Title: Million Dollar Monday - Eli Facenda
Summary:
In this Million Dollar Monday episode, Seth Bradley interviews Eli Facenda, who shares that he made his first million through an international youth sports tour company. The business was growing fast until COVID wiped it out completely. He made his last million through his current business, which helps entrepreneurs use credit card points to take luxury trips for a fraction of the cost. Now, Eli is focused on making his next million by scaling the same business through lower-ticket, community-driven, and digital products, while maintaining his high-ticket services.
Links to Watch and Subscribe:
Bullet Point Highlights:
Transcript:
Seth Bradley (00:00.16)
Welcome to Million Dollar Monday with Eli Facenda. Let's just jump right in. Let's do it. Yeah. How did you make your first million?
So I actually made my first million in a tour company. Now I made the first million. I didn't get to keep the first million, but what we were doing, we were running sports trips all over the world. This is actually part of how I fell in love with the travel industry and the work that I'd now do with points. And ultimately what we were doing, we were creating these international tour packages for youth sports teams and families to go on these international tours. So think of like a 14 year old baseball team in your, you're in San Diego. We'd like do a selection of kids.
from that area, the families would come and they would go to Japan or Italy or wherever and travel for 10 days, experience the culture, have an educational tour and also play the local teams. So we did that in a variety of sports, ice hockey and baseball and lacrosse, all these different sports and we were growing a lot and then that was ramping right until COVID and that just decimated the entire business. it took us about two years to get to a million and then we started to double almost every year for a few years and that was like,
really really tough break in COVID but that was the first night.
Man, nobody saw that coming. I No,
Eli Facenda (01:09.548)
definitely you know group large or large group sports international travel was like the worst potential like you can't go overseas and you definitely can't do it with 60 people so it was a brutal industry to be in
Yeah, there were certain sectors that just, I mean, there was nothing you could do. We opened up our first gym actually two weeks before COVID hit in 2020. So we had our, us like two years to open and then our grand opening. And then we had a bunch of free clients in those first two weeks. And then they ended up being free clients for about a year because we couldn't charge them. Cause we couldn't get them back in the gym. We're doing online workouts and all that kind of stuff. Isn't that? Hey, we adapt man.
Yeah, the true entrepreneurial muscles are definitely strengthened in times like that though. mean, like the people that bounce back and figure it out, like you just have a new sense of confidence of like, you know, I can handle anything.
Yeah, man. I mean, you pivot, right? Like I actually ended up launching my first podcast during COVID because I was stuck inside and it was like, all right, let's do this. Let's get on Zoom and interview people and all that kind of stuff, man. So that leads us right to the next question, man. How'd you make your last million? How'd you make that transition?
Yeah, so the last million that I made was in the current business that I have. so essentially what we've been doing there for about four years now is helping entrepreneurs maximize their travel on credit card points. So helping them get their dream bucket list trips, these 30, 40, $50,000 trips all over the world for about 90 % off by leveraging credit card points. And we've traditionally had some pretty high ticket services. I mean, not crazy expensive, but like,
Eli Facenda (02:40.046)
know, 5, 10, 15K in that range has been the main service. And so we cracked our first million about two years in. So that was 2024. Actually, it was the first year we made a million there.
Awesome man, awesome. How about your next million? Where are you scaling to?
Yeah, so the next million I want to make is the same business. I love what I do. I really enjoy it. And what I want to do is do it in a more community oriented and lower ticket way. So I want to have bigger reach, more digital products, more of the community, more affiliate services and stuff like that. And I'm really excited about kind of cracking the code on that because we've done it decently with the higher ticket stuff, more agency level service level stuff, which is great. And we're still cranking on that. We're going keep growing it. But I really want to see what we can do with
So the lower ticket stuff, creating awesome stuff on YouTube that leads to different channels and distributions there. So that's the next million and same business, just different type of money.
love it man. Yeah, that's kind of opposite of how some people approach it, right? You usually start with a lower ticket and then you have to build up that base before anybody will give you, you know, higher, pay for that higher ticket product, but you're kind of working backwards because you want to help more people.
Eli Facenda (03:44.398)
Totally, exactly. Yeah, there's a limit. mean, what we do in the high ticket is incredible, but it really is a specialized skill. Like you think about like a bookkeeper or an accounting firm or something, there's like a million bookkeepers. There's like 50 people that know points and travel to the level that I need them to know it to really serve clients with the highest level. So there's a real limit on the ability to scale that. It's also just like, we want to be able to do really quality work for less people, but then serve more people with the other stuff too.
Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
Seth Bradley’s Links:
https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq
www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/
https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/
https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq
https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en
Eli Facenda Links:
https://www.instagram.com/elitravelguy/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eli-facenda/
https://www.facebook.com/eli.facenda
https://www.youtube.com/@elifacenda
https://www.threads.com/@elitravelguy