EP 491 – The Eight Biggest Funding Myths with Merrill Chandler

NCS 491 | Biggest Funding Myths

NCS 491 | Biggest Funding Myths

 

With so many information being shared out there, it has become harder not to get lost. Dispelling myths in the world of funding is the funding-hacking Merrill Chandler from Credit Sense. Merrill is back to talk about the eight biggest myths when it comes to getting business lines of credit. Scott Carson sat with him again to lead you to become F’able – fundable – that any lender would look at you. Along with the myths, Merrill points the right way to fully optimize and up your credit game. Get into this fun episode and learn how to avoid the most fatal funding mistakes almost every real estate investor make.

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The Eight Biggest Funding Myths with Merrill Chandler

We’re always excited to have one of our amazing friends and rock star sponsors. You may know him from seeing some T-shirts where it says, “Are You “F”able?” The new podcast, Are You “F”able is coming out soon. He is doing an amazing job out there for so many real estate entrepreneurs and a ton of our note investing clients and students. It’s the man of the myth, the funding-hacking Merrill Chandler. What’s going on?

Last time, we killed it with the ten myths. Now, we’re going to knock it out of the park.

For those that are reading for the first time, introduce who you are and what CreditSense is.

At CreditSense aka FundingHackers.com, we help entrepreneurs, real estate investors and business owners shape their personal business borrower profiles to fit lender guidelines, specifically to get approved. I’ve got some great news about us. We got another credit line and a credit card from another bank. I’m teaching everybody what I do because it works for me. We build fundable personal and business credit profiles. This isn’t credit repair. Even if you need some help, we can make sure you get some help on if you have less than perfect credit. What we focus on is building profiles that a lender looks at.

There was not a single thing. I got 24-hour approvals on both a $25,000 business credit card from Wells Fargo, a tier-one bank and a $50,000 business line of credit, both of which only report to my business profile, not to my personal. How many of you do a deal, rehab whatever it is, buy notes, cleared it on your personal credit and your credit score plummets? It’s bad juju. We’re going to be talking about some of that. The idea is to debt shift everything you’re doing on the business and put it on your business profile so you’re not harming your personal profile. We’ll be talking about the goose that lays the golden egg.

You are doing an amazing job out there, helping people optimize and understand the credit game and how to clean up their profile. This is not credit repair. This as a credit optimization. I highly encourage you to go back and read the last couple of episodes that we’ve had Merrill on. There are many classes in themselves. We try to squeeze as much as we can in these episodes. You’ve got a great list here that we’re going to talk about. Our topic is how to avoid the eight most fatal funding mistakes almost every real estate investor makes. Let’s kick this thing off with number eight.

Not Having A Fundable Business Address

The eighth most fatal funding mistake that almost all real estate investors make is not having the right or a fundable business address. If you are using your home address, you are not going to be fundable for unsecured business lines of credit. You might get a business credit card that reports through your personal, which will screw up your personal profile, but you’re not going to get the business lines of credit. Everything we focus on, everything we’re about, are unsecured stated income business lines of credit. I put stated income on my application, both personal and business revenue with no financials, no nothing. It’s approved. It’s $50,000 out of the gate with Wells Fargo. That’s a tier-one bank. That’s not hard money. That’s not anything else. That is Wells Fargo.

My personal and business profile matched what the credit bureaus have and what the business credit bureaus have. If you don’t have the right business address, you’re not going to be fundable. You are going to look and say, “They’re not a real business.” I don’t care if you’re making $1 million out of your home. If you use your personal address, a post office box, there’s a greater fundability. The mailbox is yellow. You might get approved but it’s going to be for lower limits. A post office box is red and your personal address is a red flag. The mailbox, etc. they send at UPS stores, those are yellow flags. A virtual office is a yellow flag. The orange flag is a personal mailbox. The green is a brick and mortar.

If you want more information about that, there are ways around all of this. We call them funding hacks. That’s why you call it FundingHackers.com. We’re not hacking bank software. We’re hacking insider underwriter secrets so that you get approved as I did. This is hot off the press, stated income, business line of credit. It’s $50,000 out of the gate. That’s going to grow to a $100,000 like all the other ones that we teach about. Not having the right business address is going to make you unfundable to one degree or another, depending on the type of address you have. We have a boot camp where we discuss all this and teach you how to stop stepping on these landmines that are blowing up your fundability chances.

When is your next Bootcamp?

It’s going to be on the 24th and 25th of August.

I have an executive suites office, my company’s out in the billboard. It’s valuable for me on my business profile. Those people that have offices that are virtual, they come in but their name is on the sign. If they need a conference room, they can use it as well. That’s helpful.

I’ll tell you a story. One of our funding hackers applied for an unsecured business line of credit. They approved her for $500,000. There’s no documentation in her own words at the boot camp. You’ll hear her tell this story. They came to the office to verify and to have her sign the documents. Wells Fargo is setting up my appointment to come by my office, which I have brick and mortar building. They’re going to come by my office because that’s what determines some of what we get. We had another client who lost approval for $50,000 and got $20,000 because he refused to go. He said, “No. I’ll come to you.” If you can’t go to an office, you’re going to get less money because that’s one of the criteria that allows. There are hacks around all of this. You’ve got to find out how to do it. It is a fatal funding mistake to not have the right business address.

You Can’t Go Full Doc

Let’s talk about number seven.

Number seven is thinking you can’t qualify because you can’t go full doc. I’ll go back to Teresa’s example. She had full documentation. She was willing to give her taxes. When she submitted the application, they pulled her credit and approved her for the $500,000 line. She goes, “Don’t you want any of the documentation you asked for?” They said, “No. Your credit profile is interestingly good. We don’t see things like this very often.” We also had another gentleman who was told a cursory review. We were betting banks and finding the right partnerships to introduce to our students in The Funding Hackers. He said, “We do business lines of credit.” It’s stated income up to $100,000. When they submit an application, they said, “We don’t do stated income.” By knowing the right questions to ask, they were saying, “We need the full doc.” By pushing the envelope, they said, “We just tell everybody to give us full doc because nobody qualifies for stated income. We’re always asking for it.”

In our questions, because I was on the phone with this bank manager, we said, “You’re saying that most people don’t qualify so you just ask for it upfront to save time. Go through the process. Please do it in stated income, no full doc, no financials and no tax returns.” They go, “We’ll do it,” because it is technically available. He got awarded a $30,000 credit line with no doc. Thinking you can’t qualify because you have to go full doc, you never even apply. If you put your personal and business credit profile in the shape that they can approve, they’ll approve it. We had to battle somebody saying, “Your document says it’s a full doc. You’ll do stated income, but you require full doc. I want to try.” They did.

They award it to him because he had a profile that he was able to shape with the things we learned at the boot camp. It was amazing. It is possible, stated income. I’ll find out what they give me on mine because I have a spectacular profile. I can’t wait to see what the prime plus is. A prime plus a half and prime plus two is the range right now of what these credit lines. Write a check. Do a deal. I get to write a check and do a deal. That’s where the credit lines we encourage our real estate investors and note buyers to do. The fatal funding mistake is thinking you’ve got to go full doc. Shape your profile the right way. You don’t need the full doc.

Thinking You Know What Underwriters Are Looking For

That correlates into the number six fatal funding myth.

NCS 491 | Biggest Funding Myths

Biggest Funding Myths: It is a fatal funding mistake to not have the right business address.

 

It’s thinking you know what underwriters are looking for. That’s number six. You have no clue. Until we talked here, you didn’t know that I’m going to get more money if I let them come and have me sign at my office. They’ll Google Earth you and see where you are but when it’s time to sign, they want to come to your office. I can’t wait. I should probably Facebook Live that signing so I could use that as, “Here is Wells Fargo coming to my office to sign off on another $50,000.” That is legit. Manual underwriting is moving more and more to automatic underwriting. You’re going to learn all about that as we talk about it in the boot camp. Underwriters look for what’s called the FICO 40. There are 40 characteristics that they measure on your personal profile and then there’s the underwriting metrics that they put on the business profile. You have to know both of those. I can’t possibly tell you all the things. That’s why we’re going through these. In the boot camp, it’s two full days of craziness. Imagine this level of energy, tech and funding hacks for two full days. It’s sixteen hours’ worth of content.

It’s one of the best things I’ve ever been through that opened my eyes to so many things. It’s well-worth it out there. It’s phenomenal.

It’s $97 to go for the full weekend and you can watch it remotely. That’s what’s awesome. In the privacy of your own underwear or pajamas, you can sit there and watch the entire thing. It’s interactive. It’s not like voyeurs only. We answer every single question that is submitted. We’re going to have a local audience. We’re going to be in Vegas. We only have eight seats left there. Online, you can attend. We answer every single question after every funding hack we discuss. There are dozens and dozens of them. After every hack, we discuss it all. You’ve got to learn what underwriters are looking for. Your mistake, the fatal funding error that you make, is thinking you know what they’re looking for when you don’t. You have no clue but you can know and change all of your funding opportunities as a result.

Having The Wrong Business Type

That takes us to number five. This is a big one. I get this question all the time. I should probably do this instead because people are dropping bombs in themselves right out the gate. What is number five?

Number five is having the wrong business type for funding. Don’t get discouraged because there’s a funding hack for all of these. We just don’t have the time to go through it all in this show. It would be two days long. We’d call it the Funding Hackers Bootcamp. The whole point is having the wrong business type for funding. Lenders do not want to fund your deals. They don’t want to fund your real estate. They want to fund you. The problem is you walk in and go, “I’m a real estate investor.” That’s a prohibited transaction as defined by the small business administration’s funding rules. SBA sets the rules for lenders like all the other ones that the government backs. You have to follow these criteria. Fannie and Freddie go on conforming loans because they conform to these rules. No SBA loan ever gets delivered to a real estate investor. It doesn’t happen. Lenders are not going to do it either. They want to lend to you. You have to personally guarantee it. I’m personally guaranteeing my new $75,000 in business credit. The issue is that you think that they’re going to fund your real estate entity, your real estate business.

The boot camp describes everything about how you can set up a funding entity that then you fund all of your deals. It’s separate from your asset protection. There is no asset protection required. It is an independent entity that funds all of your deals. I’ll show you exactly how lenders fund the genius behind it. We’ve shaped CreditSense exactly the way we tell everybody else to do it because that’s who they fund. They don’t want to fund a business. They want to fund the person behind the business. If you’ve got the wrong business type, there are hacks around this. I’m classified as credit repair. Unless I implement these hacks, they wouldn’t fund me. In real estate and note buying, they’re not going to fund your real estate business. They’re going to fund you as an entrepreneur and business owner and then you get to do your deals. That’s none of their business how you use your money.

You also will give a little hint of the prohibitive names in your entities, things you don’t want to have.

Denied Because Of Application Score

There are red flag words. When you put those on an application, they deny you out of hand. They’re like, “We don’t even have to look at the address. We don’t have to look at anything else.” All we have to see is that you have these names in your name. They’re all easy hacks but you’ve got to know. That goes into what number four is. That’s a big one. Number four is your application for business credit being denied because of the application score. First of all, you don’t even know that there is an application score. FICO has a dedicated score, an algorithm that measures the difference between what is being presented on your application, all the data points. The data points that are in your application versus the data points that are on your personal and business profiles.

If they’re not within 95% of each other, you get a straight denial. 95% to 100%, you get a downgrade in the limits or an increased interest rate. It’s all automatic underwriting. They want the data that they trust, that the credit bureaus have for both personal businesses, to match perfectly what’s on your application. You don’t even know what you’re putting on. You just put this day’s truth on the application. Here’s a perfect example. Before I knew what I was doing, I did applications. If they asked for a middle initial, I put Merrill R. If they asked for a middle name, I’d put Merrill Ray. Sometimes I put Merrill Chandler. There are 29 Merrill Chandlers on the credit bureau databases. I went through and started looking for Merrill Chandlers all over the place.

I have a guy who is executed for killing a prison guard in 1898 who’s by the name of Merrill Chandler. I’ve got his picture and everything. Even in past lifetimes, I’ve been notorious. By name, I’m also an emergency surgeon in Contra Costa County Hospital. You don’t know what they’re looking for. That’s our previous mistake. On this mistake, if your data doesn’t sync up with what the data is on the credit bureaus, you’re hosed. You’re going to get a denial under 95% and a higher interest because you’re a higher risk or more, not 100%. We’ll show you how to fix your data points. This is data.

It like taking the SAT. You get 400 points for getting your names spelled right. You want to make sure your name is spelled right.

They won’t know how to sync you up with your identity.

Chasing Fake Business Credit

That brings us into the top three. Number three is one of the things a lot of people screw up on.

There are fake credit card offers. Number three is chasing fake business credit that destroys your fundability. Fundability means the ability to be fundable. We don’t care about your credit score. The credit score is the third or fourth most important metric used by lenders. The top two to three have nothing to do with the score. They have everything to do with how fundable you are in all these other metrics, the FICO 40 and the lender’s specific guidelines or what they call performance data. American Express, Discover and Capital One have a whole grip of credit card offerings that end up reporting on your personal credit. That means when you use it, thinking you’re doing something good for your business, it changes your utilization, your aging. All of the FICO 40 are effected on your personal. Your personal takes the hit every single time. You could charge it up to 100%. You’re going to have 100% utilization on your personal credit. Your score will plummet and it sucks.

Capital One does not have a business card. I don’t care if it says on the statement or on the card itself, “Business.” It’s BS and I would use stronger language if you come to my boot camp. If it reports to your personal, it is not business credit. It has to report to your business side. You’ve got to be careful. The Discover business card is fake. It’s a fake business. Half American Express’s offerings are a true business and half are fake, meaning they report to your personal. You’ve got to know what to look for. You’ll find out all of this information, who offers what and how, at the boot camp. You’ve got to understand that we call it fake business credit because it destroys your personal profile. When we get to number one, you don’t want to ruin your personal fundability. Make sure whatever you’re applying for is legit. Even though I know Wells Fargo does it, I ask the banker, “This does not report to my personal, correct?” They say it pulls in inquiry from your personal but it does not affect your personal credit profile. There is no reporting unless you’d go late or collections. Make sure whatever business instruments you’re looking for only report to your personal. Find out more at the Funding Hackers Bootcamp.

What is the best website if they want to go ahead and check that out while they’re reading this?

It’s FundingHackers.com. There’s a video there. You can watch about all the things you’re going to learn. $97 is our viewing package. Come and find out. It’s amazing.

Thinking You Are Your Deals

That takes us to number two.

NCS 491 | Biggest Funding Myths

Biggest Funding Myths: Lenders do not want to fund your deals when you have the wrong business type.

 

Number two is related to number five, the wrong type of business for funding. The second greatest funding mistake real estate investors make is thinking you are your deals. You walk into a room, “I’m a real estate investor.” You’re not. You are an entrepreneur who has chosen real estate investing to make your mark in the world and to get out of the W-2 world or to create a legacy for your family. You are not a real estate investor. You are a genius behind the business. How many of you have been doing note buying or real estate investing for less than a year? Two or three years ago, did you think for a second, “I’m a real estate investor?” You didn’t. You are looking for ways in which to create your mark in the world. Let’s say you’ve been doing it for five years. Ten years ago, did you walk into a room at a cocktail party and go, “I’m a real estate investor?” You didn’t. You became a real estate investor five years ago or you started doing real estate investing or note buying five years ago.

Ten years ago, you did not identify with being a note buyer, a real estate investor. That’s going to trip you up. That’s why it’s number two. If you walk into a bank and say, “I’m a note investor,” they’re going to say, “Thank you for applying. There’s the door because we’re not going to give you a dime.” Right now, you’re calling yourself a note investor, how many of you went to note investing from real estate investing? How many have gone to commercial real estate or note buying from single-family or personal? You don’t know you’re going to do an Amazon business two years from now. You don’t know you’re going to be in cold storage facilities. You don’t know you’re going to be buying gold two years from now. Stop identifying with your deals. You are not a real estate investor. You are an entrepreneur or business owner. You are a genius about implementing your way in the world. That’s your magic. Lenders will fund that. You cannot identify with your deals.

It reminds me of a lot of what Aaron Young teaches. You are not the corporation. The corporation is not you.

I use this in the boot camp. The Supreme Court said in the early 2000s, “Corporations and entities are people too.” They are a separate and distinct being. You’ve got to treat it that way. We’ll show you how to have relationships that are extremely profitable with your deal entity. Separate the two and lenders will love it and they’ll fund you.

Killing Your Funding Golden Goose

That takes us to the number one reason. It’s the biggest mistake almost all real estate investors and entrepreneurs make.

You’re killing your funding golden goose and you don’t even know what it is or you don’t even know that you’re killing it. You don’t know how you’re killing it. Your funding golden goose is your personal credit profile. Even for all your business, credit instrument, business loan and business lines of credit, we have a personal relationship with FICO. Jessica and I are going to our third FICO World in sequence this November. It is four days of all of the credit gods, all of the predictive analytic gods, coming and talking to us mere mortals about what underwriting criteria are, what safety mechanisms lenders are using and what new inventions or search algorithms that they’re using to protect lenders. For my clients in Funding Hackers, we have a special thing. There’s a new group out there that is taking the country by storm called Early Warning Systems. It is what lenders use to protect application fraud and identity fraud. When your application score is between 95% and 100%, they send you over to Early Warning System to find out the truth.

What if you knew what they needed and gave them the truth and you had a 100% application score and you get approved because they trust that you’re who you say you are? It’s crazy. The goose that lays golden eggs is your personal credit profile. We were told by our FICO liaison that 80% of all entrepreneurial and small business lending decisions are based on your personal credit profile. The 20%, they ping your business, not for your credit instruments or credit rating. PAYDEX score, that goes to the boot camp. PAYDEX is completely dying in debt. It is not a metric that lenders use. PAYDEX is not a thing. The small business scoring service from FICO, find out more about that. The point is that 20% is finding out what your Dun & Bradstreet data says about your identity and business. What is your SIC code and your NAICS code? Those are codes that designate the type of fundability you are as a business.

When you have real estate investor there, they tell you that you don’t get to get money because that’s a prohibited group entity to lend to. You get knocked out of the park or the running. Your golden goose is your personal profile. If you optimize that personal profile for funding, you’re matching lending criteria and then you take that to a lender like I did and they say, “Your data matches,” we’re going to fund you to the tune of $75,000. Your number one fatal funding error is that you kill your golden goose by going, carrying balances on your personal credit cards, which lowers your score, fundability and ruins your 24-month look back period. There’s more on that at the boot camp. You don’t know you’re killing it because you think, “I used my credit.” There is a way to use your personal credit that’s going to lay golden eggs, a business line of credit and business credit cards, etc. That’s what we’re talking about. Those are the fatal funding mistakes. I’ve given you a super cheap and easy way to find out how to fix all those so you can stop stepping on the landmines that are ruining your funding chances.

It’s big fatal funding missed, flaws, goof-ups that people are doing out there. That’s the biggest thing. I learned so much from Merrill. Go to FundingHacker.com and get registered. Are the replays included for people that are signing up?

Yes. The $97 gets you the one time visit. You get all the materials and the workbooks and everything. If you’re online, you download them all. If you’re live, we provide the materials there in person. For $197, you get access for an entire month to all of our previous boot camps, all the way up for 30 days. You can go back and mine all of the data anytime you want for 30 days. If you go for $29 a month, our subscription, you get every new Funding Hackers Bootcamp for in perpetuity until you cease plus, you get all our Facebook Lives, training and all of our rich content. We have huge amounts of content at Funding Hackers Facebook page. That page is private. You get it for 30 days for $197. You get a $29 a month for as long as you want to keep being a funding hacker and playing the game with us and getting all the new content we do every month.

It’s a great group. I see a lot of people asking questions and getting answered by your staff. Your staff is very alert and attentive to whether it questions after the event or during the event that’s running live on the Saturday and Sunday. They’re very attentive. You started off. Brad comes on. You flip and flop a little bit.

When we’re out of the state, I do both days. When we’re in the state, we’ll switch back and forth.

You’ve got some big stuff going on. You’ve got a podcast coming soon.

Our launch date is September 1st for Are You “F”able Podcast. September 1st is the launch date, final edit, printed, done and ready to order for my book, Are You “F”able or Just “F”ed?.

You’ve got such big stuff coming on. Check their website. You’ve got one in August.

I believe it’s the 24th to 25th. It’s the second to last Saturday of August.

Take the opportunity and get signed up now. If you have any issues, let me know. Every once in a while, there’s a little twig. Let me know. We’re glad that you’re over there, Jessica, Sky or your whole staff over there to get you all signed up.

When you go to Funding Hackers, it will tell you either to call our phone number and talk to Sky. She’s our boot camp support or send an email to Bootcamp@FundingHackers.com because we’re down to the wire on registrations. The final registrations or manual before we do the switch over to the August event.

NCS 491 | Biggest Funding Myths

Biggest Funding Myths: The goose that lays golden eggs is your personal credit profile.

 

Is this going to be your fifth one?

No, this is our eighth. For $197, you’re going to get access to all that for 30 days and $29 a month if you’d like the futures ones.

Merrill, thank you. I appreciate it greatly. Thanks for being here.

I’m so happy to be here. I love this guy. Do what he tells you to do. He is a genius in the residential and commercial notes business. I say to everybody who even says the word notes to Scott. You are reading the right blog. It makes things happen.

The best $197 you can spend is going to be at Merrill’s boot camp to learn how to do that, to grow those lines of credit and build your profiles or protect your profiles. It’s probably the biggest thing initially.

I want you emailing me saying, “I got my $50,000. I got my $75,000.” I hate to say it. It never gets old but it does get repetitive.

Thanks.

Important Links:

About Merrill Chandler

NCS 491 | Biggest Funding MythsMerrill Chandler, CEO and Chief Strategist at CreditSense.com, has been an influential player in the credit restoration industry for over 21 years, and has co-founded numerous successful credit restoration firms around the country, including Lexington Law. Unsatisfied with the results of credit repair alone, Merrill has used his extensive knowledge of credit reporting and credit profiling to single-handedly invent and dominate the credit profile optimization marketplace.

Since 1997, Merrill and his staff of advisors have assisted real estate investors, business owners, entrepreneurs, and savvy consumers nation-wide to create FUNDABLE Tier 1, and even 800+ credit profiles. Today, CreditSense’s credit profile optimization process has no equal, especially for clients who want to leverage their financial reputations towards wealth and prosperity.

Through superior client relations, Merrill and his team have maintained an A+ Better Business Bureau rating for over 21 years.

Merrill is a compelling and knowledgeable keynote speaker and has addressed real estate investment conferences and businesses forums around the country where he has delivered his popular credit-empowerment forum, “Insider Secrets to an 800+ Credit Score.” Adventurous and passionate, he is an extreme sports enthusiast and enjoys traveling all over the world.


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