VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Hey everybody. What’s up? It’s Justin from B2B Vault with your host Allen Kopelman. We’ll be providing you educational information about business payments, FinTech, or financial technology, DeFi or decentralized finance, and the technology businesses need in today’s world. And in today’s episode, we’re going to be going over small business week.
It’s May. So it’s small business week here. Everywhere in the United States and we’re celebrating small businesses! Go small business! Right? So this is part two-part dose. All right. So, you know, we celebrate small businesses all year long because people don’t understand what’s a small business; small businesses are everywhere.
They’re there. When you’re driving down the street, somebody owns a small store. Maybe they own a convenience store, a little nail salon, a hair salon, or barbershop and tattoo parlors. They sell hats to small businesses; they’re in storefronts and warehouses. Sometimes people run it out of their house, you know, so it’s, you know, 2022.
And even during the pandemic, many people decided with all these shutdowns. Maybe they’re turning their side hustle into a business full time and full time. They’re going to figure out how to take the side hustle they’ve been doing and turn it into a business. And maybe it’s time for you to, you know, take your sidewalk.
And turn it into a, uh, and turn it into a business, you know, both thought both Justin and I had started companies. So we know what’s going on with that and how to do it. You see, you can do it. Sometimes you have a budget, and sometimes you have no budget. Right. So, you know, often you don’t. Right, right.
You don’t have a budget, you got to get creative, you got to get creative, and you got to figure out like, okay, how am I going to. You know, do get, you know, get funding for my business, and what have you. And so, you know, I always ask people, you know, like what, what skill do you have or what skill have you developed?
If you’re good at maybe, maybe you have a trick? So people were saying, how many people does that person have on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook? And a lot of people have thousands of thousands of people, but they’re not doing anything to monetize that.
Or maybe they know a secret that everybody else doesn’t know how to get people to watch. Um, watch their channel. Right? I don’t know, like one of my favorite Instagrams is this one Lilo and something, and it’s his husband and wife and their kids. And they must have 50 cameras in their house and outside.
They’re dropping balloons full of shaving cream on each other and shooting those confetti things all over the house. There are like a million people watching this thing. It’s hilarious. Yeah. It’s crazy. I want to know who’s cleaning up all the time. That’s like a full-time job, and he seems to be like a police officer or something.
Cause they cover up his badge or whatever when he’s in there. But you know that their kids are in on it. The guy’s a deadly shot, man. He shoots a Nerf gun, and he hits the balloon poof, and it goes all over. I feel so bad for the lady. She’s got a great sense of humor.
When, you know, maybe, you know, the secret of getting a million people to follow you on Instagram. Perhaps you have to sell that to businesses, and companies have taken businesses. I’ve taken a new look, you know, in the last probably decade. Some of the trends that I’ve seen with businesses is an increase in service businesses. People who provide all types of services from coaching, diet coaching, and multilevel marketing, where you’re making sales, but you’re not carrying any inventory or selling somebody else’s inventory.
Right. You know, I see these guys. Instagram all the time with these videos of how to sell stuff that’s already on Amazon. I don’t even understand affiliate marketing programs. You can do many things, work at home, be a stay-at-home mom, and figure out something you can do.
Do you know? Also, many mobile businesses have popped up in the last, you know, 10, 15 years. Food trucks, and other types of services, come to your house and change your oil. Nice shopping. Yeah. Wash your car and pet grooming. Yeah. I’ve seen some knife, sharpening guys primarily to restaurants, but they go to people’s houses too, you know, they expand their business.
Like, graphic design. You would never in a million years; 20 years ago, you’d be looking for some company that comes through for that. Now there are tons of people doing that at home. You could sell. Right. Yeah. When you pay for it, you have to make sure somebody comes with reliable references and things like that.
So he knows that you’re going to get done, but there’s a lot of businesses you can do where you can be recent, you know, reselling other people’s products. I always tell people that whenever you’re talking about doing a business, People will say to me, oh, I don’t want to be in sales. I said, oh, you want to own a business. If you don’t want to learn how to make sales, you don’t want to own a business.
Right. Because if you’re not going to be sales, you’re not going to be successful. Somebody is making a sale. I used to be a chef. I’ll never forget that, though. When I was working in a hotel, they were like, oh, you got to come to talk to these people. They’re going to have a catering business. I was like, mom, the chef, you know, on this, make the food.
So I had to go and talk to the people, and they asked me questions. Oh, what can I do? Do you know? And I put on my creative hat and figure out, you know, I figured out some crazy stuff to do, like make omelets for like 600 people. And figure out how many guys I needed with butane stoves.
So it was not easy. I’m sure that wasn’t easy, and it was not easy to organize either, but we managed it. We did it, and we pulled it off. Once I did a barbecue for like 3000 people outside. I had to procure a whole bunch of equipment. I know a chef who just charged 15 grand to do a pay growth. Yeah. It’s not easy.
You have to organize a lot of equipment, trucks, and employees. You have to do what you have to do. It’s hard work, you know, and a day or two of preparation can go into just the part here on a business. If you think you’re going to quit your job and it’s going to be like, oh, I’ll work four hours a day; you are mistaken.
My friend, you will be working twice as hard and the amount of time you were at your nine to five, so if you are not prepared to do that and make that second. You might want to rethink your plan there. Yeah, no guts, no glory. Sometimes you’ve got to think about things like, well, maybe you’re in a perfect financial spot in your life, right?
Maybe their husband is working, you know, one spouse is working and making enough money to pay all the bills. And then you have a skill and that maybe now it’s time to do it because now you can spend the time to do. Perhaps you develop the skill sets to do that for sure. I was reading an article today, and it was talking about how the bank of America and some other companies are starting to want to go out into the communities and teach. They’re not talking about people in high school.
They’re talking about people in their twenties, teaching them financial literacy. And that’s one of the things who wants to do that bank of America. So that, yeah, that financial literacy, because, you know, I think kids need to get, you know, need to learn economics 1 0 1 when you’re, when you’re in high school, you know, I remember a class I had in high school.
Do they even teach how to count money, how to, you know, like they don’t gotta? Remember, in school, you had to do transactions. So, you know, you went to the grocery store, you bought this specific amount, and then you had to figure out how much money you had to give them. How much if they gave you the correct change bag like I’m not. I have six daughters, and I haven’t heard any of them ever talk about being taught, like how to manage a book or write a check.
Like all those things, in grade school for us, we had to learn. Yeah. But I’m saying like in high school, I remember I had this class, and the teacher said, okay, everybody’s getting a paycheck now. I don’t know the amount. Right. So everybody got the same amount of money. Right. And then he let you pick your profession.
So it didn’t matter whether you were a doctor or you were, or you owned a clothing store. Right. Everybody still got the same amount. Okay. Kind of money. And then you had to figure out like, okay, so you had that money coming every week. You had to put in it, you know? So he would give us out all paychecks, and they gave everybody a check register.
People don’t even use those anymore, but you have to write down like, okay, I had zero in my bank account. Now I deposit this check. I got X amount of money. And then you got this money for a few weeks, and then you had to find an apartment. So everybody had to figure out, oh, will I live with one person, two people myself? Yeah. They need to go back to teach the kids. And then he gave everybody an electric bill, a gas bill. If you wanted to buy a car, you had to go like in the newspaper, find the vehicle you wanted to buy. Cause you know, the lists like what the payments will be and all that.
And you had to make like a whole book, of everything. And then they showed us about the stock market, how to invest your money, save your money and all that. And I think that today, you know, even like my son, you know, I had to teach him and my daughter both about, you know, basic economics. And I was like; they didn’t teach this.
They’re not covering this at school, like, and had to teach them that like, they’re like my daughter went away to college, and she was like, okay, what do I do? I’m like, Hey, well, you got to go to, took her to the bank, opened up a bank account. I had to show her how to take care of the bank account and understand the bank account.
You got to understand what you’re getting into from an economic standpoint, but you know that you have to make many decisions when you run a business. Are you going to work at home? You’re going to get an office. How much is that going to cost? Are you going to have a virtual? You know, many companies now, like we do business in Las Vegas, so we got a professional address there.
And if we needed to have a meeting, like let’s say flu—someone needed to have a discussion. I should go to this place and have a meeting there. Get a meeting room; it’s included in the 30 or 40 bucks a month. Right. We need to have some packages delivered. They get it, and they get your mail.
Some places even offer to answer the phone. They’ll even take your mail, open it, scan it and email it. So it just depends on how much you need from a service standpoint. Some people just go to the virtual office to pick up their packages cause they don’t want packages delivered. Right.
You know, cause shipping ups and FedEx, if you ship to, like, if I send a package from here to a business, it’s one rate. If I ship to a home, it’s a higher rate, kind of crazy, you know, mobile companies, people, you know, getting. And then having some sort of business out of a truck, maybe they’re selling for, like, we have a client, I have a client, and they sell, um, they sell like cell phone accessories and smoking accessories.
And they go around to like convenience stores and smoke jobs, and they go, they have all the inventory and the. I have a mobile credit card reader that links up to the phone’s smart. And then the guys go in the store, and they go, okay, what do you need? And the guy, they show him what they have on the truck.
The person picks it all out. Okay. The total is 300 bucks. They take the guy’s card, bring all this stuff in, and are there. I see people who own convenience stores in Costco, you know, buying up all kinds of stuff that is sure to sell in their convenience store.
When I was a kid, my Best friend’s dad shout out to Mr. Verdin. He would take us to Sam’s club, and we would buy both potato chips, candy, you name it, anything that we could. And we sold that every day from sixth grade or seventh grade. Whenever we were getting ready to get out. You have to do like entrepreneurial, you know, kids with a lemonade stand.
But I think, you know, you have to understand, you have to put into perspective, like, oh, I’m going to, let’s say you’re going to be a graphic. Okay, well, I’m going to design this business card, then I’m going to get it printed at, let’s say, a trade printer, right? Because you have to have a business license to work with them because they’re going to give you lower prices, right.
And you and a website. Cause they’re going to want to see you have a website, and then you’re going to. So you know, they say the business cards cost you 40 bucks, and you’re going to sell them for 80 dollars. And then, are you going to charge them for the design kit? You have to think about all of that, you know, and then you also have to think about, are you going to get in the car and drive it over to the person’s office, their business, their house, how much time is all that?
So you got to think about all of that when you’re thinking about a business. Simple as that, you know? Right. So you have to think about all the expenses that go into the business. You see, you have a vehicle, gas in your car, and insurance. But you can also get creative when you have a business, you know, and you know, that’s why you should separate business expenses from personal expenses, separate bank accounts, and individual credit cards.
So you can track all your expenses set up, you know, QuickBooks or zero, whoever gives it away for free. Many of them have like a free version, the self-employed version, they call it, you know, you know, but you know, must-have for your business, you know, after you decided what type of business you want to open up.
And we work with tons of startup companies all the time, people starting a business, you know, and they say, well, how much money do I need to have in my bank account for the bank to get a merchant account? I tell them they don’t want to do business with broke people. You have to make sure you have money in the bank!
Cause they want to make sure whatever you’re doing, you have the money to run your business. You know, that’s the most important thing that you have to have. Sometimes you got to start small, and there are ways like, let’s say you’re selling stuff online, right? Like we talked about Amazon, or maybe you use Etsy.
You know, you sell stuff on Shopify or go daddy like a store. You can get, you know, as long as you use their credit cards, they give you the website for free. Right. And then you have to do it yourself, website, Wix Weebly, but these kinds of platforms, but you could, you know, if your business is successful, you’re going to outgrow.
Absolutely. Or if you’re in high school and now you’re thinking, you’d say you’re listening to this, and you’re in high school, right? In high school today, I think every kid should be required to have economics. One-on-one, learn how to use the Microsoft suite of products, word XL, use Adobe, and learn how to do some Photoshop and stuff.
So. Design and learn how to make a website. I agree. Yeah. Today, I mean, I’d be like entrepreneurship 101, whatever, or, you know, basic skills, basic tech skills, economic and tech skills. Like in the fifties, what did they teach people in school that people cook? They learned how to cook.
No, I learned how to clean. So I learned how to fix stuff, sewing. I mean, I remember in my high school, we had automotive class. They had carpentry. I mean, these are that electrical classes. I didn’t take any of that stuff. I probably should have. I’m horrible at fixing stuff. I turned out electrical in automotive, but you still have.
Right. But I think those are classes that should be, you know, back in the schools. They need to have economics back in school, music, and creative things back at school. But at the same time, these trade things like even photography don’t teach that in high school anymore. They needed to teach that only. Had. School of the arts, but I’m just saying like, they need to, and they need to encourage kids that, oh, you have to have taken once one or two of these classes to be required to graduate. But I think economics and these tech classes need to be required.
But beyond that, I was always, I always, you know, tell my kids like cause. The younger generation are social media experts already, right? Like they already know how to do all these things. So for me in school, you would think that there would be a class for these types of, you know, a program for digital marketing or, you know, we’re already tracking our kids and, you know, pushing them towards that direction. You would think that the schools would help. Other specialized programs should be offered to everybody should be required by the time they get to high school; they should be in ninth grade. They should be learning. All these technical skills have to do with digital marketing, websites, Adobe Suite, and Microsoft suite.
When you think about it now, how to send an email, I mean something, I mean, the other thing that’s a total lost art is writing and writing. I don’t know if I am sometimes writing. It’s really. Because I don’t write as much as I used to because now I type everything it’s faster typing, you know? Well, I mean, so like in school, right?
Like you either graduate, get a job, or go to college, right. They don’t teach you either. You graduate. Go to school, get a job or start a business. They don’t even; that’s not even an app. Right. And it needs to be. And recently remember a few years ago at Nova Southeastern University, a private school that the school of entrepreneurship, you know, they need to have that, that needs to be like a track in high school.
I agree. Small businesses employ more people than big businesses. When I graduated high school in 1978, most people worked for large companies, which all started to change. And then whatever, because they changed around laws and BS. But you know that that changed the landscape.
Right. You know, and now all these freelancers are freelancing. Were the gig society right? The gig society. But I think the future needs to become more technical, especially in high school. If you’re a parent listening to this, contact the school board and give them an earful.
I mean, we’re at the bare minimum. Set your kid up. It’s still the classes themselves on the side for easy, like there’s so much free stuff for you too, you know, if your kid is, yeah. If your kid is interested in, you know, coding, code academy is a great resource. Uh, Treehouse is another excellent resource. There’s a free and a paid version, but Treehouse will teach your child how to code. For real, like, you’ll be able to build he, or she will be able to create an app when they’re done with that pro. Please sit down and show your kids how to balance it and checkbooks. It’s amazing. Everybody thinks, oh, money’s just going to fall out of a tree, but it doesn’t.
So what about, so let’s talk about. You know, now you’re going to decide to open your business, right? You’re going to determine what you picked out and what you’re going to do. And now what are you, you know, you picked out where you’re going to do it possibly, right? What do you need for your business? So you need a business phone number.
You can use your cell phone. You need a Google my business because we discussed this on the last podcast we recorded. We were giving shout-outs to some local businesses. And some of them, we couldn’t even find no internet presence at all. No social media page. No Google my business page. That’s not good. No, you have to, really, really have to have that. So those things are free. Right? Google, my business, you log in, just Google, go to Google, Google my business. Like literally Google my business, type those words in it’s going to pull it up. You can set it up. Simple.
Right? It’s Facebook free, Facebook, Twitter for all these social media’s free do it. It’s like I was talking to a guy, they had a startup tech company, so I said, oh, well, you know, send us over a deck on your business. Oh, what do we need that for? Well, what do you do? Like you have a, do you have a deck on your business?
Like, is there a website? They didn’t even have a web. They didn’t, and they didn’t have a website. I go; you’re not ready yet. Move forward because here you are, you’re starting some kind of tech busy one in a merchant account, the website that like one webpage up. That was it. I was like, that’s not going to work.
You got to show the bank like the tech stack in a PowerPoint, or the website already exists, and they can log in and look at what you’re doing. You know, you have to have, um, you know, like a LinkedIn profile, and you should keep it up. A lot of people during the pandemic found jobs on LinkedIn.
You could put on LinkedIn then at a feature looking for work. Right. So people that we’re hiring just went on LinkedIn. They’re like, I don’t need to pay for ads listed in your profile. Right. Then they’re like, I don’t need to pay for advertisements. Right. And I could just go on LinkedIn and find people who got laid off out of, you know, high profile jobs and get maybe five.
And I know of a ton, three, four friends of mine, and they lost their job within a week. They had a job because they turned that on, on. So, you know, LinkedIn is essential because even if someone’s, I noticed this, like, let’s say I contact a merchant or a merchant gets me either way.
I look on my LinkedIn, and I’ll see that they viewed my LinkedIn profile. They’ve often gone in, and they viewed the LinkedIn profile because they want to know what you’re about, who, you know, do you know anybody they know, and so forth. So it’s essential to have that. The next thing is coming up with a logo for your business.
Have a physical business card, even if you get the cheapest business cards, and have some kind of a flyer, like a five-by-seven postcard or something. Just so promo when someone asks you because you know, one of the cheapest ways to, to, to, to find businesses, maybe join a networking group, go to some free networking events, um, you know, down here are tons of networking events.
When you first started this, really, though, your only choice, right? I mean, very few businesses will come into the game and just. Able to hit the ground running a million miles an hour. You came out of a company that grew and took over. They went out of business, and you have a big gap left, you know?
So, you know, you have to be ready to do it. Cause when you walk into the bank and say, hi, my name is Allen, and I want to open a bank account here. They’ll say, okay, well, we want to see your corporate papers. Oh, I don’t have that. I mean, you don’t need it. SRE. I have a corporation. You can file.
You can do a DBA fictitious name, and that’s it. Use your fictitious name to do business, or you can file what they call a single member, LLC. And you know, that way you only have to do one tax return. So unless you’re going to have business partners that can take you can pretty much, I recommend it to people.
The way I set up my company, a single member, LLC, you don’t have to file two tax returns, a corporate return and a personal return. You just file a tax return and an extra piece of paper. Then you just include your income ratchet the business income page. Yep. Whatever that made it super easier for small businesses. That made it easier because it was pretty tricky when I was trying to do taxes like a corporation. A couple of times, I had to hire somebody to help me.
You want to, and you want to make it easy. It cuts down on an expense, and you’re paying your accountant’s tax return or using even a paid version of turbo tax or whatever. It’s only one tax return. I am charging you for two tax returns. So those are things to think about, you know, then think about, you know, you got to have at least a one-page website, a Facebook page, or LinkedIn business page. A lot of that can be for free, you know. The other thing people have to think about is how to get paid. We’ve done some podcasts about how the payments landscape has changed in the last, in the previous year. Because of the current administration and the Washington DC decision, too many people use these P2P platforms for business payments.
So we’re cracking down on that. They cracked down on Zelle. Cashapp payback and a few other small ones and said Nope. If people process more than $600, you have to send them a 1099 K. Then, let’s say you were using that. You know, personal stuff or you’re going to have to go to your account and you go, Hey, I got this 1099 K.
I did it to do that. That’s not a business. This is a, you know, my kid was sending me, you know, I gave my kid money. They’re giving it to me back or whatever. Right. You’re going to have to explain that you will, right. You’re going to have to explain. My brother’s an accountant, and he told me, he goes, oh, he goes, I love all these new tax laws that they came out with.
He goes cause we’re going to be very busy. I talked to him recently, asking about all those 1099 Ks from the payment providers? He’s like, oh man, we have so many people bringing us those. And then they commingled their funds, and you’re done at that point. Cause if you co-mingled the funds into your banking app, you’re pretty much, you know, going to have some problems with the IRS.
Cause they’re not going to let you deduct your business expenses because it wasn’t a business; even though it was a business, you didn’t treat it as a business. Right. So then a hobby. Yeah. Like I had a guy I’ll never forget. I had a guy that worked for us for a little while, and he had his hobby.
It was a business, but it kind of started as a hobby. He used to buy old typewriters and fix them and sell them. And I was like, dude, what are you doing? You can’t just be buying all this stuff. You have inventory, right. Then you have expenses of fixing it, and then you’re selling it. And then you’re just taking all the math you sold it for putting in your bank account.
You’re paying a hundred percent tax on that. You’re not deducting out the cost of the house and making money. He wasn’t. He was, he’s like, I mean, cause he was telling me how many typewriters he was selling. I was like, that’s a business. That’s not a game. And you’re overpaying your taxes.
I said you need to go out and sit him down. He was a young guy. It wasn’t, it wasn’t that young, but I had to sit him down and how to do it. You know, this is how you do it. Even sales reps that work for us, like we have 10 99 sales reps. I explained to them to listen. Go out, spend some three, $400. Get yourself a single member, LLC, open up a separate bank account, get a different debit card, get a credit card and run your thing.
Like a business. First of all, you’re going to save a ton of money on tax, right? That’s it. You know, you’re going to save money. So, you know, take advantage of having a. You know, habit, take advantage of it. Have a separate bank account, accounting software, and different business expenses.
I tell everybody if you can do it, start a side hustle. If you could do it, start a business, right. If you can do it, be prepared to be a sale. Be ready to be in sales. If you have a company or a salesperson, no matter what, real quick, we want to thank our sponsors, NPS printer, nationwide payment systems, NPS bank, and the payment advisory board.
Thank you guys for providing this wonderful backdrop and all the other beautiful things that you do for us without you. There would not be a podcast; check out https://b2bvault.com and catch up on past episodes. There is a form for you to connect with Allen if you have any questions or would like to be featured on the show, and also a form for you to fill out if you’d like to sponsor the podcast for an episode or its entirety, you know, check this out. We’re streaming episodes on every streaming platform available. To catch the podcast, log in to Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iHeart, radio, Amazon Music, overcast pan, or, uh, the list goes on and on, and check us out.
Follow us. Yeah. Oh yeah. Please like subscribe and turn on post notifications for our YouTube channel. Um, you can go to YouTube and search, uh, B2B. We’re almost at a hundred, so we’ll be able to have our custom URL. So that’s kind of exciting. We just broke nearly 3000 plays, so thank you to everyone out there.
Who’s listening and, you know, tuning in and checking us out every Tuesday and Thursday for the most part. Um, so yeah, man. Yeah. So if you’re going to, if you’re going to start a business or you have a business idea you want to tell us about, leave a comment, wherever you’re listening to the podcasts, go to Facebook or LinkedIn, look us up and leave us a comment.
Say, Hey, I need help starting a business, or we give a free 15-minute consultation. If you want to have a free 15-minute consultation and talk about your business, your business needs goals. We’ll see if we can help you out. Quickly, shout out to Unfinished Legacy, a small business that screen prints custom shirts. You can visit their shop at unfinishedlegacy.co/. There are some young guys that I know are doing great things. They moved from their hometown of Milwaukee to LA and got their printing studio there. They just did an event with Billie Ellish, Nike, and Goodwill. So they’re doing really major things. Shout out to the Bremmer and Jean, Jean, the genius, unfinishedlegacy.co. If you’re into fashion, you’ll find something you like there.
Allen, have you got a small business you want to shout out today. We got lunch today from Adam and Joe. Excellent. Very good. The hummus rep was delicious. Yeah. I got a Greek salad. Rocky got a burger. He loved it. Our mascot, Rocky, loved his hamburger. We’re going to be visiting a local business show on Friday. We’ll try to get a Facebook live out there.
I hope everyone has a great day. Celebrate small businesses, go out, and shop small. Don’t just shop small this week; shop small for the whole month of May. Go, Bucks! Go, Heat! Carpe diem.
