Dashboard: Is There Anything That Can't Be Sold?

[Music] hello everyone welcome to another 21 hats dashboard every Monday Jee marks and I talk about the issues we think business owners should be following welcome Jean hey Lauren great to talk with you I just have to ask you have you have you bought your first uh nft digital art yet you know I did it was a busy week I didn't get her to it this week maybe next week how about you you know what there was a I had my eye on this really cool drawing on the board AP Yacht Club it's $2 and a half million dollar so I'm just uh you know scraped up with some cash and then I'll be buying one I can't wait to have it in my virtual meting for people who don't realize it this was the topic of our conversation last week uh where Gan explained why he thinks uh blockchain and nfts are are the biggest story dising Warren yes what you know there's one question I forgot to ask you so I'm gonna ask you now you you buy an nft say you buy the one you're talking about what what do you do with it do you just keep it locked away do you is there a way to frame it and hang it on the wall what do you do you store it uh the the marketplaces that you store it that is great put Market places that you buy it from has got um the ability to house it for you in complete Security total you know in a in a fully air conditioned climate controlled digital room so so so how do you impress your friends well I mean you can always pull it up and show them I mean you you've got access to it it's like taking somebody into that room in the back of your house but but you know it's funny that you mention that because that's yet another like the marketplaces Outsource that storage to companies that's specialize in storing digital art because they want to keep it in a certain way certain file format certain accessibility blah blah blah and and that's somebody started there are people running those companies these companies didn't exist a year or to ago do you know what I mean more opportunities for more entrepreneurs so there all right let's leave that for now uh yeah a little bit a little bit um let's go to uh more current news which is the Supreme Court's decision uh to block uh OSHA's vaccine or test mandate um that you know there's been a lot of confusion about this it did take another turn with the Supreme Court decision that means businesses kind of have to make the own decision they can't blame it all uh on uh the administration what do you think businesses are going to do have you been talking to your clients at all yeah I've talked to a few clients about I've written about this before I mean I'm I'm fairly outspoken I am I am I don't like mandate you've been on here you you said you were in favor of businesses just you know biting the bullet go ahead and uh and doing the Mandate if I was a business and I you know I I would be doing what you know I need to be doing but I don't I you you know I'm not a fan of mandates I don't like uh like in Philly restaurants are we talked about this a few weeks ago and I've written about it you know restaurants can't serve unvaccinated uh people anymore now if you read uh the reports coming out of restaurants are getting crushed right now I mean they are well let's not go down that RIT kind of I think there are answers to that too uh you know well all right let's go down the rabbit hole I've interrupted you and I apologize you keep going here's the thing a lot of people can't find enough employees everybody's getting sick and if you're inviting people in who aren't vaccinated more people are going to get sick um isn't it an issue of being you know one reason to to mandate vaccinations is to make sure you have enough staff to keep the doors open yeah but I mean come on Lauren just by that very statement aren't you insulting me as a business owner or every other business owner what I need president telling me how to run my bus that that I should know that decision made you know for me if I choose to run my business in a certain way and most of my clients want to run safe businesses both for their customers and for their employees they are well aware of of the the pain that it causes when they lose employees or people are out sick they know so these people they're they're they're business owners let them make their decisions they'll do what they feel is right for their business they'll do what they feel is right for their employees and their customers uh and you know we'll leave the decision up to them I just don't like people being forced to do that stuff by the government uh you know unnecessarily and and I believe it is unnecessary okay so back to the Supreme Court decision what do you think uh is the likely response of of businesses at this point well the business owners that I speak to um you know my my clients um it no one has a problem with the decision some of them have already put together their own mandates because that's their culture you know and so but they've decided that on their own in fact they've been doing it really for the past few weeks you know so it's not a it's not as if you know the people that don't that are running business don't know the right thing to do they're they're doing what they're doing um so the decision itself it was a relief for those business owners that didn't want to be made mandated and I have one client in general who was just he was going to re he didn't want to comply because it was not only too much of an administrative burden for him but he was really worried about being sued for violating People's Health privacy uh because he had no protections for that so you know right now he's relieved because he doesn't have to worry about that and he can focus on running his business now is his business less safe than any other businesses maybe I mean but that's that's his call let his you know if his employees are walking out the door cuz they don't feel safe coming to work he'll get the message you know but right now he doesn't consider that to be a problem well I think that affects us all but uh not just his business but um obviously there are a lot of people who agree with you um do you um do you think I mean you've just given us your opinion on how businesses should handle it do do you have a sense uh on how most will what's your sense do you think oh that's easy yeah that's easy um it depends I mean if you're running a business in the Philly area which is a predominantly blue area where people are walking around the majority of people are still walking around wearing masks cloth masks outside and in the sunshine because that's the thing to do uh if you're running a business you're going to want to make sure that you are doing all of that because that's the narrative in Philly San Francisco LA New York Chicago it just depends on where you are now if you're running a business in the midwest or you're running a business in Texas or Florida I'm talking to you right now from Florida you know uh you know I don't see many businesses they're all wide open and doing their thing I haven't seen a mask in a week so you know it depends on where you are you know as to whether enough businesses are going to comply with this and and I do Wonder just you know years from now and we're looking back on the data if it really makes any difference or not who knows who knows that's my answer it depends I think that's a that's a good answer I think you've described the situation exactly right I think we will get an answer uh at some point it will be interesting all right let's move to the next story uh you wrote last week uh about the advisability of businesses using their CRM platforms for email marketing and you said it's a bad idea why is that yes so okay CRM guys is customer relationship management um the popular applications out there like Salesforce and Zoho and Microsoft Dynamics and uh insightly and sugar so hopefully if you're running a business you're familiar with what a CRM is and what it does it's a database um a lot of my clients because we Implement CRM systems a lot of them say like hey we want to use it to send out emails I've got like a newsletter and whatever and I'm always like don't do that your serum systems aren't really great for sending out these emails they they tell you that they do but you got to be a wary of a few things number one is you know if you send out emails three or CRM system and through your internet service provider you're going to get yelled at particularly if it's like more than hundreds of emails going out at a time by whom you're going to get yelled up by your internet service provider because they're going to start seeing you as spam and you're going to have people that are potentially blacklisting your servers plus you're also going to have recipient servers that are not going to recognize the server that emails are coming from in volume and they're going to block you so there's all sorts of issues when doing that so I always say to clients listen it sign up for like a constant contact or a sendin blue or a MailChimp or aweber you know one of those you know you know a good bulk email marketing service why because that's what they do you know that's that's they're living I send out emails I use Constant Contact um I always get complaints from constant content they ask me about you know the volume of emails I'm sending out uh what's my opt-in policies you know why do I have so many info at or sales at email addresses they me up pretty bad but I give them the answers and then they let me do my thing that's the kind of due diligence that the big email service providers the outlooks you know exchange the the Gmail that's what they want they they when they see emails coming in from servers and they're all identified these servers that are run by reputable bulk email services like the one that I mentioned they let them in because they know there's like a due diligence process for doing it besides that these email marketing you know companies they have templates they have much better metrics they have analytics they can they they have spam checking tools they're just much better than a CRM system these CRM systems can't do it all and they integrate though you know you can buy any good mainstream CRM system will integrate with any of these good email services that I you know that I mentioned earlier so you can have your cake and eat it too you use your CRM database as a database but if you're going to be sending out a newsletter a bulk you know kind of communication you should be using like an email bulk you know platform for to do that that makes all the sense in the world to me it just surprises me that these CRM companies I mean Salesforce they make so much money how could they not get this right you know it's it you know of course it's a good question you know that's all relative I mean yeah they do make so much money but they decide to where they're going to allocate their resources so they're all into workflows and artificial intelligence or you know customizations or building more tools I think a lot of CRM companies you know recognize maybe they don't say it publicly or maybe they would I think they recognize that there's a role for the constant contacts and the cendon blues out there those are the companies that that makes sense yeah they do what they do so that's right I mean it's the same question like well why don't they do accounting you know well there's QuickBooks and other companies that do accounting already for a while much better you know maybe they've got other places to allocate their resources this seems more aligned with what they do but but I take your point and and it makes sense I think it's a an important point Point next story uh you also wrote last week about the growth of uh buy now pay later uh options and um and how it works even for small retailers uh it's it's a really interesting thing to me apparently it's it's driving up uh sales volumes for uh a lot of retailers why is that what's the difference between buying uh buy now pay later versus buying with a credit card yeah so first of all just to explain what buy now pay later is is that you can have it on on your website or you can have it in store somebody and they're they're provided by you big Services uh PayPal uh you know a firm is another one you can Google the competitors of a firm for buy you can find buy now pay later platforms um and the way it works is that you uh when you're going to buy something a customer comes in to buy something instead of using their credit card they just pay it off over the cost of whatever they're buying over three four five months I interviewed uh this marketing woman you know the marketing director from a a small chain of um running and fitness you know equipment that she sells in Philadelphia and uh she was saying it had a significant impact on their holiday sales people um there she says there's the demographic thing that's going on um younger people like this stuff and younger people younger Millennials and and gen zers tend maybe not to have great credit or they don't have credit cards at all so it's an opportunity for them to buy something that they otherwise might not have been able to buy other people don't want to get into the whole credit CR card thing I mean if you have a credit card and you buy something for a th000 bucks if you don't pay that off in the first month you start getting charge interest right significant interest with a buy now pay later program you don't get charged any interest over the period of your of your loan which is anywhere again from like two to six months on average so long as you pay it back within that specified period of time yeah that's the hook that's the hook Lauren because um the retailers if you're selling for first of all your fees are generally what it would be for a credit card the you know 2 to 3% so it's not costing you anything so it doesn't cost the retailer more than a than a credit card would it does not and you you get paid UPF front and you don't have to worry about it after that however I I do you know advise my clients and my readers that are doing buy now pay letter make sure that your customers know what the risks are and like you just said the risk is that somebody you know they particularly a younger customer they maybe they don't realize it but like if they don't pay it off in the 4 months or whatever the period is they're going to get hit with serious penalties and interest and it could affect their credit report as well so they need to understand that going into it and as I think as a business owner I think it's you know your job to just make sure that they're aware of of what their risks are but people love it yeah you know what's really funny about it Lauren is that like this is like the layaway plans that like our grandparents had back you know what I mean they buy a soofa pay it off the same thing it's it went away and now it's back again funny it sounds like the the only financial risk involved here is to the customer not to the business is that right correct once the business uh does the transaction they pay the fee and then they're done they wipe their hands it's like a credit card you know they're done and they can you know the customer can battle it out now there are you know what if it's somebody wants to return something and there are chargebacks that's a whole separate issue that you have to deal with the you know with the find that you're buying out pay leader platform about but assuming that the sale is a legit sale and there's no issues with the product um no you know the you know the business can just move on all right finally this week and the story that I've most been looking forward to discussing with you you wrote a story this week for uh entrepreneur.com with the headline why are so many people still eating spam I have two questions for you one why did you write about this and two what's the answer to the question you ask I wrote about it because I saw a report on CNBC that said that horal food which makes spam has recorded record-breaking sales of spam for the seventh year in a row you know and I'm like who the H how is this even possible I've never eaten spam it looks absolutely disgusting you know you seed in the can the do you know what it is it's like spiced ham right like processed pork well no that's being kind it's it's pork products it's it's it's leftovers it's I think it's it's basically what's not good enough to go into a hot dog well I think it's like similar I mean I'm from Philly and like so scrapple is a thing here and I was going to ask you what's do you know what the difference is between scrapple and spam I know scrapple I think is homemade spam I mean my understanding of scrapple which I've never I've never had scrapple either and I'm a big bacon fan but like scrapple I was told is like after everything is used up in a pig whatever is left on the floor yeah gets put into scrapple you know it's delicious I can tell but you know so I was just intrigued like how is this possible so I did I dug into it and you know in the end it was it was some smart branding and and some good Savvy marketing that that's selling this product first of all it's a thing in Asia um people in in Korea there's all these spam related dishes so hormell Foods is all over that they've kept The Branding the same although they've made it you know a little bit more colorful so people that into old school stuff that's great it's it's less expensive it stays or you can buy it and it it stays for years they came up with different variations well we should point out I think the history was didn't this have a military application wasn't it was used in the Army world this is what people ate in World War II soldiers ate that's exactly I mean the soldiers would be like you know blown up blown to bits but their spam cans weren't even like injured you know I mean it was it's like it's indestructible you so it's it has all of that charm behind it plus you know what these guys did they they saw supply chain issues coming one of the few and they cut deals with their suppliers before all this hit so that they could make sure there were plenty of spam on the shelves when you go to the supermarket it's like you know there's you can't buy yogurt but there's a whole aisle full of spam you know there's plenty of that around as well so pretty smart guys pretty good brand marketing pretty good Savvy marketing moves to keep it you know popular and um they're not sitting still on it you know they're they're they're always coming up with new ideas they have a ho on their website they have a whole section Lauren of like spam recipes hundreds of Spam recipes you it's just smart stuff it's smart stuff and that's why people are still eating spam how many people could give you a thoughtful analysis of whether you should invest in nfts or invest in spam um I I don't know very many Gan marks is a CPA who writes weekly on small business for the guardian the hill the Philadelphia inquire the Washington Times Forbes an entrepreneur you can also hear I'm on ABC radios I on the world with John Bachelor Jean hosts two small business podcasts with payex Corporation and the Hartford thank you Jean thank you Len we'll talk to you next week have a great week in Florida and have a great week all of you listening take care now