SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

In this episode of the Screw the Commute Podcast, Tom Antion discusses best practices for using credit cards wisely in your business. He highlights how credit cards can be both a great asset and a potential pitfall, depending on how they are managed.
Key Points:
1. Benefits of Credit Cards:
o Accumulate points, perks, and cash back by using credit cards for business expenses.
o Points can be redeemed for travel, business supplies, and more.
o Some cards offer short-term financing with no interest, improving cash flow.
2. Smart Practices:
o Use credit cards for purchases when vendors don’t charge high fees for card payments.
o Choose credit cards with rewards and benefits that align with your business needs.
o Monitor employee spending by using credit cards instead of petty cash or checks.
o Build business credit through strategic credit card use, which can open lines of credit for emergencies or investment opportunities.
3. Risks and Cautions:
o Avoid overspending and maintain a frugal mindset to stay within your budget.
o Be mindful that business credit cards often rely on your personal credit, which could be at risk.
o Some business cards prohibit personal expenses, so review terms carefully.
o High-interest rates can become problematic if balances aren’t paid in full monthly.
4. Opportunities:
o Occasionally, transferring balances or opening new cards can provide significant points or perks, but avoid frequent applications to protect your credit score.
o Leveraging credit cards strategically can help businesses survive tough times or seize valuable opportunities.
Tom emphasizes the importance of responsible usage, understanding terms, and maintaining financial discipline to maximize the benefits of business credit cards while avoiding common pitfalls.
He concludes by promoting his mentor program and encouraging listeners to leverage smart credit card practices for business growth.

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Episode 978 – Wise Credit Card Use
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 978 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about wise credit card using for your business. Now, I hope you didn't miss episode 977. That was great AI prompts if you're going to use I, which I'm not crazy about, but if you're going to use it, you need to use it correctly and get the best out of it. And so this teaches you how to do that. Hope you didn't miss picking up a copy of my automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and my school, the only licensed dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world, at IMTCVA.org. And it's licensed to operate by the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia because it's distance learning. All right, check it out.

[00:01:20] All right. Let's talk about credit cards. They're the savior of some businesses, but they've also killed some businesses if you use them poorly or incorrectly. So today I'm going to talk about the best practices to get the most advantage out of credit business credit cards. Now, the best thing that I've used over many, many years is the accumulation of points or perks or cash back using credit cards. So we try to pay everything possible with credit cards unless the vendor charges extra for using the credit cards.

[00:02:01] Now, if it's just a tiny bit extra, we might still do it, but if it's a lot of extra. We won't. So we've got a tremendous accumulation of points. And just in my Amazon Amex card, I could buy $1,000 worth of stuff and not have to pay for it just from the accumulation of points. And that's after I bought a $500 pressure washer thing with those same kind of points. See, so we buy lots of stuff, all our business supplies, everything on Amazon, and it adds up on the Amazon credit card. Now one of the best uses is business travel. Now terrible uses are buying. You know they send you these catalogs to for wine and electronics and things like that. And those are usually no good, a terrible deal if you're going to buy that stuff, just buy it outright. But I fly first class. I mean, I haven't flown a lot lately because I don't want to, but but I fly first class with points, so travel is a good, good thing. Now my Harbor Freight, where I buy a lot of our tools and things to run these big businesses that I have in my rental business and everything. I get cash back and use their credit card, pay it off, and I get cash back coupons that I can just go get stuff for free. All right. So that's another good use of credit cards.

[00:03:29] So you really should examine your credit cards and see which ones have the best deals for you. And I have been known, although I don't do this a lot because you don't want your credit thing too much for doing this kind of stuff. But I have moved cards just to get 50,000 points or something, which is like two coach airfares or a first class airfare somewhere. But again, you don't want it. Like I said, do that too much because the new place is going to check your credit. All right. So so you don't want too many credit checks on your credit because that will reduce your, your overall score. And some of these ones will allow you to not make any payments for six months with no interest. See? So you could get out of payments. This increases your cash flow. You got to be very careful. Like I said, overdoing this. But when it makes sense, hey, it can be a big advantage for your business. Now, you can also use credit cards for short term financing. Now, this is not a substitute for long term financing. In fact, a lot of these shyster real estate people teach you the first day. They teach you how to up the limits on your credit cards. And then by the end of the seminar, they've used up the limit 40, 50, $100,000 charging you for their crap training.

[00:04:54] See? So don't get into those stupid things. But short term financing can help you out. And I mean, there was a lot of businesses that survived the pandemic because of credit cards. That's that went on for several years. But when you you got to get something to keep your business running. The strategic use of credit cards is a great thing. Now another thing it helps monitor employee spending. So if you have employees out buying stuff, you don't want to be dealing with individual receipts. I mean, you should have them get receipts for everything, of course, but it's all laid out on a, you know, on your credit cards, on their credit card statement, so you can monitor their, their spending and it can make purchasing much easier. I know in the early days of my businesses, we used to have a petty cash file and have to keep track of it or give employees checks, which was very risky to what were already signed because the people didn't take credit cards. But now everybody takes credit cards that you're going to want to deal with, so you can get rid of petty cash and checks. Now also, this can help build your business credit. I mean, I have an enormous line of credit that I don't even use. In fact, it's funny on the for some reason, they owe me like $0.36. I get a statement every month, Uh, but, I mean, it's sitting there waiting.

[00:06:20] If I need something, I don't have to beg, borrow or fill out a bunch of crap, you know? I can go get that enormous amount of money really fast at a certain interest rate and a certain payback deal. Of course, I don't use it that much because we're we're pretty, pretty well-heeled here. But it does build your business credit and having that available to take advantage of things. For instance, I buy a lot off of Facebook Marketplace where you do have to pay cash for stuff. Usually. Sometimes they'll take Zelle or, you know, one of these off beat processors. But if you need cash in a hurry, maybe there's a business thing that would have cost you $12,000 new, and somebody going out of business and selling a really beautiful one for 6000. Well, you want to be able to take advantage of that deal. See, so having your business credit built up using business credit cards is great because that Facebook Marketplace sale is probably not going to take credit cards, but you use the credit cards to build up your business credit and have that credit line waiting for you so you can grab that 6000 and get that purchase made and save yourself $6,000. Okay. All right. Now, there are some downsides to this. I mean, it's the potential for overspending. So you've got to you still have to have a frugal attitude about your business, which, you know, I've developed from my dad in the early days, everything was, you know, buy used lumber and pull the nails out and straighten them out and reuse them.

[00:07:52] So I really got this frugality built into my brain from from when I'm a little kid. So I still have a frugal attitude. And don't overspend just because you have this credit. And also, you know, there is a risk to your personal credit because most of the business credit for smaller businesses is going to be based on your personal credit. So you're going to have to agree to be responsible for any business failures or business loans personally. So you you are putting a risk to your business or to your personal credit. And then just a warning here is you got to be careful. Read the fine print, because some business credit cards don't allow you to put personal expenses on it. And they could cancel it just if they found you were doing that. So I haven't run into that problem much, because most of the stuff we buy around here is business related because of my retreat center. And, you know, I might have to buy food and, you know, that's all business expense for guests and so forth. But you do have to be careful that that's not or that that's permissible if you want to use your business credit card for personal expenses.

[00:09:03] Now, if you do that, your taxes are going to be a little more complex because you've got to split out the business part from the personal part in your in your tax returns. So, so, so there's some downsides to this. And then also you've got interest that can be ungodly high in some of these credit cards. So you want to try to again be frugal and pay them off every every month, but take advantage of the points that they give you and the cash back and all that stuff, which can really be a benefit to you. So that's just a little primer on business credit cards and how they can really help your business, and it can help you accumulate more things because of the points and the cash back and the perks that are given with a lot of these credit cards, and there's a lot of competition out there. And like I said, once in a while, it might be worthwhile to transfer a balance to some other credit card to get out of payments for a while, as long as they don't charge you interest, and also to get an enormous amount of points, which could be, like I said, the airfare or, you know, whatever. All right, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Check out my mentor program. GreatinternetmarketingTraining.com and I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.