The Birth of B2B Vault | Why we started the podcast? | The Payment Technology Podcast | Episode 147

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Steve Jobs of payment processing, Allen Kopelman, and we'll be providing you educational information about fintech, payment processing, small business, and the technology businesses use in the world today. And in today's podcast, we wanted to talk about where the idea or where the podcast started. How did it start?

Our journey, the podcast journey.

Yes, yes, yes. So, you know, it's been almost 2 years of recording the podcast, so we thought we would reflect on a few things.

We're approaching 150 episodes.

Yes, we are.

Maybe a little more if we include all the FinTech Fridays and everything.

Oh yeah, I mean, because we weren't counting FinTech Fridays as like episode numbers and the regular Uh, things. Yeah, we're definitely— we've done more than 155.

Oh yeah, done a ton of podcasts.

Definitely 150. I mean, we might be up to 200, I don't know.

So I had the idea for the podcast, you know.

Well, before you get into all that, man, um, we got a new studio.

Yeah, we're in the new studio. So if you haven't watched us on YouTube, check out YouTube. You'll see the old podcasts from the beginning. And the evolution, and then the— how we changed the studio around 2, 3, 4 times, and now we're in the new studio with our cool B2B Vault neon light.

I can't remember the name of the company, but we will get—

yeah, we'll give them a shout out on the pod. We'll give them a social shout out.

Absolutely.

Um, yeah, and then we put— got these cool sound Yeah, to make the sound better in the room.

So hopefully that's—

we got new chairs, more living room style.

Got some mics and some waves, some things coming. They'll be here, uh, Monday, Allen said. So that's cool.

Yeah, we already— yeah, our new lighting. We just need some mic booms.

Got a new camera.

Yeah, new camera.

So it's actually very professional setup at this point. Like, the evolution of that is crazy. Uh, But yeah, man, before we like, you know, we're going away from— but anyway, you know, how's your week going?

The week's good. We've been busy with networking, new clients, so it's exciting. Good week, exciting. Going to another networking tomorrow. Oh yeah, the Better Business Bureau networking event. They haven't had a networking event like 2 or 3 years. Wow. So yeah, everybody's kicking up all kinds of in-person networking. Like, if your business is struggling with like how to get business and it's too expensive to advertise on social media, get— go to some in-person networking events.

Yeah, man. I mean, that's the number one way of getting noticed, I guess, you know what I mean?

Like, more people need to word of mouth. More people need to come out to those events.

Yeah, I've been chilling. I mean, we didn't work Monday, right?

No, Monday was President's Day. The banks were closed, so we had the day off.

Very nice.

Yeah, it was a nice 3-day weekend.

Yeah, I slept a lot on Monday.

Yeah, um, it's a chill week.

I was supposed to go get my blood work done today, but I messed up and I broke my fast.

Uh-oh.

Well, so I had to reschedule to next Wednesday.

Okay, it's not the end of the world.

Not really, but I like getting that stuff done. I'm— I don't like— I'm— I don't like being late.

I do that too. I get my blood every 6 months, so I always try to make a first thing in the morning appointment so I don't give myself a headache, you know, exactly, eating all day. Exactly.

Yeah, the one— I don't know, whatever. But yeah, so I hate when I have to reschedule or miss appointments. I don't like doing that, but whatever. Got a good old dentist appointment that's coming up Monday, so I'm getting 2 teeth pulled. So ladies and gentlemen and listeners of the podcast, take care of your teeth. Floss, mouthwash, you know, brush. Every day and night. And yeah, I don't know, that's all my advice for anyone that's younger.

I'm not a big fan of the dentist either.

Oh, I hate the dentist. So you, my mom always told me like how much I hated the dentist. You would think that I would be very, very, you know, mindful of my teeth. Well, I do like, you know, I'm not walking around here stinky breath or anything, but you know what I mean? Like I do take care of my, but I don't, you know, like the religious brush, floss, mouthwash, blah, you know, I don't do that.

Now we talk about things like in school, like basic things.

Yeah, I said hygiene and health.

Yeah, hygiene and health is another, is another bad thing. Like, I don't even remember them like really going over that with us in elementary, middle, or high school or any of that. And I think that should be taught throughout —your school.

Yeah, those things, you know, you think will be taught at home, right? Right.

But I'm just saying it should be taught also in school. You know, you should have a class on that. Maybe not a whole semester.

No, like, you should just be like on the importance of like really creating a regimen for yourself, like in homeroom, like just a daily routine thing of like, you know, these are what successful people do every day. You know, they start their day off, this is what what they do. They shower, cold showers, whatever it is. Brushing their teeth is very important because health is wealth.

Yeah, you know, like, you know, I'm just saying, like homeroom or somewhere along the day, you know, some teachers should be teaching those things, just like a self-improvement class or something like that.

I don't know, something self-reflecting.

It just needs to be incorporated into education.

Yep. And then, uh, we're going to another event, yesterday's event was, yeah, it was slow motion, but it was cool because I haven't never been to, uh, networking.

No, I'm West Palm Beach and West Palm.

Yeah, right, right. So I've never been to West Palm Beach in general. That was my first time. I didn't, you know, I guess there's nothing, I wasn't missing anything, but you know, the people were pretty nice. Yeah, for them.

Yeah, we met a few people there and had a good time.

I got Kush. I'm gonna have to link up with you soon.

We met, met quite a few people there that we have to follow up with. Yeah, it's a good event.

Yep, yep.

Then we're going to the BBB thing tomorrow, and then we got a bunch of stuff we got coming up, other events we're going— what's next week though? We're going to a disaster expo, which has—

what day is that? Wednesday. Oh great, I can't— I just scheduled my blood work for that day. Uh-oh.

Well, it's 2 days, so we can go the other day. All right. And then there's all— it's 2 days, and then we have the Alternative, um, the Alternative Product Expo. Yeah, that was pretty—

we went last year. That was a lot of fun. It was an interesting podcast.

Yeah, that was an interesting podcast.

We got Trippy Maine.

Yep. So yeah, so the podcast, you know, I wanted to do a podcast and I had the idea. Okay. And you weren't even working.

Let's do this. Let's do this. All right, so this is me. I walk in, you know, for the interview, and he's pretty much got like his whole setup going already. And so whatever, we fast forward, I get the job, and then like I don't know, a weekend.

Yeah, but I want to talk about it, but just real quick.

Yeah, a weekend, he's like, yo, you want to shoot the podcast? I'm like, what, man? I don't know.

We didn't even have a name for it.

Yeah, I know. And then, you know, we, we didn't even talk about any of the anything or anything. So, but I just thought it was funny, like, well, I had asked you. He was very excited. You were very excited. Excited that— to do a podcast, especially that once you— it's not like a light bulb went off in your head, like, Justin is going to be able to help me with this podcast.

Yeah, I had this idea that I wanted to do a podcast. I mean, I always wanted to do a blog, but a blog, you know, you can't really make people read, you know, a blog, and people weren't really consuming blogs, and I was blogging and writing articles And, you know, some of it was being consumed, you know, right? And, you know, I just felt like podcasts— and I have won this contest, AppSumo guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Noah Kagan had this contest and I won like $900 worth of gear. So I end up buying like a camera.

This is the reason why I started, like, dude had all the everything.

Yeah, we had— I had a camera. You know, because they got recommended, oh, if you're going to start a podcast or a YouTube channel, here, get this camera, this mic, right, get this. So I had all the stuff. I got like an extra laptop, and I just, you know, then we had to figure out— me and Justin had to sit down like, oh, how do you do this? So we started off. Yeah, I mean, I had— we didn't know. You didn't know and I didn't know.

I had no, uh, podcasting experience. No, and neither did I. I mean, I've had like recording experience and, you know, whatever, but, uh, not on this scale, right? You know, and I was one, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't very— I don't know, I guess I wasn't excited, as excited as you were to want to do this podcast. And so when it started, like, Allen was just alone. Well, I was a solo podcaster, and then you would hear me talk in the background. You would ask questions, random questions, or, or if he said something that I just totally had to say something because—

well, you did because it wasn't clear. Like, yeah, right, right. That's like a good dynamic that we have because as like, you know, like I'm talking about merchant services and then you're sort of acting like a business owner and asking questions about like, what am I— what am I— what is this concept that I'm explaining about? Right. Technology operating from— yeah, from operating a business. Right. So yeah, so then— and then remember we had— we got a few phone calls from people. They said they liked the podcast. They said, oh, you know, the guy who's asking the questions, tell him to sit closer to the mic. Yeah. And so we did that.

So then I like got closer, closer to the mic, but I still was not in the video because I didn't, I just didn't want to, I don't know. I don't know what it was. And it was funny.

What? Because we were using— I know exactly.

I didn't know enough about payment processing to, you know, if yours is a podcast about WordPress or web design or whatever, that's one thing, right? Or hip-hop, whatever, you know, like that's— or just general stuff. Yeah, that's cool. But having a podcast focused on payment processing, you know, I didn't have anything to add on to, you know. Well, very little. Um, and so like, I just didn't want to do it. Like, that's what— but you know, we kept trucking.

Um, yeah, in the pot, you know, in the beginning we were using like Loom and doing like a PowerPoint presentation type thing. Yeah, he's literally a little circle, right?

It wasn't like a corner.

It wasn't that great, you know, but people were still listening.

So shout out to y'all, man.

Yeah, shout out to the people who were listening to the podcast because we still had listeners and it was growing and people were actually calling saying it was a good podcast.

Yeah, like, cool. I had a few family members of, you know, friends reach out and they're like, Jay, man, you know, I'm like naturally able to— it's just, the camera running doesn't mean anything to me, right? So like, I can just do this. This is not a big deal.

Yeah, we're talking, we're having a conversation. That's what it's all about.

And they're like, dude, you should really be more engaged in the podcast.

Yeah, and then we started sitting next to each other.

My dad actually is the one who really— he was like, man, get on, help that guy out, man, you're leaving them out there on the ledge. I'm like, all right, Pops, you know what I mean? So shout out to Pops.

Um, yeah, because we're not in a big room, and we also did not— we still don't have the technical capabilities, or it's a lot, takes a lot. Like, if you You want to have multiple cameras, you know?

Yeah. I mean, we got 2 cameras set up, but it's like, one's the main footage and one is going to be used for like B-roll stuff, you know? So I mean, that's not—

yeah, but I'm talking about where you're switching the angles and stuff like that.

Like, I mean, we all still, we still have jobs to do, right? Yeah.

We don't have— yeah, we would have to hire a whole nother person. And get some more equipment to do that. But I think, you know, what we have— and we get tons of feedback on the podcast. We get people contacting us all the time from these different, like, podcast companies, and they're like, oh, how do you guys do the podcast? And they're like kind of amazed at the hack that we've put together.

A lot. Yeah, I mean, when we first started, the way we were doing it, it was so raw. Like, literally, it's like We record the video, I upload it to Premiere Pro. Well, we record the video. Should we tell them how? Yeah, let's tell them. No, we should, because it's useful. Yeah. And people can actually use this, this same process and, and actually go from, oh, I want to shoot a podcast, but I can't do it, to shooting a podcast because you can do it.

Yeah, you can do it. If you— super simple. Yeah. And it was super simple and it's Basically, these guys said, man, that was one crazy act.

So show them how you did it.

Yeah, so how we did it was we used the laptop and we used Loom in the beginning.

Yeah, then we uploaded the video. Well, he's not just— let me tell you how we did it. I did it. So this is how we figured it out. Yeah, so at first we were stuck because we're like, how are we gonna get the video or like the audio out of the Loom? Out of whatever it is we're using. We were using Loom, which is, uh, it's basically just like Zoom, you know, it's made for meetings, right? But you can record your screen. So imagine basically Allen just doing a presentation for 45 minutes and we screen record it. Then from there I would download it from Loom, and then we would up— well, Loom, you could even edit the video. Yeah, you could, you could clip the video in the beginning. So say, you know, you messed up your intro, you know, this is like one of those one-take wonder type of things. Like if you mess up in the middle of the podcast, you know, you could pause and then clip it out a little bit, but you're just freestyling pretty much the whole time. So, you know, I would do a little bit of editing in there that I could And you know, what it was is what it was. We were, you know, it's like I had— I'm not still not a video editor expert.

And believe me, there's like podcasting is in its infancy as far as, you know, companies pop up all the time. Oh, let us produce your podcast. There's a million companies trying to. So from there, turn it into a business.

We take the Loom video and then I would upload that Well, first I would take the— you could download the audio version, and so I would take that and I would upload that to a transcription service that would transcribe the video. So we would take that and put that on the blog, on the website. But so, man, I'm just— the process— then we would upload that. Sorry. We take the Loom video, download it, upload to YouTube, take the audio file, upload that to Anchor. Anchor pushes it out to all of the other podcast platforms, and then the video would live on YouTube, and then we would take the— embed this— the, uh, the audio and the video and the transcription, and we will post that as a blog on the website. And that's how we did it for, I don't even know, 6 months probably.

Yeah, quite a few months. Yeah, that's how.

And then I finally said, this is me and the graphic designer Samantha, thank you for agreeing with me that this was terrible. It was like watching a presentation every week, and it was not a podcast, right? It wasn't very good.

No, the video portion was not good.

No, it was not, right? Yeah, no, no, no, it was— it wasn't what— it wasn't a podcast. Yeah, it wasn't a podcast. So we sat down, we figured it out, and I was like, all right, I'll be in the freaking podcast, right?

So yes, I finally got you to be on the podcast.

Yeah, because it was terrible. And I'm like, you hear me talking and Everybody's asking, who's that guy? Who's Justin? Why is he not in the video? Blah, blah, blah. So, you know, I'm not, whatever. I'm not, I'm not stage shy or anything like that. I just didn't want to do it. And finally I did it. And, and then I'm like, well, we had to figure out how we were going to do this loom because you can't have two circles. It just looked stupid.

Like, yeah, then we changed to that StreamYard.

Then we switched to StreamYard, and StreamYard worked really well.

Like, I mean, for the most part. So like, it's still a hack.

It's still a hack because StreamYard is still— it's a meeting software. It's made for webinars, meetings.

Uh, some people use it for podcasting. Yeah.

So, and you use it for broadcasting live, like live.

You want to do a live thing on Facebook, you want to be live on LinkedIn, right? And Twitter all at the same time. You can do it. You have to, you can do it with StreamYard.

Yeah. And StreamYard is growing, you know, like the capabilities and the functionality of it is growing constantly. So then we, we pretty much did the same process. We record the podcast, um, except I stepped up my video editing game. And from there I take it and I put it into Premiere Pro. We hired a guy to do a vault, make that vault thing, the intro, the vault spins and the logo pops out, B2B Vault, which was awesome. So then I, you know, I edit the video in Premiere. Download the video and edit audio files, and the same process from that point though. Upload to YouTube, upload to Anchor, and then I'm done.

Yeah, um, that was kind of crazy in the beginning because we'd get these emails from all these like platforms. Oh, you have to go in, you got to claim your podcast. Oh yeah, and we're getting constantly like these, because you have to verify who you are. Some of them would actually call you on the phone. iHeart, Amazon. That was awesome. I'm just saying, it was interesting. Yeah, I mean— How they deal— some of them would send you a form to fill out, you know. And now it's everywhere. It's on platforms we never even heard of.

Yeah, I get emails all the time from new— it's just new streaming platforms. Platforms. That's really—

yeah, they just say, oh, your podcast is on here. You have to click and accept their— yeah, except, you know, accept the thing. Some of them don't even ask you to do that. They just throw your podcast on there. And, you know, I'm still—

be, be— you know, you should watch the YouTube video because as I get better at video editing, you know, there'll be cool stuff in the videos, like something pop up, like it just says cool.

You'll see. Yeah, you know, so podcasting, it's like a, it's like a whole learning thing. So we learned a lot about, you know, the conversation, how we should have the conversation to make it more conversational. Yeah, I mean, it was—

and also at first it started like Allen would have a product, right?

Like we would talk about, yeah, product, or we would talk about a concept. And then we started to do like things like payment trends, because I would be the guy that's saying that's boring.

And you know, you know it's boring if both of us are sitting here yawning during the podcast, right? So we had to figure out how to make it more fun, make it more consumable.

Yeah, and we try to talk about interesting things, you know, like business, things about business a lot of people don't know about, right, that are relative, that are actually helping or happening right now, right? And they can help business owners. Like, we just did a thing about 7 things business owners should know about, right? There's 7 new laws, they're very important, and it's an important podcast. I mean, I wish 10,000 people listened to it because I talked to people about a couple of the things to think about, the non— the, uh, the 1099 laws.

What episode number is that? Episode 144 or 145? Yeah, you should check it out, man.

Yeah, it's very— has a very important thing in the non-compete agreement, how that— what, you know, how that can affect business. You know, we try to We try to bring those kind of things to light. We talk about payments and what kind of technology is out there for businesses because the technology game for payments is in the most accelerated mode that it's ever been in.

I mean, fintech is, you know, we just did another podcast, fintech versus banking, you know, and yeah, financial technology. We talk about, we talk about financial technology.

But it's moving at a rate very, very fast. For sure. How fast it's moving, it's moving really, really quickly right now.

Yeah, financial technology and how businesses can incorporate it into their, you know, how they're running their business today. And especially from my angle, we talk about WordPress designing and and how payment processing can be incorporated into those business models. It's interesting to see how the podcast has changed from episode 0.0 to whatever number we are on. But thanks, man. No, thank you. I'm glad I could get your your— I don't want to call it a dream, but you know, you were very, very motivated to get this podcast going. And to like want— like, the reason that I even would like accept the fact that you wanted to do this was like your drive, or you're, you know, like you just really wanted to do a podcast so that you could explain payment processing. And as boring as that may sound, or as not useful, it actually is very useful because we use it every day. And I think we, you know, as business owners, we kind of take technology for granted, right? You know, and We get stuck on what we're using, right? And you are a gateway to, you know, new— introducing new technology to businesses, better way of doing processes. They're, you know, the way that they're handling their business now, just the same way as me going to a small business looking at their website and their website is from 1992. Too, right? And being like, hey dude, you know, you need a new website, you know, you need to do some SEO, you need to get your social media. So like the same things that I touch on daily with you, you know, you're able to teach, you know, you have a lot of teaching moments, I feel like, on the podcast, which is good. We, we teach each other a lot too.

Yeah, we do teach each other. No, but I try to explain explain to businesses all the time, like, don't ask me like, oh, what technology do we have? We could show you techno— we could sit in a room and I could sit down and show you technology for a week, right? What I try to do is explain to the business owner like, hey, what are you trying to do? What are you trying to do? How do you run your business? Yeah. Now, and how do you want to run your business?

Yeah. How do we make it better?

Right. So like one of the things was like during the pandemic, I was talking to a guy yesterday and I was telling him, I said, I was so happy when the pandemic happened. For one thing, all of a sudden people wanted to have these video meetings, which I was pulling people's teeth to do for the previous like 5 years. I would be on the phone with a client and I'd say, hey, I want to show you this software demo. They're like, oh, you're going to come to— how are you going to come to our office? We're in Arizona, we're in California, we're in New York. No, no, no, I'm going to send you a link, you click it, and then you're going to see, see me, and then you're going to see the computer screen. And they used to be terrified.

Oh, trust me, I know, right? To do that.

And then when the pandemic started, I was like, wow, I'm already like ready for this whole thing, you know? So I started doing like tons and tons of software demos all day long. And I was showing people like, hey, you're not in your office anymore. Hey, look at this really cool payment portal. I know that's boring, right? You can send your customers an invoice, they click on the thing, on a pay, on a link, they go to your page, it says pay by credit card, pay by ACH, which is check. They pick which one they want and they go pay their bill. And people were like, wow, because they're not in there. They don't want people at their house answering the phone, getting a credit card number. They don't want people mailing checks to their office. All their employees are at home, and we converted tons of businesses over to that platform. Nice. You know, by, by doing that. And, and, you know, this— and I was doing, like I was telling you, these software demos for 4 or 5 years before, right? And people would freak out when I would say, oh yeah, I'm going to I'm gonna send you the Zoom link. Oh, trust me, I know.

You'll be like, what's Zoom? When G Suite launched, you know, their suite of products. Yeah. And they had the, uh, the video conference. It wasn't called Google Meet back then. I can't remember.

Oh yeah, that, they had a couple of versions of Google.

Yeah, I mean, I've been— that Hangouts, that Hangouts. There's even before that though, there was something else.

Yeah, they had something else before that too.

Yeah, so I mean, me I mean, moving from Milwaukee to Fort Lauderdale with my business, at first everybody was gung-ho, like, yeah, man, you know, we can meet online, online, online. And then all of a sudden no one wanted to meet online. So it is great. I mean, there's a— it's great that people were forced to adapt to technology. It's terrible that it took COVID-19 for people to adapt.

Yeah, look into other things, like with payments, it, it really accelerated, like Apple Pay, tap and pay, contactless, contactless payments, you know, went, went gangbusters. Because before that, it was mostly like young people, younger people using Apple Pay, Google Pay, and nobody really wanted a tap and pay card because the first versions of tap and pay was this RFID chip card, and there's a famous video of this guy that they started issuing RFID chips, and then he just walked through a mall with a backpack, right, and he collected like 500 cards just walking with a backpack. And then they started selling those wallets, RFID chips wallets, and people can— but the new ones, you have to be literally like within like a half inch of the— some of them, yeah, depend on how the machines are set up. The machines are generally set up, you have to pretty much like almost, almost touch the machine. You have to be within like a half an inch.

So I mean, there's been like a couple random times where I was like really pretty far away and it worked, but, uh, it depends how the equipment is set up, or yeah, like the angle of it or something, right?

Yeah, it has to be because you can be waving it like in front of it and it's— if it's a good piece of equipment, then it's going to pick it up. Yeah, but if it's not—

the one I'm talking about was brand new. You could tell that they had just not—

I mean, I mean, I've gone up to some of them and like the grocery store and it doesn't work and you have to stick your card in.

Yeah, it's starting to get annoying because they're not— it's annoying that when you go to tap, that the tap doesn't work and they And we used to have clients call us up, hey, that's a third world problem for real.

No, we would have clients call us up, hey, do we have that tap and pay thing? Yeah, it's on your machine already. What do you mean it's already on there? Yeah, you have the little symbol. And they're like, yeah, it's already there. If it's not working, call the help desk and they'll turn it on. So for— but for the most part, most people already had it on their equipment, right? Sometimes it didn't work. Some of the processors didn't have it working, which was a real crazy thing. And people were calling us up, hey, we need this tap and pay stuff, we need the NFC, the chip, you know, the Apple Pay, we need the Apple Pay. Yeah. And then I was telling you, my son told me he went the other day to a couple of stores and they don't even take Apple Pay. Walmart was one, and I forget where he said the other one was.

Yeah, no Apple Pay. I just crossed over to the dark side of Apple. So I was the team Android forever. And my grandchildren, I got grandbabies, man. They was like, "Papa, I wanna call you!" But they couldn't call me. You know, they didn't understand that they could use other apps and that FaceTime was— it doesn't just end at FaceTime.

But yeah, um, but you know, it's interesting because, you know, I was a restaurant— I was, I was a chef and I owned a restaurant and a catering company and a consulting gig, right? And then I got into this business, you know, and one of the things that I learned very quickly was when I would go talk to merchants, they didn't even understand how credit card processing worked. That's to get out a piece piece of paper and draw a diagram, which I've done for you before. Yes. Like, how does it work? And they would be like, wow, that's how it works. I mean, it's actually like some other more complicated stuff going on in the background, but literally in, in the matter of less than a second, you know, data is going, you know. And when, and when I first started doing credit card processing, which is crazy, I mean, we were dealing with telephone lines. We weren't even dealing with a machine that could get hooked up to the internet. I mean, the internet— people, most people didn't even have internet in their business. They was using dial-up modems on the computers, you know. And then we got— went to internet, then the machines go to internet. Now most of the machines that we use, they don't even have that. The only way you can have a hard wire internet is if you're using like a base and the machine's sitting on the base and the base is plugged into the internet. Otherwise it's Wi-Fi, right? Everything is on Wi-Fi. Everything. It's all Wi-Fi. Everything has like massive encryptions, you know. So people say, oh yeah, we do this special encryption. No, everybody has it. It's all encrypted. Yeah, yeah. So it's crazy how that credit card machine has completely evolved. And very soon we'll have on our website, we don't even need a credit card machine anymore, and you just take your phone because it's got NFC in it. Dude, what just happened?

I thought we were talking about how we started. Oh no, just saying how everything—

so no, I'm saying like the credit card machine evolved, but I'm saying like that's why I wanted to do the podcast is is to educate people on what's going on with credit card processing.

See, man, as soon as you start talking about credit card processing— dude, I was trying to say that I don't use Apple Pay. I know. And then now you're talking about restaurants. Okay, we'll stop talking.

Geez, dude. No, but then we hired a new— we hired— so, so in a sense, we hired a new employee, right, to come in, to come in and help us with some social media and everything. And then she says to us, Camille, oh, gotta improve the podcast studio. So we start with the wall, and we got a— we talked about getting a sign before. Yeah, and we got the sign, and then we found the right kind of camera. We needed a little help with the camera, we got that, we got the mics, and now we didn't need any help.

I— we weren't shooting in 4K. I have no idea. I'm not a videographer, so we had to ask a question, right? We had to be educated on how to use the camera, right? That was the thing.

We got our— we got—

I guess you could say we got some help. We got some help, but we had to educate ourselves on how to— yes, I had— I have no idea what I'm doing, how to light up the studio. Yeah, shout out to Samantha's boyfriend. What's— what's Samantha's boyfriend's name? I don't know. Samantha, what's your boyfriend's name? Nilson. Nilson.

Yes, shout out to Nilson.

Yes, he's a good guy. Yeah, hooking us up, giving us some— he answered a lot of questions for us, and thank you. I appreciate you for answering those questions. Yeah, for sure. My brother Gideon, he's— I was about to send the camera back and he snapped on me, called me a bunch of names. Uh, he went and bought one himself. To, to, to see what I was doing. Yeah. So shout out to you, Give Money. I love you, bro. Can't wait to see you. Um, but the podcasting journey has been hilarious at best.

Uh, it's always nice when I get a phone call from somebody and they go, oh, you know, I was listening to your podcast and I really liked it. You know, so, you know, so I know people are listening to the podcast.

For me, my, my, when, when someone calls me about the podcast, I just want to— it just makes me laugh, that's all.

It just makes me laugh because it's just one of a million podcasts.

No, because like I'm talking about my family and friends who listen, you know, they always have some wild things to say. I'm not about to say it on air, but whatever. But I appreciate the people who do listen to the podcast, the people I don't know who listen to the podcast. There's a lot of you. I didn't expect to, to, to, to have a viewership or listening group of people listening to a podcast about fintech or payment processing. And it actually there's people who do, and thank you, you know what I mean, that— to listening. Yeah, thanks for—

we want to thank everybody for listening, whether you listen on the podcast, you follow us on social media, you see it on LinkedIn, you see our videos in social media, you see the videos on YouTube, you see the videos we post all over the place. And then the people who listen in all the apps. Oh yeah, I mean, yeah, one thing we did learn is that there's no such thing as podcast analytics.

We did learn, not really. I mean, dude, there's the ones that they say, because it, you know, when you think about it too, it like, so it makes sense like how hard it would be to really track because there's so many platforms, right? You would have There's ways I'm sure to like to try to get a, there's all kinds of different platforms that are out there saying you can track your analytics. But I mean, I would say the best way of tracking your analytics in a podcast is, is just doing the podcast, right? Yeah.

And seeing if like, if you're doing a podcast and you're selling something, then are you making sales? Right. We know that it's really, that we've gotten business.

I was gonna say, I like when you get a phone call that says, we got some business from the podcast. That's all I want to hear. No, I'm kidding.

No, I had a phone call with the merchant one day, and then the guy said, oh, I went and checked you out, and I listened to like 3, 4 episodes of your podcast. He goes, yeah, you know what you're talking about. He goes, let's— I want you to help me with my— with this project.

I mean, and that's the reason why I got, I got one of them phone calls too, right? Someone called me and they're like, hey Jay, I want to say, you know, good looking out on putting, you know, doing that podcast because I've been really learning from that podcast about— because he does like, he kind of does it, it's not a cash business, but it's for him it's a cash business, but that's because he hasn't educated his customers on how to pay him. Right. And so by listening to the podcast, he's learned that, oh, okay, this is ways to, you know, that I should be getting paid for my products and services. Right. So, you know, that's, that's what the podcast is for. Exactly. And that's what made me want to keep doing the podcast, right? Like the educational part of it. Um, because how do you, how do you, How do you turn a podcast? How do you turn a point of sale system into a podcast? It's always been, it was like a challenge to me, right? You know, and we would sit down and we would talk about point of sale systems for 45 minutes and I would want to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, but getting a phone call and saying how useful that information was. Right. You know, that, you know, that gives you the pat on the back. Yeah. Whatever you're looking for, you know, like the— what's the word I'm trying to find— solidifies the reasoning for doing the podcast. Right. You know, it gives you a reason to do it. Like, okay.

Yeah. Like, one time I was at a convention, right? Yeah. We had done a podcast, and it was probably maybe around the time we did the Alternative Expo last year. A few months after that, and we had done a few podcasts about CBD. That podcast went crazy. Yeah, and the CBD podcast is— I was at this convention, it was a, you know, payment processing convention, and like 3 or 4 people came up to me. They were like, man, you did an amazing podcast on CBD. I learned so much about CBD. That I didn't know about CBD and CBD products and what, what the banks think about it, what the processors think about it, and how much of a pain in the ass it is. Yeah, how big of a pain it is to get approved and how much has to be done.

So, and why their website got shut off, you know, there, there's— I mean, yeah, yeah. So all this— so it was a good episode.

Yeah, so we had a ton. That was like one of the top episodes that we had. You know, people like the one that was like the future of payment processing. Those are really good. Those were popular. And then the most popular one, I think, is the one we did about the Financial Brand Expo and how banking is changing. Yeah, that was—

I wasn't at the Financial Brand Expo, so I kind of didn't really.

But it's, you know, you know, that was a lot.

The people listen to that podcast for whatever reason. I don't know why you talked about Going to the Expo is nuts.

Yeah, talked about the Expo and talked about the— about banking and how bank— how banking is changing. You know, it's crazy. Like, we just did an episode and it was just about like, how, how are you accessing your financial— your finances today? And how crazy it is, you know, financial technology is today. Like, oh, you want to get You know, and the banks have to catch up because the banks are going to get shut out.

You know, it's Financial Technology Changing the Way We Bank. That's the name of the episode. So if you want to check that out, this episode, and it's very interesting.

Yeah, you know, and I'll tell you, you know, we could go into personal stories about that because I like to experiment with like, how does— how can you access financial technology without going to the bank? And banks never need to catch up on how to do that. One of the things like at the Financial Brand Conference, and we talk about this even for businesses, right? The next two— well, I don't know if I should make a prediction about two big things we're going to see. I don't know. This is the podcast. We won't do that, but we'll have another podcast about what big things are coming. But you know what big things are coming in payment processing. In financial technology, period.

Yeah, I mean, I just— I just look forward to seeing what else I can learn about podcasting.

Podding.

Shout out to all the pod fathers out there, pod mothers.

Yeah, shout out to all the people that I've talked to, Harry Potters, that I've talked to from different podcast companies who have told me they listen to the podcast, how they like the podcast, like what we're doing. Listeners who have called in and said they like what we're doing, you know, the people who don't— shout out to the guests. Yeah, we've had a few guests on. We're going to try to have more guests on the show coming up. Yes, you know, it's difficult to find, you know, with—

well, it's not difficult. It's difficult because people don't want to be on a video. Yeah, people are afraid of their voice and how they sound. I understand. Yeah, I get it. You know, I totally—

I mean, I thought it was weird when I first started doing it.

Anytime you listen into yourself, it's strange. It's like, yo, that's really how I sound?

Yeah. Like, my daughter's on TV, and I used to ask her, I said, do you think it's weird when you see yourself on TV? She's like, yeah, it's totally weird. Of course, you know. Yeah. Because, you know, I would go visit her at college when she first started to be on TV. Yeah. Then we'd be at her house because they record the weather She's a meteorologist. Then we'd be in her apartment and the weather would come on the TV. All her friends would be like, oh, Rebecca's on TV.

Yeah. I mean, being, you know, whatever. Yeah, that's tough. I don't— but yeah, I don't know. You got to get over yourself. That's all I can say.

No, it's, you know, and then when I started doing the podcast, a few people told me, said, oh, why are you doing a podcast? Does it make sense? But you know, one of the things that I, you know, why Justin said, you know, like, I appreciate, like you said, you know, like, I'm passionate about it. Because one of, when I was reading about doing a podcast or having a YouTube channel, you know, one of the things was the guy I, I was re-listening a lot to, Noah Kagan, at the time. You know, Justin, I follow all kinds of crazy people online. He was one of them at the time, and he was like, you know, if you're gonna do this, he goes, you got to really commit that you're gonna do 100 episodes, because in the beginning it's gonna suck. And it did suck, and I admit that it was not great.

I would say the first 100 episodes were trash. I agree.

Yeah. And he said, after you get to probably 50 or so, it's going to get better. And then after that, it's going to get a little bit more— it's going to get better. And then, you know, obviously the people that are helping you produce the podcast, they're going to get better, right? We're going to get better technically from a technical standpoint, and then it's just going to get better. And that's one of the things that we, that we've done is we've tried to make it better as time has gone on. We've gotten it to be better, figure out how to have better conversations. Justin has become more knowledgeable about hand processing. Yes, because it's like a— it's like a— sometimes it's, it's been like a class in the beginning, right? Like learning, right? And, uh, you know, and then we learn how to be better podcast hosts at the same time.

Better people.

And better people. And give people good educational information. And if you are a podcaster, or let's say you're thinking about podcasting and you want to reach out to us, sure, we'll take a meeting and talk to you about, you know, what it takes. But the most important thing it takes is you got to be all in on the idea, and you got to go all in on that you're going to do with 100 episodes.

Yeah, man. And like, don't get caught up in people listening, because if we would have like stopped doing the podcast because nobody was listening, or if we would have worried about if people were listening to the podcast, we would have never did the podcast because, you know, no one was listening.

Yeah, well, we don't know, but it wasn't a lot of—

we know no one was listening to the podcast, bro. Okay, there was like 20 people. Yeah, they were all our friends and family, but just people are listening if you want to be technical. But yet now there's like a lot of— there's people like that listen to the podcast all over the country, all over the world. Um, so shout out to y'all, man. Yeah, man, but just do it. Don't, don't not do the podcast because people aren't listening. That's— there's a lot of reasons why they might not be— they might not have the algorithm hasn't showed them you yet. You know, you might not have found that sweet spot of how long your content needs to be. There's just so many different things that you've got to—

yeah, we found that also crazy stuff about podcasts too, because you can get like these— we get all these crazy emails all the time. Oh, I want to promote your podcast. And then we found out like people have a phone farm Well, and there we didn't find out.

We know it's common knowledge, bro. Right. Anytime you're getting fake listens, don't do that because then you're just— you're, you're gonna take away from your real analytics if you're doing, you know, paid stuff because you won't really ever know who's listening to your podcast. So I highly suggest not doing that. Don't pay for views, don't pay for plays. In YouTube that, you know, I mean, I get it, you're trying to make money on YouTube for ads, but, you know, being deceptive into— that's not going to get you nowhere. I know that for a fact. And, you know, just it's a waste of your money, honestly.

But it was funny, so I was talking— I was listening to this, um, these guys the other day from Spotify, and they were talking— Spotify and Apple Podcasts— and they were talking about how many podcasts are listed on Apple and Spotify. So, well, total number of podcasts is a couple million for sure, but then I was actually surprised that out of the couple million podcasts that are on the platform, only less than 200,000 post an episode a month. Less than 200,000 podcasts. So we have a very active podcast. Oh yeah, we're doing 2 podcasts a week, right?

We were doing 3 because of the podcast and because of my digital marketing efforts. Allen's gotten too busy.

Yes. So, uh, yeah, but plus we wanted to do more promotion with the social media too at the same time.

So kind of like, Allen just doesn't have time to do 3 podcasts in a week. That's true.

So I don't have time Stop lying to yourself. We got busier and we don't have time to do 3 podcasts.

Just, that's just it. Like, we'd have to make more time and there's not enough time.

Yeah, we'd have to increase our work week. We don't want to do that. No, we're trying to decrease. And we have Rocky and he's over here sleeping during the podcast.

He must like the new setup of the studio because he hasn't gotten up and he hasn't farted. So, you know what I mean?

Yeah, somebody asked a question on Twitter one day, what What's the worst thing to happen during the podcast? That's all I put in. Rocky farting. That clears out the rules. That'll be like, you're on the podcast and then all of a sudden you're making a bad face.

Boom, man, you want to get out of here.

Yeah, we want to end the podcast.

Oh, I ended the podcast the last time he did it. It was a wrap. Podcast over.

Podcast over. All right, so that That's the podcast journey. And I mean, I don't know, we didn't really finish the podcast right now. We didn't finish? Not really.

Okay, I just said that was the end of the podcast. Oh, so what's the— I don't know, like, uh, I mean, as far as shooting the podcast, it's been great. Um, I finally, you know, accepted the fact that I look forward to doing it, you know what I mean? Like So that's cool. Um, but yeah, like I was saying, man, don't not do your podcast because no one's listening, because they will start listening. Definitely. But find something that you know what you're gonna talk about, right? And be passionate. Yeah, like be, you know, be knowledgeable, be passionate. And I think what really is— helps our podcast mainly is that We're giving useful information to business owners and potential business owners and entrepreneurs and people who are thinking about becoming an entrepreneur or business owner. Um, you know, so that's about it, man.

Do the podcast. Do the podcast. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta just get in there and do it. And we look forward to, we've done over 150 episodes. We look forward to doing another 150 episodes of the podcast, and we're gonna make— we're gonna constantly improve what we're doing, especially from a visual standpoint on YouTube. So if you haven't checked it out on YouTube, check out the new digs on YouTube. Yeah, please, man, you know, or, you know, something, or tell us something that we're missing, or if you have any, uh Yeah, if you have a suggestion, you have a question you want us to answer on the podcast, you can send us questions that we'll answer on the podcast. You can catch some of our funny videos when we had to eat some of the BeanBoozled beans. That was disgusting. That was pretty disgusting, but we're trying to, you know, we try to have a little bit of fun. Also and explain different things to people.

I think this is a good opportunity to say to anyone missing FinTech Friday, yeah, you know, give us a reason to do it again because doing going live and no one going checking in.

Yeah, people, yes, sometimes we'd get a couple of people checking in live. Most of the people were listening afterwards, after the fact, right? So So we still put out an episode on Fridays, but it's not FinTech Friday. Yeah, it's not FinTech Friday anymore.

So let us know if you guys are missing FinTech Friday, um, but we are— anything else that we changed, or if there's something that we— you think we should add within the show. You know, I'm always looking for, or for ways, or the ways to segment into the show to not make it so product-based, not so selly, not like an online advertisement for 45 minutes. Like, that's me and Allen and everyone in the office, we're always— that's the point of the podcast, is not to be, you know, sell-y, right? We don't want to sound— we're not trying to sell you these merchant services for 45 minutes. We're trying to educate you and to have a little fun and to also, like, you know, bring it full circle. You know, within the—

right, we want to educate you. Also want to make people aware of some of the different things that are going on that can affect your business, you know. And it's important that business owners know about because basically I think it's kind of— people don't know where to go get their news or get reliable information or whatever. But I think that we're giving people good, good information about you know, what's, you know, different things about business and payments and technology. And, and, and yes, good information.

It's reliable information because we're both business owners and we're both active, right? And so they're— we're going off of our experiences, right? So like, of course everyone is going to be different. Every business operates different. Every business owner is different. You know, what he eats, I don't go number 2, you know? So, right. Um, that's the way it is. But yeah, man, I think it's very educational for business owners and I think that everyone can listen, you know, even the, I was telling you one of, um, Justina's, my wife's niece. Yeah. She started a podcast. Okay.

Oh, we motivated her. Yeah, yeah, that's cool.

That's amazing. Yeah, that is amazing. So like, yeah, like, that's, that's cool.

I know somebody else who told me the other day, they said, oh, we listen to your podcast, and they're thinking about making a podcast for their, uh, business that they do. They should have a podcast. And I said, you should do it. And I said, you know, I can tell you what, you know, what it is.

I like the other thing too, of one other point. I mean, this is a personal part of why, I mean because it keeps me on my toes too, because I'm not gonna about to be on here talking nonsense about WordPress. All right, so I make sure I know and I'm up to date on what the technology, what's happening in the world. Yeah, it's made me stay more aware of to what's happening in the world. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing because a lot of times it's giving me anxiety through the roof, bro, like But, you know, I mean, getting older, you do have to stay in tune with what—

No, but we look at like a lot of different business news and financial news and things like that. And yeah, and we were talking not that long ago, a few weeks ago, and we were like, man, everything in the news is all this like—

Makes you want to cry.

No, there was a lot of negative stuff going on, especially with crypto. And, you know, it's like, it's like We can't even talk about that.

Anytime a crypto, World War III, environment— I mean, come on.

Yeah, there's a lot of crazy stuff coming into the office.

Was a little tough trying to be like, hey, how's everybody doing?

So it's kind of hard to do like a, you know, cover some— cover, you know, some different subject matter. So we try to do that and, you know, and cover other things. And, you know, we got some interesting topics that are coming up on the podcast that I think people will enjoy listening to because there's, you know, a lot— we try to incorporate some basic business type of things into the podcast as often as possible. So it's not always about payments and always about technology. It's about things that every business— because every business needs to get paid, every business needs to advertise. Every business needs to know about what kind of laws are out there that could affect the way you do business. Those are the kind of things we're trying to bring to the forefront, you know, marketing, things about marketing and what's going on, digital marketing, digital marketing and marketing and, you know, networking and different things like that.

So check us out on YouTube Follow us, subscribe, turn on post notifications so you never miss an episode. Don't forget, if we— if you do want to see the return of FinTech Friday, let us know. You know, if we get enough people, we do have a few plans for that. And if we have a plan to—

we have a plan for that in the future.

So, you know, if you follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Alignable— well, B2B Vault is not on Alignable, but Nationwide Payment Systems is, and so is Allen and myself. So if you're on Alignable and you want to connect with us, that's your thing, so be it. Now you can check us out on LinkedIn as well, but you got to follow us and so that you, you know, turn on the post notifications so you don't miss another episode, or that you don't miss when we share information or links to to promos because I mean there's a few things right now. If you sign up for the newsletter at nationwidepaymentsystems.com, you'll get 20% off of all GoDaddy products. So, you know, there's a lot of things, there's a lot of good incentives to follow B2B Vault and Nationwide Payment Systems online. The B2B Vault community is constantly growing. Excuse me. Thank you to everyone who is a part of that.

We have a group on Facebook.

Book. We got a giveaway coming up soon, so you know, that, that's in the works, um, for all the, the community group people, only the people on the community page.

So, oh, okay, it's gonna be only on the community page.

Yes, I like it. Yes. Um, so yeah, man, there's a lot of few things. Head over to b2bvault.info if you need a merchant account. Click the button on the top that says Apply Now, sends you to Nationalwide Payment Systems, and you'll get, you know, your merchant account within, I don't know, 10 minutes.

Yeah, 5 to 10 minutes you could be approved and processing payments lickety-split.

Yeah, so I mean, that's all I got. You know, you can follow me @JRowings. I'm actually thinking about changing my Twitter handle. Yeah, for following purposes. I just haven't came up with a catchy little—

Huh, mine's just my name, Allen Kopelman.

Yeah, but boring. No, but you know, hey, follow @AllenKopelman. It's a lot, right? So I can change it. If for the listeners, right, you know, not everyone knows how you spell your name, right? You know what I mean? And O wings is The notorious Copes, whatever. I don't know yet. Uh, yeah, man, so I'm gonna figure that one out and probably switch up the Twitter handle.

That's a good idea. Maybe we gotta switch a few things up. Yeah, personal things.

But yeah, other than that, I got nothing else. Um, I hope everyone is well.

Stay safe, my friends. Peace out. Peace. Carpe diem. And thanks to all the listeners again. Yes, thank you.

We appreciate you. You're the real MVPs. Yep. Tune back, check back soon.

What do you say, Rocky?

That was good.