Brian Jewell (00:01.818)
All right, everybody, my guest today is a long time sales and marketing professional whose career in financial technology brought him unexpectedly into the tourism industry. Today, he's the chief marketing officer of Jasby, where he develops and promotes tools to help tour companies facilitate cashless travel and improve the trip experience for group leaders, schools, and students. Greg Bottenhorn, welcome to the podcast.

Greg Bottenhorn (00:26.592)
Thanks, Brian. Good to be here. Be sure you're having me.

Brian Jewell (00:29.014)
Yeah, I'm glad to have you here. We're going to talk all things payment today. I think a lot of people hear that word cashless and it may set off some alarm bells in their heads. Why do you think cashless travel is a good thing?

Greg Bottenhorn (00:44.894)
Yeah, look, the alarm bells, I think, come from our human way of just rejecting change, right? We always have this, well, this is the way we've always done it mentality. I think where it started to shift in travel was when enough of the horror stories pile up, right? I mean, we've all heard them, from stories from people walking down the streets in New York City or DC with suitcases of cash, $30,000 plus.

know, people sitting at their dining room tables after just going to cash a $20,000 check and putting, you know, tens and fives and piles and stapling them together and then stuffing envelopes. I had one gentleman tell me the story. In his early days, he used to drive the bus for the tours and he would put the cash in a paper bag, like a shopping bag.

folded up and put it behind his seat. Well, one day he was running behind and the students got off the bus and he had a quick turnaround and he was cleaning out the bus and he accidentally threw away his paper bag that had all the cash in it. And he realized it, I don't know, 40 minutes later, went back and had to dumpster dive for an hour. Now, thank God, he found the bag of money, right? But the experience, I'm sure, wasn't great for him. But it's...

we're at a point in time, look, it's 2025. And when we started doing this, was 2023. And there was really no need to have cash in these problems on trips anymore. So cashless just kind of became the way. And now travelers are getting used to it. I mean, this is a very common thing in travel today. And here we are.

Brian Jewell (02:25.004)
Yeah, here we are. So I want to tell, I want to tell our audience about your story because you are not the typical travel industry professional. You came at it from a very unusual angle. So give us the brief overview of how you found yourself as a FinTech executive all of a sudden working in the travel industry.

Greg Bottenhorn (02:43.786)
Sure, so I guess first of all, I hope it's an industry that I'm in for a long time. I love it now. But yeah, I did really stumble into it. look, JazzBee is a traditional fintech. We work anywhere where finance, technology, and card issuing kind of comes into play as our area. So we have all sorts of programs that delve into customized portals for money movement and some large branded credit card campaigns and even payment processing, things along those lines.

Brian Jewell (02:48.771)
Yeah.

Greg Bottenhorn (03:14.1)
We started to do a lot of work with banks and credit unions, which have their own problems when it comes to reaching the youth market, and that's really our expertise. And a large provider in the Toropeter space stumbled across us. They were at a bank that had partnered with us, saw us, and said, you know, we've tried card programs in the past, but for a variety of reasons, traditional card programs just don't work in educational travel.

So they reached out to us and said, hey, do you want to build something that does work for educational travel? Just real quick on my background. I I'm a passionate Traveler, I love to travel. I love to experience new things I'm also a father of four and so my kids grew up having those experiences and I know the power of it in terms of personal education So I jumped at the opportunity to participate in that industry

We took six months, nine months to build something out and try it out. And we got a lot of feedback initially, this works, this didn't, it'd be really cool if, and all those things, until we really came up with a solution that checked all the boxes, met the needs of the tour operator and the schools and the travelers and their parents. And then we rolled it out to the rest of the market and the rest, as they say, is history.

Brian Jewell (04:36.654)
Yeah, that's fantastic. So I think most people listening have kind of two sort of core experiences with payment cards. One of them is when I go to the grocery or to the coffee shop, I swipe my card or these days I may, you know, tap my card and it's magic and I don't have to transact any cash and I might even get like points or airline miles or a little bit of cash back and it's awesome. My other experience is maybe I am a merchant and I have to take

card payments from people and whenever I take that card payment, I lose a chunk of the revenue as a fee and that's the opposite of awesome, right? So can you help us understand when a merchant swipes a card, what is happening and what kind of organizations are involved and how do they end up taking pieces of that transaction?

Greg Bottenhorn (05:26.75)
Yeah, sure. It's a great question. look, you gotta think back to when cards were introduced into our financial world, right? And so at that point, a lot of stores were still cash and even checks, you know, and I probably remember those days. And when cards were introduced, it ended up being a real convenience for stores because now people who had forgotten their wallet or didn't have cash or quite honestly couldn't afford a specific purchase and needed credit for it.

Brian Jewell (05:39.072)
Mm-hmm.

Greg Bottenhorn (05:53.898)
could very easily access those same goods. So it was an increase in revenue for merchants as well. I would say it still is to this day. With that comes a convenience fee. Look, everybody kind of that's involved needs to make their piece of it. Today, that's called interchange, right? I think it was always called interchange, but it's the amount of money that's charged whenever a card is swiped. So an easy way to think about it is that when you swipe your card at a merchant for a $10 purchase, usually,

It varies, but let's call it 3 % of that purchase becomes the interchange. So the merchant loses that 3%. It's why you see some places charge a fee for if you want to use a card and people may wonder, well, why is there a fee? It's because it's usually a smaller merchant and they just can't afford to lose that amount of money off of every purchase. The interchange is then split amongst all the parties involved, right? So when I say that, it's not just the merchant end.

MasterCard, example, right? MasterCard, Visa, American Express, they're kind of the large brand that's on these cards and that are behind a lot of this, but then there's lots of partners in between, right? So there's always a bank, an issuing bank that actually is the one responsible for issuing that card. There's a payment processor, right? The person that actually works with everything in the back scenes to make sure that that money goes from one account to another. And then there's generally a program manager that

kind of manages the whole thing, right? So all of those players kind of take their piece of that transaction and that's what the interchange goes to.

Brian Jewell (07:24.462)
Hmm.

Brian Jewell (07:31.916)
Yeah. Is there any difference between those typical interchange fees when you are accepting payments online versus at a terminal in a brick and mortar store?

Greg Bottenhorn (07:42.954)
Sure, there's, look, there's lots of different things that impact that interchange amount. Debit card and credit card programs, for example, have different interchange amounts. The type of swipe, the type of merchant can vary there. Quite honestly, it can be the relationship that that merchant has set up with their processor. Again, none of these things change dramatically, the amounts, but it's never just one flat amount industry standard. There's always variances there.

Brian Jewell (08:11.042)
Yeah. So if I'm a small tour operator and I'm, you know, swiping, I don't know, $50,000 a year worth of customer payments, getting an incremental, you know, reduction in fees is not going to be a whole lot more money in my pocket, right? I'd have to be doing a million dollars in payments to really see the difference.

Greg Bottenhorn (08:28.54)
So look, so first of all, probably, right? I mean, it's certainly you wanna have the more volume, the better the return's gonna be for you. I would also though say that a lot of times those smaller tour operators that may be only doing $50,000, a couple thousand dollars makes a big difference to them, right? Look, we all know the margins in this industry aren't fantastic. So anywhere where you can look to trim costs or to save money, I think is a good thing.

Brian Jewell (08:45.772)
Hmm. Yeah.

Greg Bottenhorn (08:57.566)
The hard part for those merchants is finding a different processor, right? So this is where Stripe kind of comes into the market and payment solutions like that, right? Processors. They really cater to that smaller audience. And the reason why it's harder for that smaller audience to find kind of a bigger player to process their payments is because of the risk involved, right? There's always risk involved when you bring on a new merchant.

Brian Jewell (09:21.24)
Mm.

Greg Bottenhorn (09:24.352)
because charge backs, things like that can really hurt your program. And for a lot of big programs, it's just not worth it for that $50,000 charge amount that they're gonna get from that vendor. And that's where the stripes come into the market. Now, with that, you pay a premium, right? It's like anything else. If I'm gonna serve your market and there's more risk to me and not many people serve your market, I'm gonna charge you more for it. The one thing that I would suggest to people in that boat is to make sure

that you're monitoring how your business grows because at some point you might either outgrow the solution that you're with or actually qualify for a different processor that you might be able to save some money on. So a couple of things to always consider. The other thing, Brian, I think this is important to point out because not many people realize this, especially as you get bigger. I'm a strong advocate of having multiple processors that you process with.

Brian Jewell (10:19.992)
Hmm.

Greg Bottenhorn (10:20.064)
You might send 90 % to one and 10 % to another or some different mix there. The real problem is sometimes processors get into a situation and sometimes it's their own doing and sometimes it's not, where they're getting more heavily audited or focused on or things like that. And they need to really look at the programs that they have and determine if the risk is worth it. The last thing you want to be if you're a merchant,

is your processor calls you up one day and says, hey, sorry, we're terminating your program. And now you're stuck and you're scrambling and you have to tell all your customers you can't take their payments. It's never a bad thing to have a couple of processors and some of your transactions one way, some transactions another. It's like anything else, just create some redundancy in the process is always good.

Brian Jewell (11:07.148)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Now I remember there being a time and I may be tipping my hand to how old I am for those who can't see me. I remember a time when I heard people say that merchants were not allowed to charge extra for using a credit card. Has that changed or are people just kind of doing it even though it's probably against the rules of their agreements?

Greg Bottenhorn (11:29.79)
No, it's a good question. Honestly, I don't know the factual answer to that question. have as far as I know, you're allowed to pass on that fee like you're allowed to pass on any other fee. I'm certain if it was a law or a rule at one point, it's not anymore. I'd be shocked to hear that it was. I'll tell you where the one of the bigger issues comes in. So New York City, I think it was either during COVID or just after COVID.

that the city really tried to go cashless and they faced tremendous pushback on that in terms of the need to actually accept US currency as a form of payment. So I think we more see it the other way now. And again, look, the industry has changed. It's using cards for payments is normal, right? It's every day, I would say it's probably far more normal than using cash in most parts of the country and the world today.

So I think our rules and regulations are more kind of going towards car payments and the benefits of them rather than against.

Brian Jewell (12:33.218)
Yeah. Would your gut tell you that most American consumers, you know, let's say they're buying a $5,000 tour package, that most of them would be okay with having a little, you know, convenience fee tacked on to that if they're paying with card, or is that going to be a hard situation for a tour operator?

Greg Bottenhorn (12:50.6)
Look, I think it's a hard situation for tour operators unless all the tour operators did it, right? Because as again, as we know, there's a lot of competition in this space as well. And so everybody's always hyper aware of what they're charging versus what another tour operator charges, right? So I actually think there'd be some pushback there. I will tell you, I know that there's tour operators that do it today that do charge convenience fees if you're gonna pay on a correct card. Look, the other, this is just the nature of...

people today, most people can't afford to pay $1,500 for their kid to go to Washington DC for five days. So oftentimes that purchase is going to be a credit purchase anyway, because we love debt, right? So I would say that I would guess, and I don't have this data in front of me, but I would guess that the vast majority of these trips are paid for on credit. And so I think you might be putting yourself at a disadvantage if you're one of a handful that charges convenient fees.

Brian Jewell (13:31.434)
Mm.

Greg Bottenhorn (13:48.436)
when the others don't, unless maybe you're less expensive in some other areas and it all kind of comes out in the wash.

Brian Jewell (13:54.7)
Yeah. So let's talk about that trip abroad. When I go abroad, I hope to be able to pay for anything I need with my US based card. What is involved in that? Are there additional expenses in that transaction that are not there, you know, when I'm just buying in US dollars here in the US?

Greg Bottenhorn (14:17.15)
Yes, so look, a few things on this. One, there's always risk involved there, right? When you're traveling, tourists are always targeted and you're always at risk of having information stolen, right? Thieves and hackers and all of these bad actors, right? They've learned to spot the people that are gonna have money and cards and things to pay for an experience, right?

Brian Jewell (14:46.094)
Hmm.

Greg Bottenhorn (14:46.472)
So I would say that there's some risk there. I would also tell you that a few things. One, if you are gonna travel abroad with a card, you always wanna let your bank know that you're traveling abroad with that card. There's all, because of what I just said, there's all sorts of security features now in place so that they can spot and really detect and terminate fraud. So you always wanna let that bank know that you're traveling. Two, there's often convenience charges.

that are charged. So if you ever take a trip and you get your bill the next month, look at it. Oftentimes there's a charge and then below it, it'll say convenience fee, 4.95. And it's every time you swipe your card, you're gonna get with a convenience fee, right? Cause there are some costs to that bank. There's currency conversions and things like that that happen. So there are some costs there. Most banks pass that cost on. There are a lot of programs now that if you have a certain level of service on that program, you can get foreign transaction fees waived.

There's also normal currency conversions, right? So if you're traveling in Europe and you're buying something, obviously there's a currency conversion between USD, which is the funds that you use on your existing card and the funds that you're paying for being the Euro, right? One little kind of tip of the trade here, when you're asked, so for anybody that's traveled internationally, you know what this looks like, you swipe your US card and a thing pops up that it says, do you want to pay?

this in euros or do you want to pay it in USD, always choose the local currency. It's a little bit better in terms of conversion and how that all works. So always choose that as the option there. think most people just naturally in their minds think, I want to choose the USD because that's what I normally deal in, but always choose the local currency if you're asked.

Brian Jewell (16:32.622)
That is a great tip. I'm blanking. We'll cut this out. Oh, okay. So yeah, that is a great tip. I think a lot of people aren't aware that they may be paying up to $4 to $5 per swipe on those foreign transactions. Does that make a case for people who are frequent travelers to maybe get one of those cards that are marketed?

towards frequent travelers, know, an airline branded card or something else that really puts an emphasis on that. Are those more likely to waive that kind of fee?

Greg Bottenhorn (17:03.552)
Yeah, so I would say yes, absolutely. Look, credit cards are a weird, it's kind of a weird industry, right? Because people see the value that they get from points and point programs and other benefits as worth that fee in a lot of times, right? There's nothing wrong with feeling that way. My feeling is I'd always rather not.

I buy things that I can afford because one, it's how you save on things like fees and interest, and I believe in earning interest and not paying interest. But also I think you gotta be extremely organized to use specific point programs to make sure you're maximizing it. But yeah, look, for me, because I do travel a lot, I always look for programs that are going to be the best fee schedule for me in my lifestyle. And so for me, it's absolutely not having foreign transaction fees.

Brian Jewell (17:34.83)
Right.

Greg Bottenhorn (18:02.236)
I also though, be honest with you, generally don't bring my U.S. credit cards on trips when I'm traveling internationally. I might bring my debit card where I can protect generally the money that I have, move things around to different accounts and things along those lines, but I generally don't travel with a credit card internationally at all.

Brian Jewell (18:20.224)
Okay. I want to hear more about that because in my mind, my instinct would be almost opposite of that. My instinct is, well, the debit card is tied to my bank account. And if somebody, you know, got this card, they could clean out my bank account versus, you know, the credit is not my money yet. So walk me through the reasoning there.

Greg Bottenhorn (18:36.766)
Yeah, so look, you're correct. A debit card links directly to your bank account or your funds. But what that means is that you can control how much funds are available and accessible via that card, right? So you can keep that amount lower. You can move money every day to that card if you want to do it that way. Look, for me, I've always found that challenging purchases with my bank, who I have a relationship with,

Has been far easier than when I try to challenge a credit card transaction now This depends on the credit card and the bank that issues it and all of us But yeah, I would always much rather have that conversation with my local bank than I would with with a credit card 1-800 number, right? The other part I would say to this though is that So look, I'm always on financial risk and risk while traveling. That's just my natural

kind of instinct, right? I would tell you that a lot of banks these days, because they have to be competitive, are very good at fraud prevention, and at returning funds when they're used. Mostly when I have had these experiences come up, it's been a pretty easy process, but it's always easier with my bank. And I have had some horror stories with credit card companies who...

And again, I think we've all probably had it when we challenge credit card charges. Like sometimes they treat you like you're lying to them. And I get it. Probably a lot of times people do lie to them. But for the honest people, it really feels like you're being interrogated and then you got to fill out this affidavit and you need to have it notarized. And it's just a lot of work and it just makes, it takes a frustrating situation and makes it even more frustrating. And usually it's the last thing I need when one of those things happens.

Brian Jewell (20:10.477)
Yeah.

Brian Jewell (20:24.674)
Yeah.

Greg Bottenhorn (20:29.61)
where I call the credit card company and I'm told, are you sure you didn't use it there? And maybe you were there and you don't remember being there. now you gotta fill out this form and have it stamped three times. And for me, it's the last thing I need when I'm that frustrated already.

Brian Jewell (20:46.53)
Yeah, that makes total sense. Now, I want to talk more about the security features in cards. I think a lot of us have been conditioned to believe that credit cards especially offer a lot of security, but we've also all heard the horror stories of the devices that skim people's card information. What is the status on that today? Has the chip card changed that? Are chip cards more secure? Are they less secure somehow? And do we need to be taking extra precautions to keep people from

somehow getting our card information when we travel.

Greg Bottenhorn (21:17.322)
Sure, so I'd say chip cards are actually less secure. They're more convenient for sure. But chip cards open you up to, now it's storing data and transacting data and things like that, right? The chip. So this is where RFID comes in and RFID is radio frequency identification. It's basically how contactless works, right? It's essentially a technology that

users' radio waves to track information and to accept information and things along those lines. With that, there's something called an RFID blocker, right? I am not an expert in RFID blockers and I've always kind of questioned how well they work, but they do exist. You know, and you can put, you can have a wallet that's an RFID blocker, you can have actual sleeves that your cards go into that supposedly block RFID. But yeah, if you have a chip that you're storing and transmitting data,

electronically, then logic tells us that that can be taken by a bad actor, right, who has either a reader where they can take the information right off the card that you're holding or even in your wallet. And I mean, this industry is crazy with that these days because I can, again, I say I, I should be careful of that, but somebody could have a reader.

that takes all the information out of you Brian's wallet on your cards. And then I can have cards printed with your name and credit card information on them and just start using them, right? Look, a lot of us don't monitor that stuff closely enough to catch it early. know, let me tell you one telltale sign, right? Oftentimes these people will start with a small purchase, right? Maybe it's a dollar 99.

Brian Jewell (22:51.532)
Wow.

Greg Bottenhorn (23:09.938)
something along those lines. They wanna see if you catch that. And if you don't, and the longer that goes on, you can get higher and higher charges from there. And by the time you might notice, you're six months down the line, right? This story makes me sound stupid, but I found ones where I was getting a monthly charge out of my bank account every month for, it went on like over a year, right? By the time that I caught it,

Brian Jewell (23:35.265)
Wow.

Greg Bottenhorn (23:37.266)
and called the bank about it. They're like, look, we can go back a year, but this goes back further than that. And the problem is, that oftentimes the description that's being used, can we all see these on our statements, right? You look at it and it's not super logical what that charge is. And in a day and age where we all have a lot of monthly charges for streaming services and gym memberships and all of this other stuff, it can get lost in the shuffle, right?

And when a year, 18 months goes by, that money really adds up, but it was at an amount every month that just kind of blended in. these are the things that need to be careful of. There's lots of financial fraud that goes on these days, specifically with our older people who don't understand technology maybe quite as well. Or this is probably the wrong word to use, but sometimes they're a little bit more naive about how

many bad people there are in the world, right? But there is, financial fraud is a gigantic industry, right? There's just lots of money being stolen and lost and we do have ways to protect ourselves.

Brian Jewell (24:46.092)
Yeah, that's great perspective. So talk to me about the use case for tour companies. You know, my first instinct again, if I'm running a tour company is to tell everybody, hey, bring your own payment method, you know, make your own decisions. Why are tour companies saying, no, we want to provide you a payment method. And what are the benefits to the tour company and to the travel?

Greg Bottenhorn (25:08.362)
Sure. Let me break this out into two buckets, right? Because we have youth and then we have adults, right? So I'll touch on youth first because I think it's easier, right? Mom and dad don't want to send their card with, you know, little Bobby on a trip because little Bobby has a way of not necessarily being super smart with money and I don't want to have my card, right? So I think that's the biggest reason. When it comes to youth travel again, I think it's pretty clear and obvious. Either your choices are cash

Brian Jewell (25:21.688)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Jewell (25:25.666)
Right.

Greg Bottenhorn (25:36.992)
or provide some sort of card option for them. One of the things we didn't talk about earlier, but really comes into play here as we live in a world today where a lot of stadiums and facilities that have concerts and venues and things like this are cashless these days. You can only use cards there. These are places that tour operators frequent with youth travelers. So the need for a card really comes into play. And again, mom and dad aren't super psyched about setting theirs along.

Adult travel is a little bit different. So we do have a lot of partners that use our program for adult travel. I'll tell you a lot of it is international and again, specifically with the senior market as a means to protect against international fraud on cards. So they'll use our card again, it's a debit card, it's not a credit card, as a means of protecting funds that might otherwise be vulnerable.

Right? So that aligned with the fact that we don't charge international fees. So we talked about transaction fees earlier on our travel program. We don't charge any international swipe fees or really fees of any kind like that. So it's a good tool for international travel. I do have and I'm actually kind of surprised by this in the adult market. And again, I think it's it's a lot of seniors, but even I see it now.

on when moms all get together and do a girls trip, right, that a tour operator is involved in that and using our card for that, just as a way to offer an all-inclusive option, right, so that the adult traveler isn't, again, getting back after the trip, looking at their statement without even realizing, wow, I actually spent a lot more money than I realized. Adults want all-inclusive options, and this is a way for the tour operator to do an all-inclusive option.

but not require that adult to have pre-planned, pre-paid for meals with the entire group. They wanna go off and do their own thing, but how am gonna do that in an all-inclusive option if I'm not providing a means of payment for that? So we've been getting much more involved in those type of trips as well.

Brian Jewell (27:51.766)
Yeah, that all-inclusive option, man, that deeply resonates with me. Maybe it has to do with getting older and you're already paying for so many things so many times a day anyway. So to not have to do that would be pretty magical.

Greg Bottenhorn (27:55.392)
Thank you.

Greg Bottenhorn (28:02.144)
Yeah, you know what it is too, Brian? It's that, you know, a lot of people have budgets for trips and for travel. Like you put aside, you say, I'm going to spend $5,000 on that trip. Right. And again, I know I've done it. You get back from that trip and you start looking, you don't even realize because you know how it is. You're you're you're on a trip and you're having fun and you see a price for something. You're like, yeah, we're having fun. I don't want you know, you swipe your card, but you get back and you find out that that $5,000 trip cost you $7,500 because you used your card a lot more than you thought.

and this is where all inclusive comes in, is you can say, listen, your budget's $5,000, this trip's gonna cost you $5,000 all in, right? Outside of taxes and gratuities, you know? And it just makes it lot easier. But if you're gonna do that, you have to provide for things like meals. So.

Brian Jewell (28:49.122)
Yeah, brilliant. What do you see in the future with all the technology coming out regarding mobile payments, biometric security? How do you how do you see those sorts of things impacting, you know, this area of financial technology?

Greg Bottenhorn (29:03.594)
Sure. I think dramatically, right? So oftentimes in the US, we can look to Europe who generally, again, in my viewpoint, have always kind of led the way with some of this stuff. And so if you've traveled in Europe recently, you'll see that the vast majority of people in line at stores are using their mobile devices to pay for purchases. I think that we're getting there in the US.

Brian Jewell (29:07.031)
Yeah.

Greg Bottenhorn (29:33.6)
I would say it's still minimal compared to what they're doing over in Europe here. I think that's just going to continue, especially as this next generation comes up. They're used to doing everything on their phones and that already includes the ability to pay for things just straight from the phone. And this is the only thing I carry. I don't carry a wallet anymore because I don't even know what cash is and all my cards I can store here in my digital wallet. So the only thing I carry with me all the time is my phone because my whole life is on.

So I think that will continue to evolve. Look, where I really find it fascinating is what happens now in the emergence of AI and what that does to payments in the payment industry. I think we'll look at this in even 10 years from now, right? And even having a conversation about mobile payments and digital payments will almost be archaic because at this point everything's just done, right?

I say, hey, I want to go on that trip. And I tell my AI personal assistant that I want to go on that trip. it's the money just comes from my account and it's paid for. And I never have to take a card out of my wallet or my phone out of my pocket. So for me, I think that's where it's going. You know, in, and again, 10 years from now, I think we'll look back at this recorded conversation and say, man, we were talking about a time when we still had to take our phones out and pay for it again. So now I'm going to age myself.

But man, it doesn't seem like that long ago when I was watching mom or dad hands their credit card over, it would get put in this for all of our younger viewers. There was this big heavy machine that merchants had behind the desk and they would take your physical card and they'd put it on this machine with like this piece of paper that had three layers to it. And they'd take this big arm and swipe it over it twice. And it would basically take an imprint of that card.

and they'd give you a copy and they'd keep a copy and that's how there was a transaction of the record. This wasn't all that long ago, Brian. You and I aren't that old, right? And it's just crazy to think of even where we are today and then to think, the same amount of time, just how different it'll be. So we'll see. It's exciting though.

Brian Jewell (31:36.258)
Yeah. No.

Brian Jewell (31:48.652)
Yeah, yeah, who knows? It is exciting. So for people that want to learn more about Jasby and see if those solutions could be really helpful for their tour companies, what is the best way for them to either find you or find the company, follow you guys online, give us some directions.

Greg Bottenhorn (32:03.858)
Absolutely, jazby.com, www.jazby.com. It's right here, but it's J-A-S-S-B-Y. There's all sorts of things on there where you can see different programs that we offer. When you go to the travel and tour tab, you'll fill out a form if you wanna have a conversation. Those actually go directly to me. I always reach out, usually right away. I can take up to a couple days if I'm really busy or if I'm away or something along those lines.

but you will always hear back from me. It's never anything that's gonna go into a black hole. And I'd love to talk with anybody about our programs. It's a really exciting time for us. We are growing like crazy. I am blessed with a phenomenal development team that quite honestly, a company of our size has no business having, because they're just super good. We build really amazing things. We come up with really crazy ideas and make them work.

It's probably the highlight of my day every day is having someone that calls me and says, you know, hear something that I want to do and I've talked to the bunch of places and nobody can seem to do it. And, you know, I just hear it and say, Hey, there's absolutely there's a way to make that happen. Right. And then we build it for them and it's, it's pretty awesome. It's rewarding for everybody. Honestly, very similar to how we stumbled into educational travel. Usually there's someone that calls me up and says, I'm interested in using it this way. We build something out and it works for a lot of other partners. So.

absolutely please reach out to us. Again, it's jazby.com. I'd love to have a conversation with anybody about any ideas they have for how to move money and what might help their business out.

Brian Jewell (33:43.48)
Yeah, excellent. We will link to that in the show notes for sure. Before I let you go, we have some questions we ask everybody and these are just for fun. So no pressure. can answer off the top of your head. When you book travel, do you choose a window seat or an aisle seat? Yeah. You got a thought process there?

Greg Bottenhorn (33:51.808)
Good luck.

Greg Bottenhorn (33:57.244)
Isle, always. So I drink a lot of coffee and a lot of water. I need to get up several times throughout a flight. What's funny is that I am strictly isle and my wife is strictly window. So usually that's good. And oftentimes we'll have somebody that ends up sitting between us, but she likes to sleep and I like to get up a lot, so.

Brian Jewell (34:17.964)
Yeah. Yeah, makes sense. What's one thing in your carry-on that you wouldn't travel without?

Greg Bottenhorn (34:26.004)
Chargers. I always have chargers. I have, it's funny, my carry-on bag has like four or five, because if case one doesn't work or Woodle's different, I always have lots of chargers and I bring my own water. It's the first thing I buy whenever I get through security. I buy two big bottles of water and put them on each side of my backpack.

Brian Jewell (34:34.04)
Right.

Brian Jewell (34:44.076)
Yeah. And I feel that I think I have chargers in my bag that I no longer own the devices that belong to them. Yeah. If you had a free airline pass in a week with nothing else to do, where would you be headed next?

Greg Bottenhorn (34:49.236)
Me too. Me too. Absolutely.

Greg Bottenhorn (34:57.922)
God, that's almost an impossible question to answer. I love to travel. So look, one of my dream destinations that I've never been is Fiji. It's probably a little longer than a week. Maybe it's 10 days, maybe it's two weeks. But that's one place that I've never been and I've been to a lot, but that's an absolute dream. have to do that.

Brian Jewell (35:01.294)
Ha

Brian Jewell (35:06.158)
Hmm.

Brian Jewell (35:17.356)
Yeah, that does sound amazing. The last question is what is one thing you have seen or done on the road that you wish you could go back and experience again with somebody you love?

Greg Bottenhorn (35:26.642)
gosh. Wow, that's a great question. So I had, this is actually, little story to this, it's probably a longer answer than what most people give here. So a few years ago, actually probably seven or eight years ago now, I had the opportunity to do a domestic road trip with my kids. So I've got four kids, they were still young enough at the time where they were interested in doing this.

Brian Jewell (35:50.414)
Hmm.

Greg Bottenhorn (35:56.448)
But we did a six week, 10,000 mile road trip around the US over a summer. It was amazing. We didn't get a Winnebago or anything. My oldest son stayed home, so was five of us. But we did it in a minivan. We never spent more than four hours in any given day in the car. And we experienced everything that this country has to offer. And it was...

Brian Jewell (36:02.4)
Wow. Wow.

Greg Bottenhorn (36:26.504)
an amazing experience, an eye-opening experience, a great family experience. So I would choose that. Just to follow up on that though, we enjoyed it so much. The next year we did something similar in Europe, not for six weeks, we did three and a half weeks, and where we did a lot of travel around Europe as well. Also awesome, like being at the Colosseum in Rome with my kids and seeing them experience

things that they had learned about in school is truly something I hope everybody with kids has an opportunity to do at some point. It doesn't have to be that specific destination, but anywhere where you can see the gears turning in their head because they learned about this and now they're standing there looking at it is really amazing. So kind of a combination there. I know it's a long answer, but both of those experiences were truly amazing.

Brian Jewell (37:19.702)
That is amazing. I'm so glad you got to share that with your kids and hey, that is the beauty of student travel. yeah, I couldn't say it any better. Greg, thanks so much for joining us. It's been a blast.

Greg Bottenhorn (37:25.585)
Absolutely. Amen.

Greg Bottenhorn (37:30.481)
Absolutely, thanks so much for having me. Really appreciated it, so thanks.