How To Restore & Build Your Credit

Welcome, everyone. Denzel Rodriguez here, personal finance geek of the 21st century. And I have a friend with me, a new friend, Michael, who is a interesting gentleman I'm getting to know very, very well over the last few weeks. He's got an extensive knowledge and experience in the credit repair space. So today is really dedicated to you all. Watching my loyal followers, loyal subscribers, even clients that have been struggling in the credit department, which is creating a bit of a delay in some of the debt acceleration strategies that we teach on this channel. And you're sort of feeling left behind, left out. And the truth is, I haven't put out enough content on credit. Building credit, repairing credit, restoring credit. And so finally that relationship has blossomed into having some time to meet with Michael here. And so I'm going to give you the floor, Mike, to introduce yourself, and we're going to dive right into today's class. Thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me. It is an honor to be here. So I have been in the credit restoration and actually business funding space for a few years now, and, man, I mean, just to give you a little bit of backstory, I remember when there was a special speaker that came in to speak about credit when I was in high school, and I was looking at the FICO score model and I was looking at the different percentages that different things mattered. And I'm like, what is this? What is going on here? How is this actually going to affect me in any practical way in my life? And lo and behold, it is the entire foundation of the US Money system has been built on credit. And I found that out as I myself was looking to get into some form of business loan, startup loan, business credit cards. I was looking at 0% business credit cards. And I, I was looking at my credit and I was like, I'm not in the right place. And I wasn't even in a place where my credit was shot. But it wasn't great, it wasn't built, it wasn't good for what an underwriter would see. And so I had to learn what are the things that, you know, actually make up a good FICO and a good solid credit profile. And through that process, you know, I got my credit cleaned up and buffed up really up into the eight hundreds. And I had a ton of friends, you know, reach out for me to do the same thing. And it's really interesting how, how you can really make an incredible impact on your credit today. And I'd love to talk about a few of the ways we can do that. But ever since then, we've been helping people fix their credit, you know, really bulk it up so that they can get access to the financial products they need to refinance debt to move forward in their lives and take care of their families.

Awesome. Awesome. So let me give you a little context of who you're talking to today on my channel. So the majority of my listeners that are watching this video and many others are between 30 to 55 years old. You're talking to single moms, divorced moms, widows, husbands and wives, families with kids. They're carrying six plus figures of debt. They've the majority of have had poor experiences with debt, as most of us do. I believe at one point we have that season where we have a terrible experience with debt. And you go one of two ways. You either avoid debt like the plague and try to never touch it, or maybe like yourself or myself, you're curious as to wait, maybe there's a way to use this tool properly. Maybe I'm just using it wrong. You know, it's not the way you use a hammer. You know, I need a screwdriver for that. Or I need a Phillips head. Right. So that's where my head went. And a lot of my viewers are like that as well, where they're like, wait a second. Okay, I've got this traumatizing experience with debt and all this emotion that comes with it. And I'm still carrying over six plus figures of debt made up of mortgage, mortgages, car loans, student loans, credit cards, and personal loans, even medical debt or IRS debt. But I'm hearing all these case studies on Denzel's channel of people using debt more efficiently and getting tremendous results. So 30, 55 years old, male, female, six plus figures of debt, low cash flow, and they're starting on their financial journey, or they've been on it for some time and they're right at that stage of taking it to the next level. But they really need to get over this credit, Humphrey, in a sense. And some of the tools that we like to use on this channel are home equity lines of credits in the first and second position, personal line of credit, business line of credit, strategic 0% credit cards. With that, you know, a couple of cashback rewards, statement credits points, Miles. And ultimately we're trying to leverage these tools to accelerate debt and get into travel hacking and just overall lifestyle hacking, where we can pay for the same things that most people pay for, but on average save anywhere from 10 to 20% off their cost of living just by running those expenses through Strategic credit cards and getting points, miles, things like that, or just completely offsetting an entire cost of a particular category like traveling hotels, flights, things like that. And we, we hear the gurus talk about it and the content creators, but we don't often hear just everyday people doing it. And so on this channel, I like to make case studies where I illustrate that. And so where I think where you're gonna really provide a ton of value is really diving into those beginning stages of how someone that I just shared with you has got a lot of debt and they don't have a whole lot of cash flow to work with. Or maybe they do. What are some easy wins? Or if you could take us through your process step by step, I'll take notes and we'll go from there. I think that sounds good. Sure.

Yeah, no, I could take you through that. I actually was just speaking with someone in kind of a similar situation and there's, there's a ton of little quick wins you can get. I'll tell you about some of that in terms of the process of credit and also of course, what that enables when it comes to different financial products that you guys could be using in order to accelerate debt payoff and get points and all that stuff. So very simply, with credit, the first thing that we're going to do when we take a look at a file is we're going to identify what are all of the items that, that are holding you back, meaning what are some of the biggest items? Delinquencies, bad accounts, where if we were to tackle those, your FICO score would have significant increases. And what we're going to do is once we target those, we're going to use what's called the Fair Credit Reporting act, is the fcra. And we're going to systematically dispute each of these items with experian, Equifax and TransUnion with the credit bureaus. And some of those items are going to be removed or altered the way that we want immediately. And when I say immediately, that might happen on the first round or the second round. A round is 30 days because the credit bureau has 30 days legally to reply to, to the, to our dispute. And so if it comes off in 30 days, great. If it comes off in 60 or 90, that's most common. Where we see most items fall off is the 60 to 90 day mark. Okay. Some items can stay on as long as 120 or 150 days. And there are some items that, you know, the credit bureaus are just so stingy on that they Just they take hitting them a few times. In fact, there are people that have gone so far as, you know, arbitration lawsuits, and you'll see these credit bureaus in lawsuits all the time. And it's one thing that I like to emphasize to people is, hey, you're not dealing with a federal bureau. It's just a company. Experian is a company like your company or my company, anybody's company. It's not a federal federal bureau. They're called bureaus because they hold a special position, but they're just companies. So they get sued all the time. They don't follow the law all the time. But we hold them to the law because you as a consumer have the right to challenge the accuracy of the items because really all they are is a company that buys and sells the data. So we understand that. We utilize the law on your behalf. We do multiple rounds of dispute and in that process we're cleaning up personal information inquiries, late payments, charge offs, collections accounts, and any and all forms of delinquencies which would basically hinder your credit from going up. Okay, so there are many. There's a few key factors that go into making up your fico, but essentially we identify all the negative items. We dispute those. That's what's called cleaning up your credit. There's a second half to this whole process, which is one that I did a lot to start, which is when you're actually building your credit, meaning putting new accounts on your file or bulking up your credit to a place where it looks even better to an underwriter and your FICO is even higher. So you're getting access to the best interest rates, the best products in the best way because you're a very good candidate for any financial product when you have good credit. And so that's a little bit of a summary of our process. Did that answer it for you?

Yeah. So we have cleaning, which involves disputing with these private companies. I think that reduces itself temperature quite a bit because I do see the hesitation, the fear, the intimidation that a lot of people have where when dealing with Experian, Equifax, Transunion, like they feel like if they make a mistake, like they. It's like equal to getting audited, like a tax audit. Sometimes they feel like something so bad is going to happen that they just don't touch it, they don't pay attention to it, they're just in fear of it. So I think that reduces the temperature quite a bit. Say no, you're dealing with a private company that's regulated and we're simply holding them accountable to the law by having the support, like someone like yourself to walk them through that process. So cleaning that involves reporting to these bureaus, removing any errors, mistakes, delinquencies, inquiries to clean up the credit from past mistakes or past debts that you've already eliminated that are still reporting for some reason so that we can actually build credit. Because if you're trying to build credit and you're carrying all this, all this weight, essentially you're just going too slow and you'll see your credit go up 2 points, 6 point when it could be shooting up 60, 80 points in a very short period of time. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, we just had someone we worked with for only two weeks and their score shot up 118 points. So this stuff happens all the time. If you're disputing this stuff accurately and you're getting it removed, you can see massive jumps pretty early on.

Okay. And then when we get into building, that's dealing with new accounts essentially. Right. Trade lines. And is it strategic types of new accounts that were leveraging. What would be some examples of that?

Yeah, so depending on where someone's at, we're going to look at what's the distribution of the account types that they have. So for example, if someone was only consolidated in student loans and maybe some credit cards, then that's not a lot of distribution. Now of course we're not going to say, hey, just so that you can go build your credit, go force yourself to buy a car, buy a house or do any of this stuff. But just so that you know it's a good place for a lender to see that you have distributed types of accounts. So it's good. It's not a bad thing necessarily to have like a student loan in the past paid off is great. You know, a car, a few credit cards. In fact, if you can get to a place where you have 19 or more really good standing accounts, you're in a very, very solid place in terms of number of accounts and likely your account range as well. But just to give you some examples, if someone is just in the stage where they're building for the first time after removing the negative items, you might not yet find yourself approved for super high limit credit cards. And so I want to give people some options here because there are some really good options. You can sign up for simple starter accounts like Experian Boost or Rent Reporters. The good thing with Rent Reporters is it'll actually report up to two years back dated which is good for your account age because anytime you add a new account, it's going to slightly reduce your account age, which usually temporarily dips your score only a little bit. But then over time it's actually a better factor because now you have a good standing account. And so you have services like that. You have secured credit cards, small secured credit cards. If you qualify already for getting a credit card and you don't already have a few of them already, it's good to keep as many accounts open and in good standing as possible. A lot of people ask me, hey Michael, should I close this account? And the answer is typically no. If it's a good standing credit card account, the more credit that you can show you can maintain that's open at the same time is a, is a plus for you, is good for you from a credit profile when they see you have multiple open accounts in good standing. So you have all sorts of options. You can also do what's called a pledge loan or secured installment loan from certain institutions where, you know, whatever cash you have on hand, they will take and lend back to you at a small interest rate. That can also get a good standing account on your file as well. So these are just some, some items where you can start to thicken your file of good standing accounts so that you have a better FICO and a better standing moving forward.

Got it. So if someone is working toward trying to obtain a home equity line of credit or something like a personal line of credit, this is someone that has a mortgage, they've got student loans, they've got car loans, they've got credit cards, they got all these different things going on. Typically from my perspective, I'm trying to tackle debts in a strategic order from a cash flow perspective, but I understand that's not always as efficient on getting the approval of a specific tool. Could you speak to that sort of example of someone is trying to pay off debt and they're actively making extra payments on either various different debts, one debt at a time. And ultimately they're trying to get to the HELOC so they can accelerate their debt faster. But can you speak to the part of, okay, maybe there's a little bit of a balance or world where maybe not paying that specific debt more, or is it a matter of spreading it out? What have you seen to be more efficient from a credit building standpoint to access the tools that we need? Let's say we've already done the cleaning process and, and now it's, we need to get it to 720 or higher so that they can get the best home equity line of credit. Zero closing costs, intro rate a point two points below prime for the first 12 months at, you know, a very credible local credit union with a high credit limit.

Yeah, so if we're assuming that we're starting from a place where we've, we don't have negative activity because if there's negative activity on the report, that's the number, that's the number. That's the number one thing that we tackle. But just from a building standpoint, when we talk about credit utilization, typically you see it averaged from all of their accounts. But really you don't want to have any. When you go to apply for a HELOC or go to apply somewhere, you don't really want any credit card revolving account that is over a 30% utilization. If you can get each of them under 30% utilization, then you're going to be in a good spot. So I would, I'd prioritize that instead of just paying one all the way off or all the way down if it meant that you were able to get some of those other cards under 30% utilization before you go to apply. Because that's going to give you, that's going to, that's going to show that you can maintain not just some of your credit cards but all of them. And you're not in a high risk territory in any way because all, all a lender wants to see for the HELOC is that they can count on you paying them back. That's all your credit is basically suggesting. And so that, that's one big tool. But, but let me give you a tip really quick as well. Something pretty that not too many people know about is you can go to your existing credit card relationships and you can request to have them increase your credit limit. Now if you increase your credit limit, then naturally your utilization will go down.

Yeah.

Because if you had a $2,000 balance on a $5,000 credit limit, but now the limit is $10,000 now you're only using 20% of that of that credit line. And so that's another strategy that you can use is simply call your bank and say, hey, do you guys have the ability to increase my credit line? Now note, note that some banks will do a soft pull and that's great. Soft pull means it doesn't actually hit your credit with a hard inquiry. Hard inquiries make up 10% of your FICO score. It's best if they can just do a soft pull. But even if they can't and they have to do a hard inquiry. The net benefit to you and to your FICO may be greater if they approve you for a higher limit on multiple cards. And so that's something that you can definitely consider. If you're just looking for some small moves, you can do some tweaks along the way before you apply for that heloc.

Okay, so I want to give you a little example here. Just kind of make it super easy, because this is what I deal with very often, and there's plenty of people watching that are carrying a lot of credit card debt. They're a homeowner. Their property has appreciated quite a bit. They learned about HELOCs. How, you know, today you get a heloc somewhere around 7 and a half percent or less with great credit. And they're rocking over here with their credit cards at 25% and up. And so in their head, they're like, man, if I could just move all this into the HELOC, I'll be good. Problem is their credit's at 620 or less than that. So even if they were able to get approved, they get approved for the worst HELOCs at the highest rates with, you know, more fees and more limitations and not as high of a credit limit, things like that. So from your perspective, knowing someone's trying to get to a certain tool within their credit reach and say, we got these four credit cards here, and I just kind of made it easy. They all have a 10k credit limit. This is the balance owed, and let's say these are just their monthly payments. Normally, as a financial coach, I'm coming at it like, okay, we need to knock off the 1, the 3, the 5, the 7. That's like, typically the case in some instances. If I'm just going from lowest to highlight now, from your perspective, you're like, let's get these balances below 30% in correlation to your credit limit. Plus let's also see if we can get credit line increases, soft pull, hopefully. And so if it was simply a matter of, you know, get this seven down to three, get this five down to three or less, leave the one alone. Would that be something where. Where you be at from your perspective?

Yeah.

So from your perspective, how would you handle that at this point?

Yeah, I would. I would say absolutely. If you can lower to under 30% each account utilization, not only is your average account utilization going to be under 30%, but each account will individually be under 30%, which looks much better from an underwriting standpoint. And from a FICO perspective.

Okay, got it. So that's, that's very helpful. I don't always look at it from that perspective, so I'm glad you're here to help with. It's, it's a timing thing as well, because one could make the argument that by paying off, from my standpoint, by paying off debt in this way, to eliminate this from a cash flow perspective puts this person in a better position. But if you can get them the better tool to essentially consolidate all of it into a lower interest rate environment faster, then there could be an argument that, well, in the end, Michael might go faster than what I might tell someone. So it also, it also just depends on who we're, who we're talking to. But if someone has, you know, been diligent, they've been cleaning, again, we assume they've already cleaned up their credit. So they're on this process now trying to better their credit simultaneously. They're paying everything on time. Where you normally see the most amount of opportunity is in the credit utilization. Because of how our credit score is made up of. You said 30% or more is just from credit utilization. So if they do have that 30 year fixed rate mortgage and they have student loans that they've been paying on for 10 plus years, maybe a car loan, those are less attractive to try to accelerate. It's really the, maybe the credit card debts or maybe a personal loan. Getting it.

Yeah.

To. Would you even, would you even argue, would you, would you even argue a car loan potentially, like getting it to a certain percentage owed it.

It would be great. I just wouldn't prioritize that above the revolving credit.

Gotcha. Okay, so just to recap again, coming, coming back, we have like step one. Every single person you work with, you're going to pull their reports, pull their credit report and see what, what can we clean. Because doing that alone, you're saying, could boost someone's credit really fast. Then, then step two is building, acquiring new accounts. You said 19 or more is great and that, that anything counts as an account, even if it was paid off. Correct, Correct.

It's, it's an account if it's an account. But it's better if we can keep it in open standing because it shows you can manage that credit simultaneously.

Okay, got it. So back to your point about credit cards. Don't necessarily want to close those. Keep, keep increasing the credit lines, if anything. And if you're not really using the card, maybe use it once a year just to keep it active. Right?

Yeah, just small amount, totally fine.

And then in the. Once we get to part two of building something, as simple as getting secured card or going to rent reporters to start registering your credit, building it up. And then you also said something on. Was it Experian Boost you said? I think it was, yeah.

So anything where you're making a recurring payment can technically be reported to your credit. And there are certain services like Experian Boost that will help you get those things.

Registered subscriptions.

Yeah. Subscriptions.

Yeah, yeah. So you're saying there's probably subscriptions that you can register on Experian Boost potential.

Yeah. Experian Boost will take you through everything and you can see which is, is something you have. And if you're in that place where you're building, it can be a good idea to add that account.

Yeah, this is great. So once I get through cleaning, once I get through building at. Is there. Is it in your mind, is it a certain credit score or, or just knowing what the person's goal is before they apply for anything, or is there another step after building in terms of boosting up someone's credit score? Is there anything else that you want to add to this?

Well, we always start with the end in mind. So knowing what the product is, if it's a HELOC they're trying to go after and what rate they're trying to get, we can see where's their FICO at and also where's their file. In terms of an underwriting standpoint, if everything's clean and you've gone through and you've built your account significantly, I can give an example of a really well built out file. We talked about 19 accounts. That's fantastic, by the way. That's exceptional to have that many accounts. If they're all in good standing, anything more than five is no longer a thin file. If you have under five accounts in general, that's a thin file. You want to have as many good standing accounts as possible. Having different types of accounts are great. Having low inquiries and very simple personal information. Just one name and one address and not a ton of aliases. We clean up all these things in the cleanup process and then the building. If you can have a credit card that is at least above a $10,000 credit limit, it's a really good anchor card to have to show that you, you can manage a significant amount of credit. Only one, though, and the last thing we talked about or haven't talked about is potentially using an authorized user to also bump up your FICO a little. Well, now these used to be More effective. But I still wouldn't take them away entirely. From a strategic standpoint, if someone is in a place where they have a close friend or family member who doesn't really use a credit card, but has a high limit on it, so maybe they have a $10,000 limit, thousand dollar limit personal credit card, and they barely keep a balance on it, that might be a great idea to have them add you as an authorized user. It'll show up on your account and it will contribute to your credit utilization as well. Now just keep in mind, from an underwriting standpoint, they can see that that's an authorized user. I don't recommend having more than two or three authorized users. Some people just go crazy. But, but it can make a nice little boost if you don't have one yet.

When it comes to authorized user, let's say, Michael, you're going to be my authorized user. Do you inherit all of my credit history or just the one account that I'm putting you on?

Only one account.

Only the one account. Okay, got it. That makes sense. Okay, that's clear. Yeah. So when it comes to authorized user, my own experience, I've used it to add my younger niece, my younger sister, so they can start building credit on my oldest, highest credit limit credit card that I, that I have. Would you say that's a pretty good move to get started off with someone that, you know, has no credit history whatsoever, leveraging that?

Absolutely. You know, get someone who you trust and they trust you and just have that account added. It'll make things much easier for you.

And they don't need to use the card to get the benefit of increased credit score. Correct.

Yeah. So in fact, you can have it where when they add you as an authorized user, they don't even need to issue you a new card and have it sent. So like you don't even have, you don't even have or need to have a physical credit card. They simply add you to the account as an authorized user. That will get reported and show up as an account on your credit report and it'll help you.

Gotcha. Now the flip side of that is if you get added on to someone that has terrible credit and they have you as an authorized user, that would be not.

Yes. If they, if they. Well, it doesn't matter if they mess up any other account on their report, but if they mess up that credit card account and they start going late on it, they start having delinquencies, they start having a high, high balance on it. Now it can adversely Affect you because it's on your report.

Gotcha. How easy is it to get removed as an authorized user? How simple is that?

It's really easy. It's. It's phone, it's a phone call away.

Now do I have to call like in that case, Michael, you have to call me to remove.

Or is that whoever has the account, whoever originally set up the account.

Okay.

Needs to call the lender and say, hey, I want this person removed.

Do you want to make sure you don't have a falling out with that person that has you as an authorized user? They could probably do some real mean things. I can imagine.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah. Although I believe there has been cases such that the person who is the authorized user who got the benefit could also call and say, hey, I don't want this account and I don't want to be on it. So remove me and you can verify yourself and I believe you can get removed.

Gotcha. Cleaning building, Authorized users Rent Reporter Secure Cards, Experian Boost. These are little wins that when combined all together can really significantly boost your credit. And as you mentioned, you want to know what the end in mind is? Are we trying to get approved for a home? Are we trying to get another car soon? Are we trying to get a heloc? So understanding you, understanding what their goal is going to help you cater to a customized plan to build or rebuild their credit right from that standpoint. Anything else outside of really those two main steps, because I would throw authorized user under building as well. So like cleaning a building, anything else.

Outside of that clean build. Have the proper mindset. You are the buyer, you are the person with the power. Understanding that lenders and institutions, they need you and you know, you're the one that gets to decide where you take your business. And I love to have that mindset going into anything because it's, it's absolutely true. You should never be in a situation where you're, you're afraid of a lender, you're afraid of a credit bureau. These are nothing to be, nothing to be afraid of. And you absolutely have the power and the laws on your side to help you in all of this.

Love it. Now, when it comes to someone successfully cleaning their credit, building their credit, they've done all the work. Now it's time to apply. Are there any strategic kinds of moves one can take? Let's say, for example, someone is trying to obtain a home equity line of credit. Is there? And I'll share with you what I tell my clients and audience. You let me know If I'm in the wrong or if that's good, or if you want to add anything additional to it. So when it comes to getting a home equity line of credit, first or second, I inform my clients, you're going to want to go to a bank that offers this home equity line of credit, first or second, preferably a credit union, and you're going to want to open a relationship with them, open up a checking, a savings, move some money over there, talk to the staff that runs that specific department of HELOCs. Get to know which branch you're going to go to. If you can go to them in person, book an appointment, meet Steve there, meet Joanne, and build a relationship. Chances are once you do those steps, building a relationship, building credibility, and really letting them know what it is that you want from them. I have personally witnessed in my case, when I go to do that, a smoother process, faster and higher chance of approval. Now, it's not rooted in any sort of fact. I can't factually guarantee someone that that will happen every single time. But by doing those initial things, I would say puts you in a better position than someone that does not have a relationship and just calls over the phone and, and apply even if you have good credit. Sometimes they would, I would assume they take the person that built that relationship over the other. That's what I say. Let me know if I'm in the wrong there or if you would like to add anything else. When it comes to the application stage, how are you informing people that may want to get a HELOC or apply for a home, but we can keep it on the, on the HELOC example, first or second.

You're absolutely right. And actually every single institution, financial institution, they actually maintain an internal score, an internal scoring system with regards to you. And that actually does factor in your relationship with them, you know, your account standing, the amount of funds that you keep in there, how long those funds have been there. And it's really important to develop relationships because these relationships can make tweaks and adjustments and essentially work on your behalf as your application goes into underwriting. And so if you can develop a good relationship with someone there at, at the financial institution, then if that goes into underwriting and comes back, let's say even an initial approval, but not quite at the, at the rate you wanted, you, you can have a relationship where they might even be able to request a rate reduction or, or a review. These, this is the back and forth conversation between the front end banker and the underwriter. And so, um, It's, It's a fan. It's a fantastic idea to go build that relationship and to, you know, open an account, have some, some funds in there and. Because again, you're gonna, you're gonna also have this internal scoring factor at play as well during the application. Yeah.

Now, would you even argue like, this applies to a CD or High Yield Savings or even if you had investments with that institution, like, all of that plays into. They have a car loan with, like, all that plays into this internal score if you're dealing with the same institution when it comes to borrowing.

Right. That's, that's why I say that's people. I mean, if you've had a relationship for a really long time with one bank, go talk to them first and see, see what they can offer you. You know, it's. It's. It's a great idea.

That's huge.

Yeah.

No, I had a personal experience recently. Just bought a condo for my mom. And during the application process, it was looking a little iffy in terms of getting the approval of the condo. Not because of my mom's score or my score or DTI or income. It had to do with the hoa, and it had to do with the HOA providing evidence that they are repairing the roofs of all the buildings under the, under the hoa. Now, we knew that work was being done because we were seeing other buildings, they were getting repaired. The building that we were buying in, no work was, Was getting started on. So the approval process was like, we're this close to closing, and we got dropped this information randomly on us. It was, it was like a. Just a blind spot last minute, and we're like, I don't think we're gonna be able to close. But because of my relationship with the mortgage loan officer, he went up to the, to the higher ups of the organization, institution and, and someone in the. Some of the top. I don't know. Never met the dude, but apparently has seen my content on online and was like, oh, this is, this is the guy that's sent us a ton of business over God knows how many years. And it was as simple as this. And I like to always remind my clients that although you're dealing with massive corporations, massive institutions, these big banks, there's still a little bit of a human element into that whole process. And if you can do everything, your power to be part of that human experience and that person that's part of your application, you're on their mind. Oh, that's Michael applying. That's Denzel applying. And they make a little note to the underwriter, hey, can you push this through for me? Don't think that don't happen behind the scenes. It may not be quote unquote protocol, or there might be a little bit of a bias there. But let's. Who are we kidding? Like, that happens all the time. Especially, hey, if you got to bring a couple cookies to the, to the person that's, you know, working behind the teller. I mean, I'm not saying do anything. I'm saying be intentional, be organic, be authentic with establishing a real relationship with that banker. Because you never know when you're going to need him or her five, ten years down the road. And if you can have again, the best rates, the best products, how many tens of thousands of dollars is that saving you on a future mortgage loan, on a future car loan that you finance, on a future rental that you finance? When it comes to business opportunities, business lending, I mean, that's probably a whole nother ball game. If we get into the business credit side, it's a whole world that opens up there. But strictly dealing with personal credit, there's a lot of things that people really underrate when it comes to having a good credit credit score that could literally increase your overall financial portfolio of investments simply because you now have more money to invest and save because not being put toward interest costs.

Right.

Because you're able to save all that money on interest. So outside of cleaning, building and then applying, is it just kind of rinse and repeat? In terms of your process, once someone is working with you, how does your services work, I should ask, in terms of from initial consultation to client, and then once that client is successful, do they just come back to you over time for the next thing? Walk us through your services and how long you work with people.

Yeah, so our goal is to get you where you want to go as fast as possible. And we love to teach the principles of how to maintain good credit, you know, even after you're with us. Because, yeah, our goal is that, you know, once you have cleaned everything up and you've built things and you've had the mindset to maintain everything, that you, you never have a massive, you know, cleanup you need to do again, you're able to maintain that. And so, uh, you know, typically we work with someone from, you know, on average, three or maybe four months. And once you're cleaned up and, and you have all the tools you need, you know, we'll, we'll make sure that you get connected to the next step that, that you need whether that's, you know, with Denzel in order to, to complete the HELOC or your next step. And, you know, we, we're there as a support, as a resource if something does go wrong in the future and you're like, hey, listen, you know, this account, I had to let it go, or this thing came up that I wasn't expecting, and now I'm seeing this or that on my credit. You know, we're available to help.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, for those that are watching, I will have a link in the description in the comment section as well. To get a hold of Michael and to rebuild your credit, repair all, all three so that you can get access to the right tools as it relates to the strategies that we teach on this channel and continue to proceed in your financial freedom journey. Mike, it's been a pleasure having you on the channel for the first time. This is your debut and hopefully we can do more workshops just like this, maybe even a live stream, who knows? I appreciate your time today. Thank you and God bless everyone. Have a good day. Sam.