In this segment of the My First Million podcast, host Sam Parr interviews entrepreneur Shaan Puri about advanced travel hacking strategies aimed at high‑spending business owners. They discuss MoPoints, a course created by Shaan’s friend Mo that teaches how to maximize airline points and credit‑card rewards. Shaan explains how entrepreneurs can earn massive, often tax‑free, cash‑back—up to $350,000 annually—by routing large business expenses (e.g., AWS bills) through personal premium credit cards, thereby attaining elite status (e.g., Amex Black) and associated perks such as free flights, lounge access, and other benefits. The conversation highlights the 80/20 approach: focusing on a few high‑impact actions (using the right cards for big spend categories) rather than mastering the entire points ecosystem. Real‑world examples illustrate the scale of spend (300‑400k points/month) and the financial upside for founders who treat credit‑card rewards as a tax‑advantaged revenue stream.
Chapters
because they were spending like, you know, $3 million a month on AWS or something crazy.
Okay.
Um, couple things I thought were interesting. Uh, one, you posted something about this thing called MoPoints. What is that?
Me?
Yeah. Did you post something about MoPoints?
No. What is MoPoints?
Oh, it's just— I thought it was your friend who was doing it. Uh, it's basically like, oh, my friend.
Yeah, Mo. Yes, he just launched it. Yeah, uh, Mo, my friend Mo. Okay, so what it is is— yeah, I was like, what the heck? Uh, I didn't even remember the name. My friend Mo helps people with points. That's funny, he'll love that we're talking about it. So Mo Points. So Mo, it's my friend Mo. Him and Ramon grew up together in, uh, most from Afghanistan by way of Where's Ramon from? Netherlands. And then moved here. And they used to have a business, it's shut down now so I could talk about it, where they would buy and sell airline points. And he became an expert on how to maximize points. And so I'm getting into this now. And so for example, if there's all these ways that you can, like, if you're spending money on advertising, on this, on that, you can maximize your points and fly for free forever, for years. And so he would teach me how to do it myself. And I was like, Mo, turn this into a course. And so that's what it is. Let's, let's, let's pick them out though. Is it mopoints.com?
mopoints.com. Yeah, I checked it out because I was pretty interested in this, like in the same way that you want like a tax guy to help you save money on the back end. You know, whenever you do like pretty significant credit card spending and a lot of times if you own your own business, you can rack up a lot of spending on credit cards. I hate going and figuring this stuff out. I just feel like it's a waste of my brain. And it's a waste of my time to go like optimize my spending and buy points so I can travel free and book all this stuff. But I like know it's valuable. And so I was hoping to get like, what's the shortcut? What's the like, you know, either you do it for me or like what's the 80/20? Give me the few things I can do that will give me the highest return on my time and effort. Because I know I'm sort of wasting this opportunity and I don't want to go become an expert in this stuff. But if you're an expert, fantastic. So I signed up for it.
Oh, great. I, uh, I'll make sure he knows. So, you know, points are interesting. I just got into them recently. So I earn, um, maybe 300,000 to 400,000 points a month, and that translates to 1% of that in cash value. So if I spent $1 million a year on, uh, through my credit card, which sounds like a lot if you're just an individual, and that is a lot if you're an individual, but for your business, that's nothing. I get $100,000 cash back. Now here's the cool thing. That cash back in most cases is tax-free. So if you live in San Francisco, that's the equivalent of getting a salary of $180,000 or $100,000. Yeah. And so it's great. And so I've actually met some entrepreneurs who earn— I think you can get up to $360,000. Some accountant's going to like tweet at me and say I got it wrong, but I'm almost positive. And it's controversial. I'm almost positive you can get up to $350,000 in cash back. And so I know this one lady who's got this flower company and she gets $350,000 in cashback income a year.
Yeah, that's great. I have a friend who, he basically negotiated with his investors. He's like, I'd like to pay the AWS bill for my company on my personal credit card. And so he earned like whatever, Amex Double Black Platinum Gold, whatever it is, like the highest tier for life because they were spending like, you know, $3 million a month on AWS or something crazy. And so like, he's like, oh, if I ever want to fly, I fly first class. Now, oh, I get like free Equinox, I get free this, I get free that, because that's the perks of like the highest tier of Amex. And he's like, yeah, I got lifetime because during my company I just asked, can I just put this on this card and keep that tied to my name? And they did it.
And so, and so that's what Mo's trying to do now. It's just like a course and hand-to-hand combat, like consultation where he's trying to help people. But that is kind of interesting to like log into a portal and, or like technology and it does it for you. That is pretty amazing. And your transaction fee is either upfront fee or you skim a little. That is incredibly interesting.
