Best Small Business Phone Systems and Credit Card Rewards – Small Business Show 342

The Small business show episode 342 for Wednesday, August 25, 2021. Greetings folks and welcome to the Small Business show here at businessshow.co. where we are small businessing. I was going to say where we are small businessing every week. Really, we're kind of small businessing all the time but every single day we stop to talk about it once a week is generally how it goes. Sponsors for this episode include LinkedIn.com SBS where you can go post your first job for free. We will talk more about that in a minute. For now, Small Businessing here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton and coming to you.

From Smoky, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you man?

I'm doing all right. I'm supposed to go to Portland and then Tahoe next week. Well, yeah, we'll see how it that. Let's see how that evolves. That's right. Yeah.

Air quality not so good out here right now and but you know, thank goodness we have all those first responders and firefighters helping to try to keep control of all these fires.

Yeah, no kidding.

Crazy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, man.

That's that. California has a fire season now, but it's not a show about fire. So what are we talking about today, Dave?

We are talking. Well, we got a question in. We're going to talk about credit cards and financing. One of our favorite topics. Yeah, yeah. I love rewards credit cards and I just, actually just got another one, a different one for, for me, for one of the businesses. So, so I'll, I'll share that as we sort of go through that in a little bit. The first thing though is I wanted to answer a question Scott wrote in and asked what is the best office phone system to use. And it's sort of an open ended question. Question. Yeah, you know, there's, I know Scott has a remote business kind of like what I run here. Some people have, of course, retail, you know, brick and mortar businesses where you might need something a little bit different.

Offices, right?

Yeah. But phone systems are an interesting thing. I'm the phone system has always, the phone system in general has always interested me and I've always had different kinds of things going on for the businesses. For the past few years I've been using a system called phone.com.

Okay.

And it's great because it gives me, you know, a virtual PBX if you will. Right. I have one number for the company. I added a fax number to it. Everything routes through it. It's got voicemail. It's got all kinds of different things and I can, you know, I can route things the way that I want. Everybody can control things the way that they want. They have a really robust phone management system where you're almost, it's almost like you're programming if you want to. It doesn't have to be that complex, but you can really build scripts with it so that you know, if a call comes in and this person is unavailable because they're in this time zone and they're unavailable outside of these hours, it goes to this place. Yeah.

Or.

And I can even have it if, you know, if I could have it. I don't have it set up this way where if, if somebody calls it, it rings all of our cell phones until one of us picks up and then it hangs up the rest of them, which is kind of cool, you know. So yeah, there's different.

That's great.

It's cool.

I agree that that question is so open ended. You know, what type of phone system really depends on what type of business you're in. Right. I have a. You know, one of my favorite comments about the phone is that in this day and age, answering the phone is really a way to distinguish yourself from other companies. Right. It's really common that small, small businesses that have people out in the field and maybe don't have enough, you know, have a staff person or whoever to answer the phone that just rolls to voicemail and then you have to wait for a callback. And then it's also very, very common that large, large, large businesses, nobody answers the phone either. So if you can answer the phone, it can really be a great marketing tool, a great way to connect with your customers.

Yeah.

And having a virtual system can, you know, I, I've been around long enough to where I spent an insane amount of money on a pbx.

An actual pbx. Yeah.

Massive. And used it now, you know, it was about $30,000. But I did use it for, you know, a couple of decades that it just performed, you know, amazingly. However, the virtual stuff@like phone.com, ringcentral, grasshopper. One I like is aircall IO because they tie into your CRM, you know, your customer relationship management. So you can roll those calls right into your contact list and your, you know, your sales funnel and all that kind of stuff. I think which is really cool that it to me, if I was looking at these cloud based virtual systems that will just do jump through any hoops it, it has to tie into whatever your CRM is Because having to go use another system is. You mean not. Not as ideal. So if you can. I think that's a great way to do it.

That is. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. I like it.

And then, you know, so I, I would investigate those things, you know, Scott. And then one comment I've had just from experience is because there will be times when you can't answer the phone or calls will get routed and there won't be someone available or it's the middle of the night. Always be sure you assign a person to every voicemail box. Don't have a generic general voice mail that.

No.

That just get ignored. It's a. It's a recipe for disaster. I thought so. And so was going to do it. I thought, no, if, you know, you're in charge of this, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you're in charge, whatever. However you want to split it up. But you have to make those voicemail boxes accountable by assigning people to them.

Yeah. And if you're going to. And, and I, I haven't done this with phone calls, but I suppose there would be a way. I've done it with emails where you have a blanket address that something comes into that goes to multiple people. If you're gonna do that, use a ticketing system like a fresh desk or something, so that it, you know. You know. Did someone else get this? There's no guess of. Well, I know it's forwarded to everyone, so I'm assuming one of the other six people got it. No, no. Look in the system. Did somebody pick that ticket up? If not, and it's still open, well, guess what, it's yours.

You know, I'm sure your. Your phone.com or aircall IO grasshopper. I'm sure they do the same. Same thing. Because that concept is really important.

It's really important. You don't want something to just fall through the cracks. That's right.

Well, you need that history. You know, if you're having a customer service issue and they're trying to call and you look at it and go, oh, wow, you need to know, boy, they've called eight times.

Yeah, right.

That's a different customer service management technique than the customer who's just called the first time.

That's right. Right.

And so by the eighth time, you've made a mistake and have. You've captured. You've taken the wrong token. I would argue go search for the. The two tokens concept of customer service up at BusinessShow Co to learn about why those things should be Resolved real quickly and you can thank us later.

Yeah, that's right.

You'll avoid having that eighth call I.

Have for people that are running their. Even for your home phone. To be honest, if you want to have some kind of landline experience in your home or your, you know, your single person office. Let's say I have moved now and I did this a couple of years ago because I was sick and tired of paying. You know, we stopped paying for an actual landline probably a decade ago and moved it to a voice VoIP line through Xfinity, which was our Internet provider at the time. But I, you know, I was still paying them. It turned out. 20 bucks a month or something for that.

Yeah.

And so what I did was I moved my Xfinity line to a Google Voice line. I ported the number over to Google Voice. I had to do it. And the reason I ported to Google Voice is because Google Voice is free. Right. But you can't port directly from voipeline to Google Voice. So I ported to T Mobile because they had a cheap like $4 SIM card. So I ported to that to pay. I paid the $4. I got a number from T Mobile, I ported my thing to that, and then from T Mobile, I ported into Google Voice. Once I had it in Google Voice, I bought this $50 little box called the OB200, which I believe Polycom now owns. And it has a power jack, it's got an ethernet port and a phone jack on it. So RJ 45 and an RJ 11. You plug one end into your router, you plug your phone into the other end, and then you link that up with your Google Voice number. When Google Voice rings, it rings your landline in your house.

Oh, that's great.

Which is great. And it cost me nothing. There's no monthly fees. So it was 20 bucks to port it, 50 bucks for the device, $4 for the T mobile thing. So for less than $75, which for us was about three and a half months of paying Comcast. That problem went away about two years ago. So I'll put a link to OB200.

Yeah, do that. Is there a. A fee for that T Mobile sim or you're just paid.

I paid $4 for it. It was a, you know, a trial SIM or something.

I got you. Oh, so you just.

I just needed it for a few days is really all I did. I needed to port the number so that it was in T Mobile's system. Because Google could slurp from T Mobile, Google couldn't slurp from Xfinity. So that was the. That was the trick. Yeah, exactly.

Cool.

Yeah. That's great. That thing's great. Yeah.

Yeah. So if you're a phone person, if you know a lot about phone systems, you know, feedbackusiness show co send us some info and will share it with other small business owners.

Yeah, we'll share it with everybody. Yeah, it's great. Hey, I want to talk about our sponsor for this week, which is LinkedIn at LinkedIn or LinkedIn jobs@LinkedIn.com SBS and it's because as business owners, small business owners especially, we are more involved with our businesses than ever. I don't like to say busier than ever. I like to say more productive than ever. But it is time consuming, that productivity often. And time spent searching for and interviewing the wrong candidates for a job opening is time that we could better spend on growing our businesses. Right. Better to work on the business than in the business. And that's why LinkedIn jobs has made it easier to get to the candidates worth interviewing faster. And it's free. I know, it's crazy. We talked about this a couple of months ago when we hired a podcast publicist. It turned out to be Sadie, who has been on the team now for a few months. We found Sadie through LinkedIn jobs and it was a remarkably wonderful experience. We got so many good candidates and. And obviously narrowed it down to. Narrowed it down to a handful that were spectacular and chose Sadie, as you know. And you can create your free job post in minutes on LinkedIn jobs to reach your network and beyond to the world's largest professional network of over 750 million people. And you get to focus on the candidates with the skills and the experience you need. And you can use screening questions that they let you set up to get your role in front of only the most qualified people. And then you can use their filters and everything to prioritize who you want to hire or interview. LinkedIn jobs helps you find the candidates worth interviewing faster. And did you know that every week nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn?

Yeah.

Post your job for free@LinkedIn.com SBS that's LinkedIn.com SBS to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply, of course. And our thanks to LinkedIn jobs for sponsoring this episode. Very cool stuff.

Yeah, those guys are awesome.

Yeah, it's great. It's great. It's great. All right, so let's talk credit cards, man.

Yeah, this is a great topic.

We.

We've. We've done a. Well, we haven't done an episode on this topic in a long time. My my be over a year, maybe even couple.

I think it's a couple of years. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you know, we talk about living a charmed life and all the benefits of being a small business owner all the time. And this topic that we're going to dive into now is definitely up there on, you know, enriching your lifestyle, living a before tax life. We alluded to it in the show last week and so I'm excited to talk about it.

Yeah, man. Do you have a. How do you want to proceed here? Do you have a favorite card you want to recommend or do you have a path you want to recommend?

Yeah, let's. Let's talk about the concept first.

Yeah.

And then we can talk about some cards. You know, your business always needs money. I mean, it's just you're paying bills, you're paying expenses and everything. And by using specific types of credit cards wisely to finance your purchases, your expenses, you know, you can just really, really benefit. We're going to talk about those benefits and we're going to focus on the business side of it. You can and you should use these same tactics in your personal life, but it's really your business that has that cash flow engine that's really going to crank up the benefits for you. Right?

It's true. Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah. I mean, if you're spending a lot of money in your personal life, then you'll see the same rewards come through. But like you said, you know, it's your business where you've got your hosting costs and you're this and you're that. And just the things that your monthly recurring expenses are the things you really need to focus on with this because those are the things that mound up over time, Certainly the big expenses. When you buy a new computer, you buy that $30,000 phone system that Shannon had or you know, those sorts of things, those are great too. But it's those monthly recurring expenses. I always have joked if I could put payroll on my credit card, man, I would.

Yeah, I'm going to use some examples of expenses and some pretty big numbers that have really, you know, helped me in my life for sure. And now the type of cards we're talking about are affinity or cards with points and benefits. Airline miles, hotel credits, cash back. You know, you can do gift cards on a number of them. Those types of benefits are typically not taxed.

Right.

You should ask. Not yet, but it's probably worth having discussion if you really push this Cash back rewards because you can generate a significant amount of cash if you play this game.

Right.

And the thing about these cards is they allow you to massively upgrade your lifestyle without paying cash, without having to pay for it even. You know, we talked about pre tax cash with your company leasing you a vehicle or expenses and travel, this is even better because you're going to be out nothing.

Right, right.

If you're, if travel is your thing, airlines and hotels, there's specific cards that we're going to talk about here that, that are really beneficial. Cash back is huge and I would say that's grown a lot.

Big time. Yeah. I'm surprised at this. Yeah, well, me too.

But some people, you know, that's what they're, that's, they're looking for and it's, but there's added benefits by using some of these travel cards that I really like. There's a ton of gift card benefits that you can figure it out. You know that, that we'll go into a little bit more. But we talked about like expenses with your business. Right?

Yeah, it's.

And if you're like a. I've been in product business my whole life, so I'm buying products from people too. And you know, I was buying from Apple at times where they were happy to take my credit card for 150, $200,000 purchase. Wow, that's a lot of point. That's a lot of points.

Yeah. Right.

Our, our shipping, our monthly shipping bill split between FedEx, UPS and DHL typically was 200 to $250,000. At the height of that business.

Right.

Every one of now you may have to negotiate to get them to take your credit card because sometimes it was, and I can remember FedEx was no problem. Ups, we had to, hey, we wanted, we, we only you know, want to pay. We'll do this, sign this contract and do all these things. But it has to go on our American Express and, and be, be ready.

To stand for that.

Absolutely.

I've, I've done that a few times. It's like, well, you know, the way we're going to finance this expense is by putting it on that card. And, and just, you know, I'm a, in, in those moments. I'm a fan of the silent close. You know, he who speaks next loses. Right. You know, it's like this is how we're going to pay. We've already negotiated the price. This is how we're going to pay for it. And you just wait there. Yeah.

Right. And since we're all Business owners listening to this or, or some aspiring business owners, there's a fee associated with taking this card. You know, when you're running that card, especially an affinity card, it's more expensive for the merchant to take that card.

Yeah. And the merchant pays, you know, just to highlight the point you just made, Shannon the merchant, or if you are the merchant taking these cards, you pay more for, for the, like you are buying those hotel points for the person that is using the card. That's how it works. Yeah.

Credit card industry, it's a great gig.

Great. Yeah, yeah.

So you know all, every single expense that you can imagine. Your electrical bill for your building, if you can pay your rent, sometimes landlords would be happy just to set up in a port and go, you know, your automobile, if you have a fleet of autos that you're leasing, you've got maintenance and expenses, gas, all those things should be funneled into these benefit accounts. For you as the business owner, you're taking the risk all the time. You got guys out in the field driving these vans around, doing whatever. You're taking the risk. You're making sure those payments are all made, you know, purchasing or leasing them. Those benefits can come back to you as the central account holder. Now, it all sounds great, but of course you have to have the cash to pay these off and not just monthly. Okay, I'm going to make it really clear here. If you can't pay these cards off at the every single month, you should not use this technique because these cards are crazy expensive when it comes to interest. They're typically 15 to 30%, these affinity cards. Oh, yeah, right.

Yeah. And yeah, there is a second way that they make money with these cards. That's right, exactly.

Exactly. So, but not only do you need to really maximize this concept, you don't. You can't wait to just pay them off every month because your limit is not, especially when you're just getting started, your limit isn't going to be high enough to make it work. So when I say our, you know, monthly shipping costs were $250,000 at some point. Well, at that point, and we were using American Express, and we're going to talk about that in a few minutes. I didn't have a $250,000 limit on my American Express, but UPS, FedEx, DHL, they would bill every few days. You'd cycle through a bill that would hit your card. So we would have to go up and make those payments. And I'm talking what it's referred to as inter statement Payments. It's a critical part of making this concept work. If you see a card that has a great offer, you want to be sure you can make inter statement payments. Because if you can't, that's how they're slowing you down. They're only allowing you to make a monthly payment. Well, that card can be worthless. I mean, not worthless, but, you know, if you get a $10,000 limit, okay, well, that's it. You know, there's no upside beyond that until you can start asking, okay, I want to hire limit this, this kind of thing. But to maximize, to maximize it, you want to make those interstate, you know, interstatement payments. And, you know, we would pay our Amex every 24 hours, you know, the minute the bill came. Charge the card, pay the card. Charge the card, pay the card.

And that's fascinating. Yeah, it makes sense. I've never done it. I've done it maybe weekly. Yeah. At times, but I've never done it every day. But I mean, it makes sense. Like if that.

Well, we didn't have it. So it was.

You don't have it. Yeah, yeah.

If I didn't have that limit. Now there are. We're going to talk about American Express. One of the things I love about amex is there really is no set limit. It is based on your ability to pay. So as you get started and they see this cash flow, well, they will rack your limit way, way up. And I'm going to tell you how to get that maxed up as well as, as we go on. But interstatement payments, really important.

The other thing that I want to make sure people know, and if I'm wrong about this, I want to be corrected. Shannon, if you know better ways. But as a small business owner, I've never gotten to the point and I've never really pushed for this either to be fair, but certainly when I was starting out and even today, any of the credit cards that I get for my business are secured by me, they are based on my credit rating. And so they, you know, they are on my, my personal credit report. And, and, and so you just need to bear that in mind that if you're, if your company, if you have financial problems with the company, you are personally are the one securing those lines of credit. There are ways to earn credit with your company. I haven't headed down that path. Have you. Have you ever. And I realize it's a little bit of a detour, but yeah, we've, we.

Had a few cards and there's a, there's a couple of types of American Express based solely on your business. That.

Okay.

You know, but getting away from that personal guarantee in anything is very difficult.

Very difficult. Yeah, yeah.

Very difficult.

Yeah.

And, you know, and because if, if you're not willing to do it, they want to know why they want it.

Yeah. What's the problem? Yeah, yeah. Why don't you believe in this company? That's right.

Yes. Yeah. So. And, you know, we're talking about which cards. You know, that's kind of like the phone system. Which cards are best for you? Depends on what your needs are. You know, when my wife and I were younger, didn't have kids, well, it was all about travel. So we focused on maximizing, you know, what travel, airline and hotel cards could we get to really take advantage of it because we traveled like crazy and we, you know, we traveled first class, we stayed in crazy hotel rooms that I would never pay cash for. And it was, it was awesome.

But it is awesome. I know. It's great.

It's tremendous. It's tremendous.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, if you, when you fly, you know, to Europe and you fly first class and they want to know what time you want your massage, that's cool, right? And I, in the back of my head, I'm like, this is awesome, because I didn't, I mean, I, I took the risk and I did pay for it through my card, but I did not buy that ticket.

Right.

It's really, really nice.

It is really nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But as you get now, you know, as things changed in my life and my daughter, like, for example, started college in New York City, living there. Well, JetBlue was the best airline for us to get back and forth New York City to the Bay Area. And so I looked around and, you know, JetBlue has a credit card, of course, through Barclays. And their points are very generous.

They are very generous. Yeah.

We switched over to our JetBlue and I started using that for one of my other businesses so we could build up those points so she could go back and forth and we would fly out, you know, every Thanksgiving. And it worked out great. Well, now she's done. Now I'm looking at, okay, what's the next thing, you know, what's the, you know, if you have a house and you're, you know, doing a bunch of renovating or maybe that's your business. Right. Well, then you maybe should look and see what the trade off on points versus like Home Depot or Lowe's gift cards are with these various things. Because I know, you know, A few people that have gotten tens of thousands of dollars in those kind of gift cards to help remodel, you know, their homes.

Yeah, I started with the Citibank Advantage MasterCard, the American Airlines one, and I did that with all the businesses, and that worked really well for me. For a long period of time, I was flying routes that American, you know, service. So it was really easy to take advantage of the upgrades and all that stuff. And then it didn't take very long. One day I got an email. It was actually in my spam folder, and it said, congratulations, you've reached the Million Miler Club. Or you entered the Million Miler Club. And I thought, wow, I haven't flown a million miles. I thought, oh, wait, but I've spent a million dollars. Got it. Because you earn a dollar a mile now they don't. Yeah, they don't qualify you for the Million Miler Club that way anymore. But those of us that got it that way or grandfathered in. Yep. And then. But then you got to keep an eye on what I always do. Not always, but, you know, a couple times a year, I do the math. I look at what am I about to spend these points on and what would the dollar amount be and how, like, what am I paying per point? And sometimes it doesn't make sense.

You know, it's not worth it.

It's not worth it. And you got to kind of keep that in mind for yourself. And so then I moved from the Citibank, the American Airlines cards to the. The. Well, what now is the Marriott Bonvoy. It was the American Express Starwood card for a long time, and it became the. The Bonvoy one. And that's been. As far as travel cards go, that one's been fantastic. I. With one of the businesses, I have the JetBlue card. I've found that it is helpful. I also have a United card with. With another business. And really what those get me are the, you know, you don't pay for luggage. You don't.

Yeah.

That's cool, right? You know, like, there are perks, even if you're not using the points, just having the card now, you are most likely paying an annual fee for these things, so you want to make sure you use it enough that. That they use the perks enough that it makes sense. But for a $75 annual fee and 25 bucks, every time I would check a bag, all I got to do is, you know, have to check three bags on United and I'm good. Jet Blue is. Is a little Bit different. But you know that like, you look at the whole package with the travel cards, not just the rewards points you get because you might get early boarding, you might get the ability to reserve a seat without, you know, without having to pay extra for it, those sorts of things. The JetBlue card qualifies you, I think, for Blue plus at the same price as blue or something like that. There's, there's.

Oh, you'll even get like. Yeah, I mean, I, we just went through an experience with, you know, canceled flights and this when my daughter was calling, it was a 45 minute wait. And when Renee called because she's a gold. What do they call that? Mosaic member, which is their, their program, her weight was like three minutes.

That's right. So, yeah, look at, look at what it gets you. But you know, we, I needed another card and I needed a MasterCard for. Or a not American Express card, I should say. Yeah. For one of the businesses. Because we, we have somebody in Canada know American Express is American, it's not Canadian and so there's not a whole lot of options to use it there. So it's like, oh, okay, I'll go get a, you know, a MasterCard. And I thought, well, I'll just get the Citibank one because I've, I've had that with other businesses. And I thought, well, let me take a look. And in doing the research, sort of fresh. You're right. Your comment about these cash back cards, it's really interesting and they're not always cash. That's the thing you want to look at because getting cash back to your point might be a taxable event, but getting gift cards or using that quote unquote cash back to fund a travel balance with which you are buying a hotel.

That's right.

You give you statement credit, you get a state. Yeah. So there's different ways of utilizing that cash back and I'm eager to try it. We wound up going with the Chase Inc. Business Unlimited card.

Oh yeah.

And you know, that one seemed, I'm curious to see because it's a very different experience for me. Right. With all the other ones I mentioned, I earn points at a very specific brand and I know how to spend those points. This is going to be far more open ended and so I'm curious to see what it's like to manage that process with those points that we're earning and that sort of thing.

Yeah, that's cool. We're setting up a page at BusinessShow Co to list these credit card information and Be a great place to update your experience or how it worked for you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I will. Yeah, yeah. I'll be sure to, to, to share my, share my experiences here. Yeah.

So the specific types of cards, I, I really love American Express for a couple of reasons. One is they allow those interstatement payments as often as you want to make them every 24 hours. But they're also, in my experience have been the most understanding of small businesses. They, they are the quickest to assign you a representative once you've hit a certain level. So you have somebody you can just call or email. There is no set limit. You can provide your financials and they will set your, you know, your spending based on that as you, you know, progress. Because if you start out, you may start out low, but every 30 days you can request a limit increase until you get to at least where you want to go. And then they'll just start, they'll just start giving it to you. I have that Bonvoy card that used to be the Marriott or the American Express Starwood. Yeah, I love that card. There's some tremendous benefits.

It's still my default. That. Yeah, Bonvoy card for sure.

The golden age of that card I think has kind of passed sort of.

Yeah, they've got me roped into it. Like I'm, I'm really used to the benefits that I get.

Me too. There are some really great benefits and if you love to travel, if you love upgrades, if you want to stay in better hotel rooms, if you want to fly, you know, fly on, on the nicer flights, that, that is just some a card I think everybody can have or should have. The, the standard American expresses have their membership rewards programs and there are some benefits to that that you can look into if you know it's a little more open. But there are bonuses when you use that Bonvoy Marriott, Starwood, American Express that are unlike any other card. The, you know, one of the big ones is when you transfer points out to an airline partner. They, they give you a 5,000 point bonus for every 25,000 points you transfer. So it's, it's fantastic. It really helps you build up your points to get better flights.

There were people, that's why I moved to that one, because I had the American American Airlines 1. And I realized, wait a minute, if I spend the money on the Bonvoy card, I get an extra 25% coming in and earning towards that second million mile mark. It was like, well that's the way easier way to get there. That's the deal. Yeah. So, yeah, learning these ins and outs, it really. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I also have seen far more bonuses offered now when you sign up the cart, these affinity cards, it seemed to be. Have gotten pretty competitive. So, you know, I was just at the Giants game last week and you know, there was a hundred thousand point bonus when you signed up for a particular Chase Card, cash back card. And I thought I was like, man, that's pretty significant. That's a lot. Now, lots of limits on the card. And that's what I would suggest is you really gotta break it down. You almost have to build yourself a spreadsheet or look at it and say, okay, what, what do I want? You know, okay, here's a 200 bonus for signing up like Citi. The Citi Double Cash card has, you know, 1 to 3% back and they pay you when you spend or they give you the 1% when you spend and they give it to you again when you pay your bill. So it's a incentive and that's interesting.

Yeah.

You know, and then there's some other. The Capital One Quicksilver cash rewards. One and a half percent on everything. Cash back. There's no caps.

Yeah, you really need to look at that cap. Yep.

There's lots of them. Will just limit you. And that.

Are these, are these business cards? Because I had just regular cards. Okay. Because I had an issue like when I was going through this recently and I wound up with that Chase Inc. Business Unlimited credit card, there were options for personal cards that I. That were more attractive to me, but if I wanted it in the business, you know, associated with the business, where I could have employee cards and things like that.

Yes.

Then you know, my options were different. I don't want to say they were limited, but they were different. And so that's where I wound up with the. Because I saw that City Double Cash, I'm like, oh, I kind of like that. And then I looked, I'm like, ah, that. That one doesn't pan out the same way if I go the business route. But that Chase Inc. Business card was like, that's the one. So, yeah, you got it. Yeah, you got to look. Because they're like the Bonvoy cards, personal and business, they're both available and basically the same. Right. Like you, you know, in terms of the rewards with some of these others, it's like sometimes they're just not even available as a business card. So you just got to be aware.

If you look at limits as well, one of the ways you can get around those limits is that you can get a card and your wife can get a card.

Yes.

And so we've done that a number of times. And it'll expand your, you know, your spending power and all that. So there's all kinds of ways to kind of hack the system. There's another amex called Annex Blue Cash Preferred and there's some really nice sign up bonuses for that one as well. And some very interesting. That one has 20% off Amazon purchases for the first six months and there's some caps in there. I think it's not a huge amount of money, but it's something. And another card I really like is if you're a Costco purchase person, you know, they have this Costco anywhere, Visa you get. And if you're buying lots of gas, maybe you're, you're out in trucks if you're in that kind of business or you're driving salespeople around, I don't know. But you get 4% back on gas purchases up to $7,000 annually. That could be significant. And then you get another 2% back on Costco purchases and 1% on everything. And you can either get cash you want, they give you a reward certificate, you can cash it in, or you can use it at Costco, whatever you want. But I think it's, it's a good card. And we're going to put, we'll put all this up on business Show Co for you. And where's it going to be, Dave? What's the URL going to be?

It'll be BusinessShow Co rewards cards.

Perfect, right? Yeah, that sounds great. BusinessShow Co rewards cards. Sure, that sounds great. We'll get it to you if we.

Can come up with something better. We'll, we'll put it in both places. Yeah, that's right.

Perfect, Perfect. And one of the key takeaways, you know, this is something that you really need to do for yourself and your family, for your kids as soon as you possibly can. Because I know you're spending the money anyway and everything. Every time you spend a dollar you should ask, can I use that card there? You know, my wife used to just, just was a zealot of it at the time. Like, wait, we're going to the movies, we're using this card. We're going to go to the drive through, we're using the card. No cash for this stuff. But the key takeaway is this concept only works if you pay these cards in full each month or you know, inter statement as well. Because you can't carry a balance because you're going to get killed on the interest.

Right.

If you, if you need to carry a balance and use it for financing, well, that's a different search, a different type of card. You're looking for the lowest interest rate. Or you can use like Amex has a card that I really like called the Plum, where you get, you charge everything up, same thing, no limits. They'll give you. That card has had the highest limit on it or the highest charging capacity is I think they call it, of any card I've ever had and, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Interesting.

If you pay it off within 10 days of your statement, you get a 1.5% cash back, which is awesome. If you decide that, wow, tapped this month, I'm not going to be able to pay it off early. You can carry a balance for 60 days with zero interest.

Oh, wow.

And that could be a big deal if you're buying, like I mentioned, buying products and doing things, you know, I used to buy tons of store returns from places like Best Buy and Target and you name it, Staples and all those big companies would take our credit card once we had a relationship with them. And, you know, so if you need to charge a hundred thousand dollars and you could carry it for 60 days, that's a big deal.

Oh, yeah.

So we'll link that Plum card in there as well. So that tactic or that concept is different than, you know, but you can also run them parallel. Right. We have both. We have the Plum and you know, a standard that Bonvoy American Express. And they both have just allowed us to live a charmed life well beyond, you know, typical earnings. And people all, everybody would always say, how do you guys do it? How do you fly to Italy? First class and this and for this day and all these. And I'll just say, well, let me show you. Yeah, don't pay. I don't pay cash for those now. Much harder to do it if you're, you know, just a regular person doing in your personal life. But you can still, you can still do it. Yeah, you just take a little longer.

Yeah, you just got to be a little. Yeah, that's right.

No, I'm paying my son's tuition with my card and there's, there's no fees. It's another thing.

You'll see now, some colleges don't. Don't charge a fee. Some, Many do, but some do. That's right.

My daughter's in Marymount, Manhattan. They charged a flat $50 the first year, it's unbelievable. Phenomenal. So we charge that the next year they started 3%. Oh my, my sons doesn't charge anything. So it's great.

I think that's awesome, man. Yeah, this is good.

So look at that. If you have tips, if we miss things, if we didn't mention a card that you love Feedbackus show co, we'd love to hear from you. We'll get this, you know, credit card information up on at Business Show Co rewards cards so you can review it and we'd love to hear from you.

Yeah, we, yeah, absolutely. Let us know what your favorite is. I we, you know, we hit some of the highlights here, but certainly not even all of the highlights and definitely not all of them. So what do you use? Feedbackusiness Show. We'd love to know. Thanks so much for listening, folks. Make sure to check out our sponsor, of course, LinkedIn.com SBS and hey, keep, keep living that charmed life. These credit cards are going to help fly to Italy first class. Doesn't get any better than that. Good stuff.