Tips To BUSINESS OWNERS From BUSINESS OWNERS | B2B Vault - Biz To Biz Podcast | Ep. 221

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 great Karnak of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And in today's podcast, we're going to be giving a couple tips for small businesses, uh, startup businesses, or, you know, businesses that are ran by, you know, like a mom-and-pop that may not have, uh, you know, the knowledge or wisdom that Allen and myself may have. Uh, we've been doing business for 15 years. Allen's been in business for 20-plus. Uh, combined we have almost 40 years of, uh, knowledge contained in our cranium, in the dome piece. So we figured it'd be a, a opportunity to, uh, let some of that go. Um, yeah, man, how you doing?

I'm doing good. So, you know, February, it is February. I don't know what happened to— boom, January came and went.

I don't know, we're in a leap year, so like it's really strange. Uh, the 4 years ago, the Chiefs and the 49ers were in the Super Bowl. Uh, Biden and Trump were going to face off for the presidency and they were talking about releasing Final Fantasy VII. And so I don't know if we've been in this really weird time warp for the past 4 years, but I could say that.

History repeating itself?

Uh, yeah. Uh, I don't understand what's going on. Um, so maybe this new year will provide some better stuff. Uh, yeah, man. What else is new though?

Um, yeah, do you see anything interesting in the news today?

No.

So I saw— I was involved in an interesting discussion this morning.

Uh-oh.

So they were talking about, you know, work in the office, hybrid, you know, 2 days in the office, 3 days home.

I've seen something about that.

And then, and then, and then they were talking about, you know, like completely remote work and like what's going on like in the workforce. And one of the things that came up in the discussion was that we're looking at the amount of layoffs happening everywhere across banking, technology, the fintech, the tech companies, the all types of different companies, right? And then one of the things that came up in the discussion was, you know, not that some of these companies, some of the, especially the very large companies, right, have taken the attitude of, well, you don't want to come to work, and if we're going to have remote workers, we're going to go remote, remote, and go like to other countries. Where people will work for a lot less money. And that's, and that's, uh, gonna— that's starting to really take effect and hurt the economy. And when I look at, you know, like, we're running an ad, right, and we're getting tons of people, they're not even from the US, applying.

I've seen that there was a lot of UK people from the UK. From India, right? The Ukraine.

Yeah. And they're applying for the job. It says—

how are they even seeing that though?

I have no idea. It says in-person job, and even in the, in the qualifications it says that it's an in-person job, right? And they still say that.

I mean, because I've, I've been sharing that job on a couple different platforms and I haven't even gotten a like.

No, I got—

I just, I don't— yeah, I don't know.

I got a bunch of responses, you know, and I got, you know, a few people.

I'm just saying, like, people don't want to work. That's what it seems like. People don't want to work in office, right?

They don't want to work in the office. And now it's— now it's coming back to the— it's gonna— I think we're gonna see a huge problem where we're gonna have one of the biggest, you know, under I think it was when Clinton was in office, we had a lot of what they called offshoring.

Okay.

And that's kind of like when it started because of some, you know, some, you know, some, some policies.

He made it so that you could do that.

Yeah, right. He made it so you could do that. And, and that really start— that really hurt the economy.

That shit was a— what he was doing what he, what he signed off for was a little bit bigger than what you're talking about. I know what you're talking about. I was, I was, I was old enough to vote, right, for that. Uh, no, I wasn't, but I— yeah, Bill Clinton. Um, Billy Clinton, that guy and his wife.

I never did that. I didn't do it.

Um, yeah, no, he That's when like manufacturing, he opened the gates for some really terrible things. And yeah, I know what you're talking about now. Yeah.

And now it's coming back to—

it's now it's just like people are using that same and they're offshoring all the jobs over there. And right.

It's not the manufacturing jobs.

No.

Now, now it's like office jobs, paperwork jobs, sales jobs. All types of jobs, customer service, answering phones, call center.

I mean, with the, with artificial intelligence. So I think what you're talking about too is, you know, with the layoffs, a lot of these companies are jumping the gun with AI and they're definitely, they're laying off whole divisions, right? Whole groups and teams of like, I've seen, I know it's exactly the companies that you're talking about. I'm not going to name them because they don't deserve the No, the love, but, um, they're literally cutting entire, like, divisions because they're under the— they've been told by the CTO, oh, we don't need that anymore, let's just use AI, right?

Yeah, well, they're all launching.

That is this. Yeah, yes, it's a workaround for the, the, the, the companies. But the, the general public, the people who buy those products and expect to talk to people, they're not going to go for this. They're not going for it. They're, they're, they're going to stop using your service. They're going to find someplace that has a human touch to it.

Yeah, when I see all these banks closing up, like I saw today, there was an article about a bunch of different banks, won't name them. And they're going to close hundreds and hundreds of branches because they want to switch over to online banking to, you know, to people open up accounts online. The problem with that is when you need to open a business account, trying to open a business account through one of those neobanks, you know, that's fully online is a huge pain in the butt. You got to send them driver's licenses. They got to take pictures of you. They have to do a video call with you because they have to do KYC. Yeah. It's a business versus a personal. Personal is easy for them because they can just get your driver's license, your Social Security. Hopefully you have some banking history, right? And they check it out. But, you know, I think it's a little crazy. I think businesses that deliver personal service, I think this is a great time, like community banks, credit unions, who definitely thrive for the, you know, the embassy, the people. Those banks are going to start picking up a lot of business because these big banks are going to piss off the general public.

I mean, it sucks that my bank, I'd have to drive all the way to Miami. They don't, they don't have a lot of—

yes, that's just— no, that's what I'm saying. It's a good time because there's branches closed up everywhere. I see bunches of them turned into marijuana dispensaries. Down here.

Yeah, really?

Yeah, well, they have a— they have the Vault, so that makes sense. That's where they go lock up all the cannabis at night.

Yeah, nice. Well, let's hop into these, uh, all right, these tips before we run out of time, right? Um, so I'll go first, okay, with, you know, my first— my, my You know, the one thing that, uh, came to mind. So if you're a business or you're starting, you know, you have this idea, my number one tip for you is to create a business plan. And if you're already in business, it is a really, really good time to go and reflect on that business plan. You know, maybe you did okay. You know, you, you've been in business for 5 years or whatever. But when was the last time you went and looked at your business plan?

And sometimes people don't have like, you know, I think it's also good, like in the beginning, you know, the end of the year and the beginning of the year and even throughout the year to like say, okay, let's look at what we're doing, how we're selling. Maybe we need to make some changes. And then, you know, and then what are those changes that you want to make? Like we're doing one right now. Where we may— we looked at a bunch of things, we made a decision, right? Now we're moving towards, you know, moving towards that goal.

Yeah, I mean, because if you got a business plan and, you know, you, you just— you, you didn't— you didn't execute, or, you know, if you're a small— if you're first starting out and, and you're like, yeah, I got this great idea and this is what we're doing, and you hit the ground running, that's awesome. But you need to have like structure and a, and a, and a goal for your business. And so that there can be longevity and that you can continue to sustain the success that you're seeing.

Yeah. Yeah. One of the things is, you know, making sure like to, as part of the business plan is, you know, keeping up with like your, you know, examining your expenses, examining your cost of goods. Examining how much you're charging because maybe you're not charging enough and have a goal for like, oh, what's your profit goal?

That's exactly what, you know, I was going to get into too because like, so business, you've been in business, right?

Yeah.

And, you know, you take a look at your business plan and you realize like, oh shit, I've been, you know, I missed the mark. I could have, you know, inflation and all this other stuff, you know, you should be putting that into consideration and revising your business plan, you know, for the time that we're in. And so, you know, that's number one for me to any business out there starting, or you already are up and running. Take a look at your business plan and tighten it up. Number two, specifically for, I would say, for startup companies, But, um, goes just hand in hand with any business is attend events and network at those events, right? So you, that you can't put a dollar amount on this because you can go to a, you know, say, say you're, uh, you sell accessories for, for bowling.

Right.

If, if that's the case, then you should be at every bowling alley birthday party event or whatever it is to market and showcase what you do, right? Um, and, and that's like basically for free. You don't, you know, most time there's a very low entry fee, you know, you might have to pay the $10 to go bowling, right? Right., but the people that you'll meet at that event or possibly be able to do business with, you'll, you'll recoup that money quickly.

Yeah, there's different like industry-specific events that you can go to. Maybe there's not one in your area and you can create an event, you know.

It's a great—

that's a great, you know, for—

that's a great jewel, you know.

Create an event, you know.

They got the meetup.com. You can go to Meetup Yeah, or Eventbrite, create an event.

Doesn't have to be an in-person event, can be an online event too. So a lot of people do those type of events, you know.

Indeed. Yeah.

And you got chambers and different business groups.

When I say— I mean, events, you know, I said bowling, but I mean, like, it was just the first thing that came to mind. Uh, there's just, you know, if you sell car parts, you should be going to car meets. And, you know, all of that.

Yeah, hand out business cards, make people aware of your website any way you can. You know, you got it. Like we talked about marketing a couple of podcasts ago, you know, what's old— what's old is new now, you know, direct mail, handing out postcards, handing out flyers, handing out business cards. People have to get back to the basics.

That good old-fashioned gorilla promo ain't never left.

No, it's never left.

It's not gonna leave either. No, no, you know, so take your, take your ass to the damn local whatever it is. You might not want to drink, you know, you might not be into the partying, you know, you don't have to stay there for the whole 3 hours. Allen Kopelman tells me this all the time, you know, it's nothing about comfort zone. Is I don't drink, so it's, it's tough being around people when they're talking and then they smell like a vodka spritzer. You know, I'm just—

I'm the same way. I don't drink.

I don't like it. You know what I mean? And, and if I am having a beverage, I'm not trying to talk about business, right? I would rather be at a sports game cheering on the Milwaukee Brewers or something, whatever. But so like, it is tough and it's something that, you know, as a business owner, you just got to either you're going to have to hire someone to do that for you.

Yeah.

Or, you know, you just go ahead and go, hey man, there's this conference that's coming up.

Yeah. Or if you have sales, I'm gonna go. Or if you have, or if you have salespeople, you gotta get them to do it. You know, that's gotta be part of their sales, you know, thing is to go out to these events.

I agree 1,000%. And my number 3, um, I, I, I've said this 1,000 times, I feel like, but You know, I know no one— not everyone loves Google, right? Okay, but they have what is called Google My Business. It is free. You claim it, you claim your business profile, or you set it up. Now, you might not have a website, you know, you might be from the Stone Age and you don't want a website, or you don't feel like it's necessary.

Or maybe you're home-based and you don't want to have a website because you don't want to expose your home business at, you know, your home address.

That's fine. But, you know, how is someone going to find your business, right? And so Google My Business is a very low entry level. Yeah, it's free for any business owner. You, you— most of the time Google's already has the information for the business. Like if you Google your business name and you never claimed your business profile, one of your customers possibly could have filled out the information for you. I used to do this all the time. It was kind of like a little hustle, right?

Yeah.

So, hey, I noticed you didn't claim your business profile on Google. I went ahead and did it for you. I optimized it for, you know, local and stuff like that. If you want to chat about what else I could do for you, you know, here's my phone number. It works sometimes, and some people got really upset, like, oh, you asshole, why would you do that? Ah, but you know, I don't think it's emails all the time, right? Yeah, it's like, hey, your contribution to such and such business helped out this many people this month, right? So the Google My Listing— Google My Business profile is an extremely important, I would say necessity for any business in a digital era that we live in. Because regardless of your feelings towards, you know, Google or, you know, any of the, you know, the tech giants that you want to go up against, your customers are using that. Exactly. Your customers are like on Facebook, your customers are on LinkedIn, your customers are on Instagram, your customers— well, they might not be on TikTok, depends on the general generational, or whatever you're offering. But at the end of the day, if someone is trying to find your business— now specifically, if you're a brick and mortar and you haven't already claimed your Google My Business profile, you are tripping. Like, you are— like, how is someone going to find you? What if they want to come to your establishment? What if they want to make a reservation? How do they find this information? A lot of, like I said, you know, your customers are on Facebook, but Facebook I find is a little bit more for the older generation now, you know.

I, I— well, Google, it's just like someone's in the search engine, it's in the search.

So if they're searching for, you know, uh, pay somebody, couple pastry shop near me.

Yeah.

And you know, you don't pop up and you're 2 blocks away from them, that's, that's, that's sad.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, I, I get disappointed, like, if I'm looking for something, even like, even like, and I can't find it, and then all of a sudden I'm around the corner and I drive past and it's like, why aren't you on Google, bro? Yeah.

And the same thing like Yelp. I'm not a big fan of Yelp, but, you know, claim your profile on there. You don't have to pay for it. I'm not a fan of it, but don't leave it.

I'm just saying. I mean, yeah, I guess I hear what you're saying. Like, Yelp is a scam.

I know that. It's—

they're good. I'm just saying, like, you—

but put your logo on there and make sure your information is correct.

I mean, at least create— at least set up your profile there. But Yeah, but yeah, I mean, my— that's my number 3 is definitely claim your Google listing profile, Google My Business. It's really simple. Like, just look, I, I'm sure you have a Gmail account, everyone out there, or your daughter does, or your son, or just make one, or just make one for your business, you know. I mean, it— and, and I guarantee you, I guarantee you, you will get some, some new business from that, just, just by that. So those are my top 3. Take a look at your business plan. Go to events and network. You know, you never know who you might meet. You might meet your next biggest client ever. And number 3 is to claim your Google Business Profile. Trust me, it'll be worth your 15 minutes if it takes you that long. It shouldn't, but it might. All right, what you got over there, partner? So I'm all jacked up.

One is recognize your strengths and weaknesses. So it's a good thing— things that you're good at, you need to do. Things that you're not good at, those are things you need to delegate. A lot of people I meet, they're just horrible with delegating. And you got to delegate because if you can't delegate in your business, you're not going to be able to grow your business.

I'll tell you what, you have to— when I first started my business, yeah. I did everything, right?

Right.

And I wish I would have— I wish I would have delegated some stuff. Like, after like 5 years, right, I realized like, oh, I can't sit and spend 8 hours on all these graphics, right? I need to— I need to farm this out, right? So he's telling the truth here.

Yeah, you have to— you have to— it's obviously like a big thing to weigh out, so you have to decide like, okay, I'm really good at this. So I'm going to delegate out this now because you can't do everything unless you're going to work 24 hours a day and you can't do that. That's not going to— you're not going to— you're going to burn yourself out. And either, either you're going to burn yourself out or you're just— you're not going to be able to do everything you want to do. So it's important to recognize that and to deal with that. Like, if you're not good at doing bookkeeping every month, then you need to farm that out.

If you're not—

you don't know how to make a website, don't make some Wix website that looks like, you know, a, a fifth grader made it. Pay somebody to make a decent website, you know, things like that. Same thing like logos, get someone to do— you don't have to pay $2,000, $3,000 for a logo, but you can get Go to Fiverr. Go to Fiverr.

Go to—

go, go, go online. There's plenty of other places.

I—

99designs.

I still use my Fiverr logo because it's— for me, it's more like a nostalgia thing. I don't really care.

Okay. No, but there's like one called 99designs. Yeah, I don't know. You pay like $99 and then 5 people make you a design. Whoever one you pick gets the $99. There you go. So that's really good. Focus on something you have a passion for. And that's about is like, what is your pa— why you— why did you start your business? What's your— that's why you started it, because you're passionate about it. So, you know, you need to make sure like you're focused in on what is your passion. Like, my passion here is we want to give people transparent pricing So we make sure we deal with companies who are not going to do shenanigans. Okay. Because I don't go for that.

I'll say it, shady shit.

And we make sure that it's in the contract that they can't do that. Some people get upset with us because they're like, well, we don't want to agree to that. Well, we can't send you business because we can't have you just randomly raising prices.

The guy yesterday was getting mad at me because I told him that you can't take pin debit at any dispensary in the United States of America. I don't care if they're doing it or not. It's illegal.

Yeah, it's illegal by Visa. You could get fined.

And you're going to get your account shut down.

And you get your money held for like a year.

So stupid.

And I've seen that happen to numerous people. All of the companies who offer that get shut off all the time. And the other thing that we're— that I'm passionate about is the customer, the level of customer service that we want to provide to people. So we make sure like, oh, you have the phone, my cell phone number, you have the phone number to the office, you have the phone number to the help desk where you need to call because, you know, EMV kind of changed everything. Before EMV, if you called me, you go, I have a problem with my HyperCom. We don't— it doesn't even exist anymore, right? We could figure it out. We could also log in and see what kind of error you were getting. But then they, you know, all this PCI compliance and security and that, that, that, that, and how they track the equipment and all that now. You can't— we don't have access to any of that. So we make sure people have— they know who to call for what, you know, and if they don't get taken care of, you know, call us back. And then the last thing is, if you're going to do, you know, you need to, you know, everybody always talks about content. Content is king, right? So it's funny, like, I always wanted to start a podcast. We started the podcast. What, about 2 years ago?

2 and a half now.

2 and a half years ago. We've done probably close to—

we're on episode 220.

Okay. And probably if you include the live—

250 with all the other things. But it's 220. We have 220 B2B Ball episodes.

Right. You know, so there's 220 episodes. I never thought I would be at 220 episodes. Most people give up after like 10 or less. Some people get to 20 and give up. It's not easy. You got to commit to it. So, you know, content, you got to really, you know, put out content for your business, you know, aim it at your customers. If you own a clothing, you know, content for every business is going to be different. And if you can dance, all the better, because all the dancing stuff is probably the most popular videos is people dancing around. Or dogs talking, right? Having a dog.

I can neither confirm nor deny.

I'm just saying it. Yeah, I bet you if you look it up, dancing.

No, I'm saying I just don't want to. He's right. That's what I'm— I guess, you know what I mean? Like, it's sad that you got to get on there and, you know, do a dance and shucking and jiving to be popular. It's pretty stupid to me. You make a fool of yourself online and then you go viral and now you're, you know, But, you know, shout out to everybody that's out there doing that.

But, you know, there's other things like now, now all of a sudden everybody wants to have a podcast. I think I started like a trend in the business. There was like a few podcasts. Most of them were aimed at— and even the new ones, most of them are aimed at people in the business that sell merchants, that sell merchant services, and then the financial technology industry.

I was not about to let that be that. I was, I'm like, we're not gonna, this is when we first started, bro. Like, oh my God, I would be falling asleep.

Yeah. Well, we didn't find our groove.

No, because I'll let you talk about what everybody else was talking about. You know what I mean? I'm like, this is not it. We got to figure a new approach. You know, you talking to business owners or entrepreneurs. I could do that all day.

Right.

So can you, you can tell people like, yo, your business is shit. You know what I'm saying? Like, you got to figure out your new business model. Look at your business plan. What is your real goal? What's the passion behind your business? Those are all good things to be looking at. Yeah.

You need to look at, you know, like, how can you create, you know, a new— maybe, maybe this year you say to yourself, okay, I'm going to create a new revenue opportunity. Or let's say you own a restaurant. You say, well, I'm going to have a podcast all about— it's an Italian restaurant. I'm going to have a I'm going to show people how to make—

or maybe show where you get your ingredients from.

Yeah. Or maybe it's a YouTube channel. It's not a podcast and you have a YouTube channel and you show people a new dish each week.

There you go.

You know, and you make that, you have it filmed and you put it out there. You know, there's different— there's all different things you could do. It just depends on what your business is and how well, who your customers are and how you want to focus. You know, here we're trying to— I've been in business, I've owned so many a whole bunch of different businesses over the years, worked in hotels, owned a restaurant, owned a catering company, owned a food service consulting company, merchant service company for 23 years, going on 24 now, you know, and then within that company started an app company, a printing company, graphic design stuff, you know, and then some stuff was, you know, came and went.

And that's how it is, business.

Yeah. And then, but, you know, we stuck to the core business, which is the merchant services, payment processing and ATMs. And that's what you got to do. So, you know, recognize your strengths and weaknesses. You know where you're weak. That's where you got to hire the right type of people, build a good team, focus on your passion. You know, don't lose your focus. And work on creating unique content for your clientele. There we go.

Can't— I can't even— I can't argue with that one.

Okay, can't—

no arguments there. I mean, creating content is tough. It's not an easy thing, you know what I mean? Try to be authentic. That's the number one rule in creating content is authenticity. We're in a world where there's not a lot of authenticity. People are, you know, doing the same old same old. But, you know, try to find your unique voice and don't ever stop. Just keep, keep, keep grinding, man. Any last words?

Any last words? That's it. We said it. We said a lot. Yeah. Everybody have a great year for 2024. Have a great February. And let's all make some money in 2024. More.

Indeed.

Peace out. Carpe diem.

Smash that like and the subscribe button for us, man. Share to your people. Peace.

Peace.