In order to grow our business, whether small or large, there are many initiatives to consider. It could be advertising. But one thing that can help you gain leverage, get exposure, and develop new clients is gift cards. How do we do it?
In this episode, I talk with Larry Rubin, Founder of Swipe It. He shares his journey, including how he overcame significant debt and the importance of supporting small local businesses. We talked about how small business owners can utilize gift cards to generate revenue and build a customer base. Larry emphasizes the versatility of gift cards, which can be used as promotions, employee rewards, and for online sales. Grow your business with gift cards. Tune in now!
—
Listen to the podcast here:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:44 — 34.5MB) | Embed
How Gift Cards can Drive Business Success with Larry Rubin
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you a little bit about gift cards and a little bit about the restaurant industry, specifically the manner in which restaurant industry uses these gift cards and what it says about what we might need to do in general to help level the playing field between smaller and larger businesses or give smaller businesses, give the person that’s just starting up their own business, whether it be a restaurant or any other kind of business, a chance to survive, a chance to really make it in this particular current state of affairs in the United States, or in any other country, for that matter, given that a lot of you out there listening are trying to build something, build something that you’re passionate about and really putting your all into it, but, sometimes, when you see these bigger corporations out there, it does feel like that the cards could be stacked against you. My guest today, Larry Rubin, is the gift card guru, the founder of SwipeIt, and he’s here to tell us a little bit about his initiative to help some of these smaller, locally owned restaurants take advantage of this tool that is much more readily and easily available to a lot of the bigger restaurant chains.
—
Larry, welcome the program.
Thank you for having me and excited to talk to you about hopefully leveling the playing field for these smaller guys.
Yeah, so 100 percent because I remember when we first connected, it didn’t feel to me necessarily obvious that gift cards was one of the ways that the bigger, larger chains kind of stomp on their smaller competitors, but you’ve observed something very different when it comes to leveraging this tool. First thing I’m kind of curious about is what makes gift cards such a powerful tool for any restaurant to use in kind of generating sales and customer base?
That’s part of our battle is going in and really educating the small business owner who, right now, they think of a gift card as a product that someone walks into my business, they purchase it, and they walk out. And that’s great for people who maybe are living or working within 15 or 20 minutes of your business. Gift cards can be utilized in many, many ways. It’s a huge revenue stream for restaurants and other merchants. It’s a great gift to give someone. I don’t know what clothes they wear, I don’t know what their activities are but I certainly know that this guy loves his chicken parm from this restaurant so I’m going to buy this gift card to his favorite restaurant. I know that you can always use it. And what we’re doing is helping the restaurants look at kind of outside the box. Great, we know that someone can walk in and purchase a gift card but do you have a website? Are you offering them online? Are you capturing last-minute gift giving by offering e-cards? All different ways to bring in revenue. And then we look at it in a different light as well and say, hey, it’s great for people to come in and pay you for gift cards but can we use these gift cards to bring in customers, run promotions, get exposure for donations and options, reward our employees?
There’s so many ways that we can utilize these gift card programs or custom card programs outside of just waiting for someone to walk into our business and buy a gift card. Share on X
So it sounds like you’re saying that most of these smaller, say, one-location restaurants, local restaurants, only use gift cards in the sense of someone walks in and they want to purchase a $50 gift card for someone and that’s limiting the amount of, first of all, gift cards that they can actually sell but also the way they can leverage these gift cards to get exposure and to develop new clients.
Yeah, when you look on your ROI, return on investment, and so if you’re only using the gift cards for one portion, obviously, you’re not going to get that return. If you’re using it for a whole array of things, promotions and marketing and employee rewards and comps or whatever, well, certainly, you’re getting a lot more out of that program and it’s our job to kind of let these small business owners know that, hey, there are a lot of different things that you can do with these cards.
So what area is the smaller, one-location or two-, three-, four-location restaurant at the biggest disadvantage? Because anyone can walk into a restaurant and purchase a gift card and it seems like most people can put one onto their website. Is there a particular area where this disadvantages really shows up?
We’re based out of Massachusetts so we try to do a lot of things locally, so we partnered with the Massachusetts Restaurant Asian Association. So, basically, it’s a restaurant association geared just for the Asian restaurants in Massachusetts. And if you look at a lot of Asian restaurants and look at their websites, you will see that they’re not using the newest technology, they’re not offering e-cards, they’re not offering physical gift cards, and so the question is why is that happening? Why are they not doing it? So then you look back and you say, well, there could be a language barrier. They might not understand the gift card concept that we’re so used to. So my objective of reaching out to that organization was, again, let’s level the playing field. It’s not fear that they aren’t doing what every other restaurant is doing in Massachusetts, which means their revenue is going to be low. They’re not bringing in, they’re not getting that return on their gift card program, and so the first thing with that partnership was to educate them, here’s what you can do, and once they’re educated, then, okay, now you know what to do, if you need our help now to get it started, we’re here, but the biggest thing is the education, to say you can do this just like everyone else in the state, and you can do this just like the bigger guys. Again, these are things that all restaurants and all merchants really should be taking advantage of.
And is there another barrier around the infrastructure that needs to be put into place to move anything beyond in-store gift cards? Because an in-store gift card, all you have to do is have the cards there and have them loaded up and have people pick it up. But, of course, if you’re selling them online, a physical card has got to be mailed to the house, an e-card or a digital card would need to be sent to emails with some other type of technology that probably involves someone that has some sort of web programming capability to manage.
Yeah, and that’s where we try to make it very simple for the merchant. So we’ve gone and we’ve taken care of all of the backend technology so they can just put a button on their website that says Gift Card and when they click on that button, all the backend technology that we put together allows the customer to check a balance, buy a physical card, or buy an e-card. If they buy a physical card, my office is actually grabbing that physical card and mailing it out for them. So the small business owner doesn’t need to deal with mailing out cards, they don’t need to deal with customer support if a card got lost in the mail. The small business owner is already so busy running their business that if we can take one thing off their plate, gift cards, then it’s going to allow them to run their business a little bit more better. And so that’s what we’re trying to do. Now, again, you will have small business owners who literally don’t even know who runs their website so even when we make it real simple and say the only thing you need to do is add this link to your website, just like when you added your Facebook link, just like when you added your LinkedIn, it’s just a link, but we hear it all the time, the email we get back is, “Can you help with that?” and then we have to write back, “Whoever is managing your website has to do it.” Sometimes, that can be a battle just trying to figure out who has access to the website.
Anyone that owns a business of any kind, they had to pay for the domain and they had to develop that site and that site is a big part of how that business gets exposure to the world so you would figure that there’d be a little bit more at least knowing who the first person to reach out to would be in case anyone ever says, “Your website’s down,” because whatever business you have, if someone tries to go to your website and something just doesn’t work, I mean, that’s money being lost, that’s clients being lost.
Small business for you, what happens is sometimes they might have bought the business from someone else so the person who set it up was the old owner, and they, again, they just didn’t think to find that out. Or, we see this a lot, is an employee set it up. Unfortunately, that employee is no longer with the company and then we see this a lot, and then there’s like passwords to get into it are attached to this person’s cell phone, everything has a code that gets sent to gain access to and so it can really be a mess trying to get access to websites or banking accounts or whatever from employees that are no longer there.
So that leads me to wonder a little bit, the internet in general, the way that business is so much done over the internet nowadays, has that tilted the world further in favor of the bigger business as opposed to small business? Or has it just kind of remixed it a little bit, given that it gives more people the opportunity to get noticed, but then, of course, it’s just another thing that another must have for any business to, or almost any business to operate?
Right. I feel like the internet definitely helps the little guy get there but, again, like anything, the more money you put into advertising on the Internet, the more exposure you’re going to get. So, obviously, if you go online, you’re going to see McDonald’s ads everywhere, you’re not going to see Joe’s Burger Joint. It’s creating a lot, but even within this exposure, the big guys are still going to capture the majority of it.
Yeah, and, of course, the internet has created a whole bunch of new big guys who now kind of rule the world, in a way.
Yes. It’s been an interesting time, but ever since COVID happened, the spending trends and the spending habits of all of us has changed. So, when COVID happened, at least, what it did do for the small business owners is it let consumers know that, “Hey, you can buy a gift card from small guys too. It’s not just McDonald’s and Home Depot.” And then also what COVID did, it was also say, “Hey, not only can you buy gift cards, the little guys also have e-cards too.” So COVID was a way where it educated the consumer that there’s other options of purchasing and then it helped get the small guy kind of in front of their face to say, “Hey, you’ve gotta put this on your website if you wanna stay in business. If you wanna survive this thing, you’re closed, the only way you can bring in revenue right now is if people buy gift cards and they’ll use it when you reopen it.” So that was certainly a changing time for a lot of businesses.
Now, what impact has COVID had on the restaurant industry in general? Because I think we saw a period of time where a lot of restaurants had to close, some of them didn’t make it, and we saw a period of time where a lot of people did learn how to cook new meals themselves. And one thing that I wondered when it was happening was whether or not the restaurant industry as a whole would take a hit long term given people kind of took to cooking or were people just going to go right back to their old habits as soon as we went back up. Do you have any numbers or experiences that inform kind of what do you think has happened since COVID?
Again, we’re dealing with thousands of small mom and pop merchants, restaurants. We saw a lot of what was happening. And, really, what we saw is that the restaurants that were struggling, and these were the ones that were kind of cash flow negative, kind of going month to month, once that cash flow stopped, they went out of business, unfortunately. On the flip side, what we saw is the stronger restaurants that were running a better business model survived and then started opening up more locations. So it’s almost like you had these restaurants that went out of business, but they might have had good locations so these stronger restaurants who were able to survive COVID now were like, “Okay, we did this, we’re surviving. And now, wow, there’s opportunity,” and so we saw a lot of our stronger clients start opening up more locations as COVID ended.
And now what size clients do you work with?
Our bread and butter is your one-location place up to probably ten locations, still keeping it small. We’re not going after a billion-dollar companies, we’re not going after 50-location franchises. Now, certainly, if a company comes to us and we can fill a need for them, well, we certainly will. One of our larger named client is Sierra Nevada Brewing where we helped them with their two breweries and online, physical gift cards and e-card program, and we also run an employee reward program for them. But, typically, we’re doing a lot of work with hospitality groups, which could be one gift card that can be used at ten locations, really helping brand the hospitality group over the individual locations. And then the recent trend the last couple years has been these upscale food halls. So not like the food halls that we used to see when we were growing up in the malls that had the pizza place and McDonald’s, these are kind of nice restaurants that have a brick and mortar and then they’ve gone into those food halls as well and so we come in and we do one gift card that could be used at all the different vendors in the food hall or Chamber of Commerce and stuff like that.
It almost feels like a new version of this mall, in a way. just like less of a parking lot and less of an ordeal but meant to, and they usually have like five or six different restaurants somewhere there and so it may be like a barbecue place, ramen place, sushi place, and like a Mediterranean and like a burger place, all kind of in there. So, how do you get all the restaurants in the food hall to kind of cooperate on a, say, multi-restaurant gift card? Is that part of their organization, kind of like a restaurant version of an HOA in there that does it?
Yeah. So typically with a food hall, there’s a management company that’s putting it all together. They’re the ones who have built the building, they’re getting the vendor to come in and lease and then, basically, they need to create foot traffic. So a great way to create foot traffic is having a universal gift card program that, again, people can buy but they also can use as promotions to get people to come in and check out the different shops. And then with like a downtown business association, same thing. There’s usually an association or an organization behind it. Same with the Chamber of Commerce. So we’re working with the organization and then we help them sign up basically their members onto the program.
So that happened a lot with like, say, small- to mid-sized towns themselves, where whatever Chamber of Commerce, whatever, or business improvement district that started there that they’ll kind of be the ones that bring the restaurant together, in the case where you have that gift card that works at eight to ten restaurants, and then they also kind of manage whatever revenue sharing agreement happens, because you get a $50 gift card and it could be at like six different restaurants, no one knows how that’s going to manage, whether it’s going to be an even distribution of people buying from all six of them or whether it’s going to be a different type of a mix.
Yep, yeah, pretty much they try to do like, they keep the purchasing to one area so all the money comes into one place and then we track, as the gift card is used at the different vendor, we’ll track where it was used and then we’ll provide that report back to the management company and say, “Okay, $30 was used at the burger place, $20 was used at the barbecue place. You’re holding the money, you have to pay them.”
I see, okay. And then so you have to kind of meet with all the specific restaurants to get them to trust your analytics, essentially.
Correct, yeah. We provide them the reporting so they can see exactly where the cards were used, how much was redeemed, and then the management company can send a reconciliation report and funds into their account.
And so I’m also assuming that, given the size your bread and butter, that you’re not really ever dealing with, say, franchises, where there’s franchisees.
Yeah,, pretty much we haven’t. We’ve had a couple in the past. We could do smaller franchisees, and we do have some that are, they start small and then they start to franchise out as they get bigger, like Sally’s Apizza, is a New Haven pizza here in Connecticut that has gotten really popular and now they’re starting to go franchising and so we’re working with them. And, again, we’re just tracking everything by location. So whether it’s one location, ten locations, or twenty locations, our software can handle it. It knows where the funds were redeemed and then we can get that report to either the franchisee or the management company.
And what is your favorite type of food?
I’m a pizza guy, for sure. I’m a pizza guy. You can have pizza morning, lunch and dinner, late night as well, hot or cold, cheese or toppings, meat or vegetarian. I mean, it’s a super food.
I’m originally from Long Island, New York, so I definitely appreciate some pizza, and I recently took a trip out to Naples, a heritage trip, where I got a lot of really good pizza there as well.
I’m sure, I’m sure. They teach everyone how to make it.
Oh, yeah, for sure. So, what is your story? What got you into this line of work? What’s your story of how you observed the issue that you wanted to solve in this world?
Yeah. I mean, actually, I didn’t really have a choice. Right out of college, I started the business. So when I graduated, I first was trying to get into the business side of sports. I was a sport management major at the University of Massachusetts, the business school. That didn’t pan out. Apparently, no one wanted to hire me, the Red Sox, Celtics, New Balance, Nike, they all passed on me. So me and a fraternity brother of mine, we saw this guy who was starting an off campus meal plan in our college. So, basically, he was walking around, he said, “Hey, I have this card. You put money on this card, you can use it at these 10 restaurants.” So that’s interesting. That’s cool. We already spent our food money this semester but we’ll take a look next year. The next year, again, same thing, he came around, it was my senior year, we’re like, “This is very interesting,” and so when I graduated, we started an off campus meal plan in Boston, which has millions of college kids and that’s how we started the program. And then a few years into that, McDonald’s and Home Depot started promoting these gift cards, I think McDonald’s called it the Arch Card, and so, at that point, we said, “Huh, you know, we’re doing this meal plan where it’s one card that you can use at ten places around Boston College, what if we went to one of these places and said, hey, what if we just did one card just for your place, just like McDonald’s?” and they were like, “That is a cool concept. That would be neat.” And so SwipeIt Technology was born and for the past 25 years, we’ve been helping small business owners with their gift card programs, so anything from card design to card production to online fulfillment to getting them set up to answering questions, best practices, consulting. I mean, really, we’re just trying to be a resource for the little guy.
And so when you graduated college and needed to figure out how to live on your own and all that stuff, were you already there with your business where your business could support paying rent for an apartment and your ability to…
No way. I worked for free for the first three years. When I first started, I was living in Boston and I was working at the Holiday Inn doing reservations just to pay rent as I was building the business. And then, again, it takes time and you don’t make money off right away. I think year two, I had to move home from Boston. Luckily, my parents were very supportive when I moved home, again, because I wasn’t making any money. But it gets to the point where, in the beginning, you can work a part-time job because you’re not as busy starting the business, but then you get to the point where you’re too busy with the business but you’re still not making enough money so what do you do at that point? So, luckily for me, I was able to move home and have free rent and free food while we were building this up. And, now, luckily, 25 years later, right now, we will have a staff of like 30 people for November and December to help with online fulfillment. We have 6,000 clients across the country. Revenue for online sales will be in the millions.
We made it happen after a lot of hard work in the beginning and now we just try to keep growing. Share on X
And is there any point in that beginning, the part, the time from when you can see the concept and you start promoting it to when you actually become a full-scale viable business, where you start to doubt yourself, whether it be doubting whether the traction will come or whether doubting if you could get through that busy period or anything else?
Yeah. So, I had two business partners and we got to the point where, I don’t remember what year we were in but we were maxed out where we were a quarter of a million dollars in debt, we had no money in our account. My two partners were brothers and they basically just said, “I’m out. It’s too much for us.” I still believed in it. I also didn’t have a quarter million dollars anyway so I bought them out, ended up bringing on board the guy who was doing sales for us who now is my partner, we brought him on board and the two of us said, “You know what, let’s try to do it. I think there’s light at the end of the tunnel.” And so, yeah, that was a scary part. Taking full ownership of a quarter million dollars of debt and bringing on another guy to try to help and that was probably 20 years ago, and so it was a good decision to make. We became – eventually, we were able to be debt free and then we started to be a profitable company. But that time where I had to make that decision where everything was against us, there was no money in the account, the two partners wanted to leave, they just wanted to close up shop, and I just said, “You know what, I’ll assume all the debt. You guys leave, I’m gonna keep trying.”
And what gave you the courage to assume all that debt? Was it just how much you believed in the idea or was there any other factors that led to you saying this is a lot of debt but I can do this, I got this?
So, I don’t know if it was naïve but I was thinking that, in all my savings that I had from growing up, my parents had put money away, I had 30 grand, so I really was assuming the debt for 30 grand because, let’s say that I take it over, I can’t do anything, I have to file bankruptcy, they’re going to take my 30 grand and I’ll have to go through bankruptcy. So my thought was, it’s really only a $30,000 risk. And, yeah, so I’ll ruin my credit for a couple years but I believed in it. I believed that we were going to turn this. I believed that gift card would become a billion-dollar industry. And, yeah, maybe I was a little stupid too. Sometimes that.
I mean –
But it worked out.
Yeah, I was going to say how stupid can it sound given what you have right now.
It was a good risk to take, I guess. I’m not a gambler, but this one, I gambled on myself.
I guess different forms of gambling, right? And one of the interesting things I think about whenever I do some investments in the stock market or anything like that is it’s like a more informed gambling than just chance because you’re trying to look at trends, you’re trying to look at people, you’re trying to look at ideas and you’re trying to look at what happened, but you also had a passion behind it or what you expressed now to me, at least, is that you want to help one-location restaurant, ten-location restaurant be able to take advantage of the same tools that some of these big chains have. Is that something that was there right from the beginning egging you on to kind of continue down the path or is that something that came later?
So, growing up, my dad was a small business owner so I always saw that you get out what you put in. It was normal to work six days a week. He took Sunday off but he always worked on Saturday. So that just was normal. But also, being a small business owner, you also see the disadvantages that they have. So, yeah, I think from the get go – and also, here’s the big thing also, small business owners are nicer. They’re just nice people. They appreciate your help. They want your help. You can see when you’re helping them, where the larger companies, you could be a number, you’re not as important, they don’t appreciate it. Sometimes, they expect you to do stuff and they want you to do it for cheaper where it’s just a nicer experience working with the smaller guys. So I think part of the pleasure of working with them and helping them and the fact that we’re also a small business, I think that’s why that’s our niche and that’s our culture.
Nice. This reminds me of a book I recently read titled The Great Reversal by a man named Thomas Philippon and I apologize if I’m pronouncing this wrong but I recently read this book and this book talks about how, across many different industries in the United States, how much more the market has gotten concentrated around fewer businesses, whatever index is used to measure the level of market concentration and how over the past roughly quarter of a century, those market concentration numbers have all kind of really expanded. Do you personally believe that, if we will look at the distribution of business, the distribution of revenue across various industries in the country, that, in general, we have a problem with, say, too few businesses occupying too large of a market share?
I think that, yeah, I mean, we’re seeing industry disappear. I mean, back in the day, when we grew up, your eye doctor was always a local guy, your dentist was always a local guy. Now, they’re franchising that. I saw one the other day, Mr. Eye, they have thousands, so now even your eye doctor has been franchised. And then dental, dentists. Now, dentists are franchising. So, yeah, I mean, I’m assuming it’s giving jobs to people, which is good, fine, but it’s definitely tearing down small business and everything is getting corporate, corporate, corporate. So, yeah, we’re definitely seeing that. I think the restaurant industry is probably one of the few industries left where the independents are really the strength of it. I feel like people would prefer to go to independent restaurants than franchises. They feel like the food will be fresher, the experience will be better. But, yeah, it seems like these large corporations are just steamrolling industry after industry, where, eventually, we’re going to be left with no small business owners and all cookie cutter corporations.
Yeah, and everything becomes kind of one version of the same thing. And it reminds me of driving across the country on an interstate highway, and this could be any interstate highway, but I’ve been on so many road trips where you drive up to a town and the interstate usually kind of bypasses around the side and you get two sections of town. Right off the interstate, you get the trucker town, the truck stop town, and it usually has like Subway, Arby’s, big gas station, they’re all the same thing, but then if you drive, like, say, a mile and a half off the highway into the historic downtown, that’s where you get your –
Local.
– local for pretty much everything. You might even get a local hardware store still existing, so it’s like interesting how we can have those two different worlds kind of still coexist.
Yeah. For how long, though, I guess is the question. For how long.
I mean, no one can ever really 100 percent tell the future and sometimes trends do reverse themselves or reach too much, because, right now, you’re saying that there’s still a strong undercurrent amongst a lot of consumers wanting to go to that local place. And even if I drive a mile and a half off of the interstate highway like – so I live in Denver, Colorado, and if I’m driving anywhere out west in small towns, I know that, for example, if I went into the town and went to just a random steakhouse in a small town in Colorado, it’s probably going to be a really good steakhouse. I mean, you’re probably getting really good food. I don’t know if you’re observing similar things in Massachusetts where people are saying I’d rather go to this local place with really good reviews than just another location of a chain.
I think so.
I don’t need to go to Walmart. Let me spend my money at those small guys, it’s the local guy who needs it, who appreciates it. Let me buy that gift card online for the local restaurant instead of the chain restaurant.”
Yeah, and I do the same thing with coffee shops because that’s where I like to have a lot of my in-person meetups, if I meet someone at an event, we want to have another conversation, and I’m lucky that we have a lot of local coffee shops, which I’m guessing you probably work with some of those too with your gift card program.
Yeah, one of the franchises we have actually is a ten-location one in Boston. So, again, they started with two, now they have ten, so it’s not like we went after a larger place, they just keep growing.
With any of these businesses, is there a point where they grow too big for you to still want to work with them or is it more about the attitude of the business?
Okay, I think it’s the attitude of the business. So, perfect example, we were doing the Wahlburgers franchise gift cards, so the burger joint, and as they kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, they were getting more corporate, more corporate, and then they just came out and said, “We need to – our investors are forcing us to go to this company,” and so are they getting the same service? Probably not, but that was a decision, and we see that a lot. “I’m a big company, I have to use another big company,” and that’s fine. That’s the corporate culture.
Yeah, because I think it goes both ways. If big business would rather do business with other big corporate companies, small businesses would rather do business with the small business. You talked about your dad being a small business owner and now you being a small business owner yourself, you probably feel a kinship, you feel way more comfortable even, like it’s a natural conversation with anyone else that’s a small business.
Right. And we say, “Hey, listen, we’re gonna be loyal to you, all we ask if you could be loyal to us, and we’re gonna be there for you.”
And do you believe that the world would be a better place if there were more small businesses?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think small business is what makes America great. I mean, isn’t that what this whole country was built on? Immigrants came here with nothing, they started something, they built a business, and then a hundred years later, they’re flourishing and their family’s here. Isn’t that the American dream? I started with a bank loan, I started a business. America is allowing me to do this so is this not the greatest country?
Yeah, and it’s also the work you put into it because you had to put a lot of work and also really believing yourself through the more uncertain times that we talked about before a couple decades ago.
Yeah.
And then what is the overall impact that you hope your business is having or will continue to have?
I just hope that we’re helping the smaller guys. Like we talked about in the beginning, leveling the playing field. So just helping these small businesses compete with the big guys. So, if cash flow is a problem, okay, we have a solution. Sell more gift cards. If promotions is an issue, hey, here we have a solution, let’s help you out. Really just helping them out with a cost-effective program that will help their business. We’ll get as involved as they want us to be and, again, a lot of it is just letting them know that we’re here. We have consulting where if you have a question, we’re here. If you never want to call us, that’s great, but if you do, we’re here to answer your questions.
And are there any other market trends that you have your eye on, whether it be trends in how payments are being made, trends in types of restaurants, even trends in like types of programs?
Restaurants are a very popular gift card. So, we’re certainly very heavy in hospitality. Well, then, a couple years ago, you had a whole new industry start, dispensaries. So, whether you are for or against it, that’s not for me to say, but it’s an industry that now would like to take gift cards and sell gift cards, so, I mean, if you think about in our lifetime, how many times do we see a new industry start? We did our first cannabis show earlier in the year and certainly a lot different than a restaurant show, but, again, what we saw was small business owners. Those were the ones who were running this so, again – and these guys even have more restrictions on them because of the industry they’re in with credit cards and processing and this and that so, again, it was like, hey, if we can help you with a gift card program, we’re here. So, we don’t care what the industry is, we’re just saying that we can help you. So whether you’re selling from a dispensary, a restaurant, a jewelry store, a trampoline park, a diamond store, a hotel, you have customers, you want more customers, you could have gift cards, we can help you.
And then do you – anything else to suss out your potential clients, like, first of all, are there any industries – now, I don’t think the marijuana industry is really dangerous at all, I think I was kind of lied to about that as a kid, but are there certain industries that are having a terrible impact that you’re not willing to work with, or certain attitudes that some people have about businesses that you’re like, “Okay, I just don’t wanna help these people”?
If someone comes to us and we don’t like their tone or we don’t like how they’re talking to our employees, we’ll politely ask them to take their business elsewhere. I mean, you have people call and start screaming at our employees about something that we have no control over or we didn’t do and it’s common courtesy, so it’s more of an individual. If they come at us and at our employees for no reason, well, we don’t need to have that and our people don’t need to take that. In terms of the industries, you can say tobacco industry or firearms, liquor stores, stuff like that, I mean, we haven’t – people are adults, as long as there’s no hate, there’s no racism, there’s stuff like that, then we don’t have a problem working with places. But we certainly understand the way this country is and we just want to be on the right side of everything, so we try – our company by morals and ethics and, at the end of the day, do what’s right by the client, do what’s right by the customer, and if you do that, you’ll have a long history of business.
Yeah, but, obviously, if someone comes in and they’re just yelling at your employees or treating people like they don’t matter, their personal servants, whichever, then it can really damper and plus you know that that working relationship is not going to be a very good one.
Right. If they’re treating my employees like that, I can’t imagine how they’re treating their own employees, and is that something you want to be a part of? Probably not.
Yeah. And then if anyone out here listening to this episode either has a small business that’s selling products of any kind or is looking for Christmas gifts or any kind of gifts for any holiday because you can listen to this episode at any point in time, what will be the best way to get a hold of you or check out what services you have to offer?
Yeah, I mean, my wife doesn’t like this but I check my email 24/7 every day so larry@swipeit.com is certainly the best way to get in touch with me. And the nice thing about our website, it’s swipeit.com, is you can actually go on and search by zip code so you can go on and find local restaurants that are selling their gift cards online right through our SwipeIt and support them.
Well, that’s wonderful. And then one final question is if you could make anything happen in the world in the next 5 years, if you could see any kind of change, any kind of progression of anything, what would you pick?
Peace. Easy. Peace. The way our world is, I can say peace in the Middle East, but, really, we need peace in the world. All over. That would be it. That’s an easy one, and this world is crazy and if people could just get along, regardless of who they believe in, what they look like, then it would be a lot better for everyone.
Well, that is wonderful. And I also hope a lot more people have the stamina, the belief in themselves to go through the type of experience that you went through where you go through those few years and you still have to pay for your own expenses, you still have to pay for an apartment, you still have to find a way to live, but you still believe in your idea and once you get through it, you get to a place that’s really beautiful, so thank you so much, Larry, for joining us for Action’s Antidotes today and for telling us about this particular story.
Stephen, this is great. I appreciate your time and I love that you invited me on and this is great. Hope to come back again.
That sounds wonderful, and I would also like to thank everyone out there listening today for tuning in to Action’s Antidotes and, hopefully, you got some really good tidbits, really good inspiration around it and, hopefully, you’re going to be also courageous enough to, whatever version of that time between when your idea is first conceived to when you actually get some traction on it and can make a viable living off of it that you can get through it by believing in yourself and believing in what you’re doing.
Important Links:
- Larry on LinkedIn
- Swipe It
- Email address: larry@swipeit.com
About Larry Rubin
Larry is the President of Swipe It. Swipe It was developed to provide Gift and Loyalty Card Programs for small to medium-sized merchants seeking the professional look and feel of larger companies, often believing such options were out of reach. Starting small themselves, the team understands the importance of making every dollar count. They work with a range of businesses, from single-location operations to larger multi-location concepts and franchises.