Adventure Travel with Julian Kheel - Points Path

Julian Kheel
Founder and CEO
Points Path

Over the last 15 years, Julian Kheel has become one of the world’s top experts on travel rewards. He first learned the ins and outs of travel loyalty programs while flying more than 200,000 miles a year as a TV producer and director for World Wrestling Entertainment (and yes, of course it’s all real). He expanded his expertise on travel topics in the following years, writing about travel for U.S. News and World Report, along with popular weekly columns for the travel rewards websites Frequent Miler and Travel Codex.

Noting Kheel’s growing following, he was recruited in 2016 to work at The Points Guy, the largest website in the world covering travel rewards, where he served as both Editorial Director and Director of Special Projects. He was the creator of the site’s now‐annual “Best and Worst U.S. Airlines” special report, as well as personally authoring its first and second yearly editions, both of which drew attention from hundreds of media outlets across the country.

Following his time at The Points Guy, Kheel became a Senior Editor at CNN covering both travel and finance topics, and launched the company’s first e‐commerce division focused on travel rewards. Battling through the global stoppage in travel from the pandemic, he grew the small section from its infancy to over seven figures of annual revenue in only three years.

In 2023, Kheel left CNN to become the founder and CEO of Points Path, a company that helps people utilize their travel rewards. The company’s browser extension not only shows travelers the cost in points and miles of every flight directly in Google Flights, but also indicates whether using points or miles for each flight is the better deal. In just 8 months, Points Path has grown to over 40,000 users, and has been lauded by numerous travel publications.

Kheel has appeared regularly as an analyst to discuss finance, travel and loyalty programs on national television segments for CNN, Bloomberg News, CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Yahoo Finance and Cheddar TV, as well as on ABC and CBS Radio. He has been quoted in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, and many other print and web outlets on travel-related topics. He has also worked as a consultant for the “Big 3” US airlines, advising them on their frequent flyer programs.

Originally from New York and South Florida, Kheel is a graduate of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications with a bachelor’s degree in television, radio and film production. His hobbies include managing his ever‐changing personal inventory of 25+ credit cards while maintaining a credit score of over 800.

summary
In this episode of the Big World Made Small podcast, host Jason Elkins interviews Julian Kheel, founder and CEO of Points Path. Julian shares his unique journey from being a reluctant traveler to becoming an expert in travel rewards and frequent flyer miles. He discusses his experience working with WWE, the importance of understanding travel points, and how Points Path simplifies the process of finding the best flight deals. The conversation also covers tips for maximizing travel rewards, the value of credit cards, and the future of Points Path.

takeaways

• Julian Kheel initially disliked travel but overcame his discomfort through frequent flying for work.
• Points Path is a browser extension that helps users find the best flight deals using points or cash.
• Frequent flyer programs are more valuable than airlines themselves, especially post-pandemic.
• S

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Transcript

Jason Elkins (00:01.075)
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Big World Made Small podcast for the adventure traveler. We're doing something a little different today that I'm pretty excited about. We've got Julian here, Julian Kheel He is the founder and CEO of Points Path. And for anybody that's been listening to the show for a while, we are generally having conversations with tour operators, travel writers. And when I first connected with Julian, I wasn't sure. was like, I'm not sure what this is, but then I heard his story.

and I was fascinated by his story. So we're going to jump into the story quite a bit. First of all, let me just say welcome to the show, Julian. Happy to have you here.

Julian Kheel (00:35.02)
Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Jason. I'm excited to be here.

Jason Elkins (00:38.451)
Yeah, yeah, this will be quite a treat. And we're going to definitely end your story. So I want the listeners to know you've got an interesting story. We're going to discuss that. And I think in this case, I'd like to start with just the 30 second elevator pitch on points path. So people that are listening to this kind of get a quick idea of what you do. And then they're going to stick around for the story. And then, of course, the story is going to lead right back to kind of present day. So what is points path?

Julian Kheel (01:03.106)
Yeah, points path. So everybody has trouble with frequent flyer miles, right? I'm sure your audience knows they have customers that get frustrated and everyone has the same two problems, which is one, they can't find flights they actually want to use their miles on. And two, even when they do, they don't know if they're getting a good deal or not, right? Or if they should just use cash or use the miles. And there are many, many websites and sites like the points guy and nerd wall and lots of sites to try and help you with this.

You have to spend really hours digging through to really understand it. What PointsPath does is answers those two questions in five seconds. It's browser extension. It runs in Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge. We have a Safari version coming shortly and it runs on top of Google Flights, which is a very popular search engine that I'm sure most of your listeners are familiar with. When you search in Google Flights with PointsPath installed, Google gives you the cash prices. PointsPath adds all the points prices for each airline and then tells you which is the better deal for each flight, whether you should use cash, use miles.

Is it a good deal? Is it a great deal? That's what Points Path does.

Jason Elkins (02:04.341)
Very cool. That sounds like a pretty good tool that addresses, like you said, those those two big things. And I and that's part of why I wanted to bring on the show, because I recognize that most of the people listen to this are into traveling. They're going somewhere or they have clients that are that are traveling. And this is so I thought that that was pretty cool, something I wanted to kind of make the listeners aware of. But then again, it's also about your story, too, and your story was super, super interesting. So I don't feel like I've got just a tech nerd on here.

that is like developed a pretty cool extension for, you know, we're not just going to sit here and talk about an hour about how to use, you know, build an extension and the business and stuff like that. I want to get into your story. So this, if you don't mind, this is our opportunity to kind of, I'm going to ask that question that I know our listeners have heard a bunch. How did you get from where you were to where you are? And I'll kind of help you kind of decide where, where we want to start. I don't know if we go back to childhood or wherever, where do you want to start?

Julian Kheel (03:00.494)
Well, I'll tell you this. I always start by saying I, when I was younger, didn't like to travel. I was not a fan of flying. I wasn't, I wouldn't not fly. If I had to fly, I would, but it was not my favorite thing to do. And travel was not really my favorite thing to do. And so that's how I grew up. And even into college in my early years, that's, that's how I was. I flew when I had to, but I didn't really look forward to it. And that all

Jason Elkins (03:27.327)
Were you, were you kind of, I'm curious, were you forced to travel? Cause a lot of people don't know if they liked to fly when they were young, unless they had opportunities or maybe they had parents. So what was, what was the childhood like that helped you come to the realization you didn't like to travel?

Julian Kheel (03:43.074)
Yeah, fortunately my parents did travel and therefore I traveled with them. So I, you know, when I was a kid, I didn't have a whole lot of options to it. I don't know why I didn't like travel. I mean, I didn't like flying. It was really about flying that I didn't like. But of course flying, you know, is a big part of travel nowadays. So I don't know exactly, but something in me just didn't like it. I don't know if I was uncomfortable. I don't know if I was scared. Again, I wasn't like fearful and wouldn't do it, but I just, it wasn't something I looked forward to.

So yeah, but I did travel as a kid, because my parents did. And I did like going places. I just didn't like how you had to get there. In any case, I grew up in South Florida. I was born in New York City, but most of my childhood was spent in a little town called Golden Beach, about halfway between Miami and Fort Lauderdale.

Jason Elkins (04:19.583)
Where did you grow up?

Jason Elkins (04:30.845)
Okay, so when you did travel with your family, was it mostly in the US or were you doing international stuff when you were young?

Julian Kheel (04:37.558)
It was mostly in the US. Occasionally we did an international trip. We'd go somewhere like London, something like that. We never did big trips to say, you know, Asia or South America or anything like that. But yeah, we did a little bit, but mostly it was within the US. It might be to see my grandmother in Detroit or something like that. So not long flights.

Jason Elkins (04:55.669)
Okay, I was just curious about that because it's interesting when you bring up, I wasn't into travel, I didn't like the flying and now we're not quite back to where we are now, but I think we can make the connection. So, okay, go ahead. You mentioned college.

Julian Kheel (04:57.89)
Yeah.

Julian Kheel (05:09.145)
Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I went to college. I went to college at Syracuse and I studied television and film because that was always my interest. And eventually I was in Los Angeles working as a TV and film director and writer. And I did that for a lot of years. And I still, you know, through my twenties and thirties would travel when I had to. It wasn't my favorite thing, but you know, as an adult, I did it when I needed to do it. And then in 2009, I was approached

to take a job as a director at World Wrestling Entertainment, WWE, the wrestling organization that involved being on the road every single week. That involved getting on a plane, flying to wherever they were doing the show that week, because it changed every week, mostly domestic, but a few international sites. We would do Monday Night Raw live on

Jason Elkins (05:43.454)
Right.

Julian Kheel (06:02.99)
9 o'clock at the time Eastern on Monday nights from whatever arena we were doing it. We would then drive to city B and tape Friday night Smackdown on Tuesday night and then fly home on Wednesday. So every single week you were flying out to a new city doing two shows and then flying back. And I said yes and partially because I thought it would be a fascinating job, which it absolutely was. I thought it was an opportunity that I would.

you know, never get again and that almost nobody else would have an opportunity. So how could I say no? And I'm really glad that I did it. But it did mean that I had to start getting on a plane every single week. So I did it. And I found what was really fascinating is after about a month, I was no longer uncomfortable traveling. All it really took was doing it for every week for not even that long, about three or four weeks. And I suddenly sit on the plane a month later and I thought this doesn't bother me at all.

I'm just used to it now. And that's how I got over my fear and of flying.

Jason Elkins (07:03.317)
Did you get to the point? There are a lot of people that travel a lot that never get to the point of actually enjoying the flying because it because of the monotony, the discomfort, the, you know, all the delays and all that stuff. But I'm just curious if during that process you ever got to the point where, yeah, I want a window seat and I love looking out as I'm flying into Chicago and seeing the city on the lake. I like window seats. I actually like.

Julian Kheel (07:24.278)
Yeah, absolutely. definitely it grew on me to the point I did like flying and of course it didn't hurt that because I was flying so much I was getting elite status on a lot of different airlines and so that meant at a time I was getting fairly routinely upgraded to business class and that certainly made it a very very enjoyable experience. Yeah, that helps exactly. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (07:34.517)
Stop.

Jason Elkins (07:41.117)
Okay, that helps. I guess I've heard.

Julian Kheel (07:49.368)
Well, back then it was a lot easier to get upgraded with elite status than it is today. Now the airlines try and sell those seats as much as they can. But back then I could get upgraded probably two thirds, maybe three quarters of every flight I took. So anyway, so I did that for about two years and then I sort of was coming to the end of my time there for various reasons. of which is, two years of wrestling is probably all you need.

Jason Elkins (08:02.15)
Okay, all right, very cool.

Julian Kheel (08:15.95)
And in any case, I was ready to move on to new things and really, frankly, I was sort of starting to wind down my TV and film career. I just had done it for 15 years and I was sort of looking for something new. And this part, this next part didn't all happen instantly. It actually unfolded over a period of years. Yeah, go ahead.

Jason Elkins (08:33.801)
Before. Before we get to the next part, I'm excited to get there and I feel like I wouldn't be doing a very good job here if I didn't dig a little bit more into the WWE thing. It's almost like that just kind of went. If I don't, if I don't ask it, it's going to sound like it just went right over my head. I remember when I read your bio, you made a comment about their yasher. It's all real. I guess the first question I would want to ask is were you at all interested in? I'm going to.

Julian Kheel (08:37.806)
Mm-hmm.

Julian Kheel (08:44.632)
Sure, sure.

Julian Kheel (08:50.476)
Hehehehehe

Jason Elkins (09:03.229)
Two part question. I'm gonna say sports and then I'm gonna say wrestling because I'm not sure. I don't know. I don't know where this conversation is gonna go. But I'm curious, were you a sports fan before? Was wrestling something on your radar? I guess let's answer those first.

Julian Kheel (09:06.307)
Yeah

Julian Kheel (09:18.858)
No, but yeah, so so first question. Yes, I I was always a big fan of football. I like I said, I grew up in South Florida, so Miami Dolphins to this day are my team. All of my father and I used to go to the games. Absolutely a big fan of football. Not as much other sports, but always certainly a passing interest. Wrestling not particularly now when I was kid, I watched some wrestling. I think a lot of kids watch wrestling, but certainly by the time I was in my.

20s and 30s, it wasn't something I was paying any attention to. So it did mean when I joined, I had to come up to speed very quickly on what was going on. What were the storylines? were the big wrestlers? Who were the big performers? Because I really walked in not knowing any of that, any knowledge I had from 30 years ago was of course way outdated. And what's really fascinating about that is of course it is an entirely different world wrestling.

It really has its own vocabulary and its own culture and all of that. The really helpful part is that it's very easy to get up to speed because there's a lot of people who have written all this down on the internet. Of all this internal vocabulary and all the storylines, you can go onto Wikipedia and find exactly all the different matches that someone has won or lost in their story. Very detailed, line by line, date by date, and know what that backstory is.

Which was great, because then you know, I just do a little research and figure out where we were. But yeah, it was a really fascinating experience.

Jason Elkins (10:49.385)
Did you?

Yeah, I'm curious. Maybe if you did, you can't tell me, but did you have to sign any sort of non-disclosure agreements about wrestling and, you know, the stuff that happens behind the scenes?

Julian Kheel (11:01.742)
I probably did. Yeah, I probably did. don't know. I honestly because this was now 15 years ago. So I probably did. mean, listen, everybody knows or if everybody doesn't know, I think it's safe to say, you know, it is obviously scripted entertainment, the storylines and the feuds. What is not scripted, I always emphasize, is the actual stunts that are happening out on in the ring. You know, they're not

wrestling but they are performing and they are falling down and they are jumping off of ladders and all of that and it's done as safely as possible but at end of the day these guys really are stunt performers and they can get injured and they do get injured sometimes just like any stunt performer it is a dangerous business and you really do have to know what you're doing.

Jason Elkins (11:42.421)
Hmm

Jason Elkins (11:50.845)
I completely get that there's some athleticism involved. mean, even if you look at, it seems like a weird analogy, but if you look at ballet, you know, it's not a sport, it's scripted and all that stuff, but it's also incredibly athletic. So I get that there's the athleticism and I'm curious like how far do they go into scripting it? So if I'm watching and someone goes over the ropes and gets the chair, comes back in, is like, is it scripted down to that or is it like just scripted like,

You guys go out, make a spectacle, and you're the one who's going to win. And I mean, to what level do they script it?

Julian Kheel (12:27.68)
No, it's pretty planned out and it has to be simply for safety reasons, right? You don't want to have two people out there throwing each other around and not knowing what's coming and what's going to happen next. Yeah. Now that being said, the top guys could improv and could, you know, if the really two really good guys working together could feel the energy.

Jason Elkins (12:33.077)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (12:38.695)
what the other one's going to do. Yeah, okay, that makes sense.

Julian Kheel (12:50.358)
and could make things happen that maybe weren't originally in the plan. And certainly in the scenes backstage, which is what I directed, which were the more verbal scenes that would move the stories forward, it depended on the performer whether you had a word-by-word script or if you simply gave them the bullet points and let them go. So it just really depended.

Jason Elkins (13:13.065)
Based on their experience and their ability to communicate. mean, what was the just? I imagine the criteria is like this guy. You can just kind of let him improv this guy. You better tell him exactly what to say, right?

Julian Kheel (13:17.696)
Yeah, I'll-

Julian Kheel (13:22.776)
Pretty much that's right and you learn that from experience and also look like anything in the in this world the more you do it the better you get at so the guys who had been doing it for a long time were usually easier to just let him roll right a John Cena, you know who was sort of the top guy when I was there you could easily just say here John and here's you know, here's what we're trying to get across. Here's what's important and he could roll and it was usually more natural that way other guys.

Jason Elkins (13:36.789)
We're

Jason Elkins (13:45.642)
Mm-hmm.

Julian Kheel (13:49.28)
wanted it like word for word or or you know if they were a little you know maybe more junior or some of them just wanted it word for word just so they knew what they were going.

Jason Elkins (13:57.705)
Was some of that stuff live or was that all recorded to where it could be edited if they went off the rails? Yeah, okay.

Julian Kheel (14:02.834)
a huge chunk of it is live. Yeah, yeah. At least when I was there, I don't know what they're doing nowadays, but when I was there, at least on Monday nights, we tried to do everything live. Once in a while, if we could get a backstage screen seen on tape, we would do so just so that we didn't have to do it live. But a lot of the time, because also the story and the scripts are changing right up to the last minute,

you can't get on tape because it changes or you might get on tape and that changes the guy do it live anyway so because those decisions are being made right up to the last minute so usually we did it live which was great in that it was exciting it was fun and once it was done he moved on to the next thing but was also a little scared.

Jason Elkins (14:50.389)
Did you, sorry, did you say you kind of directed the backstage or the, you say the word backstage, which is an interesting, behind the scenes, okay. So that's what you were doing. Were you doing some of the interview stuff as well or directing? Were you the camera in front of it and?

Julian Kheel (14:58.392)
I did, I did, yeah, the behind the scenes stuff, yeah, yeah. Yeah, go ahead.

Julian Kheel (15:12.302)
Yeah, no, I was entirely behind the camera. Yeah. So anybody who would be in front of the camera would be a performer, would be a different sort of set of the company. It was my job to make sure that they looked good. If they were supposed to be a hero, then they looked like a hero. If they were supposed to be a heel or a villain, that they looked like a heel or a villain and that they came across in a way that the audience would boo them and love them at the same time. It was my job to make sure everybody looked good, sounded good, and that the scene worked within the context.

of whatever story we're trying to tell.

Jason Elkins (15:43.163)
Right? Because I remember it was a long time ago. I have not watched. I don't like I have not watched any of that stuff in a long time. I'm not even really into the MMA stuff that's happening now. But what I which is probably a different thing. But anyway, but I go back in my memory. I like I remember scenes of these guys talking smack to each other and smack down, I guess. Right. And and some of those scenes are kind of like were iconic scenes of, you know,

Julian Kheel (15:56.398)
You

Jason Elkins (16:11.835)
So you were right in the middle of that producing that making that all that happened, right? That's basically what you were doing. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool.

Julian Kheel (16:16.714)
Absolutely. Yeah, that was actually the best part was that because right you I did a lot of television for two years. I mean we were doing hours and hours each week and you do a lot and a lot of it just sort of you know you put it up there it happens and you move on but like you said once in a while there was like a really iconic scene that stuck and there's even to this day a few in my mind where I said yeah that really it was good storytelling that was something that you know I remember and that people remember.

Jason Elkins (16:42.706)
you

Julian Kheel (16:46.086)
I was also lucky enough to be there when we were doing a celebrity initiative where we had a guest celebrity host come in every Monday and do the show. So I got to work with people like William Shatner and Will Ferrell and all sorts of celebrities. That was a lot of fun too.

Jason Elkins (16:58.549)
No.

Do you? Cause I can see a difference between that and you use the word story time. You know, it was a good story and I look at the difference between maybe that and maybe somebody that's, you know, doing NFL Monday night football type stuff, doing behind the scenes, you know, interviews with the players, the coaches, all of this stuff. That's a totally different things, right? I mean, in my opinion, or is it still storytelling? Help me.

Julian Kheel (17:24.938)
It is and it isn't. It is and it isn't because at the end of the day, because I again, I've worked in television. I've done. I also worked for the NFL for a while, so I've done football as well. You're still telling the story. You're still telling a story of the game. This team is coming in, you know, down on its luck. This other team is flying high, you know, but the underdog has a chance because of A, B and C.

Jason Elkins (17:35.765)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (17:40.661)
Yeah.

Julian Kheel (17:51.722)
And when we go down to the sideline reporter and she talks to the coach, you know, well, what are you going to do different in the second half? That's all telling a story, right? It really is. It's just a different form of it. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (17:58.599)
It's still yeah, OK, yeah, you sold me. Now maybe the difference is I don't know the NFL. It's not really well. I mean, I'm sure as a producer you can have a storyline you're trying to create, but you're not giving a script to the coach or the players and use, which is why they say some crazy shit. Sometimes I my French, right?

Julian Kheel (18:12.726)
Yeah, but no, it's no, no, no, no. Yeah, no. Yeah, no, the NFL is most certainly not scripted. But what I mean is when you're when they go into it, they do spend the week. Those announcers, they look and say, well, what you know, what is the story coming into this game? What are the what have these teams done? Which players are injured? Which players are playing well? And then, of course, as the game unfolds, yes, the story changes. And it may be about, that underdog who is going to lose is now, you know, have us having a

Jason Elkins (18:30.197)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (18:37.461)
Great.

Julian Kheel (18:41.934)
potential comeback winner, whatever it might be. And everybody goes with that because that's the story that's unfold.

Jason Elkins (18:47.921)
Yeah, and you gotta have some of that or people wouldn't watch it, I think.

Julian Kheel (18:50.978)
That's right. would be if it was all predictable, it would be more.

Jason Elkins (18:54.389)
Great. Now one back, one question back on the wrestling and then we're going to move forward. I think I'm curious about the difference in the person that we would see if we're watching wrestling and, and then the actual person that's not in front of the camera. I'm just kind of curious what your thoughts are. What did you learn about people? What did you learn about wrestlers? What would you like to share with us that would kind of give us some insight into what are these guys really like when, when they're not in the arena or they're

Julian Kheel (18:59.266)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (19:24.094)
Not in front of the camera.

Julian Kheel (19:25.58)
Well, first of all, most of them are very, very pleasant people. Like most of them are very professional. They are there to do a job. They know that, you know, they want to be, you know, the top guy or the top woman as the case may be. So they, you know, everybody has their hopes and dreams. But at the end of the day, almost to a T, every one of them was very professional. And I had very few problems working with any of them, you know, when they are being a villain.

then they are obviously playing at being a villain and when they're being a hero, they're playing at being a hero. But at end of the day, we all have pieces of our personality that we can bring out, right? If we're trying to be a villain, there's a piece of your personality that you can sort of latch onto and enhance. And that's really what it comes down to with these guys is when they're being the hero, well, those are the pieces of your personality that you're gonna bring forward. And if you're being a evil guy, then you're gonna look for sort of the darker pieces.

Jason Elkins (20:03.071)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (20:11.615)
Hmm.

Julian Kheel (20:20.684)
And most of were pretty good at it. Again, you know, look, some people are, you know, were better than others, but most of them, they certainly understood the assignment, as they say.

Jason Elkins (20:21.385)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (20:28.693)
You said something interesting. said all of them kind of want to be at the top. And I'm thinking, I'm sure the physicality is important to get to the top because you need to be able to put on a show and not get hurt. But really getting to the top, it's not like I don't know anything about MMA, but I'm guessing there's a little bit more about actually having the ability to beat your partner is how you get to the top in MMA.

Whereas with wrestling, it's gotta be a whole mix of personality. How do they perform when they get in front of your camera and you're asking, you know, and there's people asking them questions. that, that seems to be the case, right? Am I missing anything there? Yeah, okay.

Julian Kheel (21:09.71)
Absolutely. No, that's exactly right. And look you would try things and sometimes they wouldn't work and you might try them for a month and then you know say all right, this isn't happening and we got to you know pivot to something else because We you know, you can only try this for so long Other times you just give something a whirl Just as maybe a fun one-off and it would hit huge and then of course if something hit huge you say well do that again You know, just keep doing that until until you can run it out

Jason Elkins (21:25.834)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (21:33.045)
Thank

Jason Elkins (21:37.449)
This sounds like Saturday Night Live. I'm imagining the producers at Saturday Night Live. Let's try this. You've got one of the staff members. Let's put him in this role, see how it goes, and it might turn into every Saturday they do the church lady or whatever, right? But they tried it first and it worked. That's interesting.

Julian Kheel (21:39.616)
Little bit, little bit.

Julian Kheel (21:52.46)
Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. And the thing with wrestling is you have and now I think they're doing five hours a week or something like maybe more than that of television. So you got to fill it with something, you know, so you're going to try things because because you got to fill the airtime.

Jason Elkins (22:09.769)
That's interesting. I guess I do have one. I better quit saying one more question. I find this fascinating. we will move on in a moment, but you know, I had a friend, well, she's still a friend who was a swimmer. She trained all of her youth in swimming. She went to the Olympics, was part of the gold medal, synchronized swimming team. So she got a gold medal in Atlanta. I don't remember where it was as part of the team.

Julian Kheel (22:13.73)
Hahaha

Jason Elkins (22:39.381)
And then she transitioned into working for Cirque du Soleil as a performer and swimming. don't, I don't know a lot about Cirque du Soleil, but she was still swimming, but it wasn't competitive swimming. So I'm imagining some of these wrestlers, like, do they start out in some other athletic endeavor that maybe is their passion and then end up in wrestling. the extra part I want to put on that is because I think like, if I meet a football player and

I have this conversation, how'd you get where you are? I'm gonna, I played football in high school, in Pee-wee football. I moved my way up and I became an NFL football player. That was always the ambition. So I'm wondering these wrestlers, did they start out in something else, theatrical or physical, and then tend to end up in wrestling because they have this unique skillset that works? Or do they actually kind of grow up wanting to be a wrestler? I mean, I know you can't speak for all of them.

Julian Kheel (23:31.854)
Right, yeah, and that's really the answer is that it was different for every person. Some of these guys wanted to be a wrestler from day one. They grew up wanting to be a wrestler. They've chased their dream and they made it to the WWE. Other folks came through other paths. Yeah, and then maybe never really thought about being a wrestler or had other athletic endeavors and eventually moved into wrestling. So it really depended on the person. I will say there were definitely a chunk of folks who

They loved wrestling, like they just loved wrestling. And even now, when you look at people like Dwayne Johnson and John Cena, who have become fairly big Hollywood stars, certainly Dwayne Johnson and John as well, they still go back. They still go back to WWE and wrestle. And you might say, well, why you don't have to at this point, right? And the money, you don't, there's no need. They've truly loved it. They really do. And that's why they go back.

Jason Elkins (24:31.069)
It's, it's, it just had this connection between wrestling and theatrics and movies. He mentioned those guys as like, yeah, that makes sense. Storytelling, physicality, really what they're doing on the screen and an action adventure in some ways, isn't that far removed from what they were? Okay. That's interesting. All right. I think we, we, I wish I could think of a funny pun, but thank you for, thank you for discussing so much wrestling.

Julian Kheel (24:41.738)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Julian Kheel (24:58.168)
Hehehehehe

Jason Elkins (25:00.883)
I'm sure some of our listeners have checked out like, travel adventure, travel podcast. I thought it was fascinating. So I just have conversations that I think are fascinating and hopefully, either. So with us. Okay. So let's move on after you left there. What was that next big phase that you'd mentioned?

Julian Kheel (25:04.568)
Yeah

Julian Kheel (25:17.768)
Right, so while I was at WWE, I learned really everything there was to know about frequent flyer miles and travel points. And really everyone at WWE knows their frequent flyer miles and travel points because they're constantly traveling. Everyone is on the road all the time. So you very quickly learn it because why wouldn't you? Right, there's value to be had there. And there was even a little subculture there at WWE where people say, you know,

Jason Elkins (25:37.374)
Mm-hmm.

Julian Kheel (25:43.19)
Are you going for executive platinum on American? Cause I think I'm going to stay with Delta Diamond cause I'm hub captive. Everybody really knew it, you know, and it was a thing there from John Cena down to the interns. Everybody knew it. but, so once I left, and like I said, I was sort of maybe looking to pivot from my TV and film career. I had all this knowledge about frequent flyer miles and travel rewards and the ability to write from my time in Hollywood. So I started writing.

for a small blog at the time it was called Hack My Trip about frequent flyer miles and about how to maximize them and how to use them and that sort of thing. And from there it grew. I eventually got hired by a bigger blog called Frequent Mylar and then eventually I got hired by The Points Guy, the biggest website about frequent flyer miles and travel rewards. Eventually grew to running that site as the editorial director.

And then CNN actually came and asked me to come over and start their travel rewards slash credit cards vertical for their e-commerce site, CNN underscored. So I moved over to there and did several years there at CNN. And again, that's really what led me to Points Path because I spent many, many years writing about these miles, trying to help people use them. It's very complicated. It's very, you know, partially by design, frankly, and we can talk a little bit about that.

Jason Elkins (27:07.477)
Mm-hmm.

Julian Kheel (27:08.974)
But people have trouble understanding it rightfully so and so you know we would write these yeah, yeah sure yeah

Jason Elkins (27:14.675)
Yeah, let's touch on that right now if you don't mind. When I you say, by design, I can kind of imagine that the airlines maybe don't really want you to use all your points.

Julian Kheel (27:24.726)
Well, so that's the fascinating part. Today they do. In the old days, was true. In the old days, breakage, as they call it, which means miles that you earn and then don't use was part of the business model. And if there was a good chunk of breakage, that was good for the airline or hotel. Now the equation is completely reversed. And the reason is that, especially when it comes to the airlines, the fruit flyer programs are actually, in some cases, more valuable than the airline itself.

American Airlines makes more money from American Advantage than they do from actually flying people on planes. And that all became clear. I mean, that was all fairly well known, but it really came to the forefront during the pandemic because when the airlines needed loans from the federal government because people weren't flying, they put up the frequent flyer programs as their collateral because that was the valuable part of the airline. Now that so you say, well, why would that matter as far as people using their miles? The reason is that

Jason Elkins (27:55.113)
Hmm

Jason Elkins (28:01.269)
Hmm.

Jason Elkins (28:17.461)
okay.

Julian Kheel (28:24.568)
they have learned that the best way to get someone to earn miles in a program is for them to have a successful redemption. If you earn miles and then use those miles and get a free flight and it works, then you are more likely to continue earning those miles. And when you earn those miles...

Jason Elkins (28:40.095)
as opposed to just accumulating some miles for a trip you took that sit in an account somewhere that you don't touch them.

Julian Kheel (28:45.57)
that you don't, and then they expire or whatever and you forget about them, now they've lost you as a member of the program and the program is less valuable. So they really do want you to use those miles.

Jason Elkins (28:52.117)
Mm-hmm. OK.

And how are most of those miles accumulated? Is it by the credit cards or by the actual flights?

Julian Kheel (29:04.748)
Yeah, so nowadays more than two thirds of all miles are accumulated not from travel. Credit cards in this country particularly are the biggest way, but there's a lot of other ways, shopping portals, dining portals, all sorts of things like that. Travel only accounts for about a third of all miles.

Jason Elkins (29:22.867)
Okay, so the airlines making money with these credit card, the banks and all this. So they're making more money doing that than they are flying passengers. I think it's what you're saying, right?

Julian Kheel (29:31.798)
Yeah, yes, the way it works is that if, for instance, if Chase has a United credit card that they offer, when you earn miles with your Chase card, Chase buys those miles from United. So United is getting paid per mile. And obviously, they don't do it one at a time. You're talking about millions and millions of miles. But that's how it works. They pay for the miles, and that's how the airlines make their money.

Jason Elkins (29:50.677)
Right.

Jason Elkins (29:58.355)
Hmm, all right. Cool. I don't think I need you to explain all of that to me, because my eyes will be rolling the back of my head, which is which is kind of your point.

Julian Kheel (30:07.022)
Hahaha

Well, that's just the very basics of how it works behind the scenes, right? We talked about how all the different programs have different kinds of miles and they're worth different amounts and how they transfer and things like that.

Jason Elkins (30:19.304)
Uh-huh.

Yeah, yeah, and I get that. And also, I remember you started saying it was really complicated. That's why we did all these blogs. then at the very beginning of this conversation, you explained how people could just figure it out in five seconds with an extension on their Google. So, OK, so takes further. So you were writing, working for CNN, you're doing all this stuff. The industry had changed a little bit. What else should we touch on in that?

Julian Kheel (30:27.405)
Mm-hmm.

Julian Kheel (30:48.054)
Yeah, so I actually moved to CNN in January of 2020 to launch their travel rewards vertical. As you might, you you can look at a calendar and say, well, obviously, 60 days later, that changed somewhat because the pandemic really shut everything down. And we pivoted, we had to pivot on our end into a little more. We spent a lot more time doing personal finance at that point. And by the way, when I went to CNN, I said before,

Jason Elkins (30:54.665)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Julian Kheel (31:17.558)
It was to do a travel reward slash credit cards vertical. The reason those two things go together, obviously, is that you earn miles with your airline card. But also companies like CNN, also Points Guide, NerdWall, and all of them, they get paid commissions when people sign up for credit cards. So that's how they're making money off of it as well. And so it came down to us of which cards should we be recommending?

Jason Elkins (31:36.563)
Okay, got it.

Jason Elkins (31:40.891)
Okay, so you so this is a very oversimplification, I'm sure. But let's say I've got a blog that people are coming to to learn how to take advantage of more points and I've got the five best credit cards for travelers that want points and that I've got an affiliate link. So someone signs up one of those cards. I get a commission. That's how I make money as a blogger promoting credit cards and points, right? Okay, okay. Okay.

Julian Kheel (32:07.01)
Yes, that is one of the main ways. Yes, that's exactly right. Right. And look, that also you say, because then obviously the next question, let's dive into it is, well, don't you promote the cars that pay you the most? And the answer is not if you're good, not if you're responsible, not if you do it right, not if you're ethical. Yes, there are certainly shady customers, shady operators out there, not customers, shady operators out there who do exactly that, who promote the car that pays them the most.

Jason Elkins (32:21.013)
laughter

Julian Kheel (32:36.29)
But everywhere I've gone, you know, has generally been first of all, they've been big enough that they didn't need to do that. You know, say like the points guy or CNN, then they're not going to push a card that they get more money on just because there's no need, you know.

Jason Elkins (32:42.346)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (32:49.863)
Right, well, and also maybe if you can, I don't want to say the word get, but let's say I've got credit card A and credit card B and credit card A is really good. They don't pay us as much commission, but they're really good. So when someone clicks the link and goes to the website, they'll see it's good and they're not going to get sticker shock by interest rates or whatever. And they're going to actually sign up for it. Then number one, you know, okay, you've probably made up your commission gap or the other one that

that gives you a big commission, people click on that link and go to that website and the website is crap or whatever, whatever. So, and we're in the internet age, right? Like you write a blog post about the five best credit cards. It's not going to be long before somebody is posting somewhere or something about these guys over at such and such blog or full of it. You know, this is ridiculous. And you put comments on people can put comments on blog posts and stuff. So I can see that.

Julian Kheel (33:36.76)
Yeah

Julian Kheel (33:42.616)
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, at the end of the day, especially a place like CNN, all you have is your credibility. So you can't be burning in on promoting bad credit cards. yeah. Yeah. That's a whole other conversation. But you're certainly not going to try and burn your credibility pushing some bad credit card because again, it's self-defeating.

Jason Elkins (33:48.307)
Yeah. Well, I'm not going to talk about news agencies and credibility. We're not going to have that conversation.

Jason Elkins (34:01.193)
Yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (34:05.183)
Yeah, yep. Okay, all right. So you were doing that and then what was kind of the next step to get you on the path?

Julian Kheel (34:13.216)
Yeah, so actually what ended up happening was I was approached, this was been 2023, by a venture capital firm who said, you know, we think there's an opportunity here in the travel reward space to do something with technology, but we're not really sure what it is. And we know that you're one of the top guys, frankly, in the world on this and we'd love to talk to you about it. And so we started diving into it and I actually went over there and worked as an operator in residence.

developing this idea for points back that ended up being points better. did go through multiple iterations. What points package today is not where we started. And that's part of the process. But at the end of the day, what it came down to was how can we use technology to do this to solve this problem in a way that would be faster and easier for people than writing all about?

Jason Elkins (35:04.181)
Okay. Yeah. Which makes sense. Cause if you're going to spend all this time writing about it and then somebody else got to spend the time to read about it and research it and you got to SEO it and rank it and this and that. And, and there's some people out there that like myself that travel quite a bit, but to be honest with you, for me to try and figure out points and stats just kind of outside of my area of interest, I've probably.

Julian Kheel (35:30.39)
It,

Jason Elkins (35:31.911)
wasted a lot of opportunities to get points because as I added even like sign up for the account I've been on the same flying the same airline for three years and never even signed up for an account so

Julian Kheel (35:42.72)
Yeah, that's so that that is the first thing I will tell anybody, you know, because people say, well, where do I start? I say, well, first thing is sign up for an account because they're free and it takes about 30 seconds to do at the very least sign up for an account with American United Delta, you know, JetBlue Southwest that or forget JetBlue if you don't fly JetBlue, those other four have an account because even if you forget to put your number on there or whatever, you can always credit it later. Although the advantage of having an account is that

Jason Elkins (35:49.551)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (35:59.081)
Mm-hmm.

Julian Kheel (36:11.746)
you put your number in and they'll fill in all your details when you're booking a ticket so you don't have to go through and add all that stuff, know, especially if you have maybe have a TTSA pre-check number or something like that. You don't have to look it up every time to plug it in. So that's the first step. If you are going to start collecting miles is you need to have counts that where you can collect those models.

Jason Elkins (36:15.207)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (36:22.536)
Right. Okay.

Jason Elkins (36:30.035)
And a lot of the airlines, you know, the code shares or whatever. mean, like sometimes, like if I want to fly in Kiwanis, I want to go to Australia, for example, I might be able to use you probably know exactly which airline, but I could use my continental or United. I guess it's just you. Just United now.

Julian Kheel (36:45.686)
It's just United now. yeah, yeah. But yeah, you, right. So yes, so that's a un-actually getting already into the intermediate steps, which is that each of these airlines, the US airlines are parts of a airline alliance, right? So in the case of Qantas, Qantas is a member of One World, which American is also a member of. So that's where the overlap would be, of which also Alaska Airlines is also a member of.

Jason Elkins (37:00.158)
Hmm.

Jason Elkins (37:06.933)
Okay.

Julian Kheel (37:12.684)
And there's some really interesting things that you can see in points path when you run it, where because Alaska and American are both one world partners, you can often get American flights with Alaska miles and vice versa. So you might say, well, I don't need to collect Alaska miles. Like, well, but you can use them to get American flights and often at lower prices than if you used American miles. So there's a lot of overlap.

Jason Elkins (37:25.117)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (37:34.837)
Okay. All right. By the way, if somebody doesn't use credit cards for whatever reason, personal choice, they don't, they can't get them, whatever.

Are they really messing out like is it like? Because I guess I have this story in my head. That if I just accumulate the miles that I'm flying with, I'm never really going to get anywhere and I think that story comes from every time you sit down in the cabin. They're walking through. They're going to give you the thing you're going to get 50,000 free miles if you just apply for it. If you get approved for it. So sometimes it's like if I'm not doing the credit card thing, is this really worth it? So how do you answer that?

Julian Kheel (38:15.79)
Yeah, so the first thing I always tell people is if you are not comfortable with credit cards and if you do not feel that you can be disciplined with your spending and credit cards, do not get a credit card. If you pay one cent in interest on a credit card, you have blown out the value of whatever miles you've collected because those interest rates are so ridiculous. If you are carrying a balance and paying 18, 20, 25 % in interest,

The value of your miles are nowhere near that. So you've lost the game at that point. And by the way, that's how the banks win the game, of course, is they're counting on people doing that. So you want to be the person who doesn't do that. The key to any time that you're collecting miles or rewards, whether it's cash back, whatever it might be, pay your bill in full on time every single month and don't spend more than you otherwise would. You should just be replacing your debit card or cash with a credit card, but not buying anything different.

Jason Elkins (38:48.157)
Okay. okay.

Julian Kheel (39:15.564)
It should be the same stuff you're buying.

Jason Elkins (39:15.741)
OK. That sounds really good. I'm happy to hear you say that. OK, we'll continue. I'll release the store listeners.

Julian Kheel (39:19.95)
Well, to answer your question, yeah. Yeah, no, I listen. There's lots of people who say I'm just not comfortable, you know, having a credit card. say no problem. Now that being said, there are other ways you can earn miles aside from flying. I mentioned shopping portals, for instance, shopping portals. Every airline has a shopping portal. And what a shopping portal is, it's simply a way.

to earn bonus miles on things you'd already buy online with a debit card or however it is that you normally pay. You go through the shopping portal first and click through to whatever merchant you're gonna buy. Let's say you're going to Macy's.com. The only difference is instead of going to Macy's.com directly, you go to the shopping portal first, United's or American's and find Macy's, click through there. So then you can pay with your debit card, whatever you wanna pay with like you normally would, but you'll earn bonus miles from that shopping portal.

just for making that purchase. that's a great way to do it. Correct. That's right. It's a commission deal. Exactly. They're basically sharing a piece of their commission with you. Exactly. So that's a great way to earn miles without a credit card and at zero additional cost.

Jason Elkins (40:15.039)
Cause Macy's cause Macy's will give a little bit of money to the airline and the airline. Yup. Yup. They split it with you or something.

Jason Elkins (40:33.404)
interesting.

Yeah, OK, all right. I guess my thought right now is so your extension is a tool. We can talk about that here in a second, but I'm also thinking like OK, if I want to learn more about this, if I want to go figure out like other ways to do it other than you and I coming back and having five more episodes, do you have this information on your website is is there?

Or is there another place that people should go look just if they want to learn about it?

Julian Kheel (41:06.412)
You know, so we do also do some content on points path.com. can find it under our travel tips tab. But to be completely honest, you know, we've only been doing this for a little over a year. So there are obviously sites like the points guy that have much more extensive, know, libraries on this sort of thing. but we do have a story actually up right now about how you can earn more miles in 2025, you know, that we wrote at the beginning of the year. And that's got all of these different options and then many of which don't do not require a credit.

Jason Elkins (41:12.447)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (41:29.621)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (41:36.841)
Alright, alright, very cool. I'm happy happy that came up. Maybe. I don't think they need to be necessarily that you've given some good tips and pointers about points, tips and pointers about points, but I also realize that you've had so much experience traveling points are definitely part of that. That's kind of become part of your life, but I'm looking for two or three just kind of tips or things you learn along the way that.

maybe would not be obvious to people that we haven't already discussed.

Julian Kheel (42:08.994)
Yeah, I always like to talk about, you know, the myths of booking travel because I've done a lot of travel, you know. Sometimes you hear people say, you know, if you book your flight on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, you'll get a lower price. That may have been true 20 years ago when, you know, airlines loaded all their fares at once. But today, the computer algorithms are changing those prices, you know, every minute, every hour. And it doesn't really matter what day you book your flight. Now, that being said,

If you fly on a Tuesday or Wednesday, that could be cheaper because higher prices do tend to be on the weekends when people are going home and things like that. So midweek can be cheaper. And certainly booking in the last week or two before the flight departs is definitely going to be more expensive because airlines raise those prices for business class flyers or for business travelers rather, because those business travelers are, that's right, they're price insensitive.

Jason Elkins (42:41.62)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (43:01.257)
They have to go there like they can't plan vacation at a time. And they're paying for upgrades, get more points. Yeah. What about real quick? want to ask you, while we're on this topic, is it used to be that if you've extended your trip, if you bought a round trip ticket, if your trip included a Saturday, a weekend,

Julian Kheel (43:05.398)
And it's not their money. So it's the company's money. So they generally don't care anyway. those, right? They are price insensitive and that's why the airlines do that. yeah.

Jason Elkins (43:30.249)
That was more of a touristy type of thing. Less business. Is that still the case? Is it still better to try and?

Julian Kheel (43:34.496)
It is, yeah, it's fascinating. It is not the case anymore for domestic travel, typically. You can book two one ways and basically get the same price as a round trip if you're staying within the US. However, internationally is absolutely still a thing that flying one way internationally is often more expensive than completing a round trip or even just booking a round trip.

Jason Elkins (43:40.916)
Okay.

Julian Kheel (43:58.35)
And sometimes there are know stay requirements and things like that So internationally that is definitely still a thing and there have been times where if I needed to get Somewhere internationally and for whatever reason I didn't need the return flight I'd book the round trip anyway and just dump the last part because it was cheaper to do that

Jason Elkins (44:14.601)
That's helpful because I generally buy, do international. I generally buy one way just because I don't know where I'm going next or one. want to come back, but I've, haven't really checked. So thank you. Interesting.

Julian Kheel (44:26.07)
It's worth looking just stick stick some return date on the end and see if the price goes down. You know not always will happen, but sometimes it very much will.

Jason Elkins (44:33.685)
Well, and actually that'd be great because normally when you show up someplace they want to see some sort of return ticket anyway. There's ways around that. Maybe maybe you have a tip on that. I know there's one. Actually, I'm just going to mention it. It's onward ticket. I believe onward onward ticket. I hope I'm right. But there's some you can go out there and you can buy a temporary ticket and they'll give you a confirmation number, flight details and all this stuff and it's like $12 and then after 48 hours they release it back to the airline. I don't know how how it works.

Julian Kheel (44:38.765)
That's right.

Julian Kheel (44:48.586)
Yeah, I don't know that one. Yeah, no.

Julian Kheel (44:53.55)
Mmm.

Julian Kheel (45:01.442)
fascinating. That's fascinating. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (45:03.145)
But it's pretty cool. So when you show up at the airline and they're like, okay, you're going to Columbia one way, you need to have some sort of proof of return and you can, you have it all loaded up in case they ask and you push the little button, buys it and you show them your itinerary and they're like, okay, great. It's 12 bucks.

Julian Kheel (45:16.11)
You know, this is actually a place I have a funny story about this, but it is a place where points and miles can be useful because especially since the pandemic the US programs, you can generally cancel a miles ticket with no penalty right up to almost the very last minute and have those miles redeposited. So that's a great way to have an onward ticket that doesn't actually cost you anything that you can then cancel later.

Jason Elkins (45:39.679)
Cause yeah, cause I've heard people say, you can buy a ticket by one way ticket and you cancel it within 24 hours. You get a refund. Well, yeah, but you got to shell out the money, wait for the refund. So if you, even if you just did that with your points, you get your point there, it's easy to get your points back and you probably don't need them, right? You know, you don't necessarily need the cash in your account. there's a good idea. All right.

Julian Kheel (45:49.034)
Right, that's right.

Julian Kheel (45:55.926)
Yeah. Right. Exactly. You're not taking money out of your own account. That's exactly right. I was, fact, at one point, this is many years ago, I was going from Paris to London via the channel, via the train, the high speed train. And when you do that, you clear immigration before you get on the train so that when you walk out in London, you just walk out. You don't have to clear it again there. So I had already cleared

Jason Elkins (46:13.717)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (46:22.484)
Mm-hmm.

Julian Kheel (46:25.774)
Paris I'd already exited Paris at one booth and then you know, maybe 20 yards forward there was the entrance booth to England before I got on the train and I hand my passport to the immigration officer and she says when are you how long are you staying in England as it happened I hadn't booked a ticket out of England because I was waiting for a points price to lower I was just sort of like I had the ability I had you know millions of points it wasn't that but I hadn't done it yet

Jason Elkins (46:47.91)
okay.

Julian Kheel (46:54.286)
and I wasn't exactly sure I might leave a Tuesday, Wednesday. So I just casually said to the one, Oh, I don't know, four or five days. And she looks at me, she goes, you don't know how long you're staying in England. And I say, well, I, you know, I haven't booked my ticket yet. goes, you haven't booked your ticket out of it. And I started looking back. I was like, I've already left France. I don't know. I'm going to have to start a country right here between France and England's immigration booth. Cause I don't know what's going to happen. And eventually I had to pull out my business card and say, look, I'm a writer at the points guy. And this is how I draw.

She let me in, she was not happy about it, but she let me in.

Jason Elkins (47:26.101)
yeah, yeah, no, that's I could I could see that scenario. You know what comes up for me was that movie. I it was a Tom Hanks where you're stuck in an airport, terminal because because the country went to war and it would no longer exist. All right, that's funny. So those are some great tips. I have this thing I've been doing that I'm happy to share with my listeners because it works really well for me.

Julian Kheel (47:34.295)
Yeah, the terminal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, I, yeah, I thought I was going to have Julian Stan right in the middle of this, between these two immigration booths. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (47:56.277)
I don't pay upgraded tickets. I generally don't want to pay more for even, I just generally take whatever seat they give me. But here's how I do it. As I just wait and I'm the absolute last one on the plane and I just walk on, I'm just the last one on the plane. And it's when I walk in, any open seat I see is fair game. Cause there's nobody behind me.

Julian Kheel (48:19.03)
Hmm

Jason Elkins (48:21.589)
Nobody is going to come up and say, sir, you're in my seat because everybody is already kind of getting settled in. So I just go find an aisle seat. I find a window. Sometimes I find a complete aisle open and you know, I've got a ticket in my hand in case worst case. You know, I mean, if I get on the plane and every seat's full, OK, worst case scenario is I sit on my crappy middle seat. But 95 % of the time I end up with an empty row or a aisle seat with nobody sitting next to me. So I just.

I guess I'm just sharing that for anybody else out there. And I've traveled with other people that think I'm crazy. Like, you can't do that. You can't do that. They're going to get upset with you. You have to sit in your assigned seat. And I'm like.

Julian Kheel (48:55.222)
You

Julian Kheel (49:00.366)
mean, the worst they'll tell you is just go back to your seat, right? They're not going to throw you off the plane. Frankly, it happens all the time where people are just in the wrong seat because they're in the wrong seat. So they're not going to get upset at you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (49:03.079)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (49:10.003)
Yeah, as long as there's nobody behind you that has a ticket in their hand. You know, I mean, I don't sit. I'm not going to try and sit down in first class. I know I'm pushing my luck there.

Julian Kheel (49:20.064)
Yeah, thing about that, because some people try that, they do have a list of passengers in first class. And if a seat is supposed to be empty and there's somebody in it, they're going to ask you who you are and to show you a ticket. So that probably won't work. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (49:26.163)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (49:31.918)
Yeah, and I get that because the airline has more expenses involved with the people sitting in first class. I'm not trying to I'm not trying to take advantage of anybody. I'm literally just because because otherwise you get in your seat and you sit and wait until the last person comes on and then you see if there's any open seats and you move. I mean, people do that all the time. But but it's harder to move. It's really obvious that and somebody else might move into that spot quicker than you or the guy who comes on the plane last like me.

Julian Kheel (49:39.712)
Right, right.

Julian Kheel (49:49.164)
Yep. Right. So it's essentially the same thing. Right. Exactly. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (50:00.373)
to sit in the spot he wanted. So anyway, so I always come on last.

Julian Kheel (50:02.348)
Yeah, no, could totally see that. I could see that working. There's a viral trend called check-in chicken going on where people that it's not quite the same, where people are leaving their seats unassigned and waiting till the last minute to check in in the hopes that the premium seats, not first class, but the economy plus or whatever, are all that's left and they get assigned to those seats, which can work, but you can also end up with a bad middle seat. So that's why they call it check-in chicken.

Jason Elkins (50:25.044)
okay.

Jason Elkins (50:30.965)
Well, yeah, yeah, I mean that's. But I'll tell you, it has worked for me so many like I usually get middle seats because I don't pay for anything else. So I usually have a ticket, not always, but you know half the time I have a ticket for middle seat 9595 % of the time I end up in a row with nobody sitting next to me.

Julian Kheel (50:32.649)
Hahaha!

Julian Kheel (50:36.514)
Mm-hmm.

Julian Kheel (50:41.397)
Right.

Julian Kheel (50:46.328)
Yeah.

Julian Kheel (50:51.33)
Well, like you said, what's the downside, right? The worst thing is they ask you to move to your seat. So whatever you know, maybe maybe feel a little bad about it, but that's fine. No, they really don't. They really don't care. Yeah, yeah, as long as you as long you don't know about it, then they don't care. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Of course, yep, yep.

Jason Elkins (50:55.124)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (50:59.349)
I don't even feel bad about it because they don't care. Unless I sit, unless I... Oh yeah, and I'm nice too. I I also walk on, I'm friendly and outgoing. And if they did ask me to move, I'd be very, very nice about it. And they'd probably say, you know what, go ahead. So anyway, just something there. All right, so you had the hedge fund guys.

Julian Kheel (51:16.938)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's true.

Jason Elkins (51:26.965)
I should have said investment investment guys that came to you and said, hey, let's we've got this venture capital firm come to you. You guys got this set up. What kind of traffic or what kind of use are you getting? What how's it going so far and what do want our listeners to know?

Julian Kheel (51:27.118)
It's a venture capital firm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Julian Kheel (51:42.382)
Yeah, well, we've been very, very fortunate. It's gone very well. We launched it publicly in January of 24. So just a little over a year ago as when we're recording this. And in 2024, we went from 6,000 installed users to over 60,000 in one year. So we've been very, very fortunate. we've done it all. We've done almost no paid marketing to this point.

Jason Elkins (51:59.633)
Wow.

Julian Kheel (52:07.622)
It's all been organic and word of mouth and people really, I think it really goes to, you when you do a startup, one of the things that everybody talks about is, you have to get product market fit, like find something that people actually want. And I feel we've been very fortunate that we kind of did that. We have found something that people really do want and we're seeing really great organic growth. So, yeah, I always tell people, and by the way, the one other thing I should mention, I always leave this part off, Points Path is free.

Jason Elkins (52:24.564)
Mm-hmm.

Julian Kheel (52:37.454)
The extension is free to install. There is a paid advanced tier where you get more airlines and you get more advanced features like the ability to track points prices and be alerted when they go up and down and things like that. But if you just want the basic experience that I just mentioned at the beginning where we show you the points prices and we tell you which is the better deal, that's free and that will always be free and it's free for all the US airlines. I would say...

Jason Elkins (52:37.877)
Mmm.

Julian Kheel (53:05.334)
Try it, know, see, give it a shot. Like I think you'll find it to be very useful.

Jason Elkins (53:09.95)
I'm just going to ask, I'm sure you're comfortable discussing this. We've already discussed how people make money. Is this basically an affiliate link? You kind of help them figure out the best ticket to buy and then when they buy it, you guys get paid that way or?

Julian Kheel (53:11.31)
Mm-hmm.

Julian Kheel (53:20.014)
No, actually. So first of all, there are no affiliate links when it comes to using Miles because there's no money being exchanged. So, right. That's right. Yeah. So our business model is that we have a couple of different ways we make money. One is, like I said, we have an advanced tier that is a paid subscription. Either you pay monthly or you pay annually. We have a decent chunk of people who do do that for our advanced features. We do have affiliate links, not in the extension.

Jason Elkins (53:29.331)
Well, that's yeah, was trying to that's where I'm trying to figure this out.

Julian Kheel (53:50.146)
But we do affiliate emails. We send emails. We send alerts with deals. And you can unsubscribe if you don't want that stuff. But we do send that out multiple times a week. that sometimes we have affiliate deals in there. And then we also do some B2B work. We did a last, over Christmas, we did a report with the points guy where we provided the data and they wrote the report about when is the best time to use your miles during the holiday.

Jason Elkins (53:56.531)
He

Jason Elkins (54:03.028)
Okay.

Julian Kheel (54:19.975)
and do you get more value or less value for them. So there's revenue there as well. So yeah, we're piecing it together from multiple different streams.

Jason Elkins (54:20.319)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (54:27.039)
Okay, if someone does not use points, has no points, no points accounts, is there a benefit to using the extension as well?

Julian Kheel (54:34.19)
I would say you should give it a try just to see frankly what you might be missing out on. Here's the other thing though I always say is that if you install it, first of all, again, it costs nothing and it just operates. If you use Google Flights anyway, it's just going to pop the prices in. It's not going to change your experience with Google Flights. But what you do find and even I am surprised and I built it and I'm surprised.

Jason Elkins (54:40.837)
OK. OK. That makes sense. I like that response.

Julian Kheel (54:59.838)
Is that when I'm doing searches, I'll see a points price and I'll be like, I didn't even think about that. I could use, like I said, my Alaska miles for this flight that Americans charging $400 for. And that sort of starts opening up ideas. And because it all stacks together automatically, you think about things that maybe even an expert at the back of my mind, I know, but it doesn't come to the forefront unless I have something telling you.

Jason Elkins (55:24.677)
I want to go too far in the weeds, does the extension keep track? If I'm using the extension, does the extension keep track of my points so it knows which ones are? Okay.

Julian Kheel (55:27.043)
Mm-hmm.

Julian Kheel (55:33.07)
Not yet. That is something that we would like to do because that is another thing that people do have problems with. They don't know how many points they have or if they expire or they're going to expire. And we do want to expand points path so it can do that for you automatically. But we haven't quite gotten there yet.

Jason Elkins (55:37.425)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (55:51.925)
I've just I've already have names going through my head. Oh, what would that be? I'm sure you guys have already probably figured that out.

Julian Kheel (55:54.398)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, and it's surprising to me because even the airlines don't do that. If you sign in with your account and you have, you know, 20,000 miles, they don't flag in the search, which of these flights can you afford? They just show them all. And it's something that we could do and say, well, you have 20,000 miles. These are the flights you could actually afford. Like here are all the prices, but these are the ones for you.

Jason Elkins (56:16.223)
Great. Does the extension only work if you're using Google Flights? I can imagine why. I was just curious.

Julian Kheel (56:21.984)
It does currently only work on Google Flights. Yeah. Well, you we have talked about expanding it out, but Google Flights is, according to research, the first touch point for a lot of people in the US when they're searching for flights. And so we feel it's a good place to start. And of course, you know, Google, fortunately, has been very, has not given us any trouble about it as well. And we're not changing Google Flights in a way that would upset them, I don't think.

Jason Elkins (56:47.093)
Do I'm just going to ask you this. You might ask me to edit this out later depending on your response, but I think it's worth having this conversation. Do you think that Google Flights is where people should be looking for flights?

Julian Kheel (56:48.972)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Julian Kheel (57:00.862)
You know, I think Google Flights is a good... So first of all, for people who don't know the history, Google Flights is built on top of a or using the infrastructure of an other website called ITA Matrix that Google acquired a number of years ago and used to build Google Flights. I think Google Flights is a really great experience in that it is simple, it is fast, and it generally gives you the top answers right off the bat.

Is it the tool for experts who want to dive into cabin classes and see every possible permutation? No, that's not a Google Flights thing. But for the average person who's just looking for it, show me who flies on this route. Usually I want to go nonstop or whatever. You're going to get that answer from Google Flights. You're going to get it very quickly. And Google doesn't put their thumb on the scale because they don't make any money off of that. This is part of their Google infrastructure.

Jason Elkins (57:51.253)
All right.

So if you've got that really analytical person that loves using whatever, I've used, I haven't really used Google flights very much. But if I found something on wherever I like to go, I suspect I can find the exact same flight. I could go to Google, use your extension and Google flights and find the same flight and then have the points part solved for me. Right. Okay. So even if you don't necessarily use Google flights to search for your flights, there's still a benefit to have in the extension.

Julian Kheel (58:15.63)
Absolutely, absolutely. Yep, that's right. You can do it.

Jason Elkins (58:24.175)
And okay, that's all right.

Julian Kheel (58:25.58)
Look, and listen, most people start one place and then search multiple sites when they're booking travel. There was a study done a number of years ago that found the average person had something like 72 touch points before they actually booked a flight, meaning they're looking at different sites in different places. And the reason is they want to make sure they're getting the best deal. So certainly I would say there's no downside to making Google Flights part of that process for you so you get all your options.

Jason Elkins (58:34.547)
Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Jason Elkins (58:55.061)
Do you think there's a benefit to like if you're looking for flights and I see, okay, this is the flight. I know this is the flight I want. Is that maybe this is a tough question to answer, but is there a benefit to going to the airline and booking a flight directly with the airline?

Julian Kheel (59:07.252)
100%. Yes. In fact, in most cases, I recommend booking directly with the airline. And Google Flights does always provide the link. It's direct out to the airline. Yeah, Google Flights, you generally don't book with Google Flights. They're not designed for that. It's purely a search tool like the rest of Google. It will definitely show you, you can also do Expedia or whatever.

Jason Elkins (59:17.597)
So you can, got it.

Jason Elkins (59:22.709)
Okay. But you might have options. It might come up orbits or whatever, whatever, Okay.

Julian Kheel (59:30.222)
But usually the reason I say you book directly with the airline is if there is a problem with delay, cancellation, a reroute, you're going to get the best service if you have that ticket booked already with the airline.

Jason Elkins (59:37.493)
Yeah.

Yeah, I've kind of noticed that as well. all right.

Julian Kheel (59:42.318)
Mm hmm. Yep. Yep. And even worse with hotels, by the way, if you're booking a hotel and you booking it through a third party, you're going to get a real run around. If you have a problem, you're best off booking straight with the hotel. Although you can often save more money by booking on third party sites. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (59:54.911)
Okay.

Alright, now I gotta ask you. I think we keep going forever. Does does your extension touch on hotels yet? Because you can book some hotels with points.

Julian Kheel (01:00:03.689)
Hehehehehe

Julian Kheel (01:00:08.754)
Not yet. You can definitely book hotels with points. Hyatt is a very popular and a very good program when it comes to hotel points. We do not do hotels yet, partially because there is no, Google Flights is, like I said, sort of a first touch point for a lot of people. There is a Google Hotels, but it's not the same kind of take up. So there's not an obvious place for us to go. We'd probably need to build it out on our own website and we just haven't got

Jason Elkins (01:00:36.885)
I can I can see that I feel like the hotel thing seems a little bit more disjointed and segmented and and yeah, OK, so all right, that's that's very interesting. I'm excited to see what you guys, you know where you go with this with you know those few things that we mentioned that you guys are considering and it's it's all very, cool. This has been fascinating. I know we could keep going and I'm curious. Julian, what did I forget to ask you? What should I have asked you? What do you want to make sure our listeners know about you points path your?

Julian Kheel (01:00:41.452)
Yep. Yep.

Jason Elkins (01:01:08.341)
Philosophical, whatever. What do we need to share before we wrap up?

Julian Kheel (01:01:13.036)
Well, actually, I'm going to say because it's interesting. Usually when I have these discussions, the host wants to really dive into like credit cards and all that. And you're I can tell you're not a credit card guy. And you're like, yeah, I don't I don't need to talk about that, which is fine. I think that, like I said, I think there's a lot of options out there that aren't involving credit cards. But for people who may the big question I always get from everyone is what credit card should I get? If I'm going to get a credit card, what credit card should I get? And my answer to that is don't get an airline.

Jason Elkins (01:01:23.221)
You

Julian Kheel (01:01:41.89)
do not get an airline credit card. And that may sound counterintuitive, but the reason you should not get an airline credit card is because if you do that, say you get a Delta credit card, you are now earning only Delta miles and you are locked into Delta miles. And while you can use Delta miles for some Delta partners, you can't use them on American, you can't use them on United. What you're better off doing is getting what we call a card with flexible points. And what those are is,

Jason Elkins (01:01:43.166)
Mmm.

Julian Kheel (01:02:10.534)
banks like Chase, American Express, Citibank have created their own points system that one, you can use those points to book any airline through the bank's website, but two, you can also transfer those points to their airline and hotel partners. So for instance, if you earn American Express points and they're called American Express membership rewards and that you would get with an American Express gold card or green card or platinum card, there's a whole bunch of them, you'd earn those American Express points. could just book flights

on American, on AmEx Travel and use your points. But you could also transfer your points to Delta, which is an American Express partner, and then you've got Delta miles. But you only do it when you actually need Delta miles. And the rest of the time you book, American Express has got 20 other airline and hotel partners. So there's a lot of options out there. That is the best way to start is get a point, a car that earns flexible points.

Jason Elkins (01:02:50.249)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (01:03:03.977)
Where do you, let's touch on annual fees. Like, cause I heard you say don't pay interest, pay it off every time. But I also have this story in my head that a lot of these cards that you get all the points charged pretty high fees. So what should people know about?

Julian Kheel (01:03:07.724)
Mm-hmm.

Julian Kheel (01:03:18.4)
Yeah, it does. So most travel cars do charge some sort of annual fee. And so it's not, it's usually not avoidable. The key is that you're paying the minimal annual fee, you know, and usually you can get a basic credit card that does everything I just said and pay no more than 95 bucks a year, which is not crazy. Obviously there are cars that charge in five, six, $700 a year that come with lounge access and all of that, you know, only get those if you really want lounge access, you know, if you're on the road every week.

and you want to go into the airport lounge, great, you know, get one of those cars. But if you're just traveling once or twice a year, you don't need all that. Just get a basic car that charges 95 bucks a year. The Chase Sapphire Preferred is the big one that sort of everybody knows and everyone talks about that uses Chase's flexible points. And then the Capital One Venture, I'm sure you've seen, you know, Jennifer Gardner and Samuel Jackson talking about Capital One miles. That's the other one that also has, and those miles also can transfer to airlines and hotels. So those are sort of the

two that I say start with again they both cost ninety five bucks a year you know you want to be able to make sure you're using the card and you're earning the points and you're burning the points don't sit on the points for years on end either use them earn and burn is what we used to say in the in the points guy but that's that's sort of what you're looking at for annual fees you will need to pay something and so make sure you're taking advantage of the card and the benefits

Jason Elkins (01:04:40.149)
Somebody is going to read the show notes and read your bio and see where it said something like you've got 25 plus cards and 800 credit score. So what I just heard you say, I'm thinking, well, why would anybody, how could you use 25 cards? And I'm thinking a hundred dollars a year for each card. I'm like, so help, help me understand why you would want to do that.

Julian Kheel (01:05:00.672)
So yes, so first of all, I do have 25 or so cards. Most of those cards don't charge annual fees. So here's a little tip. you, cause a lot of people open and I do as well, you open different cards because you do get those big bonuses at the start, right? So you collect the bonus. Now you don't want to just close the card. Then the bank's going to get mad at you. They want you to at least keep the card open for at least a year. So when you get to the end of that first year, you have a decision. You say, well, one, am I using this card?

and therefore is it worth paying the annual fee? And if the answer to that is yes, then great. Or am I not using this card at all and I can just cancel it? That's another option. Or a third option, which is what I usually do, is I say, well, I'm not using this card in its form, but I'd love to have a no annual fee version of it. Which there usually is a no annual fee version you can convert to that has fewer perks that maybe doesn't earn the same points, but at least keeps the card open, keeps the credit line open.

which is good for your credit score because it's good for your credit utilization ratio. So that's usually what I do. So the vast majority of my 25 cards do not have annual fees, but they generally didn't start that way. Only after a year did they convert.

Jason Elkins (01:06:07.541)
Well, I'm happy I asked that because it was later in why? OK, all right. I appreciate that. So yeah, I appreciate you answering that question because you're right. I wasn't going to ask you that question. I I'm sure too much of my stuff, but I got to the point at one point in my life I'm like, yeah, I probably should not be walking around with a credit card.

Julian Kheel (01:06:08.93)
Yeah

Julian Kheel (01:06:16.642)
Yeah.

Julian Kheel (01:06:25.23)
You and a lot of other people, right? Listen, the banks and airlines have made a lot of money off of people spending too much and have paying interest or just not being able to keep track of it. So yeah, if you don't feel comfortable with a credit card, don't get a credit card. The rewards are not worth it in that case.

Jason Elkins (01:06:30.229)
Off of me.

Jason Elkins (01:06:41.949)
Yeah, I mean, I could say like, OK, a different version of Jason probably could have a lot of a different conversation with you. Well, yeah, because I know this kind of started when I started in the travel business and I was going to be traveling a lot internationally and like, look, the Delta American Express card. That's a great idea. And I.

Julian Kheel (01:06:46.478)
But you don't want a different version of Jason who has a ton of million miles and a million dollars in debt because that's not going to work out.

Julian Kheel (01:07:07.06)
Hahaha

Jason Elkins (01:07:08.831)
Tried to convince my wife, no, this is great. Look at all the traveling I'm gonna be doing. yeah, I missed the whole part about paying it off every month. That was the problem.

Julian Kheel (01:07:16.687)
That's the vital part. And American Express is hoping you miss that part. So yeah. That's how they make their money. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:07:22.099)
Yeah, there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, well, great. Anything else, Julian, before we go?

Julian Kheel (01:07:29.366)
No, I think we really did cover, boy, a lot of territory.

Jason Elkins (01:07:32.509)
Yeah, yeah, was a super fascinating conversation for me. Quite a bit different than, you know, some of the other episodes. And I think that our listeners will really enjoy that because you brought a lot of value. And we're talking about things that, you know, maybe a lot of our listeners aren't going to go look for a blog post on how to take better advantage of credit cards and points and this and that. But if they're listening to this, you know, some of them, you might spark the interest. They'll go do it or at least they feel like they know more. I definitely know more about it now than I did. So thank you.

Julian Kheel (01:07:59.828)
Yeah, and I think, you know, when people use travel agents, because I know that is a chunk of your listeners, I think sometimes the clients have these questions and I think it's useful for the agents, even if they're not personally going to be able to do it, to be able to share that kind of information.

Jason Elkins (01:08:12.253)
Yeah, absolutely. So thank you. You brought a lot of value to me and our listeners. So Julian, thank you so much for joining us today.

Julian Kheel (01:08:19.47)
Thank you, Jason, for having me. I appreciate it.

Jason Elkins (01:08:21.385)
Bye bye.