentry, electrician, just general handyman maintenance, like the, uh, not maintenance but like masonry work. Yeah, uh, painting, all that shit, man. Robots ain't here to do that yet, you know what I'm saying? And it's the one— there's this— I follow this one kid, man, he's like, he's millionaire already because he listened to his uncles and his dad and was like Dude, I don't need to go to school. All my uncles and my dad, they all have successful, you know, even like power types of businesses, service industry businesses, and they're all driving BMWs and Benzes, you know what I'm saying? So those types of jobs and those professions are still viable and very much in need and will not be going anywhere anytime soon. Exactly. So don't believe the hype. You don't have to go into tech. You don't have to be a content creator. You don't have to be a sports star. You can do some off-regular, you know, some regular shit, man, and still be very successful. Yeah. And love the life that you live.

So yeah, help people.

Yeah. So, and there's that, you can help people. But anyway, man, that's today's podcast. By the time you see this, it'll be, uh, Thanksgiving Eve. So happy Thanksgiving out there. Give thanks, kiss your family, call your mom, give her a hug.

Give everybody hugs and kisses.

You know, to those who are having Thanksgiving, you know, without their loved ones, you know, we love you regardless. You know what I'm saying? Enjoy your meal. Give thanks for another day on Earth. Peace.

Peace out. Carpe diem.