How to get 500k in credit for 0% with Brandon Elliot Ep 85
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From the art of the deal to keeping it real. Live from the Simply Vegas studios, it's The Power Move with Jon Gafford. Back again. Back again. Literally, literally back again for the second podcast of today. This is a twofer. So, man, I got to tell you, this is my second show of the day, and I'm going to try to keep energy level high.

Try to keep it where it needs to be, because if you're investing your time in me, man, I don't want it to be for nothing. Today on the podcast, man, I got to tell you, there was a time in my life when I demolished my own personal credit. I absolutely demolished it. And if that sounds like maybe something you have done, and you might need some selection to that, or you might need some help with that, my guy Brandon, who is the owner of Credit Council Elite.com.

can probably help you with that. So we're having Brandon on today and we're gonna talk about that. But it's not just about that. If you're thinking, man, I'm not listening to this shit, I got good credit, I'm not dealing with this at all. That's not just what it's about. 'Cause Brandon also has a pretty good, we'll call it superhero origin story, we'll call it that. Good origin story because listen,

The number one thing that I love that this show is about is about escaping the drift. It's about getting you from a place of complacency, getting you from a place where you're not, if you're just not quite happy where you are right now, to that next level, that next place that you want to go. And I think Brandon is a guy that's done some of that. So I want to kind of get his story. So first of all, my man, welcome Brandon. Welcome.

What's up, man? What's up, John? How are you, buddy? I'm good. How was the travel in from San Diego today? It was rough, man. It was incredibly rough. Incredibly rough. No, no. It was easy breezy. Did you come on the standard jet or did you do the JetSuiteX? You can tell me. No, we're doing the JetX on the way back. The JetSuiteX on the way back. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just the simplicity of it. It is. It's very easy. I love it. It is easy. So let's start out. Tell me a little bit about...

like let's hear your backstory man where does where does Brandon businessman extraordinaire tell me about the backstory where do you start man where are you from yeah tell me about the growing up so I I live in San Diego but um I I'm originally from New Jersey so grew up in New Jersey grew up with what part of New Jersey South Jersey like X is 17. I don't dude I spent a long weekend on in on the on in West on the Jersey Shore what is it

You were in Atlantic City, weren't you? No, not Atlantic City. On the Apprentice, man. We had to renovate a motel. Oh, I thought that was in Atlantic City. No, dude. It was on the shore. West Shore? West Haven? West something? Huh. I don't know. I don't know, dude. I don't know.

I don't know, whatever. It's been a while for me. So I'm about 30 minutes south from Atlantic City. Okay, there you go. 30 minutes south of Atlantic City. What did the parents do for a living? So I grew up with my mom, a single parent mom. I met my father when I was 18 in court so he could stop paying child support. So he was incredible. Nice. So I didn't really have that male guidance, that male fear. He was not involved at all? No, no. He had another family.

Okay. Okay. So brothers and sisters or just you? Uh, so I have two sisters, two sisters and my mom, manic depressive bipolar. She was diagnosed with that a long time ago. So sounds like one hell of a birthday party. Yeah, it was, it's a good ups and downs of rollercoaster. Okay. So mom struggled with mental and obviously probably just struggled with

excuse me, in general. God bless you. Yeah. Um, yeah. So she, you know, God bless her soul. She, she did the best that she could to raise three misfits, you know? Um, but, uh, at a very young age, I realized like, Hey, I had to be the man at the house. I had to kind of grow up. I was looking for my first job at age nine, um, because we grew up on, you know, section eight, um,

you know, social security, about a thousand bucks a month and food stamps. Right. So, um, I got my first job when I was 12. What was that job? It was working at a seafood restaurant in the back. Okay. Um, so it was friends and family. I was supposed to be 16 to work there, but we got in it's New Jersey, you know, look the other way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pay this kid under the table. We're good to go.

But, uh, you're 12. How many hours a week you're working at the seafood joint? How, how, how much time you spend? I was working full, full time, full time at 12. Yeah. So you had to work six days a week there. Um,

they had this thing and I respected it. Is this a summer job or you're still going to school? So they were from, uh, labor day, like mother's day at the time. Um, till the end of the season, like October. Okay. New Jersey is a very like during the winter, it's seasonal. Yeah, it's dead. Um, so, uh,

Speaking of which, during the winter time, a lot of people get really lazy or rely on drugs and so forth. So it's not the best area.

I imagine you guys weren't exactly living in the nicest part of town either at this point with just what your mom was struggling with. Yeah, yeah. Very blessed once again. Like we grew up in a nice home and like right on the edge of the hood, right? Got it. Very blessed. But overall, at a very young age, I jumped into marijuana for the first time. I used it for the good times, bad, ugly, everything in between. And I'm like the first person. How old was that?

That was going into, that was eighth grade summer. Like spring break. Okay, but you didn't answer the question about when you were 12 years old working full time. Were you still going to school? Yeah, I was. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So you were working at night. I was working at night. Yep. 12 years old. Okay. So. You got a son. You can kind of picture that. No, you just, you hear this shit and it's like.

oh man, my life is so miserable. NHL 2021 keeps freezing when I get to the Stanley Cup. It's bullshit. This game doesn't work right. And you're working full-time at 12. Well, I didn't have any of the games, right? I didn't have... No, but I'm just saying...

So what made me really want to get like money at a very young age was constantly going up to my mom, like at a very young age, like begging her, like, Hey, I want a quad. Like everybody in my neighborhood had a quad, had a, had a dirt bike or something. So I wanted that. And eventually keep on going up to her. Like I could see it in her face eventually just the pain of like, Hey, I cannot supply that. I have to say no. Yeah. Well, she just couldn't do it.

like it was never going to happen. So we were getting like a thousand bucks a month between three or four people, right? It's like, it's never going to happen. See, here's a foot here. I've never told this story, but I'll tell a story I haven't told in here before, which is I did not grow up by any means of the stretch like that. Right. Um, it was, it was by no means that level of disparity or despair, but I had probably

In a weird way, a similar sort of circumstance kind of, which was, you know, my mother broke. There should just be a rule about this that all young women learn, which is do not divorce a Southern attorney in a small town in the South. You should just learn that. It's tough. Because essentially my mom got the house. She got us and my dad paid virtually no support. It was like nothing. Yeah.

So even though we lived in this really nice house in this really nice neighborhood, like my mom struggled, struggled with us. So like that pain of talking about asking for things and you see that them wanting to do that.

Even as a kid, I remember my mom tells a story and it was Christmas and I had asked for drums. My first drum set, the real drum set, not like the blue denim JC Penney deal, not those, but like a real set of drums, which I had gotten for my birthday.

And it was awesome. And my mom for my birthday, it was a stretch, but she got me these drums because I wanted them. And she assumed that they came with cymbals and they did not. Right. Obviously. So from April to December, I got my drums, but I don't have any cymbals. So Christmas comes around. What do you want? All I want is the cymbals. All I want is cymbals. All I want is cymbals. So my mom,

went and bought me the cymbals. She was able to buy them. She saved some stuff. She moved some stuff around. She found them in Gainesville. She went and bought the cymbals. And how she gave them to me was she gave them to me one at a time.

And I got like the bottom high hat. That's the first thing I opened. And I was so grateful to have the one symbol. Like I didn't even, like I thought that was the only thing I was getting. Right. I thought that was it. And I was so grateful for that. And it, and it's funny. The reason I tell that story is I hear you talking about your mom wanting to do those things and wonderful stuff. And it's funny because as a kid, even when you hear people that grow up in weird situations or bad economic situations, um,

I think as a child, you're still so appreciative of what your parents can do. Yeah. You know, if you look back at your childhood, you're like, my parents were dicks. They couldn't buy me what I wanted. Like, you're a terrible human. Oh, yeah. No, I am above and beyond blessed. We had, I mean, we had help from churches as well as local schools too. And my mom did the best she could for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, it's funny that brings me to another point too, because this is, it's my biggest fear in life, right? That I'm completely ruining my children. Like that's my biggest. I believe it. That's tough. Cause things happen. You know, shit happens. Like, you know, when my son was like eight years old and we were flying somewhere and we were flying to Florida or something and like we're flying Southwest, it looks to me, he's like, does Delta not fly there? I'm like, yeah.

You're eight. You don't get an opinion on airlines, you little dick. Why don't you still do that? But they say that hard times breed great men and easy times breed weak men. Yeah.

And that is always my fear. Yeah. I'm terrified. I'm ruining my kids. See, we don't have kids yet, but that is something that like, because we're focusing on ourselves right now, we're building something real. Like I just bought a home in New Jersey for my family. Yeah. So by the time my kids actually come around, it's like, I'm terrified of that, but I don't know what to do. Yeah.

You give me the feedback later on. Oh, dude. Well, you do the best you can. Yeah. This is what you can. You fight the battles. You try to win in that. That's the best you can do. But let's get back to you. So 12 years old, working full-time New Jersey. Now you're in eighth grade. You're smoking weed. Yeah.

That's exactly right. So, okay. So the question is, was everybody smoking weed? Are you with that one group of kids over on the hill behind the gym smoking weed? I'm with that damn one group. It's the one group and it just turned into, you know, it was some older girls at first, my best friend. And then it was like, all right, well let's, yeah, I'll do that.

And, um, and I realized quickly, like right away, I was like, okay, I can't afford that. Yeah. Like I, I can't do that. Um, but I liked it so much. It was just laughs and giggles that I was like, I want to keep doing that. So, um,

I'm going to have to be the person that supplies it to my friends. And then I'll smoke for free. There you go. Yep. There you go. So that's how many people have gone down that plan. That's the entrepreneur beginning. Exactly. It's a dream come true. So yes. Okay. So now,

We are supplying weed to the rest of the eighth grade miscreants, I'm assuming. And where did this lead to? Well, so what it led to is basically I was used to not having money. Once I started making money, I would just take it back to the dealer and get as much as I could. And I was total ignorance, total like I had no idea. So I kept on getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And now I have like 10 pounds on me. And I'm like, holy shit. How is this? How are you at this point? Yeah.

How old are you? It happened quick, man. It happened really quick. So you're in like ninth grade. Yeah. And so word starts spreading. I started having guns in my head, knives in my throat, like people robbing me, a lot of fights in New Jersey, if you can imagine.

And it was just starting to take me down this bad, wrong path. Starting to take you down. If I wasn't there already. 10 pounds of weed was perfectly happy. It's not until somebody put a gun to your head that it got a little weird. Okay. Yeah, it got tough. But with all that being said,

I realized like I had best friends turn on me, robbed me before Christmas, break into my house. Like all these horrible things that I was just like enough of like enough is enough. This isn't working. New Jersey sucks. I blamed it on New Jersey in my circle. Yeah. Fair. We can blame it on Jersey. But

But let's go. I went to actually, you know, across the country. I went to San Diego, fell in love with it. And what did I do? I started growing there and I started just mailing it back home to New Jersey. So now you're cultivating weed. I'm cultivating and I'm federally sending in the post office. Much better road, by the way. Much better. Wholesaling. I switched to wholesaling instead of retail. And what that...

What happened with that is basically, I had an explosion in my apartment making hash oil and I was making a big batch. I was about to go surfing right after that. I was trying to be quick. I put on gloves for the first, like it was dirt bike riding gloves. I didn't even have a dirt bike anymore, but when I was making money, I bought all these fancy things, right? Sure. Stupid. Yeah.

you know when you're broke and you come from nothing like you could see where uh you know the ghetto rich starts coming out oh yeah you'll buy all this i think everybody goes through that sure i'm blessed that i got out of that quick um so i had an explosion in my apartment i was literally on fire they induced me into a coma for a week i burnt 40 of my body i had to learn how to walk again how old were you on this i was 25 or like 24 something yeah yeah so um

Actually, did that. No, my question is obviously, so you 22, you just, you turn yourself into the human torch with your motorcycle gloves on. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank God for the gloves though. They saved my hand. But obviously at some point a fireman or somebody is going to come into your house in the middle of what you're doing. Oh my God. It, the neighbors were screaming. All the windows blew out in my house. It was a big bomb. But I'm assuming that there was probably things in your apartment that shouldn't have been in your apartment at this point. And the law shows up. So, oh yeah. So not only did

Did you get burned? Did you get burned? Oh, I got burnt. So, um, I wake up from my coma a week later and I'm like, oh shit, you know, um, yeah, I, I rushed around my house after I was on fire. I ripped off my clothes. Some of my clothes burnt off me. And I, uh, I ran around my house collecting all of my paraphernalia and all my scales. Well, while I was in shock and, uh,

My skin, like 10 minutes later, as I look at my skin, I see that my skin starting to like peel off. Oh my God. It was disgusting. It was like melting right off me.

And, uh, but I got everything. I put it in a couple of duffel bags and I unplugged all of my like grow lamps and tents and everything. And then I was like, dude, I'm screwed. Yeah. You're like, what am I going to do with this? My skin's coming off. I've just organized it for the police. I organized it. That's exactly what I said. I was like, what a moron. Yeah. But they trashed my home of course. Oh,

They trashed it so bad that they actually missed so much. Oh, did they? They did. I found a couple pounds later on and a bunch of money. You found a couple? Yeah. Yeah. I was like, okay. It like reeked in my closets. I'm like, how'd you miss that? But they trashed the whole house. But so I had to learn how to walk again. Three weeks later, I'm out and about and...

terrified when I'm going to get arrested because I didn't get arrested at that point. They were still doing their investigation. They gave me the freedom basically of like learning how to walk again and like get back on my feet. Oh, wow. You can walk, but don't run. Yeah. Right when I was about to run, then they stepped in and they swarmed my house and arrested me on a warrant. And

That was, it was a scary time. I had a hundred thousand dollar bail that I had no idea about. Like I didn't know how to, I just knew that was the most expensive in that jail at that night. And I was like, oh, I'm just going to go home after this. And it was like, no dude, like you're sleeping here tonight. And it was like, it was three weeks later. I was released a day before Thanksgiving, second court appearance.

Um, and at that moment, that was the moment that the judge actually assigned me a mentor. Okay. And I never had a mentor. I didn't know anybody. A court appointed mentor. It was, it was a unique situation. I had to go through three meetings a week. And at one of those meetings, um, there was a mentor there and basically we linked up and that's, you know, so I blame the courts on changing my life, believe it or not. And, um,

And it was the first person that actually like, well, what, what came out of what came out of the court case? Did you, did you get, it was two years of fighting it and I was facing up to 12 years and it scared the shit out of me and five felonies I was, I was facing. So I ended up taking it to trial because they weren't giving me good offers. And, uh, I was just like all on the line and they, I had the mentor prepare me for court.

And when it was my turn to actually speak, it totally changed and did a 180. The judge realized it wasn't malicious and she gave me a second chance. She gave me house arrest. She gave me two felonies and a misdemeanor. So wait, so...

What is that decision like? I mean, we talk about risk-taking a lot in here, but you're like, you know what? I'm not going to the, I'm not taking your plea bargain deal. We're going to go to court and you could have got the max sentence there. Yeah. I thought I was literally that day. I was about to get it. Like they were, they were about to give it to me. And I was just, I was shocked. I was looking at my, or at my lawyer and I was like, dude, are you going to say something? Like they're saying the worst things about me over here, the DA. Well,

It was just it was so bad and I was terrified like overseas when he was in war over and got kind of like a slap on the wrist He got a second chance. So I

he was, he was just, you know, that male guidance, the male figure that all guys need, I feel like. And cause you had never had that before because obviously raised by a single mom. Yeah. I never had it. And I never knew how important it was, you know, like he, he saw more in me than I saw in myself and he called it out in me. And then I started, it just started changing my life drastically. Like I got, I started getting real estate. Wow, dude. Okay. Stop. You see, you just, you dropping, you dropping gems in here and just skipping over them. Like it's nothing. Yeah.

He saw more in me than I saw in myself. Of course. And dragged and demanded it out of me. Oh, yeah. I think if you're ever going to, I mean, that is fathering advice. That is coaching advice. That is what it sums down. That is it. Yeah, I never had it. You know, I just, I had no idea.

And it was exactly what I needed at the perfect time. Like with my personality type, I'm an all in type of person. Yeah. So I scaled up pretty quickly. And so with that being said, I could not just have a little slap on the wrist. If I would have just got it pulled over and got arrested, I would have not changed my life. You know, I was close to not changing my life, even being on fire.

- Because you don't know what you don't know. And what I did know was how to make money doing the wrong things. - Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's wild. Okay, so,

You beat the case to a certain extent. So what did you do for the two years you were on house arrest? You had to be doing something. So I actually, it was six months of house arrest. I got off a little early for good behavior. And because the laws in California start changing around that time for recreational marijuana. Okay, right. So all of a sudden you're not such a bad guy. I'm not so much of a bad guy. And honestly, at some point does somebody stand up and say, dude,

40% of his body got burned. I think he's paid the price. They didn't care about that at all. They cared more about, Hey, you put all these people in danger, like your whole apartment. You could have blown everybody up. Yeah. You could have hurt somebody else. So what about all the firefighters and everybody else you brought into that? Yeah. So it was like, you're, you're a menace to society. That's what they, Oh my God. They put like a mark on me, a bad one. And the judge, after I got to tell my story, uh,

from have my, my mentor, like prepare me for it. Cause I, if I did not have that story, you told, I just told my life. I told my story. I rambled on for about 10 minutes. I blacked out. Cause I just couldn't believe like, I'm about to go to jail. Like I didn't even prepare my dog. That's seen an old, like that scene in old school and just goes to another place. It gets a great answer debate. Okay. Sure. So I just started rambling on, but I prepared myself for that speech.

when it was my turn to talk. And it was just like what my mentor said. He was like, when you have this opportunity to say something, you need to prepare yourself for it and have it written out and say it from the heart, but you got to memorize it or else. Cause I'm not, you know, back then, especially I wasn't, I did not like all attention on me, especially in court. They just said a bunch of negative things about me. Like I was mentally just like, oh,

Yeah. That's not good. No. So, but the, the judge saw, like knew that it came from the heart, realized that it was not a malicious act. It was a young, dumb, you know, misguided. And, um,

And you're 24 at this time. I was like 22. Oh 22. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so she totally just realized it's not gonna happen again Let's get this kid house arrest and you know start changing your life. You know, it's funny Amaya I tell people this all the time my 25th birthday. My dad calls me. Yeah birthday as he says me It's happy dumbass birthday son of a bitch. Really? I went what? Oh my god. He was happy dumbass birthday I said, what does that mean?

It was, well, yesterday you were 24 years old. You were, you did something dumb. You were just a kid. Yeah. You're 25 now. You're a grown man. Nobody's ever going to call you kid again. So now you do something dumb. You're just a dumbass. So happy dumbass birthday. Oh, wow. I was like,

Okay, pops. And he's right. So like 22, you're still a stupid kid, silly mistake. 24, 26, you're a drug dealer. Yeah, yeah. You're a brutal criminal now. So if nothing else, be grateful that it happened at that time in your life when you were that age. Be grateful. Yeah. So there you go. So anyway, so you get out of six months. What do you do? What's the next move? So all I could do was work because with house arrest, you actually have pretty hefty amounts that you have to pay

pay for this. Bracelets aren't free, but they're not free and, uh, working restaurants. That's, that's what I was doing. I didn't know any better. And, um, so all I could do was walk my dogs, go to work. So I worked, uh, six days a week, two restaurants, about 15 hours a day. And, um,

And I did some workouts, you know? - I'm laughing 'cause back in my restaurant days, back in the day, my best kitchen guys were always house arrest guys. - Yeah! - 'Cause they would pick up any shift, they'd work every double, don't care, 'cause the only place I'm going is home. - Yeah, I was trying to clock in, I was trying to make money. - That's it, can't do anything else. - But yeah, during that time, that's actually when I met Jennifer, when I was on house arrest. And it was pretty embarrassing because I was not trying to show anybody that.

Like in the middle of the summer, hot as hell. I have long jeans. Yeah. And you could just see it bulging out, but like, what is that? It's like, don't worry about that. I have diabetes. It's leave it alone. Yeah.

But yeah, so I started buying real estate. I got addicted to real estate. I fell in love with the BRRRR strategy. I had no idea how I was going to pay for it, but I went down this rabbit hole of realizing like, all right, well, I have certain credit cards that have like 60, 70,000 limits on them from just constantly asking, saying the right things mistakenly for so long. And, um,

And what it turned into was when there's a will, there's a way. I found out how to liquidate cash from my credit cards and be able to buy the properties, complete the remodel, and then refinance it later. Who was your first guru for that? Who did you study? What did you learn? It was really just books and podcasts. Whose books, whose podcasts would you learn from? Yeah. Do you even remember? It wasn't, I don't know like the names.

There was credit secrets was one book that was decent. I met the ghost writer of that, um, Rodney. So he's pretty cool. Um, what else there is? There's a really good book. It's like $200. Uh, it's an expensive book. Um,

I don't even know what it is. I don't know. Yeah. Great content right now. It's so good. Just smoking good content. You're crushing it. I don't know what it was. A lot of it was really just like trial and error. Yeah. And just trying to figure it out along the way, like calling the banks and begging them to see like, hey, is there any promotional deals going on that I could- What can you do? Yeah, that I could, I got this amazing property. It's going to cashflow like crazy. So you were burying. And for those of you who don't know what burying is, if you're listening to this, you obviously probably do. But on the small chance you don't,

It's buy, renovate, refinance, rent. Or no, buy, renovate, rent, refinance. Sorry. Repeat. Repeat. Sorry. Either way. Essentially, it's just a way to buy rentals where you force value into them that you can refinance out all of your original capital. Yeah. It's typical real estate. It's a value add. Yeah. It's all about that. Instead of a fix and flip, you're in getting one-time payment. You're trying to have no money into it and then cash flow. Real estate 101, if you will, as you go along. So you start doing burr properties. When was this?

That was 2015. 2015. So there's deals around. Oh, yeah. Because you're coming out of the market crash. The hedge funds are still buying or just starting to buy in 2015. So you've got some deals you're picking up. You're doing this in San Diego, right? I tried for two years from 13 to 15 and kept on getting balled out by real investors. Yeah. Stuff that I do now. All cash, no contingencies, closing seven days. Yeah, yeah. Stuff I couldn't compete with. Yeah. Lack of education at the time. Sure. So I was investing 3,000 miles away over in Ohio.

Okay. Why Ohio? I have no idea. I was looking at all these other states, Arizona, New Jersey, all these, and it just, I had three different people in one week tell me about Ohio. I started doing due diligence and numbers started panning out. I found an area that I liked and it worked out. So how many properties do you own in, you obviously still own them in Ohio. I do, yeah. How many you own there? I have 14 over there. 14 in Ohio. How many properties totally do you own? I have 24 in total. 24 in total. Right now.

generating roughly how much cashflow a month? 30,000 a month. 30,000 a month. So you don't, you're at a place where you don't have to get out of bed in the morning. If you don't, I don't have to know. I enjoy, uh, because now we really, where I get more fulfilled is, uh, teaching like the credit counseling, these stuff, like people, how, because there's so many people raise their hand and say, yes, real estate. I want to do it. However, I don't have the funds. Yeah.

I need, I don't have enough credits. Yeah. They think they can't do it. And they're like, well, I need to make my money over here, the lane that I'm on. And then one day I'll jump into real estate and I'm just looking at that scenario. And I was like, I don't know if that's going to work out first off. And I don't know, second, if that, if you're going to be disciplined enough to save up whatever that's going to take to be able to get to this, how are you going to do that? Yeah. Like that wasn't my road. How did, so how, but how did you get it? So.

Did you, was your credit banged up to a point where you needed it fixed at some point? Did you go through this process or did you just decide I need to get in this? Cause there's plenty of people that are saying no. Well, so our biggest thing is like we teach people how to get up to 500,000 every six months at 0% interest. That's my main bread and butter. However,

Okay, wait a second. Say that one more time because that's, yeah, if you don't hear anything, I'll say that again. Yeah, yeah. What do you do? We teach people how to be able to get up to $500,000 at 0% interest every six months. Every six months? Yep. 500K? 500K. Rolling. And just every six months you can get another 500K? Every six months you can get another five. Okay. So this isn't...

this isn't so much credit repair. This is building lines of credit. Correct. Yeah. It's less and people get this mixed up because you say anything about credit, the typical, like 99% of people are going to be like, okay, so you do credit repair. It's like, yeah, that's what I thought. That's what I thought we were talking about. I know. I know. I know. I appreciate it. So, so now I got to go back and record another drop in for this at the beginning of this. So people will be like, yeah, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. This is the better part. However,

Fixing credit is one of the processes to be able to get there. So it wasn't a complete lie what I said earlier. It's not a complete lie. No. But every single person needs to be in the 800 club to really be able to get a successful mass apply. Yeah. And a mass apply for anybody out there that is like, what the hell do you mean, Brandon? That's when you apply for 10 to 40 plus credit cards in a 30 day timeframe and get a 90% approval odds.

How does that not sink your credit score? Yeah, that's a good question. So we'll teach you how to be able to remove the hard inquiries in a matter of moments. So it doesn't haunt you like for the long run and moments. Yeah, it will take about like 30 minutes, 20 to 30 minutes of your time. And then you'll see it later on that afternoon. Even if you get the card, they remove the inquiry. Correct. Yep.

And the thing is, people don't realize this, whether you apply for one or two credit cards or you apply for 40 plus, it makes the same impact to your FICO, your credit report. Okay. So why go for just one or two? Go for the full shebang because you're going to get the most credit lines. You can get credit limit increases over time and you can do this every six months. So you have clients that have hundreds of credit cards. Is that fair to say? Yes.

So the 0% interest is you're just targeting ones that have zero interest for the first 12 months or low or introductory rates is what you're going after. Yeah. So the intro rates range anywhere from six months to 22 months for 0% interest. Most of them are 15 or 18 months.

And with that being said, it depends on your end goal. Like what is your strategy? There's several different types of credit cards out there. You got cash rewards, you got business cards, you got travel cards, insurance cards, like 0% interest. You want to make sure you're kind of hitting what is that end goal that you're trying to do, backtrack and see.

Yeah. If you're trying to leverage and you're growing a business, scaling something, wanting to diversify, then you're going to want to focus on business credit cards at 0% interest for as long as possible. Yeah. So that you can make the money work. Yeah. Yeah. So.

How many people do you think are using their credit incorrectly? 99% of people. 99%. Yes. So if I, if I'm the lay, if I'm the layman guy, 800 credit score, like I'll tell you, I'll tell you like for me, it's like, I've got, I've got the American express platinum that I use for one company. I got the chase set fire use for another. Yeah. I do the capital one, uh,

I do the Capital One Venture deal for pretty much everything else, which just racks up points in like two points for everything you spend. - Yep. - Whatever it is. So, you know, I think right now I'm probably sitting on, I don't know, 3 million points, whatever it is. - Yeah. - Collectively from my cards that I have. - Sure. - So what should I be doing differently?

Well, first off, you want to see which cards are going to be the best for your everyday purchases and then figure that out. And then what's the end goal? You know, there's four different types of banks for traveling, right? So like AMAX, Citi, Chase and Capital One. So definitely like if you travel a lot like we do, then you're going to want to have an arsenal of those so that you can stack up those points and then start learning travel hacking because that's a it's a benefit. Yeah.

So if you know how to, the three alliance partners for traveling, then there's like 20 airlines underneath each one of those. Star Alliance and.

And Avianca I think is no, it's, it's star Alliance. It's a sky team and it's one world. Yeah. That's okay. Those are the three and there's 20 airlines underneath each one. And there's bonuses to transfer into certain airlines and then transfer to another transfer to another, and you can be able to get your, do you do that? Or do you know somebody does it? No, no, we do that. Yeah. Dude, I haven't paid for a flight in forever. We're going to Europe next month. And like we have the whole thing paid for, for a full month.

- Yeah, 'cause like I had a cat, I got a guy that did this, that had a service, has a service where he bounces your points and does this. - Yeah, he does it for you. - And he was charging me like 300 bucks a month to be a member of the service.

I found domestically it not to be worth it. Like we were getting our, like, I got it domestically. Right. But, but like you fly, it can be a long rabbit hole. Um, but it is, yeah, but it can be so worth it to learn this stuff because, um, instead of paying like somebody monthly to do it, they're not going to care as much about your, your credit, your, your end result. They just, you know, they're collecting their monthly and it's probably not enough to really for them to

give a shit. So if you can learn it yourself, then it will really like that's what we teach in credit counseling. It's one of the four steps. One of the four steps. Yeah. Which is leverage. It's the last step. Once you get all the funding. So it's educate, fix, build, leverage. And once you get all the funding, the third step, then the last part is leverage. Well, I'm jumping ahead. Let's go back to the first step then. Let's talk about educate. Yeah. So what goes on during the education portion?

- Yeah, that's a good question. So when it comes down to like, we teach you how the banks, lenders, credit bureaus are judging you. So you know how to play the game. Think of it like this. I think of it as we're playing real life Monopoly.

with our finances, every single one of us. However, nobody out there knows the damn rules of the game. Yeah. Like nobody. Yeah. So therefore they're missing out on the park plays when they land on it. They're not collecting the cash in the middle there when they go around to, you know, uh, go or whatever, they're not collecting the 200 bucks. They're screwing up the game. Yeah. So it's important to realize that, you know, think of it like this, that the banks, we give all of our money to them and how much do they give us back?

You know, they gave us 0.0111, 0.001% interest. Yeah. Like nothing. We're basically giving them 0% interest loans. Sure. They lend it back out to us at high interest rates on personal loans, auto loans, mortgages, you know, et cetera, nine times over averaging anywhere from 500 to 3000%. So it's incredible. They're doing it to us.

Like, and you know, we can do the same thing. We're just flipping the script on the banks and doing exactly what the rich do. We're leveraging good debt, not bad debt. Yeah. Right. I don't want anybody to get this fund. Go buy a Gucci purse. Do not buy the Gucci purse. All right. Do not buy the Gucci sweatshirt for 20K. Don't do it. Don't do it. But buy assets. Yeah. Like you can truly grow and scale your business. You can put the, like we're hiring on each and every week, several people.

And it's because I have the funds to do it. Yeah. Even if my business was struggling, it's like I have the capital to be able to get more aggressive. I can put 50 or $100,000 down with no contingencies for earnest money, you know? And, uh,

and close in seven days because I have the capital. I have the credit. - You can pull it. You know, I can tell you how to win at Monopoly every time if you'd like to know. - Yeah, please. What do you got? - I got the best system ever. - Do you? - Yes. - Well shit, I'm not gonna go to your house to play. - No, people will hate you. You have to be prepared for this. They're going to hate you. But this is how you win at Monopoly. - Dude, I've been hating my whole life. Let's go. Come on. - This is how you win at Monopoly every time. You ready?

if you read the rule again knowing the rules and understanding the rules within the rules of monopoly it says you put on four houses on a space and then you may replace it with a hotel sure it doesn't say you have to replace it with a hotel yeah

It also says there's so many houses in the game. It doesn't say you can use a thumbtack in place of a house. It says you have to use a house. Yes. There's only so many of them in the game. Yep. Do whatever you got to do. Lie, cheat, steal to get the first three spaces. Doesn't matter what they are. Okay. Get houses on all of them. Then get another three space space. House on all of them. And then never come room to hotels. Yeah. You create a housing shortage and you win the game. Yeah. How does it matter which space you're on? Because you'll just bleed everybody dry because they can't build anything. Yeah.

Housing shortage. That's good. That's how you win. Every single time. I've actually had somebody do this against me. Have you? And they bled you dry? Yeah. And you hate them. And I was like, what the hell? You're like, build a hotel. They're like, no, I'm good. Yeah, they won't do it. Yeah, no, I'm good. I like my houses. Like you little bastard. Do it. That's right. No, no. Housing shortage. That's good. No, you're good.

Anyway, so that was the educate. What's the next portion? Yeah. So the next one is going to be fix. So once again, if you are in the 300s or you're in the 800 club, you have to do fix. The good news is if you're mid sevens, low sevens to 800 already, then the fix is going to take about an hour of your time. And it's really just removing old, outdated information, personal information, like old addresses, employer, phone numbers, stuff like that. So wait, old addresses hurt your credit score? Believe it or not, it's a

It's like less is more when it comes down to your personal info. Okay. It could be attached to something that could potentially be holding you down. Okay. Okay. So believe it or not, if you just correct some of that stuff right there, deleting some of those things, then I've seen scores actually jump up like five, 10 points. Just from getting rid of old addresses. Yep. That's wild. Yeah. Okay. And,

And then afterwards, obviously- What do you do for somebody that's got 800 credit? What do you fix with them? It's the personal identification info. Same thing. Yeah. So it'll be one hour of your time. You knock out all three. There's a backdoor method that's free online. And bada bing, bada boom, you're done. Next, you can- Basically, you're going to boost your score. Yeah. So even if somebody has jacked up credit, there's certain techniques. It's kind of a rabbit hole of like-

and all different types of situations. But we've had people with bankruptcies that removed in an hour, a hundred thousand in collections. How? I mean, you're going to drop the secret sauce a little bit. Give me a tea. I mean, look, I know that I still don't need you, but damn. I hear you. Yeah. It's just so complicated to explain. There's not just the three credit bureaus, there's thousands of these third-party agencies.

like LexisNexis, SageStream, Innovis, ARS, CoreLogic. It's these third-party agencies that act like credit bureaus that are furnishing data. So when the credit bureaus, the three credit bureaus, TransUnion, Equifax, Experian, when they go to verify certain items, you can freeze these third-party agencies. So then they can't verify it anymore. So you're kind of chopping...

So rather than going to the top, you're kind of going to the roots. I go to the roots first, cut that off. And then afterwards, I challenge and dispute the factual data on the three bureaus. And if the roots are cut off, they have nowhere to verify. They can't verify. And then they legally need to take it off. Yeah, they have to take it off. However, these three bureaus are just like mom and pop companies. They have a lot of stall tactics. They yeah.

A lot of people, a lot of consumers out there nationwide, they give more power to the three main bureaus than they truly are. They just don't know. But these companies will give a lot of pushback. We have certain techniques to overcome those pushbacks. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I can imagine.

Burning their skin off would be one of them. There you go. I get from that. All right. So now we fixed. Yep. And the next one is fun, right? It's going to be, yeah, it's build. Build. Sorry. Now we're built. Yeah. So if everybody typically. It would be much more helpful if this was like an acronym. Yeah, I know. Like if everything went in a row. I know. We're working on it. We'll get there. Yeah.

So yeah, the next part is build and that's if you are, you know, the negative stuff is off. You're going to be in the low to mid 700s, maybe the 800 club already. But at that point, we're going to have to boost certain things. So there's out of the six boxes that make up your credit score, your FICO, three are made for fix and then three are made for build.

- Okay. - Those three that are for build are total accounts, average credit age and credit utilization. That's 55% of your FUDCO right there. And so, and those can be implemented. Like those can be,

by adding authorized users, you can boost up certain scores and make all those perfect. Yeah. I got to tell you the biggest, like after, you know, cause I demolished my credit when I was younger, it was like, like it was an art form. It happens, man. Oh, it was an art form. I demolished it. Whatever. You're responsible kid. It was efforts. No, I was already dumb ass at this point. I was beyond that dumb ass birthday. So yeah, I was just a dumb ass and ruined my credit. Yeah. But yeah, when I got it back, but the only thing that ever has screwed me up since then, right.

And dude, I wanted to murder American Express just randomly. I had like an American Express blue card that I had like for like 15 years and they just close the account and they would not reopen it. So a lot of people, and that's the education part. It's, it comes down to if you have high utilization or start getting some late payments, negative derogatory remarks, and these banks are doing soft pulls on you every single month. If they can see that, then they start getting scared. They just, no, they just closed it for non-use.

Oh, yeah. You got to use your card at least once a year. Didn't use it. Yeah, okay. They closed it. So you got to use it at least once a year or else they will close it. Yeah. They make money off of you swiping every time. Yep, they do. So that's the build. So we're going to build up...

And what was that again? So we're boosting up the score. And the best news is within 30 days max, that's absolute max. We can show you how to get to the 800 club if you're not there yet and keep you there. And as a real estate investor, you actually want to be at 760 to 780 range or higher to get the best of the best rates. Right. So we can show you how to boost it up, get to the 800 club afterwards. That's when you're going to do your mass supply.

So here's a question because I tend to be, I tend to be a victim of utilization, like just whichever way the wind blows on the day. Right. But utilization moves my score 12 to 15 points because even though we pay them off like every two weeks and I, you know, we never really run a balance. Yep.

you know, my credit card and I guess the total utilization never gets more than, you know, call it 25%, but still it's, it's, you get zapped. Sure. So the way to stop that, and this is a great question, by the way, the way to stop that is being aware of your statement closing dates for every card. Yeah. And you can change those statements. If you have a bunch of cards, like I do, like put

half of them on the first and then the other half on the 15th. So there's a statement opening date, a statement closing date, and then three weeks later, typically the due date, right? The due date you have to make or else you're going to get hit with late payment. The statement closing date, whatever amount that balance is, that gets reported out to the three bureaus. So you always want to start paying it off in full

if you're that type of, you should be that type of person, ideally, unless it's a 0% interest, then you want to pay it off about two to three days prior to that statement closing date. So it has enough time to circulate and clear and be zero. Exactly. So,

how accurate is like the credit karma? BS, total BS. Total BS. Yeah. It's a vantage score. Yeah. And if you look at all of your platforms, nine times out of 10, it is a vantage score. And that's what people need to, what a vantage score is, is a BS number. It can be off as, as much as 150 points, either up or down. Really? Yes. Do not look at the, the credit karma scores, the vantage scores. Okay. Uh, it,

I mean, the education is decent on there and the six boxes is something that you can look at to get more education. Don't treat it as the Holy Grail. Yeah. Okay. If you want your true FICO, then, um,

And we have a link that on our on Instagram underneath our link tree. But basically it is my score IQ. That one, you have to pay for it, but it gets like truly the best. Getting the real number. You're getting the right number. You're getting the real accurate data. That's the baseline where you need to start. That's what you have to start with. And if you have to do any type of fixing, you need that report anyway. Yeah. And it comes with insurance for protection and so forth.

Nice. It's beneficial. So the idea here is so many people just think that credit is about getting the best rate when you buy a car, buy a house, anything you want to do.

But this is about creating true leverage because, stop me if I'm wrong here, okay? Stop me if I'm wrong. Because like you say you're going to get 40 new credit cards with a half a million dollars with a 0% interest on them for let's call it 12 months. So I take this and then I go out and I invest it in my widget factory. All right? Widgets are going good, but I got some widget problems. I got some issues with the widgets, right? I thought widgets were going to hit the market at month four. Sure. Looks like it's going to be month seven. Uh-huh.

I'm going to start turning interest on this money. So what you're saying is with your system, though, technically I could go out and get a whole bunch of new cards and then balance transfer my widget money to the new cards. You can. You can also ask for extensions on, and people don't know that, like you can negotiate with your credit card companies, believe it or not.

You just need to know what to say and how to address it properly. Yeah. If you need extensions, there's opportunities for you to do so and stop the interest completely. Because like you could, I mean, you could literally buy cars. You could buy whatever you want with this. We have people in our- As long as they go. Yeah. I mean, there's a hack that we put out there with Bank of America. You can buy four cars with one hard inquiry on Experian that you can remove in a second. And it's only on business credit and they will fund 110%. I mean, it covers half of your insurance.

And up to 50,000. So you can get four cars to start your Turo business with up to 50,000 on each one. And all you have, I mean, you're, you can make like 2,000, 2,500 per month off each of those cars.

So anybody sitting at home saying, I don't have the money to start my business. I can't do this. You don't need it. You don't need it. You need credit. You need the education. I mean, education is everything. Yeah. You don't need money. You need leverage. That's what you need. Well, that's wild. So if I'm somebody, I'm listening to this, which if you're listening to this, you should want to find this cat because that's crazy. I mean, A, he probably still knows where to get some weed. No, I'm just kidding, brother.

But I'm totally off that. Totally off the weed now. But obviously this is some next level. This is some next level stuff. So if they want to find you, how do they find you? How do they get in touch with you? Yeah. So my best recommendation is go to our website, creditcounselelead.com. It's www.creditcounselelead.com. We have a lot of free education on there. A quick 10 minute video that gives more detail of what the hell I'm talking about so that you can really kind of piece it up together. And then if it makes sense, get on a phone call with us. We give 45 minutes of like

a true detail to go over where you're at, where you're looking to go and how we can help you get there. And, um, and just a second opinion at the end of the day. Uh, otherwise we have a weekly podcast ourselves, ready, set, go real estate investing podcast every Monday. And, uh, on Instagram, it's branded Elliot investments. Love it. Love it. Love it. Well, Brandon, man, dude, thanks for coming in. It was an awesome chat. Yeah. Appreciate you, John.

Hey, man, just two in a row, and I felt like I brought the heat for the second one. Oh, you always do, baby. I felt like I saved it up and then just like exploded through the second podcast. It was good. All right, well, dude, look, man, if you want to get some more money in your life using leverage, Brandon's going to be your guy. And I'm going to have him help me, hopefully walk me through this travel hacking thing because it's a black hole that I'm done looking at. Let's go. That's the point. Anyway, all right, man, thanks for coming in. Guys, we will see you next week.

Hey, it's John Gafford. If you want to catch up more and see what we're doing, you can always go to thejohngafford.com where we'll share any links that we have things we talked about on the show, as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live. And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram, you can always follow me at thejohngafford. I'm here. Give me a shout.