Daniel Rosen 00:00
Hey credit heroes. Today we're gonna talk with credit repair millionaires Ricardo Soto and Daniel De La Garza. They built their credit repair business up to a million dollars in just a little over a year. And today, they are here to share their secrets on exactly how they did this. 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. Okay, before I dive in, if you are new to this podcast, be sure to click to subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss any of the secrets that I share each week on the Credit Repair Business Secrets podcast. And if you want me to hold you by the hand, as you launch your very own credit repair business, go to creditherochallenge.com Okay, let's get into this. Ricardo Soto and Daniel De La Garza. They just made it into the millionaire's club. Look, here's their award that goes here on our wall. And they they got this award for making over a million dollars in their credit repair cloud. They did it in record time. And they're here today to tell us exactly how they did it. So please welcome to the podcast, Millionaire Club members Ricardo Soto and Daniel De La Garza. Hey guys, welcome to the podcast.
Ricardo Soto 01:46
Hey, how you doing? Daniel, thank you so much for having us. This is really cool. Really excited.
Daniel Rosen 01:52
I'm so excited myself. I'm really glad you guys are here. You just got into the club. How does it feel?
Ricardo Soto 01:58
It feels great. I mean, it's one of those things that you're you get recognised for it. Versus out there in the real world in the corporate world. You know, the recognitions are smaller, but never into like, hey, how do you deep dive into this? You know, it's super exciting. You know, Daniel, what do you think, man?
Daniel De La Garza 02:17
Honestly, man, I'm just happy to be a part of this club. I think the last reward I got was probably a student of the month award. So this is a nice jump up from that.
Daniel Rosen 02:27
Congratulations. And where are you guys?
Ricardo Soto 02:30
We're in to be exact. We're located in Indio, California. But that doesn't really ring a bell to a lot of people. So we usually say we're about 15 minutes from the Palm Springs area. So Southern California.
Daniel Rosen 02:43
Oh, you're our neighbour practically. Yeah. How cool. I want to come and visit my next trip out to Palm Springs do let us know. Is that where you guys are both from originally? Well, I'm
Ricardo Soto 02:55
originally from southern Mexico. I'm originally from Acapulco. I came here in 99. I was like 10 years old. But Daniel, you're he's a
Daniel De La Garza 03:05
native from your right. Yeah, native. Yeah, I'm born and raised out here in the Palm Springs area pretty much all my life. The only time I moved out was to go to college out in San Bernardino area and then graduated came back home. So yeah,
Daniel Rosen 03:18
what were you guys both doing before credit repair? And what what led you into credit repair? How did tell me the story. Jay, if
Ricardo Soto 03:25
you want to start us off with that, and yeah, I
Daniel De La Garza 03:27
think for me, probably about want to say 2015. I own a couple of businesses, actually throughout the years. And one of them was carpet and tile cleaning business. So being in that industry, it's a pretty tough industry as far as on your back, manual labour. So what happened is I basically had had to get back surgery. And when I got back surgery, I was out of work for a while, I would say at least six months. So what happened is either I wasn't able to make any money, obviously. So it was either pay your credit cards or your car or pay the roof over your head, well, obviously I'm going to pay the roof over our head and I things have to kind of go down south that way. And I had to reach out to a company. I didn't even know credit repair really was a thing back then. And I heard about it reached out to the company. They said I had to sign a one year contract, I had no idea what they were doing on my credit report or my credit file. I was just hoping that after a year that my credit would be good and kind of go from there. And so that's kind of how I was introduced to the credit repair industry going through that on my own so
Daniel Rosen 04:39
and did that company help your credit?
Daniel De La Garza 04:42
They did. I have no idea what my credit looked like before I really didn't get any, you know, hey, this is where your starting point is. And then this is what our finishing point was. It was pretty much Hey, the 12 months are up. You're all set good luck and we wish you well you know,
Daniel Rosen 04:56
that's not very good customer service. Now Ricardo, how about you? How did you get into credit repair and why?
Ricardo Soto 05:04
Right I didn't even know there was an industry, you know, for credit repair. My when I used to work for the bank, my dad was diagnosed with a brain tumour, which lead him led him to have complications. Long story short, he was we were in and out of the hospital, every day that he woke up was just another day that he was with us here. So due to being absent a work I was let go, I immediately got hit with two repos, we started living off of our credit cards, because of the time that this happened. We had to he was two years old. We had a child that was two years old. So we were living off of our credit cards, they got charged off went into collections. We were forced to do a chapter seven bankruptcy, because we were in debt, almost $113,000. And with no job, we didn't really know how to repay anything back. Mind you, there is very little information out there about credit and about bankruptcies and just financial stability. So we didn't really know what was happening. And after our bankruptcy, someone mentioned, hey, you know, I can help you fix your credit. So that's when we found out about credit repair. But I, I started working on a used car dealership, which most people there that go are because they can't qualify for a brand new car. Sure. So that's where my credit repair journey really began was like, let me look into this. And what what is this industry about?
Daniel Rosen 06:34
Wow, that's a whole lot to unpack. So your dad had a brain tumour? And then because of spending time with him, You're too much time with him. You were let go of your job at the bank.
Ricardo Soto 06:47
Correct? Yes. So that's terrible. After about seven years working for, for, you know, a bank, you realise that at the end of the day, hey, and industry does have to move forward, a bank does have to move forward. But unfortunately, we can't keep holding on to you because of your life events. That's understandable, which led me to the discovery of you know, this wonderful industry. So sure, but
Daniel Rosen 07:13
wow, how terrible of that bank, a lot of places have even here at credit repair cloud, we have a thing called compassionate leave, where people can leave when there's some life event and they can come back. So I think that's really low, when so much terrible stuff has happened to you all at the same time. But what's incredible is most people might give up and feel defeated. But it sounds like you went into survival mode and really took action. Yeah, what was that decision? Like?
Ricardo Soto 07:46
That decision came down to moving to a smaller space in our in our community? And I'm sure just like a lot of families are, you know, you don't leave your family behind. So with my father, you know, being by the way, he is the world's happiest Uber driver today. He's alive and well. Oh, he's
Daniel Rosen 08:05
good. Oh, that's awesome.
Ricardo Soto 08:07
He's good today. Yeah, they removed 99% of his brain tumour, But fast forward, right. But really what what it came down to was living in a smaller space and raising two kids and in my mom living with us, you know, so there was a total of five people in a less than 100 square foot apartment, the fun that my children have, we're just running around within the apartment, which created a lot of frustration for my wife as to why can't Why are we here? Why can we do something bigger for ourselves, which led me to as a man of the house as the breadwinner, I need to do something for my family. And it's not so much about the the tangible aspect of owning the house, or anything like that. But can we truly provide a better lifestyle for our family? Wow.
Daniel Rosen 09:03
Wow. So at that point, then you started working at the car dealership, and you saw how many people had credit issues? How did you start to learn credit repair? X, both of you guys, how did you start to learn
Ricardo Soto 09:17
a true story? You know, Daniel, I mean, credit repair cloud was the first thing that I got into, I realised that the person that was quote, unquote, helping me with their credit, with my credit, excuse me, was using credit repair cloud. I was like, Well, let me look at what credit repair cloud is, you know, and then I took the the first course that credit repair cloud offers, and I got CRC software certified, you know, which all of those you know, coming from such a background. All of those achievements that credit repair cloud offers are definitely a morale booster. So definitely CRC software certified, which led me to believe like, Hey, I'm onto something thing like, you know, I don't know what this means, but I'm onto something, you know. So the cool thing about that was that I got serious about it, I actually turned the coat closet that we had in our apartment into my office. Awesome. So I will send you a picture of that so you can see it. But literally, it was just big enough for me to put a desk, my computer in a chair, no more people could fit in there, just one person. And that's, that's where we begin our journey on credit repair through a coat closet.
Daniel Rosen 10:34
Amazing. I love that. And did it take a lot of money to launch your business?
Ricardo Soto 10:39
Not at all, I think the monetary part wasn't the problem really. Because, you know, I mean, you you give us 30 days for free just to check it out anyways, you know, so it doesn't take a lot of money on like other businesses, especially coming from like, from the auto industry, where I just spent maybe about a year and a year and a half, you know, looking at different business models. Credit Repair doesn't take money at all whatsoever, I would say just you know, the minimum requirements are the minimum things you have to get, you know,
Daniel Rosen 11:13
it's the same way I launched credit repair cloud. I was home in my bathrobe I had had wasn't showbusiness I had long gaps between gigs. So my credit cards were always maxed out. And you know, you just something happened and I bank Aaron, I nearly lost my house. I nearly lost everything. And it just ingenuity pops in it when when you're in a bind like that you do what you got to do it sink or swim. So that's so impressive that you did that from a closet. I love that. And you've totally bootstrapped everything. How long did it take before you could make a living from it?
Ricardo Soto 11:52
I'm gonna say maybe 45 days in most of it was just me saying, hey, like, do I really want to come out and do this? Do I really want to offer services, I feel like a lot of people just like in any industry, they're going to be good, or they're gonna be great at what they're going to do. But their own insecurity truly prevents them from getting to that big point. But it didn't take long before I actually started getting people asking, Hey, can you help me with my credit? Or how much are your services?
Daniel Rosen 12:24
Daniel, I know you're entrepreneurial. Because you said you have had have other businesses. Right, Ricardo have? Have you ever had other businesses? Or is this your first time being an entrepreneur,
Ricardo Soto 12:35
my first legitimate business where I had it on paper? I started my entrepreneur career back with network marketing. So you know, going into network marketing taught me a lot about mindset, which is in in, you know, in some of the more recent podcast, you've talked about that as well, sure. I think that when somebody is barely starting out, they don't see the value of hey, let me change my mindset. Because it's more of the physical aspect, the tangible things of what can I do. But the mindset is truly where the source of all millionaires lie, you know, I don't think that there's a millionaire in credit repair cloud, or in any industry, really, that has gone to a million dollars with the same mindset that they had when they were struggling financially.
Daniel Rosen 13:22
Right, exactly. And it totally changes who you are very every step of the journey, and you have to grow each step. Yeah, I wish more people understood the value of it. But I'm totally glad that you understood. This is great. And you mentioned marketing. I know you guys are great at marketing. That's how you've grown to over 1000 clients, I'm sure. Because I don't see a big online presence for your business. But I know you're doing marketing. So what is the secret to your marketing? And can you walk us through what you're doing? That's working?
Ricardo Soto 13:58
Yeah, definitely. You know, first of all, I just want to say that the marketing just revolves all around value based content. Okay. So what Daniel and I focus on is just providing nothing of value like, hey, look, this is one way where you can dispute this, or this is how you can read a credit report, or this is where you can find this. It's information that people need, but most of the time, they're not willing to go to an extent to look for. So we follow. How can I say, you know, most people know Gary, Gary Vee Gary Vaynerchuk. Right? So I value Yeah, all he does is give value. So we try to do something similar in this industry is to simply give value, give value, there's people that are going to follow those instructional videos that we provide on social media, and there's people that are gonna hire us to do it for them. And that's truly where our marketing technique or secret sauce lies. I'm the one that does most of the marketing out there. But Daniel truly is the one that took the financial er and elevated it to where it's at today when it comes to scaling and getting us to that million dollar club so he is definitely the numbers person in this relationship. Cool.
Daniel Rosen 15:16
Well, Daniel, what exactly are you doing marketing wise? Where are these videos going? I know you've got a lot going on on Tik Tok? Is that right? primary source of, of new clients.
Ricardo Soto 15:27
So, when it comes to our primary source of clients, they're kind of a mixture between tick tock and Instagram. And I can confidently say that, you know, we made it to the millionaire's club in about 15 months, we've been in business for almost 17 months. In between all that time, we've only spent less than $1,000 on advertisement. Amazing.
Daniel De La Garza 15:51
We just want to see what was out there. What's all the hype about putting dollars towards marketing, you know, and reality is there's no way that paid advertisements ever gonna outdo, you know, just kind of like what we're doing just giving that value based information. So that's what we've come across. So
Daniel Rosen 16:15
that's awesome. I did see some of your tic tock videos. Oh, I love that they start with you going? Great with you. Really, really cool. And then going through, look like you had the the audit page and you're talking about all different tips for people, which was really, really cool. So people actually watch those videos on TikTok, and then visit your site.
Ricardo Soto 16:42
Right? You'd be surprised, right? Like, TikTok is like the new learning plays on online right now. Right? So, you know, people, I guess, they find the information they want the the information that they connect with. And then our job is to build a relationship to build a community. And then because a community within a community, there's trust. And I think that in the credit repair industry, you have to build that trust between yourself and the client. And then that's where that's where the sale begins to happen in reality, because if I can get somebody to trust what we're going to do for them, and it's an, it's to most people, it's an unknown process, like, I don't even know what you're gonna do with my credit, but I just want you to help me fix it. Sure. But in order for you to be able to have those successful sales or those numbers, you have to be able to build that trust. And Daniel does a wonderful job at educating our employees to actually be able to close somebody comfortably, and not have them feel like they're being persuaded to buy a service, but rather, hey, let's establish a relationship. You feel comfortable working with us. I feel comfortable working with you. Let's make a relationship out of this. And I think honestly, that's, there's no secret to that is just honesty, you know, being transparent. Yeah,
Daniel De La Garza 18:09
transparency is very important in our line of work, especially starting in this business. One thing I always thought about credit repair was that it had that logo Tambu Yeah, like that. Like, right, right? Yeah. So it's kind of one of those things where, right off the bat, you feel like everybody's trying to get you the right, you know, all the customers are feeling like, they're just going to take your money, that's a scam or whatever. But the reality is, we care, we care about our clients, we care when a single mom is just trying to get an apartment complex for her kids, you know, and we're able to help out with that. And I think that, you know, that that's, that's a priority to us. And we, you know, sometimes when we're having our sales, or not our sales, but our, our, our coaching calls with these clients, you know, a lot of times, you know, you kind of you have no choice but you're kind of the therapist, you know, along the way, you're listening to their life's story, and, you know, and they appreciate that. So it goes a long way. So,
Daniel Rosen 19:12
absolutely, yeah, you got to be a coach and a therapist. And, and, and as far as giving value what you're doing, by sharing the transparency of the credit repair, it really is establishing you as the expert. So of course they're going to contact you it's it's brilliant. It's so most people think you got to sell if you're doing stuff like that, and and no, you guys have it, right. It's it's really just showing that you're the expert. And I think that's very, very cool. And can you go live on tiktok or is it just pre edited videos you upload? Yeah,
19:47
so I actually go live on a daily basis Monday through Friday for about 30-45 minutes. Answer questions, you know, the purpose of the lives and it's funny because I always You're in show business. Daniel, you have to direct the crowd, you know. So I'm actually a musician and I'm proud to say that after 15 years, I am retiring this year from from showbusiness. Wow. But you have to direct a crowd, you know, you can't just pay let me sit here, let me go live. No, you got to entertain them. But our form of entertainment is providing value. So I will talk about collections. I will talk about, you know, other things. And you know, what's the funny thing about being exposed on Tik Tok? Or on social media is if you're doing the right thing for people, if you're truly trying to help a community, there is people that will reach out. So I actually had the I had the pleasure of speaking to a collections manager of 30 years of experience, because he was saying, hey, look, Ricardo, what you're doing is great, what you're doing is right, how can I help you add more value to you? When you get people like that, that want to reach out and help even more? You get that feeling that you're doing something right, you know?
Daniel Rosen 21:02
Yeah, especially that it was a collections person. That's wild. Yeah, amazing. Now, if someone listening or watching here, if they want to start creating a following on on, you've got a big following, too. You have over a quarter million followers don't chew on to correct. So if someone wants to do that and build a following on tick tock, what would you recommend that they do?
Ricardo Soto 21:25
All you have to do is learn and put it on video, if you learned something, you put it on video and put it out there. That's all you have to do provide value constantly on a day to day basis
Daniel De La Garza 21:37
consistency. Also, I mean, that's like what you say constantly, you have to have that consistency, you got to continue to do that. It's kind of one of those things where we have our morning, huddles with our team Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, we have a morning huddle. And we talk about, Hey, these are the things that we're going to work on today. These are the things that these are our goals. And we're constantly having goals for ourselves individually and for the team overall. And one of those things is where I want to make sure that Ricardo has the ability to do his job. So I take care of the backend stuff. And one of those things that's extremely vital is that you make that content for your clients that you're going live every single day, and providing value for all those people watching.
Daniel Rosen 22:19
And most of the Tick Tock videos, they're short, right?
Ricardo Soto 22:23
Yeah.
Daniel Rosen 22:24
How long? Are they the average one?
Ricardo Soto 22:26
I never make videos past one minute. It seems that in this today's fast paced world, you have about two or three seconds to catch somebody's attention. And if you don't, then they're going to just keep scrolling and scrolling. I mean, we're living in right now in a time where we're being bombarded by media everywhere, right? So how keeping that in mind, that's why you'll probably see me going show, here's a secret, right? The reality there's, there's no secrets and anything, it's just information that's not widely known. And to bring that to a community. That's what you want to concentrate on. You don't want to concentrate on selling people, you want to concentrate on building a community, I just happen to do it on tick tock and on Instagram. And the funny thing is, those are just simply your avenues of traffic. So whoever wants to build a community, or wants to build a following, have that in your mind where you're going to build a community, you're not going to be selling to people, the sales will naturally follow once you add value to people's lives.
Daniel Rosen 23:28
Absolutely. So you add value people come in, and then you're awesome, and they refer others. But what other marketing pieces do you have? Once someone comes into your world? Do you have automations? Or you have drip campaigns? With emails? What else do you have going on? That's working?
Ricardo Soto 23:48
Yeah. And you know what, Daniel has actually become a master at this. But before he actually gets into a quick note, we just implemented a funnel, we had no clue as to how a funnel worked. And we just did it. And we were surprised at how many people had
Daniel De La Garza 24:05
eyes on us. Right? Yeah. So what's really unique about that is if you know, I know, Daniel, you usually ask your clients, if you started all over again, what would you do different, right? Yeah, I would figure out how to make this funnel a lot sooner than we did. Because I feel like we would have been able to scale a lot faster. So the cool thing about it is that we were able to generate the amount of clients that we have, literally by just having a calendar on our social media page, no funnel whatsoever. And we were able to fill that up five days in advance, you know, and we were to the point where we had to scale our business, we got to that point where we scaled, we hired on, by the way, I gotta say, before we even hired anybody. Okay. Ricardo and I, we said, hey, let's partner up. We'll do this together. I'll take care of all the sales calls, you just focus on social media, you're the social media guy, you're, and you can tell that he's the social media guy, he likes to talk, I don't know, I don't really like to talk a whole lot, other than if I'm just talking to the client over the phone. But I can tell you within that first month, I signed up over 150 people into our business, I lost my voice, I literally could not make any more calls whatsoever, we had to find somebody, we had no choice. And so after work every day, my wife, she would make me tea every night. And I would just be drinking tea not talking at all in the house until the next morning. But you know, it's kind of one of those things where you have this recipe, you're you see this success, and then you continue to scale your business. So to basically to bring it back that automations, right, we had no idea how much people were watching us on all the social media platforms, until we made this funnel. And we realised that we were getting over 2000 people through this funnel every month. And that's to us, that was incredible. I think the first month was almost 5000 going through this funnel, trying to figure out how to work this funnel. I literally I'm like, there's so many people, how do I get to every single person, you know? So those are our issues right now? How are we taking care of all of our clients and, and making sure they're all in the right programme, teaching them? You know, credit repair tricks, and tips and tricks and all these other things. So yeah. That's very,
Daniel Rosen 26:42
very cool. So did you go from having a website to a funnel,
Ricardo Soto 26:48
we actually still have our website. But in the marketing world, one of the things that I learned was that a confused mind is a mind that does not that that doesn't buy. So instead of putting up the website, right off the bat, and having choices, it's like, hey, people want something easy. So let me click here to book a call. Let me click here to see what you have to offer us, right. And we just simply now have our funnel as our link on our all of our social medias. So everybody just goes through our funnel directly. And then in the backend, we can see how many people are coming in on a daily basis.
Daniel Rosen 27:23
Awesome. Hey, by the way, for people watching who don't or listening who don't know what a funnel is, it's kind of like a website, but it's more like a landing page. It's more directed, there's there aren't all the distractions of a website, am I right? It's, I always think of it is it's like when you walk into a store, and a salesperson grabs you by the hand and says, Oh, I think you'd like this suit over here. Oh, and maybe you'd like these socks to go with it. And it's like a guided experience. So it's it leads them right where you want to lead them. Am
Daniel De La Garza 27:56
I correct? Right? Absolutely. 100%
Daniel Rosen 27:59
I love it. How did you learn about funnels? funnels here?
Ricardo Soto 28:04
Uh, you know, I think it's just one of those things that everybody just kind of talks about when you search into marketing, you know, everybody talks about a funnel, a funnel funnel, it's like, okay, let's look into this funnel. I never personally wanted to look into it, because it was one of those things like, I have to learn something new, you know? And between running the business and doing marketing and Daniel doing sales, it's like, okay, where do we land on this. But we we got a great funnel system. And the cool thing is, you know, you were talking about automation, which the funnel will help you but there's also other people that are willing to help you. Right? There's people are willing to build funnels landing pages for you Sure. And didn't, you don't have to do it all yourself. Right? So that's what we came across somebody that helped us with our funnel.
Daniel Rosen 28:55
Awesome. And did they help you set up drip email sequences and all that kind of stuff as well? Ah, perfect.
Daniel De La Garza 29:01
You know, what I liked, I was listening to one of the podcasts you had earlier in the month, or I don't know if it was last month, but somebody was talking about giving out I like this, they were saying that they when it was someone's birthday, they sent out a message, a simple message saying happy birthday, you know, from, you know, your company and and I just, I like that attention to detail. That was something that that caught my eye that made it more personal that you can relate or you can, you know, encourage the client more or get them at a point where they're a lot higher, and maybe if they didn't want to sign up for your programme at that time, maybe on their birthday, you send out a happy birthday message or something like that they're willing to sign up at at that point. You know, little things like that. I'm we're always constantly learning we're growing. We're listening to what people are implementing out there in the credit repair world. And I think one of the biggest thing that has helped us continue to scale and grow is that we are never going to be the expert at everything. We want to always have that learn that that mindset that we want to educate ourselves. So awesome.
Daniel Rosen 30:13
I think that's great. Because why reinvent the wheel, just study what's working, right. And that's what this show here is all about. I think the person you're talking about was bomba Freeman. And he he was the one talking about the birthdays. But several of the millionaire's club members have come on here and talked about setting notifications for birthdays. I think that's brilliant. What was amazing about bomba is, he doesn't do any marketing at all. He doesn't do any social media at all. He just does amazing customer service. Now, let's talk about customer service. What are your philosophies and strategies for customer service?
Ricardo Soto 30:53
You know, we do get people from other credit repair companies that come on board. And one of the main reasons or one of the main concerns they have is customer service. Apparently, most people focus on trying to acquire clients but not keep their clients happy. Right? Yeah. So we're proud to say that we've established a customer service department within our business with three customer service representatives. So people love the fact that they can just simply call us and somebody is going to pick up the phone. And if we're busy, for whatever reason, they will give them a call back. So that's huge in this industry, for sure. Right? Yeah.
Daniel Rosen 31:33
Awesome. How big is your team? We have
Daniel De La Garza 31:38
three onboarding team members, we have three customer service reps, and Daniel and yeah, and then Ricardo and I. So
Daniel Rosen 31:50
wow, that's a big growing team there.
Daniel De La Garza 31:52
Yeah, we're actually having our first annual Christmas party coming up. And we're excited about that.
Daniel Rosen 31:58
Wow. That's so grown up. That's real business. We haven't even had a Christmas party yet here at CRC have we know you actually join ours? Yeah. We're actually all virtual. It's only Kenan either. Here. In fact, I'm going to show show Keenan right now wave Hello, where are you? There you are. We're pretty much all virtual. Are most of your team virtual?
Daniel De La Garza 32:27
Yeah, yeah, we're all virtual. But we noticed that one of the things is we got to stay connected, we need to have that constant communication with each other. And that's what we pride ourselves in is to make sure that they're not just employees to us, they're their, you know, family to us. And we want to make sure that they're taken care of, we want to make sure that they have all the tools that they need to succeed in this business. We've even are grooming some of our onboarding staff to start their own credit repair business, because we believe in helping someone else scale their financial future. I mean, this is important to us, you know, as a company that we share this knowledge, not just with people that want to, you know, for free on social media, but also with our own staff members.
Daniel Rosen 33:16
So that's awesome. So many business owners are freaked out, if if they've hired somebody that wants to go off and start their own business, but you encourage that, and you help them.
Daniel De La Garza 33:28
Yeah, absolutely. You know, we're gonna take we're gonna help you along the way. I think if anything, you know, we've, we've spent a lot of time and money into learning how not to do things right to start starting off. And now we've created something we have this like Ricardo likes to call it the secret sauce. Yeah, you know, and we can help you get there faster. And so it's kind of one of those things where I'm, you know, it's it's, it's, it's a huge blessing, we're definitely blessed to be where we're at. And at the end of the day, you got to remember, there's so many people that need this service out there. You know, I don't think anybody's really stepping on anybody's toes out there. You know, as far as taking clients or whatever. We just want to make sure we help as many people as possible, like you said, Daniel, you want to become a credit hero. So which is cool.
Daniel Rosen 34:15
Very, very cool. Okay, so now that you have a team that you can delegate work to, how much are you both doing in the business these days? And what are you mostly focused on?
Ricardo Soto 34:26
Well, Daniel here really focuses on on the day to day task with our onboarding staff, you know, like, hey, how, where can we improve? Where can we improve our numbers? And I mostly focus on the credit repair aspect, as well as the social media. That's that's kind of my role in the company.
Daniel De La Garza 34:47
So one thing we haven't touched base on is all the affiliate income that you can make during this right Daniel.
Daniel Rosen 34:53
So right you have affiliates. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Daniel De La Garza 34:56
We've we've been doing fantastic. Actually. I'm in the field. The world. And again, this is all stuff that is new to me. I've never been a part of anything like this before. So we've been able to scale our affiliate income over $25,000 a month so far, you know, and so which has been incredible. I know people are out there doing some amazing numbers. But for us, honestly, just kind of getting this thing going is it's been awesome. I've been so focused on this seen numbers, the data, analysing I've been really just trying to put it all together and how we can continue to make that side of the business grow. So it's been really cool.
Daniel Rosen 35:36
What types of businesses are you working with, as affiliates?
Ricardo Soto 35:39
Well, you know, I guess we refer to affiliates as not only, you know, affiliates that are gonna refer a business over to us, but affiliate dress up like, hey, like smart credit. Those are the affiliates that we're referring to. Yeah, gotcha. Okay. But most people don't know. But there's great income in there that you can you can use? Oh, absolutely. You know, a quick example is most people don't know how or where to get a copy of their credit report. So what we do is we just give them the tools is like, Hey, you can always go to annual credit report.com. But if you want to friendly, easy to read version of that, instead of going to three different websites. Here's smart credit. Right? It's like you choose between the two which one you want. It hasn't been working out great. Yeah,
Daniel De La Garza 36:30
absolutely. It's been funded. We've been signing up about 600 people a month. And smart credits are pretty amazing.
Daniel Rosen 36:36
That's awesome. Yeah, there are a lot of people who they pay their mortgage with those Commission's or they pay their car payment, it's really incredible. Good for you. And do you have businesses that are affiliates to you?
Ricardo Soto 36:49
You know what, that's a funny thing. We were actually just talking about that, where we need to develop a b2b strategy of how to work this. We've been scaling our business on, you know, business to consumer, but it's okay, now it's time. It's gotten to the point, Daniel, where attorneys are reaching out to us on social media wanting to work with us. First, that was super scary, like, Hey, why isn't attorney reaching out to me? You know, and these are attorneys that are big on social media as well. You know, it's, it's really cool to know that we're doing something right. And they want to work with us. So yeah, that traffic of people wanting to refer clients over, you're always going to get that.
Daniel Rosen 37:29
Right. Awesome. So what would you say, for each of you? What's your biggest superpower in business?
Daniel De La Garza 37:37
It's a good question. You know, I think for me, honestly, I just really love to focus on our team, right now, I'm really dedicated to our team, I want to make sure that everybody's taken care of when the team is, is being elevated, they're going to continue to do go above and beyond, and honestly, I've seen it time and time again, where my team has just really, you know, been outperforming they've been doing a fantastic job, and they get rewarded for it. I think that's super vital. Being in the, you know, in the, the corporate world, you know, you got to work, you know, extremely, extremely hard just to make it you know, and even at that there's no, really pat on the back. It's just kind of like, okay, you did a great job. Now, starting the new month, we got to start all over and you got it, you know, and it's kind of one of those things where we want to continue, I want to work on the team. So that's, that's kind of my thing right now. I love that.
Daniel Rosen 38:38
And how about you Ricardo?
Ricardo Soto 38:39
You know, if I could say a superpower, it would just be transparency. There's nothing being like being 100% transparent. I always tell people and I always talk about this in my tick tock lives, there's nothing cool about going through the credit repair process is not fun. It's something people need to go through. And when people hear that transparency versus feeding you something that you really want to hear to try to gain you as a client. That's where you earn their trust. Right? Um, I would just say that that's been my biggest ammunition, my biggest superpower, if you will, and that's how we've been able to get so many appointments booked and really minimise or almost have nothing when it comes to spending on advertising. Amazing.
Daniel Rosen 39:25
Okay, now we're gonna go we're gonna switch gears right now we're going to go into rapid fire round of questions where you guys answer in just a couple words, whatever pops into your head. Okay. Okay. What is the most important lesson you've learned as a business owner?
Daniel De La Garza 39:43
Oh, man, that's a good one. I honestly, scaling your business. I mean, that's super important. I don't think I've ever realised how vital it is to scale your business and getting the right people on your team is super important. Awesome.
Daniel Rosen 39:58
Is there a book that's true? your life or your business?
Ricardo Soto 40:03
The magic of thinking big, definitely has shaped to scaling for sure.
Daniel Rosen 40:10
I'm gonna write that down. That sounds like a book I'd like. What does business ownership mean to you?
Ricardo Soto 40:18
A business ownership is just honestly taking life to the next level. Now you're no longer in charge of just your household income. But now you have other people that are looking up to you for that.
Daniel Rosen 40:30
And that's motivating. You got more mouths to feed? Yeah, but way more freedom. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. What drives and motivates you,
Daniel De La Garza 40:41
honestly drives and motivates me is making sure that my team, besides the fact that my family drives and motivates me 100% The team is just, you know, the making sure that we're taking care of them. So
Daniel Rosen 40:54
very cool. What's your definition of success? definition of
Ricardo Soto 40:57
success for me is just as I see the team grow as I see clients being happy. That's the definition of success. It's not it's not measured by $1 amount, but rather by how much you're making a difference in someone's life. Not only clients, but our team members.
Daniel Rosen 41:13
That's what makes you guys credit heroes. Okay, if you could go back in time, what do you know now that you wish you'd known when you first started the
Daniel De La Garza 41:23
automations? I want to the drip campaigns? automations. I think that was that was vital your funnel? If I'm telling you guys work on trying to create a funnel to get everybody on the same platform,
Daniel Rosen 41:38
and anybody who wants to learn more about what funnels are, get, they should get DotCom secrets, right Canaan, go dotcomsecrets.com and get Russell Bronson's book for free. Hey, you guys, what's your advice to anybody just starting out with a credit repair business.
Ricardo Soto 41:58
My advice to you in short words, everything happens for a reason you've been presented with this amazing opportunity to start this business. You have to realise in this business, you don't have inventory. Like other businesses, it's a very low cost business. So therefore, the opportunity for making profit is huge. But what's going to get you to making profit is to truly give value and help other people. You cannot go with the mentality of the mindset is, you are going to be my cash cow. That's not the way it works. And if you're going to drive yourself in that direction, you are going to quickly fail.
Daniel Rosen 42:35
Yeah, I agree. I always say if you set out to make money, if that's your goal, sure, you'll make money. But your business will only grow so far, and you probably won't have a very fulfilling life. But if you do, like you're saying, where you have a really have a passion for helping people and changing lives. That's when the big success comes. The money just flows. You don't you don't even want to chase the money. But that satisfaction of really helping people and changing lives. It's real, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to thank you so much for your time you guys, Ricardo and Daniel, you're so inspiring. And congratulations again on the millionaire's club and all of your success. And and to everyone out there. If you are enjoying this podcast, be sure to click below to subscribe, so you don't miss any of the secrets we share each week here on the credit repair business secrets podcast. And if you're feeling Quynh, rate me review me give me a thumbs up so we can move up the charts. Leave a comment, leave a question, because I read each and every one of them. And thank you again for being here. You guys. Thank you.
Daniel De La Garza 43:44
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Daniel Rosen 43:45
I really appreciate your time. And for everyone watching at home, I will see you in the next episode. And until then be a credit hero and keep changing lives. Hey, everybody, it's Daniel again. And really quick, I'd like to invite you to join what 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 started, and you dream of having a successful business of your own. So you can quit your nine to five 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 it 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 starts in just a few days, so go get started right now at creditherochallenge.com