MILLIONAIRES Club: Amber Jones - From PRO Basketball to a Credit Repair PRO | How to Make a $MILLION

Hey, credit heroes. Today we are going to visit with Amber Jones, who is our newest credit repair millionaire. She has an amazing story, but I'm going to save it later for the interview. So here's what you need to know. Amber started her business only a few years ago, but she is so driven that she has already made it into our millionaires club. And today she's going to tell us exactly how she did it and how she gets so many clients. 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 this podcast, be sure to click below to subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss a thing. And if you'd like me to hold you by the hand as you launch your very own credit repair business, go to creditherochallenge.com okay, let's get into this. Today we are visiting with Amber Jones, who is joining us all the way from Town Creek, Alabama, and she is our newest credit repair millionaire. So welcome to the podcast, Amber Jones.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

I'm excited you're here. And, and congratulations on your Millionaires club award.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

How does that feel?

It feels amazing. It feels amazing. We worked really hard here at Life Key and to be able to just change lives, when you're so focused on changing lives, you don't keep up with the numbers as much. So, you know, with being an athlete, we get rewarded with trophies and et cetera. So being in business, you rarely get trophies and accomplishments. So this is a great accomplishment. So. So I feel like I won a trophy.

You have. It's a huge one. So I want to know, first off, where is Town Creek, Alabama?

So Town Creek is at the top of northwest Alabama, So I actually live in Birmingham now. But I was born and raised in Town Creek. It's a one stop light town. I graduated with about 35 people in my class. It's very small. I grew up on a farm, so everyone is family and everyone knows each other. So when I came to Birmingham for college and it felt like I was coming to the big city, so that's where Alabama is. So small town country girl is what I am.

Wow. Well, tell. Tell us more about what your life was like before Credit Repair.

So before Credit Repair, I was actually a basketball player. So I played college basketball at UAB and then I played professionally overseas in Europe for four years and I had a career in the foot injury and Long story short, I was helping my brother, who was in the NFL at the time. I was studying to go back to med school, but I realized that his credit score was in the low 600. So I'm like, how does he have financial advisors and agents and different people? And his credit is not up to par. And so I took a tax and financial class, and the rest is history. And that's how I ended up here.

So how did you turn that into a credit repair business?

So initially, at the time, this girl I knew was hosting the credit class with the credit and the taxes, and she was like, did I want to help her? She currently had a credit repair business then, and that's when I went into helping her and we did some business together. And eventually I ventured out on my own and, you know, I realized how many athletes needed help and how many people, you know, I went to college, I graduated, but I was never taught about financial literacy and credit. So if no one taught my parents, how can I know? So when I was going back to medical school just for job security, money, etc, it was the first time, other than basketball, I found something that I actually love to do. It felt like purpose. And coming to my office every day did not feel like work. So I feel like everything happens for a reason. When I first hurt my foot, I almost had to get my foot amputated. I had three surgeries in a year in 2017, but thank God we was able to save that foot. And if I hadn't have lost basketball, God wouldn't have put me in alignment with credit and, you know, credit repair cloud when it did. So that's why I feel like no matter what we are going through in life, God has a bigger plan for us. And so that was my plan for me to lose basketball, to discover my purpose in helping people with financial literacy and credit. Wow.

And now you're a credit hero.

Yes. Yes, Credit hero.

Had you ever had your own business before this?

I haven't. And I never even had a. Well, I worked at McDonald's in high school, but other than that, you know, my profession, my job was basketball. So everything was completely new. But I was able to take a lot of the skills. And one thing about me, I like to figure things out. And I. Everything I do, I do it to the best of my ability. So it was definitely new. It was certain things. I didn't even know what a SOP was. So many things I didn't know. I'm like, you know, I went to school for exercise science. I Should have went for business and account but hey, I figured it out and it's going well.

Well, it's absolutely going well. And there's one thing I got to ask you about that really blew my mind. How were you able to process $1 million through credit repair cloud without having any chargebacks?

Yes, I brag about that all the time and it's so crazy. Me and my team talk about it. We implemented certain systems and automation so I was taught to always under promise and over deliver and that all money is not good money. So initially coming in, if I feel it in my soul that hey, this client may be in a rush, I always say even though it may take two, three months, six months, I always tell clients in the video that they get before their consultation, give yourself at least a year. If you cannot give yourself a year, please don't, I'm begging, please do not sign up for my program. So when we learn to not every know that every dollar is not beneficial to your company, you see the benefits over time. So one thing about me, if I know it's going to take one week, I'm going to tell you that it's going to take a year. So if we set the expectation for the client high, it's like under promise, over deliver and our automations, everything was set up to where I know initially. You know, with previous businesses it's like they can't put our fires. The phone is always ringing, what's my score looking like, what is my process, what is my profile, et cetera. So before you call us, you're going to get tired of hearing from us. So we don't wait until we have to put out the fire because by the time the client has called with customer service, it's time to put out the fire. So we let them know when they're processed and hey, it's been seven days since your letters went out. At 14 days we sent an informational, educational email, text messages so they never have to worry about not hearing from my key. So my goal is for my clients to get tired of seeing our information pop up. So that was the main key is the automations and being on the front end of communication versus waiting to put the fire out. And when you build that trust factor and let clients know, hey, you know, this is what you expect, then they won't have a high expectation when we try to sell, oh we can do this, we can guarantee this, et cetera, then we set a negative expectation on the clients and then other than that, my business grew a lot from word of mouth too. And so in Alabama a lot of people know me for basketball and not only was I a basketball player, I was a great academic person too. I graduated and taught 1% of my college class. So a lot of people knew that, you know, they could trust me too. So I think that that helped too. So yeah, and then when clients call and it's an issue versus me just saying, oh no, you know, we'll figure it out, hey, let me refund you for a month or two if it's something that my processing team may be slipped on, hey, we'll give you a month free. So those small things will set your business apart. And I always say short term sacrifice, long term gain. So that's how we were able to do it and how our business is a five star business accredited and et cetera and how we hold ourselves to a high standard. You have to under promise and over.

Deliver that is really, really smart. Especially all that communication to the client. Are they getting these by emails or text? How's that working?

Email, text, voice, it goes straight to their voicemail all through all three. So a lot of software is like active campaign zapier call loop connects to credit repair cloud via API and that's how you're able to process so many clients and not need as many staff members. So that's one big thing in running a business is getting your systems and your automation set up and that's how you do it. So it may seem like a lot of work but you hitting one button could send them into a 365 day automation.

Incredible. Yeah. That's the biggest problem I think most credit repair business owners have is they don't communicate enough with their clients so their clients don't know what's going on so they assume nothing is going on. So I think that's really brilliant. Have you had that since day one?

I have, I have. So my mentor starting out was Derek Carper and he taught me, he taught me the automations. Yeah, it was so crazy in college and when he seen me the first credit repair cloud conference that I went to and he was like you look so familiar. And I'm like, you too? He was like, where you're from? And I told him and he was like, you know, what do you know Tony? So my, my college boyfriend was his like second cousin. So I used to go to their family cookouts and dinners and didn't even know it. So that's kind of how. Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, he's the one.

He is the king of automations.

Yes.

What are some of your favorite automations?

My favorite automations, one of my favorite ones is actually the happy birthday one. So a happy birthday people don't understand like people when you think about people that it like clients call all the time. Thank you so much for wishing me a happy birthday. So with the happy birthday automation, when clients give us their information for their consultation, if you put their the date in ActiveCampaign you can have an automation set to when that date triggers a certain automation or trigger. So on people's birthday they get a happy birthday email and they get a happy birthday text message. So that's one that has been really good for my company. And also another one that has helped with our reviews is you supposed to hit the clients when they're up here and when they, you know, have a celebration. So we have automations for when client score increases 25 points, 50, 100 when they reach, you know, people don't understand if somebody started in the threes or low fours. Reaching a 500 club is a lot. So we send them this big congratulations for reaching a 500 score club and we send them a nice my favorite quotes on it about working hard and continuing to, you know, build. And we ask them if you're satisfied with our service, can you please leave us a review here or there, you know, if you would like. And a lot of times they do because they're at that high.

You strike while the iron is hot. That's really, really, really smart. What are some of the characteristics from basketball that you carried over into entrepreneurship?

I think one of the main ones is work ethic and consistency. So when you're starting off in business, a lot of people, especially on social media, they make it seem like it's easy and you just up and one day you pop up and you're a millionaire. When in all reality there's plenty nights when I sit in my closet and I've cried. It's nice where when I first started my business I was up to 3 o' clock in the morning, wake up 6 o', clock, do it all over again. Creating those automations do it all over again. So that's one of the main things my coach never let us give up and we always had to go until we finished it. So we could be crying, we could be throwing up anything, no matter what. Like it was never an excuse. We had to get the job done. So no matter what happens in my life, no matter what is going on around me, you have to get the task Ahead, done. That's at that at hand. So that's one of the main things that's helped.

Awesome. At the very beginning of your business were you a one woman show for a while and if so how?

Well no, actually me, no, me and my best friend, she helped me starting out so yeah I was doing all the front end work, she was doing all the back end work and she don't like to come on camera and talk a lot but she's one of the key successes of our business like she was at the previous place with us starting and we was up late tonight at night doing all the work, doing all the processing etc so yeah, so it started out with me and her and we built our team from there.

How big is your team today?

Six.

Wow. And are they remote or do they all come into an office? How does that work?

Three. Three come in and three is remote.

Okay, awesome.

Initially a lot of I meet a lot of people that have like 10, 12 for the amount of clients, 10 to 12 people. But when you have those automations, those systems and those processes you don't have to have as many as far as manpower.

Very, very, very cool. Now how do you train your team to know what to do?

I created a system first I started with my bullet points so I created a Google form with the bullet points and from all the bullet points I made screenshots. So like when you first log in credit repair cloud, it's a screenshot of the front screenshots so as they graduate they get to the screenshots and then they have a screen recording. So I use screencast o matic and everything that I did, no matter if I thought I would need it or not, I screen recorded it. And so when it's time for us to hire someone else or time for someone else to do a task, we have a screen recording for everything where I'm explaining it step by step. So I have a method for every type of way. Some people are more visual learners, some people are more better by hearing. So I just made sure I'm a perfectionist. That kind of, it's my biggest strength but it's also my biggest weakness also. So the perfectionist in me said I need to have this, this, this every type of way I need to have it. So yeah, for sure.

Brilliant. Now obviously your business is growing organically because I saw all your Google reviews, your BBB reviews, you've got 5 star reviews everywhere. It's amazing. So that's gotta be bringing people in but what are the ways that you how else do you market?

I go on Facebook live sometimes, but not enough. Not as enough as I should be. Cause I have a small online presence. But that's one of the things that I'm preparing for is to get into paid marketing. Because I haven't done any paid marketing, I haven't done any affiliate marketing or anything like that. Most is from word of mouth because we do such a good job at credit repair and our communications, we have so many referrals. And that's another reason why I was slow in growing. Well in my eyes because I could have been a lot farther. But I believe that success too soon is no success at all. And I believed if I had to use every avenue and grew and took off faster than what I was supposed to, then my business wouldn't be built on a solid foundation because you can have two separate buildings and both of them can be skyscrapers. But if one is built on sand and the other one is built on concrete, over time the one that's built on sand is going to start to crack. And you can't see that from the ground looking up, you can only see it under. So that's one thing that I stay focused on was short term sacrifice, long term gain. And, and I wanted to create a solid foundation and just keep it in my head that success too soon is no success at all. So sometimes we have to take a step back, sometimes we have to take a few losses to get our systems and get everything that we have in ready in order and realize that when it's our time, it'll be our time.

Amazing. Now you guys out there watching, listen to this for a minute. Amber has done over a million dollars in business without any paid ads. That's right. That's what you just said, right? No paid ads.

Yes sir.

That is amazing. A lot of people in our community, they say, oh, you have to have ads. No, it can all be organic. If you are awesome. People are going to help, right? People are going to refer their friends. Now how about Instagram? Has that been a lead driver for you?

Not as much. My Instagram was completely like I would just post cute pictures and just, you know, put Drake captions here and there. I just recently started talking about my business a lot on Instagram and so that's one thing. I just hired someone to help me with social media because most of my following come from when I played basketball. So I'm trying to, you know, get into more of that business educational as far as on my Instagram now. But as far as you Know Instagram, it was more so my personal thing because I love to, even though I was an athlete, I love to dress up and get really cute and take cute pictures. But that's, you know, I'm business, I can still do that. But I have to put the marketing into it. So that's what I'm working on now. But I did talk about it on my stories here and there. But once again I was forced into it and when my coach forced me to do it more, that's when more clients and everything starts to come in. So definitely don't do like me and don't delay it as long.

Well, Keenan wanted me to ask you what is the strategy with the stories on your profile?

The strategies as far as on Instagram Stories.

Yeah, yeah.

So stories stay on your page for 24 hours. So on Instagram now people look at stories a lot of times before they actually look at your page and post. So you just, you know, I put a lot of results. So we will post it from our business page. I will always tell them to tag me because even though my business is the business, the clients were coming from my personal page and I would repost. So every time we get results as far as score increases, deletions, I will post that. And even when we have people scoring, so what we've seen a trend of and what we we adjusted because everybody's score is different. Some people score may go up 100 points in the first month if they had no credit cards, they got the credit builder card and etc. Some people may not see movement until month five, month six. Some people may see a decrease if they get a late payment or something. So not only did we put the positive on there, we put the negatives, the score drops on there too. So it explained kind of both sides. And that's another thing. The automation that helped us a lot and a lot of people and a lot of clients. This could help people out a lot. So a lot of people when their score drop, majority of the time is really not the credit repair company is the client, whether they have a new collection, new late payment. So we talked about putting out the fire. So what we would do when we will see it in the update. We have an automation for a new late payment, new collection, every new negative. So it would send them a text and email and let them know what the negative was before they said, oh my God, my score dropping. They're calling us like, hey, why did my score drop? And then we have to explain, well, you had a late payment et CETERA So that's another way to put out the fire before it happens.

So great to have complete transparency like that. Very, very, very smart. Now I saw that you wrote two ebooks. I saw the ultimate business credit playbook and cracking the credit code. And I saw those on your site. Do you sell a lot of those e books?

Yes, I do now because I talk about them now. I didn't talk about them as much starting out, but yeah. So when people. I had to create something because I had so many people calling in one consultation. So now I'm working on a financial literacy course. But I had so many people calling and saying how can I build and learn about credit if I don't need credit repair? So I would have a lot of consultations for people with mid high 600, 700 that just want to know how to keep improving. But they had no negative. And we know a credit repair, it has to be a negative item. And so I just created something for people to get educated more on credit to teach them how to build. So I'm currently and constantly editing that book also. So that's the reason why I created that. And as far as the business credit, I was doing that one on one. So we have Life Key Financial Group, but I also have Life Key Business Services llc. So that's separate. So the ebooks and the courses will be under that entity. And LifeKey Financial Group is strictly just the credit repair. So I'm just coming out with courses for education on that business credit and just financial literacy.

So if someone wants to buy your ebooks, where do they go?

They go to my link tree link in my bio or they can go to thecreditassistor.net okay.

Thecreditassistor.net okay, perfect. Now speaking of, you mentioned Linktree and I saw that it's like a page of all these different links. What's your strategy behind that?

Someone just told me I need to get it one time because in your Instagram and that's why I was thinking like what website is the ebooks on? Because most of it is bought from my social media. Someone told me to get it. So versus just your website you can only get one link. So versus just your website. Link tree is a system to where you can put multiple links in one. So you click my link tree, you can see a link to schedule a consultation, the link to one eBook, the link to another ebook, the link to our Google reviews, the link to everything. So it's just everything in one link.

Very cool. Now I saw that you have appointment flows on your site for re enrollment and as well as for current clients. So what's your strategy on that and how does that help keep your team efficient?

So this is a good one. When I first started out, it was taking me about 45 minutes to an hour per consultation and I was having to go over the same thing, the five parts of credit, how long does it take, the process and et cetera. So one day I'm like, I need to write down every question that clients asked me. I wrote it down and I put it in one video. So I got introduced to Acuity via Zapier and once again that connects to credit repair cloud. And now when someone schedules an appointment, their information automatically goes into the system. They get a text message saying, thank you so much for your interest in our credit repair program. You have three required steps to do before your appointment. So they have to sign up for Identity IQ and they have to. It's another button to submit that. I'm such a perfectionist. It's crazy. When I sit and think about how I used to sit up at night and try to piece together all these automations, it's crazy. So they have a link to submit their login information to us. And it's an automation set up to where the system knows that they haven't submitted it. So two hours before their appointment, it sends them another text and email saying, hey, we see you haven't submitted your information. If you have signed up, submit it here. If not, we cannot do your appointment without it. And so that's another thing. You have to be not afraid to set your own rules and boundaries in your business and people will respect those if you are clear on those. And so along with getting Identity iq, submitting it to us, so our processing team will have the audit. They had a 15 minute video to watch of me explaining the things that I used to say over and over. Five parts of credit, how much the time frame, the basics, et cetera. So the consultations went from 45 minutes to an hour to literally 10 or 15 minutes.

Wow, you have, I think maybe the most organized business I've ever heard of. This is fantastic.

For sure. That's why, like, I have to teach this one. People like, can you teach me? Can you teach me? And like I was like, I have to master myself first. But I think I pretty much, I pretty much mastered those, like customer service automations. I pretty much. And once again, that's how we were able to do the seven figures with no chargebacks.

Amazing. What do you know now that you wish you knew back when you first.

Started to fail forward. It may be people out there like me that I'm a perfectionist. Like even my. Like even in college when we're taking a test, I'm the one that I would sit there and look at the test until the teacher says, okay, you have to leave. And in business, you can't operate like that. Because if you're forever trying to figure it out and make it perfect and I got to change this, I got to do that, you'll look up and months have went by, years have went by, and you're still in the same place where someone who has put it out there imperfect and etc. There went on to do big things. We can go off the ebook for these, these ebooks when they get the people brag about how great my ebook look all the time and etc. But it's people that have sent me other people's ebooks and etc that has made all this money off ebooks and courses. And it's like a PDF with just the words on it. Like, it don't look. It's just the information. And so you have to realize that people need the information. It doesn't have to be perfect. They need the information. So that's one thing I would have harped on more when I first started, was that, Amber, it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be exactly how you would want it. Focus on the. Getting the information out to people. For instance, you don't have to have the fancy. The camera. You know, we're waiting on getting the camera with these lights and etc. Looking at me in year two at seven figures when someone else has made $2 million with an iPhone. And so that's one thing that I did wrong and was what I wish I had did more. Starting out was to fail forward instead of waiting till everything is right. Because honestly, nothing will ever be fully how you want it. And that's one thing I had to learn in business.

That's really great. It reminded me of a quote from Derek Harper, done is better than perfect, because perfect is never done.

It never gets done. That's the one. And he used to tell me that every single time on our call. And I'm like, I gotta do this. He's like, Amber, he. And he tells me that all the time now. Like, I reached a huge milestone and I. But I could be a lot farther. Like 1 million. Could have easily been 10 if I had listened to him and did everything he said, 1 million could have easily been 10 right now, for sure.

Amazing. We have a mentor as well. Russell Brunson has helped us a lot with our business. He's the founder of Clickfunnels, but he has a similar saying. It's kind of interesting. It's. Ready, fire, aim.

I like that. I like that.

Last question. This has been so awesome, but we gotta wrap up. So last question. Amber, what does business ownership mean to you?

It means everything to me because I've learned that you don't always, you know, growing up, we go to. I went to college, and it's like you go and you get a job, like, no one even gives you the idea unless you're exposed to it in a random way. But it means everything to me because not only am I able to put myself and my family in a good position, you're able to put your team and your staff, everyone in a great position to help better them. And also, when you get up to, like, teaching, you're able to help other people start businesses. Because a lot of times people don't realize the gifts that we may have. We all have a gift. There's something about us that God put in us that's special that we can do as a trade. So that's when I tell people if you're not happy, you know, in your job or. Some people. Yeah, some people are made, you know, to work. I said, do what's best for you. Everybody doesn't have to be running around here like a chicken with their head cut off, stressed out like me every day. You know, some people want to just go and, you know, every. It's no right or wrong way, but as far as business ownership, you know, I'm able to, like, travel free, you know, come and go as I want, but it means everything because it's exposed me to different levels, and it helps me to be able to help my community to see what can be possible through entrepreneurship.

I love that. I love that. Thank you so much for being here, Amber. You are so awesome and inspiring. I think this is maybe the best interview we've done, I'll tell you that.

Thank you.

Congratulations again on the Millionaires Club Award and everyone out there. If you are enjoying this podcast, click below to subscribe so you don't miss out on any of the secrets that we share every week on the Credit Repair Business Secrets podcast. And if you're feeling kind, rate me, give me a review so we can move up the charts because that stuff really helps. Be sure to leave a comment or a question, Because I read each and every one of them and I will see you on the next episode. And until then, be a credit hero. 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.

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 end 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.