Randy Petersen, Founder @FlyerTalk

Kevin May:
Hello there. Welcome. Good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you are. Welcome to another episode of how I got here. This is focus wire and mo zeos weekly podcast where we look at the stories behind innovation and entrepreneurship in travel and transportation. Welcome, everybody for tuning in. Thanks so much. I dare say we’re delighted this week to be joined by Randy Peterson no less. For those of you that have never heard of Randy pizza, I’m going to give a very short introduction, and he will tell us a lot about himself. But Randy is the founder of fire talk inside flyer, the Freddy awards and has been involved in a lot in between. He actually began from inside fly in 1986 as a magazine flyer talk began in 1995, which is one of the first if not the first, web forums about aviation. He actually retired. There we have to put that in inverted commas in 2015, but not before Launching boarding area in 2008 is a web service for road warriors. It’s been described by the mainstream media is the most influential frequent flyer in America, and a frequent flyer guru, but this is the one that I really liked. In his own words, he says on his LinkedIn page, I didn’t invent frequent flyer program, just the news about them. So thank you very much, Randy Peterson for joining us on how I got here. We’re delighted that you’re here.

Randy Petersen:
Well, nobody’s more pleased to be here than me. After all these years I finally made it look who I’m talking to.

Kevin May:
flattery will get you nowhere, Randy. But anyway, as always, as always, with the how I got here, podcast, we start off with this very standard question. And that is, can you tell us how you got here?

Randy Petersen:
Well, you know, it started in the galaxy a long long time ago, you already named a year 1980. Now I’m pretty sure that that’s probably a year before. Most of the people listening were even born. And, indeed, I was the water cooler guy. You’ve heard stories about the guy around the water cooler. Well, that was me working in men’s retail chain of young men’s clothing stores. And one day. I’m an Iowa farm boy. And the idea of travel was pretty, pretty distant to me. But anyway, and in the travel in the retail business, I managed to travel a little bit and I was the guy who actually figured out how to read the fine print. So I figured out the fine print of these things called frequent flyer programs and believe it or not, I started off by believing the airlines because the airlines at that time said, TWA told me if you do this, Randy, you can go to Hawaii for free. Well, I did that read the fine print and guess what ended up in Hawaii for free. That’s the water cooler because when I came back, everybody up I work with wanting to know how they could go to Hawaii for free. So I started to make things up. I am then at Eastern Airlines I am done at people express. And along the way some people managed some free trips and then one day I got called into the office of my boss, big VP guy. And I’m thinking, oh boy, I’m about to be fired because word around the company is I’ve been spending too much time in the water cooler. Anyway, a guy by the name of Rocky Solomon said, Hey, Randy, I hear you know a lot about frequent flyer programs. And instantly I knew I wasn’t going to get a two week notice to find a new job. Anyway said I can’t figure out my Marriott redemption. And a light bulb went on, because I would have been saying and holiday ends all the time in the company travel policy. And all of a sudden Rocky’s asking me about how to redeem miles for Marriott. program anyway, I figured it out. And I also figured out, Rocky is a smart guy makes a lot of money. And he’s a smart guy. Why did rocky can’t figure out Marissa and this was in the early 80s. Anyway, I asked rocky that question. He says, I don’t have time. So long. I figured you know what? I’ve got some time, because I did what a lot of entrepreneurs did. We fire first and then we aim. So I quit my job and force myself to figure out how to become a publisher of frequent flyer information. So two days after putting the job last day at work, I wake up one morning and go What the hell have I done to myself now, no income living in New Jersey and no smart business plan. In fact, I Don’t know what a business plan was. I was started off in college playing football, black, black history major of all things. And I’m just the freewheeling guy. So anyway, I saw an ad from Apple computers figured out how to do desktop publishing and thus inside flower was off and running. Got lucky in that I found out that fellow travelers were also interested in how to fly for free. Pretty good with that kept playing it forward and grew from there. So inside fliers the magazine got started in 86 and 87. I’m thinking, Well, let me do something different. So I started to publish information on news net and compuserve in 1987. And got paid a lot of money by prodigy AOL and stuff because there was no free internet. And I’m thinking technology is a lovely thing. So I made some money then. And then I came up with this other dumb idea. So the idea was is everybody started asking me who has the best frequent flyer program? Well, Randy says, I know what’s good for me, but I don’t know what’s good for you. So I figured I’m gonna wimp out on this and I’m going to ask other people who has the best frequent flyer program. So in 1995, I came up with this idea of flyer talk. It was a good idea. It was really a bad idea. And first couple months, I ended up closing flyer talk down. The idea was is I didn’t know at the time I was too early, every day coming in.

Randy Petrsen:
And looking at the posts of frequent fliers, 99% of them I had to delete. The idea was the Scandinavians were ahead of me first, and they thought the internet was for picking up chicks. Everything was about where’s the party? Where’s the girls at So every day if there were 100 posts, I deleted 99 of them. It was a bad idea I should have started, started match calm them, because I could have caught a dating service with all the traffic of where the girls are. So anyway, I close flyer talk down because it just wasn’t the idea of working year or so went by. And then I restarted flyer talk with the help of a lot of employees who were my moderators, if you will, and it got started. One thing I learned is the earlier days, the wisdom of the crowd, the idea that I found other people to tell people who had the best frequent flyer program, not me. And that’s how I got started in that area is just kind of moving things forward. And then one thing about flyer talk because I realized that over time, there was a lot of noise and signal problems that was early days of the internet. And with that, I realized that on flyer talk, people were starting to pay attention to certain members of flyer talk. And they would follow them around to watch what they had to say whether it was in a Marriott form and American form united or Southwest, it didn’t really matter. So the idea was the boarding area got started them because I figured out you know, if there’s 800 posts in a forum thread, there’s probably only four or five of them that had good information. So how do I filter that down so people could just see the good information, and not all the other things, the boarding area got started. And the idea of a weblog format and today does pretty well. So anyway, that’s how I got here. It was the easy way. No business plan. I still can’t read a p&l sheet. I never had any money. I still don’t have any money. I started with $800 Along the way as most entrepreneurs do, I did all the things right. I had my car repossessed, I had all of my stuff in storage and couldn’t pay the rent on storage because I was going to make inside flyer work. I lost all my personal belongings so in the mice, or is not unlike most other prevalent entrepreneurs and others in that we go all in or we don’t go.

Kevin May:
Thank you very much. Randy Peterson, thank you for joining us. We’ll see you next week. Right. That was That was great. It’s really interesting. So and it’s difficult to know where to start I mean, obviously with with a lot of our guests we will say we start diving into the beginning but I’m quite interested because you’re the the the accolade I think that was given to you by thing was the New York Times in 1988, which was just a couple of years after you launched. That was when you were already being labeled a frequent flyer guru, which is really quite quick after just coming on the scene, almost I mean, how did you as a, as an entrepreneur, kind of get your head around the fact that you were already being lauded in the mainstream press, first of all, and the flip side to that question, Mandy’s, what did the airlines make of you within that short period of time?

Randy Petersen:
Well, that’s a really good question. I think the difference in that and the idea of Guru was was earlier on. Yeah, I got lucky with that. I think part of it was is that I realized that I alone only had one experience, but to be to build up a reputation to be authentic, if you will, for my fellow frequent travelers. I had to know what I was talking about. So I became the ultimate Road Warrior. 300 days a year on the road was nothing to me, but I spent my time not doing On fam trips not doing trying to be an influencer, I spent all my time in the offices and boardrooms of every airline and every hotel company in the world. I became an expert at reading stuff on their desk upside down. I became an expert of leaving an office and quickly writing three pages of notes of stuff I saw erased on bulletin boards. snippets of conversation from somebody who walked into the room while we were having a meeting and mentioned something. I became a student of the travel industry. And I think that’s how the guru thing that came around because when people asked me questions, I actually knew the answer. I knew the answer from a lot of good research a true me. I was been visited 100 countries where there’s a national airline or a hotel company from Aeroflot. The cuantas You name it, and all the places in between. And I think the guru came around from, frankly having no competition, because earlier on, everybody told me to get a real job. That’s what happened frequent flyer programs in the 80s. Were a gimmick. You know, even the head of Hyatt said, we can’t, we don’t think frequent flyer programs are real people love our name, Hyatt. They’re not going to be influenced by this gimmicky miles and points thing. So I took advantage of the fact that everybody told me to get a real job. I took advantage of the fact that I knew and I learned earlier on that travel was a passion. Travel was basically the original, physical, social media that people love interacting with other travelers and getting their opinion on. Where to eat. Where to fly. Why The seed whatever it might be. And I think that’s what I learned earlier on. Now again, I had no schooling and that is by osmosis, no business plan, no knowledge of anything. All I saw was a commercial on a by Apple computers on a TV and I became a desktop publisher. And along the way, it was, frankly, hard work because I went out on the road and became an expert by doing two things. One is hearing, the other was listening. Because I would go on to the airlines and hotel companies and I do with with my fellow frequent fliers is, I’m listening to what they’re saying. But I’m hearing and trying to figure out why did they say that and why were what question were they asking? So it was the whole process of that and so long the way I became a guru, grow my hair a little bit longer, and hey, that’s the way goes

Kevin May:
just just before I hand over to Davis is it’s interesting to see, you know, we go right back to the beginning of the answer. You said, Randy, the term, you know, you would go into boardrooms and you would look at the notes on the wall and you look expanding, reading things upside down, which is, which is which is terrific. But how quickly Were you able to get into boardrooms? I mean, that’s not that’s quite a mean. That’s a mean thing to be able to do quite quickly, I would presume.

Randy Petersen:
Yeah, I again, I got lucky because first of all, there was not a lot of competition, then everybody was still thinking that these were gimmicky programs. However, you know, there’s one thing about being a kind of an Iowa farm boy is just the Oh, shucks and friendliness of the Midwestern, if you will, and so it was, I think it was my and later on, I was labeled as a business. Got a surfer dude type of business guy. It was kind of my relax saying, How can I help you please? And thank you type of thing. In terms of the airline, I think it was because there was a void. And there was nobody doing any of that. So, and the other part of it, and this is really, really key for the industry is as I got a few readers and occasionally USA Today, or Wall Street Journal, New York Times would mentioned me, I would reach out to an airline because I’m trying to get connections and learn stuff about this industry. I was really, truly wanting to be a student, but they would always say, well, your members, Randy and your readers well, earlier on. I was trying to figure out what they were playing with me and what they were planning as they were trying to put everything on me in terms of their default of lack of customer service, their default. of lack of marketing strategy in the early days of frequent flyer programs, and I quickly corrected them. And this is how I became an authority because I pointed out to them, these are not my customers, these are your customers. And it took a while for that to kind of set in for the industry because they were they were interested in thinking that the people, the travelers of flyer talk and the readers of inside flyer were other people, they weren’t they they were owned by other people. And I was saying No, they aren’t owned by me. Their voices and opinions of you are about your product as a customer of yours. And I think that took me a while but once that said in I go, Whoa, this guy’s really serious and he’s right. These are our customers.

David Litwak:
Randy, thanks for joining us. I appreciate you taking the time I first of all, I think we should introduce you to the founder of Wayne that travel social network we interviewed in the last one because he also has a funny experience realizing that a lot of people were using his site for dating instead of the intended result. So you guys can maybe go off and start match calm for travelers together. But I want to delve a little bit into the community you built so there’s this great story about how is it that between the CEO of Continental Airlines and a participant of your site about could could 60 people from flyer talk fly out on all expense paid to you know, to Continentals headquarters and to see 274 actually turned up all with their own paying their own expenses? Let me clarify and I you know, communities are really tough to curate and to not squash and clearly you did a really good job of that if this people felt this you know, urge you all fly out and I’d love to for you to tell us a little more how you can You’ve curated that community how you kept it alive.

Randy Petersen:
Yeah, that’s, that’s another good question about the socialization of travel, if you will. One thing I learned earlier on is again, there’s a passion point of travel. There’s also a passion point about hobbies. And I figured out earlier on that travel and miles and points as a hobby, there was an intersection there. So I took advantage of the passion of what a hobby is, whether it’s needlepoint whether it’s hot rods, whether the BMW Car Club, I took that passion and funneled it into the topic of travel, but honestly, all that success, had names on it and the name Wasn’t Randy the names were MJ David cat man, Rudy, punky lucky coins, checks band radio flyer, all the handles of the users of flyer talk. And then cobble that with

David Litwak:
your biker gang.

Randy Petersen:
Yeah, it does.

Randy Petersen
But the earlier days of the internet, you didn’t really know who was on the other side of the keyboard. Was it a dog? Was it whatever it might have been. And so that’s kind of the earlier thing. And the other thing I realized is that the internet while today is keyboard, a keyboard. That reality in earlier days was and I referenced earlier is the physical social media. So earlier on, we started something called do’s do Apostrophe S. And these were meetings, if you will like minded frequent travelers. So we started to do that one of the first ones was in 1999. In Hawaii, we had 80 people show up in Hawaii, who none of them had ever met each other The idea was is and the joke was is that, wait a second, what if I flew to Hawaii, and this was all a fake, it was all a game. There was nobody else on the other side of the keyboard. But that started the influx of the social media today, there’s probably hundreds, if not thousands, of these dudes that occur every day, all over the world, if you will. And what it is, is, it’s the idea that we can talk about travel, we can write about travel, but when I get face to face with you, the passion really comes out. And I think that’s where community really started, was secondary to the wisdom of the crowd. In the idea that somewhere there was an answer for every question about travel, but the other idea was socially. I’m a person socially, humans love social contact. And by creating these dudes and really funding them promoting them at events of travel around topics of miles and points, and to your point, the Continental thing well, you know, again, a CEO of an airline still all these years later never believed that there was truly an interest in miles and points even though he had a gajillion people belong to his frequent flyer program.

David Litwak:
It almost seems like you know, to elaborate a little bit more on that story. I think if I remember correctly, that story was the the guy on the flyer talk clearly email the Continental CEO Cole. Yep. And it seems like there was a time when aviation was more accessible. I can’t imagine and I’ve been in the travelers for nine years. You Even like me, like emailing the American Airlines CEO calls and having him actually respond or care about my opinion. And I’m curious, you know, what do you think about the way these these programs have gone and aviation in general?

Randy Petersen:
You know, that’s a good question as well too, because when you’ve been doing this as long as I have, and being lucky at it, I’ve, I’ve seen everything and what we see today are semblances of things that I’ve seen before. The downside that I’ve never been a fan of, but I get it business because I’m in the C to C business, a lot of travel people, you will talk to our b2c or b2b, they have an e commerce motive into that and I love that as a as an entrepreneur business. I think that’s great. me there was no For an e commerce moment, so the idea of frequent flyer programs is that when I read about the billions of dollars of credit card referrals and credit card miles and points and, and decisions based upon a spreadsheet that gets to me because I still view this as a hobbyist and I think if we were a hobbyist and you look at Porsche changing the design of a 911, there would be an uproar among the crowd. And I think that’s still think. But the thing about frequent flyer programs is that today, everybody is an influencer in frequent flyer programs when I first started, hey, guess what? There was a thing called a fax machine. You might not have heard it, but it was a pretty cool thing back in the day today, whether it’s instagram, twitter or facebook or whatever, everybody has a megaphone and frequent flyer pressure. ribs have built these social units around listening to customers. So I think that’s probably the biggest change in through the years and that they’d really no longer have to watch what’s been said on flyer talk. They can watch the same thing been said in public on Facebook or Twitter.

David Litwak:
So I have kind of two follow up questions to that one. How do you monetize a CDC? I love that they use not b2c, not b2b. And we’ve interviewed, you know, a lot of people on this podcast now and it’s usually one of the two and you’re the first one to have a CDC business model. So how do you how do you monetize that? And what is the future of actually now that Twitter, like you said, is doing a lot of that kind of stuff?

Randy Petersen:
Yeah, well, you know, the thing that keeps me up at night still is what this dude Mark Zuckerberg and jack Dorsey are doing. To me, competition is not about the next website about miles and points or next blog or anything. It’s what Facebook is doing and what Twitter is doing. That is truly the competition in terms of monetization. I was lucky because I’m not really a very smart business guy. One, I still don’t know how to read a p&l sheet or a business plan. I never had a business plan never had budgets. I don’t know what any of that is. So for anybody listening out there, just create the best job in the world for yourself. That’s all that I did. monetization, interestingly enough, was never a topic for me until one thing happened, and it’s called internet brands. In 2007, I got a call from internet brand about wanting to buy flyer talk, and I had never, ever to that point thought about monetization or money because up until 2007, I continued to fund flyer talk the operations and stuff through revenues derived from inside flyers Let’s keep moving my investment forward, if you will. But the interesting thing is that I never made any money from flyer talk because the expenses were higher than revenue. And that was back in the day when advertising as probably the only legitimate revenue, although I wasn’t as smart as the TripAdvisor guys to figure out, or we could have made a lot of money off of booking fees or stuff like that. So the idea of monetization came around when internet brands called and said, we think in a buying flyer car, and I said no, because I had no other answer. I didn’t. This is a guy with no business plan. don’t really think about money, loves the fact that I have fellow travelers to chat with and love the fact that I’ve got great employees. So interested in up I said no 11 times and they finally wore me down and Wireshark came around the purchase came around from actually Jerry Greenwald, who was a former CEO of United Airlines. And he was on the board of internet brands. And when internet brands thought about price, breaking out and travel there, he said, You need to talk to this Randy guy, he runs this thing called flyer talk. And I was pretty impressed to hear that story later on that Jerry finally learned about flyer talk, which is good because he used to disagree a little bit earlier on in the earlier days. But the idea was monetization. I only learned about money. When I got a wire for the purchase of wire talk. That’s the first time I learned about money. I didn’t know what money was before then I knew what expenses were. And my job even after 30 years is I only have one goal. I gotta make payroll in two weeks. That’s the only thing that I know about finance. advertising is probably the only general thing out there. However, Along with flyer talk we introduced things such as called premium membership where we would go and bundle services and ideas behind frequent flyer programs and sell those the members so subscription based stuff we started that earlier on advertising was really nascent I mean it was no money and that was losing money. When flyer talk got sold, I made some money from flyer talk invested at and board area and kind of move that little bit forward.

Kevin May:
I’ve got a question for you Randy. And with with such a voice and you know, the label of Guru and the most influential person and where their points when your kind of influence actually made airlines or others actually change strategy as a result of what you’ve been writing about the influence that you had the ground sweat of opinion that you were able to create through things like fly torque and stuff like that. ie Did you almost become okay. Of course I lobbyist in some respects for some are

Randy Petersen:
Yes, I did. And I say that honestly, with pride because there wasn’t anything that happened and this is the earlier years of frequent flyer programs. There wasn’t anything to happen where readers wouldn’t call me write me, fax me or email me and say, Randy, we need you to, we need you to fix this. We need you to have a voice. And at first I’m not sure I was prepared for that because I’m not a community activist. I’m not a leader. I again, I’m not a B school guy. I played football in college and and that was about it. And I wasn’t team captain. So the idea of this came about and I I think I got actively involved, because that’s what my readers wanted me to do. So I became the accidental tourists and then essence, I became what my membership wanted me to be because I had a life plan. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I created the world’s best job. YouTube decide, David and Kevin can decide if you’ve got the second best job in the world. But I claim the throne the world’s best job. Now, the idea of this responsibility, it comes with caveats because everything that happened people would want me to fix I couldn’t fix everything, but I can tell you, I I was lucky and that I did implement a lot of change out there. And the interesting thing is through all this, I never hired At a PR firm, I never paid for traffic. I never paid for lights. Everything I did was just kind of organic. And a lot of things I would do. I wouldn’t necessarily write about I was just, that’s my job. My job was to serve my readers. And I think that’s the best part of what I do is I always got satisfaction, thinking I was helping them and knowing I was helping them. But indeed, I did force a lot of change earlier on. And even though my prime is way past, understand that I get it. I hope everybody else gets it. But today, yesterday last week, I still get calls for when things aren’t right and travel. Let’s get Randy in here. And it’s like, wow, I’m disappointed that nobody else has taken up that torch because I thoroughly believe that individuals have frequent fliers. And travelers in general, absolutely need to have a voice. And it’s really difficult when there’s too many voices. It’s that noise to signal type thing. I became a signal pipe guy. And yeah, change, change was good. I think we kept the programs in and check for some things. And I like let them know behind the senate says, You know what, you didn’t do what you want. But I tell you, you’re not going to be a hero to me. And, you know, there’s some things that they came back on and never made the news or the headlines, and I was happy to see that but they knew I was always honest with them first of all, second of all, I always paid my own way. I my goal was to earn all the frequent flyer miles in the world. So when I would visit an airline, I paid for my own ticket. Yeah, they would say, hey, we’ll give you a check. I said, No, no, no, no, I can I don’t earn miles off of non rubbing tickets, you keep your money, you run a better airline, I’ll pay my way. So along the way, you know, I’ve got my 2030 million miles because I pay for those damn things and I’m pretty proud of it.

Kevin May:
It could be a mini influencer or blogger can learn a thing or two from you. Just a very, very quick follow up on that one to me, with the change that you were able to create within airlines and their programs. How did you as you know, you’ve referenced a couple of times, Randy, you know, you’re the the humble fanboy. How did you kind of cope with that sense of responsibility that you had? Or did you? Did you think that was something natural came along as part of what you were doing?

Randy Petersen:
Well, you know, it’s kind of like Marvel Comics, if you will, in real life, and I was a mild mannered guy. And when I took on this mantle, if you will have been the editor of inside flyer to founder Florida. I changed into Superman suit. So that was kind of a different thing for me. Because if people know me, I mean, most people know me for my tequila collection, or the idea that outside of miles and points, I’m a modern day cowboy. I go to my ranch every weekend. But the idea of miles and points, I would go for my mild mannered self and put on my Super Man suit to talk to airlines or to address frequent fliers or to be out in front of what was happening. And, you know, I’ll go back to something I said a little bit earlier. I have absolutely no talent for any of this success. I got lucky right place right time. But the nuance of the difference between listening and hearing is all that I have the thing because every time somebody said something to me, I was thinking, why are they saying that? What is it that they’re trying to learn? What is it they’re trying to do with that information? So that’s the subtle difference between and a lot of people spend their time just hearing people not really listening to people. And I, I think, part of my, my, my livelihood, if you will, and the idea that I have the world’s best job is that I continue to try and figure out why you Kevin, we’re answering that asking that question or David, or anybody else that I do out there. And, you know, that’s the fun part of life is and that’s the social element. So

Kevin May:
I keep saying a quick follow up. I do have another

Randy Petersen:
dog, Kevin. One more, okay.

Kevin May:
Do you think, are you

trustworthy authority, because of the things that you learned through listening And as opposed to hearing and hearing or as opposed to listening, or whatever it is, did you find that the people that you were talking to I mean, in between senior powerful airline execs and others that are involved in programs? Were you trustworthy of what they were doing?

Randy Petersen:
Oh, I knew I shouldn’t give you one more question. Now, actually, I’m glad I gave you one more question and a a good question. There’s really only one answer for that, Kevin. And it’s the same answer I would have had in 1986, as I have in 2020. Indeed, I was trustworthy. And I think that those who actually know me, of course on the internet, people pretend they know you sometimes. But of those that actually know me would say that. Indeed, Randy does his research He has no party line. And interestingly enough, I’m not pro frequent flyer versus pro industry. I’m absolutely in the middle. And I can say to you, Kevin, I can say to anybody listening out there, there are times where I had to tell frequent fliers. You’re wrong on this. The industry gets this. And that’s the way the world works in a real trustworthy thing. Yeah, I’m not. On one side of things. I was never always just about the frequent flyer. I was in my role get on my Superman outfit. My goal was to be and I never started out to be this to be a trustworthy arbiter. And I would look at a situation on a change with your frequent flyer program or a hotel program and what maybe some frequent fliers were We’re doing and I would make a judgment call on that. Some would say, Oh, you deserted Randy, or you’re falling in with the airlines. And I go, I can live with that. Because at the same time, I slept well at night, knowing that when you’re in the middle, if you’re always in the middle and truly in the middle, you have to believe sometimes you’re going to be on one side, sometimes you’re going to be on the other side. And that’s still the same today, from 1986 to 2020.

David Litwak:
Very impressive. It’s funny. When Kevin used the word lobbyist, I thought actually at first consumer advocate, and the more you talk to actually the word arbiter came into my mind, and then you just set it and so I thought I was like, Oh, perfect. That’s exactly kind of what I came to understand your role to be as well. But I have one last question before we let Kevin wrap it up here as you’ve alluded to this tequila collection to this branch, and I feel like there’s a Some more stories we can get out of you. So you know, wanted to ask you what’s your top war story? From all of your time with FLIR talking and all of your ventures?

Randy Petersen:
Oh, war story, boy, that would take a couple of weeks, a couple months and maybe the rest of my lifetime war story

Randy Petersen:
or story.

Okay.

Randy Petersen:
Here it is a years ago in the early 90s, I got involved in we were managing frequent flyer programs for frequent fliers and I created basically what was the first kind of rewards manager or consolidated statement, and we had sold the idea or attracted the attention from American Express, and they adopt it and love the idea so we became the smallest company dad ever bedded, become a full partner of American Express And they lost the gold card in the 90s, of which this rewards manager and mileage manager was a key function of a key part of it. We launched it, they said, you know, we think we’ll get 80,000 people on the first run of this credit card, went out at 220,000 on the first launch, and he called me up a week later and said, Can you expand up to 500,000 and I’m thinking, this is the best day of my life. This is fabulous. went on. first month went by second month going great, making money, tons of stuff. And of course, this is before email and all the other stuff. So every day at my office, the mailman would back up a big truck and haul out bags of these statements of frequent fliers because what we did is we took all of the manual frequent flyer statements consolidated those in a new statement, which was a composite of airlines hotels. stuff. So anyway, life’s going great. I’m thinking this is the coolest damn thing in the world. I got a call one day from my Emacs Rep. And he says, Do you know who Ron Allen is? I go, Well, I only know one Ron out. He’s the CEO of Delta Airlines. And I met him and seemed like a nice guy. Why do you ask? Well, Ron Allen, and Ken Chenault, the CEO of American Express at the time, we’re in the middle of well, they got called in because delta and American Express were in the middle of negotiating a multi million dollar hundred million dollar credit card deal. And the problem is, is Ron Allen has decided that they don’t want American Express and conventional said why not? And he says, Well, you got this mileage manager thing. In your new credit cards, the problem is, is all of the statements of all of our best customers are going to Colorado Springs. We no longer have any data on our frequent fliers, because the home city residents city, which way were they were doing their marketing from what’s coming out of Colorado Springs. And I go, well, what’s that got to do with me? And he says, Well, you ever heard of the cola wars and I go, yeah, Pepsi and Coke. And he says, Well, we just blinked and uh, you immediately immediately 20,000 square feet, a new space that I’d put aside or rented out the process all these statements. I lost all that business overnight because a when it comes to credit cards and big money, it talks Randy listens. And that’s my worst story.

Kevin May:
That’s great. And we could probably do part two, part three, Part Four, Part 10 of talking to Randy. But our time is up for the, for the podcast, elements of our chat here today. So, and I’d love to say for those that are tuning in on the audio that Randy is sat here in his Superman outfit, but unfortunately, he’s not in his Superman outfit today. It only goes to say I’m really on behalf of David and I thank you so much for joining us on how I got here. We really appreciate your time and your your stories and everything that you’ve been able to share with us today. Thanks, Randy.

Randy Petersen:
Kevin and David, thank you. You both been around a long time. I’m big fans of yours. I know your contributions to the travel industry. It is duly noted and thanks for being part of a great story, even my story. So thank you.

Kevin May:
Okay, you’re very kind. So thanks ever so much. So thank you very much, everybody for tuning in. This has been how I got here that’s focused by Mojo’s weekly podcast where we talk to innovators and entrepreneurs behind travel and transportation. So thanks again to Randy and for David and I thanks so much for everybody tuning in. We’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai