Sam Taggart here, founder of D2D Experts and the guy who’s been knocking doors since I was 11 years old. Seventeen years in the trenches, finished #1 out of 3,000 reps at Vivint in 2014, and I’ve taken a lot of flights since then.

Quick question for you. You swipe a card all day, every day. Gas, gear, hotels, leads, software, payroll. Where do all those points go? For most reps and most owners, the honest answer is nowhere. You’re handing the bank free money and getting a coffee mug for it.

That’s why I got Eli “The Travel Guy” Facenda on the D2D Podcast. Eli runs Freedom Travel Systems, and his whole thing is helping entrepreneurs turn the money they’re already spending into first-class flights and 5-star hotels. He’s been to nearly 50 countries, 14 of them in a single year, and he’s personally saved over half a million dollars on luxury travel doing this.

In this episode we get into how to pick the right cards for a sales business, how to stack points without wrecking your credit, and how a rep doing real volume can fly his family to Europe for basically nothing. If you spend money and you like to travel, this one’s going to mess with you a little.

I run the D2D Podcast on Spotify, and it’s also on the D2D Experts YouTube channel. Watch it below, or keep scrolling for the breakdown.

Let’s go FULL SEND.

The points you’re already leaving on the table

Here’s the thing most people miss. You don’t need a new budget to travel hack. You need to route money you’re already spending through the right card.

Let me do some simple math. Say you run a small team and you’re putting $30,000 a month through a business card. Leads, software, fuel reimbursements, a few hotel rooms for the guys on a blitz. That’s $360,000 a year flowing across that card no matter what. On a decent rewards setup, Eli says that kind of spend can throw off enough points for multiple international flights and a week in a resort every single year.

Now flip it. If your money is going through a debit card or a no-rewards card, you just paid full price for all of it and got zero back. Same spend. Same business. One version flies you to Cabo, the other version flies you nowhere.

That’s expensive. Not because you spent the money. You were going to spend it anyway. It’s expensive because you got nothing for it.

Why sales pros are sitting on a goldmine

Reps and owners are the perfect candidates for this, and most of them have no idea. Think about it. Your business runs on spend. High volume, recurring, predictable. That’s the exact profile the banks reward the hardest.

Eli works with over 1,000 business owners. Celebrities, athletes, founders doing real numbers. And the pattern is always the same. The people who win at this aren’t the ones with the most money. They’re the ones who set up a simple system and stopped winging it.

I asked him point blank. “What’s the number one mistake people make?” He told me they chase one shiny card, swipe it for a year, never learn how to actually use the points, and then book a flight at the worst possible value. They had the gold the whole time and traded it for pennies.

Sound familiar? That’s how most reps treat their pipeline too. All that effort going in the front, no system on the back end to actually cash it out.

This isn’t about flights. It’s about reps for your life.

Here’s where I want to push you. We talk about FULL SEND in sales all the time. Grind the doors, hit the numbers, build the business. But what’s it for?

If you’re crushing it at work and you never actually go anywhere, never take your spouse somewhere nice, never show your kids the world, you didn’t build a life. You built a job that pays better.

Eli’s whole message is that the reward can be free if you’re smart about it. The trip you keep saying you’ll take “someday” is sitting in points you’ve already earned. You just never learned how to claim it.

So my question is this. What are you waiting for? You’ve got the spend. You’ve got the volume. The only thing missing is the system. Does that make sense?

Key takeaways from the episode

1. You don’t need extra money to travel hack. You need to route the money you’re already spending through the right card.
2. A sales business is one of the best point-generating machines there is because the spend is high, recurring, and predictable.
3. The biggest mistake is grabbing one card, never learning the points, and booking trips at terrible value.
4. Business expenses like leads, software, fuel, and hotels can fund multiple international trips a year.
5. Points have wildly different values depending on how you redeem them. Learn redemption before you swipe.
6. Eli has hit nearly 50 countries and saved over $500k on travel using these exact strategies.
7. Set up a simple system once instead of guessing card by card.
8. Protect your credit by being intentional, not reckless, with applications.
9. The point of the grind is the life it pays for, so actually go cash in the reward.
10. The trip you keep putting off is probably already sitting in points you’ve earned.

Want to go deeper on the systems Eli uses with his clients? Follow him at @elitravelguy and watch the full episode above.

Enjoyed this one? There’s a lot more where it came from. D2D content is here to help you build a sales game, and a life, worth bragging about. Don’t be a spectator.