The Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast

Mastering Credit Card Rewards for Business Owners With Colin Stroud

• Brent Wright and Joris Peels • Season 12 • Episode 5

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Credit card rewards expert Colin Stroud reveals how O&P practice owners can transform regular business expenses into valuable rewards through strategic credit card usage. He explains the mechanics behind credit card rewards systems and how business owners can maximize returns on spending they would do anyway.

• Single practitioner O&P clinics typically spend $15,000-$20,000 monthly on components
• Larger clinics can spend $100,000-$200,000 monthly, generating substantial reward potential
• Credit cards offer both cash flow advantages and rewards generation simultaneously
• Cash back options typically max out at 2-2.5% return on spending
• Points-based flexible currencies can yield 5%+ returns when redeemed strategically for travel
• Rewards are considered rebates rather than taxable income
• Multi-owner practices can divide points proportionally among partners
• LinkedIn content marketing has driven Colin's entire business growth without paid advertising
• The "arbitrage opportunity" of points redemption delivers significantly higher value than cash back

Visit Colin on LinkedIn (Colin Stroud - with one L) or at gosomewhereworld.com to access his free newsletter and guides on maximizing credit card rewards.

Special thanks to Advanced 3D for sponsoring this episode.



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brent wright:

Welcome to Season 12 of the Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast. This is where we connect with experts in the field, patients who use these devices, physical therapists and the vendors who help bring it all together. Our mission remains the same to share stories, tips and insights that help improve patient outcomes. Tune in and join the conversation. We're glad you're here and hope it's the highlight of your day.

Joris Peels:

Hello everyone, my name is Joris Peebles and this is another episode of the Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast with Brent Wright. How are you doing, brent?

Brent Wright:

Hey, joris, I'm doing well. I'm on a little bit of a road trip right now.

Joris Peels:

That's so nice man. That's so nice man.

Brent Wright:

So my son turns, my middle son turns 16. Yeah, and we were looking for a car with a lot of miles for not a lot of money, that you know all the things, that of a 16 year old driver. And so we came up to Minnesota to visit my aunt. She's selling her Honda Accord to us, and then we're driving all the way from Minnesota back to North Carolina, so it's going to be a two or three-day trip back down. And my son has planned where he wants to stop and such.

Joris Peels:

And is your first road trip together, just the two of you, yeah yeah, so really, really neat and yeah, so I'm looking forward to.

Brent Wright:

I mean, we've already spent a lot of time together just getting up here. We flew up, uh, the other day, and then, um, we're hanging out and then we'll be hitting the road tomorrow all right, man, that sounds really wonderful.

Joris Peels:

It sounds like a lot of fun yeah, so who's on the show?

Brent Wright:

Well, today is going to be an interesting day because we've got Colin Stroud on the podcast and one of the interesting things and he's not a prosthetist or orthotist he may not even know what those words actually mean, but I've been following him on LinkedIn for quite a while and he is one of the fastest growing content creators on LinkedIn. He his goal is to help businesses and business owners use credit cards to get the best value out of it. So, whether it's points for travel, cash back, that sort of thing, it's using money that you're already going to spend and getting the benefits of that. So I'm really looking forward to it.

Joris Peels:

So in a European context, right yeah.

Brent Wright:

So I use like my credit card.

Joris Peels:

I use a credit card. I have a credit card from work and I have a credit card person. We don't use them as much as Americans do, generally, right, right, and I use it mainly like for rental or travel tickets, stuff like this. So that's what I use it for business-wise Restaurants, maybe that kind of thing, but beyond that, not really. But I guess in the States, in the prosthetics and orthodontics clinic, this is different.

Brent Wright:

Yeah, so one of the things that's very interesting, especially in the US.

Brent Wright:

You know, we talk about the issues of insurance a lot of times holding back a payment or not paying on time or what have you, and so with a lot of companies, you get like net 30 days and so you do net 30, and then you can pay with a credit card, which gets you another 30 days to get your cashflow going, and so it's used as a tool and it can be a dangerous tool, right?

Brent Wright:

So if you do not have the money coming in to pay the bill, it could be a problem. But there's definitely an upside, and I'm really looking forward to hearing some of Colin's stories about some of the upside. I mean, he's got some interesting stories of people that are spending money that they would always normally spend and instead of stroking a check, they use a credit card and they're going on these crazy vacations, or they get cash back, or they there's some tax advantages, so like if you do a cash back and you're spending enough money, like if you do a cash back and you're spending enough money that cash back can actually become your salary.

Brent Wright:

And then there's tax advantages.

Joris Peels:

to that I'm not saying that's a typical run-of-the-mill thing, but all I'm saying is that you can take a look at credit cards as a tool to get some things, as long as you do it responsibly, okay. And you're talking like in a typical O&P clinic, like a medium clinic or something. Yeah, they'd be spending maybe tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars. You know what are we talking about here. Like the credit card thing.

Brent Wright:

Yeah. So just let's just say a one man show and then you can then take and extrapolate that A one-man show. You're probably looking at a revenue of $50,000 to $60,000 a month on a one-man show, maybe upwards to a million dollars a year, so $70, 70, 80,000, if you run a 30 to 40% material cost you're looking at probably at minimum of 15 to $20,000 a month. Spend on this is just a single practitioner office. But when you start adding practitioners up, um, you have like small regional clinics where you've got maybe 10 clinicians it would not be unheard of where you could be potentially spending $100,000, $200,000 a month on components, so things that you're going to spend. But instead of stroking a check you would use a credit card and then you know two hundred thousand dollars ends up being two hundred thousand points a month, you know. Then you end up with, you know, a couple million points at the end of the year and colin will be able to tell us what kind of travel that you can take with that.

Joris Peels:

So explain this point, because I know nothing about this. Right, tell us a little bit into your world because it's it's completely foreign to me. Don't talk to us a little bit into your world because it's completely foreign to me. Talk to us a little bit about what it is you do.

Colin Stroud:

Yeah, thanks for having me. Guys, I'm really excited to be here. I'll say I actually get a lot of my least favorite message I get on LinkedIn is Hi Colin, I'm based in Italy, spain, france, uk, whatever. Can you help me? And the answer is I don't really know, not really, and so Europe it's different. So, really, what's funding a lot of these rewards? The first thing I'll say is these interchange fees. When you swipe a credit card, there's all kinds of fees associated with that and typically the merchant is bearing the cost of that fee. There's actually, if someone wants to Google, something really interesting. The Credit Card Competition Act is something that they've been trying to push through Congress for a long time American Congress and it's not going through. But what they're trying to do is lower those fees which could actually decrease rewards. So that's an interesting thing. So in Europe and I'm not an expert on this by any means, fact check me I believe the rewards are significantly less Like, they're almost completely negligible in Europe because the interchange fees are a lot lower there. So you could argue that's good for business owners in Europe. But you know the rewards thing. Americans really love our rewards. So basically, like what I do. It's pretty simple. You know it's. You know. I think, brent, you nailed it.

Colin Stroud:

Business owners are spending enormous amounts of money to run their businesses. They're often spending on credit cards, and so my thing is, if you're going to do this, you're going to put all your life's work into this business, that you spend $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $100,000 a month on, you may as well get as much value as you can from that spending. You're doing it anyway. We're just going to assume you have the cash flow to pay it off. I'm never talking to somebody who you know I'm not ever. Credit card debt is a scourge. I would never recommend that. But in the American system, you know you can get you know 2, 2.5% cash back on all your spending. You know. So if you're spending $5 million a year, you might be able to live on that, and there's a lot of businesses that are. And even if you're not, you can still get some pretty amazing perks, some travel rewards.

Joris Peels:

And what is the total fee? What's the total fee, that this interchange fee, let's say. And then what do you get back as a consumer.

Colin Stroud:

So when I use my credit card and I go to Amazon and buy something for $100, I'm not paying a credit card fee. Amazon is either billing that into their price, or however it works, or they're not passing it off. And that's what I was actually interested with you guys is I don't know your world, but some business owners elect to pay that interchange fee, so the merchant will actually pass it on to the buyer and so, for example, you want to buy that $50,000 knee replacement thing. Whatever company that sells that may say if you want to pay a credit card, pay with a credit card, you need to pay this 2.6% fee or something. Typically, it'll be between 2% and 3% as a fee. That is a good may.

Colin Stroud:

It may not make sense to use a credit card when you have to pay that fee, but a lot of places do not charge that fee because they they know that they will make more sales if they just kind of eat the fee and let people use their credit cards, because people like to use credit cards. So it really depends. I don't know. Tell me about your industry, though.

Brent Wright:

Do they often charge a fee that you guys know of brent um, like in these different companies, suppliers selling orthotics and stuff I would say a lot of it is built in, but there is a threshold, like if it's a three, four thousand dollar, they may charge you a, a nominal fee to um to do that. But, um, you know, like for me personally, um, my son, my oldest son, is getting ready to go to college and that's not a negligible amount of money and the school does not charge a credit card fee to use it, and so we're going to be spending the money anyway. It will allow us easily a family vacation just by putting that on credit card and paying it off. So I think there's interesting things to go along with that. But I could see Yoris kind of shaking his head trying to figure that out.

Joris Peels:

It's a complete parallel world for me. Okay, so how does it work? Let's take this knee example. So I'm going to buy a knee. I pay in some kind of way. I pay this knee, but then, instead of that, I get 2.5% of that back. And when do I get that back and how do I get it back?

Colin Stroud:

Is it like cash? So yeah, it depends. So there's really two sides. Well, there's a couple different sides. Again, I'm talking about the American system. Just to be very clear, here you can do cash back, so 2% cash back Typically. It's available almost immediately. I actually don't use that many cashback cards Everyone's different.

Colin Stroud:

So it's pretty simple, like it literally would just drop into your kind of rewards account and you can simply deposit it into your checking account and boom, that money is yours. That money is not taxed as income. So you could say it's tax-free that's always a scary word to use, but it's not taxed as normal income. It's considered a rebate by the IRS, a rebate on purchase. The other options then are airline and hotel credit cards, where you might get a Marriott credit card and when you swipe it and spend you earn Marriott points. Or an American Airlines credit card. You know yours, you could get, you can. You can get an Iberia credit card, you can get an Air France credit card, like those are available. A lot of Americans get those, but you can get those in Europe, of course. And then the other one is these kind of more general travel cards, and that's actually what I focus on. When I say general, I mean and, Brent, I'm sure you've seen ads for these, a lot of our listeners right the Chase Sapphire Preferred or the American Express Platinum card.

Colin Stroud:

What's unique about these cards is that, instead of them earning just cash or just Marriott points or American Airlines miles or Delta miles, you actually earn these flexible points Chase Ultimate Rewards points or American Express Membership Rewards points and what's really cool is those can be cashed out so you can take them as cash back. Sometimes that's a good deal, sometimes not. You can use them for gift cards or things like that. I just actually had a guy who bought his wife a $10,000 purse using his American Express points, because they had, like, a deal with Saks Fifth Avenue. So if you want to buy your wife a $10,000 purse, maybe points are for you.

Colin Stroud:

I personally wouldn't do that. Use my points for that. And then the last thing, though, is you can transfer your points to different airline and hotel partners. So what's cool is that when I earn my Chase points or my American Express points or my Capital One miles or any of these flexible banks, I can actually send them, typically at a one-to-one ratio, to all these different airlines and hotels. So I get enormous flexibility. So I can send them to Marriott, send them to Delta, iberia, air France all these different airlines you might use to get places and do amazing trips. I can send them there. So I'm a huge fan of the flexible currency. So that's kind of a longer answer, but that's kind of how the basic system works.

Joris Peels:

So wait a minute. So normally, if I would, normally I would pay tax on the profit from a business right and then I would take that out and I would pay income tax on that right. But in this case, literally this money is like reserved and it's a rebate and I could take it out of the business and use it for personal stuff.

Colin Stroud:

Yeah, it's pretty simple. My thing is always like hey, check with your CPA about different things. What I know you do have to pay tax on is that if you spend $100 and you get a 2% rebate, that's cash back. Only $98 of that is a deductible business expense. So technically, you do pay some more taxes. You could argue because you can't deduct $100 expense, you can only deduct $98 because you got 2% back. But yeah, you can use that money and it's not considered taxable income by everything I'm aware of with the different CPAs I've talked to. Again, I'm not a tax person, don't quote me on that, but it's a pretty cool strategy.

Colin Stroud:

There's a lot of different things you can do Personally. I there's a lot of different things you can do personally. I like the the points because, um, I'm not trying to hide anything, of course, from the irs, but but you can send points easily between your personal and business accounts so you could earn millions of points on the business account, transfer them to the personal account. There's no like money trail there that you can even follow. And again, it's not like we're trying to hide something. This is not nothing's illegal here, but you can just send your points over to the personal account and use them for cash out, use them for travel, use them for gift cards. It's pretty cool. The points are almost even more flexible and fungible in my mind than just straight cash back.

Joris Peels:

And one of the ethics of this. I could imagine okay, let's say I work for Brent and we're two people practice as I, brent would maybe want these points. But if I'm the one buying all this stuff, maybe I would want the points. Usually it does occur to the business owner. How does that work?

Colin Stroud:

Yeah, always in my experience, always to the business owner. So I just worked with a company, um three, it's three co-founders. They all own the company equally. They spend about $200,000 a month, a month and um, so they're all splitting their points equally. So I kind of set up a system for them where all the points accrue on one credit card and then they all it's a business card and then they all have personal credit cards and they're going to, at the end of each quarter, simply transfer, split the points in thirds and transfer them out to the um, to the three different owners.

Colin Stroud:

But yeah, they're, and some sometimes I meet business owners who'll use points for, like employee incentive trips, so, you know, salesman or woman of the year. They, you know, send them to Cancun or something like that. So that's a cool thing. But yeah, typically this is a perk of being a business owner is that if it's your money you're spending, you get to keep the rewards and you can 100%. There is no ethical or legal any issues using business rewards for personal leisure travel. That's what 99% of my clients are doing. They're not using points to go to a conference, they're using points to take their family to France. That's typically what you see.

Joris Peels:

That's crazy, and there's only. This whole system works because there's a fee that needs to be paid to pay the credit card.

Joris Peels:

These companies are just not passing it all in the century, so it's being covered by everyone who's paying them and all their customers, even the people not buying the credit card, and basically this incentivizes more people to use the credit card, which means that more of the burden will be shouldered by those people paying invoices and checks, which is a crazy system, but it totally makes sense from the point of view of the credit card company.

Colin Stroud:

Yeah well, you nailed it, and that's why I encourage you and listeners to check out that Credit Card Competition Act, because, as someone who is pro-business myself, I understand what they're doing. But this would actually destroy my personal business, so I'm not a fan of it. But it's not an evil thing. These senators are looking at this stuff and saying this is crazy. Why are we making these small businesses lose 2.8% in profit or revenue or whatever? Because just to accept their credit cards? That's craziness, like they shouldn't have to. That's going to hurt their margins and I agree it's not ideal, but people like using credit cards. We live in basically a credit card culture, and so that's. We're kind of stuck in this weird system, and so my thing is hey, we're going to make, we're giving lemons, let's make some lemonade here. I'm not passing a judgment on the system. I'm just telling you what it is and let's work with it.

Joris Peels:

So that's where I come in. Okay, and then so is there. You know, are there a big? You mentioned these reward cards. Are there huge differences between them? Is there one that's like way better than all the other ones, or does it really matter?

Colin Stroud:

It's going to matter a couple of different things. So you know your preferences. So if you're someone who only wants cash back, there are certainly cards that are better. Some cards only offer 1% cash back, some offer up to 2.5%. So if you're spending a million dollars a year, that's an enormous difference. If you want to be careful there and look at your different options, I'd say generally 2% back for cash back is kind of that standard you want to go for. Don't accept something lower than that.

Colin Stroud:

On the point side, it can get even more complicated because then you're kind of focused on travel. You might optimize for a lot of different things. So you might say well, I live in Dallas, fort Worth. That's a big American Airlines hub, so maybe it makes sense to have an American Airlines credit card because there's so many direct flights to get everywhere. Also, no bank allows you to transfer points to American, so the only way to earn American miles is with their credit card. So a really good argument to get an American Airlines credit card.

Colin Stroud:

If you live in Atlanta, georgia, a big Delta hub, it really would be an odd choice to get an American credit card, and it would also be arguably an odd choice to get a Delta credit card? Why? Because you can use an American Express card, one of these flexible cards, and those cards transfer at a one-to-one ratio right over to Delta, so you can earn these flexible points, send them to Delta, send them to Marriott, send them to Air France, all these different airlines, and so that's. You know, it's going to depend on your travel preferences, where you live, maybe how many children you have, what your favorite kind of hotels are.

Colin Stroud:

So that's really where I think that my business has been really helpful, because business owners under like, begin to look into some of this stuff and they're like oh my gosh, I'm really overwhelmed. You know, I'm confused. Which card is right for me? And that's basically what I'm selling is. I'm a consultant and we'll get on the phone and I will say I will basically audit their credit card strategy, audit their spending and say here's the card you should have and this is why you should have it. And they are thrilled because an expert told them what to do and they don't have to think or be confused anymore. So that's, my business continues to go well because there's incredible complexity in this world of what card to get and why. So I try and make that simple for people.

Colin Stroud:

But there's no simple answer to your question.

Joris Peels:

unfortunately, and then do you also work on miles, because that's like an extension of that as well? Because I know people that are just like that are into frequent flying miles in a very, very unhealthy way, and they do just have these weird things like no, I have to take a flight now to Asia or something, it's like what. And then you know they have all these strategies and all these weird. Are you into that kind of stuff, or is it just credit cards for you?

Colin Stroud:

Yeah, so it's the same thing, right? So the? I've heard people say I didn't come up with this. I wish I did.

Colin Stroud:

The fastest way to earn miles is not in the air, it's on the ground, and what that means is that the fastest way to earn airline miles is with credit cards. So one right you can earn American Airlines miles with an American Airlines credit card. But you can also earn transfer points with these flexible cards. I told you about Chase cards and Amex cards that can be transferred to airlines. So I meet people every day that have 500,000 American Express points. Those can be transferred right over to Delta and now you've got 500,000 Delta SkyMiles and all the miles, tricks and things you've read are applicable.

Colin Stroud:

And that's where it gets really powerful these flexible currencies, because you can say I want to go to Europe and you can scan nine different airline mile programs Turkish Airlines and Air France and Iberiaberia and British Airways and Aer Lingus and you can kind of scan all of them and you have access to all of them because you have these flexible points and you can say, ok, I find the best deal here, I'm going to go there on Aer Lingus back in Iberia and people do all kinds of super fancy stuff. Again, that stuff gets really overwhelming to people and that's something I do too in my business is kind of do all that research for people. So, yes, I'm very into it. It's very confusing, gives me a headache sometimes, but when you get it right it feels pretty awesome. But it can be pretty challenging to do.

Joris Peels:

And if we're talking if it's 2.5% of what everybody spends on these credit cards about, and then there's miles and talbot we're talking about, like this could be trillions of dollars, right, we're talking about there's trillions of dollars in these points, and airline miles.

Colin Stroud:

Right, yes, yes, and maybe we could put it in the show notes, but I can recommend, if someone wants to Google the big business of points and miles, pointme wrote they're a points and miles media company brand software. They wrote this article about it. It's staggering the numbers. I put this on LinkedIn yesterday, but I said Delta is a bank that has a side hustle flying airplanes, and the reason I say that is because 1% of US GDP is swiped through with a Delta credit card. Like $300 billion are being spent on just Delta cards. We're not talking about all the other credit cards out there, that's just Delta cards, and so this business is massive, both on the airline bank side they're earning enormous amounts of money from this but also on the consumer side.

Colin Stroud:

We, us business owners, us normal people spending a lot of money on our lives, especially high earners, high spenders. Right, there's millions and millions of points on the table. A lot of people aren't getting enough because they don't have a good strategy. And two, a lot of people are getting millions of points and simply not using them. I get messages all the time hey, I have 6 million points. Should I be? What do you think I should do with those and I'm like what? How do you get 6 million points? And you're not even like I would have used those so quickly. I would have used those in five seconds. You know what I mean, and I get those messages almost daily now. So, yes, there is an unfathomable amount of money wrapped up in this whole rewards game that's not going to use. So I can tell you, from everything I understand, the banks are winning, the consumers are losing and a lot of that's our fault, in my mind.

Joris Peels:

Okay and then. But that's, I think that's a story everywhere. That's universal, I think, across the planet. You're so right the banks it's like a story everywhere.

brent wright:

That's universal, I think across the planet.

Joris Peels:

Yeah, you're so right, the banks, it's like a casino and they're the casino. We're just like a bunch of mugs playing in the casino. Yep, yep. But talk to us a little bit about, because to me still, I'm listening to this, I'm like, yeah, I'll just go for the 2.5% thing, no-transcript.

Colin Stroud:

Yeah, and this work people. I can easily lose people here, so bear with me. Cash back is simple and straightforward. You can't 2% back whatever Awesome, Easy, Use that money for whatever you want. The whole argument for points and miles is the arbitrage opportunity. So let me give you an example of that. I'll just say this you can, if you know what you're doing, you can get a significantly higher return on your spend doing the travel thing than you will ever get with cash back. So here's an example.

Colin Stroud:

I found a deal. It was the Park Hyatt, so Hyatt Hotel in St Kitts. So St Kitts and Evis is a beautiful little small island in the Caribbean, actually where Alexander Hamilton fun fact was born and grew up before he came to America to help found America. So that hotel, I believe I can't remember the exact numbers it was about $1,400 per night. Okay, so very expensive, nice hotel, but World of Hyatt was only charging 30,000 points per night and that number means nothing to you, probably yours. But what 30,000 points? Typically a point is worth about one penny one cent. So that's basically 300 bucks worth of points for a $1,400 a night hotel. So let's just round up to 1,500.

Colin Stroud:

So my math is easy. So basically, we're getting five cents per point. So, like I said, typically you get one penny per point or one cent per point. In this example, we're getting about five cents per point. So if you multiply that over all your redemptions, you could be getting crazy value.

Colin Stroud:

So, basically, right, I earned, you know, 1.5% or 2% on the when I spent the money, but here I go to redeem my miles or redeem my points, the money but here I go to redeem my miles, redeem my points, and I'm getting another 5% return. So my overall return I actually always get confused on the exact math there. You can use ChatGPT to figure out the exact math. My overall return, though, is well over 5%. So let's just say I got those points I needed by spending $200,000 in my business.

Colin Stroud:

I'm ending up, at the end of the day All you need to know is because I knew how to play the travel game, I end up with a five plus percent return on my spending, as opposed to cash back. We would only ever get to 2.5% best case scenario. So that is the game. If you can figure out the travel thing, or pay someone like me to figure it out for you, you can get enormous returns and you can have amazing luxury travel experiences like this hotel that personally me as a 25-year-old could never in a million years afford a $1,400 a night hotel. Hopefully business gets better and I can one day, but I can't and I don't know if I even would. But that's kind of the amazing thing is the arbitrage opportunity. So that's a very quick explanation. I could talk about this for hours, but that's the reason to think about the points and miles stuff over the cashback stuff.

Joris Peels:

Okay, and you grow this business for LinkedIn. I don't know if you know this, but Brent is like the huge LinkedIn fan and I know as an OMP community people aren't really great at marketing, just generally. A lot of people aren't A lot of people aren't. A lot of people don't care. But is LinkedIn the main thrust of your whole marketing exercise for you yourself, and how does that work?

Colin Stroud:

Yeah, linkedin has been remarkable really. I started posting when I had a corporate job. I didn't like and just kind of wanted to do something on the side and I started this little side hustle helping with credit card points, and it's taken off. So I'm going to hit 25,000 followers here soon. Yeah, I post one to two times a day. I try to leave a lot of meaningful comments. I try to respond to comments, I try to respond to DMs, but I don't do any outbound prospecting. Almost 100% of my leads and my business and my clients come through LinkedIn inbound messaging. So it's basically content for marketing. I just do content marketing. I put out great free content on my newsletter and on LinkedIn and people like it and they come to me and they ask to buy my products and services. So it's kind, it's like kind of amazing. It feels like magic. Um, I don't do any advertising, I don't do any outbounding, um, and it's just amazing.

Joris Peels:

Do you have to the twice a day thing? And do I have to do that? Do I have to commit to that? Do you say, if I really want to be successful, is that what I need to be doing?

Colin Stroud:

No, I think. I think one post a per day on weekdays, so five times a week, monday through Friday, in the mornings, or something like that is more than enough. And then, in addition to that, being a human, responding to your comments, leaving meaningful comments on other people's posts, so again, people see you, you begin to build a presence, people feel like they know you. In my mind, that's kind of the bare minimum and then, if I was, and maybe in your field, I would also recommend maybe three to five outbound messages a day, like you know who your ideal prospect is maybe a little better than I do, and so you could message those people and just basically say well, you guys can decide how forward and aggressive you want to be there, but you can just say hi or you can start pitching them right there.

Colin Stroud:

But yeah, I mean, I think it's a light lift. Just a little bit of LinkedIn work can go a really really long way, and there's so much bad content on there as in boring AI generated just crap. I would say that if you can stand out, be interesting, be funny, be a human, be cool, you are far above the average thing on there. So it's a pretty light lift in 2025 in my mind to do well on LinkedIn.

Brent Wright:

So one of the things that I found funny. So there's another Colin on LinkedIn that has two L's in his name and Colin and Colin. They just and the other Colin, he is building quite something. He's building a production company in Alaska and they will kind of go back and forth some as well. And you know they're two different things and it's all in good fun but it's been neat to watch both grow and both. You know different businesses but like truly the the human side of things and Colin I'd love for you to just share a little bit about. You know some of the connections that you've made, um, that seem to be, you know, true connections.

Colin Stroud:

Yeah, I mean I I think, uh, I've made some legitimate friends through LinkedIn, which I was not really expecting, which is pretty cool. In fact, a guy, one of my earliest clients he's begging me right now to move to where he lives in Tennessee and he's like texting his friends to find us like a house and stuff. So I'm like, okay, this is a real friendship. You know what I mean. Like this is a guy that I help with his points and now we've just become real friends. This is a guy that I help with his points and now we've just become real friends, and that feels awesome.

Colin Stroud:

But on the other side of things, connecting with people that arguably I have no business talking to people who are making enormous amounts of money, people who are running incredibly successful businesses I'm 25 years old. A year ago today, I was making $55,000 a year working for a nonprofit and I didn't have that many career opportunities ahead of me, and so through LinkedIn, I basically leapfrogged so many things and now I'm constantly talking to people in the league way above me, not even close way above me, and these are becoming my peers and the people I think like, and so even just to get in the room with these type of people has been amazing. And also just people who are not going to buy from me, like, like even Colin right the other, the other, colin just just real connection, having fun and kind of upbuilding each other. I find it a really positive good social media.

Joris Peels:

That's certainly worth the investment of time I put into it. So oh so, colin, thank you so much for sharing your story. This is completely wild to me, I mean completely crazy to me, uh, but but I'm glad you shared with us and thank you so much for coming on the show today yeah, I'm, I'm.

Colin Stroud:

It's actually really fun to hear your european perspective. So, uh, because a lot of americans right, maybe are have heard this a lot, so I it's actually I love the questions and this actually helps me think about how to even clarify all the stuff I'm saying every day over and over, because you have this fresh perspective. So I love it actually. So thank you guys so much for having me Really great.

Joris Peels:

And, yeah, thank you as well for being here as well today, brent.

Brent Wright:

Awesome, yeah, thank you, and I know that our listeners will have something to think about and I hope they reach out to you as well, to create some value that otherwise wouldn't be realized for the business.

Colin Stroud:

So thank you, Sure. So LinkedIn, like I said, is going to be one of my main places. You can just look me up, Colin Stroud that's only one L in Colin on LinkedIn. And then my company is called GoSomewhere, so my website is gosomewhereworld. W-o-r-l-d worldcom was unavailable but I thought dot world was cool and sometimes it makes me lose emails, but anyway, you can find me those two places.

Colin Stroud:

Definitely, check out my free newsletter. You can see it on both those places. And then I also have two guides on there. It's how to choose a travel credit card and how to 2 to 10x the value of your credit card points. Those are both free PDF guides that pack a lot of value in my opinion. So if you want some free stuff from me and also just my content, check those out. And yeah, my DMs are always open on LinkedIn. I'm always going to respond eventually to those. You can contact me that way. There's so much on the table For any business owner spending more than about $20,000, $30,000 a month. I'd say, hey, it is 100% worth the quick investment of your time to kind of audit this strategy and see if you can do more and do better. So always happy to help there.

Joris Peels:

Awesome and thank you very much for listening. Have a great day and thank you for listening to the Prosth you.

People on this episode

Contributor

Brent Wright

Co-host
Contributor

Joris Peels

Co-host