Gary Wade
Founder, Soar Status
Background
I spent close to twenty years in digital marketing and SEO, most of it inside agencies. One thing I kept noticing: the paid media team would run thirty, forty, fifty thousand dollars a month through a stack of business cards, and the person handling travel booked everything on another set of cards entirely. I always wondered the same thing. Where was all that cash back going? Was someone taking first-class vacations on the points nobody was tracking?
That question stuck with me.
The moment it clicked
A few years later I was standing at the Pro desk at Home Depot. The contractor in front of me rang up a twenty-two thousand dollar purchase and tossed his card down like it was nothing. I caught him in the parking lot and asked about it. Turns out he made purchases that size multiple times a week. Same question hit me again: how much is this guy earning back every month, and does he even know?
Then it got concrete. I had a client named Ray who builds high-end custom cabinets. He mentioned offhand that he runs about fifty thousand dollars a month across two cards and another thirty-five thousand on a third. I asked him how much cash back or points he was pulling in. He had no idea. None. He was moving eighty-five thousand dollars a month through plastic and the answer to that question was a blank stare.
That was the moment. There had to be a better way for business owners to get more out of money they were already spending, just by using the right cards for the right purchases. That is why Soar Status exists.
How I approach rewards strategy
I am not here to sell anyone a card or push a points hobby. The work is simple and practical: look at how a business actually spends, find where money is leaking, and match the spending to cards that pay the most for it. No spending changes, no gimmicks. Just earning more from purchases that are already happening.