Guest Session with Brian Kelly

While the BoardingArea bloggers go through a program designed specifically for them, our guest bloggers will enjoy hearing from one of the leading bloggers in the frequent flyer space. Brian Kelly will take our guests through his start, his stops, his high and his lows as he wrestled with getting started as a blogger. Learn how he took this blog startup from an idea to a reason to quite a corporate job and devote his time to full-time blogging. First time his complete story is being told an there will be many lessons to be learned from his own success. Also, several BoardingArea bloggers will be on hand to answer interest and questions about what it is like to be on the BoardingArea host. Helped them grow as bloggers or could have done it alone? Only they know for themselves and will translate their own success and some not so much success on the path toward bloghood.

Brian Kelly is The Points Guy. Passionate about travel and addicted to adventure since a youth, Brian’s worldwide jetsetting earned him elite status with US Airways by his sophomore year in college. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, Brian became a recruiter for a major investment bank and became a road warrior for a living, traveling over 125,000 miles annually and spending over 50 nights a year in hotels while on the job. His extensive travel schedule allowed him to gain an insider’s knowledge of frequent flyer miles and points systems, as well as master the ins and outs of credit card offers across the spectrum. In 2010, Brian brought his insights and passion to the masses and became “The Points Guy,” sharing his travel points knowledge with eager consumers across the globe via his website, ThePointsGuy.com. Due to the amount of interest in his tips and advice, Brian left his job on Wall Street in June 2011 to work full-time as a travel blogger and consultant. He has since been featured in The New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, The Los Angeles Times, The Independent, and on CNN, The Today Show, among others, and presents at various travel conferences including the New York Times Travel Show and the annual Chicago Frequent Flyer Seminars.