Things We Hate Being A Business Owner! (Business Pet Peeves) | B2B Vault - Biz To Biz Podcast | Episode 222

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 Chuck Norris of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And in today's podcast, we're gonna be talking about some pet peeves that we have for, uh, business owners and businesses in general. And you know, we're gonna kind of shoot the shit about that. So what's good, man? How you doing?

Good. Busy week.

Busy, busy, busy, busy bee.

Yeah, it's kind of been— I don't know what's going on. The year is disappearing right before our eyes.

I'm not going to keep going along with you on that.

I don't know, saying that's been fast.

No, it's not. It's moving slower day by day. The sun is getting brighter all the time. I am healing mentally and physically.

Uh, yeah, I do like it when it's sunny. I hate when it's so cloudy outside.

I don't like when it's dark outside by the time we leave the office. I know, it's crazy. But it's not like that anymore. The sun is still out when we leave, so it's very inspiring.

It's inspiring. We get to see sometimes a really awesome sunset over the airport. Over the airport.

And I just dream of getting in one of those PJs, flying and never returning. Every time I see it, dude, there's this one black, uh, it's like blacked out, murdered out private jet. Yeah, I wonder who— I don't know who's— I'm— I should look on that one There's a, there's a Twitter that is dedicated.

Yeah, there's an app too. You can go online and punch in the tail numbers. There's people like drive through our parking lot all the time.

Yeah, to take the pictures.

And they take pictures of the tail numbers to see whose planes are over there.

That's creepy to me. I don't, I don't want to do, I, you know, that's, I just think whoever's plane that is, it's, it's really cool. And I hope to be on that plane.

Yeah, and they have like telephoto lenses on their cameras. One time I didn't know what they were doing and I called the cops. And so I was like, hey, it's a little bit weird. There's like 5 cars parked out here. There's people with telephoto lenses. The cops came because it was, you know, they were parked in like my spot, you know? And I asked the guy to leave and the guy looked at me like I was nuts. And I was like, well, I don't like you parked out here in front of my office and you got a giant camera with a telephoto lens on the front of your car and, you know, inside your van. With the windows blacked out. It was just a little creepy. And, uh, damn, the cops, the cops came and asked the guy, and he says, oh, I'm taking pictures. I'm a, uh, he has, he had a website and he puts all the, the tail numbers on there.

That's, that's, I don't know. Yeah, I, I, you know, that's the gift and the curse of being rich, I guess.

So I guess, I mean, I don't know, it'd be kind of interesting to go outside We could do it on the podcast one day. Go out, take pictures of the tail numbers, and then we can talk about who's parked out and about.

I'm not doing that. We're not doing that. I'm not a snitch and I'm not doing that.

No, I'm just saying.

Just not doing that. You can find someone else to do that, sir. Okay, we won't do it. Carry on. Anyway, anything new and amazing going on for you?

We got a couple of new, we got a, Couple of new product things we're working on, getting finished up, gotta do a little testing on it and see how it, you know, how it functions so we understand how it functions. But one of them is pretty cool involving QuickBooks.

Okay.

And linking up credit card and ACH with a very competitive pricing.

And there's the infomercial.

Yes.

Anyway, okay, what else is new with Allen? Not new with me.

Uh, Jacob's leg is getting better. Good for him.

So keep going to physical therapy.

He's almost at 90 degrees, so once he's at 90 degrees, he can take off.

90 degrees in the shade before I catch blood on my blade. Shout out to Keith Murray. So I love Keith Murray.

That's been taking up a lot of my time, taking him to the doctor's appointments physical therapy. And so that cuts into the workday, but I'm dealing with it. Gotta go with the flow.

Dad duties, man.

Dad duties. Yep. You gotta go with the flow.

Allen came into the office this morning throwing shots at everybody about being on time at work today. So that was funny. That was a good one. That was good. Yep. Listen, so, well, I don't know, I got a bunch of stuff going on, but this did take up too much time in the podcast.

How's the garden coming?

Oh, I expanded my garden. I moved into the, I call it the back 40. It's a, I have a huge, not huge, but it's a big property and a lot of it has fruit trees on it. So, you know, it's kind of wasted space.

Right.

You know what I mean? There's nothing that you can really do. But there was a section by the fence line and my neighbors, they just moved out. And so I kind of took the opportunity to clean up back there while no one was there. And I'm gonna put some, my dad commandeered some privacy screen.

Yeah.

From his employer.

Right.

It's all, it was, they were gonna throw it in the garbage. So we're gonna try to cut some of it and we're gonna put some fence poles and put it up for the back so that, 'cause the way that the fence is now, it's not a privacy fence, it's just like a metal gate fence. So we're gonna buy some 6x.

What are you gonna grow over there?

I got some kale, I got some Swiss chard going, I got some tomato plants, some cilantro. Some cauliflower. I planted a couple avocado seeds. I'm trying to get my avocados growing. And some green peppers. And there's something else I just can't think of.

Yeah, my daughter, she usually has a garden with a vegetable garden in Iowa. So now she moved to a new house, so now they got to make a new one. Yeah.

That's good work though.

Yeah, it's good stuff. It's a project.

Yep. But yeah, man, I'm good. So let's hop into this. Um, my first number one thing that— well, shout out to Samantha, our graphic designer at Nationwide Payment Systems. She's amazing. Um, I agree. Allen, uh, Allen suffers from this. It's terrible. Uh, my, my, our pet peeve, you know, she said Answering cell phones during a meeting or conversation. And boy, oh boy, does that get me hot. Like, you'll be sitting there in the middle of something and then Allen will just answer his phone. In my mind, I've slapped the phone out of his hand at least 3,000 times. That's a fact, Jack.

Okay.

But so that's a big pet peeve. Do you— what do you think? Like I was telling him earlier, like it's Where I'm from in Milwaukee, like, that shit, it's just hella disrespectful. Like, you know, like, it's something that we frown upon. Like, I'm not— you're not gonna— I'm not gonna respect you the same, right? Like, this— I'm just saying, like, on the first time meeting you, like, if you did that in the first time my interaction with you, I'm never— I don't care what business you do or what you offer or how much money you got, anything. I'm like, I'm not dealing with that guy, whatever. That's, that's my, that's how we roll, right?

Okay.

But, you know, his, his, his rebuttal to that is, well, I'm not going to not answer a phone call from a customer. I understand that. But don't you have to set boundaries with the customer too?

I set boundaries with customers. I mean, I try to, I try to, if I'm on the phone with the customer and somebody else is calling me, I make sure that I hit, you know, I will call you back, kind of send them a message so they know I'm going to call them back.

And, but in my opinion, does that lose— don't you lose your attention to what you're dealing with? And why does that person deserve any more of the time that you're— the person that you're already dealing with? I did, you know, I— you said it's your 2024, you're going to work on time management, and you have not. Well, it's, it's It's February and you're failing that really good.

Well, I'm also down a helper, so that's created some issues also.

And then next week she's got a new— oh, we did exciting, we have a new, uh, Allen's got hired a new office assistant, hopefully. So that's— yes, so that'll help. And number 2, business owners who don't know how to run their business. This is Allen. Allen, he's on the phone screaming at people all the time.

I don't scream at them.

Well, I'm not saying— he's yelling at them.

It can be very frustrating. Yeah. Like when you're talking to somebody and, you know, you go and they send you over their bank statement. They're doing $1 million a month in sales. And you go, okay, the bank's asking for your balance sheet and P&L.

And they're like, They don't even know what that is.

They're like, huh? Like, do you have an accountant? Do you have QuickBooks? Do you have your tax returns? And then they just don't even— like, they're, they're not running any kind of like financial reports, right, on their business. And, you know, and they're like, oh, I'm getting shut off by XYZ credit card processor, or I'm getting shut down by Stripe. And I'm like, Well, didn't they ask you for this stuff? I'm like, you know, you gotta—

hell yeah, they asked for that stuff, right?

They're asking you for it for a reason because they want to see what's going on with your business, you know. And that's, you know, it's very difficult, you know, to do. And also, you know, it frustrates me. It doesn't— it kind of frustrates me when I see things like businesses are using like software that has a swiper on it and they're not doing the EMV chip.

Yeah.

And I'm like, why aren't you doing that?

I mean, that's the— I am constantly like, I'm baffled, befuddled. Shout out to Tax Down, free Tax Down. I am literally befuddled.

Okay.

A lot of times when I'm like going to try to patron businesses and, you know, I was telling Sam, one thing is like Don't you hate when you look online and like the hours are one thing or pricing and then you get there and like it's not open or the prices is just like 30% increased, right?

They haven't updated their website, nothing. They haven't updated that or even moved. Oh yeah, moved. I had that happen recently. I went to go somewhere and the business moved. They never told— it's on the It's not even on their website.

Oh my God.

And I was calling them on the phone and where'd you guys move to?

Do you ever deal with business owners that like try to operate their entire business via text message?

Yes.

Is that a thing?

Yeah, with some people.

Especially young people. Do you think that business is gonna be successful?

Sometimes it's successful in spite of that.

Okay, so that's luck.

Right, right. Yeah, like they stepped in it, but it's only—

but that is only gonna sit— that's— that, that luck is only going to sustain that success.

You're gonna get only so far, and then all of a sudden you're gonna hit a big wall. A big wall. Like, I'm dealing with somebody now, and like, they're not producing financial reports for the bank, and I'm trying to get them a new merchant account, and I'm like, you got— what is going on with you guys? And now I gotta have a meeting with the president of the credit card processing company to try to convince them to take a meeting maybe with this business owner and try to figure out how to do business with them, you know. But it's, but it's also frustrating. Like, for instance, like, pay it real quick. What?

Okay, so like, I'm dealing like an e-commerce website. Like, the fact that this business owner wants to just not check email, right, is just blowing my mind. I literally, I'm at the ends, I'm at my ends.

Listen, I have that too with e-commerce. They'll send me a website and I'll go, well, your website's missing, like, you don't have your name and address in the footer, you have no terms and conditions, you have no privacy policy, no return policy, no cancellation policy. On your checkout page, you don't have a checkbox saying I agree to the terms and conditions. Or maybe you're selling like clothing, right? Well, you know, you have to have strict, a very strict return policy. Like, oh, we're not gonna take it back if you wore it or you washed it or whatever that is, right? Yeah. You know, you have to know what you're doing with your business. Or like somebody came to me with like another website, you know, like a CBD website. And then I go, well, there's no, COAs. Oh, what do I need that for? Well, we can't help you. You know, I mean, you got to be, you know, there's a level of compliance that the banks want.

I mean, you ain't going into a bank without your Social Security number, right?

Right.

Like, I mean, come on. There's just certain things that you're going to need.

Yeah.

And yeah.

Or like pay at the table, right? That's another one for me. Like, you need to do pay at the table. You need to do tip at the time of the sale. Right.

Oh, this is why—

why can't you just take the machine to the table, right? We don't want to do that. And then they could charge back when they get— they get 5, 6, 7, 8 chargebacks a month, right, of over-tipping, right? So the person had a $100 bill, they left the waitress $50. The card was authorized for the $100. The Visa only covers 20 to 25%, you know, depending on the card— Visa, MasterCard, Amex, right? So the most is 25%. So you're covered for $125. So now you get hit with a $25 chargeback fee and the $25, and now you're out $50. If you would just do pet tip at the time of the sale, you put the machine in front of the person, they stick their card in, they hit the tip button, Boom, you're done. The entire amount is authorized. If they want to leave the waitress or the bartender $100, they can because then it's authorized for the full amount.

I actually, I don't know, last, it was my daughter's birthday actually last year and we took her to the Mexican, or, ora, ora, ora, I don't, can't remember. I can't pronounce it.

Okay.

Butcher it, and I don't want to do that. But it's a great Mexican restaurant in Hollywood, and, uh, that was actually the first time that I've seen the tip at the time of sale because they brought the machine to the car— to the table, right? And then, you know, when you looked at the receipt, there was no tip line. It was just— this was the total, right? And it was super— made sense.

Yeah, that's just much.

And I gave her a fat-ass tip because it was my daughter. I mean, it was like 15 of us, so like She got a nice tip. And because of me working with Allen, I was able to understand the tip at the time of sale. Otherwise, we would have just given her cash because I, I know that because there's been times when you give a tip and then it's like, why didn't that come out of my debit card? Right? Like, yeah. And the, the bank didn't authorize the extra charge because the tip exceeded the 20%.

Yeah, 20% variance.

So that's a, you know, we learn something new every day, man.

Yeah. And also, you know, like I educate business. Like I had a problem the other day with somebody. Somebody got this, not even a place I do business with. They got, they called me on the phone because somebody told them I could answer the question. So they told me, oh, we had all these chargebacks, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, oh, can you, do you have your report? So we ended up— they ended up sending me the report and I was at home and they sent it to me and turned out somebody was going in this restaurant with Visa Vanilla cards, which are gift cards, and they were getting partially authorized. So they were eating like $100, $200 of food. There was like $20 on the card. So it got— they got to $20, but the rest of it, their system probably spit out a ticket saying there was a balance due, and the waiter probably just ignored it. And then they let the person leave a tip, and they never got any of the money.

That's terrible.

And you got to be really careful. I have some restaurants, like, they know no vanilla, no Visa Vanilla prepaid. Yeah, no prepaid. They will not take any prepaid cards.

It's crazy.

No, because you—

scammers are out here scamming.

Yeah, it's cr— the, the amount of scams going on involving gift cards is crazy. And we try to educate business owners on this stuff. And then it frustrates me when they go, "Well, I don't understand. The guy had a $100 gift card and he left a $20 tip." Yeah, but there was only $100 on the gift card. You're not getting that $20. You know, you're not getting it. Especially, you know, 'cause it won't, if you were doing tip at the time of the sale, you would've saw it rejected it. Wouldn't allow you to do it. Would say rejected, declined.

You heard it from the man, tip at the time of sale. Tip at the table. That's what you got to do.

But it's frustrating, you know, when you try even like sending payment links to people. For some reason, the older generation doesn't like that. They want to, they want to just get the credit card number over the phone. And the younger people don't want to give the credit card number over the phone and would do the text message. Yeah, they want the text or the email, click the link.

And what's wrong with that?

Some people just get it. They just have a— they just don't want to do that. They feel like they're losing something.

My dad would never in his life give you— like, if someone— if I send my dad a text message, yeah, and it would be like, put your credit card in here, yeah, he'd lose his shit. No, that's all his phone— like, he would be— no, but the other way, attacked by the anonymous—

the other way, they're asking for the credit card over the phone and the person's saying, no, send me a link.

So, and I'm both, I don't care, you know, like I—

So I tell business owners—

What are you gonna steal from me? Anyway.

No, but I tell business owners, you gotta be flexible, you gotta offer both. Some people are gonna wanna give you the card over the phone. Some people want card on file. Some people are gonna want you to send them a link because they feel safer or their card is their Apple Pay. Or their Google Pay.

That is very true, right?

They're going to pay it off of their— out of their phone.

I had to ask my daughter how she likes to pay her bills, you know. So you'd have to pay your bills to— I'm just kidding.

Well, you know, that's— I think people are kind of used to it, especially after COVID. No touch.

Oh, nice, nice little segue there, right? COVID. So Allen had brought up— I don't know, was it a pet peeve?

Well, I think it's a pet peeve business owners deal with is how do you deal with, you know, people showing up on time, work hours and things like that. And there was a whole thing on TikTok I was showing you guys about how, you know, people were discussing that. And it's, you know, you got to learn to be flexible. With your, you know, yeah, but it, it doesn't work. Flexibility doesn't work in every business.

Oh, well, of course.

I mean, if you have a retail store and the mall says in your lease you have to be open at 10 AM and your employee consistently shows up at 10:30 and you're getting a fine from the mall, that's going to be a problem.

That is a big problem, you know. So if you're in an office environment, is that a I think, I think that's the person's problem and not the business, and the business needs to fire that person. Okay, but okay, so at the end of the day, you know, you, uh, yeah, maybe that's not the right person to open your store, right? Like, if they, if they're consistently late every morning at 10:30, then you're not going to give them that responsibility to be the person to open up the store. I mean, I That's just—

yeah, you can say there's some transportation issue and work through that and make sure like, oh, you have a transportation issue. Well, we need to get a different person opening the store.

Okay.

Yeah. You know, not fire them necessarily, but figure out the problem. Oh, well, you know, that's where I told you. Well, then you're, you know, like today I'm talking—

that's different though. Like, so you're talking about something that is highly structured and very like disciplined, I guess you could say. This is something that you have to, you have to be operating at this time of day from this time of day.

Yes, certain businesses have that. Other things, you're in an office environment, maybe you can be a little more flexible with your employees.

I think you have no choice. And that's what I was saying, like, during COVID—

Well, you do have a choice. You can either be flexible and have employees, or you can be a brick wall and people will quit.

Exactly, exactly. I think, I think what that, that's what I was getting into, like with COVID I think the pandemic itself, because I hate calling it COVID, like I don't want to call it that, but it's the pandemic, right? It's like during the whatever, the 2020 lockdown, you know what I mean? Like it was strange.

Um, no, but people got used to like, oh, I'm working at home, I'm not going to my office, I'm working.

Yeah, I'll never forget the day that, uh, I was subcontracting for an agency. Yeah. And my supervisor, right?

Yeah.

Was like, I was in line to picking up the laptops for my kids to do home learning.

Yeah.

And the supervisor was like blowing my phone up and she knew what I was doing. Right. And I'm thinking to myself, like, first of all, I'm not— dude, what the hell is going on here? So I finally answered the phone like, hey, what's up? Like, I'm getting my kids' laptops. Like I said, there was like literally it would be like when the Jordan 3s dropped. And there was a, uh, 1,000 people, 5,000 people, bro. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Everybody, every kid's mom and pop was in line, right? Because the parents had to come and get the laptop. They weren't giving them to the kids, like you had to sign them up. So I'm like, what do you want me to do right now? She said, well, I'm gonna need you to leave and go and, you know, report, you know, log in online. I said, Leave my kid. Dude, I quit. I literally, I just, I said, you can find someone else to do this stuff. I'm gonna come put my stuff in a box because it was like a key code, like I had to swipe my swab or whatever they call it.

Yeah, the fob, the fob, key fob.

I was like, put my shit in a box, leave it outside of the door, I'll be there to pick it up this afternoon. And that was That was it. Like, I mean, and I think what I'm saying all that to say, like, I think if business owners, like, Allen gets it, right? Like, Allen understands, like, he has to be flexible. I have children. Samantha's in school. Sean is taking care of his significant other's mom in the morning. Like, there's responsibilities that people have that I think what the pandemic or COVID did is made people realize what's more important to them. Right, right. Like, we all need money. Money makes the world go round, and we all need money, and we need to earn, and we need to make this a certain amount, right? Yeah, like, we have to do that. So I think as a people, we all understand that, but also we're kind of like setting boundaries and, you know, of our own as, you know, humans first. Like, we are a human being, like Like instance, like sometimes when I first started working with Allen, he would introduce me as, this is my web developer, and I'd be like, dude, I'm not yours, right? Like, I work for you, that's it. Like, stop saying that, right? Yes. You know what I mean? Like, it's just one of those things that, like, I think that us as humans in general, like, recovered our sense of self during COVID Like, not everyone, obviously, right? Like, I mean, because it's just, you know, I mean, it's just tough. And I think, like, as an employee, we have to respect the owners, right? And you know what I mean?

Like, well, I think everybody needs to have— as a business owner, I think you have to make sure you have the right person in the right position if you have to have something specifically done at a specific time. And you need to be flexible so that your employees can go to a doctor's appointment, do stuff with their kid, whatever it is that they need to do, and be flexible with that. At the same time, employees need to be flexible with, oh, we're having a special meeting, you need to come in an hour early. I think as long as you give somebody 3 or 4 days notice You know, they can, they can, they can tell you like, uh, yes, I can accommodate that, or no, I'm taking my kids to school, I can't really help you with that, right? And be honest with each other and not be like, no, I'm not doing that, you know?

Yeah, I mean, I was, you know, I was joking around with you, not jokingly, but I mean You know, like, I'll say fuck that. It's like, like that, you know what I mean? Like, but I'm older and I, you know what I mean? I'm 43 years old, so it's kind of like—

and Justin knows, I'll tell him, oh yeah, I'm gonna come pick you up at 9:30, I'll show up at 10.

Exactly, that too. So I mean, but yeah, I mean, I think that, I think that, you know, what you're saying is true. Like, just You know, this is a pet peeve of mine, is like communication, right? Within business, businesses need to learn how to communicate, business owners.

And I always tell people, like, with employees, you got to say please, you got to say thank you. I appreciate my employees. That's why we have like employee appreciation lunch twice a month and treat everybody to lunch and do, you know, different things like that. So you show your appreciation for the employees, because you can't— if you want to be difficult, if you want to be difficult, you're not going to have employees. That's why you go into these restaurants, they have no staff, they're under— completely understaffed in a lot of businesses because they're high-stress businesses, right?

And that causes a problem, and they don't pay much.

Well, whether or not they pay or not, it's still a stressful type of a business.

Well, yeah, man. So that was a good conversation. That was a good conversation. But that's the podcast. We have some more.

What are your pet peeves? What do you have to deal with at work that maybe you want to tell us about? We'll have a discussion on the podcast about that.

I would love to.

Yeah. So we're always looking for subject matter.

Yes. And we are open to business owners to hop on, on the podcast with this man. So hit me up. So anyway, thanks for listening. Smash that subscribe button. Please like and share this video as much as possible.

Peace out. Carpe diem.

Peace. Peace.