Daniel Rosen 0:00
Hey, Credit Heroes. So if you are new to my podcast, I'm standing here at our Credit Repair Cloud headquarters in front of our Wall of Millionaires. These 40 people here behind me have all made over a million dollars in their Credit Repair Cloud, which is really exciting. These are all people who had a credit issue and they learned how to fix their own credit. Then they started helping family and friends. And then they turned it into a business. And now they are all millionaires right up here on our Wall. And this is so exciting. And a while back to celebrate our Credit Repair Cloud users processing over $100 million. We threw this big party online, and we did a really big live training with me and Corey Gray and Keenan Jones. And we answered your questions live. And hundreds of people were there online and it was so awesome. And we gave away so many industry secrets that you really need to know. We answered so many questions about the ins and the outs of advanced disputing, starting a credit repair business from nothing, as well as marketing and automations. It was amazing. And I thought, wow, I really need to share these surprising secrets with all of you. So that's what I've done. Since that live training was so long, I decided I was going to split it up into three different parts. So this week, I'm going to start by sharing with you the segment where our credit repair expert Corey Gray answers your top credit repair and disputing questions. I'm talking about things like how to deal with repos and bankruptcies and inquiries and all those juicy things that you guys always ask about. So get out a pen and paper and listen closely, because Cory is America's leading expert on credit repair, and he is going to be dropping some amazing gold nuggets just for you. So 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 we dive in here, make sure that you click the link in the description below to access my free 20-page cheat sheet. It's a whole book that we created with all the info from this free training and lots and lots of resources. It's really going to help you so be sure to download it. It's really awesome. And it's going to help you a lot. Okay, here is part one of the live training with credit repair expert Corey Gray. He is our in-house subject matter expert. If you have taken our Basic Disputing Course or our Challenge. You know Corey, he's our resident credit repair expert at Credit Repair Cloud. He has over 20 years in the business and we are going to start with him. So if you're excited for Corey’s help, comment, hashtag “goCory”. Cory. Are you ready? I'm ready. Let's do this. Okay, good. Cory, here comes question number one. It's from Junior Walker. And here is Junior's question. I was told not to touch student loans due to possible blowback on the client. Can you clarify?
Corey Gray 4:12
Sure. So first off, Junior. It's a great question. But this is a total myth, okay. And it's a myth, because you have the right to challenge anything, anything at all that you feel is not 100% accurate. And that includes student loans. So what you might be referring to as far as blowback, you might be referring to like the possibility of your clients being sued over unpaid debts. And you know, with any unpaid debt, you're always going to run into the risk of being sued. So if you stop paying your bills, you're probably going to get sued. So let me also say that with student loans, like specifically federally subsidized student loans, they tend to not go away, okay, and even if you're successful, removing them from a credit report, They're backed by the government. And if you default, they pretty much just go after your tax returns or just garnish your wages anyway. So, in my opinion, disputing student loans or any other item for that matter, is not going to be a flashpoint for being sued or any type of blowback or whatever you're referring to, you know, just go for it, just go after it and do your best to delete them. And don't worry about potential, you know, blowback or, or, you know, lawsuits because, you know, your clients stopped paying the data A long time ago. And chances are if they continue to not pay, they're eventually going to get sued. Anyway. Did that answer the question?
Daniel Rosen 5:40
That was amazing. That kicked us off? Perfect. Okay, we have another question here for you. It's from Danielle Barnhart, who asks, Cory, how do you dispute a bankruptcy?
Corey Gray 5:53
Okay, I've been asked this question quite a bit in the in the community. And I've answered it a couple of times. And it's really not all that complicated. Okay. There's a little trick to it, there's a key to it. So, you know, bankruptcies are public records, and the courts never report public records to the bureaus. Okay. The Bureau's actually purchase all this information from third parties like Nexus, Lexus, and Pacer. So you see, that's the key. That's really the key to removing public records. So, you know, the Bureau's report the furnisher as the court or the magistrate. Okay, so this is totally false reporting. It's a violation of the FCRA. And it's a perfect reason to challenge it. Okay. And the technique that I've talked about numerous times, I think we did a newsletter about it, we did a tip of the month about it. And we mentioned it a few times during, in the community there. And this is the technique that worked for me. Okay, so there's a couple different steps, it's really only four steps, the first step is to dispute the public record with the Bureau's just like you normally would do, okay, you can just use a round one letter and dispute it, you can say it's inaccurate, it's outdated. It's unverifiable. It's questionable, whatever, whatever you want to go ahead and dispute it as it really doesn't matter. Just go ahead and use round one, you know, you're gonna see the itemized list of items that you're going to dispute in that round one, and just include it. Okay. Now, once you've done that, if it comes back as verified, and it probably will, Okay, the next step is to send off a letter addressed to the court. Okay, the court where the public record was filed. And the letter is really pretty simple, you're basically just going to ask for the procedure on how they verify public records. And I say this because, again, the Bureau's purchase this information from LexisNexis, or Pacer, so they're not going to be able to do it, they're actually going to tell you that they don't actually submit this information to the Bureau's. So the letter that you send should kind of go along these lines. And I have a couple little notes here. So basically, what it should say is it should say something along the lines that I have a bankruptcy from your court appearing on my credit report. Okay. I've disputed this item with the Bureau's they confirm that the public record was verified by you, please provide the procedure in which you verified my bankruptcy with the Bureau's make sense. I mean, you're really just you're sending a letter to the court saying, Hey, you know, I disputed this bankruptcy and it was verified, can you tell me how you verify this? I mean, it's just really common sense. So, of course, the the court or the magistrate or wherever you're sending this to, does not verify they do not sell that information to the Bureau's. It's documented in public records. So you can be guaranteed a response from the clerk from the clerk of the court basically saying that they don't report to the Bureau's and when you get that letter, okay, go ahead and turn around and send it to the Bureau's whatever bureau verified that bankruptcy or whatever public record it is, it could be a tax lien or a judgment or whatever it is, just turn around and send that letter along with another letter to the Bureau's and show them proof that the court basically couldn't verify it. They don't report to the Bureau's and that's your proverbial smoking gun. I mean, that is really like, like, you know, the Bureau's are saying, hey, the Corps verified this. Bam, no way to verify it, they don't report to you in the first place. So again, that that's your smoking gun, that's the key to doing it. And usually you're gonna get a deletion. Because you have, you've really proven a violation. And, you know, if for some reason it comes back as verified because you all know this is a you know, this is a process It takes persistence and it takes pressure. And if it does come back as verified, it's a good time to go ahead and file a claim, you might want to file a complaint with the CFPB. Because you do have a valid reason for removal, you can file a complaint with the BBB, whatever the case is, you can go ahead and continue to fight it. But generally speaking, if you were able to get that smoking gun to show, hey, this court does not even report this information, then they have really no other choice to remove it. The only last thing that I could say that's really like a last ditch effort, if you're not able to get it off, either through that process I just told you and then filing a complaint, you can always go ahead and get in touch with an FCRA attorney. And those FCRA attorneys are really good at actually going after the Bureau's and suing them when these violations occur. So I think that's about the best explanation I can give you to remove a bankruptcy. I hope it made sense to you.
Daniel Rosen 11:02
That's awesome. And you can pretty much dispute any public record file at a court by you following those same steps, not just a bankruptcy,
Corey Gray 11:11
if it's a public record, they don't the states the course they don't report to the Bureau's they LexisNexis and Pacer go around and pick that information off the internet. So, you know, it's it's their, it's their research, basically that you're disputing. So yeah, it doesn't matter what type of item it is, just follow that process, and you're pretty much guaranteed a deletion. And again, you know, every circumstance is different, who knows who's going to receive the letter, if it's just going to go through E Oscar or whatever. But if you keep fighting it, and you follow those steps that I just told you about, that's your best, that's your absolute best path towards a deletion. And I'm going to include all my notes in that in that document that you're going to, you're going to hand out at the end of this. So if you're confused about it, if you didn't catch all that if you're trying to take notes, just just download that document at the end of this at the end of this session.
Daniel Rosen 12:05
Yeah, and I want to stress something you said that I think was really important. And I think it needs repeating. It's about persistence, hey, verify it, just keep pounding them, right.
Corey Gray 12:18
That's my, that's just like something that I say over and over again, everything about credit repair, there's nothing guaranteed there. There really is no exact science to it. But there are a bunch of different laws, and there's a bunch of different procedures. And if if you just if you just expect to send out a round one letter and get everything deleted, you're in the wrong business. It takes it takes time. It takes persistence, it takes pressure, you really just got to keep hitting them. If they say no, you say yes, if they say sorry, I can't help you say sorry, but you're going to have to because I'm not going away. So just be persistent, continually apply pressure. And you know, you really can move mountains, if, if you if you keep you know, if you keep going at it, I mean diamonds aren't made by just sitting in, you know, just just soil sitting around, it's millions of years of pressure being placed on them, that eventually turns this piece of coal into a diamond. That's really your job. And, you know, if you're doing this for clients, this is your this is your job, this is what you're doing on a daily basis. You know, you owe it to them, you know, obviously, the longer they're a client, the, the, you know, the more lifetime value you're going to get, the more money you're going to make. And you obviously want to get them done as fast as possible. But if you preempt them with Hey, look, this is a process. It's not an overnight cure, it's not going to solve all your problems overnight. And you know what, be overly conservative, there's a very, there's a very high probability that no matter what I do, all your problems aren't going to go away. But I'm going to do my best to clean up as much as I can. I'm going to educate you, I'm going to continually work on your file, I'm going to apply pressure. If they say no, I'm gonna say yes. And if you just trust that I'm just going to do everything within my power to improve your credit, then, you know, at the end of the day, you know, it's going to cost you it's gonna save you 10s of 1000s of dollars in interest, and it's going to help you get get to reach all your goals. So yeah, persistence and pressure. You just keep pounding away. And that's really that answer that I gave you really, really comes from, is you just got to keep pounding away. It doesn't matter what they say. You just got to keep going at it. Awesome. Okay, here's
Daniel Rosen 14:36
another question. This one comes from Nikki n. Lopez. And Nikki asks, How do you dispute charged off accounts? Okay, Nikki,
Corey Gray 14:48
that's a fantastic question. And I get it. I get this question all the time. Like how do you how do you how do you dispute an inquiry How do you dispute a collection How do you dispute a charge up and You know, I just went out went through this whole process of how to dispute a bankruptcy or a public record, those are a little bit different. But charge offs are just like just about any other item that you find on your credit report, it's a delinquent account, you know, a charge off means that, you know, essentially, the, the original creditor gave up on trying to collect it. So they charged it off to get a tax break, and they either sold or leased it to a third party debt collector. But it's really just like any other item, whether it's a piece of personal information, something identity theft, or a charge off or a collection, it, you basically just follow the same most basic strategy. And it's really pretty simple. So the first thing you do is you're going to send off around one, okay, that's why it's called round one. That's the very first round, that's the first thing you do, you send off round one, and you wait for the responses, okay, the responses that you receive, are going to determine what you do next, they're going to determine your next step. So if it's deleted, awesome, great, move on and just need some more items. Now. If they respond with a stall tactic, you know, they might say that, hey, you're a credit repair, comm or credit repair companies doing this for you, or, or, hey, this is frivolous, or, hey, we don't like the way you're the color of your hair, whatever it is, it doesn't really matter. If it's a stall, and they're trying to stop you from pursuing your rights, you respond with a stall letter, okay, then, you know, maybe they verify everything, or maybe they verify a couple of items. Either way, if they verify anything, ask them to prove it. That's the next step. Okay, you can send a method of verification and mLv letter, we have those in our library, you can send a reinvestigation letter, or you can use the prove it letter in our library. But again, that just just a walk you back through that you're sending out round one, if it's deleted, great, move on to the next thing, if they give you a stall, respond with the stall letter, if they verify everything, Hey, you got to prove it, okay. And then if they ignore the request, which is very common, where you just don't get any response at all, what I always like to do is, I would like to send them a reminder. Okay, I'd like to politely remind them without getting nasty, just basically just basically being nice about it. And if that's not, if that's not in your forte, you want it you want to move ahead, and you just want to be a little nasty, you can send them a warning, if you want to be stern about it, or, you know, if you're out for blood, and you just like like, you just want to nail them, file a complaint with the CFPB file a complaint with the FTC filed a complaint with the BBB, take all of these complaints and wrap it up, and send them send send screenshots of all these complaints with your follow up letter. And you can even include an intent to sue, we've got a bunch of different variations of those letters in our library. So from here, once you've set all that out, you can either continue to apply pressure on the bureaus by disputing you know directly with the Bureau's you can file more complaints. Or you can switch gears entirely and go directly to the furniture because those the furniture is the company that reported it could be a collection agency, if it's a charge off, like you're asking, it's most likely the original creditor, because the original creditor is going to charge it off to get that tax break. But you can go ahead and go directly to the furniture. And you can go through all the same processes that you did with the Bureau's, you can dispute the item, you're going to wait for a response. And based on that response, you can follow up with all those different letters that we just talked about the same letters that you would with the with the charge off. And if the Bureau's are furnishers violate any laws along the way, you can always hire that FCRA attorney who will go after those furnishers and sue them, or the Bureau's for that matter. And you know, most of them do it on a contingency basis. If you just do a quick Google search for the FCRA attorney, there's probably one right in your city. And, you know, they they're gonna want all the documentation you previously sent, they're gonna want to know everything about it. But that's all they do is file lawsuits against these companies that violate the laws. So they'll do it on a contingency basis, you only you actually don't pay them as a credit repair professional, and the client doesn't pay them as the client, they just take a little bit of that money. I say a little bit. I think sometimes they take like around 30% or so of the settlement. But there's no cost and it's a permanent deletion, and they do get more results. So
I think I'm going really, really deep into this. But what I can say is really what you need to do with a charge off or any other item Follow that process that I just went through. Because if you if you hit them with around one, and then a follow up, and then a warning, and then a complaint, and then so on and so forth. That is the process that you go through for just about any item. So I hope that that helps. And that's the best explanation I can give you for that scenario.
Daniel Rosen 20:23
Did that help you guys? If, if you're liking what we're answering your questions, if you're liking what you hear, let us know, keep smashing that like button, or that love button. So we can know we want to know we're connecting with you guys and giving you stuff you need. And like, Cory, you're ready for one more question. Okay, this is this comes from a great name. This is from Nina cool. As Raines asks, Nina asks, license and bonding in each state? What do we need to know?
Corey Gray 21:00
This is a really good question. And, you know, I, I know a lot about this topic only because I was in business for a very long time. And for many, many years, I never had any issues. And then one day, lo and behold, I had a problem with one state. And it really learned me, it really forced me to learn all of this. And what I can tell you is, first of all, it's really not that complex. And it's not that expensive. It's really easy to be compliant. But it's a little complicated navigating exactly what you need. Just coming into the business. Okay, let me break it down for you. So first of all, every state, every single state has different regulations and requirements, some states could care less whether or not you're in the credit repair business. In fact, most of them are that way, more than half of them really just don't even care. They don't they don't take offense to credit repair. But there's a lot of states, or some states that do take offense to it and have a little bit more. They have stringent requirements. And I'm going to walk you through this, but I'd like to preempt this entire answer just by saying that I am not an attorney. Right, Daniel, I haven't passed the bar. I don't give legal advice. And everything that I tell you right here is just really my opinion. And everything that you do should not revolve around what I'm telling you here because laws constantly change. And every city and state have new updated rules and regulation. So I'm trying to help you by answering this question to the best of my ability, but don't take it as legal advice, because it's not. Okay. So, first of all, there are three main aspects, okay, three main things that you need to think about about being compliant in this industry. And they're really pretty easy. bonding, registration and state specific requirements. Okay, you can find the requirements on our website. Okay. In fact, I think, Daniel, we're currently in the process of going through and completely completely updating everything, didn't you?
Daniel Rosen 23:16
Yeah. But and, and we're going to have links in the guide that you're going to download, and it's gonna have links to all the state laws.
Corey Gray 23:23
Perfect. Okay, great. So basically, some states have no requirements, okay, and others have a lot of them. So you need to follow the laws for the state your company is in. Plus, if you help clients that are in other states, you need to follow the laws of the states that each of your clients live in. All right. So let me talk about each one first, there are 23 states that require a bond, okay? bond sound crazy, they sound like oh, they're so expensive, because they range anywhere between 10,000 and $100,000. But don't freak out, okay? bonds or bonds are are a very small percentage of the face value. And they're usually between one and 3%. Actually, some people can pay as high as 10%, if they have really bad credit, or if they have really, really bad problems on their record. But generally speaking, you're gonna pay like two or 3%. So if there's a $10,000 bond, you're only going to pay like two or 300 bucks. All right, so it's really not that crazy. And if you have a lot of clients in other states, you're making enough money to cover all this. So it's really non existent problem. So the cost is usually based on your personal credit, and the higher the bond amount, the more they dig into that they might might want to look at your bank statements or, or whatever, they're usually going to do some underwriting there. And, you know, if you if you have clients in a state that requires a bond, you really should get one and you know, for me I went in a very long time before I started investing and making sure I was bonded in the right places. And I took a little bit too long. And eventually I had a little bit of a problem. It was really just a speed bump. But, again, there are 23 states that require a bond. And I know Daniel included the links. Dan, you want to read off the 23 states that require a bond? Are You Smarter? Why not? Okay, so let me see here, I wrote it down. So the states that do require a bond are Indiana, Maryland, Maine, North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, California, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia, the Virgin Islands, Wisconsin, and Idaho. Alright, those are the 23 states that I'm aware of, at this point in time, that require a bond. And again, they range from 10,000 to 100,000. But you're only going to pay, you know, 300 to 3000. Really, at most, unless you just have like a couple homicides on your on your criminal record or something, you're probably not going to pay much more than that.
Daniel Rosen 26:11
And most of them are on the lower end of that, aren't they?
Corey Gray 26:13
Almost all of them are lower, there's a few that are higher. And one thing I just wanted to throw in about bonds, if you're just getting started in this business, go after the clients that are in your state, there's plenty of people in your state that need help, you don't need to cross state lines. And if you do cross state lines, try to be specific like if your Facebook advertising or, or marketing with any form of marketing, try to try to focus in geo target a specific state other than yours. Like if you're if you feel like you've had every client, every possible customer in your state and you're in Florida, and you want to go and you want to hit you know, Indiana or Maryland, just geotarget one state. And once you get a couple of clients in that state, just make sure you're bonded in that state. And then once you start moving there, go ahead and go to the next state. But don't don't worry about getting bonded in every state, everybody's always like, Oh, I need to get 50 bonds. Now. There's 23 states focus on your state first and then you can move on. That's that would be I think my my, a very, very key point here. So So other than bonds, there's there's two other major factors. The next one is called CSO registration. Okay, there's 19 states that require registration with a state agency and I say state agency because each state has different agencies that require it. Okay. So they call it CSO registration, because it stands for credit service organization. And that's you. Okay, that's how that's who you are. Basically, that's what this the state governments and the federal government's call you, as a credit repair company, they call you a CSO or credit service organization. And this registration, to make it to really simplify it, they want to know who's practicing credit repair in your state. So they want you to register just like if you were going to school, they want to know who's going to school, so they want you to register for school. So some states, they, they they use this as a tool for consumers, they'll post a list of credit service organizations online, they'll post a list of organizations that have registered, okay, and they do that so consumers can check out, you know, and confirm if a company's registered or not. And if you're working in a state and you're not registered, and a savvy consumer comes along, and they're not happy with you, or they just want to cause a problem. They can go and look on this list. And if you're not on that list, they're like, Oh, I got it, right. So try to get registered in the state in the states that require it. And I'll go ahead and read off that list. So there's 19 of them. California, DC, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Virgin Islands, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Idaho. And by the way, I said Virgin Islands. And before I said Puerto Rico, because there's a couple other outlying islands that have that have these things even though they're not a state, I included them so.
So anyway, that's so there's two there, the two that I just went over our bonding, and CSO registration. So remember those two and then lastly, there's a couple of states that have kind of specific requirements and it's nothing to be scared about. All you got to do is do a little bit of research and make sure that you implement it. But other than bonding and CSR registration, you need to make sure that your client contract Or your service agreement conforms with state requirements. Okay. So there's different, you know, there's different requirements for each state. And I don't really have enough time, actually, there's no way I have enough time to discuss all of them. But just to name a couple of them. Number one, make sure that your fees are in line with the limits that the states requires. So it's like some states may require that the maximum you can charge is $59 a month, okay, I'm just using that as an example. I don't even know if that's one of them. But they may require a maximum amount that you can charge over the course of the lifetime that your client is in your program. And, you know, you can look all this up, you can find it out very easy with the Google search. But secondly, make sure that your contract conforms with your state requirements. So some states require specific disclosures like they they have like a specific blob of text that you need to plop into your contract. Some of them have stupid things, like, you have to have a specific size font, like your font needs to be Arial, size 14, or whatever. So look into that, and just make sure your your contract is up to snuff. And then some states also have limits on how long the clients can stay in the program. I know the most difficult ones are six months, some of them are 12 months, but they do have term limits. And they they also may require that you have a refund policy or specific refund policy, like if they if they cancel within or cancellation period. If they cancel right to rescission within three days or five days, I think one states even 10 days, so make sure that your contract conforms with that. And then, you know, there's only like five states that I'm aware of that actually require a license. Okay, I know that was part of your initial question. And, you know, almost every city and state requires a license, whatever, you know, whether you're a plumber, or an architect or whatever, if you're self employed, and you're you're doing a certain train within their state city or whatever, they're going to require a license, and every one of them is different. So there's no way we can go over all those here. But I do know that there are five states that are a little bit particular about getting an actual license for credit repair. And those would be Oklahoma, Mississippi, Puerto Rico, South Carolina and Idaho. So if you're in any of those states, like if you not if not if your clients are in the States, but if you are physically located, your business is located in those states, then you might want to dig a little bit deeper and make sure that you're doing everything correct in those days.
Daniel Rosen 32:52
That was awesome. Corey, was that awesome. You guys smash that like or love button. So Cory knows. Wow, wasn't Cory awesome? I hope you're taking notes because he sure dropped a lot of gold. Okay, so that's part one of our big free live training with me and credit expert Corey Gray. And I hope you enjoyed it. And in next week's episode, we are going to drop even more gold, because I'm going to show you how to bootstrap a million dollar business from nothing, just like I have here at Credit Repair Cloud. And just like all of our millionaires here on the Wall have. So don't forget to click the link below to access my free 20-page cheat sheet. It's a whole book we created with all the info from this free training. And if you'd like me to hold you by the hand, as you launch your very own credit repair business, make sure to check out our Credit Hero Challenge. It's a live experience that has helped tons of Credit Heroes to get their first paying clients to get certified in disputing and to gain confidence as they launch their credit repair business on a solid foundation. So they can change a whole lot of lives and make a great living in the process. And the Challenge, it's so affordable, it's going to cost you less than it would cost to take your family to McDonald's for dinner. Now we're starting the next Challenge very soon. So you've got to join before the doors close. So to do that, go to CreditHeroChallenge.com. And if you're finding value in the things that I'm sharing on this podcast, be sure to click this subscribe and if you're feeling kind, rate me and give me a review, because this is a new podcast and I can use all the help I can get. And I will see you in the next episode and until then, be a Credit Hero and keep changing lives. Hey, everybody, it's Daniel again. And really quick, I'd like to invite you to join what I believe is the best thing we have ever created inside the Credit Repair Cloud community. And it is a challenge that we call the Credit Hero Challenge. If you're just planning out your business, or you're just getting started, and you dream of having a successful business of your own so you can quit your nine to five and fire your boss and have financial freedom or so you can add another revenue stream to your existing business. If that's your dream, you need to get into this challenge. We created this challenge to help you to create and launch your very own credit repair business to build a proper foundation for a really successful business. This challenge is going to help you to understand the strategy, the tactics and all the things you need to be successful at credit repair. It really is the greatest thing we have ever built, and it will change your life. So I recommend you do it right now. Stop everything, pause this audio, go online and go to CreditHeroChallenge.com that's CreditHeroChallenge.com and join the next Challenge. And there's a Challenge that is starting in just a few days. So go get started right now at CreditHeroChallenge.com