The Shocking Rise of Cannabis Gifts Shops in 2024!

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 Christian Slater of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. What's up, bro?

Not much. It's another busy week.

Busy week. It's Tuesday.

Baseball season is about to end.

Oh yeah, go Brewers, bro!

They're gonna hit the— they're gonna be in the playoffs.

Oh, they won the division.

Okay, great.

The Marlins— like the Marlins, they came in last place. They have— they were with the second worst, uh, record in the major leagues.

Yeah, and they traded like tons of people away.

Yeah, the guy Jazz Chisholm, he went to the Yankees.

Yeah.

Go Yankees, the Yankees are kicking ass. Brewers are smoking. They came back from an 8-nothing, they were down 8 to 0.

Yeah.

And they came back to win.

Oh, nice.

Dude, the Brewers, the boo birds was out, they was getting booed because they were down by 8.

Right.

Because Milwaukee, we don't play that shit. We don't care if you're clinching the World Series.

Right.

If you're stinking it up.

Yeah.

We're going to let you know. And they were out booing and they ended up— bats came alive and they ended up winning 9-8. Okay. Yeah.

All right. Go Brew. The Brew Crew. Yeah, baby.

So, baby, one of the—

I'll tell you, I had just some crazy stuff going on with social media right now.

Oh yeah, yeah.

So one is Instagram is now going to force teenagers to have protected accounts.

How in the hell do they think they're going to do that?

I don't know, I don't know. I guess they're going to make— start making that if they can't submit like an ID, probably.

Oh, with their account, that, you know, she's not going to be able to be on social.

Well, I'm just saying you're going to have a time. You're going to have a restricted account.

It's about time.

It's going to be restricted.

Teenagers should not be on it. There should be like a PG version, a G version, a rated R version, and an X version.

Right.

Because I'm all for freedom of speech and everything. Right. There shouldn't be limitations.

I just want to know why.

If you see somewhere for everyone.

I know, but I'm saying If, if Instagram is doing it, why isn't Zuckerberg doing it for Facebook too?

Because now people will eventually— he'll roll it out. I'm just saying one company basically.

Yeah, it's the same thing. So yeah. And then the other thing that's going on now is, and the FTC is talking about this, there's a couple articles in the, in some different, you know, news websites that the social media platforms are using your data, the posts that you put on, videos you create. Whatever you're typing into social media to train their AI. And now people are getting a little upset with them and asking if— how are you going to opt— if they can opt out of it. So some platforms opt out of data. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Opt out of them looking at your data with their AI. They just opted everybody in without asking. But I think that No, of course they did. Why would they ask? They don't ask. It's better to ask for forgiveness after you opt out.

Do you believe you really opted out of the AI reading your data?

Probably not. And also, I don't—

if you do opt out of it, that's bullshit. But also hit the— you— the biggest bullshit button. Okay, here we go. The bullshit.

That's 3 gallons of bullshit and a 2-gallon bucket.

I agree.

So then But if you opt out, are they going to— is it going to affect your posts? Like maybe they're going to suppress you. I mean, I don't know.

I mean, if the algorithm is taught that, I guess. But I'm just saying, you know, I mean, speaking of AI, did you see Sam Altman labeled our current times as the intelligence age?

What? Yeah, whatever. He needs to go to jail. His girlfriend's trying to get out of going to jail.

Uh, no, no, not Sam Bankman-Fried. Oh, oh, oh, oh, Sam Altman, OpenAI, the guy—

OpenAI.

Yeah, Sam Bankman. Yeah, his girl did ask for no, no jail time. Yeah, I mean, what did she really do though?

She was the basically the, the straw signer.

Exactly. She had like—

she did. He just said, oh, here's your title, and gave her a bunch of paperwork to sign, and she signed it because they were giving her tons of money.

And I'm sure negligence is involved here, right?

Well, negligence and scruples.

Well, being an idiot, right? I guess being ignorant does— ignorance is bliss, but being an idiot can line and, and ends you up in jail, right?

I mean, she just basically just said, here, sign. I'd be like, I know a guy, he was a notary public, right?

Yeah.

And he got a job at this company, and they said, oh, part of your job is, you know, you need to get your notary and you need to sign all these documents. Unbeknownst to him, which basically when you notarize a document, you're not required to read it, you're not required to analyze it, You're not required to say, oh, this is bullshit, right? You just have to do it, right? You're just notarizing the signature. I'm notarizing, oh, Justin gave me his driver's license, Sean gave me his driver's license. That's them. They signed it and I put my stamp on it, right? So this guy that I know had this job and basically these people were selling like bogus. They were selling the same pieces of land over and over and over to multiple people. And then he ended up like going to— he ended up going to jail for like— well, he was in a crime. Yeah, but he was in jail for like a year or two while they were like— they just had him locked up because he didn't have money to get out. And it was like federal, the federal pen, Country Club, like during the investigation.

Okay, so then he got out, time served type deal.

Yeah, they were like, okay, you're out, you know, you got a narc on these people. And he's like, yeah, I signed. He admitted it. He goes, yeah, I signed all this. He goes, but that's what a notary does. He goes, I didn't do anything wrong.

I'm not investigating. There was a woman in Miami who just did that, but her ass was guilty as shit. She was buying and selling stolen vehicles.

Oh yeah, I saw that.

Like foreign, like you talking like McLaren.

Oh yeah.

You know, not a Chevy Caprice.

Yeah, man.

But yes, in the same blog post saying, Sam Altman described, uh, the next 10 years that, uh, the stuff that AI will see would be considered magic from our grandparents. And he— that he's 1,000 hours away from super intelligence or whatever. I can't remember the word he described.

Yeah, speaking about AI, I was reading this thing from the survey, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Tenka Teneo— I don't know, Teneo— nearly every small business up to 90%, they believe 98% said through a survey are utilizing a tool that is enabled by AI. 40%, they're using regenerative AI tools like chatbots, image creation, and blogging. And that's double from last year.

Have you seen what's happening in like the music industry and shit?

Like, oh yeah, well we talked about that one guy who used AI. No, no, no, no, no, no, no!

I'm not talking about bad. Well, it is kind of bad. It's just like the music industry is in a very big shift.

They're in a panic.

Well, I don't know if it's necessarily a panic. It's just like since artificial intelligence came out, people's jobs are gone. So like entire, you know, a record company used to be a huge working mechanism, right? Like There wasn't 4 people there.

Right.

You know, it was like 150 people, employees doing art. Well, that's a lot of people. That's a, you know, that's like Def Jam.

Right.

You know what I mean? It's probably even more than that. But, you know, like now artificial intelligence comes back, comes into play and whole departments are gone. And, you know, CEOs, like whole labels are folding. CEOs, people who have been in the industry for since I was a kid. Kevin Lyles, all these people, man, like they're just retiring and shit. A lot of people are kind of trying to say that it's because of Puff, the stuff that's going on.

Well, it happens to be coinciding with that.

I mean, it's just a lot of it I think is timing and coincidental, you know. Some I'm sure is related, obvious, you know. I mean, some, right, there's got to be some. But it's like saying like Jay-Z's like hiding. I mean, Jay-Z was just on TV at this 40/40 Club release with the guy who— what's the guy who owns Fanatics? The super rich little guy.

I know who you're talking about.

Can't stand that guy's face. Anyway, uh, yeah, man.

So like, I don't know, like, I saw where they were also mad because there's some song that just came out that they didn't know was made by AI. And it's like started going up the charts and it was a total AI song. Yeah, some guy just made it, you know, made it with AI.

Dude, did you know that there's a Kmart in Miami?

Sure, there's probably some—

no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, there's two Kmarts in the United States.

Okay, I didn't know that.

There was one in— I got it written down— Bridgehampton, New York.

Okay, I don't know where that is.

And it's closing, right? Okay, the only other one Yeah, is in Miami.

Wow, that's crazy, bro.

I Googled it. Yeah, and it's inside of another store.

What? That's—

you gotta look at this. It is so strange. It used to be a Kmart, right? So then another like, uh, discount store. Yeah, like off-brand, not Dollar General or Family Dollar. He's renting it out, but then Kmart still has like half of the store.

That's weird. I can see a picture.

You gotta Google this. This is hilarious. It was— I was like, wow. But I'm saying that because it's like, damn, man, nostalgia as a kid. Like, everything is gone. Blockbuster, Radio Shack, Kmart. Oh yeah, I saw Toys R Us. KB's— well, KB is coming back. I heard KB is opening up inside of Macy's. Okay, so that's good, that's cool.

Toys R Us is trying to make a comeback then.

How is Jeffrey the Giraffe not a part of these kids, bro? It's like saying Sesame Street ain't a part of the kids because Amazon—

you can buy everything you want on Amazon. But that, that's the—

that's a problem because how do the shorties even know they really want this shit? And like For me, I remember like, yo, I want the G.I. Joe. And if I was really impatient, I'd open that shit up right inside the store. You know what I'm saying? 'Cause I mean, back when I was a kid, it was like a dollar and some change for a G.I. Joe. You know what I mean? You save up, you go save your cans, and you go recycle your cans. Next thing you know, you buy you a pack of, a whole box of baseball cards. Not a pack, the box. For like $2. You'd be sitting there for, 8 hours opening up all the baseball cards, chewing the gum until the side of your mouth is raw. You know what I mean? But yeah, man, nostalgia, man. These kids, dude, I'm worried as hell for the shorties, you know, because there's nothing to do outside. Like, you know the meme where it's like when you were a kid, your mom would be like, "All right, get out of the house, it's summertime." Right. You know what I mean? You would be gone.

All day.

Until the sun went down and the streetlights came on. It's time for dinner. Yeah, you had to be home when the streetlights came on. And if that doesn't mean you traveled to damn near from Milwaukee to Chicago on that bike, you better haul ass and get your— you know what I'm saying? Home.

But like, we used to be outside playing all the time. Hide and seek, tag, football, baseball, whatever. We were riding bikes. We were all over the place.

Abandoned houses, sewers. I'm not bullshitting. Okay, we go into those brain things. Oh bro, we were crazy. I was nuts. I almost died at least 1,000 times.

Okay.

Yeah man, do you see the DOJ is trying to sue Visa?

Yeah, I saw that.

So it's where the same shit they're doing to Google.

No, they're trying to—

Yes it is, it's the exact same shit.

Over control of saying control of the debit card network.

It's just like the conglomerate.

They're like, oh, Visa is not complying with the Durbin Amendment. The Durbin Amendment, the guy wrote it in 2010.

Okay.

Yeah. He said, oh, we need to have a, you know, a competitor to Visa and MasterCard. Okay. Well, obviously nobody thinks it's a good idea to be their competitor. So it's 2014 years later. I mean, Visa has competitors.

Right.

But I'm just saying, like, nobody's come in and be like the—

made a new network.

Right. Made a new network.

That's what you mean.

Right. And everybody— Amex abandoned their network. Discover abandoned their work because Amex is now processed along with Visa and MasterCard and Discover, the same thing. They're part of MasterCard.

And they did that because it has the most—

it's the most used.

It's like damn near perfect, right? There's nothing wrong with it. And they own it. They own it.

It's like the feds want to steal their business from them.

They do want that.

I'm sure. I don't like it. It's like forfeiture. It's like this tax that we talked about the other day. That Kamala Harris wants on your unrealized gains.

Just, yeah, that's just—

No, I'm just saying it's all this shit.

It's like very dangerous. It's blood clot fuckery.

It's not good.

It's not. Unrealized— Don't just say Kamala Harris. This shit has been in play for a long time.

A lot of people, Obama tried to do it. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, AOC. They all talk about it, all these like hard, hardline, liberal politicians.

I don't know shit about politics.

No, I'm just saying they've talked about that for a long time because somehow they think, oh, we need to take down—

I should say I don't know nothing about politics. I don't talk politics.

No, I'm saying they're trying to take down the rich people. That doesn't make sense. No one will want to own that stuff, so everything will end up being owned by the government. That I have a problem with.

I think everyone should have a problem.

Yes.

But did you see— remember we were talking about, um, how, uh, like those apps that are supposed to be secure and, you know, like privacy, like Telegram?

Yeah.

So Telegram, right?

The guy got locked up. No, in the— and yeah, like France, they arrested him.

No, I'm saying the guy from Telegram, the owner, the CEO, says Now they are gonna, uh, give information to authorities. Okay, if requested. Okay, that's bullshit. The whole point of that, everything is supposed to be anonymous and not be able to be tracked and everything, right? That's what I'm saying. People don't believe it, man. There's nothing— nothing you do is hidden online or, or in the cloud. Nothing. Don't ever believe that, oh, I'm using, uh, WhatsApp, it's, you know, encrypted, triple encrypted. I don't— don't believe the hype, fam. Like, the government that controls the world, like the whatever, whoever, the Big Brother, the deep state, if you believe for one second, oh yeah, yeah, go ahead, let them use WhatsApp, you know what I mean? We don't need to know what they're talking about. I don't believe that shit. Get out of here.

So here's a weird thing that I came across in the news. In Washington, D.C., okay, somehow people were running businesses called cannabis gift shops.

Yeah.

And no, but they weren't—

In British Columbia, you can't sell weed.

Right. So they were selling people—

I mean, in the District of Columbia.

They were selling people. People would come in and buy a gift. Basically an empty box. Yeah, but really they were buying marijuana.

Yeah.

And now the city— I guess they start— people started opening them up all over the city. Yeah. And they were selling pot everywhere using this some kind of weird loophole.

Yeah.

And I was watching a, like, a podcast on it.

I was like, you know, you've never seen this?

I've never heard about it.

So now this is the way it's been since DC legalize weed, right?

So now it's always—

so you could literally be in front. They— yeah, I got— I'm gonna say now, I gotta show you this thing. There's like this video of this guy, he's in front of like the Senate, like some sort of building, right? Very—

yeah, one of the government buildings.

Yes. Now if they were to make this transaction on the street, right, that that building was on, that'd be illegal, right? But they were directly across the street. The guy opened his van.

Yeah.

And he had like, held like pounds and pounds of weed. Right. And he is like, well, what would you like? And he's like, I don't know, whatever you would be willing to. And then so he just hands him this bag of weed and he's like, that's it? And he's like, yeah, that's it.

Yeah, but it's some kind of, it's like you're giving, you're giving the person money and they're saying, oh, I'm giving you a gift.

Yes, exactly. And then he gives him some money, right? Yeah, it's literally amazing.

So, so now Oh, the city of D.C., it's out of control. So now they start closing all the places down and they're trying to get them all licensed to be recreational marijuana places. In fact, it was weird because I got 3 phone calls, one over the weekend, one last week, and one Monday, all from shops up there trying to figure out what they're going to do because they were taking credit cards, but now they got closed down. Some of them are— they have to move because they're too close to— I guess they passed the law. You can't be with so close to like government buildings.

Yeah, I mean, that's how it always was. Schools.

Yeah, but they weren't enforcing it, of course. And it was just hella gone wild. Like, literally, it was Wild Wild West, Green Rush, man. This guy on the podcast is like, yeah, you could walk into a convenience store and get pot.

All I know is when they legalize that shit down here, yeah, the same thing is gonna happen.

Well, if they put— well, they'll just have rules because, you know, Florida likes rules.

So yeah, but who the Who's gonna go into every, just every— they bust—

let me tell you something, these smoke shops, Justin, you have no idea. When smoke shops first started opening and vapes, these guys were making their own like vape juice.

Oh, I know.

And all that. I remember. And then the cops started going and busting.

Well, that's because they're getting— people were getting sick and shit, right? And all kinds of other things. There's like health FDA.

Yeah, there was like— yeah, people were getting sick. Yeah, they were putting marijuana—

weed though. No, I know, but I'm saying, although out in New York the same shit was going on and people were getting sick and people were finding hella fentanyl and cocaine-laced weed and shit like that. Yeah, you know, people are just messed up, you know what I mean?

So they just need to control it. But I'm just saying, I just thought that was crazy. I'm like, how is this whole business going on? I never heard about it.

Oh yeah, no, it was definitely a thing, bro. It was a— that's, that's how it's always been out in DC. Yeah, my homie A-Sun lives in DC and he used to he would tell me about it.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, he's from DC. He moved down here for a couple years, moved his family back to DC. And yeah, dude, he said it's wild the way that the shit works.

And they have like insane amount of crime there too.

Well, DC is very— it, it looks nice, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, he— it all depends on how you come up and where you come up in life, right? Right. Like, the world is a ghetto and shit. Like, every, every city has a a ghetto and every state has a ghetto. It doesn't matter. You know what I mean? And I think it really depends on how you carry yourself and how you grew up. And you know, if you're a piece of shit, you act like a piece of shit in the ghetto, in the hood, you know what I mean? It's not gonna end well for you. But you know, you do what you supposed to and not nosy and you know what I mean?

No, I'm just saying, it's just like they, they have—

Yeah, no, he lives directly across the projects and shit. Like, he's like, the projects are here and then it's all those like cream city, not cream city, like the brick houses.

Yeah.

And yeah, it's amazing. It's beautiful. He lives in a very, very beautiful house.

I was just shocked listening to this podcast on LinkedIn this morning and the guy's talking about all this stuff and I was like, what? Yeah. And I started looking it up and then, you know, all the city officials are, it just like got completely outta hand. This whole cannabis gifting business.

Now you see DeSantis, now he's changing his tune about the whole yes on 3. Yeah, the recreational thing.

Well, everybody's pushing for it.

I mean, he even said the cops even say they want it. Well, they don't want to be dealing with everybody smoking weed in the car like that. It's a pain in the ass. I can only imagine how much of a pain, because they got to test it, they got to pull you out, they got to weigh it.

How long does it—

that's got— for them, they're fumbling around, they don't even know what it is.

Listen, they take the pot, they throw it down on the ground, and they— unless you got a— unless you have a marijuana card, they take it and they just smush it with their foot and they tell you to leave.

I mean, it doesn't—

unless they open up your trunk and there's 10 kilos of pot in there.

Kilos? Yeah, kilos of pot, or pounds, or whatever.

You got 5 big garbage bags full of marijuana.

Yeah, you're, you're shit out of my mind.

I'll tell you a funny story.

No, no, no, no, no, no more stories about weed.

Okay, we won't talk about that anymore. So what else you got in the news?

Uh, I got nothing, man. It's, uh, it's been, you know, I was trying to find something funny to talk about, but shit is still so serious and it's not much going on. Business-wise, it's the end of the I can't believe we're in fourth quarter, dude.

Yeah, it's crazy.

Like, it is. For me, it's the pressure cooker. Like, I'm at a point in my life where it's really just whatever, man. I'm all balls to the wall, working 7 days a week again and shit. So I don't know what to do, man, but I do know it'll be okay. But As far as news topics go, man, I don't know. I, I mean, I'm locked into the Brewers, hopefully.

I mean, one thing that I can't stand, like, not that I can't stand it, but one thing that really like upsets me, I go into like my— I have that like Newsbreak app, which is kind of cool, but one of the things that always disturbs me that pops up in there is the dirty dining, and it's like Man, it just— I look at that and I go, man, it's so expensive to go out to eat to restaurants. And then you go look at dirty dining, right? And some of them are like known restaurants that I saw getting shut off recently. Uh, Cheesecake Factory in Boca was one. Saw some Bonefish Grill with roach on the wall, you know, just some other like really crazy stuff. And I mean, you know, people are spending a lot. We've talked about it before, how expensive it is to go out to eat. And, you know, and then you go and you read all that and you're like, man, this— there's just not a—

yeah, I mean, we talked about it in that podcast, you know, it sucks. But I don't know, you— at some point the business owners need to come in and really assess what the hell they're doing, I guess, because To me, if you were the business owner, I think, and you were actually present in your business, you wouldn't be allowing most of the stuff that's happening.

Yeah, but a lot of it's in chain places.

That's what I'm saying. So it's not like you're just hiring bodies.

Yeah, well, the restaurant business has changed a lot because when COVID happened, a lot of people that worked in the restaurant business for many years went, you know, some restaurants were closed for a few months.

I just seen a restaurant again that's just for the third time. Oh, Stoner's Pizza over on Los Olas.

Yeah, they got written up.

How the hell? Like, dude, you're on Los Olas Boulevard, right? This is your third time.

There was another place on Los Olas written up also.

But like the third time though, like how many times does it take before they pull your—

no, you have to clean everything up, throw everything in the garbage, and then they let you reopen. They let you reopen.

Then that's a constant thing no matter what.

Listen, people just have to learn. You got to keep places clean. That's why I said if people had to put the sign on the door because they said they seen rat shit. Yeah, that's not good.

I mean, because like I said, like we were saying, mentioning earlier, like bugs in South Florida is tough. Like, I can only imagine, you know what I mean? But like rats, you can prevent rats from coming.

When I owned my restaurant, literally, we used to, at the end of the night, I said, go in the kitchen. And when I bought my restaurant, I had a guy come in and fix all the walls and everything in the kitchen. At the end of the night, we used to— I used to bring a hose from the outside and hose the whole place down.

Yeah, that's how restaurants are supposed to go.

Yeah, just hose it all down and get everything out of there. Donkey.

Absolutely.

And get rid of all the boxes. No, that's what you got to do, man. It's just— that's what you got to do. Man, let's have some cannabis gift shops down here. I would.

That'd be cool. Yeah, DeSantis changed his tune totally. He's talking about he's okay with people growing weed, and he just doesn't think that people should be able to smoke weed like outside everywhere. I'm fine with that. It should be just how you people regulate smoking cigarettes. If it's okay to smoke a cigarette 20 yards from the door, then it's okay for me to smoke my joint. There's— what is the difference? You're not getting high, right, from me, bro, you know what I mean? Or whoever. And but if you're standing next to me in that damn— you smelling that cigarette, it's gonna stink, right? I just— as bad.

So, so vote yes on 3 if you live in Florida.

Yeah. And if you need some cannabis payment processing, cannabis payment processing, holler at me.

And a nice point of sale system too. Yeah, does all everything for you for your cannabis business. So if you're in DC going legit, let us know. Yeah, peace out. Carpe diem.

Peace.

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