The Importance Of Knowing Your Data! | 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 Mark McGuire of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And we'll be providing you educational information about fintech, payment processing, small business, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, we'll be talking about Who owns your data? Or who's your dad? No, who's your daddy, man?

Yeah.

No, but yeah, who owns your data? A lot of questions, a lot of concerns. People are really uneducated when it comes to this, you know, like people do not like to read the terms of service. They don't read, you know, what they're signing up for, whether it be social media, you know, to starting a business. So Allen came across an interesting article last week, or maybe even the week before.

It was a couple weeks ago. And then we also had somebody, a lawyer, contact us to interpret somebody's contract.

That we'll get into. But yeah. But yeah, so we talked and we was like, you know what, that is a good topic to talk about because, you know, My mom's always calling me about it and stuff like that. My dad's always asking questions. And I think people really, I think people assume quickly that their data's safe, you know, with these different platforms and stuff like that. But we'll get into it in here in a minute. You know, anyway, how are you doing today, sir?

Everything's going well. It's a busy week.

This week has been very slow.

It's been slow? My week went fast.

I mean, I've probably slept 8 hours this week, so.

Wow, that's not good. You catch up over the weekend. I—

no, I mean, I just can't fall asleep.

So melatonin, it's not working. Really?

I've taken it Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

I've taken this natural one. It works.

Zerbe's. I used it. It's natural.

Okay.

I'm organic. If it ain't organic, Jay starts to panic.

I'll show you the bottle of the one I get.

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty strong. I don't know, I read last night that maybe I shouldn't be eating, drinking my nighttime tea along with it.

Probably not a good idea. Water.

Because the— I don't know, because it's nighttime tea and then the melatonin, the two different herbs are like fighting with each other.

I don't know.

It's possible. Yeah. Other than that, you know, life is good. I can't complain about anything. So yeah, yeah.

So there was a— I did see an article and it was talking about who owns your data, talked about a bunch of different companies. Stripe, Square, PayPal, Toast was mentioned in the, in the article. Square, Clover, Clover, not necessarily Clover, but the PayFac companies.

Yeah, the PayFac companies, right?

These PayFac companies, Shopify, Shopify was about, you you know, who own— who owns your data and what happens with that data and how does that work. So it's, you know, so, and then I had this attorney contact me and he goes, oh, I have this client and they had this— I don't want to say the name of the software— that is software they discontinued using it. And then this— the company said, well, you can't get out of the contract. So the guy had sent me the contract.

Oh, that was a terrible— no, that was, that was Excuse my friend, that was a shitty contract.

And the contract, you know, said all kinds of stuff that the customer agrees.

That's terrible, man.

Agrees that all the data and everything belongs to that company. And I think you could—

you should go ahead and tell what company that is so that people can be aware.

Well, it says it in all of those companies' things. What? Revel was this company.

Revel.

Revel. R-E-V-E-L. Revel.

Revel. Is out here, uh, Toast has the same language in their contract. Toast as well.

And so does Square.

So does Square.

And so does Stripe. And so does PayPal. They all have it in there about that the, that the, the customer data belongs to the merchant. But the merchants don't realize is they're not the merchant.

The company is the merchant because it's a pay fact explained in a whole other podcast that we're not going to get into about PayFac.

You have a PayFac company and then you have an account under them. And the way you can tell that is, is that when you go to a Square merchant or you go to a Toast merchant or a Revel merchant, the credit card transactions, like for Square, says SQ and then the name of the merchant, right? Because Square is the merchant and these people are submergence.

And if you want to find out more, you know, check back in another podcast.

Yeah, check back in about the payfac. What's a payfac? So the customer was literally like really upset that they canceled his contract and now they're keeping the data. And they also told them that he's responsible for liquidated damages of the profit that they would make and the 19 months left on the software, his condition, the terms and conditions of his contract. Got to read the terms and conditions.

Yo, we've talked about that numerous times. Yeah, you got to read this.

And especially like leases. Read your lease when you rent a commercial space. Is it a triple net lease? Who's responsible for the AC? Who's responsible for things attached to the building?

Man, but this right here is a prime example of reading what you're signing up for. It is so imperative to, to read those documents that you receive in your email. Don't just click and sign. I know we're ready to— we gotta hit the ground running, man. We I gotta make this money. I know that's what we're trying to do, but look at what happens when you don't read. Yeah, you know, it turns into conditions in the contract. That's about a $30,000 to $40,000 liability that he's gonna be liable to pay because he signed it. He might get off, you know. I'm sure that the company will—

they're gonna try to collect the money, right? I believe—

I, I wouldn't put it past them. I mean, if I sign something I agree to that.

Right. They're going to try to collect it and they'll probably send a letter and then they'll probably try to file a lien. There's— they can do a lot of stuff to force you to pay it. The other thing is, is like, you know, if you ever notice, like if you go to a Square merchant and then let's say you never were— you were never at that business before. And you put your credit card in there, the Square merchant will say, oh, you want to— you want your receipt texted to you? Your number ends in 1287, right? And you're like, how do they have my phone number? They have the number because Square owns all the data, so they have your phone number. So I want to just— this is something that I've run across a few times. I've gone into doctors' offices, right? And they're using Square for their payment provider on an iPad. And basically, their HIPAA compliance basically says Square sellers are responsible for determining whether they are subject to HIPAA requirements and whether they intend to use the services in connection with, um, with, with Square. If they're using Square services, Square is definitely not HIPAA compliant because Square, when they run the credit card, collects the name collects your phone number or your email address, and they have it and they share it with other businesses, and they own the data and they sell the data. I've said this for a long time. Companies like Square, Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, even Amazon I would put in there, right? Because Amazon is a— has basically a mall and they're selling stuff that's theirs and other people's stuff.

Yep.

And they're collecting a ton of data. Sure. If you go to Amazon and you say, I want the data on how many people buy pillows, they could tell you how many people buy pillows by zip code, right? And when they buy them and what's the best month for someone to get—

they definitely have that data, right?

So the same thing. All these companies have data. They're all essentially— you can say they're a payment company, but they're really a data company. And they've been hauled up before Congress numerous times, and they ask them, what do you do with the data? I think Congress should know what they do with the data and should ask them what they do with the data. I don't think Congress knows the right questions to ask because they don't understand the payment system and they don't understand what data they're actually collecting. But if you're a doctor's office and you're using Square, you are not HIPAA compliant because you're going to run my card and then you're going to say, Allen, your number ends in— this isn't my phone number— 1234. That's not compliant because you're sharing patient data with, with the— with Square. And they now they know that I went to a doctor's visit.

I don't like it.

You know what I'm saying? They know I went there. And the same thing with— let's say you're using Toast or Revel for your payments, right, in your restaurant. And Justin orders pizza and then he orders pizza from my restaurant all the time.

Right.

And I— and they know that Justin orders pizza, but now I decide I'm going to go to Toast. Well, Revel has all Justin's information. They have the information of everybody that's ever ordered a pizza from my place. And if they have another restaurant in the area, they can literally link— start marketing to people to order pizza from that other restaurant and take your customers from you.

And if you don't think that they're doing that, I mean, that's been happening for a while now.

Yeah, that's been going on. So same thing if somebody's selling something on Shopify and they go make a WordPress site, Shopify has all the data on everybody buying Justin's Coffee, and they can do whatever they want with it. And they know who's buying the coffee, what zip code's buying the coffee.

I mean, it's just kind of goes back to like, I mean, Amazon, when you said that, we knew, well, I knew a guy who was selling bed bug sheets, right, through a reseller account. Yeah, well, he was making a boatload of money. Amazon found out, created the same advertisement as him, made his bed— their bed bug sheet, I don't know, 10 cents cheaper, or however cheaper they made it, wiped him out. Yeah, no, he never sold another bed bug cover ever again.

I've seen that a bunch of times. Like Rocky, get, you know, his favorite treat is that chicken jerky. So I used to buy it in these big— in these like big jars. Of chicken jerky. And then one day when I go on there, I see, oh, there's a different brand of chicken jerky. And then I say, well, that one's $10 cheaper. That's a lot of money. $10.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

So I buy one just to check it out and I get it and I read the— it's like Shlomo or Slo Mo, some weird name. And then I look, look it up and it's owned by Amazon.

Exactly.

So they basically saw like, here's somebody selling.

That's why, you know, As far as in the entrepreneur world, people, we hate Amazon, right? Like, you know, the makers, the people who are out here making stuff and really like creating stuff. And, you know, you know, even as simple as the marketing side, oh, we find this product is very useful. And then we market it to the point where we're actually making some money. And then Amazon comes in and literally does what you said, like they'll go to the point of buying the fulfillment center. Where it's coming from.

Yeah, I know somebody— we had—

like, it is insane what they're doing to small businesses.

Yeah, we had a client down here that was making towels, right? Right. And they were manufacturing towels, they were selling them on their own website, but then they started putting them on Amazon. They sold a ton of them on Amazon.

Amazon—

Amazon tried to circumvent them. However, the guy was very smart and he, he had like a patent on this towel.

Smart.

And he went after Amazon. Amazon bought his company from him to make him go away for a lot of money.

I bet you they did.

For more money. Yeah, because they basically ordered the towels from the same place. From, from— no, he was making them.

Oh, they ordered them from him.

Yeah. And had it shipped to their office fulfillment center, and then they— and then they had somebody like copy it. So they ordered the towels from Amazon and gave it to a laboratory, and they saw that they copied their towel.

Wow.

The exact way it was made and everything. So that happens all the time, and it's, it's sad when I see that happen. I go, here's a small entrepreneur, right? They spent all their money, you know, you know, developing a product, R&D, and, you know, they took their life savings, right?

I don't know how many loans, right?

Took loans out and all that. And then Amazon comes and crushes them. There should be rules against that. And I see it, you know, I've seen it on Shark Tank before. I like Mark Cuban. So I, I like Mark Cuban. So I've seen on— I saw one time there was—

I kind of like Mark Cuban too. I like what he said in Kyrie's defense.

So there was a, there was a kid that was, that was made, was made this like honey. Yeah. And Mark Cuban asked how much money was invested in the honey, and he felt so bad because his family like invested all the money into this honey business. And Mark Cuban said, I'm going to help you guys out because I don't know if the honey business— I have to look it up to see if this honey business made any money or whatever. But Mark Cuban, you know, gave you know, help these people and invested money into their business. I don't think he even thought it was going to make any money, but he saw how hard they worked, right? Kids and, and all that, you know.

It's funny that you just said how hard they worked. I was, uh, listening to this guy, uh, like a, you know, psychologist or whatever, and he was talking about there was a test, um, that they Allen Kopelman made, well, like a trial or whatever they call it, experiment. And there was a group, they had two groups of kids and they had problem solving. They had the, you know, little tests in front of all the kids, young kids, right? And they, you know, in two different groups and same stuff, they had to figure out the same stuff all on their own. One group was, you know, when they finished, completed the task, they were praised with, oh, you're so smart, you're going to be a genius, blah, blah, blah. And the other group was, you know, they were, their, you know, constructive criticism or whatever praise was, oh, you worked really hard. You know what I mean? You're doing just a really great job. And the reason I'm saying this is because the people, the kids who were told, oh, you're so smart, you're a genius, blah, blah, blah. In the very next test, they failed. And all the kids who were told, oh, you did it really great, you tried really hard, you know, you worked hard, keep up the good work, et cetera, that type of stuff, right? They all flying colors. So I thought that was interesting, you know, and it makes sense to me too, 'cause you know, you don't know your baby's gonna be a genius.

You know, and data is like a crazy thing because we get emails all the time. Oh, put this pixel on your website. We're gonna be able to tell you who visited.

Yeah, we're taking your data. Who's—

what are you going to do about it? No, no, we're going to be able to tell you who visited your website and all this stuff. And, you know, we've tried a bunch of them out. There's tons of these data companies, like there's a bunch of them like ZoomInfo and Seamless. And they say, oh, you can go online and then you can go scrub through LinkedIn and then you can get all these people's information off of their LinkedIn profile. But I can tell you it's all super inaccurate.

Because, I mean, from, from what we've been working with, yeah, I would say that— I don't know if it's— is accurate the right word? It might be accurate, but who— it's, it's hard to believe when the traffic says this and then you say there's only 100 visitors, right? Right.

So exactly.

And then I get it too, because out of that, maybe they can't— it's depending on how long they're on the site. And, you know, they broke down the The different companies have different algorithms on how they track this data, right? And you know what, the one that was most recent that we were using, it started off strong and then it finished up weak. Yeah, it's like, it's almost like these companies just upload a whole, a, like a spreadsheet of already leads that they have, right? And maybe we don't know, and they're just telling you these are the people that landed on your website.

I have no idea.

I don't know either.

Um, no, but I'm just saying, data—

also, we haven't signed up for the super premium platinum versions of any of this stuff.

You have to try it. You have to— I always say crawl before you run. Yeah, you don't want to run. You don't want to go and pay $500 and then go, that's it, that's what I got.

Exactly.

You know, that's just crazy. I mean, just show me the— what the thing can do, you know, like I'll tell you, we have a social media tool, right, that we've been using for 3 months. We just had to buy it. They give us the first 3 months for free. I think that's the greatest— that company. And I don't mind.

Oh, so then that's why they're making you pay for the year, right?

I don't mind pay for the whole year after that, right? I don't mind. They want me to pay for 12 months, but I'm not paying for the 3 months I got for free. But for 3 months we used it. We learned it, we mastered it, and we know what it can do.

And we're going to keep it.

And we're going to keep it. And we don't mind paying for the whole year upfront because it's a good piece of software. More companies should— where they look at doing that, I don't remember, in the US. And they did have some stuff in there about data, that they collect data from what we do. And if they wanted to, they could put out a press release about that, we use their software, go right ahead. It's called Sprinklr. It's a little bit— it's more expensive than the other social media posting tools, or just as expensive, but for two, it's $2.99 a month.

Yeah, but we have a lot of accounts, right?

But I'm just saying, for $2.99, it's not that expensive for what you get. Yeah, it was way—

if you— if you're a small business that's managing more than five, you know, profiles on social media, I would highly I suggest it. I've never— I don't— I've never really even used it. And I was like, oh, this— but from what I see, from what they're using it for, it's really cool.

Yeah, it does a really good job. It schedules the post, it has AI in it. It's doing— they're linking— they've improved the use of the AI tools and everything in there. I think it's a very helpful piece of software. It's worth the $299. The fact that they give you 3 months for free is awesome. Other ones gave us like 10 days, a week, 5 days, 5 days. This— and they're just as expensive as that one. But that one gave you, you know, give 3 months for free. So, you know, data is very important. Everybody wants data. Like we've had people try to sell us like intent data.

Yeah. I mean, but we, you know, as a small business and with you know, technology, we use the data to improve our website. We improve, you know, our, you know, we use this data to improve, you know, the content that's on the website so that people who land there—

Well, that's how we come up with podcast episodes.

We use the data for podcast episodes. So like, I mean, there's always like, you know, the good and the bad, right?

Like, I'll give you another example. We had a client that came to us and they were, they had 100,000 customers. They were using Square. Space for their credit card processing. Square pulled the plug on them. And guess what? The 100,000 customers— the guy was not running like a side program.

He lost them all.

He lost all the data for the 100,000 customers. No way to get it back. I mean, the only way to get it back would be for them to sue Square. How could—

he can't pull out like They had like the email, huh?

He could— no, they cut him off from the platform.

Oh, he can't even log in?

Yeah, he can't log in. He can— they said, no, we're keeping your information, not giving it to you, not giving them the credit card numbers, they're not giving them the names, the addresses, nothing. I was like, what was he selling?

CBD.

CBD. But it doesn't matter. I've seen it happen with other regular—

no, I was just wondering what he was—

yeah, it was a CBD client, was a huge CBD company, and they went, they went under. But the thing is, is, you know, there are third-party softwares that can hold your, your, your subscription data aside from the credit card processor, aside from the gateway.

Well, you should be exporting that out of there every— I mean, I would, if depending on how busy your store is, man, sign somebody, you better be exporting, you know, the, your that your clients out of there at least once a week, bro. Like, I mean, and this is again when, you know, people who don't know about managing a website, they don't know how to run a business, etc., they just sell stuff.

No, sometimes people have uber success, right? You're going, you're flying high, you're doing $1 million a month in sales, and then all of a sudden the plug gets pulled out and then you go, oh, I'll just switch processors. And then you go, well, where's my data?

You ain't got it.

Your data's gone. Yeah. And You know, I've heard this story from people that use PayPal, people that use Stripe, people that use Square. We moved somebody that was on Stripe to another gateway, and I said to them, I said, you can just either leave the recurring transactions over there on Stripe, or we put Stripe in touch with the gateway and then they transfer it amongst— they're not going to give it to you, but they'll give it to the, the new gateway company.

Mm.

So, you know, they get in touch and they, you know, say send it over. They charge. Same thing like this guy that was the rebel, right? He wanted the file with all this gift card information. Yeah. They charged them per record to get it all. Yeah, that's what happened. So, you know, you got to read your contract before you go and cancel, you know, download all your data.

Oh, my God. You know, please, man, you know, you have— all right, quick, quick. Just a quick checklist. Number one.

Would be to read the contract, read your contract, number 2, terms and conditions, understand what the length of the contract is, who owns the data, you know, is it yours? And if you do leave, get your data before you leave.

Because I've had clients where I tell them like, oh, you know, what's the checklist, Allen?

What? We just went down the checklist. Read the contract, understand the terms.

That's all the same thing. Read the contract.

Understand the terms and conditions. Make sure they can process for your business type, because that happens all the time.

We're talking about data, man.

Yeah, but that's part of your data. You're giving all your stuff. You're— they, you know, and make sure, like, do you want some— do you want Shopify or Amazon or Square to know everything about your business? If you don't, then you should build a WordPress site. Then you own all the data and you control everything.

Yeah. So regardless of that as well, you should also download your data that you have on your store or wherever you're holding your customer information so that you have a copy of it yourself.

Yeah. Hard copy on your computer.

I mean, that's, that, that's a no-brainer.

Yeah. And download your sales and all that. I mean, you should have copies of all of that, everything, all your sales data. All your customers.

That's what I'm talking about, right? Your sales data, right?

And if you're running subscription, I recommend third-party subscription services. It's— it could be a little expensive, but in the long run, you own the data. And because you own the data, if you want to switch processors, or maybe you want to add a second credit card processor, you have the data and you can still run those transactions because the credit cards Data would be sitting on the third party, and even if the credit card processor cut you off, you could go get another merchant account and you still have all the data.

Nice.

So that's why you should use it. You know, when you're small, maybe not, but if you're— once you get bigger, I mean, when you're small, you still need to be—

yeah, you need to download your data, your contracts, understand what you're signing up for, know what you're getting yourself into.

Yeah, we talked about this on Starting Up.

You're not just gonna, you know, walk into a plumber shop and ask them to change your oil, bro. You know what I'm saying? So like, you, you gotta read your contracts, you know, understand what you're getting yourself into, and always, always download your sales information, whatever data that you can pull off of the platform that you're using. It's yours, so use it.

And if you're in some kind of medical business, you should not be using these services, right? PayFac services. I don't care what kind of medical business.

My dad is actually— he's going to that— back to that pain management clinic, right? And they're— they still swipe.

They still— they shouldn't be swiping.

I told my dad, the next time you should do a chargeback.

You should—

every time you go, you should just do chargebacks.

Well, don't do a chargeback. All you have to do is say, I don't remember going there. And then they'll send the receipt in with no EMV chip and he'll get his money back.

That's what I'm saying.

You don't even have to do a chargeback. That's for the receipt. They'll show no EMV, no get a chargeback. Yeah. If you're a doctor's office, you need to have EMV and you need to make sure you're using a HIPAA-compliant solution. And these PayPal, Square, Stripe, etc., none of those are HIPAA-compliant because they, they take the data.

So I got a question about the these— how are these medical companies even allowed to sign up? How is Square just—

because they put in there, it says what I told you, the Square sellers, which is the right, are responsible for determining whether they're subject. But if it's a, if it's a doctor's office, well, they're putting it on the doctor saying, oh, it's up to them to decide. It's right here in their written agreement. You read it.

No, I don't. I—

that's what it says.

I understand.

Says they have to determine it. I don't think it's right. I don't think they should be allowed to sign up those businesses.

No, they shouldn't. Anyway, who owns your data? Who's your daddy? Not so.

Yeah, who's your daddy? Do you want to own your data? You can talk to us, make an appointment at nationwidepaymentsystems.com. We'll explain it all to you.

It— that, uh, YouTube subscribe button for us. Smash it like Hulk. Uh, like, comment, all that happy stuff, man. Let us know what you want us to talk about next time. Look forward to chopping it up with Allen next week. Take it easy.

Peace out.

Peace.