How to Fly $30,000 First Class for $4,000

We just believe that anyone can beat the airline system and take advantage of the loopholes and create Dreamtrips memories that last lifetime without paying 30 grand for a ticket.

You have a little story about helping Ari Fleischer when he wanted to go to the Game of Thrones tour. Back to Croatia, Dubrovnik, favorite place.

One of my favorite places ever to travel domestic routes. They have wide, the wide body, internationally configured aircraft and so. But, but what routes are they on? Right?

You know, one of my bucket list goals is to see.

You know, Ringo Starr before he's gone. And you know, originally I started looking at only in the States and I thought maybe I can get a use one of these strategies, do a points thing, go see him, whatever country he's.

Welcome to Capability amplifier. In this episode, you'll learn how to fly first and business class for little or no more than coach from the travel industry's longest running publisher. Now My guest is Mr. Upgrade Matt Bennett. And he and I are going to share with you how to get 20 to $30,000 international tickets for 70 to 90% off. Find massive hidden airline upgrades and valuable travel mindsets. Now you'll soon rethink the way you travel and create the most incredible experiences and memories you and your family will ever have. Now, heads of state, including Ari Fleischer, actress Rita Moreno, executives from Fortune 100 companies, professors, doctors, lawyers and thousands more go to him for his expertise and content. So by the end of the show, you'll find out how to buy miles to fly in style. Travel like a king, queen or a rock star. Create accidental bucket list experiences. Turn your business trip into a vacation. Find routes with the best seats and a lot more. So welcome my new friend, Mr. Upgrade Matt Bennett, founder of First Class flyer.com. how you doing man?

Hi. Good, good, great. Mike, Good to be with you.

Yeah, this is good. I've been looking forward to this. We've been able to test out some of these messages. You were at a mastermind with me last night and the first thing when you started talking, people just leaned in, they're like, tell me more what you got. So I think the first place to start here is you've got a certain mindset about what you believe and that's a good way to kick things off before we get into the big sharing.

Yeah, well, we just believe that anyone can beat the airline system and take advantage of the loopholes and create Dreamtrips memories that last lifetime without paying 30 grand for a ticket. We try to get those for for three grand or a $20,000 ticket for two. And so that's what we do. And it, you know, changes people's memory life.

Yeah, for sure. And you've been, you've been doing this now 26 years, publishing First ClassFlora.

Yeah dot com.

Right. But the, the story that led to this, I think your origin story is really great and I always have a hard time not talking about it because it's actually pretty good. But why don't we begin with your dad and then we'll get into, you know, how you developed the business and where it came from.

Well, my father was an entrepreneur, a small wheeler dealer, small business guy. And he would, amongst other, I mean he was a stainless steel sculptor, he painted indie race cars and he did a lot of things. And then he went out on his own and got in the business of buying surplus goods. Buy truckloads of distressed merchandise. Trucking companies for example, might have be shipping Crisco oil and one bottle breaks and gets oil on the box and you know, Safeway or the store won't take it. So the truck just distributor will have to, you know, find a home for it. And my dad would, would buy these things, sprinklers, ladders, you name it. Distressed goods. And we take them and go to flea markets and you know, and other we, on the weekends we might go to a government auction, you remember, in the back of the pot mechanics on how to make a L. So my father was just, you know, he taught us how to buy low and sell high. And you know, he said jokingly that on the Bennett coat of arms that Bennett's don't pay retail.

They love that.

So. And you know, that translated what we talk about as far as mindset is concerned is to realize that in the airline industry people realize that, you know, no, the person sitting next to them didn't pay what they did. So we all have that, that feeling, that sometimes, sometimes great feeling if you score, but if you didn't get a score, you're feeling like crap and you hate the airlines. And so you just take a negative mindset into the, the process of booking an airline ticket. And so realizing that the airline industry is like any other. There's wholesale and surplus markets for airline tickets for $30,000 airline tickets. And so that was sort of the genesis of having the mindset when I, you know, if you go into the next chapter of my life and what I did with the early days.

Yeah, well, that, that I think is, is where I want to go next. So you're 17 years old, you got a 92 mile an hour fastball pitch. You get recruited by the Kansas City Royals. How did the background you have blend and merge into what became First Class Flyer?

Yeah, it's kind of a, kind of an interesting story. So yeah, I signed a minor league contract with the Kansas City Rolls when I was 17 out of high school. And they would send you, they would give you, write you a check to get, to buy an airline ticket to get to spring training. They didn't want to deal with the logistics of airline tickets so they just gave you what they call walk up or full fare money. At the time it was like $650 for a one way ticket. And so if you give a 17 year old kid who you know we would only be making $850 a month. This is like 1993. Yeah. And so you don't get paid much in the minors and you only get paid 850amonth for half a year. So when they write you a check and they, and they tell you, you know, you keep the change if you get it for a little less, they gave you the maximum an airline ticket could possibly cost. And so you know, if you, if you do that you get, write a check to the guy whose dad says Bennett's don't pay retail. You know, not long later going to figure out how to get an airline ticket to spring training for as cheap as possible. And so a few years in the minor leagues, you know, six one way tickets later, I kind of figured a lot out about the airline industry and how not to pay retail. And so, so when I tendinitis I got sacked, you know, what do I do? Right? So I wasn't going to get a job. My father never had a job when you know, he was always just buying stuff blissfully unemployable. Yeah, yeah. So, so I'm sitting there like what do I do? What do I know? How to buy low that you know, most other people don't. And you know that was, that was an airline ticket, expensive airline tickets. And so you know, throw a few ads in the paper, start meddling around and that led to you know, helping people save money. But I wasn't really a sales guy and you know, flying and talking to individuals. So.

So you know, I thought well you don't want to sell the information. You know, I don't want to be selling one ticket at a time. So.

So wrote a few books, industry books for travel agents for I wrote the first directory of airline consolidators in like I don't 95 or something and worked well. Loved it. But the travel agency market target, you know, universe is quite small.

Right.

And they don't like paying for stuff. They're used to getting stuff for free. So I thought, well, so I published one more book, source book of wholesale travel. Did okay, but again, just not a big universe. So I thought, well, and you know, along the way I'm just learning, like really learning about how the industry works and, and then got into like a lot of business in first class because the tickets were expensive. Yeah. And so I thought, you know, the travel agency don't want to buy small market. Why don't I start a newsletter? Right. This is sort of back in like mid, late 90s and you know where. Well, they're still cool. So started the first class flyer and started selling the secrets and strategies and mindset. And this is 26 years ago.

And yeah, it's, it's, it's.

Praise God, I'm still here. Yeah.

It, it's an unbelievable story because what started out was a print newsletter, went to fax.

Yeah.

And then website. And you would have arguably had one of the first paid membership sites that were available. So why don't we dig into some of your strategies? Because I know that's what's going to get some people tickled by. But more importantly, what I want you kids at home to listen for is, are the mindsets. Because one of the things that I've learned after hanging out with Matt and working with him is it's not just the technique and the strategy. Cause he's got hundreds of them. And this is how he's made a living for a long time. And at this point, maybe as a point of reference, how many total upgrades do you think you've provided since you opened doors?

Millions and millions? I don't know. I think we've counted 7 million. Depending on how you look at it, could be 70 million. Right. And a lot of them, and especially in the early days, are still used today. And so sometimes they have a shelf life. The, the particular strategies, the mindsets are sort of timeless.

Yeah.

But we've had fortunately been recognized and fairly well circulated.

So one of the things that you did for me is, is we went and we, we spent a lot of time together, days now and going through inventorying some of these strategies. And I came up with five that I wanted you to share. So here's the first one. Cool strategy number one, Buy miles to fly in style strategy. So why don't you say, tell me first of all, what Is it, when do you use it, how's it work? And what are the savings? Like, what are the benefits?

Well, I mean, most people, when you think of accumulating miles, you think of flying or, you know, sometimes now with credit cards. So those are the typical way of, of earning airline miles. Well, you know, a lot of times these 30,000, $20,000 airline tickets are. You can use miles to redeem for them. Well, what if you haven't flown enough? Or what if you burnt all your miles on your last trip? You know, maybe you take, yeah.

Or you got like, you know, when we were doing, going through all my stuff, I've got a bunch of Delta points. They're worthless, basically. But other airlines are good and they're transferable, and you've educated me on those. So, yeah, I'm, I'm like, I, you know, you did an inventory. You're like, okay, here's what you're doing. Right. Here's what you're doing wrong. I'm like, so.

Well, certainly, I mean, miles and points, there's, there's higher value currencies, just like pounds and euros and pesos. Yeah. And, you know, Delta sky miles have been termed sky pesos because, you know, they're worth essentially a penny a piece.

Yeah.

But when you use miles and points on, you know, the right airlines, you can redeem them at the discounted price levels. When we can show you how to do that too. You know, you can get $0.10, $0.15 of value a mile as opposed to Delta's $0.01. You redeem them for the right things instead of just gift cards or car rentals. You know, we think that redeeming them for 20 and $30,000 tickets that you're going to remember. There's just some magic of when you're flying business or first class in an opulent Emirates, Singapore, Lufthansa, Japan Airlines, they just change the way you arrive. They, they change the way you return and make you feel good about, you know, flying to the other side of the world. Right. Who wants to, you know, if we could just beam us to the other side of the world, we'd travel much more often. And so how do we, you know, how do we get out the door as well? You make it in a really enjoyable experience. So back to the points is, yeah, credit card points are much more valuable because you can transfer them like Amex into, you know, over 20 different airline partners. So we love credit card points more than, more than airline points because you can kind of keep them in this Uber currency and then transfer them as needed.

So let's do, let's do something, a real life example. So let's say you had shared with me airlines like Lufthansa or there's All Nippon, there's Emirates. Give me a real life scenario of, you know, maybe something that you've done recently of the real cost buying points transfer and you know, like get nitty gritty.

Well, if you want to talk about a trip that you were thinking about taking next year, Tokyo, right. Japan Airlines we love, so Emirates we love, they're a transfer partner with MX and we could talk, I think we're going to talk about.

Yeah, that's interesting.

But to stay on the buy mile strategy. So so airlines start selling miles. So in addition to the credit card transfers, in addition to flying, they started selling miles out of 10 years ago. And so you can just buy the, you know, for generally they're about two and a half cents. Is it sort of the everyday price? Generally you can buy a quarter of a million a year. Although there's secrets on how to buy virtually unlimited, well totally unlimited in the amount of miles. But let's just take your Tokyo trip because you know, I want to get you there in first class because you're going to be a lot quicker to go. Is so American Airlines sell and so you want to buy miles when they go on sale, right?

So they're like half price.

It's like people say, Matt, when's the best time to buy an airline ticket? And you hear these bloggers and these, these experts, they'll talk about well, Tuesdays or Saturdays or after midnight. Now the best time to buy an airline ticket is when they're cheapest. And so of course that's what first class, that's what we do is just the cheapest. Well so you can buy American Airlines miles on sale. So if they're typically two and a half cents, let's say you get down to about 1.8 cents. Well American is partners with many One World Alliance Airlines members. One is Japan Airlines flies non stop to Tokyo in your case. So you know, 160,000American miles get you a first class ticket on Chow Japan Airlines which ranges depending on, you know, the origin, time of year and this and that. Easily for sure, 20k but you could easily get up to 30k. And it's nice the service, I mean it's just the Asian service and the seats are just, you know, top four or five and so you get 100. So it takes 160,000American Airlines miles which you can buy on sale for 1.8 ish cents each.

Okay.

And at the end of the day, you're looking at, you know, 29ish hundred dollars for that $30,000 ticket.

Yeah. About 2,900 bucks.

That's exactly what, give or take $50 in taxes. And, you know, but I mean, wow. Because business class, right. Is six or eight grand Coach is going to spend. You know, I don't know. We don't think about coach, but premium economy would certainly be close to that. Yeah. And so, you know, this is how you can fly first class for the price of premium economy or get that 30k for 3,000. We think it's a big deal. You know, a lot of people, you know, for travelers, they know the difference between a trip and premium economy coach. Even business class nowadays is, you know, crammed in internationally. You know, I mean, it's okay. Business is okay. There's not that many first class. So.

You know, life is short. First. Fly first class whenever you can.

Right. Well, there's another thing that you did, too.

You have a little story about helping Ari Fleischer when he wanted to go to the Game of Thrones tour. Back to Croatia, Dubrovnik, favorite place. One of my favorite places ever to travel. But you also helped him with a deal. And that was. That was points related, too. It's an optimized point strategy. So you want to dig into that one really fast. Is there any.

Any. Three tickets is a little bit harder to find. Mileage availability and, you know, he wanted to stop on his way, and so he. He was, you know, and it was a $4,000, you know, maybe five with a stopover and stuff. And so, you know, it was challenging. And so but yeah, we found ways to, you know, get him down to using his miles for free. So, you know, you want to be persistent and you want to fly on dates and stuff. And, you know, that goes back to the mindset on booking backwards. You know, don't just start with hard dates. You know, look at when the deal is and, you know, get your $5,000 business class ticket to Europe when there's availability and, you know, for free on the miles. In his case, he had, you know, a ton of MX points, and so it was essentially free and he had a great trip. Yeah, with the kids, Right. I mean, with the kid, you know, take them in the premium and, you know, they. That's all anybody talks about. Right? Yeah. So there's bragging rights and you're, you know, a king at the cocktail party. What do people talk about the cocktail, where they went and how they got there?

Yeah. Yep. And it's, it makes the story even more interesting. Yesterday we were at a mastermind group, high end, $75,000 a month home that this guy friend of mine is renting and one of the guys who's there who's, he's a player, he just bought $35,000 tickets for his wife and him because to them the benefits are worth it. And then of course I introduced him to you and you know, you're like, yeah, probably could have gotten that for about four grand. So. All right, let's do cool strategy.

This is the one the finding the roots with the best seats. Why don't you explain what that is, what it means and both the mindset behind it, but also the, the strategy and technique.

Well, you know, one of the challenges is anytime you know how you get on the plane and you don't know what kind of seats there you're going to get half the time. The, the pro. The airlines are so inconsistent.

Yeah. Even within the 1970s, icky first class seats versus the Delta one sleepers. And yeah, I, you know, I don't, I don't know exactly which is which is which is which.

Yeah. If you got a one or two hour flight, who cares?

Yeah.

Okay. But if you're flying to Hawaii, you know you got five, six, you're going from the East coast, you know 10 hours of flying.

Yeah.

And it's crazy. So. Well during the, so the airlines fly domestic routes. They have a wide, the wide body internationally configured aircraft. And so, but, but what routes are they on? Right. You know, you know you sometimes see, I mean you know they're on the transcons, they'll do. They have the life flat seats from New York to San Francisco, a couple other routes but to Hawaii especially during the lockdown they, when people were traveling internationally, they moved a lot of the aircraft to domestic routes into Hawaii. Why you got to be big. They were early to let people in and so a lot of the Hawaii had the international community wide body life flat seats. Well, it's changed now. So the airlines are migrating their aircraft to back to Europe and Asia, especially Europe. And So but there's 19 routes right now across the US that have the widebody internationally configured lie flat seats to Hawaii. So for the same money you can get or similar money often the times the same money you can get a seat that for the same money as the 70 seat if you know the routes. And so that's what we publish you know, every couple of months we stay on top of the airlines, the routes, the flight numbers. And so like little, little bit of knowledge in the travel industry can just totally change your trip.

And okay, so, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you a shameless plug here. So first of all, I'm gonna ask Matt, if you do it the hard way, how to do it, but if you do it the easy way, first class flyer, you're a publisher, you show you got all these reports and I'm gonna give you a link right now. It's@firstclassflyer.com MK and you can try out Met Service.

For 14 days. Okay. And that way you can get download a whole bunch of the reports that are filled with all the strategies, the step by step how to a bunch of links. There's alert services too. But if someone were to do this the hard way, what would they have to go? What kind of stuff would they have to go through? Like what are your researchers and your systems doing manually?

We have dozens of people around the globe, you talk about alerts. So you'd have to every day, every hour, check, you know, all these routes, millions of routes, origins, destinations, classes, airlines. So there's millions of searches that we cover every month. And so it's a drag and you know, a lot of people do it. You know, Expedia came out with a study that said there's like 38 searches the average traveler makes. And we know because like who wants to push the button on airline ticket when you're always thinking, is this low? Is it going to, you know, is it going to change? And so to do this stuff on your own, you know, a few people do a little, everybody does is on their own to some extent. And so we just come along and kind of give them tools and reports and shortcuts on how to do it. But yeah, our alerts, we, we have airfare alerts when you know, airlines, they call them tactical fares and they slash when on routes where there's not a lot of like a business travel or demand. And so anytime they have access, you know, airlines, these are like tomatoes, right? The farmer doesn't, you know, he sells them cheap right before they're ready to spoil.

Yeah.

So do the airlines and they use different tactics and a lot of that kind of, there's a lot of mindsets around that and the alerts and you know, trying to find routes that have availability using your miles. I mean nowadays with the dynamic pricing, I mean it's like it's, you never Know what something's going to cost, right? In the old days, miles, they had charts, they were predictable. You earn miles, got them for trips. You can't do that nowadays. Everything's changed. But, but you know, our suite redeems alerts, for example, they show you the routes that have the discountabilities. So if you do it on your own, you can't, you can't beat the airlines on your own unless you got just endless hours.

Yeah, Yep. Okay, so what it would ultimately, what I think you're saying is you got to know what the names of the aircraft are and you'd search a whole bunch of different trips until you found one that was a better aircraft in.

That, in the aircraft, in the wide body aircraft, you just spend, you know, a few hours looking at all the routes and you know, sizing them up and, but then you've got connections and depending on where you are. So. Yeah, I mean, I don't recommend doing this stuff. Yeah, it's not what I'd say, pay the money. You know, just, just pay. And you know there's a lot of ways to get out of coach.

Well, and, and you're already, you're too cheap the way it is. You know, your, your service is way too cheap. It's only, it's only right now a few hundred bucks a year. So. Okay, cool. Strategy number three, accidental bucket list experiences. When you told me this.

I was like, you know, this is, it's not obvious, but it's really, really smart. So tell me about the trip to Sydney.

Well, you know, it's about blinders. You know, people, they get one thing in their mind and that's all they think about and everything else is bad. So you know, I was headed to Sydney a few years back and you know, had to be first class. You, 15 hours of flying, even business class, you don't want to do that. And so, but there was no, there was nothing available on, you know, on the different strategies to get into first on, on the non stops to Sydney. So. But I did find Melbourne. I'm like, well, you know, do I want to do that? Like it's not that far. And I'm like, let me just see like what's going on in Melbourne. Like the day that you know and come to find out, Australian Open quarterfinals are on. I'm like, oh, I love tennis. And wait, you're saying I can fly. I get a, you know, $20,000 first class ticket for a few grand or for free using my miles to Melbourne and the quarterfinals of the Australian Open. So I of course, no brainer. So I get there and I end up Serena Williams made it the corners of course she always probably won the tournament this a few years ago. And so by just being open minded about like I want to get to the continent, I want to get like close especially 15 hours away. And so by taking off the blinders and trying to get a deal and first class is important to me. So I want to get to the region and so you know, I'm open minded. And A, you want to get to the region, but B, you want to do on a point. So what routes have availability to use? My miles, whether you buy the miles or you already have them, half the people have a ton of miles that they don't think have any value.

Yeah.

And so I don't know, I'm pretty proud to say I got to see Serena Williams in the Australian Open. Yeah, I've talked about it, told this story 100 times.

Yeah, it's, it's great. And, and I think the, the, the summary of the strategy is first of all, the narrow story you told is okay, let me get nearby. And then you do a Google search for events taking place on the dates you're going to arrive. You, you were only there for a few hours. It was six or eight hours. So you were in and out. Still got there super cheap. The short flip from Melbourne to Sydney was simple. And then if you expand on the strategy because you and I have kind of beat this, this horse a few times, you also look for a couple days before so maybe you'll have a different hop. And, and I started using this because, you know, one of my bucket list goals is to see.

You know, Ringo Starr before he's gone. And you know, originally I started looking at only in the States and I thought, yeah, maybe I can get a, use one of these strategies, do a points thing, go see him, we're at whatever country he's in and you know, make a trip of it. Maybe there's someone else like an. I'm into older rockers right now. So you know, I saw Peter Frampton right before he, he had a, he's got a degenerative disease, he can't play anymore. And I got to see him the last year he, he toured. So you know, that's the. I know it sounds a little morbid, but I think it's just a brilliant, brilliant strategy.

Well, just another one. So I was going to a conference in Split like four months ago. Yeah. And so like that's a long ways to Go for a conference. Yeah. So I'm like, well, what's going on in Europe around that time? Well, the French Open, and I'm not that big of a tennis freak, but, you know, I mean, the French Open is the French Open. It was amazing, guys.

Got to check it. On it.

Listen. So, like, on the. On the way. So I got to stop somewhere on the way to split, right? I mean, it just. You can't just go to all that way for one. So. So, yeah, so I was in Paris. I'll go to Paris for any reason, dozen times. And so I was in Paris for like three days and went to the French Open, and now I've got three under my belt in the US So I'm thinking Wimbledon. That'll be nothing. Yeah. So it's fun. It's fun. And I'm getting more. You want to get the most bang for your buck.

Yeah, no, it's really.

That's the bottom line.

Really, really good. Hey, action taker Mike Koenig's here, and I just wanted to interrupt for a second and let you know that if you're ready to reinvent yourself and your business, go to connecttomike.com to learn more and book a conversation with me right now. All right, back to the episode. All right, next. Next, strategy. Travel like a king, queen, or rock star. And this is the Emirates strategy, which I used to think that Emirates was only like an Arabic airline or only in select parts of Africa. They go everywhere. And every flight I've ever had on Emirates has been outstanding. First class is best. Business is just fine. Even the upgraded premium or the. What is it? Upgraded coach, whatever. It's not bad. It's not bad. That's the way I went one of the times. But, boy, first is amazing. So strategy. How do you do the Emirates?

So, you know, first class. Fire. We want to start with first class, and then if we can't do that. So let's start at the top. And you know. And you can, you know, Amex. Most people nowadays have some kind of Amex card. So people have membership rewards points. They are an Amex partner. So that's the fast, easy, quick way to get onto Emirates is by collecting Amex points. Of course, you can buy. Most people don't realize you can buy Amex points, but we talked about that strategy.

Yeah.

So here's the thing. You mentioned that Emirates, yeah, of course, Dubai, but they fly New York to Milan, and they fly New York, Athens. Well, if you go into Europe and you want to fly first class, Emirates is the first airline I think of. Okay. But this past year with the lockdowns, a lot of demand and so flights are fairly full, even first class, more than usual. But you know, this is one of those like little things you never think of. It's like when you know it, it's like odd. So airline wait lists are something that a lot of people know of. United on their website you can wait list a mileage upgrade. So people kind of sort of know a little bit about wait list nowadays. And occasionally a site like United will allow you to wait list. Emirates on the other hand, so Emirates, there's no availability. You go on their site, there's nothing. Okay. But if you pick up the phone, the old fashioned telephone the last time, you know what's, and you say, hey, you know what, can I, can I just wait list, you know these flights.

And you can do more than one.

Flight, they'll allow you to list wait list three dates. And I'm telling you I've done this for myself, I did this back. How do I want to come home from Europe? How do I want to come home from how do I want to go? Or Emirates first class, right? Yeah, it's a, you know, there's a couple others to think of. And so yeah, so I, you know, I wait listed three days and you know, one of them opens. So I've done it for myself a couple times and then I've kind of done it in the first class flyer laboratory. It's about 50% of the time it opens up. So three days you're going to get one of them. And so you know, when you can't Otherwise get that $30,000 ticket for, you know, Emirates, maybe get it for five or something if you buy the miles, don't have them.

Right. Okay. So again, so there's a little, little.

Loopholes and tricks and they're, they're all over the place. But how are you going to know on your own? Yeah, how are you going to figure that out?

Yeah, well, and, and again, what I found out of all your strategies, there's probably, you know, you've got your published step by step how to's on your site, but out of the hundred or so, where it gets really interesting is when you start combining the strategies and.

We'Ve got another one here. So cool. Strategy number five, turn your business trip into a vacation.

Well, I mean, so everyone knows that a lot of times there's no rhyme or reason to how airlines price, you know, how do fares come about to be what they are and then you add different like the fair rules, you know, do these fares allow a stopover or not? And so this goes back to the, you know, getting all the bang for your buck. If you got a business meeting in Miami, for example, American with its route network through the Caribbean has Miami might be a little bit more expensive of, of a route. Not necessarily, but they're the Caribbean first class can be fairly low fares but a lot of the fares to the Caribbean allow stopover. And so what this does is turning you know, a business trip or even if you're going to Miami for fun, you know, that's not a bad place to go for fun. And if you are, you can tack on right now the two secret sort of destinations are San Juan, Puerto Rico and St. Thomas. You can actually tack on the side trip onto Miami and sometimes even drive down your Miami first class fare. So you know, we call these, you know, you get free side trips. Another example is, is flying to Frankfurt. A recent report we did a couple months ago is you can tack on say to Frankfurt you're going for, for you know, meetings or conference or whatever. Tack on Delhi, India, Taj Mahal. Okay. Or Cairo, you know, the Pyramids. Right. You can tack those on and actually drive your lord because there's sort of leisure destinations, lower cost business class destinations. And so when you have a higher fare sort of a business route and you tack on these high end bucket list side trips with leisure fares that allow stopovers in the city you were otherwise originally going to, you get a free side trip. You get it. Why are you going to go half around the halfway around the world for business and not swipe off check off a bucket list trip? I, I don't know. Yeah, you can do all that if you want.

I'm not, no, I, it's, it's a, it's a really good idea. And the just from a financial point of view, if you're combining strategies, you could buy points at a discount when they're on sale and when you sign up you get the notifications as to when they're on sale and where to go. Because if you go out right now, like I tried when you told me about this, I'm like, well I'm going to figure it out myself. I couldn't figure out where in the hell to buy AMEX points even it's annoying. It's not easy to find on their website. And then, and there's so many spam sites, spam and scam, it's almost impossible to discern what's Actually real. And most of these services.

Other people who have been in the business or in this business who haven't been in it for 26 years, they make their money selling credit card offers.

Yeah.

So we don't take advertising. So why is first classfire.com charge? And some people say, well, you know, why. Why would I pay? If you get. So what is it? If you don't. If you're not paying for something on the Internet?

If you don't pay, you don't pay attention.

Well, yeah, and if you don't pay, you're the, you're the. You're not. You're not the client. You're the. You're the.

You're the product.

Yeah, you're the product.

Exactly.

And so we, we don't sell you. So we're unbiased. We don't take advertisements. We don't have affiliate links. And all the travel bloggers, you click, you know, you see they have the disclaimers, oh, by the way, we take money from these, from these people. So we don't do that. Our content is, isn't tainted. But yeah, you don't know who to believe and you don't know what they're. You know, if they're just skewing you to, okay, maybe it's an okay deal, but maybe there's a way better deal. Yeah. Like, why are you going to want someone to sign up for a Delta credit card and get those, you know, Sky Pesos? I mean, why would you do that? So.

Yeah, well, well, I did. I'm a sucker.

Yes. Well, no, you fly Delta, so I mean, you know, you genuinely have reasons to fly. So you, you, you've accumulated them by flying.

That. That is very true.

And that's fine.

Yeah. And I, I'm a million miler.

Yeah.

But now that I'm turned onto this, I've already maneuvered some stuff, and so there's a couple strategies I'm using right now. One is, when I found out about you, we started working together. The first thing I asked you was, so, who are your clients right now? Who are you working with? And we started dialoging, and I'm like, the first thing I'm going to do, I'm given my ea. Lori access to the service in the system. And when you and I sat down with Vivian, I said, okay, Vivian, here's what I'm. I'm gonna do. Because now that I can hog up Matt's time, we're gonna plan out three vacations and I gave you some destinations and Some places I wanted to go so one of them was the Ireland, Scotland, blah blah blah blah and said what's the best strategy to do that? And then I want to go to South Korea and Japan, that's another one. And then we also are going to do like the Vietnam, Cambodia, maybe even do Thailand again, that kind of a thing. But get over there. And I had you break down what to do and the, the solutions to all these are they're hybrid, you know. And so what I, what I'm driving to is a question for you which is for anyone listening to us right now and again I'm going to give you the link so you can get a trial of the site and that's first classflyer.com MK it's a 14 day trial and then you can take advantage of the fact that Matt isn't charging enough for his service and I'm going to fix that problem for him very soon. So this is your. Anyone who knows me knows as soon as I start working with Sal someone I'm going to increase their prices. But you can get in right now if you want to use it for the year. But you'll be able to download lots of reports and see these strategies and really get the genius behind this. But who's this for? So busy business people for sure and someone like me who's got an EA and I can say go figure this out for me. Study this. You could take advantage of it. But plan my trips, find some deals, get on the wait list, tell me when to buy, buy points and give me some stacked hybrid solutions. Do the thinking for me.

I mean why not? So the best you delegate. Right. And so like what we talked, you know, I said well you, you know you have these three trips planned. So we said okay well let's. When do you want to travel? So give your EA a sense of, of the time. Especially if you're doing this a year in advance.

Yeah. The answer is always best weather when there aren't crowds. So we, we always.

Yeah but, but decide on what that is up front so you're ready so ready for the flash deals. So remember we will buy tickets when, when they're cheapest. When are they cheapest? When they're these flash deals. The airlines have these excess inventory surplus, wholesale, whatever you want to call it and so be ready with a range of dates. Y. Okay, I, I want to go, I want to go to Tokyo through you know, you know, this, these two months or Ireland these, these. So you give that to your ea, the window. So she's out there subscribing to, you know, to our alerts or she's out on their own or however you want to do it. And so, but she has these parameters of your flexibility. So if you, if you wait and you know, give the airline a particular route, a particular date on a particular class, you know you're going to pay like, you know, you go the car dealer and you say you want all this exact feature list. It's a custom, it's a custom job. You're going to pay retail, you're going to pay retail. If you don't want to pay retail, Bennett's don't pay retail. You don't have to pay retail. And that's by knowing in advance. So, so you're ready on these flash deals. And of course there's the mindset of a lot of times you can freeze flash fares. A lot of people don't realize what.

What exactly is that?

What so, so you know, I mean like United's Fairlock is sort of the simplest one, but you know, for $7 or whatever, you can hold a fair for three days or $10, you can hold a fair for, for, for a week. And so it's like the flash fair hits. Well, you know, we don't, you know, we thought we knew the dates.

But you're basically buying insurance on locking it in.

Yeah, because the flash deal is half or whatever what the other deal, you're Ireland. So you feel, how do you get to Ireland? Well, it's a 4000ish dollar ticket and using miles is not the greatest and first class, you know, B.A. i don't know, maybe you could do that. But I mean I would just wait for a flash fair sale. And it's from the west coast where you're at, you know, 17 to $1,900, half off, you know, couple tickets. And if a couple trips a year, you know, that's 10 grand by waiting for the flash deal, by knowing in advance the range of dates by locking them in when, you know, because it happens when the fair hits, you know, it may not last a day or two, sometimes less than that. And so you freeze it, hold the fair, maybe do it on multiple airlines. Okay, maybe Ireland one's got a schedule here. Your wife, you know, she's out of town, you're going to talk about it, whatever your spouse. And so make multiple bookings, your EA.

For different routing schedules and for, to hold it for 10 bucks and you've got time to think. One of our reports was time to think Right. Because that's the whole anxiety over pushing the airline buy now button. And so, you know, those sort of stacking flash fares with thinking ahead on dates, being flexible in the fares hit and being alerts and you know, you know, it sounds like a lot, but when you tell your ea, you know, just, just not that much. And you just wait. Yeah. You just wait for the deal.

Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's simple and brilliant. And I think what, again, what I've learned after just pouring through your reports and this is, it's entertaining reading. That's another thing is, is I know you've spent a long time writing this stuff, but the. I like the personality of the content. It's fun to read. It feels like you're talking to a friend. And so with your team, you found a way to continue to carry that, that, that sense and that feeling on that. I'm actually sitting down. Like I read this newsletter in bed at night. It's, it's not work. And I know now what I'm going to do is I've already told Lori that this is coming. I haven't given her parameters, but now that I've interviewed you, I know exactly what I'm going to tell her. And one of the things that I'm going to also outsource, I'm going to say, here's what I want you to research for these locations. Find the best weather and when there's the most tourists, and I'll try to catch it on the edges because my suspicion is that there might be more deals there because it isn't as high a trafficked.

I love shoulder season. So, I mean, you're not going to get me going anywhere where you got to stand in lines and fight crowds. I like to live. I like to go places where they're locals and I can experience 100. So I mean, I'll even go, you know, in the cold or winter because, you know, I'm looking for an experience. I'm going to have weather. You don't need weather in San Diego. But, but you know what you've got to do that work anyways. You've got to figure out the dates and the times so there's no extra work. The thing is, like, don't combine that and then book as soon as you find that out, do that homework, come up with your bucket list, how many different places. And so you've got, you know, a handful of opportunities your EA has and she's looking. And when the deal hits is when you buy but you asked a question. I want to come back to you because you could buy, you know, who is this for? And, and you talk about. It's enjoyable reading. I mean, consultants love us, people who make their own schedules, Business owners, of course, road warriors. Anyone who's flying a lot. It's flying or on business. And. But how do they use their miles? They got tons of miles. You know, people that already know. There's a lot of people that are sort of into, you know, the different games and stuff. And so. But there's so many advanced strategies that you're not going to find on blogs.

Well, the easiest people to convert are the ones who are already converted. Right?

Yeah. And so one of my favorite quotes we had Dick Bowles. He's, you know, what color is your parachute? 10 million books he gave us. He wrote it once and he said that First Class Flyer, their monthly newsletter, is even enjoyable reading even when you're not even traveling. So I mean, it challenges. It's. It's stimulate. Try to be stimulating, entertaining. Give you things to think about, mindsets that are transferable until, you know, whatever business.

Yeah. Well, even at the Mastermind yesterday, I was introducing you to the people who were there. And while I was, I talked about you when you were talking to other people and I was sharing some of the strategies you had. So it's definitely like, this is great conversation material. And I think you're right. You know, what do you talk about when you're at a cocktail party? It's what's the most recent place you're at? And, and if you have a. I had the most amazing first class experience. Oh. And then if you brought some friends or family with you. Yeah, it's, it is, it's a, it's great conversation.

But you don't want to tell people you flew first class unless you got a deal.

Yeah.

And you have to tell me flew first class. But you can only say that if you got a deal. Yeah. And so, you know, there's a paradox.

That definitely, that definitely takes away the cool factor for sure.

Yeah. If you paid full price and you're, you know.

Okay, Matt, so one of the things that I think that I really want to encourage is first of all, get in here and try this thing out, because the tool's awesome. It's, it's a, it's fun, it's educational. It's definitely fun for the whole family. And again, that's@firstclassflower.com MK that's where you can get our special deal, which means you Get a trial for two weeks and you get to download a bunch of special reports and you've got multiple tiers of membership that give you different capabilities. Is there anything that you want to talk about in terms of some of the tools when they get inside here, what they'll experience and what to access first that'll give them the most value, most bang for the buck?

Well, I'd get a flavor for our fair alerts because they're kind of basic, they're just information on when and you know, the deal when deals hit. So airlines sometimes will announce fair sales, but they're always an economy, never, rarely do you see fair. So I'd start with something simple. If you're new to thinking about beating the airlines, you know, at their premium air travel game, then, you know, Sweet Redeems we call them when, when, when redeeming miles is easy. So routes that offer the deeply discounted old school pricing. So that's, that's, those are both part of our silver.

So that's where we're gonna get like the 80, 90 off kind of deals.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then we have even a section within those how to buy miles. No miles, no problem. And so we guide you, we show you how to do it. We have, you know, if you're booking on a site, you've never done it. So there's all kinds of tools on, on how to do this yourself and, and then our monthly flagship newsletter, we've been publishing for 26 years, you know, the monthly upgrade advisor is just strategies and pick and choose. You don't master, don't. The goal isn't to be a master, a Jedi at any of this. The goal is just to get a cheap awesome ticket that's going to, you're going to have a lot to talk about and everyone's going to remember. And so, you know, just ease in and consume what, what, what feels good and, and just, you know, you don't have to know everything. I want to know everything Mike knows, but, you know, about, about business and marketing. But you know, I'm just going to take one thing at a time and consume one, you know, as much as I can handle and, and, and you know, dislike everything, so.

Right. That's good. All right, well, I think this is a good place to break. So I'll finish this off by first of all saying thank you for spending time with Matt and me today. As you can tell, I'm super excited about this. I can't wait. You know, Vivian and I are very committed to taking advantage of these strategies and making it a part of how we travel. And also we're going to just invite more people to travel with us. That's one of our favorite things to do, is we travel with other couples. Sometimes we've gone in groups of 8 and 10 who are good travelers. But being able to go out and say, oh, by the way, let's all go first class and to really exotic places and make a couple other stops as well, make this the ultimate bucket list opportunity. That's the way we're going to start using it. And also I'm going to extend the way I'm traveling for business where I'm going to tack on the vacations on the front and back. I in the past, I did a couple extra days in the front and back, but it was at that location. Now I'm going to find out if there's a stopover somewhere else where I can get a really sweet deal, stay a day or two on the front and back. That's going to be a new strategy as well. So, Matt, one more time, thanks a lot for this. It's been a blessing.

Great to be with you. Appreciate it.

All right, and let's say goodbye to everyone. Thanks for watching. Thanks for watching. Capability Amplifier. Bye, bye.

Bye, bye.