Hey, what’s up everybody? It’s Justin Live from B2B Vault, the Payment Technology Podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by Allen Kopelman, and we’ll be providing you educational information about FinTech. Payment processing small business and the technology businesses use in the world today and in today’s podcast, we’ll be talking about entrepreneurship and honor of entrepreneurship month.

Which is awesome because there’s so much to talk about when it comes to entrepreneurship. There’s lots to learn. We have lots of tips. Allen has 20 years of experience of operating a business. I’ve had my own business. My wife has her own business. I my father had his own business. So entrepreneurship runs in the blood.

It’s one of those things that’s keeps the country running. I’m an advocate for entrepreneurship, small businesses, hustles, Go get to the grind. Go get it for yourself. Do it until you can’t do it. No mo. But yeah, man, so entrepreneurship month is cool. There’s lots of events happening, I’m sure everywhere in the city, near you, town, near you.

Plenty of meetups. Get involved. There’s networking events happening all month. Every, every day. My email was getting a new notification about some sort of network after dark network, after hours, blah blah. Network after work. Yeah, network after work. The after dark one was spooky. I was like, Eh, I’m married, bro.

I don’t know what this means. But yeah. So entrepreneurship let’s get into same thing, like my dad had a growing up my dad had a factory. And my mom’s dad had a factory in New York. They used to knit sweaters, cool band lawn, which was stretchy material. Those sketching materials clothing stores they had.

And I had uncles that owned all sorts of businesses. A diner, a flower shop. , and my dad had a monogram store, did this kind of stuff on shirts. One of my other mamas had a flower shop. Shout out to Savannah. She let us run that when we were like in high school. Yeah. It was awesome. So I always grew up around business.

I had a restaurant. First I cut my teeth in the hotel business at a restaurant, a catering company, and then started the payment processing company and inside that company I started a app company. We made apps for a few years when the iPhone first came out, then we made, started printing. , but payment processing that’s been around now, this company 21 years in business.

Nice. Congratulations. And I remember we were talking, remember when you get, have your business and then you have your hire, your first employee , so that’s like a big step Oh yeah. To start to do that. I never got to that step, but no I guess I did hire people to do work for me, but I didn’t hire an actual.

Yeah. But when you, whatever, when you start to add people to the mix, , that’s what it is. So the actual date of the entrepreneurship day is November 15th, and each week, During the month of November, we’re gonna dedicate one of the podcasts all around entrepreneurship. Is it an actual federal holiday?

No, it’s some made up holiday. Oh, on some, Who knows? There’s a calendar. I’ve looked up these calendars before. Every day there’s five holidays. You can just pick one. Yeah. Tomorrow Dog day. Yeah. National Pizza Day. Exactly. National Pet Your Dog Day. Exactly. Nationally. Walk Your Turtle Day. Yeah.

Sunday Daughter Day. Vanilla ice cream day. No thanks. Exactly. But entrepreneurs, huh? Not to say that I am not. I am, taking away from any days. Celebrate your day, like there’s no other days left. Yeah. That’s the day for everything. If you celebrate it. I’m just saying it’s not for me.

That’s, Yeah. When we did apps, we actually did looked on that calendar and we used to do a post every day for some one or two holidays. If they were related to a particular business type. So it’s pretty, I it depends on the popularity of it, I guess I would say, right? Yeah, exactly. If you own an ice cream parlor on ice cream day, good thing to be involved.

Hot dog stand. Hot dog day. Pizza day, exactly. Part of being an entrepreneur, being creative, and being creative with your marketing, because you’re creating a business. So it’s important, and entrepreneurs are also big contributors to society and the local community, and we support the local community.

Here in South Florida, we support, we help a lot of charities out, local charities, giving them discounts on printing. We’re launching a new product to help nonprofits. Get get a website and a donations set up and all that. We’re gonna get it at launched pretty soon. So that’s really good for, And there’s very cool, there’s tons of non-profits in the local South Florida area that could use our service, talking about and, small business owners are the lifeblood of our economy. Okay? Because most people today work for a small to medium sized business, and we talked about this before, or was it a thousand employees? No. Was it 500 and less? 500 and less, yes. Yeah. So anyone with 500.

employees is considered a small business, which is crazy to me. 500 is a lot in my brain, Yeah, it got a little, But what we were talking about, let’s say someone owns a big restaurant, right? They could essentially have two, 300 employees. Then if, let’s say they have two restaurants, then it’s, when you explained it, it’s just crazy that, But considering that.

500 people in, in one place isn’t, That’s not a small amount. I know it’s not all at one time. I’m just saying like when you think of the number, it’s a pretty big number. Yeah. I remember working in a hotel and we had, you have a front desk department, housekeeping, you got all your food and beverage staff for the restaurants.

We had two restaurants, a bar, a lobby bar, Pool bar. Yeah. When you think about like when when you’re talking about like hospitality or like restaurants? Yeah, for sure. But when you’re talking about like a cleaning company, Yeah. Some cleaning companies might have, but 500, that’s, that doesn’t lot.

That doesn’t seem like a small cleaning company. To me that’s all I’m saying. I think that there, I think that there needs to be like some sort of a. The way of classifying? No, what they were saying was, is like small businesses up to a hundred employees, a hundred to 500 is a medium business.

So we classify people in smb. Those are small to medium size businesses. Yeah. I mean you can have a regional, a small business that could have, I know people that have, we have a client that have five restaurant. They have about 4,000 employees. Oh, I’m sure. Cause it’s, five restaurants and they’re open for one of ’em.

So that’s a lot. Yeah. One of them’s open breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Oh yeah. Almost 24 hours a day. So it adds up. You have a lot of part-time employees and then you have office staff and cooks and. Cleaning staff, it adds up the amount of employees that you have very quickly. Someone has like a wholesale business and they, but that’s why also people start a side hustle.

Yep. They start their side hustle, then they turn it into a business. And then they start adding on, Oh, I’ll have one employee, two employees, or the air conditioning guy gets busy, has starts off himself with one truck. , and he gets very busy. Oh, now I need two trucks, hires a. First employee.

And then grow the business. Even you could have a business with 40, 50 employees. Yeah. It’s a big business and it’s a lot of responsibility. That person who has the business, we have three full-time employees in the office. It’s a, responsibility to make sure those people get paid and we’re, earning money for the business.

So every. Job is related to bringing in business to the, everybody’s bringing in business to the company, so it’s important. So investing, small business owners are investing in the community. What most people don’t realize is the average small business owners probably only making somewhere between on the low side, 50 to a hundred grand a year.

On the high side, maybe 250 grand. Some people exceed all that, but it, in most cases, it’s if people will tell me, Oh, you own a business, you must make a million dollars a year. It doesn’t go by how much money we bring in because we have expenses. You have rent.

One of your biggest expenses and business is rent. Yep. And we’re going through a fundamental change. Since the covid where people are closing up offices, employees are working at home people are starting a business at home, and that used to be less common. Until probably about five years ago, but now it accelerated.

Oh, yeah. You know where companies are like, Oh yeah we’re gonna have office hours, and then you’re gonna work at home three days a week. Two days a week you’re in the office, but you’re sharing your desk with two or three other people as everybody’s just rotating through the office. It’s, yeah.

No thanks. It’s crazy. Like some companies do you know, operate that way? Yeah. I couldn’t it’s, it’s, And also, I I could do it like the remote thing and then come into the office two days a week. That’s cool. But I’m not, I don’t like sharing dust. Yeah. That’s what’s happening cuz there’s strength.

Their, how does that prevent from covid from spreading? That’s, who knows. Maybe the person brings their laptop. I don’t have a computer there. You’re just bringing your laptop to your, to the office. He’s sitting in my own little bubble. I don’t know. That’s what’s going. I know. I wouldn’t wanna be a part of it.

That’s all. That’s what’s going on now. I There was a big shift like several years ago where everybody switched from desktop computers to laptop computers, except for it doesn’t work for like somebody doing graphic design or something like that. Yeah, no, hide that. They need a bigger screen and they need more power for more programs.

And I know a lot of web developers that switch to, MacBook Pros, they get it done. They get a big screen. Yeah. They gotta monitor, right? Big monitor hooked up to it and all that. But business owners are investing in the local community. They’re paying people that live in the local community.

Those people are all spending their money in the local community. So that’s, important to hire people in the local community. Don’t go. Upwork and fiber and farm everything out to the Philippines. Yeah. Hire, hire somebody local. Negotiate man. The problem with what you’re getting at is people are afraid to barter.

They’re afraid to, to even, they’re just like, Oh, I need this done. I’m not willing to pay more than $5 an hour. You’re gonna get the worst. Quality of work that you can possibly imagine. I don’t care what living condition that person was under, they are gonna crank that out in a blink of an eye.

And I know that, that we’re helping these other, these countries that are impoverished and it’s very hard and difficult for them to earn money. And I’m all for that. I want them to make money, but they also have to charge. Because the problem with that is the rest of the entrepreneurs and the independent contractors of America, we can’t compete with $5 an hour because.

The bills that we have to pay. You can’t, five bucks an hour isn’t gonna equal enough to put food in our bellies. Yeah. The scale in our country and the scale in their country is completely different. Yeah. If you pay some guy a hundred bucks in the Philippines, that’s like giving somebody here like 10 grand.

Literally cuz their money is Exactly. So then there’s nothing over there. So then like I know 10 grand sounds a lot, that’s what it costs. You’re not gonna tell your your landlord like, the, whoever owns your home, you’re not gonna say your house is only worth 20,000.

I’m only gonna give you 500 bucks this month. I’m not gonna, that’s all I got. That’s all it’s worth to me is 500 bucks this month. It’s a little different. It’s a, I’m just saying Don’t stop. Just stop going that way first. There’s a lot of options for you.

There’s ways students touch students, interns hire young people, train them. You’d be surprised. You reach out to a independent contractor, and you’d be surprised they’ll, a lot of us are very eager to work. We’re very eager to build new relationships. We’re eager to expand our portfolios, so just keep that in mind when you’re on your next. But as project, as a business owner, like when we were making apps, nobody knew how to make an app. We had to train all the employees. . So we hired a lot of students. And they learn, they were going to school for graphic design, cuz that was one of the.

That was one of the skills that we needed for few of the people that were working on the projects. Absolutely. So yeah, we hired students and we trained them. They got a job experience and they worked here for six months or a year, and they went somewhere else where they could make more, make a lot more money.

Because now they had real job experience. So sometimes as a business owner, if you’re own an air conditioning company or a plumbing company, hire people like apprentices. When I was a chef, that’s how I went to school, but I also was like a chef apprentice. So I worked at a place they paid for my school and I got paid, but I didn’t get paid as much as everybody else because they were paying for my school.

And that was part of the deal. You can ha you can, there are jobs out there Especially in the trades where there’s a big shortage of people That’s, So I got started in web design. I got hurt on a job and I went to a vocational rehabilitation center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Yeah. Definitely there’s ways to get, there’s ways to get it, but also, support the local business. Like we have lunch in the office every Friday or every other Friday, and we order from local businesses. We don’t order from the chains, sorry, Chain restaurant, but we try to order from a local place.

That’s not entirely true. Yeah, but it’s a franchise. No. So Twin Peaks, okay, we got from, But it’s a f. True. So it’s locally owned. Maybe it’s locally owned. So we try to order from a local, we try to order from local businesses Indeed. So you know, in the area to give support them. And businesses, a lot of local businesses do their advertising by supporting local schools, the pta, local charities, local organizations, local business networking groups.

So it’s important to help. Look, your local business owner and like for us, we ask people buy credit card processing from Nationwide Payment Systems. You don’t have to go to PayPal, Stripe, and Square. In fact, we now have, can do the same exact thing they do yet you set up with a merchant account, answer 10 questions, and you have a merchant account in about five minutes.

Justin, set one up, right? Yep. Didn’t take one very easy. Very easy. A local business, but entrepreneurs and business owners also have to un have to deal with challenges. Challenges that they have to deal with is when you’re setting up your business, you need to make sure, you have to like, like the right legal entity.

Yep. You set up banking set up ways to get paid, you know how you’re gonna invoice or collect money from people. Where are you gonna get your funding from? To start your business. Wait. You’re gonna wait too fast. I know. Okay. So what, So the first thing, what’s the first thing a business should do?

You gotta get your set up, your corporate name. What are you gonna call your business? What are you gonna call your business? What are you gonna name it? That’s, that’s one of the first things you should think about. And then go to the website, make sure it’s available. Check it, go to Google Domains or GoDaddy.

Yeah. But also your state that you. You have yeah, like in Florida you have Sunbiz, you wanna make sure the name is available. You could Yes. I locally. You don’t wanna have the same, I’m not gonna owe Jay’s bodega if there’s three Jay’s bodegas in Fort Lauderdale. But if there’s one in Orlando, I’m not really worried about that.

But he’s right. You wanna make sure, search, like when I picked a very. Hard I don’t know, Niche digital, 1380. The numbers are my birthday it’s very unique. As I, I thought come to find out when I started to rank, there was a scale that was the Digital 1380 scale.

Yes. That was the, like the model number. Yeah. Digital 1380. So I had a, that was. That was a funny, little competition to Outran cuz that, that was probably get a lot of traffic people like, they’re constantly losing weight, whatever. So that was interesting. But, but that’s just a, example of you want to do your research diligently and come up with something that is easy to pronounce and easy to type.

You don’t want to have. So like Alan Ha is a good example, right? They picked Nationwide payment Systems. That’s a lot, right? When you’re typing that in, right? So then they went back and they went and chose NPS Bank. We could go get it. This is a whole podcast we could talk about yeah.

Because first of all, they’re not a bank, right? They’re actually don’t really offer anything that a bank does besides ATM managed services. That was a very bad decision, but We’ll, we’re gonna digress and we’re gonna go to Nationwide Payment Systems. Nationwide. Payment Systems is long Come to find out someone else that owned a web.

The domain. Yeah. Somebody, even though we had the corporate name, they bought the domain and they had it directed at their site, and they were in our same business, which was n. Payment systems.com or something like that. I don’t want to say the person. Whatever. Yeah, whatever.

We got it back from that. Yeah. So they finally got it. And so then, I talked Alan and Dave, Hey, we should brand go back to this. And so we’re working on that. But so that’s just an, that’s just an example of making sure that you’re. You’re really thinking about what you’re gonna name your business does it.

But also, over the years the SEO rules have changed. Oh. When you started you could do whatever you wanted. So it didn’t matter so much what the name was back then. No, as it does now. Cause like back then and PS bank was probably not bad cuz it was short. No, it was good. Cuz when you’re ti I always tell someone when they’re, picking a domain name.

Should I’ll give you a little jewel When you’re picking a domain name, right? And say, your business is, My business was digital 1380. If I knew what I knew now, I would’ve bought SEO milwaukee.com, right? Because I wanted to rank locally, right? So if you’re a cleaning agency, right in I’m sure it’s taken, but like Boca Airbnb cleaning, that’s a great domain name to purchase because it has keywords within a domain.

And that’s good for search when someone’s searching. If you’re a business, like my wife’s company is supreme cleaned, they’re not searching for Supreme Clean, they’re searching for Airbnb cleaning. There’s a little jewel for you. If you’re, when you have business, you’re in, try to find a keyword that matches your niche or whatever service that you want to, that’s particularly important to your business.

You would wanna, add that to your keyword, to your domain. I’m not saying to added your domain Fort Lauderdale Plumbing service. Fix your pipe.com. Don’t do that . You know what I mean? It’s a, Yeah. So what I’m saying is that didn’t fit on your checks. Exactly. So solo plumbing, South Florida, plumbing, ftl, plumbing, those types of keywords because you want to localize it into your city.

You have a better likelihood of popping up in the search receipt. And also, you know what’s really crazy is they changed the law a while ago for your, your federal tax ID number and then your corporate name. I don’t remember how many characters it has to be, but it’s limited now. So we had a client one time, and their name, the name of their company was Professional Golf Courses.

Golf Course Management of America talking about, right? So they had this really long name and then that doesn’t fit in the field to, to check the federal tax ID number. So this guy, so we’re getting letters like. Oh the Fed. Cuz they made a rule that the merchant account has to be connected to the federal tax id.

So we’re getting notes from the bank. Oh, we can’t find this company, blah, blah, blah. So it turns out, after looking on the website, that their name, even though they had the name for 30 years. , dad, Too many characters. So they had to go to their lawyer. And they had to go change the name of the company.

They left the name of the company the same. They had changed the legal entity to the initials of all that. Yeah. That’s not big. Cool. Cause it was too, cuz it was too long. They used to only use the initial, Excuse me. But the whole name would not fit in the search bar. Definitely don’t need your lawyer to do that.

No. They had a, it was a big thing. It was a big company, so they had to get like their, They had to do like a legal name change. It was a little, Oh, okay. I see what you’re saying. That it was a little cop like yeah. That would make a legal name change. Cause they had like checks going out.

So it was, Yeah, not just checks, but there was checks coming in and there were contracts with companies and cities. That would be a disaster Nowaday. It would be a big disaster. That’s why you see all those companies with pbp dot, I dot b, dot do. That’s the name of the, like the legal entity.

You’ll never know the name of the, you know what I mean? And it’s good sometimes to take your, to have a different legal name. It is good and a different DBA because that. You can ha that way. You’re giving lots a lot of jewels here. Yeah, we’re giving you lots of stuff. Finish. No, you should finish that Juul.

Yeah. And the reason for that is maybe you’re in a business that’s a little bit hinky or you’re selling something that’s like c b, so you don’t want to go name your company, Allen and Justin, c b Emporium Farm. You want to call it aj? Inc. And that’s it. Aj what’s a good word? Aj dreams inc.com.

It’s something, not.com, but Yes. So that way when you go in the bank, they say, Oh, what do you do? Oh, we have a store. Yeah, okay, great. Sign you up. Boom boom, boom. They don’t need to know that you’re selling a, you have a c b smoke shop. Yeah. Especially if you’re in a high risk.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Pick up, pick a name that’s gonna, or let’s say you’re gonna have multiple businesses, name it after your daughter or. That’s a good idea. Name the legal entity and then the DBA can be whatever you can imagine. And then it’ll be tied to that, but it would take somebody to do some research to find it.

But it’s also good if you’re gonna have, let’s say, maybe multiple businesses. Yeah. That’s why you form your umbrella and you can have your build your umbrella and you don’t have to worry about, Oh, I picked this very niche name. You can form your start your own conglomerate. So they would say, Make it easier then you don’t have to go back and redo everything like some people have had to do.

Yes, it’s important. I told a story on here, on the podcast once we had a customer, I’ll never forget, they owned a bunch of restaurants and they go, We’re opening a new restaurant. So I go there cuz it was before electronic applications. And I look at the name and I go you guys really named your restaurant that spas.

I was like, Are you serious? Like that’s a famous restaurant in Chicago owned by a huge company, Levy Restaurants. The guy’s whatever. I’m like, Okay. So we signed them up for credit card processing. Boom boom. Literally, I don’t even think two months went by. They got cease and desist.

They got letters from them that had changed. The sign, the menus, the website the whole, they couldn’t even get a web. They changed, like they made a website with a different ending on it. They made, they had bought chairs with the name on it. Oh. They were tripping tables. The guy lo the guy.

It cost them hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. I can’t even believe that their lawyer didn’t search to see was there another restaurant and or search for a trademark. Cause that’s so that’s what he did. Cause. I’ve known a lot of companies who’ve done this and there’s a lot of companies, you can have the same name, right?

That’s not a, That’s not a problem, but if it’s trademarked, But if there’s a trademark or a copyright, or if their logo has been copywritten or there’s some sort of tagline, Associa, What’s that other thing? Business. No, there’s another thing you can do besides a copyright and a trademark. I forget what it is.

There’s some website you can go to and you can. You can register your mark, they call it, which is your logo. It’s T something. I forget the name of the website. I think I do know what you’re talking about. Yeah, so you you can, let’s say you have a logo like B2B vault. We want to go register it there.

So it’s not really a trademark. You’re registering your mark, right? It’s called, It’s a little cheaper than doing a trademark, but it is the cheapest way is to. Put it in a sealed envelope, Take it to your court house, have the notary public stamp it and mail it to yourself. Never open it. Then it’s co.

Yeah, but it’s, I’m just saying, But if someone goes yours, you gotta have a legal entity, then that’s how we were able to get our ghetto copyright. People do that with music too all the time, right? But we, someone takes your name, but you should make sure if you pick a name that it’s not been trademarked.

It’s easy to search. It’s very easy. Cause that was in a very, you’ll see it, right? It have a little either a T and the M next to it, or a C or an R. You can’t use either one of those or an R three of those or an R, right? Cause what’s the one that’s, there’s a P for pending. Yes. Another one is P for pending.

Don’t use that one. So that was a very expensive lesson. They had, it was probably in a hot, in the mid six figures. Yeah. I was waiting to get a cease of desist from the company that had that the scale. Yeah. We got one, we made a thing once we had this product for people could pay rent, so had nps rent cause I outranked them and then we got a letter from.

From the some company and they said, Oh, we have a product called NPS Rent. And then I said to ’em we had a website. We’re gonna have to change the website, we’re gonna have to redo the printed material. They said, they asked us how much that was gonna cost, so we told ’em, They actually sent us a check.

They said we feel bad, we want the domain name, blah, blah, blah. And they gave us some money. Nice. That’s, See, that’s. Goof. Shout out to Bill’s people. They were, they did it right. They weren’t, they weren’t mean about it cuz we actually searched it and they never did anything with it. They didn’t register the domain, they didn’t use it, but it was the name of a product that they had nothing to do with what we were doing.

I remember. Funny. And then they gave us some funds and that was the end of that. My uncle had a very similar situation. He. Unique remodeling concepts. And there was another company in they obviously had some money and they had to stay just a little bit further up north of where he was living.

And they made him change the name man. And I had to change it to. My unique renovations. There was a company too, where some guy went out and he trademarked the letters nps. He spent a lot of money and we got a letter, Oh, you can’t have this nps. Like you can’t use nps. So that’s how we ended up with NPS Bank.

So that’s how that kind of happened. So then I. You know how many people have nps? A lot. I looked it up everywhere. So they sent me this like massive document. Then they sent it to me in an email too. So I was like, Okay, let’s just have a little fun, right? The guy’s being. They were being very mean about it.

Ah. They were sending us all kinds of letters and all this stuff. We ignored it. But they were in the same niche as you. Yeah, they were in the same niche business as us, but they’re trying to do this. But they trademark the letters nps. thought it was funny cuz. Guess what else is nps?

The National Park Service. Is nps, right? So we took the packet and that they sent by the email cuz we say, Oh, can you please email that to us? That was a big mistake. They shouldn’t have done that. So then I looked up online, I found hundreds of companies that had the letters, nps and I shared the packet with them.

Some of them were not too happy because they did not want to change their. This guy was like going after people and he was gonna try to soup. He was threatening this, he was threatening to sue us. So we fixed it right away. Always avoid lawyers. Yeah. Suing at all, all costs. You don’t want to do that.

Never fight with anybody. Waste time. Cause the only person who wins are the attorneys. Yep. Cause they get paid. And then, And especially if it’s something where you know you’re not gonna win. So I said let’s just make this gu. Since the guy took, he wouldn’t give us back nationwide payment systems.

So I said if you’re not gonna give that back to me, then I’m gonna. I’m not gonna go to war, but I shared this NPS thing with like a hundred companies, , so they all got it and they were upset. They started writing the guy letters, so I’m sure that he got a huge legal bill. Good for him from all that.

And we also sent him a, We also got a friend of ours to send him a legal letter that he was cyber squatting on our. Since he’s given us crap about the nps you’re cyber squatting on nationwide payment systems.com and he gave it back. He finally, he gave it back to us cuz he said he for free or did you have to pay him?

No for free, because he was saying, Can you please stop mailing this thing out to everybody

And I said, Okay, I’ll stop sending the email back. See my domain. Give me the domain. So he. You have to be very careful. You have to be very careful with names. Nowaday, there’s a huge fight, like still, I don’t even know if that, I haven’t looked up to update for it, but there’s a company, a small company that’s called mea.

, right? And then Mark Zuckerberg just went and called, shared that to you. Mea, right? Yeah. And then there’s a u, they’re in a lawsuit in meta. The first meta is gone. Take a look for yourselves. You ain’t gonna find nothing. Oh, it’s gone. Oh, it’s gone. Did they give him money? I don’t know. I don’t know if Mark Zuckerberg paid them, cuz the first offer he had two of the first offer he gave him.

The guy said no. I would’ve said no too. They were sneaky. They just had a lawyer call them on the phone. And offer them like a hundred grand or something. I forgot all about that. I’m gonna have to, I’m gonna check again. They had ’em they look on your phone real quick. They had ’em offer like a hundred grand or something.

They said 50 grand. Then they went up to a hundred, then they went up to 200 grand. And then the guy said to himself, Why are they offering me all this money? Who are these people? And then they find out that it’s Facebook. And then they said no. The price went way up after they found out it was Facebook on September 7th.

They just had a court date. Oh, they did it violates trademark. Asked the court for damage of at least 60 million. . 60 million they want now. That’s crazy. Mark Duck. This same amount that they use to acquire trademark assets of Meta Financial Group, a regional. So they’re, So what Basically he’s, they’re saying is Meta’s out here buying off everyone that has meta in their name.

Wow. But they only offered that guy to start off 50 was like 50 grand. It’s terrible. And then he said, no. Some people probably got tricked because it was just an attorney. But then somehow the guy did some research and he said, No way. Now he’s gonna get millions. So this the one that we’re talking about was founded in 2001.

He’s, we long, way before Facebook way before Facebook, right? 2021 is when Facebook. It’s changed. But I’m saying like Facebook’s didn’t, wasn’t even started in 2001. No. Maybe in his brain. But I’m just saying like it wasn’t out there, but I’m just saying, so you gotta be careful when you’re doing your formation and all that.

Maybe you’ll get lucky. Like this meta guy, he’s probably gonna get 40, 50 million. There is a ton meta X L C. What? They’re all platform paid off. As a black chain. Are they all suing them? Yeah, they’re all suing. They’re all suing Mark Zuckerberg. Listen, I’m not gonna, I met a hit with trademark lawsuit by Virtual reality company.

Meta. X meta hit with trader art, Man. Geez. Yeah. Not look is so good for the name. Mea, right? He’s gotta be dishing out. But how much money does Mark Zuckerberg? I don’t know. Their stock took a big hit though. Billions still. I don’t know about billions, but they took a big loss. But that’s the one thing you’ve gotta be very careful about with your business.

Don’t pick a name until you do your research. And then, and also, then when you find the perfect name, make sure, oh, the.com is available, all the social handles are available. Grab all the social handles at once. Don’t just say, Oh, I’m gonna only use Facebook. No, Get ’em all. Go. Go. And just make, like when we picked that B2B vault, we went and got the domain all the, We made sure before we went crazy.

Yeah. Oh, B2B vault. And even then, cuz YouTube some guy snagged our YouTube thing and he has one video. Yeah. It’s terrible. We still have our back from Beau, from YouTube. I’m YouTube. Come on dude. Help us out. Yeah, the guy’s, one video, it’s not even related to business at all. Nothing like at all.

Like it’s like some child playing a flute or something. It’s weird. It’s weird. One video and it’s like in, in some Chinese or Japanese. It’s definitely some language. Yeah. Different language, not even English. And we’re like, how’d the guy get that? Cuz it’s not even in his. This thing and you got B to people bald, so yeah, that’s not cool.

He must have been up in the middle of the night when they flipped the switch on that . I don’t know. He had to have, and that why target us. I’m, Come on dude. We’ll send you a gift card for like a hundred bucks. Maybe we probably take it. But yeah, man, I tried to see if there was a contact info. There was no contact.

No, I’m gonna actually reach out to, I know how to do it. I’ll find, maybe just leave him a message. That’s what I’m gonna, I’ll his video. Maybe I’ll just, I’ll find him. Okay. We’ll find the guy. So that’s just one, that’s one aspect. That’s why we’re, we are gonna do one podcast a week and we’re gonna talk about, dive into all this stuff.

And the next one we’ll probably do talk about. About what? Location? Location. Location. Oh, we’ll talk about like your digit. We’ll talk a little bit more about your digital footprint and e-commerce. All right. Before we end this one though, so your name, right? So we’re going to you’re gonna make sure that you’ve, you figure out what you’re gonna name your business and you don’t have to name the legal entity if you’re going that far.

And the DBA don’t have to be the same. Yeah. So if you’re just doing a dba, for now, name it, whatever. Think about what you’re gonna name your LLC or your in, or whatever it is you’re gonna do. But when you’re doing that, you know also right away, what’s the first thing that I would say someone should do Domain and social.

Yes. And buy your domain. Yeah. Immediately set it up. You don’t have to set up the website right away, but yes. Put a coming soon page. Yeah. If you can, but the main thing is go to GoDaddy and buy whatever domain it is. Al Allen’s ice cream shop.com. Buy it today. Cause you always buy another one if you change it, they’re very but’s. Not expensive. They’re fairly inexpensive. Go Daddy’s the cheapest place. Yeah. Don’t go anywhere like those name cheap.com please. No, don’t do that. You’ll buy it. You’ll buy it for real. Then you go to renew it’s hundred bucks. Exactly. You don’t redefine print and now you’re held hostage, your website’s down.

You can’t renew it, you’re screwed. So use something like GoDaddy. I like the GoDaddy process. Google Domains is also another good one. Just whatever’s best for you, but, so yeah. buy that and get all your social handles. Yes. Immediately right away. Exactly. It’s the most important thing to do.

Cuz that way you’re not gonna be scrambling around looking for, Oh, where’s I can’t get my social handle? I picked out a name, The domain’s not available. Then you gotta go back. You don’t want to have to go rename your company. And that’s tough, right? Because it’s like the business owners working on their their product or their service.

, they don’t necessarily think Oh, it’s just gonna be AL’S cleaning service. They don’t think about it. So it’s, you gotta put a little effort in part of the process. Yes. So you got to put that into your process. So we talked about entrepreneurship or celebrating entrepreneurship.

Support local businesses. Local businesses are the heartbeat of America, that’s for sure. Small business. Are employing most of the people in your community. Small businesses are the ones investing in the communities. People that work at small businesses are spending their money locally. So support small business and stay tuned for our weekly.

Entrepreneurship celebration in the month of November, and we’ll be talking about entrepreneurship all month on the B2B Vault podcast. Peace out, everybody. Have a great day. Be it’s much better than yesterday.