Lessons

Lesson Info

Discover Your Dream Destination

We are so so excited to be back we have been working on this course for months thrilled to be joined with a wonderful in studio audience and lots of people watching online from all over the world when we were last time creative live we did a one day course called become a travel hacker and we've got lots of great feedback from that course we got lots of great stories of people who earn tons of miles and points but we also heard from a lot of people who say well there's just there's just so much here there's just so much information about this and also maybe I'm earning miles and points but I'm not really sure how to put them to use on so our whole goal with this course with make your dream trip a reality is to really focus on this core concept of selecting one destination anywhere in the world dream big we'll talk about that here today on making that actually happen so it's not just about some aspirational thing it's actually very practical it's saying here's what I want to go and here...

's the tools that I need to get there and here's all the miles and points I'm gonna learn along the way and here's how I'm gonna redeem the course and all that kind of stuff it's going to be great s owe so much to talk about but if we haven't met before just a brief introduction we're mostly going to be talking about you during the whole course our in studio audience here is well as folks watching online again it's our goal to help you, but if we haven't met before, I'm chris colombo ondas kenna mentioned for about ten years I pursued a quest to visit every country in the world and that originally came from a love of travel I loved exp exploration I love making discoveries meeting new people I lived in west africa for about four years on a hospital ship as an aid worker, and after I left that experience I just kept traveling and I just kept going places and it was always very goal oriented, so eventually I had this idea of going to every country in the world that I worked on from two thousand to two thousand thirteen and it wasn't terribly expensive I used travel hacking to visit many of my destinations I learned about frequent flier miles and points just kind of trial and error and I paid for much of that entire adventure explained very clearly what the costs were and it was just a wonderful thing it just helped me grow I had all these great experiences loved everything about it and even though it was just a personal project for me in the beginning it wasn't a business project or anything along the way I found a lot of amazing people who were doing interesting, remarkable things of their own, and many of them were fellow travellers. Many of them also shared these values of adventure and exploration on this became a whole community of remarkable people, united by these ideals by this love of seeing the world and connecting and learning and a cz I think about, you know what travel has done for me. I really like this quote, the big question is whether you're going to be able to say, ah, hardy, yes to your adventure. So as I look back at some of the adventures I've had thus far, hopefully many more to come, I really feel incredibly grateful to have said yes to the adventure. I'm looking forward to sharing that with you. Thanks. Like I said, I'm stephanie and I've been to one hundred twenty countries, but I haven't always been a traveller. In fact, growing up travel wasn't anywhere in my like in my vision at all, I didn't think it was possible, and I remember my first introduction to travel even just the concept of it. When I was in sixth grade, I had a social studies teacher named mr hummer. And he used to travel and we would watch slide shows slides and I would want I remember seeing his slides of the pyramids in giza and thinking wow that's really cool like but never ever thinking like that's something I could do or something I could see and never even dreaming about it until I got to ninth grade and I studied french and on the cover of my french book there was a picture of mount st michelle and I used to think in that french class bash if I could go to paris before I died my life would be complete and I really didn't know that it would be possible or practical and then I went to college and in college I met a friend named lisa and lisa wanted to study abroad in london for a semester and she was actually my french class and she coaxed me to go to london to study first semester and that's my first passport stamped and twenty six nineteen, ninety three and it was really a day that changed my life because that trip taught me that travel really was possible and lisa's dad was really good at points in miles and he's the one who actually taught me about how to use points in miles in the next year he left he gave us award tickets to go back to europe and travel again and I got to travel again and then I thought this is really possible and I went to china my junior year in college and there I was just my eyes were open toe everything that was in the world and that there was possibility and that I could like possibly actually live overseas or work overseas because I really loved it so much and that journey led me to becoming a humanitarian worker and that's actually workers and I met we both worked on the same hospital ship in west africa and I lived in africa. I would this picture's from sudan, I lived in asia, I spent about twenty years living internationally and points in miles let me travel to a lot of amazing places, this picture's from the usa in from sri lanka and from beijing and that's how I got to one hundred twenty countries and this past year, actually this january I got to one of my dream destinations and that was my seventh continent and this is a picture of me in antarctica, and that was a really big dream trip and none of that ever would have happened if I hadn't acted on that dream trip that I had initially and so I was in paris this year, and I took this picture and I was thinking, what if I had never thought about going to paris? You know, my dreams were so much bigger than the small one is that I thought, and so whatever your dream trip is, it's possible and that's what we're here to share with you this week. Excellent. So as I mentioned briefly and can I mentioned, you know, we're going to show you how to earn miles and points in this course, but this new format focuses specifically on a core question, a really specific thing. How can we go in thirty days from where you are now to the destination of your dreams, no matter your budget, right? So it's all about taking advantage of these really highly practical strategies and tactics that will teach you we've divided the course up into six weeks, which you can follow along online. First week is all about making your plan will help you identify your dream destination will actually do that here today. Then we're going to identify your travel hacking style. Uh, we're gonna have a whole fun profile system for that help you take stock inventory of any current points or miles you have and if you don't have any it's okay, no problem on then we'll set your strategy and get started again. The goals help you pack your bags with your flights and hotels paid for by the end of the thirty days. That's awesome and a week to it's where we start to put legs to all of these dreams we're going to talk about how to earn all the points and miles that you need for your dream destination so the first thing we're going to talk about is earning miles while you sleep not while you fly but while you sleep we're gonna talk about how to get really big beilin bonuses we're gonna talk about how to maximize all those credit cards you have that earns points and miles and different programs and we're going to get you on track turning hundreds and thousands of points and miles this year then we'll keep it going because we don't want you to just earn points in miles we want you to use them way want to teach you how to book your flights how to use those miles for the most valuable flights he possibly can how to master award charge which is kind of how we figure out what some of those opportunities are how to sit in first class or business class perhaps at the price of shows lots of great stories about that from our readers in our community who have actually made this happen for themselves and then we'll also teach you the secrets that the airlines don't want you to know so I have a little bit of a black hat section we may actually even have some black hats for that and then we for after you got your flights, we're gonna help you figure out where to stay and how to book your health hotels for your drink trip so it will help you choose your dream trip hotel I personally love really nice hotels and we're gonna help you find out how to get the best rooms when you book those hotels and above that we're going to show you how you can get treated like a pipe without spending your whole life in hotels, which most people think is what you have to dio and we'll help you upgrade your accommodation awesome and so weak five continuing with the upgrade idea going help you upgrade the whole dream trip. So maybe you had an initial idea and by the time you've come this far you're actually thinking a little bit bigger you're actually hearing some of these stories of people who don't really amazing stuff you're like, ok, I want to do that to you as we expand those travel horizons help you gain access to amazing airline lounges all over the world. Some of those large is going be a destination of their own at least for may, but even if not for you, maybe you'll pass through on the way to your dream destination it's all about leveling up on helping you to travel and whatever style you want whatever goal is best for you in our final week week six we're gonna put it all together so we're gonna handle all of the logistics we know that most of you probably haven't been to one hundred ninety three countries or one hundred twenty countries, so we're going to teach you from all of our mistakes the things that you can do to handle all the logistics from visas to packing and and more so to get all of your experience in line we're gonna teach you how to track all the points of miles because you're gonna be earning a lot two point two miles in this course and you're gonna need some system to keep them all sorted so you can redeem for the best awards we'll help you plan your on the ground experience and also we think by this time you'll want to make trouble part of your ongoing lifestyle so we're gonna teach you how to do that but even if you don't want to do that, you can still have your dream destination your dream trip and it's not just us we're gonna be joined along the way of course by a number of special guests some of them phoning in some of them skyping in from all over the world some of them actually coming here to the studio in seattle we're going to talk to how tran college student who earned two and a half million miles in point before graduation so we're gonna figure out how he did that. I love this story, we're gonna talk to nathan berry from idaho and he's going to tell us about how he turned his bathroom renovation into a a first class trip to hong kong by earning points through it crazy story going to talk to a retired fbi agent who earned seven hundred fifty thousand miles and travels to europe, the caribbean, really all over the world will talk to him about how he makes that work, and we're going to talk to drew and carrie and also hear from them in less than twenty four about how they live in four star hotels full time and spend twenty to thirty dollars a night. I think that's actually less than my red that's. Amazing! Great again, maybe you don't want to live in hotels full time. Would you like to stay in a four star hotel? Twenty to thirty dollars a night? Will they do it every day? They've been doing it for years? Another couple, we're going to talk to marvin and josephine. Been traveling nonstop all over asia, the middle east, turkey, everywhere else, since twenty eleven have no idea where in the world will be calling in front, but we'll talk with them, and I'm excited about this one, because people ask me all the time, like you can't do this you can do this because you you trouble by yourself but if you're traveling you know with the family it's impossible you can't use points and miles is just not practical and so we're going to talk to the sp ackerley family here in the studio and they're going to tell us how they used points and miles to do a year long round the world trip for their family of four amazing and then speaking of tracking miles wouldn't have a whole special lesson on how to keep up with all the miles and points have been earning that lesson will be taught by a man tyler to warren who ran a marathon on all seven continents using points and miles often to travel to those destinations he actually is the community manager for the travel hacking cartel which we'll talk about a bit on he'll be in studio with us here in seattle and the reason we share these stories it's not just to say hey look at what this awesome person did it's a really kind of dissect okay how did they do that on how can you do that? How can we apply these strategies and tactics you know toe our lives as we work toward this story that we're building for ourselves so it really is all about helping you in studio audience and everyone watching online we're here to support that goal and speaking of being supported you'll be able to interact and ask questions throughout the whole six weeks you can use the hashtag dream trip, which will be talking about frequently will be responding to that. You can also follow us on social media, instagram, twitter, a couple of other things. We've also got this great work book that you can download from the course page and use it to follow along for the course can I just wanted teo jump in and say hi to everybody that might just be joining and let you little bit, you know, a little bit more about this workbook again. This comes with the purchase of the course, of course, is a ninety nine dollars class. However, during the boot camp, when we're live, like right now, it is seventy nine dollars, and that gives you any time access to all of the videos, and they will be up once we're done filming and you can actually fast forward. Go ahead, watch whenever you want it's great for those binge watchers out there that want to get a head start, but that's, what happens when you do purchase the course? And then this is a seventy page booklet that takes you through step by step, where you could be keeping your notes as you go through the boot camp, so that's what that is and again we want to see you in the chat rooms were getting people's dream destinations where they live now, where they're joining us from, and you can get there by clicking on the chat icon. Thank you. We've also got some other downloadable resource is some of these were created by some of those special guests who are coming in and you can download those resource is on that course, pages. Well, then if you head over at some point to travel, hacking dot org's last dream trip gonna be talking about a lot of resource is and links throughout the course you'll be able to go there and get some pdf. Some other resource is all that stuff will be free for you. There you can also ask us a question there, and so now that we've done that, I mentioned that we have a great in studio audience. I would love to just say hello to them and everybody else who's watching online love to say hello to you as well, so maybe let us know where you're watching from and can't keep up with that, and I'll start over here on my left with casey, so say where you're from and why you're here? Yes, my name is casey, I'm from sacramento, california. Just came to be educated, learn as much as I can and to be able to travel the world jen I'm based in seattle washington and I came to learn new strategies to optimize travel I'm bill I'm from portland, oregon my wife and I just recently transplanted there from the new york city area and for me this is learning for both my wife and I had to travel in this post expense account phase of our lives great hi, I'm kim I'm from seattle, washington and I'm here to make some strategy some plan some systems to do mohr traveling than I currently do hi uh, gen, I'm from vancouver, canada and I'm here to learn how to travel longer, better and cheaper my name's matt, I grew up in australia, but I live in victoria in canada on dh I'm here like I was always a little bit skeptical of these credit card programs, but then you see these people doing these trips like there has to be something check it out hi, my name is sherry, I'm looking to diversify we have one loyal hub in seattle and I learned that I need to diversify and get to better places and keep seeing things hi, my name is scott, I'm from anchorage, alaska I'ma travel evangelist so hang with you guys really in my sweets father let's rock and roll I'm looking forward to learning how everyone my name is kendrick I'm from vancouver, b c canada I'm here to learn how to travel long term not just for a dream trip, but for long term and I'm here to learn some fridays meet some great people and yeah that's about it my name is lin. I'm from seattle um it definitely have aspirations to travel more and my aspirations are bigger than my budget. So this is where I've started dabbling and I need to learn more fantastic thank you were thrilled to be with you guys for the hole thirty days, kenna. Yes, I have a lot of shot out to people who are joining us and in the chat rooms we have. What I'm really excited about is that we have somebody who's dream destination is also among kolya no great wearing the right place at the right time. Wei have sarah, who is from maryland. Yusa we have sue who is from canada and we have polly mathis, whose my dream trip is going to be to go around do around the world trip excellent with the help of chris and stephanie uk, africa, asia, the moon the moon thing is joining us from the moon way ya and then says okay, the moon is another boot camp so that's right? Afraid you're experiencing week five, you go to the right, so keep them coming. Yeah, no that's great, super awesome. Well, we're thrilled to have everybody watching online as well as everybody here, and we love to just kind of jump right in to lesson one, which is to discover your dream trip. S o if you have the workbook, I think we're starting on page five or something. If you don't have the workbook, no problem, you can follow along with us on. As I said, we're gonna break everything down step by step so every lesson has three goals. Today's goals are to expand your horizons, teo, identify your dream destination, which is kind of the main activity we're working on on get excited pretty easy goal, so we thought we'd start would start with that. Um, I like this quote in addition to the one I shared earlier, I like this quote from st augustine the world is a book and those who do not travel read on ly a page, and as I said, travel has changed my life for the better stephanie's as well, and many people in our community, as well as many of the audience were here already, so travel isn't once in a lifetime, it doesn't have to be stephanie I take big dream trips all of the time but when you're starting it's really good as I said earlier to kind of focus in on a single goal or a single destination that's what we're doing on this course and the best place to start is to say okay, what what is that? You know on how do you decide how do you determine okay, what is going to be that goal for me? And I think first of all ah lot of people may already have something in mind if you think about it a little bit like you realize okay there's this there's this place it's always been kind of special for me a place that was always special was hong kong and I don't know why it was before I went I just dreamed of hong kong I looked at lots of pictures of re lots of stories about it, but I never really did anything about it and finally I went to accomplish my dream trip and I loved it was an amazing place and I kept going back throughout the whole quest I'm going to every country I would return to hong kong several times a year, you know, for the whole decade, andi, I'm so glad I kind of followed up on that so that was something that was special to me, so maybe you have that, but if you don't know what if you can't say ok, there is this place you know there's a few questions that you can ask yourself it might help this is how I like to think about it when you're having a bad week when you close your eyes what do you see? Do you see somewhere else? Is it a beach? A mountain? A park of forest is there a place that's always captured your imagination or fascinated you for an unknown reason? Do you dream of escaping or exploring discovering new world are immersing yourself in a new experience? Or maybe you just want to lay on the beach and drink pina coladas and that's ok, that is totally cool, right? It is your dream it is your dream trip it's for you to decide you know we have a lot of different kinds of trips and what we want to stress here as we do this exercise is a lot of times we think about what's practical instead of what's possible we're like okay, you know, I like the idea of taking a trip but here's my budget you know, a small amount of money maybe I can't get much time off work we really kind of want to break through that in this brainstorming phase and then later were going teo as the course promises make it a reality, so we really want you to encourage tio they encourage you to think about your dream ship could be anything, anywhere, it can be there's no limit for it. So what we want to do is look at what is your dream destination. This is the very first activity in our workbook. We'll have lots more activities to come, so on page five, we'll ask the studio audience to turn there and you can follow along if you're doing this at home and we just want to hear what this one dream trip is, and if you've got a lot of places in your mind, it's really helpful to try to narrow it down to one place. Great, so I'd love to go around with the studio audience again, and maybe I'll start over here with lynn and just kind of share with us what your dream destination is, and while I'm doing that, something is going to be marking these destinations with pens or stickers on this awesome map behind us because they were going to work toward that over the thirty days. So, hey, if you're watching online, please just give us a shout and tell us what you're doing destination is love to hear about that. Maybe we'll put some of those up as well, then we can respond to those ideas throughout the course, so len what's your dream destination ok last summer my husband and I spent a month in tanzania with some african friends focusing on being in in their villages and music festival but we had just a taste of wildlife safari and we would like to go back and spend more time serengeti in tanzania stuff safari in east africa it wonderful I have tons of dream trips but if I were to narrow it down to one it would be proof of when I was in grade nine I took social studies and I learned about peru and their culture and I've always wanted to hide the macho peach you so actually it's proof that when we got kendricks dream destination on his submission form he actually gave us ten of them so we said he actually was kind of a town a little bit you wouldn't talk for a second I didn't want to jump in here because we have two other people in the chat rooms whose dream destination is also peru okay but what's interesting is that b lives in dubai and he wants to go to peru and then a cz well somebody saying that they live from mangal in mongolia and want to go to peru or maybe that meant they want to go from maybe that's the person on the moon gets around okay what's what's really people people are both telling us where they're starting from and where they want but it's also like that which is really very hopeful. Then you can see you know what airlines that super great program awesome let's get going, moon somebody beat me to it. No, I picked to south africa because mostly it's far away as I could get but so I unlike kendrick, I do have several other stuff, so I just make a round the world trip, okay to south africa with all those other stops. Excellent. I have my camera ready and I am focused and going to morocco and I can already visualize the sunset. So oh, that's, right? I look forward to seeing the instagram and everything from where exactly, um I think I've always dreamed about patagonia to be someplace with mountains and ocean, snow and rivers and just beautiful. So it seems a mythical place that I'd love to go and see for real fantastic. I gotta go. Uh, my dream trip is nepal. Um I love photography and the outdoors and I'd love to track up tio the base camp of everest. Excellent. Thank you. So my dream trip is mongolia and I would like to track through the countryside mongolia fantastic. I'm with you. Hong kong is one of my favorite cities in the world and I want to get back there excellent and you travelled there on business before and now you want to go back first I want to go back and see it other than conference rooms in hotels right? Right excellent there's a little bit more there yeah, when you guys asked that question it was hard to choose because I just got back from one of my main dream trips ever to new zealand last month so going down the list the next top location is going to be iceland awesome excellent it's always hard to narrow it down to this one spot but you know, when I think about like some of the most beautiful places in the world and I would love to go to greece santorini in greece is awesome views great water so excellent cool. So we're gonna be working on all of these destinations throughout the course and I think we got some more love to hear what other people are going oh, and you you have a dream destination that's right? What do you want to go? Yeah, sorry, it's all right, so my dream destination is paris and while that might sound cliche I have been to forty four countries but never paris and so I'm really excited to learn how to do that, especially to do it with nice hotels well, let's do some more for the booth, okay, so good exactly so we have someone who's sixty years old and has never been off the north american continent wants to go to london and scotland we're goingto make good have anchor what way have shirky from houston who wants to go to south america and we have alison who wants to go to new zealand and I just wantto take a moment to read this one because this really encapsulates what we're here for so gracie is joining us who says my husband and I have been married for three years but haven't been able to afford a honeymoon we've been best friends since childhood and have always wanted to go to europe together we're hoping to make that happen using this course we want to go to so many places in england we want teo from so many places in europe we want to go first to england my husband would actually just a study at oxford someday that's so fun that was gracie said gracey great gracie we would love to support your theory on the course crazy awesome cool amazing how is our map looking back there it's great I think we've got people in every continent well not to be us but we've got some people here already oh our dream trip this week you're a crate of live s okay we have this awesome set here which created life is built for us thank you guys so we have this travel hacker hot seat which we have sourced from the seattle museum of flight and we'll be so everyone can practice sitting in it business class that's right now so we'll be preboarding you're on course on we just went around the room and did some kind of quick introductions and quick discussion about dream destination but we would actually love to bring someone up and talk a little bit more about why that trip matters and what we're going to do tow work toward it so I would love him if you would come and join us that's awesome run applause for him that's good. Come on, have a seat, let's welcome to the welcome to the travel like a hot seat so you don't have to buckle up you can recline your seat if you want to be in pain oh my gosh yes way! Don't spill this live that's pretty good we'll get you some more after that yeah, yeah I'm good right now hold the champagne for later okay so way met the other day and I believe you have traveled a bit already a little bit you can you tell us about that? So my first big trip was about ten years ago I went to london by myself that was a really big deal I went for about ten days and traveled but then in two thousand eight I put together a three year plan where I wanted teo in two thousand nine run my first marathon in two thousand ten I wanted teo take up climbing and climb mount rainier, and then in two thousand eleven, I wanted to go to mount everest base camp with a climbing expedition. So that's what I did two thousand eleven, so you've had a lot of pretty epic experiences already. Yes, it was awesome and what made you think of mongolia? So when I went to mt everest, I very consciously chose to go with a climbing expedition, a group of climbers that we're hoping to summit, and I wanted that experience of being with climbers, there's a lot of tour companies that goto whatever his base camp, but, um, you just you get all the way to base camp and wave and turn around and come down, and I wanted to spend time with the climbers. I've discovered that it's really important to me, too travel with adventure people, people that I really want to be with that want adventures, so I was kind of hanging out on different websites looking for the next adventure. I found a website that had a lot of trips on it, and I was like, look at this mongolia ah, fourteen day horse trek across mongolia, staying in gers what's a what's a girl like a you're like a you're like a big tent yeah on dh not only that so you know you're a fourteen day horse track across mongolia and you're going from buddhist monastery to buddhist monastery and I was like, count me in so that was captivating you're like that that was it and I'm sure that it's going to attract some pretty amazing people to spend time with your eyes you see adventure oh yeah and you see mongolia vast land of a lot of nothing. You yeah, exactly exactly that's amazing. So in the course we're going to be talking about how to get you there that's our goal so you've got that you got their whole plan in mind once you get there we're gonna help you get there so we won't do all of it now that's what we're doing throughout the whole course but maybe just for a brief overview have you done much with frequent flyer miles or points before? Nothing. Okay, do you have any point office okay. Yes. So I have about eighty thousand miles accumulated on a credit card and I have I think three thousand model miles on a airline okay, well that's great because we could make that happen we can do that so we'll be working with kim and everybody else to get kim to mongolia to get everybody to wherever I need to know where they need to go anything else came from you know that's also way with your ticket to mongolia and we're excited well so you say you're from luton guitar thank you so much, kim great job thank you we'll get you a refill refilling that champagne at some point awesome. So for the for the course you know, chris and I both been a lot of places but I like to say I have a hole in my bucket list because every time I check something off I did just add something new and one of the places I haven't been to that I'd like to go to happens to be bora bora I personally closed my eyes and I see myself drinking a pina colada on my dream trip so one of the reasons I chose this on as my dream trip is because I believe that if you can learn to travel hack your way to bora bora you can learn to go anywhere you possibly want to go absolutely so I had a challenge and thinking of like, what is my dream trip? Because like where do you go after go to every country it is hard to go to the moon, but you know, for the second course I decided to struggle and sacrifice and pick a dream trip somewhere that I could go so I decided to go to united arab emirates dubai specifically and I've been to dubai several times but I've never actually been to dubai on emirates on the a three eighty aircraft in first class and this is quite an experience that actually haven't onboard shower, which I'm really excited about for some strange reason like I guess you could take a shower before you boarded the flight and after but I like the idea of taking a shower thirty five thousand feet on it has a private bar has all kinds of fun stuff some kind of geeked out about that this plane ticket normally cost something like ten thousand dollars to purchase I don't want to spend ten thousand dollars on it and I won't s oh my goal is to use frequent flier miles and points to travel there in this fashion and we'll talk about how that works along the way oh, and so we each have this dream trip but just to point out, most importantly, it's it's really not about dreaming like this course is actually about doing so. We wanted to kind of begin with this exercise of closing your eyes and thinking about where you're captivated by making lists and brainstorming but we really are doing practical work to get you there you know, step by step you know, week one through week six that's why we're focusing so much on the practical details of how do we book these flights and how can we get things you know to our advantage and how can we but great hotels? How can we get upgraded talk when we travel on a round the world plane tickets? What do we do if something goes wrong? All kinds of these topics and more lots of questions that people will have, we're gonna answer those very specific so it's about dreaming and doing. You can also send comments or questions to us directly. A travel hacking dot org's last dream trip there's the facebook group has all kinds of ways to engage with us, so I would love to know before we wrap today from our in studio audience and maybe also from those watching online what's the most important thing you learned today so if you'd like to share something, raise your hand here, matt have a shower on a place that it was amazing to see I'm glad somebody else that's awesome anyone else casing line about the hole in the bucket list I think that's something that happens on going to continue to help motivate you what else? Yes, let the idea of not being limited in your dream by the money you've got in your bank account by actually being able to during bigger fantastic thank you yes travel that's what's online I love it and this's exactly getting us to where we need to go coming from you can I or anyone else online? Well, yeah, we actually kristin's we do still have a little bit of time left for this live portion that is just this first our today we have a bunch of questions coming you have to do some question where people are asking kind of are we going to be covering this? So this will be a fantastic well, first of all also read a smith video is bora bora is also her dream destination again you are you saw that actually really coming when we would ask online a lot of people said bora bora so everyone will everyone can go to bora bora awesome way do have about people who are I'm asking about the whole credit card thing and a little bit nervous, maybe they have that credit maybe they're just in college. Can you just give us a hint of what we'll talk about? What regard to absolutely no, I'm glad I'm glad you mentioned that. So credit cards are a great way to build a lot of mileage bonuses really quickly and easily. You can also do it safely and responsibly and we'll talk exactly about how that works we'll talk in great detail, I'm going to go through all those concerns and address them one by one we're into some case studies and talk about how people have done it differently how people have done and have had issues with their credit so it's not about like you need to go out and get twenty credit cards or something you know we won't encourage people if you're able like here's here's a product that this could do something for you but there's also many other approaches that you can take there's lots of other stuff that we're taking so we have maybe thirty lessons and I think three lessons are specifically focused on credit cards and twenty seven others or about lots of other lesson seventy eight and nine specifically covered credit cards and they cover it from kind of three different levels like what you want to do if you're just starting out and getting one card and learning how to get that use miles from that card all the way to the story we shared of how who got two and a half million miles while he was in college. So anywhere anywhere in that spectrum that's right? That's, right? And we're expecting people from all over the world to participate. This is a global audience that we have here with us in the studio number of folks from canada one guy from australia, the person on the moon watching elsewhere so so I don't think you can get credit cards on the moon yet yeah, maybe virgin virgin galactic richard branson got that locked up what else talk to me a little bit more about people who are just starting off with nothing, so also a little bit intimidated, I have no points, I have no miles, I totally fine, nothing totally fine. You know, one of the concepts were going to delve into in a lot of detail is people think that you have to fly a lot to have a lot of frequent flyer miles, so we actually show that the average flight in north america is really short. I won't say exactly what it is because we'll preview that it's actually really, really short, you know, the amount of miles that you earn from that you can earn far, far, far more miles through online surveys, you're all kinds of promotions, earning miles while you sleep. Like stephanie alluded to, we have a whole segment on dining rewards about how you can set up with a program. It doesn't cost you anything zero cost zero trouble. You just sign up, and then every time you go to certain restaurant, you're gonna earn miles two points. So if you're just starting out that that's totally fine that's actually ideal in some ways because we're trying to go from, you know, zero lesson one all the way to thirty step by step to get you everything you need. I really like to say if you're watching this at your desk at work, then our goal is to get you from your desk to your dream destination. I think kenya catic had a question. I'm sorry I just had a comment for your person, good s o that individual said that they have no miles and we're starting from scratch well, last year, september two thousand fourteen, I had nothing zero, zero points and absolutely nothing. And now it's, april two thousand fifteen and I have two hundred thousand airplane points so amazing you can start from scratch for sure and fantastic one hundred thousand arrows plan points as well. Well, I had more than that, but I already used twenty five thousand s o two great points there. You know kendrick is from canada, so he's been able to do this in just a short period of time and then also he's using the points and miles, which is exactly what should be, well, that's. True, because that's, a cool thing that we've talked about is that a lot of people. Get there miles that get their miles but then they get confused. I don't even know how to use them and that's going to be the critical part of what you guys are teaching. Yeah, that's probably them there's two main things here it's like get a lot of points in miles and then let's really put them to good use it's not horrid, are miles and points let's actually deploy them for something really great. Exactly. We do have another question coming in from jeff. What are the expectations as faras how quickly we're going to be able to travel abroad from the usf we're starting from zero and I know we're going to talk about the o a perfectly for tomorrow, but maybe want to say some we're going to talk about that tomorrow we're gonna look at what? Your travel profile, it's? Because everybody's different. I think so many times we look too, of course like this to tell us exactly what to do. Like you should fly american it's the best airline, and you should use it. And this is how many points is going to cost etcetera. But so much of that depends on how you like to travel again your dream destination if you want to go to bora bora. Or if you want to go to hawaii, there are different they're going to be a different number of miles is going to take you a different amount of time to get that also, if you're, you know, people are at different levels, you might just be interested in doing this as a hobby, but you might be interested in doing this a lot, and if you are really active in pursuing mileage, is not going to take you as long as if you're just, you know, earning some miles when you fly. So our goal is that you would be able to figure out your strategy that if you wanted to do this in thirty days, you could in fact, we might even take a dream destination while this course airs right and check their lives as we go along. So yes, it is possible to do it in thirty days if you want to take longer if you have a more conservative approach that's all so fine, so it's really up to you, you and again, those dates are going to be made fifteen is when we're going to do a live check in throughout as part of this boot camp from somewhere secret come and then we will wrap it up at june fifth as we do another life q nay, before that day, that lesson starts so let's see we did have a couple more things coming and I also wanted teo share a another story by the way a hundred people were very motivated by your story saying that they didn't know that you could actually get points that quickly and so that was really exciting on dh then we also have heather aurens who says she's watching from chicago she also started with nothing no miles or points watch your last workshop here incredible I've and has already earned two hundred and thirty thousand mary on points that we will be using this summer to stay at a five star hotels in paris and other places in france thanks for all the information okay so thank you for sharing thanks because those testimonials from people who are watching out there really goes to show the value that you are going to get out of these two people who are the most traveled that I've ever uh I'm curious from the studio audience what are some of the topics you're most interested in covering in the next six weeks? I know a cz a foreigner in canada it's something that with the credit cards thing is something that concerns may I just want to make sure that I'm not goingto have to stretch myself if I want to buy a house later isn't going to affect my committed and so that's this kind of stuff that I'm really excited about seeing it's think the scary thoughts to pop up in your head before you say, like, well, I'm gonna dream trip, but then I won't be out of my house and they were horrible stuff, but, um, I know that, like I've heard little things that people have put me to ease before, and so I know that it's possible. I'm excited about hearing what that what those tricks are, how were excellent, yes, really creative strategies for booking flights to different places because I see it is almost like a game like the world is a playground, some clearly here chained together, optimized the miles, you know, figure out the awards tables, so I'm really excited about that part that's a lot of fun, it could be addictive as well. It's a good kind of good. A couple of us were talking at breakfast, and we were actually looking to the table of contents and wondering if there's any if you're going to talk about any particular apse because it looks from the table of contents relatively technology agnostic, other than love itself. Okay, interesting part of the reason it's technology agnostic I don't mean to speak over that. Part of the reason is because things are changing. All the times we want to teach people like what's relevant now as well as if you're watching the course later, you know what still relevant then I think we'll touch on some different things probably and we can have a conversation about that in the facebook group that's fantastic and will be lots of people discussing and I think one of the greatest things is to get people from all over to share the things that share the things that they use I'm excited to learn about the logistics part ofthe booking a flight I booked some trips already but nowhere near really far away from the north american continent, so learning how to book in asia, europe, south america and whatnot would be very helpful for sure, and I'm very excited about that. Fantastic? Yes, yeah, I just I have a writer in the forest whose says I've tried turning points, but what I got frustrated by was the way that they expired before I could collect enough team. So are we gonna talk anything? We will absolutely talk about that I'd be curious to know what kind of points that person was earning because most of them actually don't expire as long as you have some kind of activity in the account and the activity on the account doesn't have to be a flight, it could be something really simple, like completing a survey and usually have three years before that happens and then whenever you do that it resets for another three years but we will talk all about that so there's usually italian yeah yeah yeah alitalia is the problem with only carriers that actually does expire your point so there's ways around that yes no, sorry yeah just one thing I'm excited about is be able tio to diversify my accounts to be able to go on my dream trip but then, you know, come back and go on another dream trip through no having different resource is a different type of the council went not so that's pretty exciting to me that's in case he was telling us before we started filming that he watched the last course and tell us how many points in stuff you got from that just from so I watched the last course about three months ago andan I did my research for about a month and then, you know, within the last two months I've accrued close to a hundred thousand points and continue the ongoing as well. So I'm just like a lot of people the audience so I took you know, one step at a time I didn't open multiple cards at one time but you know, start off a baby steps but I see big things to come in and definitely for part two sure you had your hendricks I'm excited to find out about what, um I already doing and not getting points, okay, you're gonna earn miles while you sleep, because there are probably a lot of things you're doing, you aren't getting points for already excellent, I'm looking forward to being able to four places that I couldn't to stay in and, uh, be able to experience that level like me on my bora bora. All right, chris, so a question comes in. Well, the course cover solo travelers on dh howto avoid single supplement, but that just made me think solo travelers, families, you know, it doesn't matter what it's diverse and inclusive, we're looking at people in a variety of background, so people who are travelling on their own people are traveling as a couple or as a family, all kinds of things. We actually have a specific segment, I believe it's lesson twenty five on families and couple troubles, and we're just going to address some of those issues that people always seem to come up come across, and but apart from that would be kind of addressing all the demographics throughout the whole course and also on the course bonuses paige there's some specific resource is for a travel hacking couples I think it's something about seven habits of highly effective couples, I don't know that's one for purchase or for our sleepy that's free of p r s v p great and I think there's also a bonus for family travelers as well, if you if you purchase, um let's see anything else that you that you are most that you are most excited about over the course of the day, I'm just excited I loved when we did our last creative life course and I was exhausted. It was so much information in one day and so much of it focused on the earning points in miles part, in fact, probably five of the seven hours was just around how to earn points and miles, and so many people come to us and they don't have the once you kind of get a strategy and figure out how to earn the miles that's the easy part, the harder part is actually figuring out what to do with them and that's really the reason I like to think about the dream destination, because if you can frame your strategy around earning miles and redeeming them around a specific place, it kind of you don't get stuck because when you go and look at an airline, look at an award chart there's so many choices out there and you just you just paralyzed by all this information and it's so hard, even for me. It's so hard, knowing everything that I do, I just know all the options and it's so hard to actually, you know, hit that confirmed button, because what if I'm not getting the best deal? What if my dream trip could be better? And so by having that focus, it just gives you a frame? It's like putting together a puzzle? You know, if if this week we lay out that outline and then we put all the rest of the pieces in for the dream trip throughout the course of the next six weeks, you know, I'm really motivated by stories I'm really motivated by hearing what people do with the information, not just oh, I learned this, but I went and did something about it. So I really, really love hearing stories like from the previous course, like, I love the story from heather, you know, who talked about how she earned something like one hundred eighty thousand marriott points. But then she also talked about what she's doing with them and she said, she's got, you know, her hotel's booked, I think, in paris or something like that or whatever it was, I I really like hearing stories of people who like I engaged with this and this is what happened that that for me is the goal and it is it is, you know, like there's a full intensive process for us to put this together, but I'm so so excited to do it because that's what we really want so fantastic oh, go ahead just curious if as we go through some of these segments when I when I first learned about you chris, I saw you as sort of a leader in the micro entrepreneurial community and you had made the focus of your micro entrepreneurship you're traveling and telling the stories of traveling, blogging about traveling you know we're going to be touching on me and those personalities you know, people that are doing some of this and making a living traveling the world as they do it I think so I think we have some maybe even with us here today like jenna's location traveling some of the skype guests I think we talked with marvin and josephine they're actually a traveling couple that do a lot of micro entrepreneurial things around the world we hope so that's great matt would you say to people like me who like, come when you immediately when you hear just from your upbringing whatever you think like oh that it must be some sort of like points, there's some catch like there is some cats, and I always get that knee jerk reaction, but, like, what would you say to people like me who have that immediate a reaction? Like it was gonna be forced to sign up for something? Or is there some sort of like card that you're goingto get me to do? Like, make me sign with a little faith, one step at a time? I have, you know, I have friends, in fact, a great story, my family, my family, I think for years and years thought I was crazy. I mean, they all lived very normal lives and you saw what I did. I went all over the world and was doing crazy things and, you know, I was doing humanitarian work for twenty years, I wasn't making any money, and my family was always like, we don't understand we don't understand this. And about two years ago, year and a half ago I came, I flew back to florida to see my family, and I flew on lou kahn's, a first class, and I came back and I showed my I'm showing my dad pictures of this. It wasn't a sweet, but I was in the upper deck of a seven four, seven I had a bed, not a seat that turned into a bed, but a bed and a giant seat next to me, and I was showing him the pictures and he was like, you know, you really have to tell me how to do this because I know that you have no money, we want to travel like this. My dad retired last year, and he hasn't been a business traveler his entire life, he's like a million miler on american and he's had lots of miles, you know, he was probably earning, you know, seventy, the one hundred thousand miles a year just from business travel domestically, and after he retired last year, I told him a few things step by step, he wanted to take a trip, they wanted to go to fly to europe to spain business class this year, and I was like, okay, I'll help you do it, but I was like, I'm not gonna do it for you, I'm gonna teach you how to do it kind of step by step, just like I'm showing you guys and my dad in the year that he retired, earn two hundred fifty thousand miles and bought his business class tickets to spain and he's totally sold on it now and now he calls me he's, like I got another credit card in the mail for you. What do I d'oh, you know? And so I first he was like, I think stephanie is in a lot of debt because she gets credit cards in the mail all the time, and now he totally he totally gets it. In fact, I was there a week ago and he was like, so I'm thinking about a first class trip to australia, and I've been checking aero plan and they have first class availability. I'm looking three hundred thirty days out, and I'm going to transfer my american express points into my aeroplane account, and I was just like, wow, and he was so sceptical to begin with, and it was just one step and listening to somebody who you trust and watching them do it and just following. And I promise you and all of you watching, if you do these steps and take your dream trip, you're going to be sold also, that's great, so have a little faith and teo