If you want to know EXACTLY how to go from zero to a million dollars in a year with your own credit repair company, then you’ll want to read highlights from today’s podcast interview with Ricardo Soto and Daniel De La Garza.
Like most of our Millionaires, they ran into normal life problems that led to bad credit, but then they made it to our Millionaire’s Club in just 15 months. They reached success without prior experience, without a job or any other income, without spending money on advertising, and without office space. In fact, all they had was their 30-Day free trial of Credit Repair Cloud, and a tiny coat closet.
Read on to learn their expert strategies for launching – and scaling – your own business, in a very short amount of time, and with almost no money invested.
Question: How did you get into credit repair and why?
Answer: I didn't even know there was an industry for credit repair. When I used to work for the bank, my dad was diagnosed with a brain tumor, which led him to have complications, and we were in and out of the hospital. Every day that he woke up was another day that he was with us here. So due to being absent at work, I was let go. I immediately got hit with two repos (repossessions). We started living off of our credit cards because of this. We had a child that was two years old. The credit cards got charged off, went into collections. We were forced to do a chapter seven bankruptcy because we were in debt almost $113,000.
And with no job, we didn't really know how to repay anything back. There is very little information out there about credit and about bankruptcies and just financial stability. So we didn't really know what was happening and after our bankruptcy someone mentioned, Hey, you know, I can help you fix your credit. So that's when we found out about credit repair. But I started working in a used car dealership, and most people who go there, go because they can't qualify for a brand new car. So that's where my credit repair journey really begins.
Question: So at that point then you started working at the car dealership and you saw how many people had credit issues. How did you start to learn credit repair?
Answer: Credit Repair Cloud was the first thing that I got into. I took the first course that credit repair cloud offers, and I got CRC software certified. All of those achievements that credit repair cloud offers are definitely a morale booster. I knew I was onto something, and the cool thing about that was that I got serious about it.
Question: What's incredible is most people might give up and feel defeated, but it sounds like you went into survival mode and really took action. So what, what was that decision like?
Answer: I actually turned the coat closet that we had in our apartment into my office. Literally, it was just big enough for me to put a desk, my computer in a chair, no more people could fit in there, just one person. And that's where we began our journey on credit repair, through a coat closet. I think the monetary part wasn't the problem really, because you give us 30 days for free just to check it. So it doesn't take a lot of money, unlike other businesses, especially coming from the auto industry where I just spent a year and a half, you know, looking at different business models. Credit repair doesn't take money at all. I would say the minimum requirements are the minimum things you have to get
Question: Daniel, I know you're entrepreneurial, because you said you’ve had other businesses, but Ricardo have you ever had other businesses or is this your first time being an entrepreneurial?
Answer: This was my first legitimate business, one that I had on paper. I started my entrepreneurial career back with network marketing. So, going into network marketing taught me a lot about mindset, which is in some of your more recent podcasts. I think that when somebody is barely starting out, they don't see the value of, Hey, let me change my mindset because it's more of the physical aspect, the tangible things of what can I do, but the mindset is truly where the source of all millions are. I don't think that there's a millionaire at credit repair cloud or in any industry really that has gone to a million dollars with the same mindset that they had when they were struggling financially.
Question: I know you guys are great at marketing. That's how you've grown to over a thousand clients. I don't see a big online presence for your business, but I know you're doing marketing. So what is the secret to your marketing? And can you walk us through what you're doing? That's working.
Answer: First of all, I just want to say that it just revolves all around value-based content – for example, this is one way where you can dispute this, or this is how you can read a credit report, or this is where you can find this information that people need. But most of the time, they're not willing to go to an extent to look for it. So we try to do something similar in this industry, which is just to simply give value, because there are people that will follow those instructional videos that we provide on social media. And there are people that are going to hire us to do it for them. And that's truly where our marketing technique, or secret sauce, lies.
Question: Where are these videos going? I know you've got a lot going on on Tik ToK. Is that your primary source of new clients?
Answer: So when it comes to our primary source of clients, they're kind of a mixture between tick-tock and Instagram. And I can confidently say that we made it to the Millionaires Club in about 15 months. We've been in business for almost 17 months. In between all that time, we've only spent less than a thousand dollars on advertisements. We just want to see what was out there – What's all the hype about putting dollars towards marketing. The reality is, there's no way that paid advertisement is ever going to outdo what we're doing, just giving that value-based information.
Question: So if someone wants to do that and build a following on Tik TOK, what would you recommend that they do?
Answer: All you have to do is learn and put it on video. If you learn something, you put it on video and put it out there. That's all you have to do, provide value constantly on a day-to-day basis, and you have to have that consistency. It's kind of one of those things where we have our morning huddles with our team, Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, we have a morning huddle and we talk about, Hey, these are the things that we're going to work on today. These are the things that are our goals and we're constantly having goals for ourselves individually and for the team overall. And one of those things is where I want to make sure that Ricardo has the ability to do his job. So I take care of the backend stuff. And one of those things that's extremely vital is that you make that content for your clients, that you're going live every single day and providing value for all those people watching.
Question: Most of the Tik TOK videos they're short. Right? How, how, how long are they the average one?
Answer: I never make videos past one minute. It seems that in today's fast-paced world, you have about two or three seconds to catch somebody's attention. And if you don't, then they're going to just keep scrolling and scrolling. The reality there's, it's all information. You don't want to concentrate on selling people. You want to concentrate on building a community. I just happened to do it on Tik TOK and on Instagram. And the funny thing is those are just simply your avenues of traffic. So once you build a following, have that in your mind where you're going to build a community, you're not going to be selling to people. The sales will naturally follow once you add value to people's lives.
Question: Once someone comes into your world, do you have automations?
Answer: We just implemented a funnel. We had no clue how a funnel works and we just did it. And we were surprised at how many people had eyes on us. If I could do something differently, I would figure out how to make this funnel a lot sooner than we did, because I feel like we would've been able to scale a lot faster.
So the cool thing about it is that we were able to generate the amount of clients that we have literally by just having a calendar on our social media page, no funnel whatsoever. And we were able to fill that up five days in advance, we were to the point where we had to scale our business.
We had no idea how much people were watching us on all the social media platforms until we made this funnel. And we realized that we were getting over 2,000 people through this funnel every month. To us, that was incredible.
Question: So how did you go from having a website to having a funnel?
Answer: We actually still have our website, but in the marketing world, one of the things that I learned was that a confused mind is a mind that does not, that that doesn't buy. So instead of putting up the website right off the bat and having choices, it's like, Hey, people want something easy. So let me click here to book a call, let me click here to see what you have to offer us. Right. And we just simply now have our funnel as our link on all of our social media. So everybody just goes through our funnel directly. And then in the backend, we can see how many people are coming in on a daily basis.
Question: For people who don't know what a funnel is, it's kind of like a website, but it's more like a landing page. It's more directed. There aren't all the distractions of a website. I always think of it like when you walk into a store and a sales person grabs you by the hand and says, oh, I think you'd like this suit over here. Or maybe you'd like these socks to go with it. And it's like a guided experience. So it leads them right where you want to lead them. How did you learn about funnels?
Answer: A hundred percent. You know, I think it's just one of those things that everybody just kind of talks about when you search into marketing, everybody talks about a funnel. I never personally wanted to look into it because then I’d have to learn something new, you know? And between running the business and doing marketing and Daniel doing sales, I thought, ok, where do we land on this? But we got a great funnel system. And the cool thing is, you were talking about automation, which funnel will help you, but there's also other people that are willing to help you. There are people who are willing to build funnels, landing pages for you. And you don't have to do it all yourself.
Question: Now let's talk about customer service. What are your philosophies and strategies for customer service?
Answer: We do get people from other credit repair companies that come on board. And one of the main reasons, or one of the main concerns they have is customer service.We're proud to say that we've established a customer service department within our business with three customer service representatives. So people love the fact that they can just simply call us and somebody is going to pick up the phone and if we're busy, for whatever reason, they will give them a call back. We have three three onboarding team members. We have three customer service reps. We're actually having our first annual Christmas party coming up and we're excited about that. You guys should join ours!
Question: What's your definition of success? What makes you guys credit heroes?
Answer: Business ownership is just honestly taking life to the next level. Now you're no longer in charge of just your household income, but now you have other people that are looking up to you for that. And you got, sorry. I was going to say you got more mouths to feed. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Honestly drives and motivates me is making sure that my team, besides the fact that my family drives them, motivates me a hundred percent. The definition, definition of success for me is just as I see the team grow, as I see clients being happy, that's the definition of success. It's not measured by a dollar amount, but rather by how much you're making a difference in someone's life, not only clients, but our team members.
Answer: My advice to you in short words, everything happens for a reason; you've been presented with this amazing opportunity to start this business. You have to realize in this business, you don't have inventory like other businesses. It's a very low-cost business. So therefore, the opportunity for making profit, it's huge, but what's going to get you to make profit it's to truly give value and help other people.
And that’s it –– Those are just SOME of the highlights from my interview with Daniel and Ricardo. Once you watch my interview with this amazing team, and see that you are just as capable as they are, you’ll know that no matter what challenges come your way, you can overcome them and reach your own goals. Then, you can live your dream, and while you’re at it, you’ll change a lotta lives so other people can live their dreams, too.
Pretty amazing, right?!
And one more thing! If you want to get certified in disputing and launch your very own credit repair business in just a couple weeks, I invite you to join our Credit Hero Challenge!
It’s an amazing program that has helped tons of Credit Heroes get their first clients, get certified in disputing, and gain confidence in knowing they are launching their credit repair business on a solid foundation that allows them to grow and scale FAST!
We’re starting again soon, so SIGN UP NOW at creditherochallenge.com!