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from ABC News Radio kmbt 1490 in Southern California. This is Biz Ninja Entrepreneur Radio with your host Tyler Jorgenson.
Tyler Jorgenson 0:13
All right, welcome to Biz Ninja Entrepreneur Radio. I’m your host Tyler Jorgensen and today here in the dojo we have a very special treat to have another ninja. It’s not often that there get to be two Ninjas in here in the dojo so excited to have Lyann Nguyen the Credit Ninja, who I’ve had the pleasure of knowing now for a couple of years. Welcome back to the show. Leann Nice to see you.
Lyann 0:38
Hey, thanks for having me. My ninja buddy.
Tyler Jorgenson 0:40
Yeah, exactly. I remember when we met and you’re like a busy ninja. I’m the credit ninja. And I thought it was it was great because you know, everyone else or gurus or other things, but we’re ninjas. And that’s cool.
Lyann 0:53
Yeah, there was a podcast ninja too, I’m sure.
Tyler Jorgenson 0:57
Yeah. I’m sure there’s plenty of Other ninjas out there, but none as cool as these two. That’s right. So we have we met at Dana Derek’s dream 100 con in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which neither of us is from. Yeah. And, and so I was, and we’ve stayed connected since then and know a lot of the same people. But for those that have never heard of you before, what is the credit ninja?
Lyann 1:22
Yeah, so I’m a credit expert, mostly mentoring in the credit scene, basically analyze where the credit is and what we can do to build it, improve it, and scale it because most of the entrepreneurs are looking to get more money, or to fix something in the past so that they can either start a new business or scale their business. And as you know, it’s great that you have a dream. It’s great that you have a plan. But if you don’t have the finances together, where’s that plan going?
Tyler Jorgenson 1:50
Absolutely. Yeah. So let’s, I have a lot of questions around that that I know will be very beneficial to listeners. Let’s scale back a little bit. Peel back the curtain rewind time. Yeah. How did you get here? Why did you decide to become a credit expert? Did it happen? did was it deliberate? Or did you just become an expert and decide to do it as a business?
Lyann 2:11
It’s actually a combination. I started in the credit field back in 98, when it was the first technology boom. And during that time, I was part of a company that is kind of similar to what Credit Karma is now where they handle the data, and they help people manage their credit. And from there, they recommend different types of lending, credit cards, and so forth. That was back in 1998. After that, we had a crash, a technology crash, one of the biggest ones similar to 2008. And I moved to Vegas and from there started consultant in the credit space and kind of evolved into the debit and credit side where we actually do money transfer things that technology similar to Venmo today, and PayPal, and like a no-no, you don’t have to actually you could do it on the phone and RFID so that was my background in the technology and the bit. But then in 2008, when we had another crash happened, that was very devastating to most people, people lost their homes, they lost their jobs, they lost money, they lost their credit. I personally went through it. I lost from the company, I lost 17 million worth of my equity in the company. And then in addition, I had lawsuits that were pending against me that basically had my freedom at stake. So I it was the worst time in my life and I thought I was just going to give up, but you just kind of build-up that you know, strength and that courage to go on day by day. That’s all you can deal with. Similar to the case that we’re in right now. Where you don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring. You’re just trying to make it through the next day. So because you have this you know, coping mechanism, you just kind of deal with it. So end up I had to my house was being foreclosed. So I had to deal with that I had credit cards that I lived off that they finally shut them all down. Because when they see that you’re not paying or if the balances are too high, the banks take a position of just closing all down because they want to protect themselves, which is what’s happening right now, because you’ll see a lot of those closures. Third thing is that now I have lawsuits that are against me. So you just have to deal with one thing at a time I dealt with the lawsuit that was done in three years after that I dealt with a foreclosure of my home, which I turned into a short sale. So that was not hurting my credit as often as bad as the foreclosure then dealing with the credit card information. So I started disputing kind of searching online finding some people that knew a little bit more than me and started working on my file. All of a sudden, all these things started falling off, and then started applying for little cards. And from there, this light bulb came on. And I basically said, if that happened to me how many other business people lost your money and came back stronger, but their credit is still damaged and they have the money to fix it. Then I just thought, who can I talk to? See, that’s it because you went through it. Yeah, I talked to my CPA, my attorney, and I found out that they have like high net worth clients that need their credit done. So I started working on those files for free. Then I got the results. And then from there, we got the testimonies, and started just going into those circles, and you just create a name for yourself in that circle. And they kept saying, God, you’re such a ninja and the credit stuff. And so just combining the two names, I’m like, I’m gonna just grab that name on Instagram, credit Ninja, and I’ll deal with it later because I don’t know anything about it. And from that point, I met Gary Vaynerchuk. And he was really big on Instagram about three years ago. And I wanted to meet him really bad. And one of my friends, Josh 40 said, Oh, you know what, I’m going to an event that I’m going to meet Gary Vaynerchuk and I didn’t know clickfunnels community I didn’t know Russell Brunson. But all I know is I really want to meet Gary. He actually invited me through Kevin Anson, who is Russell Brunson videographer. And I didn’t know he was a video I just showed up because my intent was to meet Gary Vaynerchuk. I didn’t know it was Russell Brunson event. And from that point on, I spoke to Gary, this, I really want to build this up. And what he told me was, you’re going to either go all in, or don’t do it at all. So I went all in. And so I got involved with the clickfunnels community built that audience down and help their files and it just grew it from there. So the main thing is just helping different organizations and different influential groups. And from there, when you serve that community, people know that you’re there to serve them not to sell them. I think that’s the key. Absolutely. It just fell on my lap. Basically, I don’t choose the field. I have the technology and but the part that was very meaningful, it’s changing lives.
Tyler Jorgenson 6:56
Yeah. So a couple of fun connections there. One I know Josh and I know Kevin, Kevin x. And I actually grew up together in the same town, same community, went to the same schools, and I’ve known each other since we were kids. And then I was at that event with Gary Vaynerchuk. And Josh, right. And so for those watching, you can see the world record the Guinness Book of World record on my wall behind me. And that’s from that event that Leanne’s talking about, where after Gary’s book, we went down onto the Boise State University Smurf turf and set the world record in soccer. But then we always say in like small text, it’s actually bubble soccer. But it was still pretty cool. Yeah, that was a cool event. And that’s funny. I don’t know. I don’t think our paths crossed at that event. I there was a lot of really cool people there. It was a big event. There’s a couple hundred people so but that’s me. So but really cool. So that’s only a few years ago. Yeah. Where you really decided, Hey, I’m going to go all in on this. I’m going to really scale it up. I person I mean, we Again, we know a lot of the same people. I know a lot of people that you’ve helped, and I’ve watched over the last couple years is you’ve got swag. You’ve got more things your business has grown. What from a business side of things? Hmm, you know, you got that advice. Three years ago, you started doing things, looking back three years ago. Now, what’s one thing that you would have done differently three years ago? compared to how you did it handled it?
Lyann 8:21
I wouldn’t have waited so long.
Tyler Jorgenson 8:24
Does that mean so not wait? What would you have done
Lyann 8:26
differently? So most people think when they get bad credit, or they file bankruptcy, automatically, Oh, you got to wait seven to 10 years. That’s actually a it’s not really true. It’s just theory. But the thing is, once you start filing BK or it goes to collection, you can start disputing that right away and start building your credit and adding positive items. I wish I didn’t wait for five or seven years. I wish I would have done it in five to seven months, which I’m able to now do for my clients and cut down that time. Remember, these people have to be serious. It’s a business decision to invest in themselves so that they can get their credit score better so that they can make this big, massive action to grow their business to get access to funding, to expand, to hire to buy supplies, whatever you may do, whether it’s ecommerce, social media, marketing, YouTube channel, whatever you need to, you still need this finance. So don’t wait. That’s my best. It’s okay. You have all the tools now.
Tyler Jorgenson 9:25
Take action now. So let’s look at a couple of important things. Is debt good or bad?
Lyann 9:31
Both. So debt is good when you actually are using it to grow your business and have a return on your investment. debt is bad when you buy things and you don’t have a plan of action to pay it back and get bigger lines. So people go well, I don’t like credit credit is bad for you. Well, credit is actually good for you. It’s the debt on credit that doesn’t make you money. That’s bad for you.
Tyler Jorgenson 9:55
Got it. So it’s very cashflow quadrant, right. That’s the difference between good credit and bad credit. Good credit is credit that you’re utilizing or debt that you’re using to grow and increase your income. Bad Credit would be the kind that you’re using to buy a Gucci belt that you can’t afford to look to impress people that don’t really care about you. Right. And so now that we’ve established that some debt is good, and one of those things is for business owners, which most of the listeners of this show are entrepreneurs and hustlers, people that are building their own future. What are some ways or common misconceptions around credit and debt that these people are facing?
Lyann 10:30
Yeah, so with credit, they go, Well, I only need one card or two cards. Well, that’s a misnomer. It’s really good to have relationships with different things. And I’ll tell you why. What if you had all your relationships with Amex and Amex decides that for some reason, they close all your account, and that’s the only card that’s reporting on your credit report, your score is going to plummet because all those available lines are going to be gone. Or if you just put all your business relationship credit cards with Bank of America. For some reason, maybe something went wrong with the checking account, they closed all your accounts. And all that history goes away. That is the saddest thing. So you’re as you’re building your credit journey builder, so you have different relationship with different things. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, and actually spread them out. And even at one thing, you want to have multiple credit cards so that you can move those balances around. That’s a game. Because what if one card, you’re almost maxed out, because for some reason the interest went up? Well, if you have other cards in place, you cannot move the limits over so that if it’s at 80%, when you move those limit orders, this can actually drop down because you have all these other lines that you can manipulate, keep them at for $500 move 10,000 over then now you have 30,000 out of 5000 it’s not as bad as you know, you just have to mean differently. It’s just the more you have, the more you can play with.
Tyler Jorgenson 11:53
Okay, and so what that means is that there’s a little bit of an education that people need to have on how this works and how credit cards work. Your credit as well, you know your credit score as well as how in the banks look at it. So
Lyann 12:06
Exactly. Give you a visual. Sure. So these are, these are my credit cards. This is one book, I have two of these. And there’s about 4050 cards in here and the balances are zero. But the cool part is that I use these cards to float over the purchases so that I can get points over here. And these points can now be redeemed as cash or travel and so forth. So that actually supports my business. This is called good debt. Right.
Tyler Jorgenson 12:36
Now, do you think everyone should go that extreme or is that are you because you’re the credit Ninja, you have like you’re the expert, you have that many, but most people should have how many cards?
Lyann 12:47
Well the average is actually 21
Tyler Jorgenson 12:50
the average of what they should have or the average should
Lyann 12:52
have what their profile to be in the 800. Why? Because the banks really look at how many cards you can manage, right? If you You can only manage one or two, usually your score is not that high. But if you’re able to manage like 3040 cards at a time, that yes, that’s a skill. And that’s a ninja skill.
Tyler Jorgenson 13:11
So they see that additional, like the increase of trade lines as a response as a troop as a representation of responsibility, right in the ad worthiness.
Leanne 13:19
And some of these cards date back to 92, or 1980s. Okay, so you’re able to now have really old cards and also high limit cards. So combination of the two, I mean, unless some people can’t manage more than three cards, so don’t do it. This game is not for everyone. Because if you can’t even pay on time, two to three cards, this is not for you just manage those few cards in there. And maybe they do open some put them away, put them away, and then have a schedule to use it every six months. That way, you’re not really using it. You’re just stimulating the file and keeping it active. Yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson 13:56
So and that’s, I think really important this what you’re talking about This is an advanced skill, right? This is not for someone who’s still working on figuring out how to be responsible and have discipline with their credit. And right this is for people who, hey, you understand the difference between good debt, bad debt, you have a business, you’re ready to grow. And you need to start really improving your score and your file so that you have greater opportunities towards right so if you’re going through a business acquisition, you need to acquire some some debt. And you’re these are the kind of things where credit can help. So what are some other reasons that today’s entrepreneurs need to have a really good credit score?
Leanne 14:34
Yeah, so they’re trying to lease equipment? Are they trying to buy a car or lease a car so that they can actually use that as a business expense? The company’s still these banks still run your personal credit? until you start building the third part of credit, which is corporate credit, where it’s all based on your aim and corporate credit that’s like, that takes longer to do so in the meantime 80 or 90% of the population they actually Run your personal credit or if you’re planning to buy a house and a lot of people are now working out of the home, especially right now with Coronavirus, so they purchase a home and they use certain rooms of the house for business and they take us right you still gotta get that mortgage loan and they will run your personal credit, there’s very few people that actually get mortgage loan approved with just their business, DUNS number, so forth. So it’s very important if you’re trying to refinance a car like especially during this time, so you pay a higher interest when you first got your card, and you’re stuck at home. Now you’re looking at all your expenses expense cutting time right now. And one of the item is say you pay 10% or 12% on that card loan and you want to refinance it, guess what you’re gonna have to make sure your credits decent, then if you can get it down to four or 5%. That’s a lot of money you can save that you can put back in your business and grow your business because it’s trapped in that loan.
Tyler Jorgenson 15:56
Absolutely, yeah. Okay, awesome. What are some other things that honestly members should be doing right now just to, you know, what are some of that? What are maybe either some other credit tips or just money management tips that you have for them?
Leanne 16:07
Yeah. So I would say organization is very important during this time and you’re stuck at home anyway. So might as well make like a spreadsheet, list all the credit cards that you think that you know, that you have, if not go to credit? No, some people don’t know how many Oh, for sure.
Unknown Speaker 16:22
That’s why I’m, that’s why I’m smiling. Yeah,
Leanne 16:25
yeah, they might have opened a Macy’s credit card, like during Christmas, and they forgot about it. And they may have put a charge of like 20 $30 and they forgot to pay it. So this is the time that you self audit yourself. Okay. And go to Credit Karma is a free site, but it lists all the credit cards that they have on you, at least on to the bureaus TransUnion and Equifax, list them all down. In the next column you want to put like the due date. And the next column you want to put what the limit is. These are all critical items. The second one is how much the balance is. And then the next one you want to put I have spreadsheets. Anyone want to DM me at credit ninja on Instagram, I will send them the spreadsheet and they can fill it in. Okay, this is really good tip. And then another item is when it reports to the Bureau. So the date that it reports to the Bureau, if you know the date, you can actually manipulate your score, because you want to look as pretty as possible. And then masturbate if they after they report, you guess what happened, you can match that card out. And it still shows a zero. That’s power for you.
Tyler Jorgenson 17:30
So yeah, that’s interesting. Those are ways you can leverage that in. And sometimes it is it’s as simple. So years ago, I worked in the mortgage industry, and we had to do those kinds of things. Because the difference of one or two points sometimes made the difference whether or not someone could buy the house they wanted. Yeah, and then other times it was a difference of one or two points change the interest rate to the point where over the life of the loan, you’re talking about 10s of thousands of dollars of savings, right so we you know, not I wasn’t a ninja at it, but we knew the basics. Like, okay, let’s pay these things off, you know, we would do, they would, what people would do is they would get a send us their savings account, right. And then they would use that money to then pay off their credit card. And then so they’d have their they’d have savings and their credit paid off, even though it’s really the same dollars, but those are the little tiny things that people had to do back then, in order to just improve their credit. Now you get
Leanne 18:24
right with those things make a difference, like you say, you’re on the cusp of getting that loan. So it could be like, from one category to the next. And making those minor adjustment will give you the approval that you need. And that’s money long term that you can put back, you know, it’s so critical. And again, let’s let’s let’s touch on the mortgage right now, because you’ve seen all the news, Chase and all the big banks are now requiring 20% down because they want to mitigate the risk. Second thing is they need a 700 plus score sometimes 720. So now the requirements are even harder than ever because they’re losing so much money. Money, they are now kind of mitigating their risks will definitely get the best score possible. Here’s another tip. Once your credit is decent start getting business credit cards that are you run your personal credit to get the business credit card, but then once those debts start reporting, they do not report on your personal so now you can shift that debt into business credit cards. And that way you can now always preserve your personal credit file, and you can still get more loans. And then you have to first you have the third box which is corporate credit, which is more advanced. So you have three different baskets of credit. And if you can slowly grow them all at the same time, then now you have three different sources. It’s a game.
Tyler Jorgenson 19:44
Yeah, it is. What are the numbers like what numbers should people be going for what to their credit, target goal credit scores, which should be
Leanne 19:52
ideally better than 720. You can get most loans if you want really good rates anywhere from 750 and And above would be great.
Tyler Jorgenson 20:01
And the average in america i think is in like the mid six hundreds right now.
Leanne 20:04
Yeah, 656 50 right now and after the pandemic, it’s gonna go lower, because people are missing payments. And when you miss, like 30 day or 60 day payments, your score is going to plummet, like 100 200 points. Oh, wow.
Tyler Jorgenson 20:20
Yeah, big time. And I mean, for those of those business owners that have been through this kind of stuff, this is probably giving you a little bit of PTSD, right where you’re like, man, I remember 2008 or I remember 98, or I remember, two years ago when something happened and you’re you’ve had to go through some trauma. If you’re like, a lot of us, you’ve gone through some of these things, and it’s very real for you. So depending on where people are at their exact strategies are going to be different. I really encourage you to reach out to the end on Instagram, it’s credit Ninja, but or you can go to our website, which is
Leanne 20:51
we credit.co. So it’s our e credit.co. It’s like rebuilding your credit, basically.
Tyler Jorgenson 21:00
So because it’s everything is going to be different for based on where each person is right if they’re in a different part of the journey. But let’s say, you know, again, most entrepreneurs have gone through. And this is an interesting thing where I want to talk to someone who said, they don’t work with anybody who hasn’t already gone through a cycle at least twice, meaning they haven’t had some success and then had it fall and fail, then done it again. And then they’re on their third one. And they said, the best people to work with are people who have gone through it at least twice. Because now the first time you don’t think you can fit, right, you’re like, um, you know, entrepreneurs have to be optimistic, it’s part of the game. So but you don’t want to be infallible, right, you have to know that it can fall apart. The second time now you’re a little bit cautious, but you’ve got to build but you also know how to have play some defense. Yeah, businesses fail or you sell them off and move on. But by the third time, people are in a place where, hey, they’ve got some experience under their belt. They know how things work both in the uptime and the downtime. So We have entrepreneurs at all different stages. They’re in the first one, they’re in their their third, where do you like to help people, and what stage
Leanne 22:07
I think at every stage because everyone has a credit score, and it’s changing all the time, depending on your debt load and what your goals are, and so forth. So I’m in the business where it’s recession proof. When the when the economy is great, people are now having the money to fix their problem when the economy is bad, they got to get a better score. So they really invest in themselves. So I’m really blessed to have gone through such a horrible journey. But I feel like I’m more prepared to help people. And at the same time, I’m pretty confident and I have the courage to do and I want to be able to instill that in all of my clients and that’s part of my coaching mentorship program. It’s higher level, but it’s for a specific type of person that’s ready for someone to guide them through to get them through and get them there faster and get them there in like more stages. Teaching manner and depending on their situation, what their goals are, we reverse engineer that and get them there. So if it’s ecommerce or YouTubing, or Forex trading or social media marketing or Click Funnels, like they want to do their own project, then we would reverse engineer them, find out what their endgame is going to be and get them there.
Tyler Jorgenson 23:21
Yeah, it’s very exciting. Yeah, absolutely. Can you share with us some recent examples of some things, some results that you’ve been able to get for people?
Leanne 23:30
Yeah, so this young lady came to us. Her name is Nancy. She works for T Mobile met about three months ago, she found me on social media. And she wanted to get an e commerce store like an Amazon store, and the cost would be anywhere from 25,000 to 30,000. She might need a few credit cards to put it in the file. And so after speaking to her, we went through a series of things in her file where we fix cleaned up certain things added some positive item because she’s fairly young. Okay, and her goal was about 30,000 In credit cards, whether it’s personal or business, you want a combination. So in about a month and a half, we got into a credit card sequence, which is a step by step way that we put people through to get the approvals. So about three weekends ago, we got her, not $199,000 in credit card lines, a combination of personal and business credit, and she was blown away because in her mind, she was looking for about 25,000. And remember, individual results vary, but we coached her through the entire time to make sure that when she goes to the sequence, she get the highest approval possible. That’s a very high approval rate in her first round. So that’s just an example of what we’re able to do.
Tyler Jorgenson 24:44
So with re credit and with credit, you know, you the credit manager, you’re not just helping people improve their score, you’re really coaching them through an entire process, enhancing everything and getting their credit cards, getting everything set up setting up those systems. That’s really cool. Another
Leanne 24:58
thing Tyler is like somebody People get so hung up on the score. But if they’re not doing anything with the score and getting the right credit card, then it’s useless. It’s leveraging the score so that you can get financing to get to your endgame and impact in your business. I just think that for doesn’t mean anything to you’re able to do something with it.
Tyler Jorgenson 25:17
Yeah, that’s true. All right. So we’re wrapping up the show. I always like to ask this question to my guests. So business is about building us the lifestyle that we want. I know that you travel and you like to do things. What is one major item that pending you know, travel restrictions or the world loosening things back up? What’s one major item on your bucket list that you’re going to do in the next 12 months? I want to go to the melodies. Cool. I love that. You knew that answer? That’s good. That’s a cool, yeah. Yeah. Well, because
Leanne 25:43
I travel all the time and it’s very odd for me to be home in one week at a time. Normally, I come back, switch out my luggage and move on. And as you can see in the background, I love flying private jets. Yeah. Back on the front private jet thing and just do my circuit. I see Start from the west coast all the way to Florida and Puerto Rico and I come back usually on a two week span. But I like to do it on an island like a mastermind. Because I always write to tie in business and, you know, relaxation at the same time because it’s the experience and memories that no one can ever take away from you ever, even if all your money is to experience and I love that I’m able to experience things with you meeting you meeting the community and helping more people. I think that’s an impact for me that’s more fulfilling for me than just the money because money can be made. Money can be lost, but this experience can never be taken away.
Tyler Jorgenson 26:40
I totally agree. Thank you so much for coming out on the show. Please go follow the end when on her website is re credit.co or credit ninja on Instagram. Thank you for coming out. It’s your turn to go out and do something.
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