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

Hey, Credit Heroes, it's Daniel Rosen here, and I'm coming to you live from my hotel room here in Orlando, Florida. I'm actually here at the rock concert of marketing events. It's an event called Funnel Hacking Live, and it's been here in Orlando, Florida, all week. And I had to come up here to my room because I needed to shoot this video. And it's just crazy downstairs.

The energy is through the roof.

And all week, I've been hard at work with some of the best minds in the business, developing new tools and tactics to help you to run and.

Grow your credit repair business.

So while I'm out of town, I wanted to share an interview that I recently did with one of our most successful credit heroes. See, I had the honor of being one of the first guests on the.

Credit Repair Junkies podcast, which is hosted.

By Millionaires Club member Bruce Politano. See, Bruce and Keenan and I, we dove deep into what it takes to grow and scale a credit repair business all the way up to seven figures. And you know what? I'm going to share that entire conversation with you right now on this podcast.

So you better stick around. So the big question is this. How can we take our passion for helping people with their credit and turn it into a successful business without taking loans, 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.

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

Well, Credit Repair Cloud's been around for about 10 years, but I've been in the credit repair space about 10 years prior to that, so it's about 20 years.

Really? Tell me about that.

Yeah, well, it's kind of a crazy story. When I was a kid, I didn't have a very good home life. I wasn't very good in school, but I was really obsessed with juggling. I was so obsessed with juggling, it's all I would do. And I got really good at it, which came in handy because When I was 13, I left home and I would juggle on street corners to make money to eat. I was homeless, and that's how I made money to eat. Then I learned that if I could make people laugh, they'd put more money in my hat. I just kept obsessing and obsessing and Getting better at this. And I started to have a little career in business. My first gig off the streets, I was in the Ice Capades, which was kind of weird. I wasn't an ice skater, but I went to the skating rig and said, I'd like to have ice skating lessons, please, because I'm going to be in the Ice Capades instead. Have you ever skated? I said no. They thought I was crazy. So I started practicing all that, got in the Ice Capades, realized I didn't like that so much that I missed the comedy from the streets. So I decided I wanted to get really, really good at comedy. So I obsessed on that. I just obsess over things, and I worked in all kinds of crappy comedy clubs and all kinds of things, worked my way up till eventually I was doing shows like Johnny Carson and things like that. And I had a pretty long career in show business and on television. My last longtime gig, I was the announcer, the Price is Right.

Oh, no.

The guy who says, come on down a new car. So that a career? It looked like I was doing a lot, but a career in show business really means you're broke all the time. I had big gigs, but then there were long, long gaps between them where I was always living on credit cards and, you know, and you get those credit cards and then you get those things in the mail with those blank checks.

Yeah.

And I'd use those to pay off to pay my rent and other things. And it just kept getting worse and worse and worse during the Price is Right. That was my longest gig. So I managed to buy this messed up little house, and it had no kitchen or bathroom for like nine months. I was living there like I was camping.

Really?

Yeah. I pooed in Home Depot bags in the yard.

Oh, wow.

But I slowly, slowly fixed it up and again racked up my credit cards. But I was so proud of that little house because I felt like I had finally really achieved something. But then one day, this bank error destroyed my credit overnight. And all my bills shot up and I was on break between shows again, and my bills doubled overnight. The error was I had both my first and second loan at the same bank. So big loan and then little HELOC loan. Some clerk there typed in the wrong thing, and so they were both the same amount. And that made me look hundreds of thousands of dollars over a revolving line of credit. So that sent up red flags. All my bills shot up. I didn't have the money. I almost lost my house. I almost went bankrupt. It was just horrible. It Ruined my life. I called the bank and. And they, they said, sorry, we made a mistake, we'll fix it. But I couldn't fix that domino effect on all the other cards. So it was months of letter writing and call whole time. And I was pretty into computers on the side. I would make websites for people.

Yeah.

Other. Other comedians and performers.

So you.

Exactly, exactly. And I realized I'm writing all these letters. I'm. Because I was studying about credit repair and how it works. And I'm writing all these letters and making these calls and keeping track of everything. And I'm going, this is a lot of repetitive work. There's got to be software for this. And I started searching for it.

Yeah.

And there wasn't any. What year this was? Early 2000s.

Yeah.

And I. There wasn't any. And I went, aha. I found my way out of show business. I'm going to create the world's first credit repair software.

Yeah.

But I didn't know anything about business. I don't have a degree in finance. I didn't even graduate high school. So I had to start learning how to code. And I kept trying to learn how to code and it wasn't working. And eventually. But I kept drawing the software. So I drew it so many times. Like, do you remember the movie Close Encounters where the guy keeps drawing this mountain and he doesn't know why he's obsessed with it. That's how I was. I kept drawing this software that I wanted to build that I couldn't build until eventually I figured out you hire somebody. And so by doing a gig here or there or making somebody a website or whatever, I could. I managed to pay for a developer to help me and I made this little download called Credit Aid. Yeah. I mean, I finally got this launched in about 2004 and it was $20. I sold a few, but nobody really cared. And. But that was me in the doctor suit. I was the credit doctor. See. But it actually did what it was supposed to do.

That still was existing in 2012, was it not?

Oh, yeah.

I remember that. When I got into credit for the year in 2012, that's what I had.

Oh yeah. I. And for about some people bought it, but it just, it was. It was so hard to get a customer and then I'd get $20 for this thing and then I'd never see that person again. Eventually I made a little bit bigger of a version for businesses, but still that was the end of the sale. I didn't know how to create a business from it. A good week, I could make maybe a hundred dollars or a couple hundred dollars. It was terrible. But credit repair companies started wanting bigger versions. Mortgage brokers and realtors and people like that, tax people started wanting bigger versions. And that's when I realized, oh, I've gotta make it for businesses.

Yeah.

And it's gotta be in order for it to really be a business. And it's gotta be in the cloud so that we can keep making it better. And so for consumers, Credit Aid was for consumers. For consumers like you, who's.

Hey, you know, I got the run around from the credit bureaus, right. There's this huge error and it's very predative work. So yeah, let me buy this little piece of software. It'll help me not cramp my hands and get carpal tunnel from writing so many letters. So that's what Credit Aid was for, is for the consumer, right? Yeah. It was like a diy.

Yeah. In fact, I even, it even got into stores. It was in a chain called Fries.

Oh, cool.

But, but so I made thousands of them. But then Fries never paid me. It was a disaster. Yeah. I ran TV commercials, but I, it was just like flushing money away. I didn't know how advertising worked.

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

Well, the little bit of money I was making from this, I got this idea, but I knew it was going to be really expensive and it was before people were even calling this the cloud, the Internet. But I got this idea and I, I started pitching to investors because I knew was going to cost a whole lot of money. And they all said no. So I just thought, I'm not going to leave this room until I figure it out.

Yeah.

And I sat in a weird little sad room for about five years and I just worked on it. I mean, occasionally I'd leave to. If I, like could paint someone's wall or watch someone's cat or do something to get money to keep paying developers and slowly hobble this thing together. And I still didn't know how advertising worked. So I would just write articles all night until the sun came up. And that started to create a blog and, and that started to bring traffic. And then after five or six years in this weird little room, I was able to launch Credit Repair Cloud. And because I'd written all the articles people started coming and it started getting a little traffic. Traffic and traction. And then the first year or so I was doing everything. I thought it'd be easy once there were customers.

Yeah.

But suddenly I was dealing with people too, and that was really hard. I'd never done that on the early website. You'd probably remember Tammy. I had little pictures on the site of the people I was pretending to be. Yeah. I was still on sales. I was Tammy on support. Everyone hated Tammy. Tammy was a bitch. So it was just horrible trying to get this thing going. But little by little it started grow. But I. I wasn't getting any sleep and it was very stressful. At one point, I gained almost a hundred pounds from the stress.

Yeah.

And that's when Keenan came into the picture.

That's what I was going to ask. Like, Keenan had to come in somehow. How. How did that happen? And what was that like?

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

Yeah, it was a. At the time, it was a platform where you could learn from a variety of experts online. So if you wanted to learn to cook or hire a lawyer or get I. T. Support, you could basically pay someone by the minute over like a. Kind of like what we're doing now. Like over a zoom call.

Yeah.

And you get someone's expert help.

Yeah. And so I thought, this is far out. I want to try this.

Yeah.

And then I thought, what do I need help with? And I just bought my first Mac because I'd been doing windows for years and years and years. And I thought, okay, I have this weird question about formatting bullet notes. Yeah. Or bullet bullets in. In an email and I'll find somebody who can help me. And I kept seeing all these IT People. And then there was this kid that I kept seeing, and it was Keenan in. In a little suit and tie.

Yeah.

And he. And my girlfriend's in the other room. Grace is in there saying, hey, what are you doing? Aren't we going to watch a show? And I'm going, no, I got to meet Keenan. I found Keenan's resume and it said he. I figured out he was in high school, so I thought he about 17. And his resume said he'd been doing IT support for 10 years, meaning he started at seven.

Yeah.

So she's going, can we watch a show? And I'm going, no, I gotta meet keenan. And then five minutes later, I. He was 4.95 for 15 minutes. Oh, and I paid the 495. And then we're. I'm face to face with Keenan and he solved my problem in less than a minute. And. And I said, hey, I paid you for 15 minutes. We still got 14 left.

So I want to tell you about.

My company because I want you to work for me. And so Keenan was the first employee.

That's awesome.

And, yeah, and then he started giving me advice and I'm going, why is this kid giving me advice? But months later, when I started following the advice, we started doing a lot better as a business and we started to grow. Most of Keenan's advice was hire more people.

Yeah.

So that's what we started this.

Here you are. You built this software, but you can't figure out bullets in an email on a Mac.

Yeah, right.

Like I could build software, but I can't do bullets on a Mac. Right. Give me my Windows back. So you meet Keenan for 4.95.

Right.

And boom. Marriage made in heaven. And this was how long? Ten years ago? I guess.

Nine and a half. Ten years ago, yeah.

Keenan, how old are you then?

I think, yeah, somewhere around 18 at the time.

Wow, look at that. And what has that been like for you? Like, what was that experience like for you to come into what Daniel had just started out and then kind of be able to not only, you know, give your input, but see how your input helped develop what credit for cloud is today?

Yeah, it was. I mean, the whole experience was a lot of fun. I mean, I. But always been into tech and. And always been kind of an entrepreneur at heart growing up. Like, I like some. I think Daniel and I have a lot of similarities with some of our early stories of like, like, he's hustling, doing people's websites.

Like, yeah.

In the wall. Like I was in high school. Like, yeah. Doing video editing for people. Building people's websites. Yeah. Running around in my car the different people's houses to do it, support and always like freelancing with a ton of entrepreneurial stuff.

Yeah.

Then it just, it gave me a vehicle to do it in a business and. And yeah, started giving a bunch of advice on like marketing in the early days. I came in doing support, then grew into marketing and now product the company.

That's awesome. I have a similar story too. Like, I left my parents house when I was 15 and I was hustling too, but when your back is pushed against the wall and you have no choice but to succeed, the only thing you could do is succeed. Right. My wife And I. We talk about this all the time, and we. You know, I wonder what kind of person I would have become if I didn't have those things happen to me early on in my life. Would I even be where I am today, doing the things that I am doing today?

Right.

Would I have the little bit of success that I have today if it weren't for all those circumstances? Because I feel like I'm a product of all that. And I think you guys could probably share the same things. Like, if you weren't juggling in the middle of the street at 13, credit pair, cloud probably wouldn't be here.

Right? Exactly.

Some things just have to happen in life in order to kind of push you through, you know, beyond your limits. And that's where you really build big things. So that's. That's awesome. That's an awesome story. With within Credit Repair Cloud, was there ever a plan B? Like, you knew, Daniel, that you were going to do this credit aid, and then you started seeing the demand that people needed a bigger version of it, companies needed a bigger version of it. Was ever. Was there ever a thought like, man, maybe I shouldn't do this. I should go into doing something else instead? Or were you always like, all in to this one thing?

And why all in? Because I become obsessed about things. And, I mean, during that time when I was in that weird little room obsessing about trying to build this, I also wasn't sleeping much. I wasn't showering, brushing my teeth. I was just focused. And I get. I mean, now I. I've learned to have a morning routine where I actually do bathe and brush my teeth.

Oh, God.

Yeah. But things got pretty unbalanced, and I think to do anything big, you have to go unbalanced. I know. I was just so obsessed for it to succeed. And then when Keenan came on on board and started saying, we got to hire more, we just kept. As we grew, actually, we'd hire more people and then the business would grow. It was sort of backwards.

Yeah.

But that's how it worked. Even Keenan, at the very beginning that, okay, how much money do you want? It was $500 a month. And I went, oh, my God, that's so much money. How am I ever going to afford that? Yeah. But I figured it out.

Yeah.

And then that was the beginning. It was very, very meager beginnings. But we. We kept hiring higher. Now we have over 100 people. It's pretty amazing. So we can do really cool stuff. Yeah, we're building all kinds of cool stuff. For the future, we're getting into AI and all kinds of wild things are coming.

That's awesome. You know, it's, it's cool to see because I don't want to knock anybody out who didn't have hardships in life but are successful. Right? There, there's a way to success without hardships, right? You don't. And you also don't have to be a trust fund baby to have success either, right? There's, there's, there is a happy medium. Really. All you need to do is you need to work hard so you can have a good life. Right? A loving home with two parents and, you know, graduate high school with a 4.0 GPA and you know, be, you know, all these wonderful things. But that's not what makes somebody successful. Makes somebody successful is their work ethic. If you have a strong work ethic, that's really what it takes where you obsess and you don't give up until you're done.

Right?

Exactly.

So it's not to knock anybody out who didn't have hardships like the three of us did and found success. But I feel like when you have hardships, you don't have any other choice other than to have a strong work ethic or else you don't survive. Are you gonna eat? Like, if you weren't juggling, you weren't gonna make a few bucks to go get a dollar menu burger from McDonald's, right? Like, I remember that. Like, I used to get $3 a day so I can have three double cheeseburgers from McDonald's. Like, I remember that like it was yesterday, you know, and it was, if you don't have the work ethic, you're not going to make the $3, you know, so I feel like, you know, for anybody listening to this show who's interested in starting a credit repair company, or maybe you already started your credit for your company, but you don't. You haven't found the success that you're trying to, to achieve yet. It has all to do with your work ethic. Not knocking your work ethic, just work harder, right? Like it's. If you're, if you didn't have a dollar to feed your family next week, would you be working as hard as you are today or would you work a little bit harder? And if you have that mindset, that framework, you really could bootstrap your business to the next level.

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

Yeah.

And so they don't get customers.

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

And again and again, thousands of times.

And that's how you do it.

Upwards failing.

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

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

You hear eight figure businesses or nine figure businesses talk about. I have mentors, I network, I get in masterminds. What Makes you think that your six figure business doesn't need that. It's like if my eight figure business, your eight, nine figure business needs that, what makes you think that those don't? Right. And people are so afraid of asking for help. And I, I didn't, my business didn't boom until I went out and I asked for help because I, I, and I have a hard time delegating. Like I'm a control freak. I feel like if I want something done right, I got to do it myself. No one is going to do it as good as me. The problem with that is I'm limited to just my own capabilities, right?

Sure.

And then I'm only limited to what I know. And what I don't know hurts me every single time. So I had to go out, I had to find a mentor. My mentor is Ty Crando.

Right.

I've been working with Ty for, I don't know, five years now. What did Ty do? Ty had a credit for business. He built it, he sold it, and now he runs credit suite, you know, multi a figure business. Like this guy's been where I'm trying to go. How about I try to reach out to him and follow his footsteps until this day, like clockwork. Ty and I meet every week. And I don't like I can be in Italy on vacation, my family or he can be in skiing somewhere and we're still finding a way to meet because it's important to me, it's important to him. And it just. When you have help, you get forward faster. So the fact that you said that coming from a company at the size of credit repair cloud, like I hope that the people who are listening or watching this can understand and realize the importance of seeking help from people who are further ahead. Because there's plenty of us willing to lay a hand back.

Right.

Like if you had a software company, maybe not in the credit pair space, but in other spaces and they're just getting started with their software company. I'm sure you'd be more than happy and willing to lay a hand to give some advice, to be a sounding board because you have those people for you.

Exactly.

Right. It's only lonely at the top if you get there by yourself. Right. So how many people can you bring up Keenan, for you? What was, you know, the one thing that you wish you knew then that you know now that would have made a world of a difference for you guys? Organization.

Well, before I go into my first item, just something tactical from Daniel's advice of just hiring and getting People to help.

Yeah.

Like one of our mentors, Dan Martell, he's in the software world, but he just wrote a book recently called buy back your time that it's all about getting help. And very tactically, you don't have to run a software company. It could be. It's actually very tactical for any business.

Yeah.

It teaches you the right mindsets and right processes to, to get you out of the business and.

Yeah.

Get you into building the business.

That's important. Very important.

Yeah. I think the, the biggest thing that I wish I would have knew at the beginning and know now is to model success in general. Like go up, go out there, who's. Who's one step ahead of us and go model them. That. And it doesn't have to be expensive. Like, I think in the early days we were buying some books, buying some courses.

Yeah.

No, you're now a fan of ClickFunnels. So we were buying some, like to get better at marketing. We bought a bunch of Russell Brunson's books of the founder of ClickFunnels and learned a lot about marketing. And those books can be like 20 bucks to buy. It's not. You don't have to invest a ton. And then we were able to model what they were doing successfully. And then, and then over time we were able to hire more expensive mentors, get into masterminds, get into bigger business groups. And then we were able to start modeling the success of others. And instead of doing like the tactics of marketing and sales and building product, now it's more leadership and learning from other companies to how do we delegate more? How do we, how do we become better leaders? Yeah, but the investments have come more over time, so you can, you could start smaller. It does. Again, you don't have to get into a really expensive mastermind. At the beginning. We started with just some books, some courses, and grew from there.

So model success. Don't reinvent the wheel. Like, if somebody already has a wheel working, why are you going to reinvent it and make a square. Right.

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

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

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

I still get CC in every email that comes to my company because I just can't let go. But yes, I get that it's hard. Yeah.

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

Tell me that. Yeah, let's talk about that. Keenan, how's that experience?

It's a challenging experience for anyone to go through. I mean, I, I mean, I started with the company in support, had to work my way out of that into marketing, and then work my way more out of that to get into product. And now I'm actually. Or hiring people under me to work my way at a higher, so I can get to a higher level of the product side of the business. It is really hard to let go. But there's, but it's the only way to grow the business because you're, you become a bottleneck. Yeah. For it. If you want to grow the business, you, you have to do it. There's like a reason that if you look at lots of small, medium businesses in like your city, like you go like a plumber, dentist, all those kind of small businesses in your city. There's, there's a reason that, that most of them get to like a million, 2 million a year, and then cap at that because they just can't out outgrow their, their ability to delegate what they're doing in their own time.

The bottleneck of the business, like you yourself, your position becomes the bottleneck of the business.

Yeah. Because he knows so much. Yeah, he knows so much. Everyone's coming to him for every department. We all call him Young Yoda, so.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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

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

Well, I think you need to learn your craft first. And. But then as soon as you know your craft and if you've got some customers. Yeah. Start finding help because you can't manage.

What you don't know. Right. Like how can you hire somebody to come out and do your customer service or your sales if you don't even know how to do customer service and sell yourself? How can you hire somebody to come do your disputes or manage somebody to do your disputes? Even if it's a company like mine, with 11 years of experience? How can you manage us if you don't even know how to do it? Like, how can you hold us accountable if you don't even know it? You're going to literally be at our mercy. I mean, you could, you're safe.

Right.

But as a business owner, is that necessarily the smartest choice to make? So I agree with you. Learn your craft first, but that doesn't mean that to learn it, you have to do it for a year.

No, but you have to do it long enough to document it.

Yes.

And write the SOPs. Otherwise when you hire somebody, they're not going to know what to do.

And it's going to be. And it's. Sops are just easier to train. Right. You plug somebody into your sop, right. Your standard operating procedure, and then now you have a framework to train somebody. And now you can hire as many people as you want and just plug them into sop. If you don't have an sop, then every time you hire somebody, you got to take time away from doing what you're doing to go and do manually what the SOP can just automate in your business.

Right, Exactly.

Credit per cloud has a lot of SOPs, huh?

Probably over a thousand.

And who puts all those together?

Keenan put a lot together.

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

Yeah.

Create the processes for their departments. Yeah.

A lot of people have analysis paralysis when it comes to building SOPs. And it's literally as easy as recording yourself doing that thing. Even if it's not your screen, if it's a manual process, turn your iPhone camera on, put it in a selfie mode and record yourself doing it. Now when you hire somebody, here, watch this video. This is how I do it. Right. And watch this video. This is my screen of me doing that whole thing. It's easier than you think. You don't need analysis. You don't need to create this whole Google Doc with 30 bullet points. You know, Keenan can help people do bullet points on Mac if you guys need help, but it's not that difficult. Right. You just record yourself doing it. So don't have analysis paralysis.

And these are the things that really grow a business.

Mm. Yep. You gotta have a concise way of doing things.

Right.

And then a lot of times when you build an sop, while you're building the sop, you can come up with a more efficient way of doing it just because you're documenting it and you're like, man, why do I do it that way? It's so counterproductive. I just did it like this instead. It'd be so much easier. Just because you're building the SOPs, you start realizing those things.

Right.

That's awesome. A couple more questions and then we'll, we'll wrap it up. What's next for. For credit repair cloud?

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

That's awesome. That's awesome. That's, you know, I, I try to serve My industry, that's, you know, I live to serve, you know, servant leadership for me is a real thing. And, and you know, working with as many CROs as we do, we realize that the biggest problem that CROs have is getting customers.

Right?

So July 10th, we're running our first CRO Bootcamp and we're doing a hundred clients in a hundred days, Boom, guaranteed. And if you don't get a hundred clients in a hundred days, I'll personally work with you one on one for free until you do. Because I'm sick and tired of seeing CRO struggle to get customers. That's getting leads is the easy part. You could throw a rock and you hit somebody with bad credit. Finding people with bad credit is not hard. The difficulty comes in having a sales process to convert those leads into paying customers and having a structured business that can support that growth.

Right.

So people come into the industry thinking it's as easy as making, you know, a few Facebook posts and then you get one of the millionaire plaques. Yeah, it's not, not necessarily you get there, but you got to have processes, you got to have SOPs. You have to remove yourself from the day to day operations. You are the bottleneck, you know, so we're running this boot camp. We're going to start helping a lot of people because I want the industry to succeed. I want people to come into the industry and stay right. I don't want you to come into the industry, stay for three to six months, not be able to succeed, and then quit and go back to your nine to five. Like that's not, that's not the life that anybody wants. When you want to start a credit repair business to help people, well, then let's get there, you know, so it's awesome that you guys have that same mission of helping people, you know, coming up, marketing, sales and teach people how to get customers. Because what, what else are you in business for? How are you going to change a whole lot of lies if you can get lives to change? Right. So it's cool to see that we share that same vision and that same mission to help CROs up and running. Daniel, for you, what is long term goal for credit repair cloud? You know, five years, maybe even 10 years from a long term. What do you see as a visionary of the, of the company?

We're building something that is going to bring CROs lots and lots and lots of clients. We've got this big giant thing. I can't really talk about it, but it's really exciting.

Love the cliffhanger.

Take us some time to build it. Yeah. But it's going to bring lots and lots and lots of clients.

This is your long term vision for crc.

It's a long term vision. That's great.

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

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

Yeah.

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

Educating them.

Millions of people.

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

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

I wish they knew it wasn't so easy. I wish they knew that it's not as easy as you may think. Like anything in life, it's not all rainbows and unicorns.

Right.

Like, you're gonna have hurdles, you're gonna have adversities, you're gonna have difficulties. And the only way you get through those things is if you're why you're doing it is strong enough. The success is on the other side of the adversity or the failures of the uncomfortable. Right. You don't trip and fall on success. Success is intentional.

Right.

It's not accidental. So it's not going to be easy. Building anything that's worth anything isn't easy. So, yeah, it's easy to get started. Very easy. You get a laptop, you get a cell phone, you get started. But you're not doing this just so you can get started. So building a credit repair company. Running a credit repair company isn't easy. It's not. It's no easier than running anything else. Right? It's not like, oh, I'm gonna do a credit repair business instead of X, Y, Z, because it's gonna be so much easier. That's you. That's a lie that you're telling yourself. And I wish a lot of most people knew that. If you can go back and, you know, if I can know something myself, is that, man, it ain't gonna be as easy as it's cut out to, as it's made seem to be, you know? And we do a good job getting people into the industry, but we have to do a better job helping them succeed and not just get in, just to get out six months, 12 months later, you know? So that's my mission. Like, that's why this whole boot camp thing is if I can help you get 100 clients in 100 days, and I can show you that you have what it takes to make it into the industry. And if you can't get 100 clients in 100 days, it ain't because of me. It's because of you. It's because you didn't put in the work you didn't put in. And it's a boot camp. I'm calling a boot camp because it's intentional. You think about military boot camp, right? What is a framework? What is a mind phrase? Like, no excuses, I don't care. Just get it done. I don't care if it's snowing. I don't care if it's raining. I don't care if it's 200 degrees outside. I don't care if you're dehydrated. I don't want to hear it until you're done.

Right?

And that's the framework that I'm bringing into this thing that we're doing. Because I need people to know that it's not easy. Like, it's not. It's easy to start. Yeah, go ahead, file your llc, get your computer, get your laptop. Boom, easy to start. But now what are you going to do with it? How do we grow this thing? How do we really make this a real thing? It's not easy. And that's what I wish, Keenan, to answer your question that most people would know, is that starting credit company? Yeah, it's easy. Building it, running it, managing it. Not as easy as you may think it is. So that I think that hopefully answers your Question.

Yeah. That's awesome. Do you see any changes in the industry around marketing that what's. What are the tactics that they're working to bring in those clients? I mean, you're right in the trenches with thousands of companies.

The name of the game is eyeballs. The name of the game is eyeballs. The more eyeballs you get on your business, the more clients you have. Right. You can't have 100 clients if 100 people don't even know we do credit repair. That's impossible. It's literally impossible. Right. So, yeah, you're afraid of posting on your social media because you don't know what your third cousin is going to think of you, Zach.

Yeah.

Good luck. You're not going to grow your business further than your third cousin.

Right.

So, yeah, the more. The name of the game is eyeball. So how can you get more eyeballs in your business effectively? Right. Because you have an effectiveness or something you think about. Why is it social media? Because that's where all the eyeballs are, right? You can go to networking events and BNI meetings. That's all great and dandy, but you get 20 eyeballs for the hour and a half that you're there, right? I can spend an hour and a half going live on Facebook and that's going to live forever on Facebook.

It's going to give me a lot.

More than 20 eyeballs in a week.

Right.

Or even in a day. So the name of the game is eyeballs. When it comes to marketing for credit repair, it's eyeballs. You can literally again, throw a rock and you hit somebody with bad credit. Two people that are watching have great credit. The other eight need your help. So how often are you getting in front of them? How often are those eyeballs. Those same eyeballs seeing you? And that's only built with consistency. You have to become an authority in your space. There's plenty of people back credit, enough for all of us to eat and make a really great living with it.

Right.

I have a company five miles away from me. We can both make a whole lot of money and serve a whole lot of people. We're not stealing business from each other because there's more than enough for everybody to go around. And people are scared that, oh, but you know, there are other companies around me, like, no, it doesn't matter. There's enough eyeballs, like, just capture more eyeballs. So to answer your question, Keenan, when it comes to marketing trends, it's no trends. It's just, where are all the eyeballs congregating nowadays, you know, why do we go to mortgage brokers? Because if go to Russell Brunson's book, you know, where are your dream clients congregating? Where's the pond that you can throw your hook? Where do your dream clients already live? Apply for mortgages, and where's that pond? At the mortgage broker's office. So why aren't you there? Your dream clients are there. Why aren't you there?

Right.

I built my first credit repair company. It's over 7,000 clients in one little pond. Just the mortgage broker pond, you know, like it's. You got to be where your clients are. You need to have the eyeballs. And if you have the eyeballs, you'll get the business point blank. No questions or ifs or ands about it.

Every time we see you, it's just, you are so smart about this stuff. It's just amazing to just watch you. I'm just always mesmerized listening to you.

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

Wasn't that great? Bruce Politano is amazing. And if you'd like to hear even more, check out my interview with him. Behind the scenes of a million dollar credit repair business. So take care, Credit Hero, and keep changing lives.

Hey, everybody, it's Daniel again. And really quick. I'd like to invite you to join what I believe is the best thing we have ever created inside the credit repair cloud community. And it is a challenge that we call the Credit Hero Challenge. If you're just planning out your business or you're just getting it started and you dream of having a successful business of your own, so you can quit your 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.