What business would you start if you had 20K? | B2B Vault - Biz To Biz Podcast | Episode 239

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, uh, we thought it'd be a good idea, fun, little fun twist of things, and, and figure out, ask each other what we would do if we had $20,000 to invest or to start a business. Um, I had a couple of good ideas. I'm sure Allen is gonna share some interesting ideas as well. So yeah, how you doing, man?

I'm doing good. Busy week. Busy, busy. Yeah, April's almost gone.

That's just nuts. My birthday is coming up so fast. May 13th is my birthday. If anyone sends me any swag or anything, if you know, if you're interested, I wear size 7 3/8 in fitted hats. Yeah, man. Today's date is April 26th, 2024. It is 4:07 PM Eastern time. So yeah, man, I had dental surgery on my mouth yesterday. If anyone's noticed of why Justin is so grumpy lately, it's one of the main reasons. Yes. Because my mouth is, uh, you seem a little less grumpy now. Today? Yeah, I do feel a little— I feel so like for the past 6 months I wake up and it feels like someone's punching me, like punched me in my mouth all night. Yeah. And I have blood in my mouth, so it's not really fun.

No.

So my message to all you people out there, entrepreneurs, hustlers, grinders, everybody's out there trying to get it: take care of your teeth, bro. Insist, fams, take care of your teeth.

Take care of your teeth, take care of your health. A lot of times, a lot of times medical problems can be traced back to your teeth, to your teeth, to oral issues.

And I'd known this, you know, but whatever, I don't want to get into a whole spiel. But I, yeah, so I had a LANAP surgery, well, the first half of my upper right and lower right Um, so that's the laser surgery for periodontal disease, which is also known as gum disease. And yeah, that was crazy. That was some wild shit, bro. I mean, she showed me the laser before we got into it. Yeah. Um, it's— oh, the smell of burning flesh is not cool.

Um, and yeah, yeah, but I heard like it's a lot less painful than what—

oh, it doesn't feel like— I mean, today I'm sore, like I feel sore. But yeah, I mean, my mom had this like the old school way of doing it where they cut your gums and then they sew them back together. And she said that she's— I remember her being in a lot of pain. I don't— and I was a kid. I don't, you know, I do remember having that surgery and how she would never wish or tell anyone to have it done, right? My pops even was like, I'll just have them take my teeth out, man. I'm like, bro, I'm 43 years old. I don't want to have implants, right, or a denture. Like, I'm not— I'm not— if I was 50—

50? No, you have to be like 70.

I'm just saying, like, if I was 50 and, you know what I mean, like, not active like I am.

Yeah.

Like, I don't know if I would have cared as much, you know what I'm saying? But Yeah, bro, like, I like my teeth actually. My, my wife says I have a great smile when I smile. So yeah, man.

So let's— ready to jump in and talk about some money?

Yeah, for sure, man. My, uh, I'll go first because it's, you know, I just know what I want, I would do. So my number one thing would be I would invest in a laundry, uh, Matt, I would buy— try to find the cheapest building possible and stock some, some laundry, some laundry, you know, washing dryers in there. And then I would eventually, you know, if, if it was feasible, I'd also have like dry cleaning services as well inside of the facility. But that would be Obviously, you know, $20,000 isn't going to cut it.

Yeah, but a lot of times, like, you can set up, you can set up like a laundromat and then make a deal with like a dry cleaner.

Exactly.

Where people can like drop stuff off to you.

And they don't know the difference.

Right, they don't know it's going to another place. And there's some, so one of my friends started a business when he was a bellman in a hotel. People would ask, oh, can I get my shoes shined? Can I get my shirts cleaned? And he would just do it. He would just take it to the— he would shine the shoes himself, him and his friend. And then they would take the dry cleaning to a dry cleaner down the street. They would just upcharge the customer and they would do it. Then they started a little business. Yeah, I mean, doing that, me and my wife have been talking about doing—

starting a laundromat for about, I don't know, 1, 2, 3 years now. We've been really I, I'm—

yeah, one of my—

she's ready to quit her job anyway, so like, I, I would rather, um, have her run the laundromat. She was doing during COVID— yeah, she, she kind of— she started a laundry service, um, to like coincide with the cleaning service, right? She still got a couple of like older, older guys— well, older people, not guys. Um, well, there's one guy, he's from New York, I can't remember his name. He's funny as shit. But yeah, he, uh, they, they— she still does the laundry for them. So it's the laundromats, you know, and we call it paper bag money. Yeah, because it's just endless, you know what I'm saying? Like, I, I can imagine how much people are getting over At the laundromat?

No, the laundromat. The thing is, with, you know, the older laundromats, you'd walk in there, you'd have to have quarters. Okay, now a lot of these laundromats, you got a card, you got to put a credit card in there.

Yeah, and then not even— well, the one we go to, you put— you can put money on dollar bills or whatever. You can use your debit card too, but it, it's a specific card for that laundromat, right?

Yeah, some of them have that where you buy a prepaid card.

Yeah. And then you use a prepaid, which is a pain in the ass because my wife has lost it a few times and it's like loaded.

Yeah, that's not good.

No.

So yeah, that's a lot of them just have credit card readers on there now. You just swipe your card.

Not at the laundromat we go to.

No, I'm just telling you, I've seen them out there. One thing, my friend owns a laundromat in Jacksonville. Told me the most important— and I had another friend of mine that owned one here, told me the most important thing about owning the laundromat, right? Because I wanted to buy one one time. He said, you need to learn how to fix the laundry machine.

Oh, for sure.

If you don't know how to fix the laundry machines, he goes, you'll be paying people. And he goes, he did— my friend didn't know how to fix the washers and the dryers. He didn't know. He was paying guys. He's like, name was the biggest mistake he ever made yet. Yet it's selling the place. Because if you're not fixing it, if you don't know how to fix it yourself and you got a bunch of old equipment, you gotta be, you gotta be really careful when you're buying a business.

Fortunately, you know, I grew up impoverished and I've had to take apart my fair share of washers and dryers. Okay. It's not very complicated.

Well, I'm sure it's not.

It is not. Usually there's just a motor. I mean, if your motor shot, your motor shot,, but a lot of times what happens is the belt falls off. Right. And the same shit for the dryer. I mean, unless the heating element goes out and that's really easy to replace too.

Yeah.

It's like spark plug.

Yeah, he was just telling me, he goes, that was a mistake that he made. He didn't realize with the, you know, how old was the equipment. And then also a lot of people like to bring their laundry, drop it off, and then you have somebody there who's doing, the laundry. Yeah. And doing a—

that would be— that would— so that's kind of— that would— I don't want to— it doesn't even matter.

It's really—

so that's like what Justina, my wife, wants to do. She doesn't want it to be open for the public per se, right? Um, the neighborhood is one, you know what I mean? She just doesn't really want— she wants to do the laundry herself. So one, she doesn't have to maintain the washing machine.

I'll tell you what I would—

because people overload the washing machines, right? And people put too much shit in there.

Yeah.

And that's how your washer and dryer breaks. It's just like your kids, right? They don't know how to do their laundry. They put their whole wardrobe in the washing machine and then they stuff it to the point where it's—

yeah, then it's full of water and they can't do nothing, right? You got to do a drain. Yeah. No, but I had— here's a good idea for that. So there was some guys that I had met one time when I was at a startup thing, and they had a good idea for a laundry service. They never launched it. It was just like people presenting their entrepreneurial ideas. And I thought it was a cool idea because now when you see like they're building all these apartment buildings, right? Right. So you have all these people and all these high-rise buildings, obviously. And most, most of them, the units don't have laundry inside.

Depends on how new they are.

Like a lot of them don't have, or they have a small, tiny stackable every 3 floors.

They have one for— there's like a laundry room for every 3 floors, and when you go down, there's another one.

So they had an idea that they were going to put, like, open it in a warehouse, and then they would just come pick it up and then drop it back off to you.

It's a great idea.

And I was like, that's a really good— that's a really good idea if you can market in an area where there's a lot of apartment buildings where people are working. People are— no, even like around here, go like down to Pompano, they're building a gazillion apartment buildings everywhere. All the people are single, they're working, they don't have time to necessarily do all their laundry.

I would totally— if I was— I know laundry is a— it's just a hilarious thing in my household. So when I first met my wife Justina, she came to my house And she's like, "What the— how do you have bags of clothes? Like, what are all these clothes?" Right. And then I just looked at her like— I was kind of embarrassed. I'm like, "Those are my dirty clothes." And she said, "You got 3, like, big—" like, I call them body bags, right? They're that big— of clothes. And I was like, "When I was younger, that's what I spent my money on, clothes. Well, what else did I have to spend my money on? Nothing.

My clothes." So sounds like Jacob.

So it's like from that day, like I was paying her to do my laundry, you know what I'm saying? Like, so it's like, she's like, you got that $40 for the laundry? Like she still says that to me to this day, you know what I mean? So that's hilarious. I love you, Justina. Thank you for doing my dirty laundry. But yeah, I mean, it's a, I think that one that's never going nowhere. The one hard part, I guess, would be location, you know, trying to find—

I think if you go into like a warehouse and you do it in a way with $20K, you're getting into a warehouse. Yeah. Not better, cheaper than in a shopping center.

$20K, you're going to need the washing machines and then you're going to need the space. Yeah.

Well, rent in a warehouse is going to be way cheaper than rent in a shopping center.

When you say it like that. Yeah. Look at our office.

We're in the— we're in an office complex that used to be warehouses. We're in the back facing the airport. The people in the front pay more than double what we pay in rent. I believe it. So they're— and they're not even really facing the street. There's no signage. So what's the advantage other than it looks a little nicer? You still hear the airplanes.

I'm going to say it doesn't— there's nothing really, right?

So, I mean, you know, when they— when you— when you look at office space, you look at A, B, C, the office space, right? And then, you know, when you go to— when you go look at warehouses, obviously, you know, warehouse space is warehouse space. So how much warehouse space do you need?

I don't know. Starting off, you wouldn't need much, right? I mean, enough. Just in my head, I'm— I told my wife, I said you would need one big industrial guy, you know, like this super big one. What, the washing machine? Maybe 2, right? And then you could go— you could get away with the other small ones. Oh yeah, you could. Of course. I mean, you could— I mean, there's a shit ton— pardon me, but like the strip malls. Yeah, you know, like the strips over in Fort Lauderdale, there's a laundromat in almost every one of them, right? You know what I mean?

Yeah, but I think if you aim at a higher customer That's a pickup. You don't have to be in a shopping center. A lot of times they own, like, I had an uncle and he owned like some laundromats, but he owned the building. Of course. So, and he didn't, that's simple. And there was all the quarters. Right. I remember going there with him and getting quarters. Well, I'll tell you what, when I was single, I lived in this condo building, okay? And then the condo building, you had to go downstairs and you had to buy these green plastic tokens to put in the washing machine.

I've been to a laundromat that had that.

So one night I come home from work and I've got to do my— I got to do my laundry. It's back when I was still doing the chef thing, and I got to do my laundry. And I go down there and I look at— I look in the garbage can and there's 5 gazillion green tokens. I'm like, are you kidding me? You took them? I took all of them, those green tokens.. And I figured out even though they— there was a lot of whole ones that really weren't busted, then the other ones I just like sort of like put a little bit of, you know, stick glue on them. And I had free laundry the rest of the time I lived there. Absolutely. And but yeah, so don't— if you're using tokens, don't be throwing them in the garbage where people can get them.

That's why the business model is what you're saying more is pickup, you know what I mean? Like real laundry service. Yeah. I mean, ideally, of course, having a brick and mortar is the way to go because then you can set up some, you know, your vending machine.

But you could still be in a— you could still be in a warehouse that has some street access where some people might say, yeah, I'm going to drop off. But, you know, think about like work. So pre-COVID, we had probably a— we had a couple— we had a client that had like a bunch of vans and they would go drive to like real estate offices and a lot of the professional offices.

You could make a killing with dry cleaning.

And pick up everybody's dry cleaning, right?

Make a killing.

But you want to know what happened to that business? It went down. People were working at home. Now everybody's wearing like casual clothing like this.

Professional up top, party down below.

Well, no, not even that. People are just wearing very people are dressed a lot more casually for work, bro.

Everybody I know, they went to work. Yeah, on— it had to be on Zoom calls. They'd be like, bro, I literally would have on jogging pants. Yeah, in a suit jacket, right? And that's it. Like, they weren't changing their shirts, right? They weren't. Because, I mean, you think about it, no one's smelling you, no one's, you know, like, oh hey, you got some smudge on your— yeah, collar. Yeah, like, you're, you're, you're filthy, bro.

Yeah, but not only— yeah, there was a few accidents that became famous with that. I was on a meeting and a guy took his laptop in the bathroom and forgot about it and got up from his seat and he knocked it and then the camera came on. That's disgusting.

Why the hell would you take your laptop in the bathroom?

He had the camera off.

Doesn't matter. He had to go.

He put it on mute. You tell them you got to go to the bathroom. What are they going to do, fire you, bro? He put it on mute, brought it in there. Gracias, amigo.

First of all, I'm not taking my laptop in the bathroom ever because of that. That's just nasty. That's fucking gross.

Sorry. No, but I think, you know, but now, but we said we had some, we have a few dry cleaners on the books. I want to tell you, their business is down like more than 50% and it's not coming back.

Why do you think that is though?

Because I think people took a more casual approach for work.

Oh, I definitely— for— I agree 100%. People don't wear suits every day. This is for you, Dave. No one's rocking a suit. No one's wearing a—

no one's rocking— yeah, 70-year-olds are rocking a suit and tie.

I mean, if you're going to a business meeting and you're going to go meet somebody for the first time, I can see it. Maybe. Maybe. But it's definitely depending on where the meeting is. Who the meeting is with, what time of day the meeting is.

Listen, let me tell you, I had meetings when I get on, you know, Zoom and meet people. I was talking to a guy this morning from a big business. The guy was wearing— one guy was wearing a polo shirt and the other guy had on a t-shirt, and they're processing $8 million of credit cards a month.

I do know, you know, most of the two other people that work in the office with us Sean and Samantha, they're in their early 20s, mid-20s, and, um, there is a big push for them to like that age group. They want people, you know, like, why let's wear suits all the time? But bro, I don't see that.

I don't see that coming back like that. Like, I don't see that coming back. No one wants to—

who the hell wants to deal with— I mean, I remember putting on a three-piece suit every morning, bro.

We used to have a guy that worked in the business I wouldn't be used to call him John Crazy. This guy's name was John, and we used to call him the three-piece suit guy. You would see this guy out selling, going door to door. Me and Dave first started in the business. Jeff knows him. He probably was making a killing too, and he would wear a three-piece suit and it would be like 90 degrees outside. See, that's just— no, but people expected that in the early 2000s. Sure. So now nobody cares how how anybody's dressed. Listen, we went to a trade show, right? We're at a professional trade show last year, right? There's dudes walking around in a t-shirt going with the— with a big F something. What were they wearing? Something they said that wasn't the F word. They were mad that— oh, high risk AF, as— oh yeah, right. And a bunch of people were wearing all kinds of weird t-shirts.

Like, oh, the dudes who were like your age who were like balling out of control, they all look like surfer dudes. Oh yeah, there was people with shorts, Hawaiian shirts, rocking their chanclas.

They were rocking the Tevas, right? Yeah, we saw a couple people in flip-flops. That— some of those guys were old— are older than me, that's for sure. But that— but then we saw 2 or 3 guys walking around in a suit.

If you, in your mind, think about who was— it was the younger people wearing the suits.

Some of them, not all of them.

Not all of them, but yeah, like the younger The younger generation definitely has—

there's a— yeah, but some people—

I want to look nice all the time.

But some people will wear like a polo shirt with a suit jacket.

That's corny to me.

I know, but I see it all the time.

No, that's, that's, that's like standard, uh, Miami business.

What are the things I used to make fun of? Okay, let me tell you one business faux pas to make fun of. Do— okay, there was a movie with Michael Douglas in it, okay? And he went crazy and like whatever, I don't know. Short sleeve shirt but a business shirt, like a short sleeve white business shirt but it's short sleeve with a pocket, right?

Yeah, with a pocket, and you can wear it under your suit jacket, right?

But guys would wear that with no suit jacket and then the pocket protector. Oh, that's right, Revenge of the Nerds. Or a guy wearing that with a tie. I mean, that No, don't not wear that. Yeah, no, no, no, no. But I would see dudes wearing that.

That's some Poyntexter shit. No, but I would see people wearing that. Shout out to all the Poyntexters out there though.

No, when I would go door to door, I would see like other salespeople and how they were dressed. But you know, like I've gone— I went to a meeting one time.

It's funny because I have like— this is like my Poyntexter jacket, to be honest. Like, because I have— I got all kinds of stuff. I got a pocket knife, I got my flashlight in case, hey, what's going on over there, fellas? I usually have my notebook. I don't know where that is. That's kind of— But I walked in—

That's freaking me out right now. No, I walked into a meeting one time. I was wearing a long sleeve shirt with a tie on. I came into the meeting. This guy owned like 5 restaurants on Miami Beach doing millions of dollars a month. He looks at me, he's like, you got to lose the tie. He goes, I can't handle it. Just unbutton, roll the sleeves up. He's like, you got to be a little more relaxed.

Yeah. Most of the time when you dress like that, you look like you got a stick in your ass.

And then I go, I said, okay, boss. So I get like more relaxed. And this guy's coming to the meeting. He's wearing like $300 flip-flops. Okay. $300 flip-flops?

Yeah. He had like some— was it Louis Vuitton flip-flops?

Yeah, like Louis Vuitton flip-flops. Gucci loafers he's got on? Like— no, he had on flip-flops. He had on a pair of shorts and a golf shirt.

I'm like, okay, they call them Gucci slides. Okay, whatever, Gucci slides.

But I'm just saying, like, you know, you don't— if you overdress, or for— and you— if you overdress for a meeting, no one wants to see that. I mean, I go to the— I'd go to meetings with people all the time, and you see people how they're dressed in their office, and it's, you know, it's gotten pretty casual. I will say that some people started wearing like more like a jacket but with a very casual looking shirt with it. Are you gonna like that? Yeah, or a t-shirt with a jacket. That's just corny to me. Steve Jobs used to dress like that. Steve Jobs, he would wear a turtleneck with a jacket.

He dressed like he was going to a funeral every day.

Yeah, he wore black.

Well, he kind of was, but whatever. Every black, black pants. He was literally watching Apple die every day that he went to work.

Whatever, I don't think Apple ever died.

No, it's doing great. Well, on paper, not so much. Anyway, so yeah, man, I think that's— that would be my number one.

Uh, I think it's a $20,000. I think there's a business there. There's definitely— if you could do it for $20 grand, you probably could get started for $20.

That's what I'm saying. You would— it would have to be really small scale because one of those industrial machines that I'm talking about is $20 grand at least.

I mean, well, you could brand new— you could still start with some smaller machines.

There's a company by my house, it's called Sudsy's, and, uh, I was doing the, uh a little research on it. It's pretty much how— what I'm talking about, how it started. So yeah, that. And this is my second one. Okay. And this is something that I'm actually pursuing, um, is a spice company, right? So it's going to be J&J Spices. Okay. Justin and Justina, we've been going back and forth with the logo. She's— my wife is I didn't know how much of a pain in the ass she was going to be with this.

But yeah, she wanted an eagle on it. Oh no, no, no.

She wants it to look really—

inside joke. She wants it to look old school.

But like, it's— she's got— she's right. It should. I said my idea was like, you remember the East Indian Trading Company on— obviously. Yeah. From like the whatever, 1200s, 1300s, whatever. Um, their logo was like, it just was real plain and it said East Indian, EIT, right? Yeah, that's kind of what I had, J&J, like, because it's spices, right? So it's— you can't really spice up a spice, right? Like, that's where people go wrong. They'd spend so much money on packaging, and I wanted to be really plain Jane. You know what I mean? And basic, like turmeric, you know what I'm saying? But I mean, we're not going to be doing that. I have, you know, some chili, curry, hamburger, uh, taco seasoning, a few others.

Yeah, when I was in Italian, my Italian herb mix. So when I was in Dallas and I worked for the hotel company and I was a chef, so they wanted, like, we had, I was in charge of making all the recipes for like everything. Like, okay, we're going to have this ranch salad dressing and this is what goes in the ranch salad dressing. Right. Right. So we could have our own taste. So ended up there was a guy who used to come to the hotel and sell us like the oregano and the basil and like all the different spices. And it was like a Brand X kind of guy, but he just had it like on a truck. So I said, so he saw like what I was doing one day. He goes, oh, you should take that stuff over to the place where I buy all this stuff from and they can make it for you. And I was like, really? He goes, yeah, then you wouldn't have to do all that. So we ended up going over there, had a meeting with them. We said, okay, they're going to mix up a 5, take a gallon bucket of mayo. And then this is the spice mix that goes into the 5-gallon bucket, into the 5-gallon bucket. And then, you know, for this kind of thing, for, you know, red sauce, for this particular type of soup, was like about 20 different things that we were doing. And they actually made up like these, the ready-to-go packs, the spice mix, and it was in a zip Not a Ziploc bag, but like a sealed up bag, right? And then that's how we bought it. We bought it from them. So then— So it'd be premixed.

So the people who are cooking spaghetti or something, they didn't have to measure out—

Yeah, basil, oregano, all that. They just, boom, I'm making a batch.

Take one thing and dump it in there. I guess I had two good ideas because we just killed the whole podcast.

That's all right. Those are good ideas. If you have money and you don't know what you're going to do with it yet, but you have the money, get on Betterment, you can get 5.5% interest on your money in a savings account. It's not a CD. So, you know, or, you know, a lot of people don't think about this. You know, you can go to like company like Charles Schwab and you can also get like 5.5% or more in a money market there. And it's a lot more competitive than banks because I was telling my son, get your money out of the bank. Oh, the banks are losing money because people are I don't understand why the banks don't raise their interest rates. Their money's dissipating out and people are taking their money. They're moving it to Betterment, to Charles Schwab, to these online banks to do that. But those are good, good. Those are good, solid business ideas. I'll tell you one business idea not to do. Oh, well, we won't get into that.

We'll save it for next time.

Save it for next time.

Some businesses not to do. Right. All right. That's the podcast for the day. Check us out on YouTube, smash that subscribe button for us for the one time, show some love. Peace. Peace out.