EXACT steps to be a financial coach — with Dan B. | Credit Repair Insider Secrets

Hey, credit heroes. Today we are talking with finance expert Dan Benvenisti, and today he's going to tell us how to solve the biggest underlying issue that causes bad credit and how you can use that knowledge to double your credit repair income and change more lives. So you better stick around. My name is Daniel Rosen, and welcome to Credit Repair Business Secrets. Okay, before I dive in, if you are new to my podcast, be sure to click to subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss any of the secrets that I share each week on the Credit Repair Business Secrets podcast. And if you want me to hold you by the hand as you launch your very own profitable credit repair business, go to creditherochallenge.com okay, let's get into this. Dan Benvenisti is my very Good friend of 25 years. He is the smartest guy I know when it comes to personal finances. He created our very popular course on how to become a personal finance coach, and he's got a new course called Credit Card Secrets, and he's here today to talk about how to solve the biggest underlying issue that causes bad credit and how you can use that knowledge to. To double your credit repair income and change more lives. So please welcome to the podcast Dan Benvenisti. Hey, Dan. Welcome.

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

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

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

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

Well, that's a great question. The main Challenge I see with credit repair clients is they often need to be more financially savvy. Most credit repair clients have quite a bit of debt and they don't have a plan for savings. They're often living week to week or month to month. And they're essentially finding themselves in a common problem that many Americans find themselves in and that is burdened with high interest rates, high interest rate credit cards, not having a financial plan for the future, not having a retirement plan, not having savings to address rainy day concerns. These are very common problems throughout our society, throughout America. It doesn't matter what state you're in, these issues are prolific throughout our society.

Yeah, but okay, you know, I was in show business, which meant I was going gig to gig to gig, and there were long gaps between gigs, so I had to live on my credit cards, and they were maxed out all the time. And when someone is living on credit cards that way, how do you even start to save money?

It all starts with two things. One, have a budget, have a plan, and two, have visibility. Those two things are so important because that's the problem that people have. One, people don't have visibility, so they don't know how much they're spending. They don't know how they're doing at this point in the month, compared to last month, compared to the next month. And they don't have a budget, so they don't know how much they should be spending. And the one thing that I always emphasize is you can't fix a problem unless you could see the problem. So when you give people the tools to have visibility, such as I describe in my course, then they could actually address the problem.

What tools do you use and are they expensive?

No, actually, they're free.

So they're free.

They are free. The way how I wrote the course is we wanted. We wanted people with credit repair companies to use free tools to help manage their clients. And the tool that I chose was mint.com mint.com allows you to aggregate all of your accounts into one screen. So if you have, let's say, six credit cards, a savings account, an investment account, a retirement account, maybe a home loan, all that gets aggregated up into one screen and it automatically budgets it for you. So what that does is you could, you could create a budget and day by day, week by week, you could see how you're doing in comparison to that budget. And when you see how you're doing, you know how you're doing to your plan. So you could adjust your actions to make that plan in Many ways this allows the clients to have better discipline. You. No one's going to have discipline if they, if they don't know what they're doing. If they can't see where they're at, if there's no plan, then, then they're just reacting to it day by day.

Okay, but if I'm living on credit cards and I'm maxed out on everything, how do I know what to tackle first? Can Mint help me with that?

Absolutely. Because what Mint does is it shows you all of the interest rates of each of your credit cards. And as many of us know, in the credit repair business, we should pay down the highest credit card first. Interest is, of course, a fee, and the highest interest rate is the highest fee. So we want to reduce the one that has the highest fee first. So that targets right away which credit cards you should pay down first.

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

That's a great question. And it kind of starts off with discipline. One, again, you have to have a budget, and everyone should have a budget that includes savings. And that savings should be short term savings and long term savings. Long term savings means retirement plan. If you work for a company that offers a 401k, you should sign up for that. It's free money. It allows you to build up money over time. You don't see it removed from your paycheck. The advantage of that is it defers your tax responsibility and it allows you to what's called take advantage of compound interest. In other words, the. The income that you make from that investment gets reinvested and that makes more income. So if you do have the opportunity to get a 401, you should take advantage of that. If you don't, you just start an ira. An IRA is another way to have a retirement plan. These are savings plans that everyone should have.

Well, what if you work for yourself? What if you have a credit repair business? You don't have an employer. How do you do this?

Yeah, that's where an IRA comes in. Anyone could sign up for an ira. An IRA is essentially a savings plan intended for your retirement. Now, we're all going to get older, we're all going to retire. We need to save for that. So the advantage of an IRA is that the money that you put in there is not taxed. So that reduces your tax burden, and it allows you to essentially use that money that would have been taxed as part of your investment and means you get higher returns. So over the course of your working career, that type of savings plan will save enough for you to retire. It is essential for everyone to have some form of retirement plan, either an IRA or a 401K.

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

Yeah. Well, obviously you have to meet your essentials. Right? You have to eat, you have to pay your rent, you have to pay your car payments. Those are all your essentials. And you put that into your budget. You, you then look at how much you're making every week and you see how much you can save. Right. So this goes back to visibility. When you look at how much you make versus how much you have to spend your essentials, that will tell you how much you could save. And ideally you should try to save as much as possible somewhere anywhere between 2 and 10%.

Oh, okay. So if you can even just put as little as 2 to 5%, that's going to make a difference. If you're consistent. Right.

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

So I guess the trick is you gotta learn how to be thrifty. What are some ways to be thrifty?

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

Wow. And a two year old car is going to feel the same as a new car? Basically it will.

And that amount of money you save can be put back into savings and then could generate more wealth.

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

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

Well, which one do you do?

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah. I got so upset, I just left. How about houses? What's Better to rent a house or to buy a house.

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

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

It was great. It really got me to understand the community, to understand their needs, to understand how credit repair kind of relates to personal finance, which is really important. And then I can kind of craft it to kind of understand how best to kind of serve the community.

So your course, it's specifically designed for credit repair business owners on how to become a personal finance coach, right?

Yeah. The message that I always try to give is most of us could repair people's credit. That's somewhat, you know, we know how to do it. There's a very system, there's. It's a systematic approach. It's bureaucratic. We go through the steps and you can improve someone's credit, but that doesn't always address the underlying issues. So in many ways, fixing someone's credit is somewhat of a band aid. So to address the underlying issues, you have to essentially provide financial literacy, you know, train your clients to be financially literate and to make better financial decisions. And that's where personal finance coaching is essentially aligned due to credit repair.

Got it. Because it actually helps the source of the problem.

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

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

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

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

So that time is fairly minimal. I go into techniques to kind of automate the process using public software, and it could be no more than 5, 10 minutes a day to kind of review all their financial transactions and to see if they're following their plan, to see if they're following their budget, and essentially, as the course describes, coaching them. So it's not a lot of extra work. You're able to manage quite a few clients all at once. And I want to kind of emphasize this, it really does build, you know, a next level relationship with your clients so that you're, you're supporting them and you're getting them out of the hole that they're in and getting them into a much better place. Building assets, reducing debts, and as you just said, staged for generational wealth.

Yeah. As well as for the credit repair business owner. Because it literally becomes a new stream of revenue as well, Right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is a really, really ugly system.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wow. And again, you created these courses just for credit repair pros, right?

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

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

Knowledge is power. The solutions education. We want to educate people and bring them up to a better place. Building up assets, reducing debt.

And the more value you can bring to your clients, the more word of mouth and the bigger your business grows.

And we change lives.

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

It was my pleasure. Love being here.

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