Had dinner in New York with a guy who spent 4 years on the Amex Centurion Black Card team
Asked him what his richest clients actually put on a card that costs $5,000 a year
He laughed and said "Steak dinners and their wife's Chanel bags. Literally nothing else"
I thought he was exaggerating
"Wait, don't you have to spend $500,000 a year just to get invited?"
"Yeah, and the second they get the titanium card in the mail, they only pull it out when a waiter or a client is watching"
"Why? It has no preset spending limit"
"Because it is a charge card. You have to pay the entire balance in full every 30 days, it charges a $10,000 initiation fee plus $5,000 every year, and it only pays 1 point per dollar on almost everything"
"So what do they put their actual business expenses on?"
"A free blue plastic Amex that costs $0 a year"
He broke down the exact wallet of a client who owns 9 commercial plumbing and mechanical companies in Queens:
In the front slot sits the titanium Amex Black Card. That card sees $4,000 a month at Cipriani and Carbone so the host gives him a corner booth
In the back of his wallet sit five $0-annual-fee business cards held under his LLC's federal tax ID:
- Amex Blue Business Plus ($50,000 limit, 0% APR for 12 months, 2x points on every swipe)
- Chase Ink Business Unlimited ($60,000 limit, 0% APR for 12 months, 1.5x points)
- US Bank Triple Cash ($50,000 limit, 0% APR for 18 months)
- Wells Fargo Signify ($45,000 limit, 0% APR for 12 months)
- Capital One Spark Cash ($45,000 limit)
Every month he runs $250,000 of copper pipe, boilers, commercial water heaters, fuel, and Google Ads across those zero-fee plastic cards
Because the cards sit at 0% interest for 12 to 18 months, he holds onto $250,000 of his own cash for a full year and uses it to buy out smaller plumbing vans around the city for cash discounts
Plus that $0 Amex Blue card pays double the points of the $5,000 Black Card on his first $50,000 of spend, and zero dollars of the $250,000 balance ever report to his personal credit file
Guys making $150,000 a year pay Amex $695 for a shiny Platinum card to look rich in an airport lounge. Guys making $4 million a year use free plastic cards and make the bank float their inventory for 18 months
If you go online tonight and apply for those five business cards one by one, your personal credit report takes five scattered hard pulls and the banks cut your limits down to $10,000 each. You have to trigger Amex's soft-pull rules first and split the other four applications across Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion in the right order
(If you have a 700+ credit score and want my team to build your 150K-250K 0% funding stack, book a call using the link in my bio)