Daniel Rosen 0:00
No matter where you are in this business, you are going to get so much from our special guest today. He's going to show you how you can start your business easier by using outsourcing. Then he is going to show you how to grow your business faster by working with affiliates, and then he's going to show you had to make additional revenue by helping your clients with their student loans. This is a show you're not gonna want to miss. So start that music!
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.
Hey, Credit Heroes, I am so excited for our guest today. He's been in the credit repair industry since 2012. He is the author of the book, Understanding Credit Repair and The World Around It, and he started and grew a successful credit repair business from nothing and he eventually sold that business, so he could focus on launching a brand new business, student loan relief, but his passion for credit repair is so great that he couldn't stay away. So after selling that first business, he started another credit repair business again from scratch. And on top of that, he also does outsourcing to help other credit repair business owners with their daily operations and their processing. So please welcome to the podcast, Bruce Politano! Hey Bruce, welcome!
Bruce Politano 1:53
Hello.
Daniel Rosen 1:55
I'm so excited you're here.
Bruce Politano 1:57
I'm excited.
Daniel Rosen 1:58
I got your book. It's awesome. You guys out there, I recommend getting this. It's on Amazon. It's really, really... What I love about it is it's you make everything so simple and clear.
Bruce Politano 2:09
I tried. I tried my best.
Daniel Rosen 2:12
Yeah, so congratulations on that. That's brand new, right?
Bruce Politano 2:15
Yeah, it's been maybe about a year I just never really marketed it. Yeah.
Daniel Rosen 2:19
Cool. Well, I'm glad I got it. So let's dive in. I want to know everything about you. But first of all, I want to know, what were you doing before credit repair and what led you into it?
Bruce Politano 2:31
Yeah, that's a great question. I used to work for a debt relief company. What they used to do was they would litigate time-barred debt, and help their clients, you know, get out of their unsecured debt obligations. There was a... It was pretty decent. When I started working there. I was one of four employees. When I left I was one of 400. And this was within about a year and a half. So they grew very fast. And my role there was to hire and train everyone that came through the company. And part of the services wasn't only the debt relief, they also provided credit repair services to their clients. The reason I left is they got greedy. And they started charging their clients not providing the service. And my role there was to hire and train people how to do that. So I got to a point where I couldn't sleep at night. So I quit. I had no plan B, I quit. And I was like, credit repair sounds pretty awesome. I love doing it. I love teaching it. So let me start my own business. And that's how I got started.
Daniel Rosen 3:28
Wow, that's, that's amazing. That was quite a leap. So how did you get that started on your own? How'd you get your first clients? How did that work?
Bruce Politano 3:37
Yeah, so I had a lot of friends who were real estate agents. And I just started tapping into that market. You know, as I started my credit repair company, obviously first thing I found was credit repair cloud. Back in it was I think you had just moved off from credit eight, I believe. And it doesn't 13 Yeah, exactly. So I got a credit repair Cloud account and you know, dive in and solve The letters and started getting my clients by affiliates. And so this day I've never stopped. That's the only way that we get our clients is referral from affiliates.
Daniel Rosen 4:08
So you're not doing any traditional advertising of any kind?
Bruce Politano 4:12
No, and I believe I'm leaving money on the table by doing that, right. I mean, everyone is online, and I haven't tapped into that market, because we were just so busy with all of our affiliates.
Daniel Rosen 4:20
Well, I think affiliates is really the way to go. If you can build those relationships. Tell me how do you build those relationships? What kind of people first of all, are your affiliates? And tell us about them?
Bruce Politano 4:31
Yeah, so all of our affiliates, I don't want to say all but I would say 99% of them are mortgage professionals, either real estate agents or loan officers. And honestly, I go after the real estate agents to get to their loan officers. At the end of the day, the loan officer is the one that's looking at the credit and saying no, right, they just pass that message on to the real estate agent and the client. So when I meet with real estate agents, it's with the end goal of getting an introduction to their loan officer. What we normally do to get affiliates, right for me to talk about that is we walk into an office, right? We'll walk into a real estate office, and just pretty much tell them exactly what we do and why we do it and how it can help them. Right? And if they say yes, great, if they say no, great, I'll move on to the next office, you know, so that's kind of like how I started it. I you know, back in 2012 2013. Nowadays, we've kind of perfected that a little bit, we've become a little more organized. I'm not just randomly walking into people's offices anymore. You know, we try to have appointments made and things like that.
Daniel Rosen 5:32
But what do you tell them during that pitch? What do you tell them that you can do for their business?
Bruce Politano 5:36
Oh, it's a very easy, very simple pitch, right? it'll sound something like this. Hey, Daniel. My name is Bruce. I own a credit repair company here in Long Beach, California, wherever city it is that you're located at right. And we have a lot of clients that come into our program with an end goal of purchasing a home and a lot of our clients aren't working with a mortgage professional. I saw you online I see you have some great reviews. So I wanted to stop by or see if I can schedule that. to speak with you to see if you'd be a good fit for me to refer my clients to that need someone to work with. That's the pitch, I almost feel they almost feel like they're auditioning or interviewing for my referrals.
Daniel Rosen 6:11
Absolutely. And they'd be missing out if they didn't take you up on this
Bruce Politano 6:15
Correct. And then when we have that meeting, I always tell them, one hand washes the other. Right, then if you happen to run across the client, which I'm sure you do. Now, you cannot help at the time because of a credit criteria, please refer them over to us, and we'll do our job. We'll help them fix their credit and work for them right back to you. And now you have a pipeline that's going to be growing, that's going to be adding to your bottom line. And no, you can see how that can benefit your business.
Daniel Rosen 6:38
And then after you help the people with their credit, you send them back to them.
Bruce Politano 6:41
Right. Always. Yes.
Daniel Rosen 6:43
So this has got to be having a major increase in their revenue, right?
Bruce Politano 6:48
Always. Yeah, yeah. And what we do with them is when it's a new affiliate, we tell them, Daniel, the first two clients they send over to us, we'll do them for free. We won't charge your clients a penny. We want to show you the quality Our work so you can feel confident in referring your clients over to us. And what we get out of that Daniel is that once they refer the first two clients, now they know how to refer the client. And once they get the third client, they're not going to stop. They're just going to refer the third and fourth. And that's how we've done it.
Daniel Rosen 7:14
Wow, that is so smart. I love that. How many affiliates Do you have at the moment?
Bruce Politano 7:19
I think are probably around close to 250.
Daniel Rosen 7:23
Wow, that is awesome. And how do you keep them happy? And how do you keep that relationship going?
Bruce Politano 7:30
So there's one person in my company that their position is our affiliate manager. That's all he does, all 40 hours a week as he he spends about 70% of his week, visiting with our current affiliates, right, just stopping by saying hello, taking them out to lunch, right to make sure that our relationship stays active. And 30% of his time is getting new affiliates, right. So we got to a point where we can't just have someone sign on us and one quiet, we got to stay in front of them over and over again to keep them you know, happy.
Daniel Rosen 8:00
Sure makes a lot of sense. Now. So you started a credit repair business from nothing in 2012. And then you grew it, and you learned all the parts, what led you to selling it?
Bruce Politano 8:13
So my business partner and I, he used to own the student loan company, and he had a small credit repair company. I had a big credit repair company and just started a small student loan company. So when we partnered up, we kind of joined forces, right, I brought my big Credit Repair Company, he brought his big student loan company, and we joined forces. And it got to a point where the partnership just ended. And part of that this The agreement was he was going to keep the credit card company and I was going to keep this to the loan company. So I started focusing my time on the student loan business because we were getting a lot I mean, a ton of new student loan clients, and what I mean by student loan clients or you know, people who needed help managing their student loan debt, right, the same affiliates that referred credit pair class to us referred student loan clients to us. People don't qualify for mortgage because their debt to income ratio too high because of student loan debt, or because their loans are in default. So I decided to focus my time on that. More than so the credit repair company because I was really big that was established and the student loan company was more of a project and I wanted to take on at the time.
Daniel Rosen 9:13
Well, so what has that project turned into? Can you tell us about that service?
Bruce Politano 9:18
Yeah, so one service that we offer is we help the clients consolidate their student loan debt, which in essence helps them lower the monthly payments, lower their interest rates, we enroll them into different forgiveness programs that they may qualify for income driven repayment plans where they can qualify for payments as low as zero dollars a month on our student loan debt, and most importantly, help them get in their laws out of default. You know, they go nine months without making a payment. They're almost it's a default. Now they run the risk of getting their wages garnished, and their income tax refund offset. So we help them get the lowest out of default so that they can be on time with a payment that they could afford.
Daniel Rosen 9:53
Wow, that is super cool. And then you've also turn this into something that can help other credit repair businesses. Right,
Bruce Politano 10:00
yeah, so we were we used to have an affiliate program where credit repair businesses refer their clients over to us and we would pay them $100. Right for every referral of a client any to help with their student loans. And we got flooded. I mean, there were hundreds of credit repair companies referring business more than we could handle. So I'm sure you've heard the saying, you know, feed a man a fish, you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish feed him for a lifetime. I taught them how to fish, I created a course that teaches them A to Z, exactly what all the services are, how they work, how to perform well, so that they don't need to refer the clients to me, they can just do it themselves in house. So that was a different business that we created, which is pretty much the course that teaches them how to do everything themselves and add that additional stream of income to their business, which is what I spoke about in the first Expo that you guys had.
Daniel Rosen 10:47
Right. Right, right. I remember what is this course called?
Bruce Politano 10:51
It's the student loan companion.
Daniel Rosen 10:53
Student loan companion, okay. And we're going to give all the links at the end for people who are interested, and how is this helped the credit repair businesses that have signed up for this?
Bruce Politano 11:02
I haven't had... Honestly, not one complain about it, everyone loves it and the people who took the course and took action. They've added, you know, six figures to their income, the ones who really took action just by offering these new services. You know, we make money off of credit monitoring, right? We make money off of the secured credit cards, and I make money off of our clients when you sit alone help as well.
Daniel Rosen 11:23
Right. Absolutely. And it's an amazing service for them. Absolutely as Yeah, yeah, cuz people come out of school and they're in such debt. It's such a bad system.
Bruce Politano 11:36
It's crazy.
Daniel Rosen 11:37
Yeah. Did you experience this yourself?
Bruce Politano 11:40
I did not. I did not go to college. I barely graduated high school.
Daniel Rosen 11:44
Well, you're further along than me. I didn't even graduate high school.
Bruce Politano 11:49
But I didn't and I honestly my opinion on it is unless you're going to be like a doctor or an attorney or something of that need that education. I don't recommend it. My personal opinion somewhere. At the debt.
Daniel Rosen 12:01
I actually think learning online, I think this is the new college. I think this is so much better way to learn, because you could learn what's really going to apply to you.
Bruce Politano 12:11
Absolutely. Yeah. I agree. Yeah.
Daniel Rosen 12:14
Yeah. So this is so, so cool. Now, at what point did you relaunch your new credit repair business? And how's that going?
Bruce Politano 12:23
That was back in the end of 2017. Got Levi Incorporated. Again, it was October 2017, kind of finished the year and then hit the ground running in 2018. January, it's going well, but I focus so much on our outsourcing, that I kind of lacked my own credit very company for like to the side like the ugly child. And it's been tough because when I sold the other business, I have a non compete where I can't go after the affiliates that were referring clients to that business. So the problem with that is everybody in their mother was referring clients to that business already. So I'm having to go after the new blood, the new loan officers and new real estate agents that have come into the business since I started my own again. So we're back on that track again of adding the affiliates.
Daniel Rosen 13:12
And so at the same time, you're doing all this outsourcing for a whole lot of other credit repair businesses. Can you tell us what outsourcing is?
Bruce Politano 13:20
Yeah, so we pretty much handle the entire dispute process. For as of right now about 60 other credit repair companies. And the majority of them I want to say 95% of them are using federal fair cloud, which is great. I mean, I love it. All they do is they add the client into the system, right, make sure their ID documents are uploaded, make sure their credit monitor information is in there. And we create a custom status in their credit repair cloud called ready for processing. And all they do is change the client status to ready for processing. My team logs in twice a day once in the morning, once in the afternoon. If there's anyone in a ready for processing status, we're going to import the report. We're going to create the letters we're going to print them we're going to mail them out, we're going to change their status. in dispute, which is another custom status that we create, and 35 days later, we'll update the results.
Daniel Rosen 14:05
Wow. So this is a perfect opportunity for somebody who maybe is good at sales and good at being the front person, but doesn't know how to do all the back end processing or doesn't have time. So this gives them an instant way to scale the business, right?
Bruce Politano 14:20
Even if they do know how to process and they do have the time. I believe as the owner of the company, you shouldn't be licking stamps, you should be running your business, you should be growing your business. The more time you spend folding letters and licking stamps, the less time you're out there growing your business, right. So either hire staff or outsource the work to someone who you trust that will do right by your company by your clients.
Daniel Rosen 14:43
Now, when is the right time for a company to look into outsourcing?
Bruce Politano 14:48
It's really up to the owner, right? I mean, we have companies that are just getting started when they have zero clients or they have 10 clients. And we have companies that have you know, 1500 clients, you know, it really it's up to To the owner of the company, what I recommend is start right away. Because the hardest part of your business is going from zero to 100 clients, right? And it's going to take you so much longer to do that if you're spending majority of your time going to the post office, you should be going to networking events, not the post office.
Daniel Rosen 15:19
Absolutely. You should be steering the ship and not down below rowing.
Bruce Politano 15:23
Exactly. Yes. And we also offer our back end as well. So the difference about what we do in outsourcing versus other outsourcing companies is we handle customer service, billing and even sales if the company wants us to. So for a monthly fee per client, we'll handle all your customer service and billing. All your inbound calls will be answered by us. The monthly outbound update calls to the clients will be done by us. If the clients payment fails and you need to reschedule we pretty much can run your business if you really wanted us to
Daniel Rosen 15:53
How cost effective is this?
Bruce Politano 15:55
$1 million. I'm just kidding! If you're Charging 50 bucks a month not worth it, right. But if you're in the norm where most companies are around 99 to 149 per month, I believe it's worth it until you grow to the point where you could afford to hire staff in house. Right. And or you may not want to hire staff in house because people quit. People will call in sick and you still have those issues. You know what I mean? We charge anywhere from 15 to $20 per client for our services.
Daniel Rosen 16:25
Per month?
Bruce Politano 16:26
Per month for the processing. And it's the same for the customer service and billing another 15 to $20 per client per month, depending on how many clients they have.
Daniel Rosen 16:35
So if someone's charging, let's say in the average of $99 $120 a month somewhere in there, you're still gonna have a pretty big profit margin?
Bruce Politano 16:46
And pretty much netting everything because it's my paper. It's my ink. It's my stamp. It's my staff. Right.
Daniel Rosen 16:51
Wow. That seems really amazing.
Bruce Politano 16:55
Yeah. We find a way to make it work.
Daniel Rosen 16:58
Wow. And so you're doing this now for 60 companies. That is huge. I didn't realize you had that big an operation. How big a team do you have?
Bruce Politano 17:06
So we have 123... We're at eight, eight people. Wow.
Daniel Rosen 17:13
It must be frantically busy all day long,
Bruce Politano 17:16
All day.
Daniel Rosen 17:18
But you've been doing this so long. You have all your processes down.
Bruce Politano 17:22
Yeah. I mean, if we're not organized and have a system in place, then we fail. Right? So before were we added in before we grew, we didn't, you know, figure things out as we went. We kind of figured things out first, and then we went makes a lot of sense.
Daniel Rosen 17:38
Wow. How long did it take to grow to that big of a team? And what's that process like?
Bruce Politano 17:45
So we add as we need, right? I'm structured to be able to handle more business with the staff that I have now so that I don't have to turn business away. Right. So whenever I feel like we're coming up close, I hire a new staff member. They go through our training. Training and then they hit the ground running and just help with the workload.
Daniel Rosen 18:03
Wow. Awesome. What's your big goal for 2020?
Bruce Politano 18:07
My big goal for 2020 is to focus on credit likes, which is my credit repair company. I want to grow that to what my old company was before I sold it. I would really want to focus on Bruce this year.
Daniel Rosen 18:20
Yeah, that sounds good. What was it like when you sold the first company? Was it strange then not having that to do every day?
Bruce Politano 18:29
Yeah, it was like, it was like breaking up with a long term wife, you know, that was my baby for so many years. And then having to part ways with it was, it was bittersweet, you know, but it really freed up my time to focus on the student loan stuff. I'm a big believer, if you're going to do something, right. You got to give 100% of what you have into that one thing. And what was happening was I was giving, you know, 60% of myself to that, and that's why it wasn't growing the way I'd like it to.
Daniel Rosen 18:56
Got it, and then you missed it. And now you're doing it again.
Bruce Politano 19:00
I couldn't stay away. And that's when I wrote the book. I was like, man, I just gotta do something. Right. So I wrote the book. I was like, man, let me just start another company. Why not?
Daniel Rosen 19:08
Wow, you really are driven. Now, what's your advice for someone just starting out in credit repair?
Bruce Politano 19:16
Don't give up. Right? Don't give up. I see a lot of people that especially because we outsource, right? So we have companies that start and you know, they have that fire in their belly, and then they hit a roadblock. And they're like, Oh, this is too hard. This is too difficult. And they kind of just go away a little bit and I almost have I call them you know, I speak to him like, what's going on? I noticed you haven't really picked up what troubles are you having? And like, Man, you know, I can't get any new clients. My Facebook posts aren't working anymore. So don't give up you know, just find a different way of doing it. What works for one person isn't going to work for every person affiliates may not work for you. Right? You might be a genius online marketer then do that. You don't have to do what's working for somebody else. find what works for you and run with it.
Daniel Rosen 19:57
Absolutely. And being an artist. pinner is about solving these kinds of problems. It's about making mistakes and learning from them. And adjusting. I mean, you've certainly done a lot of that you started from zero. And now look at everything you're doing. It's amazing.
Bruce Politano 20:14
Thank you. Yeah, I tell everybody, success wouldn't exist if failure also didn't exist. So you're going to fail before you succeed, and it's okay. I tell my team the same thing. It's okay.
Daniel Rosen 20:22
That's really good advice. Bruce, I want to thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited for you with everything you're doing. Can you please tell everyone what we know? They can get your book on Amazon, right?
Bruce Politano 20:33
Yes, it is on Amazon.
Daniel Rosen 20:35
And so they can search your name Bruce Positano. And it's called Understanding Credit Repair and The World Around It. And where can they get information about student loan relief?
Bruce Politano 20:46
So if they want the course they can just visit studentloancompanion.com. The courses on that website, you can purchase it, the moment that you buy it, you have access to it right away, and you have lifetime access to it. It's a three and a half hour Video Course of me personally teaching everything there is to know. You get an 82-page training manual, which is pretty much the entire video course but in a written manual format for those who like to read and you know. And lots of extra resources, sales scripts, customer service scripts, processing flowcharts, the whole nine.
Daniel Rosen 21:16
Awesome. And for people who want to know more about your outsourcing services, where do they go for that?
Bruce Politano 21:23
They will go to disputesforme.com and for spelled out f o r, disputeforme.com.
Daniel Rosen 21:29
Disputeforme.com Okay, awesome. Bruce, I want to thank you for your time. I look forward to seeing you at Credit Repair Expo.
Bruce Politano 21:37
I can't wait.
Daniel Rosen 21:38
Yeah, you've been at all of them so far.
Bruce Politano 21:41
Yes, sir.
Daniel Rosen 21:42
And hey, what's that experience been like for you?
Bruce Politano 21:45
It's amazing. I mean, Credit Repair Expo is not like any other event. You know, it's fun, it's relaxed, and it's full of content. You know, we all go to these events. Whether you've been in the business for a year or 100 years, you always leave knowing something new and meeting somebody new. And meeting somebody new is just as important as learning new information.
Daniel Rosen 22:04
Absolutely. So you guys out there, I hope this gave you a lot of inspiration out there to go out and keep growing your credit repair business. And I want to thank you again for being here, Bruce.
Bruce Politano 22:16
You're welcome, Daniel. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
Daniel Rosen 22:18
I hope to have you back. And you guys out there. Thanks for listening. And I will see you on the next podcast and until then, keep changing lives!
Want a fast track to creating an amazing business that helps people, changes lives, and makes you a great living and the process? Then 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/freetraining.
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