VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Hey, everybody, it’s Justin from B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcasts with Allen Kopelman, and we’ll be providing you with educational information about business payments, FinTech, financial technology, decentralized finance, and the technology businesses need in today’s world. In today’s episode, we’ll be talking about Small Business Week. This is an ongoing podcast celebrating small business week this week.
So be expecting a couple more episodes focusing on small businesses. Here you go, bud. So small business week, you know, we, you know, our target audience are the owners of small to medium size businesses. The everyday companies out there are who we’re trying to help with the information we’re providing.
So today, I wanted to talk a bit about my business journey. I started out working in restaurants, and then I was a chef. I worked in Atlanta. Then I worked in Dallas, Texas. Then I moved back to Florida, and when I got to Florida, you know, the entrepreneurial bug it, because I grew up around a lot of business people, my dad owned clothing stores, and I had uncles that were that own.
Knitting mills, like they made sweaters and stuff. And even my dad was involved in that business. And then I had uncles that owned flower shops, deli counters, businesses, and hotels, so growing up, I was around a lot of business, and then I started my first business was, a restaurant. And then I, well, first I had a catering company.
Then I had a restaurant. Then I had a little consulting company. The cause had people I worked for in the hotel industry contacting me about updating their menus, and the company I worked for got sold. So that part of their company didn’t exist anymore. So I started doing that.
Then I started Nationwide Payment Systems in 2001. You know, and then we began within that company. I started a few other businesses. We created an app company, and we made mobile apps. We started a printing company, which is still around NPS Printer. You can get, you know, so that we could help our clients with, um, printing.
And the printing came from the apps, you know? And so it’s a, it’s a journey to have a business, and it’s a risk, you know, you have to take a chance. One of my sayings that I learned early on was no guts, no glory. So sometimes. Sometimes, you know, like I used to watch the show.
Like I like business shows on TV. Like we’re always talking about businesses, what kind of TV shows have a business there and what do we come up with? Billions. Um, I’m all in on billions. I’m on the last season before the new season comes out. Yeah. So I got a guy watch. One show was called startups and was about these guys, all these startup companies in Silicon Valley.
And I like the shark tank. You know, cause I find that interesting, how people, you know, start a business and you hear their story. And I still like to watch the apprentice before with celebrity apprentice, you know, when it was just the apprentice. Cause it was people who were trying to be entrepreneurs, not the celebrity apprentice; there was a good one on Netflix too called startup.
It’s not; yeah, that’s a little bit crazy. I think. Uh, I loved the movie. I mean, it’s serious. It was great. Yeah. So there were a few, a few in there, and the guy’s name that played Hellboy. I don’t remember that, James. And then, we talk about movies that involve credit card processing or payment fraud.
So one of my, one of the movies is, uh, there was one called going for the green. It was a low-budget movie, and then there was another one with, uh, now I’m going to mess it up. Pretty green was hard to find even on the internet. And Cynthia, Gary had the guy who played Gary Bird here from, uh, the Titans movie where the one with Denzel Washington.
And, uh, there’s one with the Owen Wilson’s brother. What was that one called? It was about credit card processing. These guys are processing pornography. Oh yeah. We were looking at that one. I didn’t watch it yet. And then there’s catch me if you can, which is all about check fraud; that’s an excellent movie for Caprio peaks, right?
Yeah. Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio. And you can learn all about where’s Matt Damon. No, no. It’s Tom Hanks. He’s the FBI agent, Leonardo to crap. Rio is the criminal. And he’s going around. It’s true, you know, it’s all, those are all movies, true stories. You learn about the bottom of the checks. What is all that? What do all those numbers mean?
And in my, you know, so it’s fantastic, you know, Like what has people committed fraud? Right. You know, so it’s interesting, and there are probably tons of movies. Let’s go and look around about Ozark, for like money laundering. That’s the ultimate money laundering show Samantha, the graphic designer over there and social media likes those are, did you see the last.
Two thumbs up. Those are, yeah, those are spoilers. I know. We’re not going to tell anybody what happened. It’s awesome. But that’s probably like the ultimate show, in modern-day about money laundering, you know, it’s Ozark laundering money all towards the illegal activity going on. So it’s exciting.
I’m always interested in, you know, I can tell when people want to talk to me about my business. A half an hour and tell you all of that credit card processing ATM’s whatever, because you know, business owners love their business. So one of my favorite things, like when I would go out on sales calls, is to ask people, oh, tell me about your business.
I’ll always just, and you probably hear me on the phone. Oh, tell me about your company. Because one of the first things I lead into, like, if someone calls me about a website or something, tell me about your business or tell me about your project or, you know, and I want to hear like, what are they doing?
What’s their passion, how their patch, right? Because I don’t want to do a site for someone if they’re not passionate about the business or if they don’t have a, they don’t have them, if they don’t know or can’t explain what the companies, it’s just going to be a, well, we have to understand what you’re doing and how you’re going to do it.
You know, and all those different things. So it’s excellent so that we wanted to give, so we’ll get, we’re going to pass, uh, some shout outs today, but we’ll do them not, we’re not going to do them all at one time, so we’ll give one, then we’ll go onto the next subject. Better. That way, there’ll be broken up into the podcast, but we will shout out to four local businesses today and post the websites in the show notes.
So that way, you can go check them out. So the first one, I will get a shout-out to SupremeClean https://supremeclean.biz. And that’s the people who come and clean the office. Yes, they do. So they do a great job and go in and make sure the office is clean. Shout out to the owner Justina Gomez.
Justina, thank you. Great job. Everybody is happy. Next, we will talk about Facebook groups. You know, so I started where we started two groups on Facebook real quick.
If you have a small business, we were thinking about ways to help small businesses, right. And how you could promote your small business to local people. And one of those ways is through Facebook groups. So we started two Facebook groups. One is called open for business Broward, and there’s been, you know, it had a lot of that.
We tried to do it during the pandemic, and many people started posting. So people would know who. The activity went off, but lately, some people have started finding the group. There are some members in there, so doing and doing the posting, more people should join the group. And then that way you can.
You know, grow your business and Broward county, Florida. That’s where we are local. So we’re trying to assist local businesses. And I go on local business pages to find local businesses. And then another one we have is executive business networking. That’s more for like business owners.
You can be anywhere in the United States, and you want to promote your business or promote a networking event. Or we post podcast episodes in there. And things like that. So those are great ways. If you’re a small business or you’re looking for a small business, go into the group, check it out, join these groups before when you join a group, you know, a lot of times what happens is someone, you know, I know we’re all busy, and you’ve got to operate the business.
Right. But each one of us as a CEO, or if you’re the operations day-to-day manager, whatever it is, you have to chalk out some time. To plug away on social media, even if it’s only 10 minutes a day, right? So plugin, when you go and hit subscribe to those, join the groups, you know, turn on the note of vacations, make a post, comment on someone else’s posts, and share someone’s post.
But the main thing is being active inside the groups, you know, Don’t just join the group for the sake of joining the group and never post in there or anything. Cause then, you know, you’re just wasting your time again. It’s all about actionable, you know, ways of increasing knowledge and awareness of your business.
And the only way of doing that is being a part of the conversation, getting involved, you know, making people understand the things that you do and provide yeah. Post pictures, post pictures of your events, post pictures of your business, post pictures of what you sell.
You make a video. Stick it in there. You know, let people know who you are. One post doesn’t always turn into a business. You got to keep posting content. One position is not going to, you know, 99% of the time, the one time that you post it, and it’s not going to get, we’re going to make sure we put this podcast in those groups.
So ammo all your business. When your business is mentioned, you’ll be tagged. So now let’s go to tag that. We’re shouting out Adam and Joe’s, where we order lunch from. We’ve been in this area of Cypress Creek Road and 95 since 2001.
This is our second office location. Our first office was close by, and it’s funny. There was a place called Adams lunch or something, Adam subs. And then there was Joe’s does lunch. And then somehow, at some point, They combined. It’s called Adam and Joe’s. I want to hear the story.
Yeah. So one guy had Adam subs. I get that. I went Greg, the guy Joe does, Joe does one. It was also right down the street from the office. And we used to order lunch from them and, uh, they competed. And then the Adam sub guy, I think, bought out Joe’s lunch guy. He was from New York. I think he was a little older and the more skin in the game.
So whatever they, you know, I think during the pandemic, it happened. So it’s pretty interesting. And then they moved to a. They were both like in warehouses, and now, uh, they moved it into a shopping center with many restaurants. So you can actually go there, pick up your food, sit outside and eat or get the list of websites, Adam and Joe’s dot com adamandjoes.com.
Right. Never good. And it’s also simple to order from, so I’ve found that it’s, oh yeah, no for sure. Yeah, user-friendly they deliver in the area here. Where are you going for lunch if you’re in the Cypress Creek zone? Somewhere that’s a fantastic place with Good sandwiches, salads, and then we’ll go to our next thing.
So we’ve talked about five must-haves if you own a small business. So we wanted to stick to five things you must have. Suppose you have a small business. Number one is one of Justin’s favorite things. Cause when he first started here, he’s like, man, he goes, your Google page thing is a mess. Google my business profile.
He’s like, I got to fix this. Yeah. You know, it’s essential for. You see, it’s called NAP, the name, address, and phone number. Those things get overlooked by many small businesses because they’re, just as I said, they’re so focused on running the business. Then, we wanted to shout out to a couple of people because we didn’t have anything.
And we looked, they didn’t have a website—no Facebook page. I was like, come on. It’s 20, 22 felons, ladies and gentlemen. It’s time to get, and you got to have some moms in business. Yes. You know, Google, my company for the main thing is one. You tell Google. Once you verify that it’s a legitimate business.
It’s where people come, and you serve them, you, they get goods, they purchase stuff, whatever. And so, once you do that, you automatically get a jump start on many other businesses that don’t have any. Even if someone Googles your phone number and you have Google, my company, they’ll at least fight.
Exactly. It’s almost the only thing they have about you. If they only have your name. Right. Google my business, 90% of the time, I’m going to say, they will find you from that, you know, right. For now, you can do it at NPS bank. Just search for that. The Google My Business profile pops up immediately, and nationwide payment systems, the business.
Yeah. So it’s essential to have that presence. The next thing is social media. Social media is critical. People today are looking for, you know, and they’re hiring somebody who looked for reviews. Not every con, not every business, gets reviews. Still, if you’re a pool service or an air conditioning company, or you’re somebody that sells something expensive, there will be a lot of reviews. For businesses like that or a restaurant, let’s say you own a restaurant or a sub shop, people will look for their reviews.
Suppose they’re visiting or new to the area, which goes back into Google my business. Right. Because. It’s all connected. How will they leave a review if you don’t have a business page or don’t have social media? Yelp often has business reviews, and I go there, and I’ll look for a business, and then you’ll see it.
It’s not even claimed like that. It’s not claimed. And I don’t want to get into Yelp; stay away from the platform. Don’t pay them for any advertised claim, but claim your listing. Yes. Claim you’re listening. The next thing is a website, so I can understand that people don’t have a lot.
They’re on a budget. Maybe it’s too complicated to make a website, but you can put it up like a simple one-pager. I mean, I’m a WordPress guy. Right, right. And I’m going to say no to anything free, right. I mean, that’s not WordPress, but I also understand that people have to live, right. So there are platforms, free platforms that you can use to build websites.
I’m not sure if Weebly’s free now. I don’t feel it’s free anymore. Well, none of them are free, right. Because you do still have to pay a subscription or whatever, but you could get a website, uh, for, for very cheap, right? Yeah. Yeah, at least have your name, contact information, and pictures; maybe it’s the service services.
You can put up something straightforward, and at least you have a presence. Google. I think the website builder is free, but you have to pay for your domain. But the other thing is, is. You, you want, you want to be searchable. So when you go look somebody up, it’s not just manta and yes, business registry and different stuff.
You want to see some, some other stuff shows up for your business and the, and you know, and it’s essential to have, have that. You know, the other thing is business cards. It’s funny, like marketing material, marketing material. I always tell people that I don’t have a business card, even for some young people.
I have a, uh, electronic business card again. So it’s an electronic business card. That’s fine. Maybe if we’re going to email each other or something like that, or you’re dealing with somebody over the phone, and he said, here’s my contact info. And you can give them a, you know, your electronic business card or link tree or something likely your card, your V card, whatever you want to call it.
But you got to have something. People should have a physical business card because not everybody because somebody, you know, no, one’s come up with a way where somebody sends you these electronic business cards. You have to save it like a mobile website; you can’t take it and like hit save. And then it goes into your contacts, right?
Google and Apple are not cooperating. You know, you can’t do it. That’s how it works now, and I think when it’s like your Android or mobile sharing context, you can save it. Yeah. But you’re saving the contact card, which is not like a link. No, it’s limited. I can have your name, your email, and all that.
And I was super against business cards for a long time. And then it moving here to south Florida, I realized. How important it is because you got to, and you don’t always have time to, you know, take my phone number blah, blah, blah. Do you know? Yeah. People don’t want to give out their numbers all the time.
I think you need to have both an electronic business card and you need to have a, a regular business card. You know, because let’s say you go into the bank. I don’t want to look at your electronic business card. You’re opening up a bank account or doing other business.
You need a business card sometimes in some interactions. I think it’s. Professionalism is not an expense, and it doesn’t have to be. Vista print gives you 250 cards for free. You can get business cards from moo.com.
So there are ways of getting that done for sure. But I mean, I agree. The business card thing is, and if you’re not going to produce like a whole brochure, make at least like a postcard or a flyer, a little postcard, five by seven postcards, they’re inexpensive. Put your services on the back, your website, and the contact info.
Maybe something basic, something, whatever you have that, you know, shows what it is. If you go to a networking event or go to a, let’s say, you’re doing a local show at the chamber of commerce. And when I just have something quick, you can hand people, you know, that’s not expensive, you know, and the next thing people need to leave to look at is how are you getting.
So, you know, you need to make sure you have a business bank account. You have you. Business finances and deposits are separated from your personal. So you’re not co-mingling funds, you know, and then figure out how people will pay you cash credit crypto, you know, do you need a merchant account? You know, a lot of people were, you know, especially during the pandemic where you’re using, which we’ve discussed on quite a few podcasts, you know, they were using these P to P payments services, but now those crackdown and they’re sending everybody 10 99.
You know, so yeah. You know, every business needs to think about it there. Must have. Yeah. Like how are you going to get the money? Right? How are you going to get paid? How are you going to get paid? I think that is a good, good, uh, answer. I mean, a question to ask yourself before launching the business and speaking of getting paid, Alan pointed out, if you want.
Shout out to our sponsor, NPS printer; they provided us with this great backdrop. These fabulous cube things. Got a couple of those throughout the studio: Nationwide Payment Systems, NPS Bank, and The Payment Advisory Board. Thank you guys for keeping the lights on and the water running; we wouldn’t exist without you.
To all our future sponsors, we’re waiting. You want to put your logo up here on the backdrop. That is your opportunity to now we’re going to get our third chat app for the third business, which is we’ll do three and four, the heart screen printing. So heart screen printing.com. He’s a local and Margate Fort Lauderdale area.
Screenprints and embroiders shirts. T-shirts hats. Cool local business. So shout out to John Hart, and it’s funny, you know, He knew a friend of mine, and that’s how we met. And then it’s weird. Cause I have another guy that I used to do business with. That was a manager at a restaurant. His name’s also John Hart spelled the same way as John Hart’s on my phone.
And then the following shout out, we’re going to shout out. Your unit grabbed the camera, and got a shot of Rocky, Rocky, come here, Rocky. Do you want a treat, Rocky? You want to treat them. He doesn’t want to treat but just shout out for Rocky because Rocky was adopted, spent seven years ago from tri-county animal and Boca Raton.
We’ll post the link. It’s an animal rescue. I don’t know if that’s the right website you got there. Tri-county animal rescue and it’s on Boca Rio Road in Boca Raton. A local person operates it in Boca, and they get dogs from all over. Some of them that were going Rocky was going to a kill shelter.
Yeah. And Rocky was there. He licked my son’s face, and my son was like, oh, let’s take him. This is a good boy dog. As he said, you know, he didn’t want an all-white flight. The book is called the food, food dog. So now let’s talk, since it’s the small business week right now, to talk about how can you support your local small businesses?
First of all, we’re a local small business. You know, we’re local, we’re a small business owner. We provide payment processing. You know if you need payment processing and want to deal with a company. He’s a small company, unlike, you know, square and Stripe and PayPal. That’s what we do. So we always, you know, like things that I like to shop local.
So I look for always, you know, I look for a local business, you know, I’d instead go to the, you know, the local restaurant over the chain, you know, every time, uh, you can help out small businesses also by buying gift cards from them so if you have. Friend that needs, you know, you’re buying a gift for, you know, go to a small local restaurant that you know, that they might like, and then we’ll get a new customer yep.
Order takeout, like from Adam and Jones. So get some local takeout, you know, you don’t have to get from the giant pizza chain, call the local pizza shop, you know, check their reviews, Google. Right. Check their reviews and say, Hey, let’s get a local pizza tonight or whatever, whatever that is. Tip generously to the rep, the restaurant business, the servers, servers, and you get your hair cut.
I just got a haircut. I always give good tips. The people are shocked, but you know, once we got some guy delivered to my house and gave him a $50 tip, that guy’s like, is that a mistake? I’m like, Because it was a sky that always comes into the livers, coughs up a buck, you cheap. So, you know, tip generously.
If you can afford it, consider small businesses before big businesses. It’s always right. Never go after the big chain guy to get the same stuff if you can. From the petite guy. And so this week, small business week, so small business, I’m challenging myself and Justin going to get into this challenge.
I’m going to go on my Facebook pages today, the open for business and executive network. Am I going? They will pick one post every day this week, and I will share it on my page. So people can check the app. That is the most cost-effective way of helping a small business. Right?
Like if the one thing that any of us in, all of us can do is to like their business page. Like, and, you know, turn on the notifications so that you get information when they post something and share the content. Yeah. But do it this week. Challenge yourself for five small business weeks, find five small businesses and share a post from each of those businesses.
Let people know about them, and make a comment. I go here to eat. It’s yummy, whatever that, whatever that is, I’m going to look for all of these businesses and see if I can share posts for them. But they’re all going to get tagged on the, in the, uh, the one post this, when we post this up, they’re going to get there, you know, write a review.
I’m not telling everybody to go out and write a review every day this week; find the time. Okay. Right. One review last night, I went out for sushi at a local place in Boca. I would love that place. Sugiyama, I’m going to write a review for them, so yeah. So important that, like those, those are the little things.
Differentiate businesses from others, right? It’s yummy. I mean, I, you know, it’s hard to get reviews. Believe me. We’ve tried, we’ve asked people with power who are customers of ours for 15 years, we asked the guy, can you please write a review one day? You not? Cause Justin was trying to build up that Google page.
When did that? The guy wrote like three words. No, he didn’t write anything. No, you just click five stars, five stars. I thought he wrote one word. No. He never tells friends and family about a business that you love and that you love and support or notifies them about a nonprofit you love. You know, it’s like, oh yeah, this is a great local nonprofit sign up for a newsletter this week from somebody.
And we talked about like, share a comment on a social post tag, a friend, like let’s say you have a friend that owns a business. Find their business and share the post and tag them. Um, posts. If you visit a company you like, take a selfie outside and post it at the business. So when you’re there, make sure you say, you know, pick your location.
You feel comfortable with doing it, obviously, for safety reasons, not everybody will pull your location, and nobody knows you’re driving the business. I mean, this is, here’s a little social media game for everybody. If you don’t know, you never post the pig. When you first arrive, you always post the pig.
When you’re leaving, you know, get your food chat, and put it in the queue, but don’t post it while you’re still there. In case you got weird old boyfriend ex stalkers, stalkers. No. Buy merchandise from your local business, attend an event virtually, or attend an event in person.
Yeah. Your favorite restaurant has a t-shirt that they’re selling, or if there’s something from the local shop, they got their business logo on a hat. That goes a lot farther than even buying something from the store because you’re buying something that they’re going to get a hundred percent of the profits, right.
Or go out to a local farmer’s market and check out local farmer’s markets. You don’t commit to doing one thing each week for a small business, but let’s put it small Businessweek this week. Let’s put in some, a little more effort, try to do, you know, Seven days, but let’s try to do three to five things, and I’m going to go, you know, do that today and check it out.
Check out small businesses, and support a small businesses. I’m trying to support small businesses as much as possible, especially since the pandemic. You must help local businesses because they’re the ones that suffered the most during the pandemic and got the least amount of help from the government.
I tried very hard with businesses to help them to direct them to resources during the pandemic. Like even now, like there’s one like payroll credit thing, but I will tell you the be very, there’s a lot of commercials on the radio about it and TV and, you know, though, uh, email and stuff, I would tell people like, be very careful, make sure you understand what the.
What are the qualifications? Because if you don’t meet the qualifications and you get the money. Oh, After you get the money, they ask you to provide the documentation. Because I had the PR, we already had an issue where we took, and we got some money from the federal government. Then they sent us what we needed to send them.
I was like, I’m not sending that. I called them on the phone. I said I’m just going to send you the money back. Cause that’s what you’re asking for, way too much stuff. And we’re not going to qualify right after you get that. Right. So after, but I don’t know why they’re doing it that way. They’re doing it that way to get money out there, but it’s also caused a lot of fraud.
So don’t get caught up in anything like that, but there’s, you know, there are resources out there for small businesses, but the best way is helping other small businesses. No posts this week on your social media. Hey, it’s small business week; support me. I’m a small business owner or post, uh, you know, go to a small bit, you know, go to a small business Facebook page and share one of their posts or share their page and say, Hey, this is a great local small business.
So let’s all support small businesses—this week. I have five for small businesses. Let’s get everybody to make extra sales this week, Carpe diem; we’re out B2B Vault. Follow us on social media at B2B vault. We’re everywhere. Facebook, Instagram, Tik TOK, Twitter, Twitter, we’re all over the place and follow the podcasts.
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I think we’re on like over 20 platforms for podcasting. So you can find if you just Google B2B vault, you’re going to see this or visit our website. B2Bvault.info. You can fill out a form can get in touch with us. Sponsor the show. Sponsor an episode, become a guest, or set up an appointment. Yours genuinely give you a 15-minute, no charge consultation to discuss whatever you want to discuss your business and see if we can help you and direct you.
Cause that’s what we do. We provide consulting services for businesses when it comes to payments. Nice. So we can help you with all kinds of stuff when it involves payments. So thank you. Thank you—Carpe diem.
