And by fun I mean the least enjoyable, most annoying, and highest likely hood to cause a bottleneck in your business.

Payment processing.

Whether you're selling services, software, supplements, or tarot card readings a necessary reality is that you're going to need a way for people to pay you

Some examples: Stripe, Amazon Pay, Shop Pay, Authorize.net, etc...

You've probably heard of one if not all of the above. 

If you're new to this Wifi $ game you may be saying to yourself " Yes, I've heard of these and this is obvious. What's the big deal?".

The big deal is that these companies are frickin' terrorists. (kidding.. or am I?)

They can quite literally shut you down at any moment for being "too risky" without any real chance to appeal and lock in your funds for 90-180+ days. (I, Tommy, currently have $5,000 locked up with one.. more on that later)

Before we get to the real alpha of how to avoid shut downs and how to navigate setting up a merchant account, I'd like to go through some real examples of issues that both Wifi and myself have experienced:

- A monthly $10,000 revenue cap that was never mentioned in the sign up phase

- Holding of up to 25% of all money charged as a safety net

- Payment gate completely shut off for a full week due to copy on the website

- As mentioned above, reserve cash being held for 90-180 days when cancelling services

- Kicked off platform for "fraud" one week into a new venture because someone charged back

You get the point.

Merchant accounts are one of, if not the, biggest potential bottle necks for any business and are an aspect that you need to take seriously.

Now, Let's get to the good stuff.

How to avoid getting f*cked

I've been hearing a lot complaints about PayPal and Stripe.

As someone who has sold supplements before I know the struggle of getting banned/paused.

That's why you need a real merchant account.

You might be thinking, “isn’t Stripe a real merchant account?”

Well, not exactly. In fact, Stripe is just a software company not a bank.

And that’s one of the differences you need to understand earlier on. There are payment gateways and then there are payment processors (aka the bank).

A payment gateway is simply an interface or the software that allows you to swipe the credit card.

They encrypt and accept payments, that's all they do.

However, a merchant bank is the one who actually collects and processes the transaction in the backend.

The bank charges the gateway a fee and the gateway then marks up the fees to make some money themselves.

Cool, we all like to make money.

But here’s the problem…

Payment gateways have to pay fees for each transaction they send to the bank, so they want to make sure they are as safe as humanly possible.

The last thing they want is an account that is going to cost them money but then turns that they have a bunch of chargebacks.

So companies like Stripe and PayPal take it to the extreme, often grouping individuals in certain industries as being risky.

What are these industries?

You mainly have to worry if you’re selling supplements and selling make money opportunities.

Now let’s be real, I totally understand them.

There are PLENTY of bad actors in both of those industries.

But what if you’re a legit guy or gal trying to sell a supplement?

Or maybe you’re selling a FB ads course, not some low end biz opp offer?

Well, you’re shit out of luck because you are going to get grouped into the same bucket.

Which means, you get banned.

Companies like Stripe and PayPal became sort of this integrated (convenient) way of having both a gateway and a merchant at once.

They would act as the gateway and you will never know who the bank behind them is.

Problem: what if the bank flags you, who do you call?

Exactly... No one.

That's a problem.

Anyone online long enough has used **http://Authorized.net**.

Another gateway, who's a little more opened about their merchants as they tell you who's assigned to you.

And if you're a beginner and a bit lazy, they are a super safe option to use.

But if you really want to take things to the next level.

I recommend you find a merchant bank directly (like BankCardUSA) and plug into NMI (or even Authorize.net).

NMI is a very modern and clean payment gateway.

It's really cool...

You can plug in many other merchants and load balance your payment processing.

So if a bank takes you down (for any reason), you can still continue playing.

The best part is that even if a bank flags you, you can always call them up!

PayPal and Stripe will just boot you.

Advantages of using NMI as a gateway

By far, the coolest and most important feature that NMI provides is "load balancing."

I'll let them explain it themselves...

"Transaction Routing (previously known as Load Balancing) is a feature only available to Merchants with more than one processing service of the same “type” (cc or ach) boarded on their gateway account. Transaction Routing will “balance” transactions between two or more processors using percentages and amounts."

Once you are done with BankCardUSA, they'll set you up with an NMI account.

You don't need to open this account yourself.

Closing Note

Some of you reading this may be wondering “Wifi, Tommy…. why did I get refunded? I want to support this insanely valuable alpha and learn!”

Welp… the irony of this entire post is that WE GOT RUGGED.

You read that right.

The very thing we’re waning against happened to us with this newsletter. Our friends at a certain merchant that is utilized by this very platform hit us with the reverse Uno card.

But don’t you worry, friend. We have a plan!

You’ll be able to rejoin soon (we’ll be using the strategies listed above to prevent this from happening again)

I do have to say that I didn’t get as much as I wanted to do because I also had to take care of a few SwipeBuilder stuff (like launching, happening tonight ahhhhh).

However, the irony of all of this is that SwipeBuilder also gave me exactly what I needed as it wrote my ads and even wrote a VSL (or at least part of it).

In a way, this was the true test I needed as I am the ideal buyer of SwipeBuilder. After all, I built this tool for me. It just happens that people like you can also use it to grow your business.

Before I show you the ads that I wrote this week, I want to share with you the two ads I swiped and used as inspiration.

First, we have the popular “7 seconds poop release ritual” by Emma.

If you don’t know anything about Emma, well, let me tell you this… They are making BANK.

Their USP (unique selling proposition)? A ritual to help women take a dump.

Emma is likely bringing over a $1M per day in revenue. So that makes them swipe-worthy as far as I am concerned.

Take a look at the ad yourself:

Silly, ain’t it?

However, it is responsible for making Emma millions of dollars in revenue.

Now, how do I know that this brand is worth copying for B4?

Well, because it’s been copied by others and they are doing very well as well.

I’ll show the second ad that I considered swipe-worthy:

Now, I can’t tell you the brand for this one. At least not yet. I promise I’ll do it later.

But notice a pattern?

Seems like everyone is into rituals these days!

Okay, ready for the ones that SwipeBuilder made?

I’ll show you the 12-minute VSL that I wrote using it as well.

… it took me 2 minutes to write this crazy script for a VSL.

Here we go:

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• Being as authentic and genuine as we can be without doing damage to ourselves and our businesses

• Providing WAY more value than the $10/mo price tag on this stack

• And, most importantly, going deep on topics you most likely will not see discussed anywhere else

This post is no exception.

As the title states, today's topic is managing the emotions of being a new entrepreneur. 

This may not sound as "sexy" as writing a VSL or increasing conversion rates but it is related to literally every aspect of the process and can be extremely debilitating if not handled properly.

You're probably saying to yourself "Aright, bro. We get it. Emotions Shmemotions. But what are we actually talking about here?"

What I'm talking about are:

• The fear of pushing things live

• The gut punch when you get your first negative review

• The anxiety when an issue occurs with inventory, product, packaging, or website

• The shame when you forgot to do something important or have a blatant error in something you put out to the world that could've been avoided

• The ruined afternoon because some entitled asshole spoke to you like a medieval peasant about customer service

• The paralyzing anxiety of having 10 high-priority things to do so you do none of them and play video games (just me? hehe)

It's impossible to list every scenario but this is a decent list of some of the most egregious offenders.

The point is: 

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This is not fun.

It's just one of those things you gotta do (I guess not technically?).

But forming your LLC is the first official "I started a business" move.

First and foremost it protects your @$$.

LLC stands for limited liability company and is is a business structure that offers limited liability protection and pass-through taxation.

In other words, it limits your personal liability.

It's also required in order to get an EIN (Tax ID) for your business which is then required for banking, payment processing, credit cards, etc...

Also if you don’t have a paid subscription yet we just enabled 7 day trials so don’t miss out. Check what we have to offer.

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Let’s be real, you’re going to face a lot of competition in your market.

There’s actually a very slim chance that you were the first to invent what you have or are trying to sell.

Maybe the product is NOT the same as yours.

But you have competitors regardless.

Some are direct competitors and basically sell to the same audience as you with a similar product.

Others are indirect and sell a different solution to the same audience as you.

Now, let’s say you are in the market selling a product for energy and focus.

In that case Zyn (nicotine pouches) is competing with Nootropics Depot’s Sabroxy.

And both of them compete with B4.

Not the same products but the same market and the same core problem.

That means that all three products could be using the same angles as they solve the same problem but each with a different mechanisms for the solution.

So if you only look at your direct competitors and ignore indirect competitors you’re missing out on some serious gold.

For B4 this week I’ll be focusing on one angle and will make two video creatives.

But here’s the catch, while the videos are being made, I’ll come up with two image creatives that can be ran immediately.

You want to always test your angles with the easiest to produce creative because the name of the game is called SPEED.

And look, I am not saying that if it fails as an image ad, you don’t launch the video test.

But you want to get working fast. We have no time to waste.

I made a video for this week, and I’ll be covering:

1. Where I found the angles (yes, I found them online I didn’t sit down in the toilet to ponder indefinitely).

2. Where I found inspiration to swipe and make new ads.

I’ll also cover how I validate that I am picking the RIGHT creatives to swipe.

Without further ado, here’s a video showing you this week’s update:

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