MDM 03 | Million Dollar Monday With Eli Faceda

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:

https://youtu.be/o8qmXoQf8LE

Bullet Point Highlights:

• First Million: Built through a youth sports international tour company (pre-COVID)
• Business Model: Organized overseas travel for youth teams and families
• Impact of COVID: Entire business was decimated by travel restrictions
• Last Million: Made via a business helping entrepreneurs maximize credit card points for luxury travel
• High-ticket offers: $5K–$15K services, hit $1M revenue in 2024
• Next Million Strategy: Scale through lower-ticket products, community offerings, and digital content (YouTube, affiliates)
• Goal: Reach more people without sacrificing service quality at the high-ticket level
• Approach: Reverse path—starting high-ticket, moving into scalable, lower-ticket reach

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