EXACT steps to be a financial coach — with Dan B.

Daniel Rosen  00:00

Hey credit heroes. Today we are talking with finance expert Dan B. And today he's going to tell us how to solve the biggest underlying issue that causes bad credit and how you can use that knowledge to double your credit, repair income, and change more lives. So you're better stick around. So the big question is this, how can we take our passion for helping people with their credit and turn it into a successful business without taking loans without spending a fortune by bootstrapping it from nothing? So we can help the most people and still become highly profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Daniel Rosen, and welcome to Credit Repair Business Secrets. Okay, before I dive in if you are new to my podcast, be sure to click to subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss any of the secrets that I share each week on the credit repair business secrets podcast. And if you want me to hold you by the hand, as you launch your very own profitable credit repair business, go to creditherochallenge.com. Okay, let's get into this. Dan B. is my very good friend of 25 years. He is the smartest guy I know when it comes to personal finances. He created our very popular course on how to become a personal finance coach. And he's got a new course called Credit Card Secrets. And he's here today to talk about how to solve the biggest underlying issue that causes bad credit, and how you can use that knowledge to double your credit repair income and change more lives. So please welcome to the podcast, Dan B. Hey, Dan, welcome. 

Dan B. 01:55

Great to be here, Dan. Thanks for having me.

Daniel Rosen  01:57

I'm really happy you're here. It's always amazing when you're here. So please tell us where you're from. And what led you to this interest in personal finances?

Dan B. 02:07

Well, I actually grew up in Venice Beach way back in the 70s, and 80s. And back then Venice Beach was actually not the most affluent place it is today. It was essentially the ghetto by the beach. And we I grew up in a single family household, there was a lot of, you know, barely scraping by a lot of poverty, a lot of issues like that. I was essentially surrounded by people and family members that struggled with money and had a challenge of the finance that helped shape who I am kind of today. It kind of made me think and kind of focus on how to avoid those things. And also what that did is it because I had to kind of like take care of my mother throughout my life who had struggled with personal finances, it kind of allowed me to, you know, become kind of a natural coach in that way. And that kind of led to where I am today.

Daniel Rosen  02:58

Awesome. And from being around me and all of our credit heroes in our credit repair world. What are some of the challenges that you see in credit repair clients?

Dan B.  03:09

Well, that's a great question. The main challenge I see with quarter repair clients is they often need to be more financially savvy, most credit repair clients have quite a bit of debt. And they don't have a plan for savings. They're often living week to week or month to month. And they're essentially finding themselves in a common problem that many Americans find themselves in. And that is burdened with high interest rates, highest rate credit cards, not having a financial plan for the future, not having a retirement plan. Not having a savings to address, you know, a rainy day concerns. These are very common problems throughout our society throughout America. It doesn't matter, you know, what state you're in. These issues are prolific throughout our society. Yeah, but okay. You know, I was in show business, which meant I was going gig to gig to gig and there were long gaps between gigs. So I had to live on my credit cards, and they were maxed out all the time. And when someone is living on credit cards that way, how do you even start to save money? It all starts with two things, one, have a budget, have a plan, and to have visibility, those two things are so important, because that's the problem that people have one people don't have visibility, so they don't know how much they're spending. They don't know, you know how they're doing at this point in the month compared to last month compared to than, you know, the next month, and they don't have a budget, so they don't know how much they should be spending. And the one thing that I always emphasise is you can't fix a problem unless you could see the problem. So when you give people the tools, they have visibility, such as I described in my course, then they could actually address the problem. What tools do you use?

05:00

And are they expensive? No, actually, they're free. They're free. So free, they are free. The way how I wrote the course, is we one wanted people with credit repair companies to use free tools to help manage their clients. And the tool that I chose was mint.com. Mint.com allows you to aggregate all of your accounts into one screen. So if you have, let's say, six credit cards, a savings account, an investment account, retirement account, maybe a home loan, all that gets aggregated up into one screen, and it automatically budgets it for you. So what that does is you could you could create a budget. And day by day, week by week, you could see how you're doing in comparison to that budget. And when you see how you're doing you know how you're doing to your plants, you could adjust your actions to make that plan. In many ways. This allows the clients to have better discipline, you no one's gonna have discipline, if they if they don't know what they're doing. They can't see what they're at. There's no plan, then they then they just react into day by day. Okay, but if I'm living on credit cards, and I'm maxed out on everything, how do I know what to tackle first? Can mint.com help him with that? Absolutely. Because what mint.com does is it shows you all of the interest rates of each of your credit cards. And as many of us know, in the credit repair business, we should pay down the highest credit card first. Interest is of course, a fee. And the highest interest rate is the highest fee. So we want to reduce the one that has the highest the first. So that targets right away which credit cards you should pay down first.

Daniel Rosen  06:34

Gotcha. And again, if you're living paycheck to paycheck, how do you even start to save money? What's the secret there?

Dan B.  06:43

That's a great question. And it kind of starts off with discipline. Once again, you have to have a budget, and everyone should have a budget that includes savings. And that savings should be short term savings and long term savings. Long term savings means retirement plan. If you work for a company that offers a 401k, you should sign up for that. It's free money, it allows you to build up money over time, you don't see it removed from your paycheck. The advantage of that is it defers your tax responsibility. And it allows you to what's called take advantage of compound interest. In other words, the the income that you make from that investment gets reinvested, and that makes more income. So if you do have the opportunity to get 401k, you should take advantage of that if you don't, just start an IRA, an IRA is another way to have a retirement plan. These are savings plans that everyone should have. Well, what if you work for yourself? What if you have a credit repair business? You don't have an employer? How do you do this? Yeah, that's where an IRA comes in. Anyone could sign up for an IRA, an IRA is essentially a savings plan intended for your retirement. Now we're all going to get older, we're all going to retire we need to save for that.

07:51

So the advantage of an IRA is that you the money that you put in there is not taxed, so that that reduces your tax burden. And it allows you to to essentially use that money that would have been taxed as part of your investment and means you get higher returns. So over the course of your working career, that type of savings plan will save enough for you to retire. It is essential for everyone to have a some form of retirement plan, either an IRA or 401k.

Daniel Rosen  08:21

 I see. And if you're just getting your business going, Are you how do you? How do you know how much to put away? If you're really on a tight budget?

Dan B.  08:31

Yeah, well, obviously you have to meet your essentials, right, you have to you have to eat, eat, you have to pay your rent, you have to pay your car payments, those are all your essentials, and you put that into your budget, you you then look at how much you're making every week, and you see how much you can save. Right? So this goes back to visibility, when you look at how much you make versus how much you have to spend your essentials, that will tell you how much you could save. And ideally, you should try to save as much as possible, somewhere anywhere between two and 10%.

Daniel Rosen  09:02

Okay. So if if you can even just put as little as two to 5%. That's going to make a difference if you're consistent, right?

Dan B.  09:13

That can make all the difference in the world over the course of your working career that could turn into a you know, a small fortune. And that money. If you spend in the course you know throughout your life, you wouldn't even notice it. But if you use that money instead of spending it on, you know, things that you consume, and put it into savings, when you retire that money can be quite large, it could be a small fortune.

Daniel Rosen  09:35

So I guess the trick is, you've got to learn how to be thrifty. What are some ways to be thrifty?

Dan B.  09:40

Well, there are many ways one of the largest things we buy is our cars. And cars are as many of us know horrible investments. When you as soon as you take a car off the lot, you immediately lose 20% For those who want to buy a car of new car that's let's say our newest car that's two years old. It's usually about half the cost or about 60% of the cost. And right there, there's a massive savings. So by making that decision, you could save 40% off your car.

Daniel Rosen  10:08

Wow. And a two year old car is gonna feel the same as a new car, basically,

Dan B.  10:13

It will and that amount of money you save can be put back into savings, and then can generate more wealth.

Daniel Rosen  10:19

Okay, now here's the question, what's better for buying a car a lease, or a loan?

Dan B.  10:25

Ah, that all depends. So there are a wide range of leases. And there's a wide range of loans. So what you have to do in each situation is do the math, you have to calculate how much a lease will cost over the course of your car over the course of owning that car or occupant using that car and calculate how much the loan will be. Normally speaking, when you get a loan for a car, you don't account for depreciation, and that's what Elise addresses. So all that has to be calculated side by side. And these deals vary by by dealership, and by you know how it's done. And when you calculate that out, you will determine which one is better for you.

Daniel Rosen  11:09

Which one do you do?

Dan B.  11:11

I've done both. That's a that's an interesting thing. There are times when there are amazing deals where leases is cheaper than a loan. And there are times when when a loan is cheaper than a lease. And of course, if you have the opportunity to buy it in cash, that's often the best decision.

Daniel Rosen  11:25

Fascinating. I'm afraid of car dealerships, I'm afraid to buy a car because I don't understand any of that stuff. How do you even get over that fear?

Dan B.  11:35

The reason why you're afraid of car dealerships is because you're relying on them to do the math, and you're relying on them to tell you, you know, the best deal, and that's very problematic. To avoid that you should do your own math, as we said, if you if you're comparing between the lease and alone, do your own math, and I could teach you how to do those techniques and compare one option versus another option. And then through that technique, will you know that the best decision?

Daniel Rosen  12:01

You know, that's interesting that you say that? Because the last time I went and look into a car dealership? Can I picked out the car I wanted? The first question was, how much can you afford to pay every month? It wasn't, he wasn't telling me how much the car was or how long the loan was. He just wanted to know what I could afford every month, and that seemed a little shifty, is it

Dan B.  12:24

What they're doing in that situation is they can lower the payment, the monthly payment, but that means they're extending it. So that's, that's a trick that people do where people think they're paying less because their monthly payment is lower. But actually the the amount of time that they're borrowing is longer, so they end up paying more. All of those are tricks that car dealerships do and many companies do to make people spend more money when they don't realise it?

Daniel Rosen  12:51

Wow, yeah, I got so upset I just left. How about houses, what's better to rent a house or to buy a house?

Dan B.  13:00

Generally speaking, it is much better to own a house than it is to rent. When you rent, you're exposing yourself to higher rent, every year 5% increase is not uncommon. And also you're not building assets, when you leave that apartment, you have nothing to show for it. When you buy a house, you're paying down your debt, you're taking advantage of the asset, the house increasing in value every year, and often you get a write off the interest of that house against your taxes. So generally speaking, it is much better to own a house. For most people, they should be preparing to be in a position where they can purchase a house, that does not happen overnight. That could take quite a few years to kind of build up the assets needed to purchase the house.

Daniel Rosen  13:46

Gotcha. When you spoke at the last credit repair Expo, you were awesome. By the way, you got a standing ovation, and then everyone wanted your course. How was that experience for you?

Dan B.  13:57

It was great. It really got me to understand the community to understand their needs to understand how credit repair kind of relates to personal finance, which is really important. And then I can kind of craft it to to kind of understand it, you know how best to kind of serve the community. So your course it's specifically designed for credit repair business owners on how to become a personal finance coach, right? Yeah, the message that I always try to give is, most of us could repair people's credit. That's somewhat you know, we know how to do it. There's a very system there's it's a systematic approach is bureaucratic we go through the steps and you can improve someone's credit, but that doesn't always address the underlying issues. So in many ways, fixing someone's credit is somewhat of a bandaid. So to address the underlying issues, you have to essentially provide financial literacy you know, train your clients to be financially literate and to make better financial decisions. And that's what personal finance coaching is essentially a line to two credit repair.

Daniel Rosen  14:56

Got it because it actually helps the source of the problem

Dan B.  15:00

Correct, the two are very closely aligned. If you truly want to kind of address the underlying problems, you have to address the personal finance. Otherwise, you know what could happen. And what often happen is someone gets their credit repaired. And then several years later, they're right back into the situation they found themselves in.

Daniel Rosen  15:17

So when someone takes your course, what can they learn from you that can improve their business?

Dan B.  15:24

Well, this is this course is specifically designed for people who already have a credit repair company service. And what this does is it provides another service you could provide to your clients. And that service is personal finance coaching. So this course, teaches them how to provide that service, how to do it in relatively short amount of time to automate the process and provide as much value to their clients.

Daniel Rosen  15:49

So if someone is doing credit repair, how much extra time does it take to offer personal finance coaching.

Dan B.  15:56

So that time is fairly minimal, I go into techniques to kind of automate the process using public software. And it could be no more than 5 minutes a day to kind of review all their financial transactions, and to see if they're following their plan to see if they're following their budget. And essentially, as the course describes coaching them, so it's not a lot of extra work, you're able to manage quite a few clients all at once. And I want to kind of emphasise this, it really does build, you know, a next level relationship with your clients so that you're you're supporting them, and you're getting them out of the hole that they're in and getting them into a much better place, building assets, reducing debts, and as you just said, stage for generational wealth.

Daniel Rosen  16:39

Yeah, as well as for the credit repair business owner, because it literally becomes a new stream of revenue as well, right?

Dan B.  16:47

It's more value. Absolutely. So anytime you add more value, you can provide another service. And that, of course, is growing your business and is a new stream of revenue. And it's it's more than that, though, I mean, what you're really doing is you're helping these these clients, you know, nothing happens overnight. This is not a get rich quick scheme. This this occurs over the course of years. But these skills take time to understand and they take time to learn. And over the over the long haul. You'll teach the your clients how to how to become more financially savvy, and that's a service they're gonna appreciate. That's a service they're going to value, you know that they're going to want that it has value, they're gonna pay for it.

Daniel Rosen  17:25

What's a common financial trap that really hurts people?

Dan B.  17:29

Credit cards, credit cards is a very common trap that hurts virtually everybody, or virtually everyone in this situation. A credit cards are very unique in that they market their their services to people that are financially challenged. And that, of course, is where the credit card companies make their income, literally, the credit card industry is subsidised by people with who are financially challenged. So for many of us, me included, who use credit cards quite often and get free miles and free dinners and all these extra perks that's coming from people who are financially challenged. And that is not really a moral system, right? So we want to do is teach people how to get out of credit card debt, how to pay off their credit cards and how to use their credit cards responsibly.

Daniel Rosen  18:13

And is it true that credit card companies intentionally target the people who are financially vulnerable,

Dan B. 18:20

it could not be more true. And everyone knows this? Well, whoever's gone through a period of financial challenges, or you know, someone who's gone through bankruptcy, you see all the credit card offers right away. And you know, they don't ever feel guilty for not paying your credit card bill all the way. That's what they want you to do. Because you're essentially paying 20% 25% interest rate, that there are very few loans that are that high rate. If you were to loan, if I were to borrow money against my house, it's at 4% 3% 2%. But if you borrow money against a credit card, which many people do, it's a 25%. So they are targeting people they're hoping will not be able to pay their credit cards off at the end of the month. If people did pay the credit cards off at the end the month, they don't make much money.

Daniel Rosen  19:07

Wow. Now, I don't use credit cards at all. But you've posted that you love yours using your credit cards because you get miles and all this stuff, right?

Dan B.  19:16

That's correct. For people like me, credit cards is a great free service. I don't pay anything for it, I get the insurance that everything I buy, I could you know, it's covered by insurance. And then I get free vacations every year. And all of that is coming from the profits from essential people that are financially challenged. So credit card cards can be very useful if you know how to use them. But for many people, they're a nightmare.

Daniel Rosen  19:43

So the people who are in the nightmare, the people who can't afford to pay their bills, they're essentially paying for your free flights?

Dan B. 19:50

That's correct. And I thank them for that. But I don't like that system. So I will teach them how to get out of that system.

Daniel Rosen  19:57

That is a really, really ugly system.

Dan B.  19:59

Yes, yes, it is. It's not a good system when essentially the poor are subsidising the rich. And that's how the credit card industry works.

Daniel Rosen  20:08

It's very ugly. It's very hurtful. I hate it. But it certainly is why we've all we all become credit heroes because of this, isn't it?

Dan B.  20:19

Yeah. And we could solve this problem through education. I mean, this is not this is not something that's, that's unavoidable. There are techniques and tricks and essentially knowledge that allows people to get out of these situations. And again, it does not happen overnight. It's a skill set that you build over time. And you have to have that that discipline that that goes along with it.

Daniel Rosen  20:41

Absolutely. Hmm. So let's talk for a moment about your two courses. So first, you've got become a personal finance coach, tell me about that course and what it's like.

Dan B.  20:52

So that course is written at a level where most people can understand if even if you don't have a financial background, it is not intended for people who have a strong financial background and are doing, you know, wealth assets or anything like that. It's intended for the average person. And it breaks down each subject in a relatively simple way. And the intent, like I said, is for people who already have a credit repair company, and it gives them the skill sets needed to provide another service. And that service is personal financial coaching. And it teaches them how to do that with a minimal amount of time, and incorporate that into their credit repair company.

Daniel Rosen  21:30

Awesome. And then there's your new credit card secrets course. Tell us about that one?

Dan B.  21:36

Well, most people's problems are credit cards. So this is a deep dive into the credit card industry and how to essentially manage credit cards better, you know, how to choose credit cards, how to pay off different credit cards, which credit cards are beneficial, you know, I don't necessarily favour not having any credit cards at all, because you essentially, you're not taking advantage of all the essentially rewards programmes that are associated with that. But they're complicated. So this course is specifically designed to make someone an expert on credit cards. And for most people who are personal financial coaches. That's the biggest challenge. Obviously, there's other challenges. There's education loans, car loans, and 10 other things, but most people have credit card debt is their biggest biggest challenge.

Daniel Rosen  22:20

Wow. And again, you created these courses just for Credit Repair Pros, right?

Dan B. 22:26

Correct. These courses are specifically designed for people who already have credit repair companies. And it allows them to have to provide another service and provide more value to their customers.

Daniel Rosen  22:37

And it's continuing education for your business. The solute Knowledge is power. Knowledge is power.

Dan B.  22:45

The solution is education. We want to educate people and bring the amping them up to a better place, building up assets, reducing debt, and the more value you can bring to your clients, the more word of mouth, and the bigger your business grows, and we change lives. We do.

Daniel Rosen  23:00

Hey, Dan, I want to thank you so much for being here with us. I really appreciate you This was awesome. You guys out there. I hope this inspired you. And if you want to learn more about Dan's courses on how to become a personal finance coach, or his new course, credit card secrets, just go to creditrepaircloud.com/training. And we're gonna put the link to the courses down in the description of this podcast, and also on YouTube. These courses are awesome. And if you're running a credit repair business, they're going to help you a tonne with your clients. And just like our Credit Hero Challenge, they cost less than you'll spend to take your family to McDonald's for dinner tonight. So again, go to creditrepaircloud.com/training And we'll put the link down in the description. And if you're finding value in this podcast, be sure to click to subscribe, and, and turn on notifications is so you don't miss any of the secrets we share each week here on the podcast. If you have any questions, drop a comment. I read each and every one of them. And I would love to hear from you. And thank you again, Dan, for being here.

Dan B.  24:07

It was my pleasure, love being here. Thanks so much, Daniel. And all you guys out there.

Daniel Rosen  24:12

I'll see you on next week's podcast and in the meantime, be a credit hero and keep changing lives.  Want a fast track to creating an amazing business that helps people changes lives and makes you a great living in the process that I'd like to invite you to my free online training at creditrepaircloud.com/freetraining. In this free training, you will learn how to get clients willing to pay you even if you're just starting out how to get easy credit repair results without being an expert, and how to get all the clients you'll ever need without paying for advertising. Again, this training is absolutely free. Just visit creditrepaircloud.com/free training