Stories

Navy veteran and small-business owner Nick Falletta began his career in sales, traveling the world selling cash registers and credit card readers, before the dream he and his wife, Linda, shared of running their own small-business became reality. 

Early in their careers, Nick and Linda, who worked in advertising, realized that it’s hard to build meaningful wealth working for someone else. That realization made them aspire to run their own business one day. While shopping at the mall, they befriended a couple selling weathervanes. Years later, the couple decided to retire and sell their business. Nick and Linda saw this as an opportunity to finally run their own business, and they bought the company.
 

Online weathervane innovators

While Nick continued his work in sales, each weekend the couple loaded up their van with weathervanes and custom copper products to sell at various flea markets. While it was lucrative, it was also time-consuming and physically laborious. In the 1990s, with the rise of the internet, Nick realized he could shift his in-person business completely online. The couple named the business The Weathervane Shoppe, bought the web address www.weathervane.com and became the first business to sell weathervanes online.

When Linda developed a brain disorder and needed to permanently step back from the business, Nick decided to continue running the business himself – managing everything from customer service and marketing to sales and operations.

“As a small-business owner who has to manage many different aspects of the business, PayPal is a real convenience for me,” Nick shared, adding, “PayPal has helped me do everything from drive sales to reduce customer service calls.”
 

Diverse customers require diverse solutions

The business has a diverse customer base – ranging from traditional consumers to contractors and architects – all with varying needs. PayPal’s broad range of solutions for small businesses has helped Nick serve all types of customers.

“Many of my customers don’t want to share their credit card information over the phone. So, PayPal’s Invoicing solution works well for those customers. Some of my other customers prefer to pay over the phone rather than directly through our website, so PayPal’s Virtual Terminal has been a huge help in those cases.” The business also leverages PayPal Complete Payments for credit and debit card processing on their website, and offers customers a range of payment options.
 

Boosting conversion with easy checkout – even for guest customers

Given his line of work, Nick sees more new -- versus recurring -- customers coming to his site. To help improve his guest checkout experience and speed up time to checkout for his customers, Nick added Fastlane by PayPal. “When I first learned about Fastlane, I was quick to enable it. It was a no-brainer for me. The faster a customer can get through checkout, the more likely it is that you will complete the sale,” Nick shared.

“Before we enabled Fastlane, I would get calls every few days from people who had questions about the checkout process. Now, those calls are non-existent,” he said, “which is nice because as a small-business owner, I’m also customer service!” Nick added, “For me, the fact that PayPal offers a broad suite of solutions for small businesses is really compelling. While we currently use several PayPal solutions from Invoicing to Fastlane, I love knowing that if I ever need a solution like financing, for example, PayPal has working capital solutions that I could tap into.”

When he’s not working, Nick plays competitive pickleball and is an active member of a local pickleball league that operates as a non-profit business. Nick’s positive experience with PayPal’s small-business solutions encouraged the pickleball non-profit to also integrate with PayPal to accept payments for memberships and subscriptions.
 

Success in small business starts with mindset

As a long-time small-business owner, Nick shared some advice for other entrepreneurs looking to start their own business. 

“First, really think it through before you start a business. Running your own business is tougher than you could ever imagine. Second, you will run into obstacles that you would never have imagined. So, you need to be flexible enough to adapt and adjust, and always have a backup plan,” Nick advised. “Third, you will need enough finances to keep you going in the beginning. Just because you have a great product doesn’t mean you will initially have a lot of money coming in.

“Finally, your business will become your life, so choose something you love,” said Nick. “For example, when I go on vacation, my computer always comes with me – business doesn’t stop. Whether I’m on a cruise in the Caribbean or at the U.S. Open Pickleball Championships, I’m still taking customer calls and running my business.”