Startup to 7 Figures: Insider Guide to the Credit Repair Business w/Bruce Politano!

Daniel Rosen  0:00  

Hey, Credit Heroes. It's Daniel Rosen here. And I'm coming to you live from my hotel room here in Orlando, Florida. I'm actually here at the rock concert of marketing events. It's an event called Funnel Hacking Live. And it's been here in Orlando, Florida, all week, and I had to come up here to my room because I needed to shoot this video. And it's just crazy. Downstairs, the energy is through the roof. And all week, I've been hard at work with some of the best minds in the business, developing new tools and tactics to help you run and grow your credit repair business. So, while I'm in town, I wanted to share an interview that I recently did with one of our most successful credit heroes. See, I had the honor of being one of the first guests on the credit repair junkies podcast, which is hosted by our Millionaire's Club member Bruce Politano. See, Bruce, Keenan and I dove deep into what it takes to grow and scale a credit repair business all the way up to seven figures. And you know what? I'm going to share that entire conversation with you right now on this podcast. So you 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 and 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.

Bruce Politano  1:52  

Now, let's jump right into this thing. I want to know Daniel Keenan, Credit Repair Cloud. How long has it been that you guys have been in a credit repair space?

Daniel Rosen  2:02  

Well, Credit Repair Cloud has been around for about 10 years. But I had been in the credit repair space for about 10 years prior to that. So it's about 20

Bruce Politano  2:11  

years. Really, Tell me about that. Yeah. Well,

Daniel Rosen  2:15  

it's kind of a crazy story. When I was a kid. I didn't have a very good home life. I wasn't very good in school. But I was really obsessed with juggling. I was so obsessed with juggling. It's all I would do. And I got really good at it. which came in handy because when I was 13, I left home and I would juggle on street corners to make money to eat. I was homeless, and that's how I made money to eat. Then I learned that if I could make people laugh, they put more money in my hat. I just kept obsessing and obsessing and getting better at this. And I started to have a little career in show business. My first gig off the streets. I was in the Ice Capades, which was kind of weird. I was in an ice skater. But I went to the skating rink and said, I'd like to have ice skating lessons, please, because I'm gonna be in the Ice Capades. That's it. Have you ever skated? I said, no, they thought I was crazy. So I started practicing all that got in the Ice Capades and realized that I didn't like that so much that I missed the comedy from the streets. So I decided I wanted to get really, really good at comedy. So I obsessed on that I just obsess over things. And I worked in all kinds of crappy comedy clubs and all kinds of things worked my way up. Eventually, I was doing shows like Johnny Carson and things like that. And I had a pretty long career in show business and on television. In my last longtime gig, I was the announcer The prices, right? Oh, a guy who says come on down, guy, a new car. So that was a career, and it looked like I was doing a lot. But a career in show business really means you're broke all the time. I had big gigs, but then there were long, long gaps between them where I was always living on credit cards. And you know, and you get those credit cards, and then you get those things in the mail with those blank checks. Yeah, and I use those to pay off to pay my rent and other things, and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse during the prices, right? That was my longest gig. So I managed to buy this messed up little house. And it had no kitchen or bathroom for like nine months. I was living there like I was camping. Really? Yeah, food and Home Depot back in the yard. Oh, wow. But I slowly fixed it up and again racked up my credit cards, but I was so proud of that little house because I felt like I had finally really achieved something but then one day, this bank error destroyed my credit overnight. And all my bills shut up and I was on break between shows again. My bills doubled overnight, the error was, that I had both my first and second loan at the same bank. So big loan, and then a little HELOC loan, some clerk there typed in the wrong thing. And so they're both the same amount. And that made me look hundreds of 1000s of dollars over a revolving line of credit. So that sent up red flags, all my bills Shut up. I didn't have the money. I almost lost my house, I almost went bankrupt. It was just horrible. It ruined my life. I called the bank. And, they they said, Sorry, we made a mistake, we'll fix it. But I couldn't fix that domino effect on all the other cards. So it was months of letter writing and calling. And this whole time and I was pretty into computers on the side, I would make websites for people. Yeah. Other other comedians and performers. So. Exactly, exactly. And I realized I'm writing all these letters. I'm because I was studying credit repair and how it works. And I'm writing all these letters and making these calls and keeping track of everything. And I'm doing this is a lot of repetitive work. There's got to be software for this. And I started searching for it. Yeah. And there wasn't any. Well, you and this was early 2000s. Yeah, and there wasn't any. And I went, Uh huh, I found my way to show business, I'm going to create the world's first credit repair software. But I didn't know anything about business. I don't have a degree in finance. I didn't even graduate high school. So I had to start learning how to code, and I kept trying to learn how to code, and it wasn't working. And eventually, but I kept drawing the software. So I drew it so many times, like Do you remember the movie Close Encounters where the guy keeps drawing this mountain? And he doesn't know why he's obsessed with it. That's how I was. I kept drawing this software that I wanted to build that I couldn't build, eventually, I figured out you hire somebody. And so by doing a gig here or there, or making somebody a website, or whatever I could, I managed to pay for a developer to help me. And I made this little download called credit aid. Yeah, I mean, I finally got this launched in about 2004. And it was $20. I sold a few, but nobody really cared. And, but that was me in the doctor's suit. I was the credit doctor see. But it actually did what it was supposed to do.

Bruce Politano  7:42  

That still existed in 2012. Was it not? Oh, yeah, that I remember that when I got into credit for the chance. 2012. That's what I had. Oh, yeah. And

Daniel Rosen  7:52  

for about, some people bought it. But it just it was, it was so hard to get a customer. And then I'd get $20 for this thing. And then I'd never see that person again. Eventually, I made a little bit bigger of a version for businesses. But still, that was the end of the sale, I didn't know how to create a business from it a good week, I could make maybe $100 or a couple of dollars. It was terrible. But credit repair companies started wanting bigger versions, mortgage brokers and realtors, and people like tax people started wanting bigger versions. And that's when I realized, oh, I've got to make it for businesses. Yeah. And it's got to be in order for it to really be a business. And it's got to be in the cloud so that we can keep making it better. And, and so

Bruce Politano  8:46  

Uber's credit aid was for consumers per consumer, like you were, hey, you know, I got the runaround from the credit bureaus, right? There's huge air, and it's very repetitive work. So yeah, let me buy this little piece of software to help me not cramp my hands and get a carpal tunnel for writing so many letters. So that's quite an alias for us for the consumer. Right? Yeah. It's like a dry.

Daniel Rosen  9:08  

Yeah. In fact, I even did get into stores. It was in a chain called Fries. No, but so I made 1000s of them. But then fries never paid me. It was a disaster. Yeah, I ran TV commercials. But I was just like flushing money away. I didn't know how advertising worked.

Bruce Politano  9:27  

Yeah. So, really, you've been in credit for space. And since the early 2000s, in one way or another especially in credit, a. So then when did Credit Repair Cloud become a thing? When was the Credit Repair Cloud initiated? And how was that transition from credit aid to Credit Repair Cloud? Well,

Daniel Rosen  9:45  

the little bit of money I was making from this, I got this idea, but I knew it was gonna be really expensive. And it was before people were even calling this the cloud, the internet, but I got this idea. And I started pitching to investors because I knew it was going to cost a whole lot of money. And they all said, No. So I just thought it, I'm not going to leave this room until I figure it out. And I sat in the weird little sad room for about five years. And I just worked on it. I mean, occasionally, I leave to if I like, paint someone's wall or watch someone's cat or do something to get money to keep paying developers and slowly hobbled this thing together. And I still didn't know how advertising worked. So I would just write articles all night until the sun came up. And that started to create a blog, and that started to bring traffic. And then, after five or six years, in this weird little room, I was able to launch a Credit Repair Cloud. And because I'd written all the articles, people started coming in and started getting a little traffic, traffic, and traction. And then, the first year or so, I was doing everything. I thought it'd be easy once there were customers. Yeah. But suddenly, I was dealing with people, too. And that was really hard. I'd never done that I on the early website; you'd probably remember Tammy. I had little pictures on this side of the people I was pretending to be. Yeah, I was still on sales. I was Tammy on support. Everyone hated me, it was. So it was just horrible trying to get this thing going. But little by little, it started to grow. But I wasn't getting any sleep. And it was very stressful. At one point, I gained almost 100 pounds from the stress. Yeah. And that's when Kenan came into the picture. That's

Bruce Politano  11:53  

what I was gonna ask like, Yeah, you didn't have to come in somehow. How did that happen? And what was that like?

Daniel Rosen  11:59  

Well, there was this, Google had this thing. It was really cool. But they only promoted it on one day, it was called Google Helpouts. Can you describe what that was?

Keenan Jones  12:09  

Yeah, it was at the time; it was a platform where you could learn from a variety of experts online. So if you wanted to learn to cook, or I heard lawyer or GET IT support, you could basically pay someone by the minute and over like a, I don't like what we're doing now. Like over a Zoom call. Yeah. And you get someone's expert help.

Daniel Rosen  12:31  

Yeah. And so I thought this is far out. I want to try this. Yeah. And then I thought, What do I need help with? And I just bought my first Mac because I'd been doing windows for years and years and years. And I thought, Okay, I have this weird question about formatting bullet notes, or bullet bullets in in an email, and I'll find somebody who can help me. And I kept seeing all these IT people. And then there was this kid that I kept seeing, it was Kenan in a little suit and tie. And he and my girlfriend are in the other room. Christ is in there, saying, Hey, what are you doing? Aren't we going to watch a show? No, I gotta meet Kenan. I found his resume. And it said he I figured out he was in high school. So I thought he was about 17. His resume said he'd been doing IT support for 10 years, and the meeting started at seven. Yeah, she's going, can we watch a show? And I'm going no, I gotta meet Caden. And then, five minutes later, he was $4.95 for 15 minutes. Oh, 495. And then we're face to face with Kenan. And he solved my problem in less than a minute. And, and I said, Hey, I paid you for 15 minutes. We still have 14 left. Tell you about my company, because I want you to work for me. And so Kenan was the first employee. And yeah, and then he started giving me advice. And I'm going, why is this kid giving me advice? But months later, when I started following the advice, we started doing a lot better as a business and we started to grow. Most of Keenan’s advice was to hire more people. Yeah. So that's what we started this

Bruce Politano  14:18  

year. Are you built this software? We can figure out bullets in an email on a Mac. Yeah, right. Like I can build software. But I can't do bullets on a Mac. Right. Give me my windows back. So you meet Kenan for 495. Right. And boom, a marriage made in heaven. And this was how long? 10 years ago, I guess, nine-half

Keenan Jones  14:39  

10 years ago. Yeah. And

Bruce Politano  14:40  

how old were you then?

Keenan Jones  14:42  

I think, yeah, somewhere around 18.

Bruce Politano  14:43  

At the time, wow. Look at that. And what has that been like for you? Like what was that experience like for you to come into what Daniel had just started out and then kind of be able to, not only you know, give your input by seeing how your input helped? Develop? What credit for Cloud is to De

Keenan Jones  15:00  

Yeah, it was a. I mean, the whole experience was a lot of fun. I mean, I've always been into tech, and, um, and always been kind of an entrepreneur at heart growing up. Like I like some, I think Daniel and I have a lot of similarities with some of our early stories of length. It's like he's hustling and doing people's websites. Yeah. In the wall, like I was in high school, like, yeah, doing video editing for people building people's websites. Yeah. I run around in my car at different people's houses to do it support, and I always like freelancing with a tonne of entrepreneurial stuff. Yeah, then it just gave me a vehicle to do it in a business. And, yeah, I started giving a bunch of advice on, like, marketing in the early days. What came in doing support grew into marketing and now a product,

Bruce Politano  15:50  

the combats that are awesome. I have a similar story to like, I left. My parents I was when I was 15. And I was hustling too. But when your back is pushed against the wall, and you have no choice but to succeed, the only thing you can do is succeed, right? Yeah, my wife and I, talked about this all the time. And we, you know, I wonder what kind of person I would have become if I didn't have those things happen to me early on in my life. Would I even be where I am today doing the things that I am doing today? Right? I would have the little bit of success that I have today if it weren't for all those circumstances because I feel like I'm a product of all that. And I think you guys could probably share the same things. It's as if you weren't juggling in the middle of the street at 13. Federal, your clock probably wouldn't be here. Right? Exactly. Some things just have to happen in life in order to kind of push you through, you know, beyond your limits. And that's where you really build big things. So that's that's awesome. So, the awesome story the Credit Repair Cloud. Was there ever a plan B? Like you knew they knew that you were going to do this credit aid? And then you started seeing to demand that people needed a bigger version of IT companies needed a bigger version of it? Was ever it? Was there ever a thought like, man, maybe I shouldn't do this, I should go into doing something else instead? Or were you always all in to this one thing, and why are all in

Daniel Rosen  17:05  

because I become obsessed with things. And I mean, during that time, when I was in that weird little room, obsessing about trying to build this, I also wasn't sleeping much. I wasn't showering or brushing my teeth, I was just focused. In the end, I get I mean, now I, I've learned to have a morning routine where I actually do bathe and brush my teeth. But things got pretty unbalanced. And I think to do anything big, you have to go unbalanced. I know I was just so obsessed for it to succeed. And then when Kenan came on board and started saying, We got to hire more, we just kept higher as we grew. Actually, we'd hire more people, and then the business would grow. It was sort of backward. Yeah. But that's how it worked. Even Kenan at the very beginning, okay, how much money do you want? It was $500 a month. And I went, Oh, my God, that's so much money. How am I gonna afford that? Yeah, I figured it out. Yeah. And then, if that was the beginning, it was very, very meager beginnings. But we kept hiring hard. Now we have over 100 people, it's pretty amazing. So we can do really cool stuff. Yeah, we're building all kinds of cool stuff for the future, we're getting into AI, and all kinds of wild things are coming.

Bruce Politano  18:27  

That's awesome. You know, it's, it's cool to see because I don't want to knock anybody out who didn't have hardships in life but are successful right there. Um, there's a way to succeed without hardships, right? You don't, and you also don't have to be a trust fund baby to have success either. Right? There's, there's, there's a happy medium, really, all you need to do is you need to work hard. So you can have a good life, right? A loving home with two parents and, you know, graduate high school to a 4.0 GPA, and, you know, be you know, all these wonderful things. But that's not what makes somebody successful, is a work ethic. If you have a strong work ethic, that's really what it takes, where you obsess and you don't give up until you're done. Right. So it's not to knock anybody out who didn't have hardships like the three of us did, and found success. But I feel like when you have hardships, you don't have any other choice other than to have a strong work ethic, so you don't survive, are you going to eat? Like if you're juggling, you weren't going to make a few bucks to go get $1 menu burger from McDonald's. Right? Like, I remember that. Like, I used to get $3 a day. So I can have three double cheeseburgers. So McDonald's, like I remember that like it was yesterday, you know, and it was if you don't have the work ethic, you're not going to make the $3. You know, so I feel like you know, for anybody listening to this show who's interested in starting a credit repair company, or maybe you already started your credit card company, but you don't you haven't found the success that you're trying to achieve yet. It has all to do with your work ethic, not knocking your work ethic just work harder, right? It's not like if you're if you didn't have $1 to feed your family A next week, would you be working as hard as you are today? Or would you work a little bit harder? And if you have that mindset, that framework, you really could bootstrap your business to the next level.

Daniel Rosen  20:08  

Sure. The important thing is to learn from your mistakes and make little adjustments. When I was doing this, it wasn't working. And I kept, like, trying and trying and trying the same thing, and it was failing and failing. But now what finally grew, the company was making mistakes and learning from them and pivoting and, and, I see our customers, many CROs when they're just getting started. They're, they're afraid to go live on, you know, Facebook Live and all that stuff. And they're afraid to put things out there for their friends and family to see. And yeah, and so they don't get customers, you don't go

Bruce Politano  20:50  

all into it, it's not gonna go all in for you. The failure is a good thing. If you're failing forward, they'll fail, right? If you fail, and that defeats you, then fail. Failure wins, right? Failure loses every time you fail forward, and you use failure as a stepping stone to get to the next thing, right? So if you fail, that's okay. It's normal, you know, success on the other side of failure, right? You can avoid failure on your way to success; you're going to fail a few times before you find success. And even when you do find success, you're still going to fail, you know, again,

Daniel Rosen  21:20  

and again and again, 1000s of times.

Bruce Politano  21:23  

And that's how you do it upward billing, exactly. Failing upwards fairly forward. If you have to say, right, it's been 20 years, right? Almost Credit Repair Cloud has been around or in the credit repair space that you guys have been involved in. If you each had to say one thing that you know, now that you wish you knew when you first started Credit Repair Cloud when Kenya was already in the picture, and you guys were working together, Daniel for you, what is one thing that you know, now that you wish you knew, then that could have like, made a world of difference for you guys? And then Kenan, I'll ask you the same question.

Daniel Rosen  21:56  

Getting help growing a team, finding mentors. And another big one, when I was doing this, my girlfriend Grace kept saying you should go out and meet other other businesses and get their advice. And I was like, I know everything. Nobody's gonna understand my business. And it kept failing. Now, we're we get in mastermind programs. We've got mentors, we've got, we do networking, we're meeting lots and lots of people in many kinds of businesses. Really, all businesses are the same. Yeah. But it's really important. So I wish I'd done all that.

Bruce Politano  22:37  

You hear eight-figure businesses or nine-figure businesses talk about I have mentors; I network and get in masterminds. What makes you think that your six-figure business doesn't need that? If my eight-figure business and your eight-nine-figure business need that, what makes you think that those don't, right? And people are so afraid of asking for help. And I, I didn't, my business didn't boom until I went out. And I asked for help. Because I have a hard time delegating like I'm a control freak. I feel like if I want something done right, I gotta do it myself. No one is gonna do it as good as me. The problem with that is I'm limited to just my own capabilities, right? And then I'm only limited to what I know. And what I don't know hurts me every single time. So I had to go out I had to find a mentor. My mentor is Ty Crandall right, I have been working with Ty for about five years. Now, what did I do? I had a credit card business. He built it. He sold it. And now he runs credit suite, you know, multi--eight figure business-like, this guy's been where I'm trying to go, how about I try to reach out to him and follow his footsteps. Until this day, like clockwork, Ty and I meet every week, and I don't like I can be in Italy on vacation, my family or he can be in skiing somewhere. And we're still finding a way to meet because it's important to me, it's important to him. And it is just it what do you have help you get forward faster. So the fact that you said that coming from a company at the size of Credit Repair Cloud, like I hope that the people who are listening or watching this can understand and realize the importance of seeking help from people who are further ahead because there's plenty of us willing to lay a hand back, right? Like if you had a software company, maybe not in the creditors, Facebook, in other spaces, and they're just getting started their software company. I'm sure you'd be more than happy and willing to lay a hand to give some advice to be a sounding board because you have those people for you. Exactly. Right. It's only lonely at the top if you get there by yourself. Right. So, how many people can you bring up Kenan for you? What was you know, the one thing that you wish you knew then that you know now that would have made a world of difference for you guys organization?

Keenan Jones  24:39  

Well, before I go into my first time, just something tactical around Daniel's advice of just hiring and getting people to help. Yeah, like one of our mentors, Dan Martell, he's in the software world, but he just wrote a book recently called Buy Back Your Time, it's all about getting help and very tactically Young. After looking around software companies, it could be it's actually very tactical for any business. Yeah, it teaches you the right mindsets and right processes to, to get you out of the business and get you into building the business.

Bruce Politano  25:14  

That's important. Very important.

Keenan Jones  25:15  

Yeah. I think the biggest thing that I wish I would have known to be known from the beginning and know now is to model success in general, like go up, go out there, who's, who's one step ahead of us, and go model them back. And it doesn't have to be expensive. Like, I think in the early days, we were buying some books, buying some courses. You're now a fan of Click Funnels. So we were buying some, like, to get better at marketing, we bought a bunch of Russell Brunson's books of the founder of Click Funnels and learned a lot about marketing. And those books can be like 20 bucks to buy. It's not. You don't have to invest the time. And then we're able to model what they were doing successfully. And then, and then over time, we were able to hire more expensive mentors, get into masterminds, get into bigger business groups, and then we're able to start modeling the success of others. And instead of doing like, the tactics of marketing, sales, and building products, now it's more leadership and learning from other companies to delegate more, how do we, how do we become better leaders. But the investments have come more over time. So you can, you could start smaller. Again, you don't have to get into a really expensive mastermind, In the beginning, we started with just some books and courses and grew from there.

Bruce Politano  26:46  

So model success, don't reinvent the wheel. Like if somebody already has a wheel working, why you're going to reinvent it and make a square right?

Daniel Rosen  26:54  

Also, even if you don't have money for a mastermind, just every city has a local business networking group, and it meets plumbers and electricians, and their business is the same as yours. They have to get clients the same way. And then they can probably send you clients, and all so many of those things are free.

Bruce Politano  27:17  

Yeah, that's true. A lot of, you know, a mistake that I see entrepreneurs make, especially in our industry, right in a credit per space, is as credit for your business owners, right as CROs we sometimes obsess with the idea of doing credit repair more than with the fact that you own a credit repair business. Yes, it's important to know how to do credit repair because that's what people are paying you for. That's your product, that's your service, you need to note that. But more important than that is knowing all that is useless if you don't have a business, right? So, knowing the business is more important than knowing the service or the product. So you need to be able to remove yourself from the day-to-day as soon as possible. So that you can grow your business, and you can teach somebody the day-to-day, right, you can hire, you can do all these things. Because no one is gonna go out there and grow your business. You can find a bunch of people to write dispute letters, and you can find a bunch of people to talk to customers on the phone, but you're not going to find people who are going to go out and grow your business for you. Well, you can do that. Right. So to Kevin's point, you know, don't reinvent the wheel, find help mentor, not mentor model success model, what's working? Let's look at successful credit card companies. Are their owners or their CEOs writing dispute letters? Well, what are they doing? Model what they're doing. Right? I think that for you, Daniel in particular, when did you get to the point where you kind of removed yourself from being CRC creator hands-on to moving the business moving the vision forward? That was

Daniel Rosen  28:58  

hard. That was really hard because it meant letting go of everything because I was doing everything I was in everybody's business. I was in support tickets, I still get

Bruce Politano  29:07  

the same email that comes to my company because I just can't let go. But yes, I get that it's hard. Yeah.

Daniel Rosen  29:12  

And I was we were in this program with this guy named Alec Scharffen. His company is now called Simple Operations. In fact, he taught us how to create the organization, how communication works, goals, meetings, and all the things that became the operating system of our business. And the big goal of his program is to get into what he calls running your business from the passenger seat. And that means handing everything off, and that freaked me out. I couldn't do it, but Keenan would catch me in support tickets and say get out of there. Other people I was I was micromanaging. But I was doing so much and under so much stress. One day, I just surrendered and let go. And it was scary. It was very scary and actually went through about six months, where I was depressed. And I didn't know what to do because I was so used to putting out fires all day long. And I'd come in here to work. And I'd be playing on Facebook so that Keenan in the next office would think that I was working class and I didn't know what to do. But gradually, it opened up space to where suddenly I could live in the future. And I could live in the future of what we want to do as a company. And the other thing, once I handed everything off, and got Abraham out of everyone's way, the business grew a lot faster. And now Kenan is going through that,

Bruce Politano  30:46  

tell me that, yeah, let's talk about that game, and how's that experienced?

Keenan Jones  30:49  

It's a challenging experience for anyone to go through. I mean I, I mean, I started with the company and support, I had to work my way out of that into marketing and then work my way more out of that to get into the product. And now I'm actually or hiring people under me to work my way, at a higher so I can get to a higher level of the product side of the business, it is really hard to let go. But there's was only way to grow the business because you're allowed to become a bottleneck. Or if you want to grow the business, you have to do it. There's like a reason that if you look at lots of small and medium businesses and like your city like you go like a plumber, dentists, all those kinds of small businesses in your city, there's a reason that most of them get to like 1,000,002 million a year and then cap at that because they just can't out outgrow their ability to delegate what they're doing in their own time.

Bruce Politano  31:48  

I know we've said unlocking the bottleneck of the business like you yourself, your position becomes the bottleneck.

Daniel Rosen  31:54  

Because he knows so much. He knows so much; everyone's coming to him for every department. We all call him Young Yoda. So yeah, yeah.

Keenan Jones  32:06  

But mentors have helped a lot. A lot of management books say this where you if you feel like you're having a challenge, where you're spending way too much time in the business and not on it to grow it. Like, just spend two weeks documenting your time in 15-minute increments on a piece of paper; what are you doing? What are you doing, it makes you realize where you're spending all your time. And then you can analyze that and be like, I just spent one week on marketing? Yeah, I need to hire someone to replace me. And that's one way to start getting out of the day-to-day

Bruce Politano  32:39  

and it's easier said than done, right? Because, like, it's your baby like you what it is today, you created it from nothing like you birthed this thing. And then for you to just hand it off to somebody who for sure is not going to care as much about it as you do. Well, they don't have to, they just have to care enough to keep moving it forward. Right? It's hard for my wife and I to go out on dates because we don't let strangers watch our kids. Like if my parents aren't watching my kids or, or my sister-in-law is not watching my kids, we're not going anyway. Because I'm not going to leave my babies with people who I don't know that I don't trust that are going to even keep them alive in our businesses the same way. So, delegating is so difficult. And then you said your business really started growing when you started doing those things. And that's the truth for every business. That's why the plumbers and the dentist offices they do they grow to once a million are done because who else is gonna be the dentists? Who else is gonna be the plumber like you become the bottleneck of your business for me, I hired a 17-year-old kid today, his name is Rob he runs better pair jockeys today. He was scooping ice cream. And we met at church and students a ministry, and I was like, hey, you know, I'm looking for, you know, somebody to help me out. And he will come into the third bedroom of my apartment. And we used to print letters and fold letters together, way back in the day, until I had my business to grow because I had to be stuck in there. Then when Rob came along and he became the Bruce of that time, the new Bruce had time to go out and do other things right. And now we have Danny, who was fresh here from Columbia and needed a job; he now runs my entire credit, like a credit repair company. And if it weren't for Daniel, we wouldn't be where we are today in our own credit repair company because I can't handle everything by myself. So it's important to know, like, if you're if you're just getting started now, you think about starting a credit repair company. One of the things that you need to realize a need to do sooner than later is get yourself out of the day-to-day operations as soon as possible. Right? How soon would you guys say Daniel? How soon do you remove yourself from day-to-day operations?

Daniel Rosen  34:35  

Well, I think you need to learn your craft first. And but then as soon as you know your craft and you got some customers, Yeah, start finding help

Bruce Politano  34:46  

because you can't manage what you don't know. Right? How can you hire somebody to come out and do your customer service or your sales? If you don't even know how to do customer service and sell yourself? How can you hire somebody to come to your disputes or manage somebody to do disputes? Even if it's a company like mine with 11 years of experience, how can you manage us? If you don't even know how to do it? Like, how can you hold us accountable? If you don't even know it? You're gonna literally be at our mercy. I mean, you could. You're safe, right? But as a business owner, it is not necessarily the smartest choice to make. So I agree with you: learn your craft first. But that doesn't mean that to learn it, you have to do it for a year.

Daniel Rosen  35:19  

No, but you have to do it long enough to document it. Yes. And write the SOP SOP; otherwise, when you hire somebody, they're not going to know what to do.

Bruce Politano  35:27  

And it's gonna be in its SOPs, which are just easier to train, right? You plug somebody into your SOP, right, your standard operating procedure, and then now you have a framework to train somebody. And now you can hire as many people as you want, you just plug them into SOP, if you don't have an SOP, that every time you hire somebody, you got to take time away from doing what you're doing to go and do manually what the SOP can automate in your business. Right? It's better if your client has a lot of SOPs,

Daniel Rosen  35:51  

probably over 1000.

Bruce Politano  35:55  

Then who puts all those together? Kenan put a lot together?

Keenan Jones  35:59  

Well, at the start, it's, I mean, when, if you're trying to get something off your plate, it's I mean, sometimes they can start by just that person documenting the processes. For example, in the early days, I was doing support, and then I would document a few things, that process of how I would do support, and then hand that to that person. And then, you know, start doing that product, here's the process of how we're going to build a product, and then handing it over to a team member. I mean, you could do that simply just by getting an app like loom is Another and order screen, just go through the process that you're doing on a daily basis, like, on a 15-minute video, this is how I do this process. This is how we booked people for the podcast, this is we how we should do this type of support ticket and send it over to them. And that's one way of starting to delegate that. And now it's, I mean, now we have teams with members under them and members under them. So they're all creating the processes. We have to teach techniques to those team members to help them, you know, create the processes for their departments. Yeah,

Bruce Politano  37:05  

a lot of people have analysis paralysis when it comes to building SOPs. And it's literally as easy as recording yourself doing that thing. Maybe if it's not your screen, if it's a manual process, turn your iPhone camera on, put it into selfie mode, and record yourself doing it. Nobody hire somebody here; watch this video; this is how I do it. Right, and watch this video. This is my screen of me doing a whole thing. It's easier than you think. You don't need analysis prep, and you don't need to create this whole Google Doc with 30 bullet points. You know, a Kenan can help people do bullet points on Mac if you guys need help. But it's not that difficult, right? You just record yourself doing it. So yeah, I don't have analysis paralysis.

Daniel Rosen  37:40  

And these are the things that really grow a business.

Bruce Politano  37:43  

You have to have a concise way of doing things right. And then, a lot of times when you build an SOP, while you're building the SOP, you can come up with a more efficient way of doing it. Just because you're documenting it. And you're like, Man, why do I do it that way? It's so counterproductive. I just didn't like this instead, it'll be so much easier. Just because you're building the SOPs, you start realizing those things. Right. That's awesome. A couple more questions, and then we'll wrap it up. What's next for Credit Repair Cloud?

Keenan Jones  38:08  

What's next? We got a lot on her plate. I mean, a few things coming down the line. We're working our way into AI and got some big things coming in that direction. And we're working on a lot of things that, as a new CRO, you need. Often a lot of people in coming into the industry need help with marketing and sales and getting leads into their business. So we're working on ways to make that even easier.

Bruce Politano  38:33  

That's awesome. That's awesome. That's, you know, I tried to serve my industry that's, you know, I live to serve. You know, servant leadership, for me, is a real thing. And, you know, working with as many CROs as we do, we realize that the biggest problem that CEOs have is getting customers, right? So, on July 10, we're running our first CRO boot camp. It we're doing 100 clients in 100 days, boom, guaranteed. And if you don't get 100 clients in 100 days, I'll personally work with you one-on-one for free until you do because I'm sick and tired of seeing CRO struggle to get customers that are getting leads. You could throw a rock and hit somebody with bad credit. Finding people's backgrounds is not hard. The difficulty comes in having a sales process to convert those leads into paying customers and having a structured business that can support that growth. Right, so people come into the industry thinking it's as easy as making, you know, a few Facebook posts, and then you get one of the millionaire plaques. Yeah, it's not necessarily you get there, but you got to have processes, you got to have SOPs, you have to remove yourself from the day-to-day operations. You are the bottleneck, you know, so we're running this boot camp where we're gonna start helping a lot of people because I want the industry to succeed. I want people to come into the industry and stay right. I don't want you to come into the industry, stay for three to six months, not be able to succeed, and then quit and go back to your nine-to-five like that's not the life that anybody wants when you want to start a credit card business to help people well, let's get there you know, so it's awesome that you guys have that same mission of helping people you know coming up marketing and sales and teach people how to get customers because what else are you in business for? Are you gonna change a whole lot of lives if you can get lives to change? Right? So it's cool to see that we share that same vision. And that's a mission to help CROs up and running. Daniel, for you, what is long-term goal for Credit Repair Cloud? You know, five years, maybe even 10 years from long term? What do you see, as a visionary of the company,

Daniel Rosen  40:21  

we're building something that is going to bring CROs lots and lots and lots of clients. We've got this big giant thing. I can't really talk about it. But it's really exciting. Love the cliffhanger. Take some time to build it. Yeah, but it's gonna bring lots and lots and lots of clients.

Bruce Politano  40:43  

This is your long-term vision for CRC; it's

Daniel Rosen  40:45  

a long-term vision

Bruce Politano  40:47  

is right. Now whatever you guys put out, it's, you know, you have that heart of serving as well, you know, and that's why companies who are in it just for money, they fail, they fell in with you guys do your best with what you have to be able to help as many people as you can. And we, you know, a lot of you are appreciated by many. That's for sure.

Daniel Rosen  41:04  

That's so nice to hear. I mean, it's really, we really care about the businesses on our platform.

Keenan Jones  41:11  

A little more about the future, to I mean, I think we see that a lot of consumers don't even realize how to get to their financial goals. They don't realize they can buy a house or they don't even realize that, that they're paying a crazy amount on their loans. So we have some big ambitions to really help help more people get to their financial goals, educating them,

Daniel Rosen  41:34  

millions of people. Awesome.

Bruce Politano  41:37  

That's exciting. I can't wait to see it unfold. All right, so let's wrap up. I'll let you guys put me on the spot. If you have any questions that you'd like to ask me, now's the time,

Keenan Jones  41:45  

you're exposed to so many business owners, you're just mentioned mentioning. I mean, I'm sure you've worked with 1000s 10s of 1000s of people in the industry over the years, like, what do you wish they knew in the industry to help them succeed? Like, what do you wish they knew prior to getting into the industry?

Bruce Politano  42:04  

I wish they knew it wasn't so easy. I wish they knew that. It's not as easy as you may think. Like anything in life, it's all rainbows and unicorns, right? Like, you're gonna have hurdles, you're gonna have adversity, you're gonna have difficulties. And the only way you get through those things if you're why you're doing it is strong enough, the successes on the other side of the adversity or the failures of the uncomfortable, right? You don't trip and fall on success. Success is intentional, right? It's not accidental. So it's not going to be easy. building anything that's worth anything isn't easy. So yeah, it's easy to get started. It is very easy: you get a laptop, you get a cell phone, you get started. We're not doing this so that you can get started. So, building a credit repair company running a credit repair company isn't easy. It's, it's no easier than running anything else. Right? It's not like, Oh, I'm gonna do a credit for business instead of XYZ, because it'd be so much easier. That's you. That's a lie that you're telling yourself. And I wish a lot of most people knew that if you can go back and you know, if I can know something myself is that man, it ain't gonna be as easy as it's cut out to as it's made seem to be, you know, and we do a good job getting people into the industry, but we have to do a better job, helping them succeed, and not just get in just to get out six months, 12 months later, you know, so that's my mission. Like, that's why this whole boot camp thing is, if I can help you get 100 clients and holidays, and I can show you that you have what it takes to make an incident history. And if you can't get 100 clients in 100 days, and it's because of me, it's because of you. It's because you didn't put in the work you didn't put in, and it's a boot camp. I'm calling it a boot camp because it's intentional. You think about military boot camp. Right? What is a framework? What does the mind phrase like? No excuses, I don't care. Just get it done. I don't care if it's snowing. I don't care if it's raining. I don't care if it's 200 degrees outside, I don't care if you're dehydrated. I don't want to hear it until you're done. Right. And that's the framework that I'm bringing into this thing that we're doing because I need people to know that it's not easy. Like it's, it's easy to start. Yeah, go ahead, file your LLC, get your computer, get your laptop, and boom, easy to start. But now what are you gonna do with it? How do we grow this thing? How do we really make this a real thing? It's not easy. And that's what I wish Kenyans to answer your question. And most people would know, is starting to break company. Yeah, it's easy. Building it, running it, and managing it is not as easy as you may think it is. So that I think that hopefully answers your question.

Keenan Jones  44:20  

As awesome. Do you see any changes in the industry around marketing? What are the tactics that are working to bring in those clients? I mean, you're right in the trenches with 1000s of companies. The name

Bruce Politano  44:35  

of the game is eyeballs. The name of the game is eyeballs. The more eyeballs you get on your business, the more clients you have, right? You can't have 100 clients if 100 People don't even know we do credit repair. That's impossible. It's literally impossible. Right? So yeah, you're afraid of posting on your social media because you don't know what your third cousin is going to think of you think. Yeah, good luck. You're not going to grow your business further than your third cousin. Right. So yeah, more of the name of the game is eyeballs, so How can you get more eyeballs in your business? Effectively, right? Because you have an effectiveness or something you think about, why is it social media that's where all the eyeballs are. Right? You can go to networking events and BNI meetings. That's all great and dandy, where you get 20 eyeballs for the hour and a half that you're there. Right? I can spend an hour and a half going live on Facebook, and that's gonna live forever on Facebook is gonna give me a lot more than 20 eyeballs in a week, right or even in a day so the name of the game is eyeballs when it comes to marketing for credit repair its eyeballs you can literally again throw rock and hit somebody with bad credit to people that are watching have great credit. The other eight need your help. So, how often are you getting in front of them? How often are those eyeballs the same eyeballs seeing you? And that's only built with consistency. You have to become an authority in your space. There are plenty of people back on Reddit, enough for all of us to eat and make a really great living with it. Right? I have a company five miles away from me. We can both make a whole lot of money and serve a whole lot of people. We're not stealing business from each other because there's more than enough for everybody to go around. And people are scared at all. But you know, there are other companies around me like, No, it doesn't matter. There are enough eyeballs. Just capture more eyeballs. So to answer your question, Kenyan, when it comes to marketing trends, it's no trends. It's just where all the eyeballs congregating nowadays, you know, why do we go to mortgage brokers? Because if you go to Russell Brunson's book, you know where your dream clients congregate. Where's the pond? Can they throw your hook? Where do your client dream clients already live? Apply for mortgages? And where's that pond at the mortgage broker's office? So why aren't you there? Your dream clients are there. Why aren't you there? Right, I built my first credit repair company of over 7000 clients in one little pond, just the mortgage broker pond. You know, like, it's you got to be where your clients are. You need to have the eyeballs. And if you have the eyeballs, you'll get the business point blank, no questions or ifs or ands about it.

Daniel Rosen  46:47  

Every time we see you, you are so smart about this stuff. It is just amazing to watch you; I've just always been mesmerized listening to you.

Bruce Politano  46:56  

I appreciate I'm really passionate about this. Just like you guys aren't this is my livelihood. This is I put food on my table, right again. Yeah, the money is great. But that's not why I'm in it. People who know me on a little bit deeper level than just, oh, I use your product as a user service. They can they can vouch for that. Right? You guys can vouch for that. For me, it's really about the people. It's about serving. How can I help you get to the top because it is lonely at the top? I don't want to be there by myself. Let me let's let's help bring more people up. You know exactly. Thank you guys so much from the bottom of my heart for taking your time when you guys are very busy. So, I appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me for this episode. And I can't wait to see you know what else happens next for all of us in the space. Thank you again so much for your time

Daniel Rosen  47:35  

wasn't that great? Bruce Positano is amazing. And if you'd like to hear even more, check out my interview with him behind the scenes of a million-dollar credit repair business. So take care, 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 it 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 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 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 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 starts in just a few days. So, go get started right now at creditherochallenge.com.