.png)
In this episode, host Matt Rouse interviews Richard Guilbeau about credit repair and credit for personal and business use. They discuss the importance of credit, how to fix bad credit, and strategies for building business credit. They also talk about the role of AI in the credit industry and if AI is going to decide if you get approved or declined!
Arguably one of the best when it comes to credit repair and business funding, Richard Guilbeau is a serial entrepreneur, business funding consultant, and financial literacy educator who has earned the title, “Credit Rich” among other names.
His sharp-shooting approach to personal credit and business credit has helped business owners and entrepreneurs get access to hundreds of thousands of dollars to start or grow a business, regardless of their age of business.
In just a few short years, he has built a business education empire on the belief that any new or seasoned business owner can get access to capital with the right tools, systems, and guidance.
He's the author of the book, "The Business Credit Blueprint."
Links:
https://instagram.com/richardguilbeau
https://facebook.com/richard.guilbeau
Hook Digital Marketing: https://hookdm.com
Hook DM Canada: https://hookdm.ca
Arguably one of the best when it comes to credit repair and business funding, Richard Guilbeau is a serial entrepreneur, business funding consultant, and financial literacy educator who has earned the title, “Credit Rich” among other names.
His sharp-shooting approach to personal credit and business credit has helped business owners and entrepreneurs get access to hundreds of thousands of dollars to start or grow a business, regardless of their age of business.
In just a few short years, he has built a business education empire on the belief that any new or seasoned business owner can get access to capital with the right tools, systems, and guidance.
He's the author of the book, "The Business Credit Blueprint."
Links:
https://instagram.com/richardguilbeau
https://facebook.com/richard.guilbeau
Hook Digital Marketing: https://hookdm.com
Hook DM Canada: https://hookdm.ca
[00:00:00]
AI Narrator #1:
Welcome to the Digital Marketing Masters Podcast, with your host, Matt Krause.
[00:00:05] Matt Rouse:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to digital marketing masters. I'm your host, Matt Krause, and today. My guest is Richard Gilbo. Richard. How are you doing today? I'm doing fantastic, man. Thank you for asking. Hey. I think The topic today, we're gonna talk a little bit about credit repair and credit for both personal and business credit. And also, you know, of course, a little bit about AI. I think the first thing that we wanna talk about, you have a lot of experience doing, like, education around credit.
[00:00:37] Richard Guilbeau:
How did you get started doing that? Oh, man. So I actually started in 2015. I was in the oil field at the time, and the oil field got slow. I ended up getting laid off when I was trying to start my first company. But when I got laid off, my credit got horrible. I had a brand new card. I got a repossessed. We got evicted. My wife was still in school to be a nurse, so she couldn't help, and we're gonna no money coming in. So my credit got hard. Once we started getting back on our feet, I started learning about credit, and I started spending a lot of time and a lot of money on education and building profiles out you know, really understanding the value of it because once you don't have it, you realize how much you need it. Right. So that's when I really started learning about it because my credit was horrible. I had to learn how to fix Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to get anything. You know, you needed a you need credit even to rent nowadays, so we couldn't even rent anything.
[00:01:25] Matt Rouse:
Yeah. That's crazy. I mean, that's kind of a state by state thing. Right? Because I don't think, like, Oregon, I don't think they're allowed to check your credit for rentals. I don't I don't know. I'm not an attorney or anything, but Yeah. If I remember correctly, it's been a while. This happens to a lot of people. Right? Mean, you get laid off. Something happens. Life happens. Right? There's some kind of financial problem. For whatever reason, you can't make your payments. You know, on your credit cards or something, right, for a little while. People get a new job. Right? They start working again. Money starts coming back in. What's the, like, first step when you're getting back on your feet? So the first thing is just definitely make sure you're catching up on all of the bills you behind them. You know, whatever you're behind on, pay that, make sure you're being responsible with everything else, pay down your personal credit cards because
[00:02:10] Richard Guilbeau:
you wanna have higher scores, your credit utilization is one of your biggest parts, the biggest portion of your credit score. So you pay those credit cards down, make sure you're on time with the rest of your payments. And then your scores will slowly start to go back up. If you still have the negative things on there, your scores will kinda stay down a little bit, but long as you're making your payments on time, you can start getting the age behind those, negatives that you have, then your scores will start increasing.
[00:02:35] Matt Rouse:
Yeah. I think one thing that a lot of people kind of don't consider when they're in the thick of a problem is how quickly the time is gonna pass once you kinda get back on your feet. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. You know, to think about it is
[00:02:50] Richard Guilbeau:
I'm in this situation right now. It feels like it lasts forever, but it doesn't. You know, it's always it's cliche to say it, but it's always light at the end of the tunnel. And once you get there, in the outside. It's like, you don't really remember all the stuff that happened in the past.
[00:03:03] Matt Rouse:
Yeah. When you got all those bills, you know, back on track, you're making whatever your minimums are on stuff. And and you get that, you know, 120 days of regular payments. Suddenly you're score starts to move again. They're like, oh, wait. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Exactly. Exactly. Right? Yeah. So let's talk about business credit. For a second because, I mean, most of the people listening to the podcast have a business or, you know, are part of a business or they're a solo entrepreneur kind of thing. What I find is that people have a very misunderstanding of credit for business.
And what that kind of comes from is they go, okay. Well, if I'm gonna start a business, I'm gonna rack up my credit card to buy all the stuff that I need, and then I start making money, and then I pay off my personal credit card. And then I'm using you know, my business bank account now for stuff. And then but they don't have any no any idea where to go. Like, how does business credit from there get built?
[00:04:04] Richard Guilbeau:
Correct. So one of the first things I always start with the foundation when it comes to building business credit. So a lot of times people will talk to me. They'll get on these calls and they'll say, hey, I think I have some business credit, but I'm not sure. But you have to be really intentional about building business credit. Because just having business credit cards, they might not report to the business credit profiles, so you still don't have business credit. But the very foundation of it first is making sure you you have the right business name. Having the wrong business name can actually get you denied because it puts you on a high risk or restricted industry category. When banks see that, like, trucking, finance, real estate investments, if you have anything like that in your name, you actually classify yourself as a high risk company. Okay. So if you were to get approved, you would get very low. You would get a lot lower limits, but most of the time, you will get denied just from having the wrong business name. So you have to get the right business name. Make sure you're not in the high risk industry. You have to have the correct business address because most lenders and most banks and most business credit issuers would not wanna fund you if you have a home based business. K. Even though a lot of businesses run out of home, you can't use a home address and you can't use a PO box.
So you have to kinda work around that. And maybe if you don't need a commercial address that spends, you know, you spend 1000 of dollars a month on that then you can also get a virtual office with places like Opus and, you know, Alliance and things like that. And then your next thing, after you have that address, it's having business phone numbers. You have to have you can't use your cell phone number. You have to have a commercial number. You have to have a 800 number, a fax number, even though most people don't use fax nowadays. When you fill out the applications, it's kinda AI driven, you know, especially for credit cards. If you don't meet all of the requirements and you don't fill out most of those spaces, then you're gonna look bad today, and they're not gonna wanna fund you. So having a fax number, even though you might not use it, you still need it. Fax number, business, email, you know, like, not a Gmail, not a hotmail, like, info at ABC LLC.com.
[00:05:59] Matt Rouse:
Your domain
[00:06:01] Richard Guilbeau:
domain. Yeah. Correct. Correct. And, email, website, license, if you need a license, because some places will look it up. And the stuff sounds like it's so minuscule and it's not important, but I can tell you when I'm on the phone with some of these bankers, when I tell them who I am and what that any of my businesses, they're looking it up while I'm on the phone with them. So before I get into the bank, they already know who I am and what I do. Laura, if you just log into the bank, when they're on their computer, you can't see what they're doing. They're looking you up. They're checking your address and see what pops up in Google. Right. Another big thing is that when they're pulling your business, address, if it if it looks oh, I'm sorry. If you have a business address, that's your home address, it's public information. So people can actually just Google that and see exactly where you stay at. So it's it's is unsafe and is unprofessional.
[00:06:51] Matt Rouse:
Yeah. You can go in and go to, like, you know, Google street view and be like, oh, that's an apartment building. Exactly. Exactly.
[00:07:00] Richard Guilbeau:
Suite 601. Yeah. You know exactly where you live. 601 B.
[00:07:04] Matt Rouse:
Exactly. You know, they do that to to, like, spoof addresses in the SEO world. Everybody's always trying to work that system. They're like, I work out of my house, but I need a business address. So They'll take, like, an office building down the street that's one floor, and they'll be like, suite 201. Yeah. But it's only a one floor. You know? So, yeah, that's super interesting. And, you know, you we talked a little bit about, you know, there about the AI, looking at applications, and mean, you and I were talking before about, you know, how AI is used in the in the industry. How do you think that's gonna kinda pan out in the next little bit here?
[00:07:42] Richard Guilbeau:
So I actually think that some people have said that they're even gonna AI is gonna take over, like, a lot of security. So you won't have usernames and passwords and things like that in the future. Not sure how how true that is, but, I mean, it does definitely sounds kinda possible. You know, fraud prevention is is, you know, when you use your credit card, if you normally staying in one area and you decide to go out and stay on vacation and you don't let your bank know your credit cards might not work because the AI is looking at it and the algorithm is saying they're normally not in this area, so this must be fraud. So they'll they'll stop your credit cards from working. So I think it's very important to understand how the AI works when it comes to banking and finance and even credit repair so you can stay on top of it. You know, let you make no when you go out of town, which you shouldn't have to do that stuff. But that's just what the AI looks at. And it does help me some instances, but for the most part, I think you just have to overly communicate and understand how their AI and their system works.
[00:08:43] Matt Rouse:
I think an interesting thing, and I I've just traveled. Right? Like, I just went to Cleveland for the marketing artificial intelligence convention. Right? And so what I did is I booked my hotel and my flight with points from, you know, one of the banks that has credit cards and stuff for us. And then I used the cards from that bank, at the airport, at the gas station, right, at the other airport on the way there. I bought a coffee or whatever. Right? You know, then I use that while I'm there. And then it doesn't get flagged because they've tracked. Oh, yeah. Well, we know you're going there because you bought plane tickets to there. You use this date and you, you know so sometimes you can kinda work that system where you just use the same card for the whole trip all the way through there and back, you know, at least from the same bank that can avoid the fraud protection. Sometimes, you know, you get a thing on your app, you know, where you just gotta go in and say, yes. This was me. Exactly. They might send you a text message sometimes. A lot of times I get a phone call and they're like, hey. Did you use your card here? Yes. I did. Or they'll send you, like, American Express is good for sending me a text message and say, hey. Did you spend this at this place and just reply 1 for yes and 2 for no? So, yeah, you do get I do get those messages a lot too. Talking about travel and and kind of credit and money and stuff. As a business owner, mean, we run a marketing agency. Right? So when we pay for ads, we use a credit card that has points. Right? Correct. Because we wanna get the airline points.
And then Exactly. You could actually use an airline points credit card
[00:10:16] Richard Guilbeau:
to pay for your advertising and your marketing and stuff. And then you use the points from that card for your trip and you put your air miles number or whatever it is for that airline in. Right? And so now you're double collecting. Right? Because you're getting the points on the points and you're using the airline car Exactly. To begin with, then you get to have, like, free drinks and business class on your way. Exactly. And, you know, if you have so, like, the American Express platinum card, when you're at the airports, there's certain lounges that you can go in. And instead of you sitting around and you know, you know, if if you travel a lot, you know, go into your terminal and just waiting there for a hour, it gets it's boring, then a lot of people just stare at you, you know, But when you have American Express Platinum, you there's different lounges like Delta style lounge, Centurion lounges where you can actually go in there to kinda secluded, and there's free food, there's you know, I I don't know if they have drinks and stuff like that, but it's free food. Usually, they got coffee and juice. Coffee and juice. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's always it does pay to have those credit cards. And American Express Gold Card, they actually give you four times the money that you spend if you use it on advertising.
So whereas you use one card and you might give see you spend $900 and get a 100 points with American Express and you spend $900 or a $1000, you get 4000 points instead. So the points do add up, and then that's where you get your free flights, your free hotels, and you can even use the points to pay for the items that you spend money on. Know, so if you go in a store and buy I see you buy lunch for a team and it's $500 or something like that, you can actually use the points to pay off the mill that you pay for the team.
[00:11:50] Matt Rouse:
Oh, yeah. That's a that's a good tip on that one. I like that. You know, our so our company is also a merchant processor. Right? So we accept payments. And so we understand the payment processing industry. And one thing that's interesting is if you get a card like a points card like American Express or something and you're accepting that as payment for your company, you're probably gonna pay, like, maybe as much as, like, 4% on that card. Right? Yeah. But if somebody uses, like, just kind of the regular non point credit card, it could be as low as, like, 2.2,2.3%. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So you're gonna save about 1 a half percent on every bill.
If the bills are in the 1000 of dollars over the years, I mean, that could be 100 of dollars a month between all your customers, right, or 1000 in some cases. So a good trick. You know, I'm not saying that you should do this, but a good trick is to only accept cards that are not American Express because the percentage is lower and then use your American Express to pay for stuff, like from Google and Bing in places like that. Right? Yeah. Because then you're still getting the points, but then you're paying a lower percentage fee on the incoming money. That makes sense. That makes sense to get to get that 1 a half percent in their trade off. One more thing that I wanted to ask you about. And we talked about a right a little bit and how it's used for, you know, trying to when you all the things that you need to do to tell the AI that you know, you're a safe person to bank with as I mean, let's face it. More of those AI systems are gonna be used in the place of real people making those decisions.
I'm not saying they're gonna replace the people. I'm saying that the person will probably run you through the system and do more verifications, but they're not gonna be the one verifying it as often as the AI will. Yes. And I know that they've used these systems like these kind of deep learning systems for years now, like you were saying. And they've looked at all the credit risks of all the different things that people do, and they've said, okay. Well, how risky is this person? And that's kind of how they determine your limits and your interest rates and that kind of thing. Mhmm.
So I guess going forward, what's your advice Since more of these systems are gonna be automated, is it just to try and make yourself look as credit worthy as possible and check as many boxes as you can, or is there kind of more of a strategy to it? Oh, yeah. So what we do is a lot
[00:14:25] Richard Guilbeau:
So for credit cards, I do see that it could get a it could get a little harder. Credit cards are very easy to get as long as you do check off all the boxes, but for, like, lines of credit, we do everything relationship based. So we'll find managers and relationship manager and things like that who we can really form a relationship with so we can send people directly to them. And our relationship manager, it was help it's what helps you to kinda beat the algorithm and not beat it, but work with the algorithm to help you to get high limit approvals. So having a good relationship in place think it helps. And so far, as far as I know, the lines of credit aren't gonna be replaced by AI. I don't know how how long that's gonna be for, right now. You know, banking is always tightening up their their reins on the funding, you know, as you can see, a lot of banks are going out of business, but So far, having a relationship with the branch managers or with relationship managers at the banks can help you to get those approvals. So try to keep everything in as relationship based as possible and keep that human touch in it. You know, if I need to, I'll fly out and take a manager to lunch or something like that. Who can really understand, you know, what's going on with the bank. Should I continue sending people here, or what do we need to be doing so that we can have, or what do my people need to have that we can get better approvals and things like that. But they still have to make sure that they're making sure they mitigate risk for the bank as well.
So we still have to check off all those boxes. We still have to look good on paper. We still have to have the foundation good and the personal credit good, but just having that relationship of that inside person who can give you better tips on how to get the funding that develops.
[00:15:58] Matt Rouse:
Alright. So how do you work with businesses and people when it comes to credit? Do they is there some kind of, like, your, like, consultant and you help them get credit or fixed credit, how does that work?
[00:16:10] Richard Guilbeau:
So on a personal credit side, we do all of the work for them. I have a team by, actually, my lead credit specialist used to work in TransUnion and in Equifax. So the big thing about credit is that a lot of times, your things will get reported inaccurately or unfertifiable. And for me, personally, if I have a account on my credit, that's why $10,000 and you can't verify that it was actually me, or it was not me. Why should I why should I pay that $10,000 plus the interest and fees if it's not actually me that did Right. A lot of times, those debts you see, a lot a lot of times, the debts will actually get paid for by the government, and they're supposed to give you a tax write off, which is a 1099. And that's why on your credit, it'll say written off account or profits on the profit and loss because they actually got paid for that account already. And they're supposed to send you a 1099, but they don't. They'll take the money for the account and then still come after you for more money and they just get paid twice. That's sketchy.
Exactly. So for things like that, you know, you can get those things removed. So we remove all of that stuff for, you know, my team actually knows who to talk to. We don't do we don't release any letters unless we have to. My team knows exactly who to call, like, what numbers to call, what to say on the phone, to get these removed as fast as possible. And some clients actually get removed within, like, the 1st couple of hours of working with us. Not not a whole profile won't be cleaned, but some things will come off and you can see that we're working. And on the business credit side, we do more consulting on that side. We're gonna show you what accounts to get. That's gonna report what bureaus they report to.
There's a certain there is a sequence to it. There's certain accounts that you can only get when you're first starting out. You can't get them you can't get a lot of accounts if you don't have business credit already. So it's kind of a step ladder, and we do work with them to get those lower level accounts and then level up and level up and level up and level up. But we do consulting on that side. We don't do it for them because we have to have, like, the credit card information, and then we could possibly purchase things that they don't actually need. So it just puts a lot of risk on our side, and we don't wanna waste their money. So, yeah, for business credit, we do it with them for personal credit, we do it form. And for business funding, we do it with I kinda separate business credit and business funding. To me, business credit is gonna be no personal guarantee accounts that you're gonna be only on the business side. But business funding can be business credit cards, lines of credit, and loans.
[00:18:22] Matt Rouse:
Okay.
[00:18:23] Richard Guilbeau:
And so, I mean, you said no guarantee on it. That's in business finance. What you're trying to do is get it so that the business is holding the liability instead of the ownership. Right? Correct. Like like the old saying says, risk people control everything, but own nothing. Their business has the credit. So the business, you, you know, you as a person, you have your own credit profile, but your business can have a credit profile as well. It's called your EIN number, It's like your business is social. So you can have accounts that's attached to the business side, but not attached to you personally. Nice. Richard, if somebody wants get a hold of you? Talk about credit. What's the best place for them to do that? Oh, it's probably Instagram. Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, all over social media. It's all the same name, Richard Gibvo. And, you can reach me on all of those.
[00:19:07] Matt Rouse:
Sounds good. We'll put that in the show notes and Richard, thanks for being on the show today. And it was a pleasure having you on. Yeah, man. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me here. I hope you enjoy digital marketing masters.
[00:19:18] AI Narrator #1:
Check out our back catalog of episodes for more than 200 interviews with top digital marketers, authors, and productivity experts. Stay tuned for the next episode where we talk about more AI tactics and applications you can start using right now just like me. Remember to tap like. Subscribe and follow to never miss a show.
Welcome to the Digital Marketing Masters Podcast, with your host, Matt Krause.
[00:00:05] Matt Rouse:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to digital marketing masters. I'm your host, Matt Krause, and today. My guest is Richard Gilbo. Richard. How are you doing today? I'm doing fantastic, man. Thank you for asking. Hey. I think The topic today, we're gonna talk a little bit about credit repair and credit for both personal and business credit. And also, you know, of course, a little bit about AI. I think the first thing that we wanna talk about, you have a lot of experience doing, like, education around credit.
[00:00:37] Richard Guilbeau:
How did you get started doing that? Oh, man. So I actually started in 2015. I was in the oil field at the time, and the oil field got slow. I ended up getting laid off when I was trying to start my first company. But when I got laid off, my credit got horrible. I had a brand new card. I got a repossessed. We got evicted. My wife was still in school to be a nurse, so she couldn't help, and we're gonna no money coming in. So my credit got hard. Once we started getting back on our feet, I started learning about credit, and I started spending a lot of time and a lot of money on education and building profiles out you know, really understanding the value of it because once you don't have it, you realize how much you need it. Right. So that's when I really started learning about it because my credit was horrible. I had to learn how to fix Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to get anything. You know, you needed a you need credit even to rent nowadays, so we couldn't even rent anything.
[00:01:25] Matt Rouse:
Yeah. That's crazy. I mean, that's kind of a state by state thing. Right? Because I don't think, like, Oregon, I don't think they're allowed to check your credit for rentals. I don't I don't know. I'm not an attorney or anything, but Yeah. If I remember correctly, it's been a while. This happens to a lot of people. Right? Mean, you get laid off. Something happens. Life happens. Right? There's some kind of financial problem. For whatever reason, you can't make your payments. You know, on your credit cards or something, right, for a little while. People get a new job. Right? They start working again. Money starts coming back in. What's the, like, first step when you're getting back on your feet? So the first thing is just definitely make sure you're catching up on all of the bills you behind them. You know, whatever you're behind on, pay that, make sure you're being responsible with everything else, pay down your personal credit cards because
[00:02:10] Richard Guilbeau:
you wanna have higher scores, your credit utilization is one of your biggest parts, the biggest portion of your credit score. So you pay those credit cards down, make sure you're on time with the rest of your payments. And then your scores will slowly start to go back up. If you still have the negative things on there, your scores will kinda stay down a little bit, but long as you're making your payments on time, you can start getting the age behind those, negatives that you have, then your scores will start increasing.
[00:02:35] Matt Rouse:
Yeah. I think one thing that a lot of people kind of don't consider when they're in the thick of a problem is how quickly the time is gonna pass once you kinda get back on your feet. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. You know, to think about it is
[00:02:50] Richard Guilbeau:
I'm in this situation right now. It feels like it lasts forever, but it doesn't. You know, it's always it's cliche to say it, but it's always light at the end of the tunnel. And once you get there, in the outside. It's like, you don't really remember all the stuff that happened in the past.
[00:03:03] Matt Rouse:
Yeah. When you got all those bills, you know, back on track, you're making whatever your minimums are on stuff. And and you get that, you know, 120 days of regular payments. Suddenly you're score starts to move again. They're like, oh, wait. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Exactly. Exactly. Right? Yeah. So let's talk about business credit. For a second because, I mean, most of the people listening to the podcast have a business or, you know, are part of a business or they're a solo entrepreneur kind of thing. What I find is that people have a very misunderstanding of credit for business.
And what that kind of comes from is they go, okay. Well, if I'm gonna start a business, I'm gonna rack up my credit card to buy all the stuff that I need, and then I start making money, and then I pay off my personal credit card. And then I'm using you know, my business bank account now for stuff. And then but they don't have any no any idea where to go. Like, how does business credit from there get built?
[00:04:04] Richard Guilbeau:
Correct. So one of the first things I always start with the foundation when it comes to building business credit. So a lot of times people will talk to me. They'll get on these calls and they'll say, hey, I think I have some business credit, but I'm not sure. But you have to be really intentional about building business credit. Because just having business credit cards, they might not report to the business credit profiles, so you still don't have business credit. But the very foundation of it first is making sure you you have the right business name. Having the wrong business name can actually get you denied because it puts you on a high risk or restricted industry category. When banks see that, like, trucking, finance, real estate investments, if you have anything like that in your name, you actually classify yourself as a high risk company. Okay. So if you were to get approved, you would get very low. You would get a lot lower limits, but most of the time, you will get denied just from having the wrong business name. So you have to get the right business name. Make sure you're not in the high risk industry. You have to have the correct business address because most lenders and most banks and most business credit issuers would not wanna fund you if you have a home based business. K. Even though a lot of businesses run out of home, you can't use a home address and you can't use a PO box.
So you have to kinda work around that. And maybe if you don't need a commercial address that spends, you know, you spend 1000 of dollars a month on that then you can also get a virtual office with places like Opus and, you know, Alliance and things like that. And then your next thing, after you have that address, it's having business phone numbers. You have to have you can't use your cell phone number. You have to have a commercial number. You have to have a 800 number, a fax number, even though most people don't use fax nowadays. When you fill out the applications, it's kinda AI driven, you know, especially for credit cards. If you don't meet all of the requirements and you don't fill out most of those spaces, then you're gonna look bad today, and they're not gonna wanna fund you. So having a fax number, even though you might not use it, you still need it. Fax number, business, email, you know, like, not a Gmail, not a hotmail, like, info at ABC LLC.com.
[00:05:59] Matt Rouse:
Your domain
[00:06:01] Richard Guilbeau:
domain. Yeah. Correct. Correct. And, email, website, license, if you need a license, because some places will look it up. And the stuff sounds like it's so minuscule and it's not important, but I can tell you when I'm on the phone with some of these bankers, when I tell them who I am and what that any of my businesses, they're looking it up while I'm on the phone with them. So before I get into the bank, they already know who I am and what I do. Laura, if you just log into the bank, when they're on their computer, you can't see what they're doing. They're looking you up. They're checking your address and see what pops up in Google. Right. Another big thing is that when they're pulling your business, address, if it if it looks oh, I'm sorry. If you have a business address, that's your home address, it's public information. So people can actually just Google that and see exactly where you stay at. So it's it's is unsafe and is unprofessional.
[00:06:51] Matt Rouse:
Yeah. You can go in and go to, like, you know, Google street view and be like, oh, that's an apartment building. Exactly. Exactly.
[00:07:00] Richard Guilbeau:
Suite 601. Yeah. You know exactly where you live. 601 B.
[00:07:04] Matt Rouse:
Exactly. You know, they do that to to, like, spoof addresses in the SEO world. Everybody's always trying to work that system. They're like, I work out of my house, but I need a business address. So They'll take, like, an office building down the street that's one floor, and they'll be like, suite 201. Yeah. But it's only a one floor. You know? So, yeah, that's super interesting. And, you know, you we talked a little bit about, you know, there about the AI, looking at applications, and mean, you and I were talking before about, you know, how AI is used in the in the industry. How do you think that's gonna kinda pan out in the next little bit here?
[00:07:42] Richard Guilbeau:
So I actually think that some people have said that they're even gonna AI is gonna take over, like, a lot of security. So you won't have usernames and passwords and things like that in the future. Not sure how how true that is, but, I mean, it does definitely sounds kinda possible. You know, fraud prevention is is, you know, when you use your credit card, if you normally staying in one area and you decide to go out and stay on vacation and you don't let your bank know your credit cards might not work because the AI is looking at it and the algorithm is saying they're normally not in this area, so this must be fraud. So they'll they'll stop your credit cards from working. So I think it's very important to understand how the AI works when it comes to banking and finance and even credit repair so you can stay on top of it. You know, let you make no when you go out of town, which you shouldn't have to do that stuff. But that's just what the AI looks at. And it does help me some instances, but for the most part, I think you just have to overly communicate and understand how their AI and their system works.
[00:08:43] Matt Rouse:
I think an interesting thing, and I I've just traveled. Right? Like, I just went to Cleveland for the marketing artificial intelligence convention. Right? And so what I did is I booked my hotel and my flight with points from, you know, one of the banks that has credit cards and stuff for us. And then I used the cards from that bank, at the airport, at the gas station, right, at the other airport on the way there. I bought a coffee or whatever. Right? You know, then I use that while I'm there. And then it doesn't get flagged because they've tracked. Oh, yeah. Well, we know you're going there because you bought plane tickets to there. You use this date and you, you know so sometimes you can kinda work that system where you just use the same card for the whole trip all the way through there and back, you know, at least from the same bank that can avoid the fraud protection. Sometimes, you know, you get a thing on your app, you know, where you just gotta go in and say, yes. This was me. Exactly. They might send you a text message sometimes. A lot of times I get a phone call and they're like, hey. Did you use your card here? Yes. I did. Or they'll send you, like, American Express is good for sending me a text message and say, hey. Did you spend this at this place and just reply 1 for yes and 2 for no? So, yeah, you do get I do get those messages a lot too. Talking about travel and and kind of credit and money and stuff. As a business owner, mean, we run a marketing agency. Right? So when we pay for ads, we use a credit card that has points. Right? Correct. Because we wanna get the airline points.
And then Exactly. You could actually use an airline points credit card
[00:10:16] Richard Guilbeau:
to pay for your advertising and your marketing and stuff. And then you use the points from that card for your trip and you put your air miles number or whatever it is for that airline in. Right? And so now you're double collecting. Right? Because you're getting the points on the points and you're using the airline car Exactly. To begin with, then you get to have, like, free drinks and business class on your way. Exactly. And, you know, if you have so, like, the American Express platinum card, when you're at the airports, there's certain lounges that you can go in. And instead of you sitting around and you know, you know, if if you travel a lot, you know, go into your terminal and just waiting there for a hour, it gets it's boring, then a lot of people just stare at you, you know, But when you have American Express Platinum, you there's different lounges like Delta style lounge, Centurion lounges where you can actually go in there to kinda secluded, and there's free food, there's you know, I I don't know if they have drinks and stuff like that, but it's free food. Usually, they got coffee and juice. Coffee and juice. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's always it does pay to have those credit cards. And American Express Gold Card, they actually give you four times the money that you spend if you use it on advertising.
So whereas you use one card and you might give see you spend $900 and get a 100 points with American Express and you spend $900 or a $1000, you get 4000 points instead. So the points do add up, and then that's where you get your free flights, your free hotels, and you can even use the points to pay for the items that you spend money on. Know, so if you go in a store and buy I see you buy lunch for a team and it's $500 or something like that, you can actually use the points to pay off the mill that you pay for the team.
[00:11:50] Matt Rouse:
Oh, yeah. That's a that's a good tip on that one. I like that. You know, our so our company is also a merchant processor. Right? So we accept payments. And so we understand the payment processing industry. And one thing that's interesting is if you get a card like a points card like American Express or something and you're accepting that as payment for your company, you're probably gonna pay, like, maybe as much as, like, 4% on that card. Right? Yeah. But if somebody uses, like, just kind of the regular non point credit card, it could be as low as, like, 2.2,2.3%. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So you're gonna save about 1 a half percent on every bill.
If the bills are in the 1000 of dollars over the years, I mean, that could be 100 of dollars a month between all your customers, right, or 1000 in some cases. So a good trick. You know, I'm not saying that you should do this, but a good trick is to only accept cards that are not American Express because the percentage is lower and then use your American Express to pay for stuff, like from Google and Bing in places like that. Right? Yeah. Because then you're still getting the points, but then you're paying a lower percentage fee on the incoming money. That makes sense. That makes sense to get to get that 1 a half percent in their trade off. One more thing that I wanted to ask you about. And we talked about a right a little bit and how it's used for, you know, trying to when you all the things that you need to do to tell the AI that you know, you're a safe person to bank with as I mean, let's face it. More of those AI systems are gonna be used in the place of real people making those decisions.
I'm not saying they're gonna replace the people. I'm saying that the person will probably run you through the system and do more verifications, but they're not gonna be the one verifying it as often as the AI will. Yes. And I know that they've used these systems like these kind of deep learning systems for years now, like you were saying. And they've looked at all the credit risks of all the different things that people do, and they've said, okay. Well, how risky is this person? And that's kind of how they determine your limits and your interest rates and that kind of thing. Mhmm.
So I guess going forward, what's your advice Since more of these systems are gonna be automated, is it just to try and make yourself look as credit worthy as possible and check as many boxes as you can, or is there kind of more of a strategy to it? Oh, yeah. So what we do is a lot
[00:14:25] Richard Guilbeau:
So for credit cards, I do see that it could get a it could get a little harder. Credit cards are very easy to get as long as you do check off all the boxes, but for, like, lines of credit, we do everything relationship based. So we'll find managers and relationship manager and things like that who we can really form a relationship with so we can send people directly to them. And our relationship manager, it was help it's what helps you to kinda beat the algorithm and not beat it, but work with the algorithm to help you to get high limit approvals. So having a good relationship in place think it helps. And so far, as far as I know, the lines of credit aren't gonna be replaced by AI. I don't know how how long that's gonna be for, right now. You know, banking is always tightening up their their reins on the funding, you know, as you can see, a lot of banks are going out of business, but So far, having a relationship with the branch managers or with relationship managers at the banks can help you to get those approvals. So try to keep everything in as relationship based as possible and keep that human touch in it. You know, if I need to, I'll fly out and take a manager to lunch or something like that. Who can really understand, you know, what's going on with the bank. Should I continue sending people here, or what do we need to be doing so that we can have, or what do my people need to have that we can get better approvals and things like that. But they still have to make sure that they're making sure they mitigate risk for the bank as well.
So we still have to check off all those boxes. We still have to look good on paper. We still have to have the foundation good and the personal credit good, but just having that relationship of that inside person who can give you better tips on how to get the funding that develops.
[00:15:58] Matt Rouse:
Alright. So how do you work with businesses and people when it comes to credit? Do they is there some kind of, like, your, like, consultant and you help them get credit or fixed credit, how does that work?
[00:16:10] Richard Guilbeau:
So on a personal credit side, we do all of the work for them. I have a team by, actually, my lead credit specialist used to work in TransUnion and in Equifax. So the big thing about credit is that a lot of times, your things will get reported inaccurately or unfertifiable. And for me, personally, if I have a account on my credit, that's why $10,000 and you can't verify that it was actually me, or it was not me. Why should I why should I pay that $10,000 plus the interest and fees if it's not actually me that did Right. A lot of times, those debts you see, a lot a lot of times, the debts will actually get paid for by the government, and they're supposed to give you a tax write off, which is a 1099. And that's why on your credit, it'll say written off account or profits on the profit and loss because they actually got paid for that account already. And they're supposed to send you a 1099, but they don't. They'll take the money for the account and then still come after you for more money and they just get paid twice. That's sketchy.
Exactly. So for things like that, you know, you can get those things removed. So we remove all of that stuff for, you know, my team actually knows who to talk to. We don't do we don't release any letters unless we have to. My team knows exactly who to call, like, what numbers to call, what to say on the phone, to get these removed as fast as possible. And some clients actually get removed within, like, the 1st couple of hours of working with us. Not not a whole profile won't be cleaned, but some things will come off and you can see that we're working. And on the business credit side, we do more consulting on that side. We're gonna show you what accounts to get. That's gonna report what bureaus they report to.
There's a certain there is a sequence to it. There's certain accounts that you can only get when you're first starting out. You can't get them you can't get a lot of accounts if you don't have business credit already. So it's kind of a step ladder, and we do work with them to get those lower level accounts and then level up and level up and level up and level up. But we do consulting on that side. We don't do it for them because we have to have, like, the credit card information, and then we could possibly purchase things that they don't actually need. So it just puts a lot of risk on our side, and we don't wanna waste their money. So, yeah, for business credit, we do it with them for personal credit, we do it form. And for business funding, we do it with I kinda separate business credit and business funding. To me, business credit is gonna be no personal guarantee accounts that you're gonna be only on the business side. But business funding can be business credit cards, lines of credit, and loans.
[00:18:22] Matt Rouse:
Okay.
[00:18:23] Richard Guilbeau:
And so, I mean, you said no guarantee on it. That's in business finance. What you're trying to do is get it so that the business is holding the liability instead of the ownership. Right? Correct. Like like the old saying says, risk people control everything, but own nothing. Their business has the credit. So the business, you, you know, you as a person, you have your own credit profile, but your business can have a credit profile as well. It's called your EIN number, It's like your business is social. So you can have accounts that's attached to the business side, but not attached to you personally. Nice. Richard, if somebody wants get a hold of you? Talk about credit. What's the best place for them to do that? Oh, it's probably Instagram. Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, all over social media. It's all the same name, Richard Gibvo. And, you can reach me on all of those.
[00:19:07] Matt Rouse:
Sounds good. We'll put that in the show notes and Richard, thanks for being on the show today. And it was a pleasure having you on. Yeah, man. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me here. I hope you enjoy digital marketing masters.
[00:19:18] AI Narrator #1:
Check out our back catalog of episodes for more than 200 interviews with top digital marketers, authors, and productivity experts. Stay tuned for the next episode where we talk about more AI tactics and applications you can start using right now just like me. Remember to tap like. Subscribe and follow to never miss a show.
