Ep #15: Sam Parker My Credit Guy

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hello, hello, loyal listeners, Jeff Zimfer, your host of mortgage marketing radio. Hey, thanks for tuning in to another episode where we bring you truth in mortgage marketing. And on this episode, we continue along with truth. And I think a relevant topic, we're talking about credit, restoration, and credit repair. Yes, a topic that is sometimes couched in sketchiness, shall we say. So I'm bringing you here today, a new friend of mine, Sam Parker, who's the founder and CEO of my credit guy, credit restoration. And I met Sam actually at the mortgage marketing mastermind summit in Las Vegas recently and just connected as a matter of fact, I thought Sam was a great guy because he invited me to an awesome party. So how can you not want to be friends with somebody who invites you to the best party at the mastermind summit in Vegas. But beyond that, I wanted to have Sam here because I wanted to clear up some confusion, perhaps some preconceived notions that you as a mortgage loan officer may have about credit restoration because they are not all created equal. And yes, there are a lot of probably fly by night shady companies and then there are a few stand out bright shiny lighthouses, if you will, that really rise above that noise and are doing some really incredible things. So if you haven't checked out mycreditguy.com, go do so while you're listening to this interview because you're going to see some incredible testimonials from both loan officers and consumers. I'm talking about what Sam does is he gets people back to the closing table, ASAP, right? He's legit. He's solid. He's authentic. He's helping to clear up some of the bad perceptions that are out there, but he's giving a really solid advice and he's got a great process and a great program, both for consumers and mortgage loan officers to be able to put one or two extra loans back in your closed funnel pipeline, fundings every single month. So without further ado, let's transition over to this week's episode of mortgage marketing radio with mycreditguy. Hey, Sam, welcome to the show. Hey, Jeff, thanks a lot for having me. I appreciate it. No, my pleasure. Now you're busy. You just flew in from somewhere and boy, your arms are tired. I had to use that old joke, but so let's get started here. We're obviously here talking about credit repair, credit restoration. And I wanted to have you on in particular because you and I connected at the recent mortgage mastermind summit in Las Vegas and it's actually surprising that we connected with the thousands of people that were there. But you and I, I think what happened was you invited me to a party and I was like, I am in. This guy's a good guy. Yeah. Yeah, that's always a good way to meet people and buy them up for some free drinks and a cool party. Yeah, and it definitely was. It was right at the best party, the whole shendig there. So credit repair credit restoration, I think it's a very important topic and I wanted to take it head on because who out there is the loan officer listening right now, doesn't face those situations, even with FHA and we've got some leeway when it comes to qualification requirements. There's still, every day you see it, obviously, people who just for whatever reason because of credit issues can't qualify right now, but perhaps can qualify with just some, some little bit of cleanup. So I want to, first of all, you know, address that and kind of set the stage for that's what we're going to talk about. But if you would for our listeners, maybe just give a brief background of, you know, who you are, how the heck do you get into this business and who ultimately do you serve? Yeah, absolutely. I kind of fell into this business, honestly, when I was 19 almost 20 years old, I was working as a telemarketer for MCI phone company and I don't really know how they get a hold of it, but anyway, a head and a hunter called me said, hey, we hear your decent on the phones. Would you like to come and, you know, help help start a credit repair company at the sales side of it? And I was like, wow, this is an excellent way to have an excuse to stop going to college because I was supposed to go back at, you know, at the end of the summer and my parents won't be mad at me if I can say that I'm pursuing a career. Well, they were mad at me anyway, but it's, I didn't worry about that. And I ended up, you know, going into something for, for that reason, but then really falling in love and becoming very passionate about, you know, helping these people. And so when I was 20, 20 late 20 almost 21, I went off and I started my own company, grew that up for about four and a half years, sold off to a competitor, worked with them for a while, and then left and launched my credit guy credit restoration. And then that brought me out here from Iowa, out here to Arizona. And you know, our brand right now is, you know, just, we're doing really well. You know, we're kind of synonymous in the mortgage industry with closings and then that's what we're going for. So who we're here to serve, you know, it's kind of two levels. I mean, the first level is that, you know, we want to work with our lenders and help as many of our lenders and realtors get back to the closing table as many times as we possibly can. And you know, the people that work with us are finding that that's, you know, a regular occurrence. You know, our goal is to help each one of our referral partners close a minimum of one extra transaction a month. And we try really, really hard to maintain that. And as long as we have a, our participating referral partner that sent in the leads over to us, it's pretty easy to make that happen. And then on the second line of things and where we really get to feel good and sleep on a salt pillow at night is our clients. You know, the people that have been told know by, you know, a credit card company or bank or another mortgage lender and then they finally get somebody a lender that's willing to just refer them over to a good company. And then we're able to fix them up in a matter of months, get them back to a closing table and I mean, you've never seen a more grateful client in your life than that client who was told know and then comes full circle and gets to the closing table. So yeah, it's, it's definitely a rewarding career that I have. Yeah. And I can tell your passion about it. I'll tell you. And it's a rare find to find somebody passionate about this. Yeah. Yeah. So let's, you know, originally when you and I talked, like, you know, in terms of talking notes, I think I put something together that said, like, you know, truth and lies about a credit repair. And so naturally when somebody hears, you know, credit repair, credit restoration, there's probably some preconceived notions that pop up for people on that. So why don't we address some of the misconceptions or how you guys are different than how you overcome those preconceived notions out there? Yeah. Well, you know, unfortunately, the notions about the credit repair industry in general aren't too far off. We have a history of, you know, having some bad players that, you know, of course, the bad ones get all the press. There are a lot of good credit repair companies out there. But the problem that comes is that a lot of them charge up front, which is against the federal guidelines, the CROA, the credit repair organization access that you're not supposed to charge until you've provided services to a client. And so many of them will try to kind of skirt around the law and they'll say, oh, well, we're charging for this on either they'll ignore the law and just charge right up front anyway. They'll hide behind maybe a state statute or something like that. Or they'll say, you know, well, our service is to enroll the client and enter them into our system. And so we charge on the third day of service. It's like, well, come on, you know, that's that's some gray area that you're just playing around in. So that's one of the things they charge up front, but the biggest thing and the reason that most credit repair companies actually get shut down when they do get shut down is over promising of services or false advertising. And so you'll have all these companies run around out there that say, oh, yeah, I can do this. Or, you know, I can get, you know, right on their advertising, they'll say, that judgements late pays, you know, bankruptcies, no problem. And that's just not how you're supposed to do it. It's that if an item is inaccurate, outdated, duplicated, erroneous, something like that, then you can claim to be able to get it removed. Otherwise, you know, you got to hear the whole story and really dig into that item before you can claim to be able to get it removed. And, you know, in the mortgage world, why credit repair has a bad name is because, you know, a lot of credit repair companies are black holes. You know, you send leads over there and either they never come back or they take, you know, six to 12 months to come back. So that's, you know, that's where the bad name comes from. Yeah. And, you know, for those that are listening right now, if you're wondering, you know, is Sam, can he back up what he says, you can go to his website at mycreditguy.com and look under reviews, he's got it broken down to both referral partners and consumers. And I'm just scanning through a few here right now. I mean, I'm just just really real quickly, right? Scores went from 609 to 683. Now we're using that to qualify, sweet, everything's better. Not just pulled credit, no disputes, midscore, 643, we got a brand new one that just came in a couple of weeks ago, now working on a complete review for his pre-approval. And I'm just scratching the surface as far as those stories goes, not even getting into the consumer side of things, you know, I got to wonder, why would a mortgage loan officer professional be reluctant to engage your services? Well, a lot of it's just misinformation and it's either that they think that all credit repair, every time I talk to a lender these days, you know, they say, I tried that in the past and it didn't work and it made me look totally understandable. They work long and hard to make sure that their reputations intact and that they look great and that they're portraying that to the public and their referral partners. But there's no sense, you know, what I think looks worse for a lender is to not be able to get those tough deals done than to try and then maybe have to try again. So a lot of it's just their past and they just need to kind of, you know, not to sound insensitive but just get over it and move on and work with a great company that has a great reputation. The other thing is that there's a lot of the education levels about credit, whether it's for a loan officer or especially for the consumers in our country is so, so low. You know, just it's just not taught the way that it needs to be and so on that same, you know, a lot of loan officers think that when they're doing their, what if simulators or their rapid rescores that they're doing the same thing that we would do and that's not our service at all, we don't even have the ability to do the rapid rescores. Those are, you know, products of the credit vendor that you're pulling credit through. So when I go through and I explain, you know, what an MOP rating is and how that, you know, a paid collection can still affect the scores just as much as it never has or that, you know, paying off a collection can drop the credit scores and here's why, then they start to realize that those rapid rescores are great when they applaud when the situation calls for it, but they're very surface level. And so once they see that we can go a lot more in depth, then their eyes really open and then those referrals start coming over, you know, kind of fast and furious. Right. So let's then talk a little bit specifically about what you do. You think that makes you different as a credit restoration company? Yeah. Well, everything that we do is at a sprint because what we are doing is catering to the lending and real estate community. So our job is to get you closings as many of them and as quickly as possible, you know, as we possibly can. So a lot of times what credit repair companies do is they'll make this into a process where their business model is, hey, show you some results. But, you know, let's keep that client in for six to 12 months because the, you know, the company makes more money that way. Where what we do is we kind of front load the service. And so usually our clients are back the lender, you know, within two to three months or so. And maybe four or five at a long, you know, would be a longer term with us. So what we do is just get in there. We do the disputes. We don't do blanket disputes that way. You don't end up with a bunch of dispute verbiage on the credit report at the end. So we're very pinpointed with our, with our disputes and how we're disputing them. We're, you know, instead of saying this account isn't mine or something very general like that, which unfortunately is kind of the, you know, some of the industry norms with doing blanket disputes. But, you know, that way we could go in and actually pinpoint violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Fair Debt Collection Praxis Act, things like that. If items come back as verified, then we can assist the clients with negotiating settlements and pay for deletions to save a money. We help them establish new positive trade lines and teach them how to use them and we do a ton of credit education and budgeting. So that way by the time they're all done, they're a very knowledgeable client. They're a better borrower with a better credit score, but then they don't fall back in, you know, to these, these pitfalls that they put, you know, that have put them in this place. But by doing all those things at once, all the same time, that's going to get that client back to you much faster than, you know, attacking a few items here or a few items there and then covering something else on month four and five and six. So. Yeah, that's good stuff for sure. So then how do you, how would you suggest or how have you advised in the past a loan officer take a topic like credit restoration when positioning themselves? Let's say can loan officers use having an affiliation with you as a unique selling advantage? Yeah, I absolutely would. I mean, when I talk to the realtors and we do business with a ton of realtors as well, but you know, when I asked them, I say, you know, have you ever sent a file over to a lender and you get the answer back, hey, sorry, the scores aren't good enough at this time and then the deal's dead and they say, yeah, all the time. And when I tell them, did you know about companies like ours and they're just like, well, we had heard about it, but the lender says they'll take care of it. And they find out that that lender did not give them that resource of making sure that that deal was, you know, that they had done everything they possibly can for it. The realtors are upset, you know, they, they, so I would definitely market it, you know, not only to your referral partners, but also to the community of, hey, listen, if there's credit issues, come on over, we would love to help you out and we have resources for you. I mean, some of our lenders even do credits, you know, they do a lender credit at the closing table to reimburse them for some of the costs, you know, and they don't have to do that. But there's definitely ways to use your affiliation with a great credit repair company to increase business, you know, not only get the deals back that are already in your pipeline that you shouldn't be losing, but also to create more. So do, are there any ways that you team up with loan officers to, you know, help them, you know, kind of position in affiliation you have with them? Yeah, absolutely. So we can do customized marketing materials, we can also customize landing pages, just to, you know, give that, that great web presence. We will actually come out if they schedule us, that will come out, we'll do lunch and learns, we'll do first time home buyer seminars. So we want to be as involved with their processes, they want us to be, you know, overwork when the great lender that says, I am not going to let one of these deals slip through the cracks. Then we'll bend over backwards to make sure that we're, you know, giving you everything that you're asking for. Wow. Well, that's really cool, man. Yeah. Education is key. And I think that's what you're kind of alluding to through this whole thing, it's the bad rap, that restoration agency has gotten. So you may or may not know that a lot of what I teach loan officers is, you know, have that heart of a teacher and position yourself by providing educational lunch and learns. And so that's a great way, just to add this to your mix, right, this topic of credit restoration, you know, the do's and don'ts. So you have like a deck or anything that they could use? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if they want to, you know, just email me and then request, I can get them over, you know, we have a few different slideshows that can be used, you know, that we can kind of white label for them. And then also, if they don't want to have to do that, then we can always record customized videos for them if they just give us, you know, at least a week in advance and say, hey, here's the audience that we're going to be speaking to. I'll just record a video for them that they can press play on if they don't want to have to go through that, you know, that slide show themselves. Oh, that's great. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about how your process works, right? We can talk about pricing in a minute and you can go specific or not. However, I know it varies, but when somebody engages with you, what does that process look like for the client, you mean, for the loan officer? Okay. So for the loan officer, it's really simple. There's no contract assigned either. I do a great job and retain your business or I don't and I didn't deserve to keep it. So there's, there's, there's no startup, they go to our website. If they have a client, they go to our website, which again, is mycreditguy.com and they just click on the client file submission button, they click on that and then they can upload a file or just the client's information if they're not allowed to send a credit report over and we can always pull a consumer credit report. We do a free review and we usually within minutes, we're getting back to the lender to let them know if they want to review whether or not we can help, how much we can help and how long it's going to take. And then from there, the lender can decide whether or not to put us in touch with the client. I can tell you that usually after the first one or two reviews, they skip the, they skip that middle part and then the, you know, the submissions are going to look a lot more like, here's my client, here's his phone number. And then all they want to do is make sure that we have the ability to contact that client and let the client know, hey, listen, you know, mycreditguy is going to be giving you a call, listen to what they have to say, you know, whatever, just give us a leg to stand on. And then from there, we call the client, we give them a free review, we enroll them, they're connected in our system to the lender the entire time. So the lender's getting updates plus there's a portal that they can log into to check on the status of any one of their clients at any time. And then like I said, you know, within a couple months, sometimes sooner, we're getting them back to that closing table and letting them know, hey, it's time to repel credit and finish this thing up. How did your pricing work? Is it very based on the deal or how do you want to, yeah, not really more so just on length of time because we have set pricing though. So we don't do, you know, the per deletion pricing that can end up being very expensive. We don't, like I said, charge upfront because it's illegal and you're not supposed to do it. So what we do is we charge on day 30 of the service and on day 30, it's only $3.99 for an individual or $6.99 for a couple. So a couple does get a hundred dollar discount and then after that, it would drop all the way down to only $89 per additional month for an individual or only one or nine a month for a couple. And again, most of our clients are in fixed up and back out within two to four months of the cost. They minimal and in that time, we're also saving them a ton of money both with our deletions, you know, because they were probably about to go and pay some items that might have been invalid or with the help that we give them with the settlements and pay for deletions, we can save them a lot of money there too. Yeah, so I'm looking on your website and you offer a free consultation that might have been what you were kind of describing just a moment ago, but that's where a loan officer can call you and run perhaps a file both by you and see what you think. Yeah, yeah, so we tell our loan officers whether you have the credit to qualify and there's a lender overlay in your way or it's that you're 200 points shy. I don't care. I want to look at that file because I want to help you. I don't need to get paid on every file. We just want to create a relationship here. So you know, sometimes I get a file over that says, hey Sam, what do you think of this one? We can't use authorized users. Can you get that removed? But the scores are good enough or, you know, hey, Sam, this one's 150 points away. What do you think? And we'll get back with a detailed game plan of exactly what needs to be done by us, what the client's going to have to do to meet us in the middle. If there is anything, how long that should take, what that translates to and costs. And then, you know, like I said, in some cases, we're just getting back to you and saying, hey, listen, do this, pay this down, do a rapid rescore, repel credit, close the loan next week. So it just depends on the situation, but we'll always give you, you know, free advice and, you know, a free review. Yeah. And so I want to make it clear to those that are listening right now, you know, you are not a fly by night company. I mean, you've been around how many years? Well, I've been doing credit repair for 14 years. My credit guy, the brand has been in existence for about four years, two years in Arizona that we've been doing, or almost two years that we've been doing business in Arizona. Yeah. I mean, we're kind of, you know, luckily we've gotten in and created a great name for ourselves in the mortgage industry. So you see us around a lot at the different national shows and in-state shows and all that good stuff. Yeah, but you have a team of your staff, it looks like of approximately 15 people, and you've got, as you said, you cover the entire country, right? Yeah, we're actually up to 18. We had to hire three new people this last week because we are fortunate enough to be growing at a pretty astonishing rate. So yeah, we're all over the place, though. I got reps in California, Iowa, Arizona, Wisconsin, and we just hired a guy on in Tennessee. So yeah, we're definitely trying to make some moves. Well, I think you are. I mean, yeah, you're pretty established presence, and you're well connected as well to a lot of leadership in the industry like we talked about, which is good. So you mentioned what you work with realtors. Obviously, you know, you're real main focus if I understand you correctly as loan officers, but when you do direct stuff with realtors, yeah, we do, but I mean, to make the process easier for them, what we're usually doing is trying to connect with their lender of choice or lenders of choice. So just make sure that it's a smooth process for the realtors rather than having the realtors learn, because we definitely operate more in the mortgage world and speak the mortgage language, which then we do the real state world. And so to try to have a realtor come in and kind of go in depth in that, we're kind of asking them to do, you know, to become familiar with two different worlds that they might not be familiar with. And so it's much easier in an easier process for the realtor and the client if we just make sure that that lender that that they work with is on board. But yeah, realtor can also send me a client directly. It doesn't have to be through a lender. Right. Okay. So what lights you up about this business in a good way? Yeah. Yeah. It's in a good way. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I really do. I love seeing the impact that we have on people's lives. I mean, there's, you know, at the end of the day, the American dream still, one of if not the biggest staples of it is owning your own home and having your family be comfortable and safe and just have that feeling of security. And so to take somebody, I mean, you got to put yourself in those shoes if you've ever been in them and to go somewhere and say, hey, my family just got bigger. We just had a baby and I need an extra room and we live in an apartment. And for somebody to sit there across the desk from you and say, no, you're not good enough and I don't have any options for you. I mean, that's horrible. That's heartbreaking for that person. And so to take somebody from that lowest of the low feeling to where they're taking their family through their brand new house and showing them, hey, you know, this is going to be your room or, hey, honey, this is the kitchen. And that you always wanted something like that. I mean, that's, I get tingles every time I even talk about it. I'm so thrilled to be able to provide that to people. Wow. That's awesome. Yeah. I encourage people listening to go check it out on the website, microdicci.com. I'm just reading the consumer testimonials on there. And what's great is that you guys are staying updated and current on that. You know how you got a lot of websites and the testimonials are from four years ago. Yeah. Well, you have one on here from today. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty awesome, man. You guys are on it, right? I mean, so clearly you guys are making a difference out there and, you know, I think doing it from an ethical standpoint. And that's why I said I wanted to bring it on, right? Because usually you can, you know, you get your radar up. You can tell if somebody's coming from the right place. And particularly when you're dealing with with credit restoration, you maybe have to have a few extra radars up. But, you know, when I met you and who was, who was also that was at the event with you? Zach. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. My VP of sales and marketing. Yeah. Yeah. You guys are rock solid. You're straight on. Thank you. Any last things you wanted to share with the listeners? Obviously, one more time. How do they get in touch with you? Yeah. Our numbers 866-726-7339, or you can just go to mycreditguy.com or you can go to Facebook, mycreditguy, and see all of our testimonials and all that good stuff. You know, at the end of the day, I just try to, you know, to really preach, you know, if you will to our lenders and say, let us get a look at the files that you're having trouble with. It's free review. Give these clients a second shot. Even if you think you know, you know, a way to get them there, I mean, I understand that the loan needs to get done and that's the first and foremost thing. But to slap a bandaid on something and get them to a 621 when you need a 620 to qualify, their life isn't still going to be that great at a 621. So just let us get a look. Even if we need to, you know, let you do your job first and then kind of coming on the backside. That client is going to be so, so grateful. And we'll definitely save those deals that, you know, are falling by the wayside right now. So just, just get us to be part of your process rather than feeling like you're doing something extra and you'll be very happy with the results. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for making time to be here. I know you're extremely busy and hopefully the listeners got a lot out of this and I encourage everybody listening to go check out mycreditguy.com because everyone here likely has at least one, if not several clients coming through their pipeline right now that needs some type of help on this. So go check out mycreditguy.com. Sam, you rock. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks so much for having me. You bet. And for you listening today, if you like today's show, make sure you don't miss the next one. Subscribe on iTunes. Leave us a review if you like it. Once again, Jeff Zim for your host of Morgan Marketing Radio. Take care and we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio. One more truth in Mortgage Marketing. Get more free training and resources at MortgageMarketingInstitute.com. Hey guys, what's up real quick? 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