Proven Podcast - Limitless Funding Through Credit Repair - Herman Dolce

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Herman Dolce joins this episode to share his inspiring journey from a first-generation Haitian-American with a passion for financial literacy to becoming the founder of Bella Sloan Enterprises and a leading expert in business funding. With years of experience helping entrepreneurs secure capital and build solid financial foundations, Herman's insights are invaluable for anyone looking to grow their business responsibly. Through personal stories and proven strategies, Herman breaks down the common mistakes entrepreneurs make with credit and funding, as well as the steps needed to optimize both for success. He emphasizes the importance of financial literacy, sharing actionable tips on cleaning up credit profiles, building business credit, and stacking funding sources effectively. Herman doesn't just provide advice—he delivers a clear and practical roadmap for entrepreneurs to secure the resources they need to scale. From understanding the nuances of credit to leveraging smart funding techniques, his insights offer a fresh perspective for anyone navigating the financial side of business. Whether you're a business owner seeking funding or an aspiring entrepreneur looking to strengthen your financial foundation, this episode is packed with practical advice and real-world examples. Herman's no-nonsense approach and deep expertise will leave you ready to take control of your financial future. Key Takeaways: * The critical steps to optimizing your credit profile for personal and business success. * How to responsibly leverage funding to grow your business. * The concept of stacking funding sources and why it's a game-changer for entrepreneurs. * Practical insights into financial literacy that every business owner needs to know. Head over to https://provenpodcast.com/ to download your exclusive companion guide, designed to guide you step-by-step in implementing the strategies revealed in this episode. KEY POINTS: 4:12 - Understanding Wealth Ratio: Herman explains the wealth ratio formula—dividing savings by monthly expenses—and how it helps assess financial stability. He emphasizes the need for at least six months of savings before leaving a job. 6:02 - Importance of Good Credit: Herman highlights good credit as essential for funding, explaining how personal credit acts as a trust indicator for lenders, especially for new businesses. 10:00 - Credit Optimization Tips: Herman shares quick tips like reducing credit utilization under 9%, cleaning up inquiries, and maintaining a clean credit profile to make lenders see you as more reliable. 12:33 - Importance of Credit Profile: Herman explains why lenders look beyond your credit score, stressing the value of diverse credit types, older accounts, and financial consistency. 14:41 - Buy Assets Only: Herman urges entrepreneurs to buy assets that generate income instead of liabilities that drain resources, emphasizing this as the key to sustainable wealth. 20:36 - Recommended Financial Books: Herman recommends Credit Mastery and 10x Is Easier Than 2x for actionable advice on improving credit and scaling businesses strategically. 45:10 - Leveraging Credit Effectively: Herman explains how to strategically stack funding sources from different banks to maximize capital without negatively impacting your credit profile.

Welcome to the proven podcast, where it does not matter what you think, only what you can prove. Everyone says getting business funding takes months of paperwork and perfect credit. Herman Dulcy Jr. proves that's the slow lane to success. The founder of Bella Sloan Enterprises has cracked the code on strategic credit stacking and financial literacy that generates six-figure business funding in weeks, not years. The show starts now. All right, everybody, welcome back. I'm excited to talk to Herman. Herman, you've done an immense amount of things.

You go by the hasten CEO. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Charles, for having me and trusting me on your platform. I'm here to serve today. I love it. Tell people who you are, because a lot of people may have lived under a rock or have been distracted with the news lately. We won't get into that. Tell people who you are, what your success is, and I'd love for you to sneak in why your entire background, for those of you're watching on YouTube, why his background says what it says.

I love the story behind it. It makes my heart blow up. So my name is Herman Dulcy, Jr. son of Herman Dulcy. I am a first-generation patient. My family came to this country in the late 70s. Born in Brooklyn, Philly raised me. And I'm the founder of this wonderful company called Bella Sloan Enterprises, financial literacy company first.

But we primarily like to help small, medium businesses get capital and get some funding. I named this company after my firstborn daughter, Bella Sloan, Dalsey, amazing. She's seven years old right now. And you can find me on Instagram as Haitian CEO. And the reason why I say that is because I have two personalities. There's Herman and then there's Hays and CEO. Hayst's CEO dances on Instagram. And that's what my daughter is.

She's a ball and I like. And she's totally amazing. I love that you named it after her. When you told me that, I was like, yes, you have to sneak that in. We have to sneak that. The other thing we have to sneak in is when people do this and they want to get funding, there's a lot of questions that I always get asked. And they're like, how much should I have?

How much should I do? We were talking about this before. went on camera, things like a wealth ratio. And if people don't know what a wealth ratio is, could you explain someone what a wealth ratio is? Well, what a wealth ratio is, let's say for me, when I wanted to quit my job and go full time in my business and you set it offline, having six months of, I guess, bills saved up is a good place to start, having a year of operating expenses for your business.

But for me, when I was staying in phone calls in my room closet at work, I saved up two years of income for my household to make sure that if I didn't make any money from Bellasone and eight bronzes for two years, I would have that money to at least pay my bills. So I had a pretty decent FU account before I told my boss, I quit. So I love that you snuck in what we actually call it offline. It's the FU account. Yeah. I'll be honest here. So for those people who want to calculate your wealth ratio, it's really simple. Let's say your monthly expenses are $5 and you've got $10 in the bank.

You've got a two-month wealth ratio. Really, really simple. It's really, it goes through that. And I agree with you. I think for your personal life and your professional life, you need to have at least two years for your personal life. And then hopefully at least a year in your business life. If you don't have that, don't quit your job. Just it is what it is.

You got to mind your job while you're building your business. You know, I built my first company while I was. still working at a hospice. I was running the IT division in order to build it. I did the same time because sleep is optional. It happens. Dang it. As you get more successful, you will get sleep because it's a new thing for me. You also will also have stories where you lose your first million. So welcome to all of those wonderful adventures. We all have those stories. Exactly. I have a good friend of my name Storm Leroy and he talks about, he's called the unemployed millionaire. And he says your job should be your first business.

partner. So after you pay all your bills and you have your savings, you take that savings and you use that to fund your business. See if it works. That T-shirt company, the boutique your start, you want to start, lose your money first. Your second business partner will get into should be American Express Wells Fargo and Bank of America. When you go into that, people are like, okay, well, I want to be my first business partner. I want to get into that, but I have no idea how to do funding. I have no idea how to bring this in. There's so many different ways. I thought, you know, getting funding meant that I just stood on 95 and a two. to and people through money at me.

Didn't pay. Completely not how funding worked. Didn't work. People will pay me money to close back on at this point. How do people get in this? If they're going to go through funding, give me the broad overview,

and then we'll jump in the details. If someone needs funding, what's the best kind of ways to do that? Broad overview, at the easiest way to get to that path is, and that's why financial literacy is such a component in our company is actually having good credit.

So if you have good personal credit, the banks are going to say, all right, Bella Sloan, you're like five minutes old. We don't know who Bella Sloan is, but we know who Herman is. And Herman has good credit with us. He has a 700 credit score. He has a good credit profile. We trust him. And since he's going to personally guarantee a co-sign for this business, we'll give the business this capital in the business name, not in Herman's name. And that could be your first seed money to start whatever you need to start. And one of the blessings and benefit of it is the capital you get in your business name is much higher than you would in your business name. So I have a best buy credit credit. card on the personal side, $10,000. My best buy business credit card is $30,000 because banks know that the business needs more capital. So there's all these conversations about building credit, and there's jokes and memes about it all over the place that talk about that based on your culture, you will get different credit scores. Is that actually true or is that just a meme?

That's just a meme. That is attached to the knowledge that certain cultures get, but the information is universal. as ubiquitous, if you do the right things, anybody can get good credit. So, and, you know, your backstory about this is you actually have a lot of details in credit. So you talked about before you started your business, you were doing credit and you were helping people expand their credit. Can you help the audience understand a little bit more about that? Right. So the foundation of Bellasone Enterprise was we were first helping people educate them on their credit and help and their fix their credit. One of the ways we do that was through factual

disputes. Per of Fair Credit Reporting Act, your credit report is supposed to be 100% accurate or 100% and 100% verifiable. If it is not the credit agency's trade unit epa-faxing experience, they have to remove those negative items. So like I told you, my name is Herman Dolsey Jr. On my credit report, when I was uneducated, it said Herman Dulcey Sr. or Herman Dole,

little edits, little things that were incorrect. It was a phone call before internet blew up credit repair. Called them up and be like, hey, you need to fix this. This isn't me. I sent him a picture of my driver's license. We are good to go. Hey, I got this late. payment on this credit card. Experience says I was late on Thursday, but Epifax says I was late

on Friday. I send them both credit reports. Oh, that's incorrect. They're credit reporting act. You have to delete it. So I was doing little tactics like that to help people clean their credit because the law is in your favor. So if someone goes, I think first step sounds like getting your actual report. And there's all these services that you have that charge you to do that. And there's other ways to do that. If you're going into this and you're listening to this going, hey, I've never even done it for my business, let alone myself, what are the first steps that they go in through? Say, hey, I just need to get this credit report and find out what is real versus what is it. But it's on here.

There's two places you can go just to get it for free. If you don't want to pay for it, you can go to Experian.com. They'll let you see your Experian credit report and just to check out what's on there. Then you can go to Credit Karma. I don't always recommend Freda Karma because your scores a little bit different, but the information is correct. They'll give you Equifax and TransUnion credit report. and then you can look on there to see the negative items you have that are on there that could be positive, negative,

or incorrect, just for free. Which is wonderful. It's people don't understand the power of credit either. For example, I don't buy cars. I never have. That's not true. I bought my first car and it was garbage. And I just the way I drive.

I know you're not supposed to do it. I just, I'd lease cars. It's just it is what it is. I beat the things out of them. I just have a heavy foot. So it's just, it's mean to cars. Right.

So I go in and I always negotiate with them. And being able to walk in and take, okay, what's your credit score? I'm very, I've been doing this for a long time. My credit scores over 800. So I get to walk in, I'm like, before I'm going to negotiate with you, go to your finance manager and just pull up my credit. And they walk out and like, what do you want? And they don't even negotiate.

It goes away. That angsts, that back and forth that we all, I think I would rather get, you know, colonoscopy than buy a car at this point because it's such a toxic thing. But having the, yeah, now having that credit score, it changes the ballgame. So that's what comes in your personal life. In my business life, to what you were saying. there is a difference between my company and my personal credit. Like I have a credit card that's got, you know, whatever, $20,000, $30,000 limit on it.

My business credit card is six figures because they know the business and they know me of what's going on. And I just don't touch it. And then they raise it every year. I'm like, stop doing that. But so someone gets your credit report and they're sitting at home and they go, okay, I'm trying to increase my financial literacy. What are the books?

What are the tools? What are the things that they need to start doing to say, okay, I need to heal this before I go out and get funding because I really want. want to get people, and I'm going to try and do it on this podcast, where it's okay, this is how you get funding efficiently and effectively, and these are the tools that will actually not rip you off. So you don't want to get it from the guy down the street who only hangs out at the deli, that would be a different way. What are some of the tools once they get their credit report so they can start educating himself and helping them out? Well, some of the tools we can talk about

right now. I could just tell them, number one, I call the credit optimization. So before you go and get funding, you want to look as sexy as possible to. the banks on your credit profile. So number one, you want to clean up the demographic information. There's only one name on my credit report, not a bunch of them. Number two, I know when we fill out applications, we're usually at different jobs when we do that. I only have one job on my credit report. It's Bellasone Enterprises. All my old jobs, I called and had those deleted. Addresses, having too many addresses on your credit report, that's a red flag also. So I only have one address. That's my current address, because it looks like you're unstable. Those are little things

that lenders look at. Now when that's done, the next credit optimization is if you have credit cards, you want to pay down as much credit card debt as possible, preferably keeping it under 9%. That's the sweet spot. Banks like to see between 1% and 9%. Some people are like, why don't you pay it all the way down? You can, but banks like to see that they can make a little bit money off of you. But for your credit report, keep it between 1% and 9%. Because anything over 30% that drops your credit score and it shows that you're a little bit unresponsible with income. The next thing is you want to remove as many inquiries offer your credit report.

Inquiries are when you're applying for credit. They ding your credit. You want to check it. You have too many of those. It's going to look like you're thirsty for money and they don't want to give it to you. So you've got to act like you don't really want it. Banks don't like to see any more than three to four of those

in the last six months. After it's six months old, then they really don't care about it. And lastly, collection, charge else bankruptcies. You want to make sure those are not on your credit report, obviously. And the one last thing I do want to say is your credit profile is important. What I mean by that? It's great to have a 700 credit score, 800 credit score, but you have an authorized user and a Today's Man credit card and you have a 700 credit score.

But me, I have a mortgage. I have student loans. I have a closed card note. And I have four credit cards that are over five years old, $10,000 limit. The bank will look at both of our 700 credit scores, be like, Herman clearly is more responsible with money. So having those profiles on your credit port makes you look extremely sexy when it's time to go and get some business funding. You mentioned getting addresses off because I've had multiple addresses and I go in multiple properties.

When you go into the situation, you're like, hey, here is, I want this address off. Even though you did technically live there, can you just go to the credit reports and say, get it off? I don't want to have this on here. How does that work? Absolutely. Absolutely. We go back to the Fair Credit Reporting Act because they say nothing. is supposed to be put on your credit report without your permission. So one of those things are my address. So I can call and be like, hey, those addresses right there, can you please remove it?

This is my current address. And depending who will pick up the phone, they'll do it there right on the phone at TransUnified XVaxmore Experian. Or sometimes they'll say, hey, and you send me your car driver's license or a utility bill, and you'll do that and they'll delete it. And I'm guessing the same thing with jobs and so on and so forth. You get to- Same thing with job. Yes. Anything demographic is a phone call you can delete. When it comes to negative items like charge-offs collection, doors a little bit harder to fight, you got to send some letters, use the fair credit reporting act to help you fight it.

So if they're going through there and they're getting the ball rolling and they're starting to fix their financial literacy, getting your down to 9% is hard for a lot of people. So getting that, that's where in my mind, financial literacy comes in. Decide how stuff is doing all of those. As you've gone through your journey, you know,

you mentioned you've got student debt and you've got a couple other things, mortgage, which I don't know if people know this, but mortgage is French. It means to be in debt until you die. Die. Yep. Yes. It is terrifying. You hear the actual name. It is. So as you're doing this, please buy assets, not liabilities. Please. But as you're going through this, please, for the love of God, if it doesn't make you money, as soon as you sign, you bought a liability. A liability. Buy assets. Please. As you're going through this and you're

trying to scale your financial literacy and you're trying to step this up, what are some of the ways that, okay, we've got our credit relatively fixed. We've made the phone calls. What are the proven ways that you found that work to getting your financial literacy up? Number one, I want to talk to you about taxes for two seconds because you said something really interested in if you're in a lot of credit card debt. And I always looks at me crazy when I say this. I was like, well, we were taught that on our W-2s when we first get a job to, like, I guess, take the maximum deduction.

I was like, you know what you're doing when you do that, right? You're giving the government a tax-free loan or interest-free loan for 12 months. and then in January, February, everybody's on my timeline, ball and then going to Cabo because they got a tax refund check of $5,6 grant. I was like, or you can make some adjustments, and this goes to your question about financial literacy, or you can make some adjustments on your W-2, your I-9, whatever, and that money you get every single, every other week or every month,

that two, three, four, $500 a month. That's what you're going to take and start to pay down your credit card debt and including the side hustles that you may have. I mean, when I teach people that, they get out of debt a lot faster, and I call it, here's how you get out of debt without getting a second job. And that always piques people in interest. So that's the last component in getting out of debt on the personal side, which will transfer to some great opportunities on the business side

because now you actually understand taxes just a little bit better. For those who also, if you're on the business side, because most of our listeners or business owners, when everyone started freaking out, when the politics came in, like, oh, my God, he's never paid taxes. She doesn't pay taxes. All of us who have been in that environment were like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. It's talking to me. Talk about that.

I don't know what you're talking about. You'll find out that, you know, you've got the most famous line of this is you got Warren Buffett who pays percentage-wise less than his secretary. If you're in W-2 versus a 1099 or whatever your business is, not only does Herman's tactic talk about, hey, don't pay your taxes right. now defer to the end of the year type of thing because you can just use that as your own funding. But also, there are legal ways. I'm not going to get involved on a podcast of this one. So you're a tax professional. We are not giving legal advice.

Right. But you hear someone who is a politician and you have that politician change where they're like, hey, I didn't pay more than 3% in taxes or 0% in taxes or 6. And they're in single digit. Yes, hire someone very, very smart. hire someone who understands this, pay the extra money. I pay my accountant very well and it has kept me very, very safe. But one of the things that's great about it is I'll ask him like, hey, can I do this? He's like, of course you could do that.

I'm like, you'll go to jail. But yeah, you could do it. I'm like, yeah. So make sure you have someone who knows law and won't just get in your face about it. So financial literacy is just so critical. And taxes is just one thing because remember you get paid, you get taxed. You then go buy something. You get taxed.

You go to sell something. you get taxed. So we are just overwhelmed with it. And people are like, oh, Switzerland has worse taxes than we have here. I'm like, what? Not really. So it just depends on where you are and how it goes. If someone's sitting down and they're learning these things, are there books, are their resources? What are the things that you have involved? You've thought, hey, this is what's proven. If you do this, do these steps. We, you know, we've already gone through a couple that I'm sure people have already paused the podcast and I go, I'll do with that in a second. I want to learn all this and start implementing it. They're making

the phone calls. What are some of the things that you've run into that you got that you've like, you know what? This changed my financial career. This changed my financial intelligence in my life that I can now teach to my kids. One of the most important things that I've learned is how to fund your business through stacking. So what that means is say for instance, when I, when I remember when I started doing it, people were like, well, how'd you get one person $150,000 in like two weeks? And I have the book right here. I'm going to go grab up for you in a second. and it talks about how I will go to like American Express and I will get $20,000 from them, $25,000. I have good credit easily, right?

They pull from Experian. Then I know that maybe federal credit union, they pull from TransUnion, get another 25 from them. Then I go to Key Bank. They pull from Equifax. That's another $25,000. So I just raised $75,000 in funding, 0% interest, technically one inquiry because the TransUnion Bank can't see that I got an inquiry from. American Express and vice versa, and I just maxed out as much funding as I can get. Because if I went to American Express and then I went to PNC, which pulls from experience,

they were like, oh, you just got a ding. Like you just got it today. You're clearly shopping. So instead of giving you a $25,000 credit card, we're going to give you a $15,000 one. So this is how I maximize how much capital that I got. And because I understood that information, I'm able to double, triple the funding that I can get from my business, use credit responsibly, by the way. I was about to say that there, you know, people like, oh my God, I can get $75,000 at zero percent.

This is amazing. Amazing. You already need to be in a situation where you have financial literacy where there's already cash flow. I don't want you going out. That's not what Herman and I are talking about. We're not like, hey, go get six figures of debt and then file bankruptcy. And what we're saying.

What we're saying is funding when you're trying to feed your business is the lifeblood in the very beginning. It's going to be your sweat, your blood, and someone else's money sometimes. It's called OPA. So going through this idea of, of doing this effectively and stacking is something I've never heard of. So you mentioned you're going to go grab a book. Go grab that real quick.

It's one of those things that, you know, again, finding these resources, none of the stuff we invented. In all these situations, we are not sourced for any of this knowledge. We are synthesis. In other words, we have digested this. We have found it. We are working with it. And this is why it's so important to go with people who are proven to actually do

these type of things. So for those of you, what is it? What is the book? Share it with us? So I got a couple books. The first one is called the Credit Mastery. There you go, Credit Mastery. It's by Ian Richards.

It's a great book on how to fix your credit. The second book is by Ian also. It's Developing Age Corporations, sending you a picture of it. And that shows you how to build your business credit. And the last one, I have no affiliations, no affiliates with these guys, but they really help my business.

And the other one is 10X. It's easier than 2x by Dan Sullivan. That book, it showed me how to think bigger with my business in regards to, I set a goal for my business. I want to have 5,000 subscribers. That was the goal. Right.

And he was like, well, why don't you make it 50? And I didn't have a reason why I couldn't make it 50. So he's like, make it 50. And I was like, okay, so what happened automatically is my brain started planning and game planning for 50,000 instead of 5,000. And what happened? I tripped into 15,000 because my operations, my business, my CEO, I was like, all right, let's shoot for 50,000.

So that's why it's easier just to change the number verbally and that'll grow your business. Well, your brain thinks differently, right? It gives you different answers. on what's going on. You know, if you sit there and say, I'm hungry versus I'm starving, your body will automatically go into, oh, okay, well, I was going to just get a snack versus, oh, my God, I'm going to go eat a chunk of cow, whatever it is.

Just kind of go through there. For my vegan friends, you would eat lots of beans. I don't know. I don't know. Sorry, my sister, Sarah, I have padagia. I don't know what the equivalent is. You guys can send me messages and tell me what the equivalent is. We'll talk about it in detail.

So when they go through there and when does a person know, like, okay, you know, I'm starting to learn my financial literacy. I've read the books. I've worked with Herman. What are we going through where we're like, all right, now I need funding. How do I know as a business owner when's the right time to go get funding to go through different rounds? Because there's different funding where you're doing it on your own and then doing rounds of funding. Because there's an entire practice as an entire pitch deck.

So they call a Sequoia pitch deck when it goes into pitching for funding when you're going in your first round of funding. How does someone know as a business owner? Okay, now I need funding. I can liken it to, I'll give an example, when I first started my credit repair company, and I was typing the letters and I was doing all that work, right? And then I realized I was capping it like $25,000 a month in revenue because my time was attached to the work I can do, right? So at that point, I was like, oh, I need to hire more people.

So if I hire more people and I invest that $25 back into the business and I hire three people, I'm able to make $100,000 a month. instead. So I try to keep that little 25 because I still had a nine to five mentality. The same thing is when it comes to funding. When you feel that you can grow if you invest X amount into your business because you've capped, that's when it's time to raise a little capital. But you have to know your numbers. So I knew my numbers before I went and got a $25,000 business credit card. And I liquidated that credit card and I used it to hire my first staff member. Like, hey, I'll give you $1,000 a month if you help me with these.

letters and I'll train you. And then within 90, 60 days, it wasn't even 90 days, 60 days, we doubled our income. And in 120 days, we five-exed it. And then when I saw that, I was like, oh, I'll just do it again. Right. Because I figured it out, got the systems in place. We got to stabilize because I didn't want to fly a plane and build it at the same time. I wanted to ensure I grew slowly, and then I put gasoline on that fire. I love that you just subtly snuck in my favorite word, which is systems. Your systems need to be bulletproof. Systems are mission credit for scaling. If you do not have systems in place and you just throw money at the wall, it's not going to stick. It's not how to work.

And there's a lot of ways to generate capital without ever selling product. I love that you focused on, you know, I'm using this money to pay for personnel versus for product. And, you know, people run into this all the time. They're like, okay, I need more money to buy product. You don't ever need more money to buy product because you can sit there and you can go online and say, listen, you want to pre-order this? We have this. We're going to offer it. Would you like to pre-order this? We're opening this special session. You get your network and you pre-order. And that will fund you fast. So if you're in a situation where you're trying to purchase, I'm not sourced for any of this. We're just synthesized. Right, right, right. And we'll go in

and I'm like, hey, I've got, I have a, I'm not going to plug it, but I own a company. We sell lots of merch, a ton of merch. I never touch it. I never see it. It's all automated. God bless the internet. But we'll go through and we'll use a Supreme model, which is, you know, it's only going to be available for a short time. You have to pre-order it if you're going to get it. Opening, it opens up for a very short amount of time, so you have scarcity there. It's only going to be available for only about two hours if you want to go. And I'll open it up. And because it's connected to this thing, we'll get 2,000 orders like that.

And then I'll go to my supplier. And I'm like, well, I need 2,000 of these now. And he's like, okay. And then he'll pay, because it's already been paid for, I just immediately pay and I'm gone. So it's cost me nothing. And that's why it's so important to fortify your social media, why it's so important to fortify and have these system in place, get money that's going to pay for personnel, not for product.

It's a different bargain. You have to have a buyer before you purchase the product. People don't understand this. Very, very extraordinary to me. You got another book. What was it? I grabbed another book by Daniel Priesty. It's called the scorecard marketing.

And it talks about weightless. And I didn't understand the whole weightless model. And then he gave the best example. The best example that everyone has seen recently is Tesla. So what, three, four years ago, Elon Musk, what we had to put down $100 for a cyber truck? And then he raised over $100 million. He went to the banks be like, hey, I got $100 million.

Can you give me more? And then he built a bunch of cyber trucks that didn't have to be delivered for years. Or work at all, or be functional or be good products in any way should have been. Exactly. Or be a good product. Exactly. Or be attractive in any way at all. At all.

So I wait list everything. Hey, I got a new product coming out. And I see what's going on with the wait list. I was like, oh, the people want this product. Let's create it. Yes. Let's give it to them. And that little insight's important.

There's so many people who go to the ocean say, you know, you're not allowed to come in now or tell the river, go upstream or don't. I think, no, the market's going to tell you what to do. Then do it. You are not smarter than the market unless, no, they're not smart on the market period. I was trying to think of an example. I was like, is anybody smart on the market? I was thinking Steve Jobs.

I was like, no, he didn't like the iPad mini. And it was the number one seller that year after he died. And I was like, well, I can't think of anybody who's ever been smarter than the market. The market will tell you what it wants the attention. So if my wait list was 100 people, I'm not creating the product. If the wait list was $1,500,000, I was like, all right, guys, we got work to do. Let's get less smart people in the three because I came up with the idea already. I'll figure it out.

And this is a joy of being a business owner. So I tell people all the time, I'm like, stop being a CEO, become a strategist. Like, I'm just going to advise you guys, go do it. And that's where systems come into place, which is a completely different conversation. So let's say someone to the point, like, I get it. I've heard what you guys have said. I understand waitlist now. I've read all the books that Herman have shown me, which those are some that I haven't read.

So they're definitely going to be on my list. God bless Everand. I'm not sponsored by Everett. God bless them and you get free audio books or you pay like whatever it is, 20 bucks a month and you get it. That's, guess what I'm doing on my walks every day? Listen to that. Right.

I'm working out. If someone's to the point, though, okay, I get it. I need to get funding. This is mission critical now. I have to do this. I need to get personnel. I can't afford them. I haven't done the waitlist thing yet.

I'm in this pocket of, you know what? I need 25K. I need it in 100K, whatever it is. And they need to get effective funding. Walk me through that process. When they work with you, what are some of the things that people mess up when they first come in, and then one of the things that are proven to actually help people out? So we got the creditors together.

Their profile is together. Their business has to be structured properly. S-Corpsie, whatever you got. These are the little dings that banks look at, because I want you to think like a bank does. So when I come in, I have a real business address. It's not my home address, right? So I have an office. And even if you can't afford an office space, you can actually rent addresses where your mail gets sent to virtual address

or a registered agent because now you look like a real business. This Bank of America want to do business or give somebody $25,000 who offices in their home, right? And another thing, people who have their home addresses as your business address, that's actually not safe because your business is public information. I can go to the Secretary of State website, look at Bellasone Enterprises and miss my home address. Everybody knows where I live. So little things like that. Having a real business email info of Bellasone Enterprises, not Bellasone Enterprises at Gmail. You want to look legitimate and you want to look out.

absolutely credible. Those are the two little things I just wanted to tell people and also have a real business website because the banks, they actually look you up while you're sitting there. Oh, okay, let me check out your website, see if you're legitimate. So if that looks good and it's perfect, the application process is pretty simple. They know that you're a startup. They know that you've done only 30,000 next year. Sometimes they'll ask you, hey, if we give you this 25 grand, what does revenue look like? I project I'm going to make $100,000, $125,000 next year with this $25,000, influx into my business. Okay, great. And sometimes they give you 10% of what the business has made or what the business will make up to a certain point. So if you say you're going to make up to

$125,000, that business credit card will probably be $12,500. Or they'll see what credit cards you already have on your personal side. They're like, all right, well, he has a $25,000 personal credit card. He's done well with it. We'll bump that $12,000 card to a $30,000 card. That's how they think. Another thing with the application is what you put on it as what you do is important too. So, yes, I have a job. But what is your title that you're putting on your business? I would sell people put that you're the president. You're the CEO.

Don't put owner. And they're like, well, why not? I am the owner. I was like, because owners don't make any money. So me as a president or a founder, I have a salary that I get because they're thinking, well, how are you going to pay this credit card if you're the owner? Because the owner is always, what, the last to get paid. And so you get the change that's.

left over. So those little things when filling out the application, actually you can leverage to actually get more capital for your business. And I don't think people understand that banks actually want to lend you money because they make one of money. Like when you buy a house, so when you buy a house and you're like, oh, well, I'm just paying off my mortgage. No. You want to think of a box and then it's cut in half from one corner, the bottom left to the top right. And you're just mostly paying interest the entire time. They're making it your actual balances is going down. That's not any different than business loans. they're going to make a ton of money because they have these things where to go sign up now get

five hundred dollars when you sign up bonus or never credit card they're hoping that you're like the majority of the people out there that they're going to make that a hundred X over the lifetime between fees and late fees and problems and so on and so forth if you've got effective financial literacy you're not going to be that guy that you're not going to be that situation and you're going to get away from that so if they're coming in and you know you got to put down that they're the founder or the owner or the president you got to have a real business address what happens of someone's like, I don't have a website. I don't have this. Do you walk people through that? Or what is the ball? Absolutely. We can walk you through that. We don't do it. Here's why we don't do it. Because it's so simple to do. You can go to fiverr.com. Pay somebody 100 bucks. I promise you. They'll have your business email, your business website set up within three days. Or you can go and do it yourself and get it done in like two hours. GoDaddy.com or Whits.com. It's very simple. There's nothing that we're discussing on this podcast today that cannot be done in the next 24 hours in regards to your business setup.

we used to run summits and we would do this and we would force people to do it live. We're like, okay, here we go. Go do this, go do this. And within two hours, it's operational. Because it's not that complicated. It's so easy to do. Because if you show up with Gmail or live

or Hotmail or whatever is your address, it's not that there's anything wrong with those email addresses except you don't own any of those emails. Remember, if you're not paying for something, you're the product. So it is what it is. Because remember that. But it tells the person who's investing,

it tells the lender. It tells as an angel investor, when you come to me, if that's your email address, It tells me volumes about your business. All ams. I know more about you than you could possibly know. If you show up and you've got an AOL address, it's like a puff of smoke where I was sitting because I will run as fast as I can.

It just tells me so much about you. It's just like when you go to apply for something, if you show up wearing a pair of raggedy shoes and flip flops versus a three-piece suit, I'm going to know also the way you articulate, what vernacular are you using. I use very different vernacular when I'm on a podcast or if I'm, you know, in the, versus when I'm with my friends. Because when I'm with my friends, basically, I sound like an idiot.

There's just no way around it. We're goofy and we're just, we're making words up and we are cursing more than my mother would ever approve, but we are being idiots. There is a time and a place that's also your digital footprint. And people regrettably don't understand that. What are some of the other mistakes that people make and they're just common stuff when they come to you and they want to come and they want to help you out?

What are some of the things that you help people on? Okay, first off, don't do this anymore. Dear God, please, don't do this. Right, right, right. Being in a high-risk industry and lying on the business application. All right. So, number one. Yeah, that happens.

So, no, there's people out there. Believe it or not. A high-risk industry, banks don't like to give money to, like, high-risk industry, such as real estate. So I know HGTV made it look all sexy and good, but banks hate giving that money to that N-A-I-C-S code. So every industry has a code that is attached to it, business consulting, technology, medical, they all have a code. So when you're going to the bank and they're nice and they're wonderful, oh, Herman, it's a pleasure to meet you. What do you do? What's the business? And you tell them, hey, Bellasone Academy, Belisloid enterprises, we do real estate. They're like, oh, that's wonderful.

And they attach a code to your business at that bank. Now, when it's time for you to go get funding, instead of you getting a $25,000 card, you're probably going to get a $7,000 card. Because in their eyes, real estate is high risk. Trucking is high risk. Carmen, what? What are the other high-risk industries? Adult vices are high-risk, daycare, anything with transportation. You can Google this information, high-risk industries. So those type of industries they don't like to give funding to. That's why I have a journal name, Bellis-Sloan Enterprises, not Bellis-Lone Credit Repair or Bellis-Lone trucking.

And the other thing is lying on business applications. Like you said, banks want to give you money. Start slow. You're trying to get $150,000 credit card or a loan from a bank. and if you have to lie to get it, then you're probably not ready to get the money. So be honest with the bank. Listen, I made $30,000 last year. I'm projected to make a buck 50 this year.

What can you give me based on my credit and my business being structure probably? Herman, honestly, we can give you $30,000. Great. I'm going to turn this $30,000. And here's what the great thing. Once you spend that $30,000 and you pay it down or you pay it down half within 90 days or six months, guess what the bank is going to do. They're going to reach out to you.

But hey, you're doing really good with this credit card. Yeah. Would you like a credit card increase? Would you like another business credit card? Absolutely. I would love to do that because you got to prove yourself to the bank and they'll take care of you. I love that you said they'll reach out to you in a nice way. No, they will hound you.

I don't you for you 15 times a day. Do you like your money, sir? It becomes the different problem. When you actually have financial literacy and you're running into this, they'll bang on your door. They will get annoyed. That's why it's important to have. Don't use your regular phone. Try and have another phone specifically for this.

We all have hidden phones. have hidden WhatsApp. We all have hidden Google voice. We all have extra SIM cards in our lives. Let's be honest. Right, right. Right. Because I will just get hounded. Whenever I go and I do apply for something or whatever it is, I will go in and I'll have a separate email address and a separate phone number that just gets hounded. And I'm like, whatever. It's connected to a phone that sits in a closet in the office. I'm like, have fun. It's on airport mode or it's on do not disturb. And I just like, whatever. I don't check it. I never interact with it. Sorry for those of you who have Googled me and tried to get a hold of me. That's why you can't get a

with me. That's why. It's for my protection. Yeah. It goes back to what you said earlier, which is don't put your home address on the thing. No one knows my home address. There's no way to Google where my home address is because I technically don't own my home.

My home is owned by a trust, which I am not connected to in any way, shape, or form publicly. Privately, it's my trust. But no one knows where I live and that's done on purpose. Because I love you guys. You guys are very sweet, which I are creepy. And you freak me out. Don't show up in my house and mix me pee on myself a little bit. Don't be doing that.

It's weird. Yaller. It's me nervous. I have to protect myself. Absolutely. You know, I like carrying guns and I will return fire. It's what it is. So when someone comes in, there's a lot of people when we talk about getting a loan, fixing their credit, they're terrified.

Because they weren't taught this. I mean, financial literacy isn't something I was taught by my family in any way, shape, or form. I was taught save, save, save, save, save, save, don't buy stuff you don't need. That's the extent of it. It wasn't until I read, I know. it's very classic and everybody's read it a thousand times. I read Rich Dead Poredad.

That Poredad. I read Rich Dead Poredad. And then my favorite book by him is not Rich That Pordad. It's Cash Flow Quadrant. Cash Flow Quadrant changed my life. And then I was 20 years old, 21 maybe. I bought a book called Cash Flow and a book, a game called Cash Flow that he has done. If you haven't bought this game, which it was $350 or $2.99 when I bought it,

which at the time was more money than I could possibly imagine. Because I grew up, I couldn't afford the last three letters of poor. I was broke. And, and, I spent this money and it's like Monopoly on crack. And I laid it out and I played with my buddy Keith and he'd kick my butt the first time. And then I sat there on the table and there's four people can play at the same time. I can play more, but normally four.

And I would run around and I'd sit there and play every night all by myself. Just constantly playing this game over and over and over. And I have played this game with every one of my clients that I've coached. Everyone of my clients that I get like $75 now because bastards made me spend money before. I played it with people who are billionaires and who go bankrupt. instantaneously in the game. It is one of those games that fundamentally change it

and allowed me to get past the fear of hey, maybe I'll try this, maybe I'll try that. Because if I lose, it's just paper money and it's a little plastic rats on a board. So when people come to you and they're terrified because there's a lot of people who are terrified of approaching this, they're like, you know what? I can't be a business owner.

I can't do a side hustle because I'm afraid. I just want to be an employee and get a W-2 which is horrible. Good God. The amount of damage. Oh, my God. it's horrible. When someone's at that point and they're, they're, they have paralysis because of fear, how do you handle that? How do you hold people's hands through them? I give them a different fear. So, uh, everybody doesn't have to be an entrepreneur, but everybody does need to be an investor. You need to be investing in something that you're in control of. Um, a friend of mine gave me this wonderful example. He was like, they are financial prey and they're financial predators, right? And it's in the interest of the financial prey to keep you,

financially illiterate. And when you're financially illiterate, they make more money. Right. So for banks, say, for instance, they make billions, like tens of billions. I want to say $50 billion just on late fees and not even late fees. It's like bounce checks or whatever, non-sufficient funds. Billions. Why wouldn't they just send you a text message? Hey, your bank account is low. Or in school. Why didn't they teach you how to balance a checkbook? But it was a private school. We actually had a class where they showed us how to write checks and balance a checkbook. And my dad sat me down. He's like, hey, son, I want you to pay the bills every Friday. And he was, he's like, this is what I made. This is what we're spending. I think he did that. So I want to ask him for Nintendo because he would see how much money was left. But it was

financial literacy for me. So when I grew up, I had those, those habits. Not having those habits would cost me money. I wouldn't learn how to save. I wouldn't learn how to invest. So the different fear that I give people, okay, you want to do the W-2, I'm old enough to, I'm old enough to see a couple of crashes happen where people's 401K have been wiped away, right? So I'm like, do you want that option or do you want to have just a little bit more control? Because you gave somebody two, three, $400 a week for 30 years. They made millions off of that. And they gave you, when you retire, you're probably have half a million dollars or million dollars and you think you did a thing. But the opportunity cost of your financial literacy, it's probably $10 million that you lost.

I guess you didn't have that information. So when I pivot, when I give them new, information, they're like, oh, I was like, listen, I'm not going to promise you getting you $10 million, but hey, let me help you get two or three rental income, right, properties. So when you retire, in addition to the 401k Social Security, you're getting $3,000, $4,000 in rent check. And the asset is worth X amount, put in a trust that you can pass out to your children, leverage by life insurance. We'll go down the rabbit hole. I just make them think differently about that $1,000 or giving away to somebody else. So let's go down that rabbit hole. So if someone comes to you and they're like,

and I love that you said, I wanted the Nintendo because that makes you in my age group. It was different though. Did you actually get the Nintendo or no? I got the Nintendo. So you're getting Nintendo was different than me getting Nintendo. Because remember, my last name is Schwartz. We have eight days.

So day one, I got the Nintendo. Day two, I got the controller. Day three, I got the other controller. You know what I got the last day? The power is after to turn the damn thing on. I was so mad. I was so much. My dad thought it was hilarious.

But very similar to you. I had my mom sit down and show me. This is what a checkbook is because we're both that old. But you got to sit down and go through this and learn these things out. But let's start going down these rabbit holes. Let's talk about more of these advanced things that you do and that you share about life insurance and how to do this and all that. Walk me through the stuff that when you share it with people, their minds just go and they're just, their politics. I'll give you a great example of this.

I did a Zoom call with Temple University students during the pandemic. Temple called me. That's my alma mater. So I was very honored. Is I, hey, can you talk to our freshmen about some financial literacy topics? I was like, great. So I got on the call, maybe 20 people on there. And I was like, hey, who wants to be worth $250,000 by the time they graduate college?

So you're telling a bunch of 18-year-olds that. And I'm like, what are you talking about? That's not even possible. I'm just trying to get this teaching degrees so I could make $50,000 in the school district of Philadelphia. Right? Right. Painful. So I was like, all right.

So we talked about the credit thing, walked them through the whole credit thing, open up a bank account, getting your first personal credit card. walk them through all that. In two years, when that credit card is two years old, it'll probably have a five to $10,000 limit on year. And I want everybody to start their LLC. So I'm talking to freshmen's right now. So now it's sophomore year, junior year, excuse me, your credit card is two years old. The limit is $10,000. You have a business as two years old. Whether you are using it or not, I'm just glad you got that paper. Now you're able to go get business credit or business line of credit and you're able to put a down payment on an investment property, right? Because you're over 18 you're able to sign for it, talk to a good realtor.

And now we're going to house hack. You can get up to a four-unit property, right, through a program called NACA. So I'm talking about this NACA program where they're able to get in it with low, low, money down or zero money down for first-time homebuyers. So now you're in this property. The three other units are paying the rent for you, right? And you're living for free. In another two years, you're able to take out the equity because there will be a little equity, a little five, $10,000 and purchase another do another down payment on another property. So by the time you're a

senior or you're a graduate student, you'll have eight doors paying you X amount of money. And at minimum, in the Philadelphia market at the time, those assets should be worth over $250,000 and you're cash flowing at least $25,000 to $3,000. So after I gave him, it was a longer PowerPoint. I was like, after I do that, what do you think will happen to you by the time you graduate? Everyone was like, I probably won't work. Right. And I was glad in that moment, I brainwashed them. I was like, really, why wouldn't you work? Well, they was like, well, if I can leverage credit to make $3,000 or $5,000, then I'll just do that over and over. I was like, all right, class dismissed. I did a job. Sorry Temple University that everyone's

going to drop out in a few semesters. But I just show them the difference. And I was like, hey, you could still have a job and having this side hustle cash flow coming in and building asset equity. And then I tell them to put in a trust to protect assets because everybody wants to sue you. Hey, you got an extra $10,000. Start putting that into a life insurance policy, that that will grow some safe dividends. So now their mind is just thinking differently about money. And I was like, hey, the job that you guys are going to have,

you can leverage that to 10-nex is even more. And you'll probably retire in five years. So I love that you just kind of, again, for people who have done it a million times, it's like, oh, it's no big deal. So to make it easy to remember, it's monopoly. Or Greenhouse's one red hotel. Really, really simple.

But, you know, you came on. you said, you didn't say, go buy your dream house. You're like, no, go buy a fourplex. That's the three of them are going to pay for the one. And you go through that rinse and repeat and repeat and rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat. It doesn't have to be sexy. It doesn't have to be fun. Now, you're still going to have the headaches of being a property owner. There's always going to be that. That's just the nature of the beast. It is what it is. You're going to have people who ruined stuff. You're going to have those things. There are those hurdles and there's ways to prevent that. There's ways to really fortify it. One of the ways that, you know, when I was purchasing real estate in the very beginning, I refused to rent to renters. It was always, was rent to own. I'm like, listen, if you want to come in, it's a rent to own model.

Therefore, all of my problems with as far as anybody coming in and messing with my properties and breaking anything, they're going to take better care of it. Now, most of them have been there for 13 years, 14 years. They still don't want to buy the property. They're still, I'm going to buy it one day, but they're wage slaves, they're employees. So they're never going to get there. I'm like, we're going to get to a point sooner or later. And I'm like, guys, we're way outside our realm of when you could have bought it, but they still have this idea that this is their home and before the collapse happened, I was lucky enough to be connected to in COVID before the collapse. I was lucky to be connected. People are like, listen, take all of your commercial property,

chuck it. I was like, I'm sorry. What? That's most of my portfolio that you have to chuck it. You have to chuck it. You have to chuck it now. And I was very lucky. I chucked all my commercial property. I got out, took all that road, put it into industrial stuff, survived the hit. And now I got to go back in and buy certain industrial stuff. Because I own a bunch of office complexes. And they're like, You're going to get, oh, it wasn't me. Again, this is something that people don't understand. Herman and I, I'm sure, I'm curious of you, it is not ever what you know. It's who you know.

Who you know. Your network is your net worth. I knew this individual for a very long time. I'm not going to plug his name. He's a gift. You already have read about him. He helped somebody who we may have talked about earlier who created a really cool board game and multiple books. Yet his real estate, well, he called me up.

He was like, listen, I've never told you to do anything. You and I've been friends. We've been connected. you've got to purge all of this now. And I was like, I'm sorry, what? And he kept blowing up my phone. I was like, dude, what's wrong? And he said, you got to get out.

He goes, you're going to get eaten alive. And I was like, dude, you're asking me to wipe out 60% of my wealth. He's like, I'm just, you have to please for the love of gossip. And I was like, oh, I'm going to beat your ass. It just doesn't work. I go, we're going to. This is taking years to get all of these. And I listed everything and wiped it out.

We got very lucky. One of the things that Herman went through was he didn't, again, he didn't say, go buy your primary residence. You should never, you should never do that. Like, hey, I want this primary residence. That's $3 million. It's $300,000. Awesome.

What is the mortgage paying? Cool. It's $2,000, $3,000 a month. Awesome. How can I buy something that's going to pay for that? That's what we talk about with buying an asset. And you can't do that without having a certain level of financial intelligence. So there's a lot of advanced things we're talking about.

We didn't even get into the life insurance stuff. There's so much here where people can just pick your brain because you've done it. And you share so openly. and so loving. If someone wants to find out more and they want to connect you more and they want to do this, how do people, how do they get a hold of you? How do they like, okay, we get it. There's actual help out there. How do they find you? So they can find me on Instagram, Haitian underscore CEO, where I have these conversations every single morning at 6 a.m. East or San of time, I'm dropping a video on some type of knowledge base so that they can do this. A lot of people hit me up,

hey, I want to learn more. I want to sit down with you. I have an academy is called Bellasone Academy. 50 bucks a month. Sign up. We meet every single Wednesday night at 7 p.m. where we would like to be of service. And you can find me on my YouTube channel, Bella Sloan Enterprises. We have long foreign content where we teach for an hour for free. I tell you by, hey, I only charge for my time.

The information I'm going to give it away to you for free, just tap into any one of my platforms. I love to be a service. So if someone comes in, because you've got Haitian CEO and you've got Bella Sloan, if someone is not either fall into that, if someone isn't Haitian, if someone is from a different culture, Are they completely welcome as well? Yes, they're absolutely welcome. That's just my moniker. That's my title.

That's just for me. But black, white, purple, a green, rich, or poor, we like to serve everybody. We have something for everyone. I love it. Thank you so much for coming and sharing these little tidbits and being part of this. I really appreciate your time. Charles, it's an absolutely honor. Great conversation today.

Thank you. Herman didn't theorize about credit. He mastered it, then systematically generated $150,000 in funding using proven stacking methods. Financial literacy isn't optional anymore. Take action, check your credit report, optimize your profile, and start building real well.