Frequent Miler on the Air - Frequent Miler origin story - Carrie's story | Coffee Break Ep18 | 7-16-24

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

(01:37) - Carrie saw Greg speak at Chicago Seminars in 2013 - the topic was Million Mile Madness. (02:10) - The next summer (2014) Drew and Carrie were invited to the "Ann Arbor Art Fair Do". While in Ann Arbor, they met Greg for kayaking. (05:02) - Over the next few years, Carrie periodically did freelance projects for Greg (including an infographic about Redbird, layout design for the card page, editing YouTube videos for Greg's Necker Island visit, etc.) Read more about Greg and Carrie's Necker Island video partnership here: https://frequentmiler.com/necker-island-blogging-bloopers/ and read about how Greg booked Necker Island on points here: https://frequentmiler.com/how-to-book-a-free-week-on-necker-island/ (07:33) - After selling TIF in 2019, Carrie half-jokingly (but not joking at all), asked Greg if FM needed a web designer. (09:12) - Greg decided he was actually interested, but by then Carrie had started a UX/UI course and was considering that. The indecision was brief - by early 2020 she was part of the team. (10:17) - Here's a link to our Best Offers Page: https://frequentmiler.com/best-credit-card-sign-up-offers/ (14:19) - Carrie's first impressions Visit frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media. Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

Here we go. This is not your typical Frequent Miler on the Air episode. This is a standalone segment we're calling Coffee Break. Each Coffee Break segment will cover a single topic related to miles and points. And each Coffee Break is limited to 20 minutes or your money back. Enjoy. Today's coffee break, Frequent Miler's origin story, Carrie's story. We've previously done the Frequent Miler origin story to talk about my starting the Frequent Miler business. I'm Greg. And we also did a separate show where, where Nick told his story, how he

joined up with Frequent Miler and everything that went on behind the scenes there. And now we're delighted to bring Carrie onto the show and, and talk through how she got involved with Frequent Miler and, and why, why she's now stuck working with the Frequent Mylar team day in and day out. So I've never heard this story. I'm curious to find out Carrie's origin story. So welcome, Carrie. Yeah, thanks. Cool. Well, I kind of am copying the pattern of how you told your story, Nick. So you kind of started with when you first became familiar with Frequent Miler. I had a hard time remembering the years on this, but back in 2013, which would have been when my own blog, well, not mine, the one I shared with my husband, Drew, Travel is Free,

was about two years old. We went to chicago seminars i'm pretty sure and greg was speaking and drew really wanted to go to the session and i was like who's this guy and he was like oh this guy's doing a billion mile madness thing i was like okay he was like he got his start in redbird anyway he gave me like the rundown and so i didn't get to meet greg though so just watched him talk and then not just a few months after that uh dave homiak which some folks in the community know um contacted drew and i to see if we would speak at his event that was called ann arbor art fair do at the. I don't think it still exists. Yeah, unfortunately, he stopped running it. And it's ironic we're doing this now. I just now

realized that Art Fair is going to be happening this week in Ann Arbor as we're recording it. This would have been 10 years ago. Wow. 10 year anniversary of us meeting, Greg. That's why you decided to do this episode now Greg didn't attend though Oh, you didn't go to the Ann Arbor Art Fair do, Greg? Come on No, too much consternation I know I went It was so frustrating, every year you had a competing vacation

That's right So we hung around in town like a few days Afterwards and you got back Right as the Art Fair Due ended And you suggested we hang out so we kayaked um and then we were friends basically ever since um yeah so then we knew so wait let me back up greg did you did you so you knew who they were then or was this just like Dave connected you um well I'm not sure I can't remember how exactly I guess I met Kerry so I think I asked Dave to connect me up with them because I had read

travel is free you know every single thing Drew wrote on there and I loved the, uh, that blog and, um, I'd heard he was a great guy. I don't know that I, I can't remember if I knew anything about Kerry at all at that point, but, um, he connected us up and, and that's when I met both Drew and Kerry and, and we became good friends, right? Like I'd say immediately. Um, we had a lot of fun that day parallel i can't imagine why that would happen well he took us to ice cream so that's all you need to do really easy win so you guys both started in like 2011 then you both started blogs in 2011 probably right around the same month and everything i don't know it was like see if i can remember it would have been early 2011.

When did you start? You were ahead of FrequentMiler. Technically, but I mean, I don't think we had any readers really until we started traveling, which would have been that fall, fall of 2011. We actually started being nomads and writing about implementing all of that stuff. Okay. Yeah. And fall of 2011 is when I started the blog. Well, I guess you could say technically summer because it was early september but uh

basically fall so we were we were like competitor peers sort of for years uh although we never behaved like competitors uh no so for the next few years then greg would hire me for random kind of freelance things here and there i was trying to remember what some of those projects were when you went to necker island uh you had me edit some youtube videos that was huge yeah um i i think we were using google um photos and and yeah i like set it up so that, uh, I forget how we did it, but that Carrie would just get all the files that appeared. And so she would make, um, she would make, you know, organized videos out of the stuff that I was dumping in there. And, um, cause I was too busy having fun on Necker Island. Um, for those who don't know, um, Necker Island. For those who don't know, Necker Island is Richard Branson's

private island where you can use, off and on, you could use Virgin Atlantic points to stay there for a week. And at the time, it cost me 1.2 million Virgin Atlantic miles for my wife and I to stay there for a week. And it's all inclusive. And yeah carrie did all the great video work for that so how did you even know that carrie could do that or like how did you guys connect on because i know you did that and you did some infographics and things like that right like so how did you guys even connect on getting that stuff together by then you must have known what i was doing for travel it's free because right uh our kind of angle on the blog was that we tried to have these kind of more evergreen resources. So we would have, we were trying to do the whole YouTube channel thing.

So you probably watched some of those. And then we tried to have infographics for some of these more complicated travel hackery things. So we did a Redbird one as a collaboration between Travels Free and Frequent Miler back when we were. And I think we must've run into each other at other events. Oh yeah. We were constantly going to those things and hanging out. Yeah. So, you know, so we, yes, we met initially at this one thing in Ann Arbor, but we'd see each other probably a couple of times a year because of all the frequent flyer events and things that we'd go to.

And so we, yeah, so we would talk and I knew Carrie was doing both, you know, that kind of work for Travel is Free. And you must have told me at some point that you did freelance work as well. Yeah. I, uh, you were one of my only clients for a long time, I think, because I was hoping to do it, but I was pretty much only doing travels free stuff. Uh, but then when we sold travels free in 2019 ish or something, uh, I got a job as a web manager for some other company, but I really wanted to get more into freelance. And on a particularly long workday with like lots of corporate meetings and stuff, I messaged you at the end of the day and kind of half joking, but not really joking. I was like, you don't need like a web manager do you uh and i i forget what your initial response was but i think a few

weeks went by and you were like yeah actually i have been thinking about that uh and maybe i could yeah i remember talking to you on the phone and like i i was excited about that idea so so i think what you had suggested you would do was not something like specifically that I thought we had much work to do. But after we talked more about it, like, you know, I was like realizing that I'm sure there are things that could fill your time. And and boy, was I right. I mean, I'd say you never you're never lacking for things to do here with FibonMiler, are you? No, and it's so much fun. And I, you know, especially like, you know, I was working a job where I thought I would be managing a website and I spent a lot of my time uploading

spreadsheets. And so then I think I just pitched to you, like, here's what I wish I was spending my time doing. And you actually let me do it which is awesome it's kind of on brand to kind of let us play around with the stuff that actually interests us and it ends up working well uh but I didn't say yes right away ironically even though I was the one that introduced the idea uh by the time you got back to me which wasn't even that much time but I was kind of trying to figure out what I wanted to do next so i was brainstorming a lot of things i got interested in ui ux i actually took like an online course from u of m or something and i was trying to decide if i wanted to do that so i kind of put non-techie people can you mention what ui ux is yeah so um user interface or user experience and that's

actually one of the freelance projects i had done for you was help design the layout of your early card page um right right which is another project that we've ended up redoing then since then but um so ux ux is is where uh you design like websites and apps and things based on the user experience, right? Like trying to understand what the user ideal user experience is and design the apps and things to work well for, for how the users would actually use them. Yeah.

Which has been super useful for the card page, our best offers page. So I am glad I took that course. That's good. That's good. Yeah. No, once I knew that Carrie was potentially interested and the more I thought about it, I was a hundred percent sure she would be a great addition to the team. And I don't know, do you remember Nick? Did I talk to you? I must've talked to you about it. And do you remember anything about that? You don't even remember, but you know that you must have because that's just the kind of person you are. So yeah. So backing up a step or two here. So in the meantime, somewhere in the middle

there, I had started with Frequent Miler, right? So after Greg and Kerry already knew each other, but well before Kerry was working with us. And so every year we do an internal, we call it FM con. It's just, you know, for the people that work in the blog and a couple of friends of the blog that, you know, bloggers and other places and that kind of thing that come together. And we have a meeting for a few days to talk about, you know, what's going well at Frequent Miler, what we need to improve on, what our goals are for the longterm. And so Kerry and Drew came to one of those early on when I was working at Frequent Miler and have been, I think, at each one since. And so by the time this conversation about Kerry being interested in working for Frequent Miler happened, I had met

Drew and Kerry. And I think probably it must have been at least two of the FM cons that I was at by that point and came to like them a lot. I mean, as you know, if you've ever followed these guys, they're fun people, they're good people. And so it's not surprising that Greg and Kerry got along well. And I think it's interesting too, that like Kerry is somebody that Greg had known since well before me. And I'd only been working for the blog a couple of years at that point. And Greg still reached out to me and asked, what do you think about this? Which I think says a lot about the kind of boss that Greg is to work for, that he was interested in my feedback. And of course, I was super excited. I love Drew and Kerry. And I knew that Kerry could do great things for us. And that there was, like Greg said, way more to do than

there were hours in the day that she would do much better at than either of us. So I thought it was a brilliant idea, a great fit. So I was very supportive. I said, yes, absolutely. We need Kerry. So I was super excited that I said, yes, absolutely. Like we need Carrie. So, uh, so I was super excited that this conversation was even happening behind the scenes. The funny thing is, we have two funny stories. So you go with yours first and then I'll tell mine. Well, what I was going to say is, is, is then because, uh, Carrie wasn't sure at that point, whether she was going to take the, the, uh to take the job. I went into like sales mode. I'm like, I'm going to get her to come on board because I was so convinced that she'd be a great addition to the team.

And I was right. Well, I let you sell a little longer than you needed to because I had kind of already decided yeah I'm gonna go for this but Drew and I wanted to do like a real vacation where where we didn't work uh and so I was in Philippines I think and was like I'm not gonna think about this or respond to it till I'm back and then I got an email from Nick like really trying to sell me too he's working for Greg is the best and I hadn't told you guys yet that I had already kind of decided I was going to do it because I was like, I'm vacation mode. I'm not thinking about, and it takes me hours to write emails like that. So that would have been like, that would

have cost me vacation time. So you guys, I let you sell a little longer than you needed to, but. That's okay. It was worth it. It was worth every, every minute of effort there. So, so I figured if there was any indecision, let me do whatever I can too, because I, I mean, it was clear to me that it was going to make frequent miler better. And, and if you just look at the traffic that we've had over the last several years, since Carrie joined, there's no doubt that it made frequent miler better, uh, just from an, an objective standpoint, from a subjective standpoint, I think Greg and I and everybody else agrees that Carrie has made Frequent Miler better and continues to.

So well said. We do well as a team. We do. I agree. So Carrie, I'm curious. So once you started working with us, do you remember any of your initial thoughts? Were you like, oh, oh man this is a mess i loved it and it was kind of fun in the beginning because like there were so many

there was so much low-hanging fruit because like uh we were you got you hadn't redesigned the theme in i think like as long as it had existed maybe and you were already kind of thinking you'd like to do that uh so instantly i got to do stuff that I find really fun. And I got to be like the person driving that project. So it was immediately it was immediately fun and immediately cool. And I implemented Slack, which we still use now, which is a workplace messaging tool if people aren't familiar with that. and i think that's when we started weekly meetings which now yeah can you imagine if we didn't know you were the driver for that yeah and she still is the driver of us getting stuff done like making sure that we did what we said we were going to do in the weekly meetings it's it's it's just been constant fun ever since basically yeah that's awesome and did you, um, when you took the job, you know, were you foreseeing doing like actually traveling with the team to Asia and South America?

Definitely not. And I'm so glad I still feel like I won the lottery for that happening because, uh, you guys had just done, um, 40 K to far away right before I came on board basically not right before but like you know the year before and I was obsessed with it you know I was working this day job that was a lot more kind of corporate and and so I would like you know that would be my relief during the days was following along and so it was so cool it's like now I get to participate but then you know the world changed a little bit during COVID and we didn't get to quite implement our ideas right away but I never imagined that I

would actually get to do the traveling I just thought it'd be cool to help kind of create the content and stuff and that is like that is a highlight for me every year when we get to do that so yeah no it's been awesome yeah and highlight for us too because you do a great job putting the footage

and things together. So you've been doing, and then it was fantastic to travel with you. So. Absolutely. It was so much fun. And, and so in addition to doing like redesigning the website and, and continually making tweaks to the website

and editing our videos and managing our social media presence, you've also written some posts for the blog itself. I mean, that's not your primary job description, but you've done some. And early on, one of yours, I don't know which one it was, but it was one of the biggest. Yeah, it was the Machu Picchu, the back way to Machu Picchu. Randomly that got a bunch of traffic and I don't know why. It was a very harrowing journey, but I guess before.

Carrie had the most page views that month of all of us. So that was pretty, that was pretty fun. That hasn't happened since. That's the last time I got the most page views, but I guess I got to do

more harrowing things and write about it. I was going to say, that's just because got to do more harrowing things and write about it. I was going to say that's just because there have been fewer harrowing stories, but certainly not. Oh, there's plenty more. I just can't figure out how to like relate them to luxury. But not everybody's into luxury travel. Lots of people are into budget travel, too. And I think that's an interesting piece of your story that we're kind of of assuming people know but not necessarily everybody really really knows so like how long did you guys travel for before you like in between

or overall like how many years basically did you spend mostly just traveling i think collectively it's been uh somewhere around six or something collectively but the longest in a row i think was four years uh in a row um so we've had kind of different nomadic phases we we've spent most of our marriage nomadic that was that's almost not true but it's still fairly true now so yeah um yeah it's pretty and most of it was more budget i remember from the Travel is Free blog, IHG free nights were a lot of your lodging, right? Yeah, you always hear Stephen and I brighten up when IHG comes up because it just makes sense.

It still makes sense for nomads long-term kind of trying to do more instead of more luxury, more nights. I think it still kind of makes sense for that although that's a steven question yes it's probably less gameable than it was then though i think uh so i remember back then for example that you could find like random like ihe promos like all over the web and you could stack them all like you could sign up for all of them and earn more points than you're spending on any given night and things like that were possible back then.

Drew has some kind of stat on how many promo codes we applied to a single night. And I can't remember what it is, but it was more than a dozen, I think. I don't know. It's crazy. Amazing. Those were the days. All right. Well, it's fantastic having you on board and I hope everybody enjoyed this

Carrie's origin story for Frequent Miler. Yeah. We'll collect the others later in future episodes. Don't forget to subscribe frequentmiler.com slash subscribe and check out our full length Frequent Miler on the air episodes dropping every Friday. Bye everybody.