In this episode of "Small Business, Big Moves,". Thomas Bennett is joined by guest Kevin Faulkner to explore creative strategies and innovative approaches that have propelled small businesses to new heights. Discover what can happen when you simply focus on personal accountability and personal credit.
Connect with us on social media:
- Facebook: Thomas Bennett
- Instagram: @Thomas.mbennett
-YouTube:@SmallBusinessMoneyConnector
- LinkedIn: Thomas Bennett
Subscribe to "Small Business, Big Moves" on Your Favorite Podcast Platform for more inspiring episodes on innovation and entrepreneurship.
Small Business Big Moves is a podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Join Tom Bennett as he explores all things business growth! From business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses!
In this episode of "Small Business, Big Moves,". Thomas Bennett is joined by guest Kevin Faulkner to explore creative strategies and innovative approaches that have propelled small businesses to new heights. Discover what can happen when you simply focus on personal accountability and personal credit.
Connect with us on social media:
- Facebook: Thomas Bennett
- Instagram: @Thomas.mbennett
-YouTube:@SmallBusinessMoneyConnector
- LinkedIn: Thomas Bennett
Subscribe to "Small Business, Big Moves" on Your Favorite Podcast Platform for more inspiring episodes on innovation and entrepreneurship.
Small Business Big Moves is a podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Join Tom Bennett as he explores all things business growth! From business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses!
Welcome to small business, big moves, a podcast where innovation needs entrepreneurship. I'm your host, Tom Bennett, and we're going to explore all things, business growth from business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses. Welcome to the show. My guest today is Kevin Faulkner. Kevin, I'm excited to have you on the show. If you can introduce yourself. Tom, thank you so much for having me, man. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, my name is Kevin Faulkner. I own a business called 3B Credit Health, and we specialize in personal credit, and I've been in business for three years, and it's been quite the journey. I live in Waco, Texas with my wife Kelly, and I'm in my 50s, and we have some grandkids, and we're just doing life, man, and growing a business. Absolutely. I love it. Yeah. And kind of piggybacking off that today's topic is going to be based on some personal credit, kind of how important that can be to the business and give a little more value as well throughout the episode. But I wanted to get started with really what got you to where you are today, right? Kind of your journey what got you into the industry and kind of everything that you've been through along the way. Oh, man, I'll tell you, dude, it's been quite the journey. I like to say, you know, to say that if there's if there's anybody out there doubting whether or not it's too late in life. You can look at me and I hope I'm the example that it's absolutely never too late. It took me a long time, brother. I was 50 years old before I, before I really ever got any momentum in life, man, it was life was a struggle and I kind of couldn't get out of my own way, man. And I had a lot of confidence issues that just couldn't get my feet underneath me and man, I guarantee you, dude, I've had probably 700 jobs in my life, man, that I've either gotten fired from or quit. But what I didn't know at the time was that When I was going through all these, and most of it was in sales I worked in prisons as a prison guard and, and things like that security. And what I didn't understand was at the time that I was learning all these things that that I've been able to put together to get myself into a position to go into entrepreneurship, man. So, a lot of times when we're failing we don't realize that we're really gathering information that's going to help us win in the long run. Yeah, that's huge. I appreciate you sharing that, right? that means a lot, Because we all hear about the wins, we all see the victories Everyone ringing the bell, all that good stuff. Obviously, we love to see that but we also want to hear about the the struggles and what people went through to get to where they are today. So I appreciate you sharing that later in life, figuring out really what you what you're meant to do and making that happen. So that's definitely inspirational. I know you're doing a personal credit repair today. What made you specifically get into that? I know you've said you've pretty much tried everything out there. What made you say this? This is what i'm good at. This is where I can provide value to some people out there, man. I'll kind of give you the the rundown from the beginning. So as I said, I, I, I've struggled in life and, and, and really, it took me a long time to put together some wins and get some, gather some confidence. In 2020 I had gotten married in 2018. And in 2020 You know, a lot of things were going on in 2020 with the pandemic and all that stuff. So everybody's kind of a wild year for everybody. And my wife came to me and she was like, dude, I can't, I can't do this anymore. I just can't be married to you. And what I didn't realize is between 2000 and 18 In I had had eight jobs and she was like, man, you're not who I thought you were. I can't, I just can't do this. This is not how I want to spend the rest of my life. And honestly, looking back on it, if she would have had any other attitude, I wouldn't respected her. You know, she had to have that attitude, but at the time, it really hurt. I went to stay with a friend of mine and I was standing in his back room and I just had myself and my dog, Cash. We call him Cash the credit repair dog. And so we're in this back room and I didn't have much money to my name at all. And I actually remember, man being a therapist. We went to a marriage counselor a couple of times after that. And I remember telling them, you know, both my wife and. The marriage counselor, I don't know what's going to happen here. This is out of my control, but I'm tired of losing in life. And I'm going to come out better because of this so can't do anything. I don't know if you're going to ever get back together with me. I don't know if you're ever going to change your mind, but I know that one way or another. I'm coming out of this better. So start still hadn't at that time. I'm taking accountability and realize that it was all my fault yet. But I did know I wanted to get better and I want to learn what the heck is Kelly thinking? Why did she make this decision that she didn't want to be married to me anymore? So I'm on this quest to figure out women. So I start watching YouTube videos and kind of taking myself to school with that and trying to figure out like, what was she thinking? And I watched this video that told me that women want a man with a purpose. So I'm like, okay, we're starting at bare bottom here. I need a purpose because if I'm ever gonna get, win my wife back, she wants me to have a purpose. So I read that I got this book called the 3 percent man. And it's it's kind of a it's actually by a guy that at the time was a dating coach. And I wasn't in the dating world. I was in no shape to date. I was separated and wanted to get back with my wife, but it taught me a lot about women and the guy in the book. said something that for the listeners out there, you can, if you hear anything else I say, this is one of the things you'll want to hear. He said, read this book, 12 to 13 times until you've memorized it and you can talk about it on stage. And I didn't have anything else to do. I'm at rock bottom. So I read that book 12 to 13 times and listened to the the audible because I did have a job working at home Depot. I was the guy that, sold bathroom and kitchen remodels at home Depot at that time. So I was driving from my buddy's house that I was staying with to Waco where I live. Now an hour each way. And so man I'm in this back room and I'm learning and I knew I need a purpose in life and I had this the only thing I know to say, Tom, is it was, it was an awakening, man. And I was at my buddy's house and it's at, it's at night on a Thursday night and I just started crying and man, I'm crying from head to toe from every fiber of my body. It hit me that night that my problems were never going to get better. my problems weren't going to be solved by the right job, by being with the right person, by living in the right town, by the weather being a certain way. It was 100 percent me. And the only way I was going to get better was if I changed my life and turn myself around and started getting my habits in place and and really learned how to do so. And so that Along with the book, the 3 percent man book that taught me about purpose, that I needed a purpose made me realize, okay, I need to do something. Well, it just so happens that I had always struggled with credit. So I knew that I needed to get my credit fixed. So that I could get my life started because remember I told the therapist and my wife that I was going to become better and I was going to, you know be better and fixing my credit was part of that. So I started working on my own credit and I answered a very small ad man, a very small organic ad by this guy from Pennsylvania that was offering to teach you how to do credit and how to start a credit repair business. And man, I took off, dude. I was a man on a mission at that point. I love that. No, I want to just take a second to go back to what you just said and just recognize that accountability that you took, right? I mean, we all hear about it. A lot of people pay someone to keep them accountable. A lot of people look for someone to hold them accountable. But at the end of the day, like you just said, it really has to come from yourself. Right? You you take that accountability and you find out what you need to do and you go make it happen. Right? And that led you to where you are today with this credit repair company helping tons of people in businesses out there is yeah. Exciting And that's another thing I wanted to cover too, right? I mean, we, we focus a lot on business funding, right? Now, one of the things that often comes up with us is I'm a business owner. I'm getting funding through my business. Why do I need to have, why does my personal credit matter? Or, X, Y, Z down the street told me that my personal credit doesn't matter. We always tell them that it's a bunch of BS if if a company's out there telling you that your personal credit doesn't matter. Now, absolutely, there's options out there, but walk us through that a little bit, the importance of personal credit and how how you've been able to help people out with that. Man, it does matter. It, absolutely it matters, because, well, no any ways out there and I'm not a specialist in business credit. Let me be very clear about that. No personal credit inside and out. But with business credit from what I do know, and I have looked into it some and done some research on it. Just so I can have some ideas to help my clients point them in the right direction on how to how to go with it is you have to have a personal guarantee to get some kind of footing for your EIN number so so that your EIN number starts to build that that that credit and then the way you want to position that is where you can. You can build it and then with your personal credit as a personal guarantee and then and then set it up to where you can pull yourself out of it once your EIN number has life. So it begins with your personal credit as you said. Yeah. And I we see it all the time, right? I talked to business owners and entrepreneurs all day that they want those top tier programs. And obviously with a lower credit score, you're going to qualify for some of those lower programs, right? Now, oftentimes I tell them that mostly what it is, is paying off a lot of those credit card balances and the credit card debt. I think obviously utilization is a huge piece of it. Typically told them to to try to get that down to the 30 percent utilization a little lower if they can. Want to walk through that a little bit or some of the other ways that that people can improve that personal credit score to get it to where they need it to be. It's huge, Tom. Utilization is I say 32%. It's right in there in that low thirties percent of what makes up your credit score. So it's, a huge part. So definitely you want to keep that utilization low in order to get, keep your credit score up because I've seen It I work with a lot of entrepreneurs on their personal credit for the reasons we spoke about a minute ago, and I've seen people just by the credit cards that they have their utilization, their scores go up or down either way. 100 points just based off of utilization. Now carry that a step further, man. I've had hundreds, if not a thousand by now, clients that we've worked with, when you include husband and wives. And, with our data, we've been able to come to the conclusion that between seven and 15 percent is what the, the algorithms are set at for optimum credit score with utilization. That's hard to do in the real world, man. You know, because we're out there. A lot of folks are out there running their business with credit cards and that kind of thing, but just for your listeners knowledge so that they know if they're in a position where they're about to invest in some property or they need their credit score up for something specific that they're doing. If you let your utilization stay 7 to 15 percent for about 90 days, your score will optimize. I appreciate sharing that. And then I've heard a couple people to mention that they've, I haven't seen this personally, but I know some people have said they've paid down a ton of credit card debt and got the utilization way down, right? And then they've told me that they're the lender, the credit card company has actually decreased their their line of credit or credit limit. Is that something you're familiar with or something that you've seen in your experience? It can't happen, man. And in this climate too, with what, you know, with the economy going on right now, everybody's getting a little bit weirder about the way they, they loan money these lenders are. So they're more quick on quick to pull the trigger on taking away your borrowing power. If you miss a payment, if you have a late payment or something like that, Or a lot of times if you owe you have your cards maxed out and you're late on a payment, what they'll do is they'll wait until you pay that down and they get their money, and then they'll cancel that card. And when they cancel that card, that takes us into a whole nother realm of credit, which is Aged credit, which is actually over 15 percent of what makes up your credit score. So you don't want if you've got a credit card open, even if it's one that you don't like or don't use or don't get points with, it really doesn't benefit you to have it. You still don't want that card to be closed on you because that will hurt your score as well. Again, example is my wife and I had one back in 2018 when we first got married and it was actually hers. But I was on it as an authorized user. And we didn't know. We did not. That was before I got in the credit business and we didn't know. So we closed that card because we were like, man, we don't want this card. It had been paid perfect for like 10 years. And it was a Walmart card and had that 10 years of age on it. And man, our credit took a hit when we closed that card, unknowing that that was going to happen because we didn't understand aged credit and how much of a role it has on our credit. I'm glad you shared that because that's another another huge piece out there for sure. And I know, obviously, you shared your background, of where you started some of the ups and downs and setbacks that you went through. Is there been anything specific that I know, obviously, you mentioned accountability, but on top of that, it's kind of got you to where you are today or anything that helped you move the needle a little faster in the business? Business are impersonal. I guess they're kind of hand in hand, though, aren't they, man? Because. Your business is only going to go as far as your personal self development goes. If your personal self development hits a wall, trust me, your business is about 90 to 180 days behind. So for me, man, habits and keeping promises to myself. I did 75 hard in 2021, early, 2021. And man, that was a big game changer for me. It gave me something that I had been lacking my whole life, man. I was 50 years old, dude, walking around with no confidence whatsoever in life, man. I was scared of my own shadow. and when I started keeping small promises to myself, like when my wife and I were separated, you know, I mentioned that we separated in 2020. One of the things I started doing was, like, every night I belong to Planet Fitness, and every night at 7 p. m., no matter what, I would go to the gym and I would run three miles and I was my way up to that because when I started I did this couch to five K app on my phone to get to where I could do that. But I got to where I could run that and every night at 7pm I would go run, and I can't tell you what that did for my confidence, just keeping that promise to myself, I actually made a post today on Facebook. Talking about that, that going to the gym every morning actually does a whole lot more for your life than just going to the gym. yeah, it's been huge for me, right? I mean, I, I try to get there every morning and I don't think I've ever woken up and said, I'm super excited to go to the gym, but that's the you know what they say, do we get the hard things done early? And it's, I end up thanking myself for it, right? It makes a huge difference in the day and it makes your whole life better. Absolutely, just kind of getting in that routine and getting things going. Anything specific that I didn't ask you or that we didn't cover that you wanted to throw out there or leave the listeners with? Credit. I'll just give them a quick rundown on the other things that affect your credit, just so the listeners can raise credit scores, man. So we talked about utilization. Utilization is going to be over 30 percent of your credit score. So again to recap a little bit on that, you want to ideally, and I know we're raising kids, we're, we're, we're, we have a family, we're running a business. We're doing a lot of things, so it's hard to do, but ideally, just so you understand the right way between seven and 15 percent utilization for optimum credit score there. Now, if you can just keep it under 30, you'll be okay. But for optimal credit score between seven and 15%. So on utilization, the other part we talked about was aged credit. Age credit is going to be over 15% of what makes up your, your credit score. And I used the Walmart card that my wife and I closed that made our score go down as reference on that. The other one is payment history. Payment history is over 30% of your credit. Obviously you want to pay your, pay your, you're you're built on time if at all possible, but we do know life happens and that's why I'm in business. That's why I'm here because things happen. So then newer credit. Is over 10 percent of your credit score. And what I mean by newer credit, if you open up a new credit card, if you have inquiries on your credit inquiries fall under new credit. So that's why when you go to a car dealership and they run your credit, a lot of times it'll hurt your score for a short time, because that's those, that's that new credit has those inquiries and it screws up the algorithm because the algorithm is wondering why you're looking for money. And so that's new credit is over 10 percent of your credit score. And then diversity of credit is over 10 percent of your credit score. And what I mean by diversity of credit, you're going to have different types of loans. So you want to have revolving credit. Which might be a credit card, something like that. You want to have some like auto loan, like a mortgage. Then you want to have like a signature loan or I'm old school dating myself, but we used to call those signature loans back in the day, but that would be like a straight loan for like a thousand dollars or something like that, that you borrow from a bank that you're paying back. That's a great recipe for diversity of credit to give you. And it makes your credit stronger to give you a well rounded credit score when you're looking to get a loan. I appreciate you sharing that. That's extremely valuable. I know a lot of listeners out there will get some value and benefit out of that as well. Appreciate you joining us today, and that's going to be a wrap for this episode of Small Business Big Moves. If you enjoyed today's episode, what would really help us is if you shared this podcast with someone that you think could get value out of it. And you can also hit me up on all social media platforms at Thomas Bennett or on Instagram at Thomas dot M Bennett. And we look forward to seeing you all on the next episode.