Naming Your Business and Credit Card Rewards – Small Business Show 49

Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business show, episode number 49 here at BusinessShow. Co for Wednesday, January 13, 2016 here in Durham, New Hampshire.

I'm Dave Hamilton, and from Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. That's quite a mouthful. I'm always impressed. It's a good way to start the show when you can roll that all off.

Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking about three words ahead of myself, and I'm doing that pretty good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I'm trying not to get tongue twisted. You know, that's actually the hardest thing I learned, or I had to learn when I started podcasting. And I say I had to learn. I still have it to learn. I speak too quickly and. And I can't always keep up with, you know, where I am. And that's when you get tongue twisted. It. So if you. If you slow yourself down, it's actually much easier to formulate thoughts and do all of that.

But, yeah, that is good.

Easier said than done.

I find my. Yeah. See, my problem is I start chatting and I get, I'm sure, so enamored with hearing my own voice that it leads me down some path. And then I forget what the original question or comment was, but I've taken it into a whole nother direction.

Yeah.

So sometimes I have to, like, wait, wait, what do we start talking about here?

So when we started doing this show, and this isn't necessarily, you know, the podcast Geek Gab, although I have a logo in the domain for that, so. So that perhaps is a show coming soon.

Yeah, we go.

But I. I never did this with Matt Geek Gab, which is a show I've been doing, you know, coming up on 11 years. But when we started doing this show, and then when I started doing Git Gab, which is the other show I started almost exactly the same time as this one last year, I realized what I need to have in front of me is a pad of paper or just a. Honestly, it's often a sticky note. Yeah. And I just jot down, you know, the thoughts because what I don't want to do is interrupt you while you're speaking, but. And I. And I also don't want to stop listening to you because I had a thought that I'm desperately trying to hold onto. And a piece of paper is perfect for that. You know, you just write it down and then you can come back to it or not, it doesn't matter, you know, but it frees me from that. And then I can just be present in the Moment. And it's all good.

Yeah, that's very good. Great advice.

So we. We were supposed to have an interview today, and. And the Skype gods frowned upon us is what they did.

Yes.

So we will have. Rob Godoro from JustLux.com will join us hopefully soon, because as a fellow publisher, I'm quite eager to speak with you.

That's true.

And also. And I know that's actually not the reason you even brought him in or invited him to the show. He's run several businesses throughout his career, and so there's lots that we have to talk to with Rob, but today is obviously not that day, but you and I have some house cleaning to do. Not house cleaning, housekeeping to do.

That's good, because I don't like house cleaning, but housekeeping is fine.

Housekeeping is fine. Sure. So there's two things I want to talk about today. Number one is we started this conversation about a month and a half ago about potentially renaming this show, and then that was the last our listeners have heard of it. And to be honest, it's the last you or I had ever heard of it.

That's right.

So we need to do that. And then I want to revisit a topic that I know is near and dear to our hearts, and that is credit cards, and specifically rewards credit cards, and which ones are the best ones to use. Because I think you and I. Well, you know, we'll get there. We'll get there.

But I. Yeah, that sounds great.

Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about this name thing first, because we really. Since you last heard about it, folks, we really haven't.

We haven't. And. Which. Which kind of probably leads. Or at least my thought pattern is that, you know, we really still haven't landed on something that we were really excited about. Yeah. And. And, you know, we started it as dba, you know, doing business as. Which is. I. I liked that. It was catchy and everything, but it's a little bit outdated. Not a lot of people know even what it is anymore, I guess. And most people are doing LLCs and this kind of thing. And then as the year progressed, you know, we decided you went to a podcast show, did some things, and came back. So, you know, really, it's.

It's.

It's the small business show, which I completely agreed. So we kind of switched that, but I'm the one who brought that up later in the year, it's like, you know, with all these interviews and with our thoughts and our. You know, it's kind of Like, I believe I made the suggestion, you know, the voice of small business or small business voices, something like that. But I'm not sure that grabbed you either. I think we're on a. A path here. I'm just not sure we've gone all the way down it to find a name that really defines what we do.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I. I always talk about us as business geeks. So there. There is that. Right? There's business geeks. And businessgeeks.com is for sale at the moment. We can buy it for 700 bucks if the. If the owner of it is listening, that price just went up.

That's right. Yeah, I know how that. I know how that works.

Same.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Let's not both bid on it.

Shannon. No, no.

Yeah. I made friends with a guy named Dave Hamilton last year. He found me on Facebook a couple of weeks after I bought davehamilton.com and he and I were evidently bidding against each other.

Oh, no.

For the name. So, yeah, he cost me. He cost me quite a bit of money. But I won the domain and, you know, we're friends now. It's all good.

Yeah. Now that you're in control.

Well, well. But he's in control of his thousand bucks, and I'm in control of the domain name. So, you know, I don't know. I don't know which one of us won.

That's right.

And actually, I do know who won. Godaddy won. That's what.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. And not long after that, I just. Because I've been looking for my name, you know, Shannon gene.comforever, and it just was never available. And literally a week after you told me that story, I said, I'll just take a look. And it available. And I bought it for 10 bucks.

Yeah, I was several orders of magnitude above you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I do like the geek concept. I do think we are geeks about business. That was what drove me to reach out to you to start this show, to not only kind of reconnect with you, because we've had a number of business ventures in the past and wanted us to get something going again. But also what I realized is I was at the point in, you know, my. My business lifespan, if you will, after running a number of companies that I really enjoy talking about and learning a lot about other. Other folks and their experiences. And I've made this comment before. I mean, I have definitely learned the most on these shows, and we've had some great interviews, and some of those Folks, you know, was going to ask to come back and give us updates on what they're doing. And so we do kind of geek out on the whole business concept. And, you know, I think I'd be. That's an. It's an interesting angle.

So there's business geeks. You know me, I'm all about branding, so. Yeah. And I mentioned Podcast Geek Gab earlier. In this episode, there is Business Geek Gab, which is available for far less than 700 bucks because no one owns it at the moment. So I'm probably gonna go and grab that anyway.

Sure.

So that. By the time. But you know that. I know you know this, Shannon, but for the benefit of our listeners, I grab domains all the time, and I'm sure you do, too. That doesn't mean anything. It just means that I don't want to make a decision about it right now.

Yeah, yeah. And I. We'd love some feedback, you know, right now that, you know, you want to, you know, send us some info to feedbackusinessshow.co. we'd love to get, you know, what, what the show has done for you or what you've liked about it. What, what focus do you think it really has? And maybe that'll guide us in choosing a name and looking at what it, you know, what I want is. I really want the name to say what it is we do. And I've always, you know, I've started businesses and one of the first things I always focus on is we need a good name. We need a good logo, and that really is just a personal thing. I want a name that I can tell people and they get it immediately. Oh, I know. I understand what Tech Restore does. I understand when we started Mac Rescue. I understand what Mac Rescue is. I understand what, you know, Rebound Trading is. You know, we're a trading business. We buy and sell things. I mean, all those kinds of things. So if we can, you know, you know, wrap it around that, I think it's much easier to get our message out.

Yeah, I know the name is important, for sure. Yeah. But it, but it, It's. It's not the most important thing.

It's true. It's not. Yeah, it's not. Yeah, but give us some feedback, folks. And then Dave, we promised. Dave and I promised to. Then we will talk about it again off air and make some decisions and we'll come back and report and you can tell us if we've, you know, if we done a great job, screwed it up. You never know. You never know. You never know.

You never know. It's true. It's true. All right, well, I guess that's as far as that one goes today.

Yeah. I mean, if. If you'd like to, you know, what's your. What's in your wheelhouse? I know you like the gab, the geek thing. I think that's great. Business Geek Gab. I'm not sure. It's a little long.

It's a little long. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it is. It's a mouthful.

Yeah. Biz Geek Gap or something like that, I think is if we can shorten it up a little bit, then I think that's, you know, the. The.

I have. I have no emotional attachment to Business Geek Gap. I do own it now, by the way.

I figured you were doing that.

A little distracted there. Yeah, yeah. It's just easier.

Yeah.

That's not the first time in a decade that I've bought a domain while podcasting.

Yeah, I'm sure.

Yeah. It happens all the time.

That's how your domain list builds up to hundreds and hundreds of domains, and what starts out as very little or very small, and then all of a sudden you get the renewal notice. You're like, wait, that's. That's like $600.

Yeah, that's the problem. Yeah, exactly. No, but I'm not enamored with fits. Right. And it's a very comfortable concept for me, only because of where I come from. But. But yeah. All right, let's.

Let's.

Let's. Because I think it's. It sends the. It communicates the right message. So how can we communicate that message more efficiently is. Is really the key.

Yeah, I like Biz Geek Gab. I think that rolls off the mouth pretty well.

Geek B I Z. Yeah. Yeah.

Bsc. Yeah, yeah. When you're talking, it does, but, you.

Know, it reads weird is the thing, so. But, you know, I don't know. Do we. Well, we've already proven that we own Business Geek Gab, so that's good. Do we make the domain Business Geek Gab and we call it Biz Geek Gab? I don't know. It sounds that. No, that doesn't work.

Yeah, yeah. Business Geek Gab. Yeah. Business Geek Gab. Yeah. I'm gonna have to kind of do my yellow pad putting a bunch of these domain down with that word geek and Geek Gab. And why don't we do that? And when, you know, on the next show, we'll revisit it. We'll kind of. Yeah. We'll winnow it down and we'll we'll pick something. But I do think that we need to embrace something that says a little bit more about what it is we're, what we're doing.

Yeah. Because Small business show certainly is. It's too generic. I think that's right.

I do too. I do too. Yeah.

All right. I, I promised that I wanted to talk about credit cards or I mentioned that I want to talk about credit cards. But I'm going to approach this from a slightly different angle. I read very, very few print publications these days. I have, I believe there are two of them that arrive at my home for me. One is Modern Drummer. I've been, you know, I am a drummer and I've been subscribed to that for I think, three decades, probably almost. Actually it would be exactly three decades because I've been playing the drums for 30 years and I like that. I don't always get to read it cover to cover, but I like it. I also subscribe to, and that's a monthly publication these days. I also subscribe to something called Bottom Line Personal, which comes out every two weeks. And it's usually, you know, about 15 pages, 16, because, you know, they're double sided and that's how that works and full of tiny little tidbit type articles that, some of which are completely, you know, of no interest to me and some are just awesome. And they're all like, you know, one to three paragraph articles with the exception of an, you know, maybe, maybe two feature articles which might span a page. Have you ever heard of Bottom Line Personal?

No, never have.

It's a fascinating publication. Yeah, it's, it's, it's one of my favorites because, because it's just full of tips. And they, they've expanded because, you know, they're smart business folks and so they have Bottom Line Health and Bottom Line this and Bottom Line that. But Bottom Line Personal is the one that, that they started with. And it, it really is. I've tried the others, you know, over the years and they just didn't stick for me. But, but there's business tips, there's investing tips, there's, you know, personal tips. I mean, sometimes they're giving you tips about your sex life in the same issue that they're giving you tips about stocks. You know, it's just all over the map. But it's really, really good stuff. And I always find at least one thing, usually probably about five to ten things in any issue that just, you know, capture me. And I usually read it while I'm eating breakfast or lunch in the kitchen at the house.

And how long have you been a subscriber?

Wow.

Years.

Oh, decades. Yeah, probably. I think my dad started me on. Must have. It might have been 20 years ago, but certainly 10 to. Certainly more than 10. Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah.

That's cool. That's always the test. The test to me is, okay, how long have you been reading it and everything? So certainly that passes the test.

It does. And I gave a subscription to. I usually give a subscription to my employees or some of my employees. Not all of them, but the people that a conversation like this will make me think, oh, I should send a subscription to, Shannon. And then you probably will get one, because that's just how it works.

Don't send me one because I'm signing up right now.

Okay, all right, well, fair enough.

That's how we roll.

I'm glad we, I'm glad we had this conversation because otherwise. Yeah, I would have sent you one and you'd have to.

That's right.

Yeah.

Yes.

But that, you know, it's that kind of thing. Like, I'll share a tip with one of my employees and realize, ah, wait a minute, you know, if they, if it resonates well with them, then boom, okay, you're on the list, you know, and that's it. So, yeah, you know, and so they had an article about the best credit cards for 2016, which, of course captures my attention because, you know, I'm a credit card. I'm a rewards card junkie or geek, rather, like you. Yeah.

Yep.

And, and the interesting thing, and they talk about all kinds of things and rewards cards and, and their articles are on the web, so we will put a link to this particular article, you know, for you there. And it's probably true that you could just get this for free, but I don't know, there's something about reading it on paper that for this type of content works really well for me. You and I were. I, I believe we followed the same path. We were. We are currently focusing most of our efforts with the Starwood rewards cards from, From American Express. Right. That's what I'm doing. Is that what you're doing, Shannon?

That's right. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Prior to that, were you an American Airlines cardhold, you know, Citibank cardholder? I was, yeah.

We hit Citibank, and then we also just had, you know, the regular American Express, you know, membership rewards at that, we used to use that.

Okay. So you and I have followed a very similar path. I, I, I am pretty sure that you're the One that kind of hit me to the fact that I should move from the, the American Airlines City card to the Starwood amex card because I can get the same benefit from it for. Actually you can get slightly more of a benefit.

More. That's right.

Yeah. I read these articles occasionally and they pop up everywhere. The points guy talks about them and they, you know actually I'd love to have the points guy on this show that he would be a great guest. Yep. And, and but there's never like in the last three years I have had not seen the Starwood rewards card show up on any of these lists.

Yeah, that's interesting. I was just looking at the article that you pointed and it will link on the website and I don't see it up there either.

No. And they talk about a lot of different cards in this article. The interesting. I mean and, and, and actually quite a few of them are interesting. They, they really kind of lean people towards the cash back cards for, for personal stuff. And, and they say the best card for cashbacks cash back is the Citi Double Cash MasterCard which gives you 2% cash back on all purchases. No caps on how much you can earn.

That. Yeah, the cap is really important and the one thing I don't see here that's also important to figure out is if they let you do inter statement payments that will reset your limit or whatever you get. Especially when you, if you just add this card and let's say they give you a, I don't know, whatever twenty thousand dollar limit and you have a business like in my case where you're you know, putting you know, tens of that 50,000, $80,000 a month on credit cards to pay bills like UPS, FedEx, all kind of stuff. You, you can live with a smaller limit as long as you can make payments every 24 hours.

That's right.

And some of these cards that I, I do know that's a way they put kind of this. They say no cap but they'll only let you make one payment every 30 days. Which is kind of how they, they have. They, they limit you.

That's how they. There is a cat, there's a throttle. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.

And you want to ask about that? I'm not sure. And article. I don't know if they talk about it or not.

There's not one mention of it in here. No, that, not that I. Yeah, yeah.

It's a critical part of any card you make like with you know, the SPG card. Well, you can, if you have a $50,000 limit, you can go spend 50 grand and go transfer from your, your, you know, bank and pay it off and then use it again tomorrow.

That's right.

So, so you want to do that. And it's, it's interesting that they don't, that they don't mention that.

But no, it didn't, it didn't come up at all. At least I don't recall it in here. You know, it, there might have been something at the very end of the article where they say hey, by the way, but I'm looking and there's no hey, by the way.

And maybe, maybe they all allow it now. Maybe, maybe I'm outdated. You never know. So you just want to check and be sure.

Yeah, yeah. So there's, there's that one they, they talk about and then they kind of categorize it down. They say the best gas card, you know, and, and they've, they've their best gas card that can be used at any gas station is the Pen Fed Platinum Cash Rewards plus Visa. I'm not going to go into crazy details but you know, it's 5% cash back on, on gas purchases, which can be a lot. Again, you know, if you've got a fleet of vehicles out there that can be a lot.

Oh, that's a big deal. Yeah, for sure, for sure.

They say for travel rewards, the city. Thank you. Premier MasterCard offers 3 points per dollar spent on travel related expenses and 2 points on meals and entertainment and then 1 point on others. So, and the points are not capped so that, you know, another good one and then the one that sort of caught my eye and made me think, whoa, we need to talk about this again. Is the, what they call the best credit card for small business. They say it's the Chase Inc. Cash visa. It offers 5% cash back at office supply stores and on cell phone and Internet bills on, but they do have a cap on up to 25,000 spent per year, 2% cash back at gas stations and restaurants. Up to 25,000 spent per year and 1% on everything else. No limit.

Interesting. Yeah, I think the, the, the takeaway for me is that there is no one right card for everybody. You know, like when I look at this travel card that they have. Yeah, I, I only travel basically with my points and, and, and this kind of thing. So this car even, it pays you a lot extra when you buy travel, when you pay for travel expenses, hotels, airfares, which is great. So you know, you have to analyze the way you spend money and like to your point, Dave, if you've got a fleet of trucks out there because you're in some kind of service industry, a 5% off gas could be a big deal for you.

Oh, that could be. That could be, you know, 5% straight to your bottom line, I mean.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Search by line. And then I know that, you know, for us and we've talked about this before, we've often tried to come up with, you know, completely legal ways though to limit your, the income you may take out of your business that's heavily taxed, but at the same time increasing your lifestyle.

Right.

And certainly many of these points card in the affinity cards definitely fall into that category where you're getting a benefit and you're truly getting that full dollar value instead of paying, you know, 30 or 40% in federal taxes plus any state if you have to, which is 13.3% in California, by the way.

Yeah.

Just hate to say that, but so you know, you really, you can realize much more value by taking those perks as a benefit. You know.

That's right. No, it's totally true. I'm flying out in the morning to Mexico with Lisa and the flights were all rewards points.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah, yeah.

I was stupid and didn't book it when I should have. We're going for it. Well, it's a holiday weekend first of all. And so I, and, and then it's also for this festival that we're going, this music festival that we're going to and the fish. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah.

That's awesome. That's awesome.

I should have booked the flights when. And this is actually, we'll go down this tangent because it's worth it. When you're booking rewards flights on American Airlines, you can hold them for five days. That's a long time.

Just with a phone call.

No, online.

Oh, online.

And you. And, and, and you don't have to, I mean you don't have to book. You get a 24 hour hold if you're going to pay cash for a ticket. But if you're doing rewards. Yeah. So what I should have done was lock these in before the tickets went on sale for this, this event. I didn't. Yeah, you know, I was busy. I don't know.

Sure, sure.

You know, and, but what I did do and it didn't work out for me this time was every five and you know, they, your order will automatically expire if you put it on hold and you book everything, seats, you Know, you hold all that you want and then, you know, after five days, if you haven't gone back and quote unquote, purchased it, which is, you know, committed your points and gotten your tickets, then it, it just goes away. And so every five days, I just put it on my calendar to go in and rebook the thing and kind of kick the can down the road because I was buying with, you know, anytime rewards. Right. And I didn't want to pay anytime prices. I wanted to pay, you know, the, the, the, the cheaper prices, the, you know, the mile saver prices or whatever it was. Right. It didn't work out for me. I, I paid any and, you know, I'm okay with it, but I, it didn't hurt to just keep kicking the can down the road, except I screwed it up by one day. And it was, I knew I was, I knew it was going to happen because it was like over Christmas and through New Year's and it, you know, things were weird. And I was doing, actually I was doing Matt Key Cab and it hit me, I was like, oh, my gosh, they expired at midnight last night. You know, and I had it like reminders on my calendar. I don't know how I screwed it up. I don't know how I didn't see it, but I knew it was going to happen. And then to add insult to injury, so I, you know, we finished the show, I went downstairs to the office, I rebooked it, and I noticed that, like, the seat I was holding decent seats on these flights, and some of those were gone. We still have fantastic seats. We're all in, you know, we're either in first class or, you know, the extra leg room section, it's all fine. Yeah, but some of those were gone. Yep.

Yeah.

And in 11 hours, right? It was, this was 11:00am and dang it. But. So I rebooked them and was fine. And then when I went to, you know, and then I set my reminder five days later, I go and I realized I booked for the wrong date. Yeah. So I don't know if the seats that I held were actually gone after 11 hours, but, but certainly after five days they were.

Oh, my gosh. That's classic.

So you got to be careful, right?

Yeah, you do. Yeah.

And I kn. I, I was 100 aware of the risk. So it was like, whatever, you know, my wife, I tell my wife, the, the result of my error is that on a few of the flights we have to sit next to each other. We like, we like to sit across the aisle from each other.

I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

So we have to sit next to each other. You know, that's a good story, but. Yeah, but, you know, but that's, that's where your rewards points can take you.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

So this is, it's an interesting topic. The other card I want to throw into the mix here, Shannon, is the AMEX Platinum card. If, if you are, you know, especially if you're an American Airlines customer, you get, you get a free pass. It's a $450 a year fee, you know, to, to have this card. But they waive your application fee for global entry. Right. Which is 100 bucks, but only every five years. So it's, you know, it's really only worth 20 bucks a year. They, you get a free Admirals Club pass.

Oh, that's a big deal.

Yeah, it is. And there's, there's, there's a couple other things too. You get some, some they'll cover, I think up to 2 or 300 bucks worth of like travel fees on an airline, like luggage fees and you know, that kind of thing, which if, depending on your status with the airline, can, can certainly add up.

All that stuff adds up. And it all is, you know, using those cards. I don't want to beat a dead horse, but, you know, you're, you're using those which otherwise you'd be paying with, with. If you're expensing them for your business is one thing, but if you're paying for them personally, you're paying for them with after tax dollars, which is never a good way to really ma, you know, those dollars. So.

Right.

All those fees and all that stuff, it really adds up. Really adds up.

Yeah.

And you know, one of the other ones that I always bring up, I've mentioned here before, but is, and you don't hear a lot about it, but it's the American Express, the Plum card. And if you're a business, especially that, that buys inventory and your suppliers will take, you know, your MX, the plum gives you 2%. Well, if you're grandfathered in, it's 2%. I believe right now it's probably either one or one and a half, depending upon your situation. 2% back if you pay within 30 days of using the card or you'll get net 60. You can choose. You can defer for 60 days after the bill comes due.

Wow.

It's very powerful. So if, especially if you, I mean, like in, you know, my business, we move lots of stuff quickly. So 60 days is a lifetime and that this card has no limit. So it's all based on your financials. You give them to amex, they look at, they ask you for an update. You know, once a year, if you do some significant volume, you get a rep that is in touch with you. And it's a fantastic card. You either take the cash back or, you know, run it for. Do the 60 day deferral and flip your inventory a number of times and it works out great. I really like it.

Huh? Oh, that's. Wow.

And then one last pitch, I'll say for the SPG card. And I don't know if you've ever done any of these, Dave, but if you go to moments.com, you know what SPG has. Have you ever used the Moments service?

I know what they are, but yeah, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So what, what SPG does is they build these experiences, they call them moments, and you can bid your points to, to go to different places. And we're always watching it. We've seen concerts and trips and different things. And you know, jumping up there right now you can get a lu luxury suite for, you know, NBA basketball game. There's an Italian cooking class which Michelin starred chef, this guy, I don't know if you know, at, at the St. Regis in Florence. And you can play, you know, at these golf classics. There's, there's one here being insider and ride in a Mardi Gras parade. So if you're really into Mardi Gras, you can do it, you know. And right now the bid is sitting at 22,500 points. So if you.

That's not very much.

Yeah, it's not, it's not very. Like any auction, nothing really matters until about the last 20 seconds.

That, that's to, to go back to, to the beginning of the show when we were talking about domain names. My Dave, the davehamilton.com was, I think at about, you know, 80 bucks until the last five minutes. And, and by the time it all ended, it was I think 980. But yeah, yeah, it didn't quite hit the, the thousand dollar mark, but, but we, we danced closely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're trying to get you to burn some points. But sometimes the concert, like we went to a Sting and Annie Lennox concert a few years back and it's a full VIP package. You know, you get treated really well. Usually you get food and you may get backstage and all this kind of stuff. And it's just, I think we for that show, I think it was like. I think it was like 5,000 points. It was really low. So anyway, it's worth looking into and it makes it kind of interesting and you can, you know, I always hang out up on this website and see, and sometimes you. You jump on something that really has some interest for you. I had some friends that went to the Country Music Awards one year with the package and they loved it. They got to meet all these people and everything. So it's cool.

I gotta. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They. I mean, they clearly know their. I was gonna. What I was gonna say is, I gotta do this. Wow. I can't believe, you know, it's an auction. It's all of this stuff. And then it hit me. They clearly know their clientele, right?

Oh, yeah. They're trying to get your account balance down. You know, they're all, oh, that would be fun. That would be good. And a lot of them, you know, that are in. It's definitely international, you know, and many of them do not include the airfare. So, you know, you're going to use some more points and get that stuff and That's Right. But there's a lot of fun stuff, you know, if you're into sports, I mean, right now there's about 40 different sports packages up there, everything from hockey. Catch a chalk, talk with Mike Ricker. Enjoy the Rangers at Madison Square Garden, February 2016. You know, it's at a thousand. A thousand star points right now.

This is the problem.

Caused you a problem, right?

If you told my son about that, you'd cause me a problem. No, I'll tell him about it. That's great. But it's fun. And you go, you know, and actually, this. It's a whole other conversation, but my. My initial thought was, why don't I carve out, you know, and tell. Tell my son, hey, look, you go bid this experience, what that's like. And you know, your cap is, I don't know, whatever, 40,000 points. You know, you will come up with some number and you can bid up to that, but don't necessarily bid it all up front. Learn your lessons with this. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I do the same with my son on ebay. You know, we just do not pay retail here. And so when he wants something new, even if it's his own money, he was just dying to get an Xbox One. I said, okay, you saved your money and everything, but you're just not going to go spend 500 bucks. I mean, we're not going to do it. So you got to go on ebay. What's the deal? You're gonna buy an open box. You're gonna buy this or that. And teaching your kids the real value is, I think, really, it's valuable.

It. It is. Yeah. I, I, I felt, I felt bad last night, but I felt good. My daughter is really into, and I know this show's all over the place. She's really into this planner thing that, that she does where she prints out, like, these stickers and puts them in her paper planner. And it's great for. She's been doing it for, like, the last year, and she plans every week. She spends like an hour or two on Sunday and, and, and enjoys it, and it keeps her schedule good. But all these stickers cost money, and she's been buying them from, like, Etsy shops and whatever, and it's fine. She found, you know, she said, I want to start making my own stickers. I'm like, yeah, great. She found the printer for, you know, that, that these people use. Well, you print on inkjet printer, but then you have to cut the stickers out. And she found this printer. It's called the Cricut printer. C R, I, C T. Yeah. And it does these what they call kiss cuts, where it only cuts the top layer and it leaves the back layer of the sticker, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

And, and, but last night, she got all excited. She's like, I found it this one store local to us. It's normally a $250 thing. They have a hundred bucks off. And she, like, you know, worked out this whole deal. And, you know, I realized that for work, I could probably have gotten this thing for free as a review.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it was like, okay, what do I do?

You know, like, you wouldn't have it tomorrow, Dave. That's the problem.

That's the problem. Exactly. Yeah. So I, I backed off. I'm like, you know what? She went. She found a deal. She didn't just spend her money when it was burning a hole in her pocket. And, and the reality is, if it was a review unit, a, you know, I don't like to abuse that privilege of mine. But, but also, you know, they, they wouldn't necessarily. Well, they would want a review of it. They would certainly want us to evaluate it from the standpoint of is this something we would tell our listeners or readers about? You know, and, and. And then they might also just want it back. Most of the time, you know, I would say half the time, stuff like that winds up going back so, you know. Yeah, like, it's like, I'm not gonna head down that path. But it was funny because I had gotten an email person within the last.

Like, three weeks, so that is too funny. Yeah, that's great.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, good. I think we covered some good topics here. You know, we're still hashing out our name, and we have the luxury of doing that because we, like, unlike, you know, most small businesses, we haven't printed up, you know, things. We haven't paid somebody, develop a logo. We haven't done all those things. So we are in a good position to try to finalize something so that we can build a really nice logo. You know, the one I slapped together is all right, but. And just kind of, you know, grow and expand. We're in our second year of the show now. I'm still having a great time, and that's the most important thing to me, so I'm ready to move forward. And then we, I think, really covered more on the credit card thing, and I'm sure we're going to talk about it again multiple times this year. It's a. It is a really important part of enriching your life in a various or, you know, varied amount, different way.

Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And send us in. You know, I'm curious. I mean, these articles are great and all of that, but I'm curious what you folks like. So send it in. Let us know. Feedbackusinessshow.co. let us know your favorite rewards credit card or your favorite rewards credit card story. We'd love to hear it. And we'll share it with. With everybody else. You know, so much was going on before the show. The one thing I didn't do was mute my phone.

I thought that was a bumper music.

Oh, that would be good. That's actually the bumper music for a different podcast.

Oh, got it, got it, got it. Right on. Well, thanks for joining us, folks, and have a great week. And we'll be back with you next week on the Small Business Show.