Ready to learn the secrets to getting strangers who want to fix their credit with YOU?
Well, today I’m joined by Israel Cordova, the founder of Cordova Financial who is going to share all about how he built his wildly successful credit repair business from nothing, and now he helps THOUSANDS of people and has made over a million dollars.
One of the hardest parts of running any business is finding clients. But our most successful credit heroes, the ones that make a great living and make a massive impact, they’re really good at that!
Israel Cordova has helped thousands of clients repair their credit, built a big social media following, and is on a mission to educate his clients as much as possible.
So, please welcome to the podcast, Israel Cordova!
Here are some of the top highlights from our conversion. Watch the full interview here.
Let's start with the basics. Where did you grow up? And where are you now?
I was actually born in Mexico and brought over to the US when I was 10 years old. Now, I'm in Central Florida and between Tampa and Orlando.
What was your life like before credit repair?
Well, I was working at a manufacturing plant. I was a Production Supervisor, working probably between 70 and 80 hours a week. It was it was extreme.
What made you go from that to credit repair? did? Did you have credit issues?
I did, I had ruined my credit at a young age. And then after that, it was just a search to see how I could help myself come out of that situation, and I just started researching as much as I possibly could about it and started working on issues that I had personally until I was able to get my credit repair myself.
And then it kind of paused for a second. I didn't go right into business right away. And the situation with me was I ruined my credit and kind of forgot about it. And at the moment when I was ready to buy a house, I started looking for a house. I kind of actually wasted a realtor's time because they knew where I work. So they assumed that I had a good credit score. And we just started shopping for houses, and we found the one we liked.
And right when we were about to proceed with the rest of the process of buying the home, she's like, Hey, have you been pre-approved? I'm like, oh, no, it didn't even come to mind getting pre-approved. So I'll give a call to this lender, they'll pre-approve you, and we'll get you all set up as soon as she runs the credit. She's like, well, that's not gonna happen now. So we put that on pause. And that's when I started researching about how I fix my credit.
You left school at an early age to support your family. How did this challenge shape your approach to business and personal finance?
Yeah, I went all the way to ninth grade in high school. And then I kind of dropped out of school to start trying to help my parents.
Whenever I came across Credit Repair Cloud, it was kind of all the information at once and at first it was a lot of information. But once you start going through the software, and it just makes things so simple for you. It's just common sense, really. Even if you're not a high school graduate or a college graduate, you can still jump on Credit Repair Cloud and figure out everything you guys have on there. It's so simple and explained so well that it's it's easy to comprehend.
How did you start to turn credit repair into a business?
I started giving tips. So once I fixed mine, I figured out how to do that. Then I started just giving tips out on social media and started telling people hey, this is what you can do to help yourself. This is what you can do to help others as authorized users. This is what you can do when it comes to collection.
Basically, I gave so much information that they asked me to start my business. And at the time, I didn't see it as a business, it was just a matter of giving information. And then when it came to everybody asking them the comments, can you help me? Can you help me? Can you help me? It grew so big that I'm like, hold on, maybe this is an opportunity, and then I need to take advantage.
How did you start to scale it up? Because you have a lot of clients today. In fact, how many clients do you have today?
In the first month, we signed up almost 100 clients. In the first month I started, once I got to the 250-300 client mark, I kind of stopped marketing because I wanted to make sure that I had everything in place to be able to take on more clients. So it wasn't that we couldn't grow faster. It was just I was making sure that we had everything in place. Now, we have just over 1300 clients.
What were the biggest obstacles you faced when starting your credit repair business? And how did you overcome them?
Whenever I started with credit repair, you guys didn't have the Masterclass. And now you do. But before then, I did the 14-Day Challenge. From the 14-Day Challenge, I just started reading every single thing that I could get. Every book that they offered online, I bought it. Every single video that I could get my eyes on, I went after it. I wanted to make sure I knew everything I possibly could. If there was something out there that I could read, I went after it.
In the world of credit repair, how important is brand trust? And what are some good ways to establish it?
It is critical if you want to grow, you want those clients to remember they see that logo, they see the company name, no matter where they see it, you start building trust. They see it maybe a few times before they even call you. There have been clients in the past who said, Hey, I watched your videos for three months before I called you. I build confidence with them on on lives. I've built confidence with them over videos and just giving tips. And branding is everything. If you want to have a scalable company, something that you can grow into the millions a year, you definitely need to focus on your brand. Initially, I have a a logo, but after seeing the success that we're having, I'm like I need to invest and make sure that people remember who they worked with.
I noticed on your website and a lot of your social media, it's all in Spanish, or nearly all in Spanish. What motivated you to start focusing on helping the Spanish-speaking community with credit repair?
When I started this credit repair journey, I didn't find a whole lot of information when it came to Spanish. I'm like, hey, there's hardly anybody actually talking about tips, tricks, how you can better your score. There's a lot of information in English, but there's very limited when it comes to Spanish. So there's not a whole lot of companies out there that are doing credit repair for the Hispanic community. So I figure this is this is where I need to go.
How do you help educate your clients about how to avoid damaging their credit scores?
We have done some training for our clients. So, how to manage credit cards, when is credit card important to have a low balance, and what balances should be. We also educated on the house, the best way to get a car loan, when you should go buy a car and when you shouldn't. And also, I do Monday through Friday lives on TikTok, where I just go and answer people's questions for 45 minutes to an hour on a daily basis. And people just offer their lives, not clients, but just people that come to watch and I started watching your content and never interested in getting a credit card and now on my credit score is 760 just by watching your lives.
I think that's so smart to have a money-back guarantee. I saw that on your site. What effects has this brought to your business?
We've never had to give anybody any money back. But the thing is, when you do a money back guarantee with your clients, make sure that they understand what's their portion of the deal. So make sure they understand that they play a huge part in the credit repair process. It's not like a client could come, just forget about us, and expect their credit to be great in six months. They have to work with us. It's a mutual relationship, where hey, listen, lower your credit card balances, this is the data, your credit card reports, this is when you should have a balance between one and 6%. Make sure your payments on time, if you have automatic payments, still go online, make sure that those are going in and they're they're getting posted. So it's it's a mutual relationship if they want to have a very big change in their credit, and needs to be mutual.
What advice would you give someone who's looking to start their own credit repair business,
I'd say go for it. Go open it. And sometimes, people will research and what they call analysis paralysis, they go on there and just look for so much information. You'll never have 100% of the information. If you want to get started. Go ahead and get started. I would definitely suggest you know, reach out for help. But definitely, get started.
Let's talk about marketing and attracting new clients. I want to know what's working I saw you make a lot of TikTok videos, is that driving a lot of your business?
Well, I feel like the live videos on TikTok build that confidence for people. There are clients who say, Hey, I've been watching you for three months before I even called you. But just being able to answer every question that they have on a live, it shows that you're not just reading off a script, whenever you're making a video, if you're on a live and you're answering every question of a client on the live, they know that you're the expert because you're answering every single person's question on there, giving them tips at the same time. It just gives them all the information. I give them all the information and they can better their credit and they don't have to come to me. That's good. They don't necessarily have to come and work with us. They can come on our lives. They can watch all the information.
What are a couple of strategies that have been effective for you in disputing any sort of item on a credit report?
We've used the law for anything that is a collection company, and we mailed directly to that collection company. And we asked them to send a specific list of items to be able to validate that. And on that first letter, we typically tell them if you can't send me that list, please go ahead and remove it already. And out of every single person who signs with us. Out of 10 people, eight of them get results in the very first month that they sign on. And just because we also use certified letters, we track and make sure that the collection company receives it when they receive it. And we let them know that we're using certified letters as well.
And we've been talking on the show lately a lot about stall letters from the credit bureaus. How do you deal with stall letters?
We have a power of attorney for every single client. Every single client, when they sign on, gives us a limited power of attorney that just specifies that we're disputing for them. And that has completely stopped. I think we don't get any at all anymore. Wow.
It shows on there that a client has hired us to help dispute items on their credit report and that we're working on their behalf and it has their signature, it has a date that they started. It gives us six months. And then if the client wants to continue with this, it gives them the option to extend that time, but it definitely shows the Bureau's, hey, listen, we have permission from the client. We are working to help them, but we have their permission to do so.
Want even more of Israel’s amazing advice? Check out the full interview on YouTube.
I'LL END BY SAYING
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So take care, Credit Hero!
And Keep Changing Lives!