I Made A $Million At Credit Repair With Irene Day

Hey, credit heroes. Today we're going to talk with credit repair millionaire Irene Day. Yeah, this is her award from the wall here in our office. See, Irene, she built her credit repair business all the way up to a million dollars in just a couple years.

So if you are wanting to launch.

Or grow your own credit repair business, you are going to love this interview because Irene shares her secrets for for social media, building a team, mindset, automations, and the exact step she took to grow her business so fast. So you better stick around.

So the big question is, how can we take our passion for helping people with their credit and turn it into a successful business without taking loans, without spending a fortune by bootstrapping it from nothing so we can help the most people and still become highly profitable? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Daniel Rosen and welcome to Credit Repair Business Secrets.

Hey, credit heroes. Our guest today is Irene Day, also known as credit Queen Irene. She only launched her business just a few years ago when she left her longtime job in retail to pursue running her very own credit repair business full time. And now she has made it into the Millionaires club. So now, in addition to running her million dollar business, she also helps other folks to start and scale their credit repair businesses using Credit Repair Cloud. And today she is going to reveal her secrets of how she became so successful so fast. So please welcome to the podcast Credit Repair Cloud Millionaires club member Irene Day. Welcome, Irene.

Hey, Daniel. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for being here. Congratulations. I see your award there behind you.

Thank you. Listen, you guys are awesome. I actually, I've got three. Like, my mom stole the first one that I had and I'm like, mom, like, that's, that's my plaque. I need that for myself. And then we recently moved into a 3,000 square foot office. So I'm like, I think I need a plaque for the office too. So.

Wow, that's so cool. And there's another one with your name on it because we have a little version of it.

Oh yeah, the headquarters.

Yes, exactly. For those of you watching, when you get into the millionaires club, you get this big award like Irene has behind her. And then we make a second one that goes on our wall. So our goal is to fill our entire office building with these things covering all the walls. So that's our big goal. And we've come a long way. There's. I think we're at 41.

Anyways, I'm number 35. I was like, check me out, check me out. How does it feel it's been an amazing journey. Like I starting out, I didn't really have like the goal to be on the Mariners club, but then I'm like, why not me? You know, why not? Yeah, why not? So it was definitely a huge accomplishment in my business and I think it meant a lot to me because I had spent so long working for somebody else. Like, when I left my job, I was at my job for exactly 13 years. Like my last day at work was my 13th year anniversary. I've never been somebody who wanted to be an entrepreneur. Like, when I graduated college in 2016, I just wanted a better job. I wanted to work in human resources. That's what my degree is in organizational leadership with a minor in HR. I wanted to work at HR, work Monday through Friday 9 to 5, have my weekends off, drive my little Ford Fusion. That was our company car. Like, that was all I wanted. So taking like this head first approach into entrepreneurship, it was definitely not something that I felt like I had in the cards for myself. But you know, there are higher powers that it's gonna make it, make it do what it do. So here we are.

There are. So what were you doing in that previous job?

So I worked at Sableye. So it's a grocery store chain. When I was there, There were about 3,000 stores across the United States. And the stores that I was at, so I'm in Ohio. Ohio is the most profitable division and I was in the top stores in our division literally the 13 years that I worked there.

What were you doing there?

When I left, I was an assistant manager. I got hired as a cashier. I got hired when I was 17 and I just worked my way up the chain.

So that's how you learned how to manage a team?

Yes. I tell people, like, people ask me all the time, like, what's the most, like what skill set do they feel like I have? That kind of put me ahead of the curve and really already having management experience, like being able to deal with people. Hence the reason I went to school with HR and hr. But being able to deal with people, being able to manage people, being able to manage systems with people. I tell people all the time, you can be the smartest person in the world, like, you can be super great with people, but if you don't have systems in place to run your business, you're not going to be successful. And I think that's why credit repair cloud and like really being able to master credit repair cloud is so important, especially in your credit repair business. Because I'VE used a ton of Credit Repair CRMs. Like, I've been in the industry since 2017, and I tell people time and time again, credit repair cloud has not failed me like anything I wanted to be able to do in my business. Systems wise, credit repair cloud has always been at the foundation of that. So, yeah, you can absolutely run a business without systems, but it's going to be very hard to scale. It's going to be very hard to keep track of your metrics, keep track of your team, keep track of everything you got going on without having the proper systems in place to be able to do that.

Exactly. Now I want to back up a bit.

Okay.

I want to know, how did you even think of getting into credit repair? What led you into this?

So in 2014, my great grandfather died. He was like my favorite person in the whole world. When he passed, my credit was terrible. So all of my credits were in the low four hundreds. I had heard about credit repair, and I've always been a person, like, if I have a problem, I'm going to find a solution. So I had heard about credit repair, and when my grandfather died, he left me some money. What do we do when we get some money and we got bad credit? We pay off our debt because we don't know, like, how the credit system actually works. So I paid off $30,000 worth of debt October 2014. My highest score increase I had was 12 points. And I had been looking for help, and everybody that I was finding was either doing it through, like, network marketing or. Or I would ask them, like, well, do you have to have customer service? Like, if I have questions, who I go, who do I talk to? And, oh, you're not going to have questions. I just spent $30,000 in cash and my credit score went up 12 points. I have all of the questions in the world. So that's when I really start doing a deep dive. And that's when I realized, like, this credit repair thing, like, this is a real thing. Like, we've got state legislation, we've got federal laws. Like, you got licensing. It's a whole. It's a whole ball game. So I repaired my credit and then my coworkers, they've always had more faith in me than I had in myself, honestly. So when I told them, like, this is what I want to do, they were my first clients. Like, oh, Irene, fixing credit. We got to get our credit fixed. So that's where it started. And then I graduated in 2016 from Baldwin Wallace University, and I had actually applied for an internal job that I should have gotten. Like I had letter of recommendation from my store manager, his boss, which was our district manager and his boss, which is our regional manager. And the internal recruiter never reached out to me. They ended up doing an internal investigation and found out that he hired one of his friends and needed a job, even though they specifically told him to hire from within. Because that's why our previous human resource manager had got fired because she didn't know our policy. She didn't know like how the company was being ran. So a lot of times people would call our human resource manager and she was just completely useless. So when I had applied for the job, my district manager was like, they would be crazy to hire anybody else but you. So I just knew like, yeah, this is my job. Like I've been here all this time. Like I put in all this work. I'm great at what I do. I'm great with people. I know our policies inside and out. And I didn't get the job.

Wow.

I didn't even get a call for the interview. And after they did like the internal investigation, like me not getting the job made it up to the COO of the company. And this is a multimillion dollar company, made it up to the coo. So they ended up firing the human resource manager that was responsible for filling that position. But y' all firing him still didn't give me a job. Like I'm still in here with private student loan debt from going to a private university slinging freight. Wow. So I thought I was putting in my two weeks, but I told my district manager like once I had gave him my notice, I told him that it was important that I had the opportunity to work until my 13th year anniversary. So it's really a three week notification. But he didn't have a problem with it. And my coworkers, like they gave me a real great send off. Like they had a party and everything. And I cried the whole way home. But that was like the longest day of life. Longest day ever.

And then did you have plans at that time to open up the credit repair business?

Yeah. So I had started. I officially started my business March of that year. When I quit my job though, I only had three active clients, so it.

Was a little side hustle.

Yeah. But when I quit, it was like, oh, reality hit me real fast. Irene, you got grown people bills. Like you need to hop on it and start generating some money. So 2017, I definitely struggled. Like I tell people all the time, I think we see a lot of people that talk down on the 9 to 5, like, oh, you, you should leave your job and do this. No, you absolutely should not. Like, you should do what is best for you financially or your financial situation. Me leaving my job the way that I did was not good for me financially. In my financial situation, I just happened to be blessed enough. Like, my house was paid off because it was the house that my granddad left me. And I had cashed out my 401k, so. And I was contributing pretty high because I don't have any children and I was, like, relatively young. So I had like almost $50,000 in my 401k and I had cash that out and it was like sink or swim. And I learned how to swim in 2017, so here we are.

You sure did nothing like that to light a fire under you.

Yeah.

So how did you start to turn it into a real business?

Social media has helped tremendously. So I've always been good with people and I've always been a solutionist. Like, a lot of times I think people come into wanting to be a new business owner and they want to free their way to the top. And I don't mean monetarily, I mean time wise, dedication wise, discipline wise. I did a lot of research, like, I'm always reading articles from Fannie and Freddie Mac, like, about what's going on with the mortgage industry. I'm going to all of the credit repair conventions, like, staying on top of what's going on. And a lot of times we fail as business owners because we try to be super salesy. And I tell people all the time, people buy from people they, like, know and trust. Right, Right. So do they like you? Do they know you? Do they trust you? How do you build trust? You build trust by being able to educate your audience. So it's like, I do a lot of educating my audiences. Like, I'm actually a certified financial education instructor. And one of the things that I do outside of my business is that I actually write financial literacy curriculum, so.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Like, constantly. I'm constantly giving people, like, credit advice, tax advice. We also offer tax preparation as a service with Hannah Financial, and that has helped tremendously with building my, like, knowing trust because people feel like I can go to hand financial, get my credit fixed and they know what they're doing. So definitely building, like, knowing trust. We started running paid ads in October of last year.

Okay.

And yeah. But a lot of that has just been organic. I do a lot of networking outside of social media, so I go to A lot of, like, realtor events, mortgage lender events, and, yeah, show my stuff.

You're doing it all well. So back there at the beginning, you lost your job of 13 years. You had three clients.

Three.

You had a little bit of money and a little less pressure than a lot of people. Slightly less, but probably pretty scary, right? Was it scary?

I was terrified. That was. I've never been a risk taker. Like, everything that I've always done has always been very calculated. I've never been the person like, hey, Irene, let's go bungee jumping, or, let's go get on roller coasters. Like, I'm not a risk taker. I don't like that. I'm also terrible with money. So, like, yeah, I had this 50k for my 401k, but that 50k spend, like $5,000 when you are terrible with money. And even now, like, I've gotten a lot better, but money management has always been, like, not my strong suit.

So how do you go from three clients to being able to make a living at this?

Showing up consistently.

Awesome.

We want consistent clients, but we don't want to show up consistently. And that was something I really struggled with in 2017. And once I. It's really just a mindset shift. Like, you have to approach this as, this is all I have. So it's like, I knew this is all I had, but I'm like, you know, I could probably get a. I could probably get a job. Like, I got a lot of experience. I got the education. I could probably get a job. But once the mindset changed, like, this is all I have, and I can absolutely get this done, it was like night and day. It was like a. It was like a complete 180. So. And I tell people all the time, like, it's not hard. The hardest part about running a credit repair business or any business in general, is really just showing up consistently. Like, people do not understand. Like, we see. We see people and we like, oh, they were overnight success. A lot of people failed for 10 years before they got that overnight success. And that overnight success came with them realizing that I have to be consistent in what I'm doing. And it's not a couple of days. Like, I've seen people take credit repair trainings. All right, You've been in class for three weeks. You haven't been keeping up with the coursework. You haven't been actively doing the challenges and everything that we have in it. But it's like, you want consistent clients. You can't expect your clients to show up for your business consistently. If you won't show up for your.

Business consistently, sure, that makes a lot of sense. And back to what you're saying. People see someone successful and it looks easy. They don't realize that's just the tip of the iceberg. What you see, you don't see all down below what went into that. So to go from three clients to making a living, how did you start to get the first consistent clients?

A lot of the clients that I got initially were not local. Oh, yeah. And it's crazy because I was doing a lot of local marketing, Like, a lot of local networking. A lot of local marketing, but my initial set of clients were not local at all. And that's, like, one of the great things about social media. It gives you the opportunity to touch so many people that you would never have the opportunity to touch if you just walked outside of your front door.

So you were doing social media back then? Oh, I didn't realize that.

And when I say, like, show up consistently, people think, oh, I got to get on live, and I got to talk about credit all the time. I want to say now, a lot of my social media stuff that I do is, like, 50 credit, 50 real life, and, like, just random stuff. Like, today I realized that I parked my Tesla too close to the wall in the garage, and I used the summons feature to pull her out of the garage so I could go to the office. I posted that real. It got almost 2,000 views in less than 24 hours. Like, had nothing to do with credit, but it was funny. And I had almost 20 DMS. Hey, how do I sign up for a consultation? So it doesn't necessarily have to be credit, credit, credit, credit, credit, credit, credit again. And it goes back to people buy from who they, like, know and trust. So, yes, people know me as credit queen Irene. Like, they know I'm gonna give y' all all the game you need. And they also know they can come to my profile and get a good laugh or they can see me actually in the field at a mortgage lender networking event. Like, you, you gonna get. You're gonna get a little bit of everything when you come across my social media profiles. And I think that has what has helped me to be able to build my audience even the days that I don't wanna show up for just credit.

Awesome. Okay, now I'm understanding how you're getting these clients from everywhere. That's amazing. How often do you post?

I don't post as often as I should. I have committed to Being active on social media at least once a day. So whether it's posting on my story, posting on my timeline, something else about social media that social media marketing that I see is people will have all these great posts, like, and they're aesthetically pleasing. They have like their graphic designers do them. But one of the most important parts of social media is being social. So yes, going live is great. Yes, posting these posts is great. But are you actually interacting with the people that are interacting with you? And then that also helps with your social media algorithm because that's how Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, that's how they decide who sees what is. Who are you actually interacting with. So it's definitely a job, but it's probably one of the easiest and freest ways of marketing that you are ever going to come across.

Very, very cool. Now I know you said you have an office now, did you. Were you initially doing this all from home?

Oh, yeah, I was doing it all from home. And when I started, so in 2017, there was actually a merchant account freeze for new credit repair businesses, right? Yeah. So when I got my first merchant account with payment cloud, they had to do a site visit and I'm like, what is that? And it was like, oh, well, we just need to come and see then make sure that you're actually running a business. So I had, I had my little printer set up and my disputes and my computer and they like, I'm like, well, what else do you guys need to see? And it was like, well, if you have any marketing material. Oh, I got flyers, I got flyers, I got cards, like, I got shirts, like, what you need, what you need to see. But they came. It was a quick five minute visit. And yeah, I was initially, I was at home and I've just gotten bigger and bigger. Like my, I think my first office space was like 500 square feet.

Wow.

And the place I'm in now is 3,000 square feet. There's four offices in our office. We've got a conference room. I needed bigger space, especially because, like locally I want to service more local clients. So I actually have two local employees. The rest of my team works like remote across the United States. And I needed somewhere to be able to shoot social media content.

Sure.

So what better place to do that than at the Hannah Financial headquarters?

Awesome. Awesome. So are you in your office right now?

No, I'm actually in my home office. This throne is very uncomfortable to work in, so I just. Yes, it's not good for my back at all.

I love it. I love, I See, you've got a crown.

Yes.

Listen, I've got a crown. Someone gave me this.

Dale, Are we twins?

How about that? I love it. I love your branding. It's amazing. So let's talk about your team. How long were you a one woman show? When did you, how long did you go until you got your first hire?

I was a one woman show probably until I hit about 200 clients.

Wow.

Yeah. And you know what? See, listen. Secrets to success. Once I decided that I could not do this anymore, I actually outsourced.

Oh, fascinating.

And so I'm a control freak. Right. So outsourcing for me initially was like new. What, you want me to have somebody? And it's like doing research because I'm always researching, I'm always reading up. There are several businesses that outsource some type of function in their business.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And I feel like one of the things that I have, I've learned in the scaling process is a lot of us are in our, we get in our own way when it comes time to scale because we are trying to do every single thing in our business. We're trying to be the graphic designer. That is something that I outsource. We're trying to be a social media manager. That, that should be something that I outsource to get done more consistently. But I'm still doing it on my own. We want to edit our own videos like, and trying to master all of those things takes you away from the things that are going to actually bring you business. Like you're sitting in the house on Thursday trying to edit some videos for social media when you could be out networking, you could be out passing on business cards, you could be out passing out flyers, you could be looking at your KPIs, trying to see what works over here, what works over here, what's not working. We get caught up in a lot of busy work.

Sure. You can't be the captain steering the ship if you're down below rowing.

Exactly. So yeah, outsourcing. I'm definitely pro outsourcing. I think it's important to make sure that you are using reputable companies, especially in the credit repair industry. Because a lot of times you're going to have people who come into the industry that are passionate about what they do, like they genuinely want to help people. And then you're going to have people that come to the industry that just see it as a quick buck or something easy to do. And usually those people with that mindset, like, it's just a, it's just a Quick buck. Usually those people with that mindset have low business integrity. And I think with everything that's going on with credit repair and the credit repair industry, this is not a space for somebody that has low personal or business integrity.

Sure, absolutely. Hey, so let's talk about your team. You said you have two team members there in your office, and then you have a number of them around the world. Six of us, six of you. What do they each do?

So one person does our credit coaching calls. So we actually do monthly coaching calls. So when we reprocess your file. Yeah, you get the updates and crc, like, we send you a message with your score increases and the deletions that you have, but then we have you schedule a call to actually go over your results with you. We go over your results with you. And then I tell people, credit repair is a team sport. So it's like, yeah, as a credit repair specialist, I can get you 14 deletions. Right. But if you're not getting the score increases that you want is because you're not being a team player. You're not adding positive credit, you're not paying down your credit card balances. And a lot of times we feel like, oh, this is common sense. Nothing about the way credit works is common sense. And that's why I. It grinds my gears when I see people asking for help with credit repair. And then you'll see somebody in comments like, oh, you can do it yourself. Listen, you can go to Target and buy some shampoo and conditioner and wash your hair, but I can guarantee you it's not going to be the same cleanliness and it's not going to look as good as it did if you went to a professional hairstylist. That's the same thing with credit. Like, it's. It's not. It's not rocket science, but it's not something you just wake up and just be like, hey, I'm a credit specialist and I can repair your credit. Like, that's. That's not what credit repair is. So it's important. It was important to me, especially once I could actually hire people to be able to make sure that I was doing something that was putting Hannah Financial apart from the other credit repair organizations. Like, people always ask me, like, oh, Irene, why do you charge so much? Because I offer a higher quality of service.

Sure. How do you provide a higher quality of service?

Those monthly coaching calls are gold. All of our disputes are sent certified. Last year, during the pandemic, especially with the passing of the CARES act, that affected the credit industry. Basically, Congress told the big three, the big three credit bureaus that they didn't have to abide by the FCRA, which basically says they have to investigate disputes within 30 days. It gave them the option to investigate disputes as long as you guys are operating in good faith to try to get them done in 30 days. But that translated into people are not getting results because their disputes are not being processed. So I had to make an executive decision to start sending our dispute letter certified. And that first month, I think that was like an additional $15,000 to our bottom line.

Wow.

Monthly. And I was like, oh, no, these prices got to go up. So. But in turn, like, that helped with the quality of service because you're not sending in certified disputes and not getting results.

Yeah, absolutely. And I saw on your site, you have a big focus on customer service. You have a whole thing about it. And I think customer service is everything.

It's important. And I tell people, like, there are going to be customers that you can help and there are going to be customers that you cannot help. So we have a money back guarantee. And like, legally, with croa, I can't guarantee you results. Right. So I can't be like, hey, Daniel, I can guarantee you that I can get that repossession off your credit. I can't do that. Right. However, I can guarantee our services. So if you are an active client with us for six consecutive months, we cannot get any items removed or repaired from your credit report. I refund you all your money. Like, if you actually we're five star, five star rated on Google. BBB accredited, because credit repair is legal in the state of Ohio. BBB accredited. Like, if you go and read our reviews, there are. We actually have reviews from people that we couldn't help, but we gave them their money back and they were like, oh, my God, like, you refunded us our money. Yes.

And a lot of people are afraid to give refunds.

Yeah.

And it's like, I think the more you refund, the more you make because more people will trust you.

Listen, I tell people it only takes one bad. Like you not showing up the way that you should or you not taking care of somebody, which you should on your end as a business owner, to make or break your business. I think there are situations where there are people where you cannot satisfy everybody. But I stand firm behind our policies. So no result. Six months, I will give you your money back with no problem. Like, I've even had people DM me on social media and I tell People I do not do customer service on M I. DMS. Like, I have no idea who you DM me, baby girl 123. I have no idea who you are if you're a client. Right? And I actually have people on payroll to make sure that you are serviced in a timely manner and the way that I want you to be serviced. Those people are not in my DMs. But I've had people message me on social media like, hey, Irene, I was thinking about signing up for service like I was a client last year but I didn't get any results. And if I see it, I'll ask them like, well, how long were you a client? Oh, I was a client for six months. Okay, can you send me your address so I can send you a cashier's check? Because you can only do credit card refunds for six months. And they like, what? Like, why are you sending me my money back? Because this is my money back guarantee and it's very important to me and my business integrity that I'm taking care of everybody that I need to take care of.

Very, very smart. So you've got your team handling all this. How do you train your team to know what to do?

So it took me like four months to just really write out everything that I do in my business from start to finish. And even like the smallest thing that you feel like you do, like write that out, create SOPs. Right? And I had already been doing that. That was something I already had experience doing because I've been in retail for 13 years and was in retail management for eight. So right now everything that I did, I'm also very patient, which is so weird because I'm really hot headed, but I'm like, I'm really patient. It takes me a while to like push me to the hot headedness, but I'm going to be extremely patient with you until you get me there. And I think that has helped also because we all learn differently. Like I'm a very hands on learner. Everybody is not a hands on learner. Some people prefer to sit and absorb information and then go from there. So right now, everything, creating my SOPs, a lot of the day to day that I do now is just checking on my team. Hey, what we got going on? Pulling calls. Like, I'm always listening to our calls. All of our calls, incoming and outgoing are recorded. So listening to calls like, and if it's something that I didn't like, we'll have conversations about it. Hey, I was listening to this call from the Other day with this client, I'll explain what was going on. You could have handled this situation differently or you could have worded this differently. I think even when it's not really something that you want to hear, it's very important to still be able to effectively communicate with people. And I think you do that just by talking to people like they're human beings. Like, just because I'm giving you corrective action or trying to change something that you did, doesn't mean that I have to talk to you like you're not a human being.

Right. Very, very smart. I see how the management skills you learned in the previous job really are. Yeah. Coming to you here. This is amazing. You're. You sound like an amazing leader.

Thanks, Daniel.

That's. Congratulations. How does it feel to have employees and be responsible for them?

It feels awesome. Especially because I am not always my best self. Right. I'm 34, I'll be 35 this year. I got diagnosed with bipolar depression when I was 22. And there are some days where I just physically and emotionally cannot. Right, sure. So having people in place that support me genuinely, like in my business and professionally I think has been so important with the success of Hannah Financial. Like even down to my tax preparers. Like the girls that are actually in office with me, like they make well above industry standard to do that work. And I feel like when you take care of people, more times than not they will absolutely take care of you.

Amen to that. So now that you've got all this work delegated, what are you mostly focusing.

On yourself right now in business? Probably getting more disciplined with my day to day. So I've been like making myself get up and go to the office. Like went to the office today and literally just sat there waiting for Amazon to bring me packages today. So really just being more disciplined. We have like our set meetings, so we have set meeting times every week. Hannah Financial University.

Uh huh. What's that?

So I actually teach people how to start and scale credit repair businesses.

Awesome.

Yeah, I think when I started there wasn't anybody that I would consider an industry leader or somebody that was like on the millionaires club that was really teaching people how to get started. And I think there are tools that are going to be extremely important in your business credit repair cloud. But it's completely different having somebody with the experience that's going to be able to guide you step by step to get your business off the ground. And I really like teaching people like as. As crazy as people make me sometimes I really Like, I really like teaching people and I really wish that I would have had the foundation that I'm able to give people now when I first started my business. Because I feel like I probably would have been on the Millionaires club list in 2018 and not 2021, but delayed but not denied. Here we are.

So what do you teach them and what results do they get?

So this is actually our first cohort. Graduation is Friday.

Wow.

Graduation is Friday. I teach them how to use the credit repair software. There's a lot of things that you can do in CRC outside of like the basic, like adding a client, adding a lead. So being able to show them how to use those scripts, how to talk to people, like how to do a proper consultation. Because we don't understand that a lot of the things that we feel like might be common sense are not common sense. Like there's no such thing as common sense in business.

Common sense isn't common.

It is not common at all. So really just giving them the foundation of everything that I wish that I had starting out. Like, I had no structure to my consultation license and bonded. I had no idea how to even do that. And then I'm in Ohio. So what's going on now? A lot of states are actually transitioning their credit service organization licenses to the nmls. And that application process is grueling. Giving them examples of the documents that they need to be able to like properly apply for their license using the nmls. We do live zooms every week. We'll have guest trainers for like affiliate marketing. We had somebody for that merchant accounts. Like we had Rick from Five Star.

Oh, he's awesome.

Yeah, he was a guest trainer. So really just like giving them literally the blueprint of what they need to be able to take it to the next level. And then there were some people, like I've got a lot of students who are in the credit repair industry but like they need their systems tightened up. So showing them how to set up automations and then there's like, like little quirky things. Like you can't send like text messages using texting platforms with shortened URLs.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah, I just found this out two months ago, like with Bitly Links. So showing them how to get custom Bitly links, little stuff like that. And it sounds like so minute, but you'd be surprised. Like the smallest thing can stop you from being able to use a system. Like when I got the email that you can't use Bitly Links, they were like yeah. If you don't correct it, we're going to close your account in 30 days. Oh, okay. But I fixed it, but thanks for letting me know little stuff like that. So yeah. Oh, and disputing, disputing. Hey, like very, very, very important part of being able to run a credit repair business is being able to get results.

So absolutely very, very cool. What are some of the biggest mistakes you've made on your journey to the millionaires club?

Biggest mistake I made was probably not vetting the people that I was doing business with. Like not doing my due diligence as a business owner when deciding who I was doing business with or who I was getting education from.

Gotcha. And then nowadays, what do you think is your biggest superpower in business?

I think my biggest strength as a business owner is that I know how to work with people. Like I feel like that alone will always put me ahead of the curve. And I'm also very, very, very good on like on the back end. I feel like I'm kind of like the Canaan of credit repair cloud. But yeah, like automations and systems. I'm very, very good at those also. I'm very self aware so I know what works for me, what doesn't work for me. I know, yeah, this is not going to be a good fit for our business. Like I have no problem telling people no. A lot of times, especially early starting out, I was taking everybody. Like if you needed your credit fix, you was a Hannah Financial client. So realizing that everybody that needs their credit fix is not essentially a client that would be a great fit for Hannah Financial. And people asking like, well what does that look like? So when we do our consultations we ask you one of the questions. Probably the most important question outside of what's the 16 digit number in front of your credit card is what are your goals during this process? So if you are a client or you are trying to be a client and we ask you that and they like, oh, I just want to have a better credit, you're not an ideal client for us because the people that have realistic goals, like I want to buy a house, I want to buy a car, those are going to be the people that are going to get on the field with you and do the work.

Sure. They're more motivated, very, very smart. Hey, you mentioned automations.

Yes.

What are your favorite automations?

Probably our initial consultation automation. Like you get an email from me. I'm actually we're working on recording video campaigns because we're going to be moving away from email Marketing.

Oh wow. Tell me about this.

Yeah, we're going to be moving away from email marketing because the open rate with text marketing is just so much bigger. So we're going to be moving away from email marketing but we're going to have a text campaign. So initially when you sign up for a consultation, you get a email explaining like what we do, how we do it, communication. As far as being a client, you get a text message reminder, hey, is Irene from Hannah Financial. You got a call Tuesday at 2pm with one of my team members. You also get another text and email one hour prior to your consultation and then you get another text and email 15 minutes prior to your consultation. You have to follow up with people. The money isn't a follow up. The money is not when they first see you. And I've read like a lot of books on marketing, people have to see you at least seven times or interact with you at least seven times before they even decide to buy.

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. A lot of people get frustrated because they think every visitor is going to buy when they visit your site. But that's not the case. Maybe 2% because I get messages all.

The time like, hey Rain, like I've been watching you since 2018 and I just want to let you know I finally decided to become a client. Well, welcome and thank you. I'm sad that it took me three years to convince you, but like that, that's how a lot of people are like they have to see you consistently doing what you do and then that's, that's another reason why so many businesses fail. Like you got people that are hustle hopping. That's what I call it. You over here doing this for a couple of months. You over here doing this for a couple of months. And then you're like, hey, I want to do credit repair. Why would these people trust you with repairing their credit when you don't even trust yourself and your capabilities of being a business owner? Because if you did, you wouldn't be hustle hopping. So.

Absolutely. Now I saw something really clever on your site. Okay, I saw that right away. When you get to your site, there's a thing on the side about getting a free ebook about collection agencies and consumer rights. And it looks really tantalizing now. What happens when someone gives their name and email and click submit nurturing emails.

So they get, we've got like 30 emails in our nurturing sequence until you decide to book a call or become a client. And then once you do, we have an automation set up that'll take you out of that nurturing sequence. But until then, you're going to hear from me.

And now what's in that nurturing sequence is it. It's not selling. It's.

No, it's credit education. It's different things that I've experienced with my personal credit. Like, a lot of the people that come to Hannah Financial for service, they know my personal journey or they know they can tell you something about my personal life or. Or something outside of Hand and financial that is like, oh, yeah, I know Irene. And one of the things with that is you have to be able to find balance. So I've been on social media since social media was even a thing. Like, I was on Facebook when you had to have an email, a college email address to even get on Facebook before they let all the crazies on. I've had my Twitter account since, for forever. Like, so I have always, I think initially starting out, I was like an oversharer. And then the older I got, I understood the importance of boundaries. So, yeah, like, you might see a video of me, my mom and my brother at lunch. But there are a lot of things, like, in my personal life that I still choose not to share. Right. So I'm very selective with, like, what I want people to see and what I don't want people to see. So it's like, I still have some privacy and that helps with my mental health, but I can still connect with my audience and show them like, I'm a regular person. Like, I might not be making the $39,000 a year I was making in 2017, but I'm still. I rang from around the way.

So very, very cool. Now, I know you're also doing credit workshops. Right. So these are for consumers. Right. So what are the situations where you would do a credit workshop? How does that happen and what do you talk about?

So it depends on what the theme of the workshop is. I also do a lot of, like, online classes. Like, I've got a online class coming up to show people how to finance cars using their business credit.

Nice.

And that has something that I've been able to do, like in 2018, got a 2019 Mercedes GLE 400 and my business name, my Tesla Model X that I got this year and my business name, I bought my brother a car, which is really just a drive in advertisement because we're about to get it wrapped in Hannah Financial Marketing 2020 Chevy Blazer Financing.

My business names are companies asking you to do these workshops.

So there are. I do. I have done Paid workshops. But, like, even with the financial literacy curriculum that I build out, a lot of those I have to sign NDAs for. And I'm very sad because I actually just got a contract for one that was a little over $50,000. And I can't even, like, talk about it the way that I want to because contractually I can't.

Well, that's okay.

Yeah. A lot of non profits, like, will pay me to come and do financial literacy workshops. And the Hannah Financial office is huge. So I plan on having workshops actually at the Hannah Financial headquarters.

Awesome. What other marketing things do you do? Do you have affiliates?

I do mostly mortgage lenders and realtors. I'm very selective with who I let market my business.

Very smart.

You should be very selective. Like, if you want to refer clients to me, that's absolutely fine. But there are very few people that you will see marketing material with the Hannah Financial logo that are, like, directly affiliated with Hannah Financial.

How do you attract affiliates?

I do a lot of networking. I do a whole lot of networking. Like, for instance, I did a mortgage. It was like a mortgage loan, open house. And we did breakout sessions. So it was like, sessions every 15 minutes. And people, like, signed up for your session. They came and I talked to them about something that you might not have known. Like, you'd be surprised how many mortgage lenders cannot tell you why the credit scores that they use are not the same credit scores that people see on Credit Karma.

Sure.

And it's like, you would think, you know, common sense. You would think, hey, we can sell you that we're using FICO's 5, 4, and 2. And they, they're like, oh, we had no idea. Or why the algorithm between FICO scores and Vantage scores, which is what Credit karma uses for credit scoring, why the algorithm is even as big of a difference as it is. They have no idea. And when I tell them, that kind of makes me like, oh, she really know what she's talking about. And now they're sending me clients.

Amazing.

And the thing about education, like, I'm big on the game is sold, not told. Right. Like, I was watching this interview and Master P was like, he had to pay $25,000 to sit and talk to Michael Jackson's lawyer for like 15 minutes. Like, something crazy. However, I think when you are, like, building your expertise, like making you the go to person in your area, you need to be able to flaunt what you know. Right. So when you can educate people on something that they have no idea about, they automatically are like, yo, you know what you got going on, right? And initially, like, people are always very skeptical about dealing with people in the credit repair industry because there are so many of us not operating the way that we should. So it's like, when you are operating the way that you should, you have to go the extra mile to really solidify, like, who you are with the people that you want to network with. And then in turn, like, the mortgage lenders, the open house that I did, they're able to explain to their clients why you're seeing a 720 on Credit Karma, but I'm seeing a 680 over here. So it's like, yeah, we might not be able to get you approved right now, but just by you being able to explain that to somebody who is a potential client, you think they're not coming back to have you close their loan? They absolutely are.

Absolutely.

They'd be a fool not to, because where can you go? Just gonna put you up on game the way he just put you up.

On game Makes a lot of sense.

So. Yeah.

So what opportunities opened up once you got the millionaires club award?

So I didn't want to start doing credit repair business trainings of my own until I could say I made a million dollars in just credit repair. So, like, we surpassed seven figures in revenue as a company beginning of last year. But I wanted to be able to say, I've made a million dollars in just credit repair before. I decided to train other people because I feel like, especially with COVID since everybody was stuck in the house, one of the things that we see now, we got all these credit repair business trainers popping up from people who have not really seen real success in their business, which is so awkward to me. So it's like, yeah, you're going to pay 200 for their course, but it's like, what are they really able to teach you? Or what experience do they really have? Because essentially, I feel like when you buy courses from people who have had success that you want to have, you're essentially buying their experience. So it's like, now you know not to make these mistakes that this person made. And it's like, until you've actually done the revenue and made those mistakes, how can you really teach somebody else? You haven't experienced it yourself.

There are a lot of fake mentors out there, but clearly you're the real deal.

Listen, listen. So it's really the training, and it drives me crazy sometimes, but it's something that thoroughly enjoy doing. And this year, I have prioritized, like, Mental health for sure. Because when I'm not, when I'm not my best self, like, I'm thankful and I'm blessed to be in a position to have people around me that can make sure handed financial is still running. Right. But Hannah Financial is not running on all cylinders if Irene Day is not her best self. So really just taking time for myself to, like, do things that I want to do. Like, I stopped working on the weekends outside of first quarter. Like, I told all my friends, I'm not working. I'm not doing it. Nope. So this is like the first weekend that I've taken off of work. Like, I didn't open my MacBook, somebody confiscated the keyboard and the mouse to my imac. Like, no work got done this weekend and I had a blast. I had to remind my friends that I'm also old, so I can't be kicking it like a spring chicken on the weekends. But just to not work, not check an email, not be pulling progress reports. It was great.

That's amazing. And that's the great thing about having a team, is that the business can keep chugging along without you.

Yep.

And maybe even run better when you take a week off.

Yes.

Yeah. So that. Congratulations. That's a place very few entrepreneurs get to.

Yeah. And it's taken four years. Four years to do that. So, like, yeah, number 35 on the millionaires club list. But, like, it's been a journey.

Yeah, it's. You learned it a lot faster than me. Up until a couple years ago, Keaton would catch me doing support tickets and he'd yell at me. See, I was like, I was so used to wearing all the hats, you know? Yeah.

Doing all the busy work. And I'm pretty sure once you were able to remove yourself from the busy work, you were able to focus on scaling credit repair cloud. Taking credit repair cloud to the next level.

Absolutely. So I want to know what would you do differently if you started your business from scratch today?

I would have found a mentor. And I don't even like to tell people that I'm a mentor, because I'm not. I'm just going to train you to do the foundational things that I needed to learn in my business, essentially. And you can pick my brain for six weeks because that's how long class usually is. I tell people there's a big difference between mentorship and training. So mentorships typically are very long term. So, like, when you find a mentor, it's usually something. It's like, it's a very ongoing commitment and I don't mean like a couple of weeks. I mean like a couple of years. I never wanted to do mentoring. I know me like we talked about, I'm very self aware. I know what works for me, what does not work for me, the days that I'm not my best self and I don't want to deal with people. I don't want the burden of your business success being dependent on me showing up or not. So what works for me with training is like, I can set aside a certain period of time to make sure that I get these tasks done, make sure that I show up for our live calls, and then when those six weeks is up, I can take the time off that I need for myself and then move on to the next project. But I definitely wish that I would have took or there was somebody that I could find that would give me, like, the foundational training that I'm able to give people now.

Amen to that. Yeah. Having mentors has helped me a ton. Yeah. Without that, I was going backwards and in circles. So how can someone who's listening find out more about your coaching and how to contact you about it?

So you guys can find me on Instagram and Facebook. Credit queen Irene. I'm actually smiling really, really, really big in my profile picture like this. Hannah financial.com for credit repair services. Hannah financial university.com to register for any upcoming trainings that we have. And I'm always posting about, like, what we got going on. So if you guys just find my profiles, like, all my links and everything are in my bio. Yeah.

Awesome. Well, I want to thank you so much for your time today, Irene. You're so awesome and so inspiring and. And congratulations again on the millionaires club and all of your success.

Listen. Thank you, Daniel. It's funny, when Keena messaged me, I was like, you want me to do what? Okay, podcast. Here it is. I got you guys.

And this was great. I really appreciate it.

Okay. I'm like, I'm just letting you know I'm a little. I'm a little bit crazy, but I'm gonna try to be on my best behavior. So.

Yeah, you were awesome. Thank you. And everyone out there, if you are enjoying this podcast and if you are getting value from this podcast, click below to subscribe so you don't miss out on any of the other future episodes and secrets you learn here on the Credit Repair Business Secrets podcast. If you're feeling kind, rate me, give me a review, give me a thumbs up, give us some comments, because these things really help. Okay. And have a great day, you guys. 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 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 9 to 5 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's starting in just a few days. So go get started right now@creditherochallenge.com.