Need some inspiration?
Well, today we're joined by Nicole Covone, the star CEO of The Credit Clique, and she's gonna reveal how she took control of her life, pivoted careers with purpose, and grew a very large and successful credit repair business in a very short time!
Our most successful credit heroes, the ones that make a great living and change a ton of lives, all have a few things in common... they're all resilient.
They take control of their lives, pivot with purpose, and never settle for anything less than their vision of success.
Nicole Covone is a proud mother of 2, a social media star with over a quarter million followers, and she's a mogul on a mission!
After she co-founded the hip-hop collective, 'Only The Family,' she saw an opportunity to change careers, and now she's the owner and CEO of The Credit Clique, a very successful credit repair business!
She's a true credit hero with a passion for supporting women in business.
She's a fantastic guest, and I know you'll love this interview!
Here’s some of the top highlights from my interview with Nicole.
What was your life like before credit repair?
I was working a nine-to-five job, paycheck to paycheck. Iit was stability because you knew that I had that money coming every two weeks from the job. But it just was never enough. I couldn't be attentive to my kids for certain things, trying to find a babysitter and stuff like that for breaks and different things. It just was super hard being a single mom doing that. So here we are today, and I'm a successful business owner. So, anything is possible.
Most people learn credit repair by fixing their own credit. Was that your story?
Yes, I had a lot of credit issues of my own. As a matter of fact, before I ever started doing credit, I had a friend who was doing credit and had been using your software for years. She would have sales and different flyers and stuff on her page. And I would always see it, and I would support her business. So I would repost the posts and stuff like that. And I would bring her a lot of clients. So I got to the point where she was like, oh, Nikki, I'm gonna start giving you a referral for every client that you give me. I started just racking in on referrals and reminding you I was working a nine-to-five job too. So I'm racking on referrals. And she was like, you know, what, have you ever thought about doing credit yourself? And I'm like, No, and she was like, You should let me show you.
She was charging at the time to teach people how to do credit. And at the time, I didn't have the money like that. But she was like, so what I'll do for you is you can work it off, you can work towards it with clients, and you'll make 50% of whatever you bring in. So I said, okay, that's fine.
I was working as a fraud prevention specialist for a trucking company. And I had a small office inside of a large warehouse. This company is in 15 or 16 states, and I had a small office in there. And the crazy part about it is I lost my job for doing credit.
I got caught doing credit on the clock on my work computer. It had got to the point that I was doing every buddy's credit at my job. I could not make this up, I was doing all the warehouse workers or some of the management. I was printing off my letters and mailing them. I would be so caught up and on point with my work at my nine-to-five job that I would set myself up to be able to work both at the same time. So the day that I got fired for doing credit on the clock, that same week, I made my first $10,000 with this lady in her company.
To go from being fired in that same day, to deciding you're going to launch a credit repair business. I know you have two young kids, and you've got a lot on the line. How did you actually get that going?
I just got dedicated. I just had a pep talk with myself. You know, some people that want to lose weight, they say, Oh, well go, I'm going on a diet on Monday. No, you got to start right then. And there, you got to get dedicated to the point where I had to, it was trial and error for me. I have to learn from my mistakes, I have to mess up a couple of times, I have to go through some people that I needed to go through to understand that you can no longer hang with people that fit your past, you got to hang with people that fit your future.
What's your secret to having so few chargebacks and no negative reviews?
My secret is communicating with the client, making sure that all the clients questions are answered, making sure the client has a clear line of communication to get in contact with you. And you don't want to leave the client with any unanswered questions. So that's very important.
Can you share a memorable success story of one of your credit repair clients?
Yeah, I can even share one about myself. So I had a lot of bad stuff on my credit evictions, credit cards I didn't pay off. And I had got to the point where I knew I had to get myself together because I went to apply for a job. And I got denied the job. Because of my credit, I passed everything but the credit check. And I don't think that people understand the importance of credit, you can't even get a job these days with bad credit, because they're looking at your credit. If you don't pay your bills on time, you're a liability. Why would I want you to come and work for my company, and you don't even care enough about your own personal finances, you're not going to treat our company the right way. You're looked at as a liability, you may one day walk off and quit, you know, so people don't want liabilities around. Everybody wants assets around. So that's kind of my thing.
Afterward, I couldn't get in a place in my name, my car wasn't in my name, I couldn't get a bank account, I was in ChexSystems. I just really just did whatever with my credit and didn't care and didn't realize the importance of it. Because we weren't taught that about credit. So now that I know the importance of it, I talked to my kids about it. My kids know about credit, they speak about credit, the importance of credit. And even the importance of investing in yourself and having your own business is super important.
So, I just tried to lead by example for my team and my kids. And even with the Credit Clique, you can't be a part of the product and have bad credit because we're not hypocrites. We can't be saying you need to fix your credit up. But our credit is in the low three hundreds and we owe 20 people. That's not okay.
And we're all focused on the same thing. We all have a passion to do the same thing. And that's helped people change their lives and get their selves together.
What's working for you in marketing?
I try to set a goal for myself to get one client a day. This has been my goal forever, get one client a day. Some days, I may not get one client a day, but I never give up on promoting. I promote and promote and promote because maybe I don't get a client for two, three days. And then that fourth day, I got five new clients that signed up.
I do pay for ads on my Instagram and Facebook. I will say that what has been driving a lot of clients to me with the algorithm on my page is Reels. The Reels are really been driving people to my page; content is very important. Consistency is very important. Posting every day is very important. People want to see you active, people want to see that the business is serious. You're posting every day, automatic replies to the DM, comment repair or comment this and now you're getting like all of that stuff is vital. Going live on your page, newsletters for the clients, different things that you got going on, join my community, you know what I'm saying? I wouldn't subscribe to me, I'll give you some free letters. You want to reel them in.
It's very important to stay active. If somebody comments, you comment back. You answer all DMs, you answer them properly. So I have a person in place that does all of this for me, I hire somebody to do everything, you know, that's their contribution to the credit clip. So that's that's what I do.
So for social media, I make all of my money on Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. Every dollar that I have comes from the internet or word of mouth. And then, like I do, you can text the number in my bio, and you'll get automatic alerts about sales that we're having. If you stay on the app, you'll see updates in the app.
So I do everything possible that I can to show them, you know that we have it going on here, because it could be 100 of us having a credit repair business, but what's going to separate you from me, what's going to separate me from you? There could be 100 of us in the room. But I got to think of something that's going to take me to the top.
For example, I'm getting ready to come out with right before Christmas gift cards. Gift your family member the gift of financial freedom. You can't lose, you're gifting somebody the best thing that you can ever give them financial freedom.
But I tried to make money all the way around the board with whatever I could. So any affiliate program that you have, I do. The Credit Hero Challenge, the credit monitoring through your affiliate program, and I always just send my links to anybody that I know that does not use Credit Repair Cloud, just to tell them this is way simpler than what you're using because I've looked around at other ones. They just weren't for me.
What are a couple of key strategies that have been most effective for you for disputing items?
Consistency, sending letters on time, making sure you know what happened with this account. What codes to put on there, you know, what reasons to put on there, stuff like that. That's very important. Just knowing what you're talking about, knowing the different rules, reading up on the letters, everything's super self-explanatory.
Even with how you guys break it down from the dropdowns on how to do stuff, if they just take their time with it and go through it. Because you know, once you go through it once, and then you send it out, now you're going to re-import. Once you re-import, and you will see the results. And you see where it's at now. People are like, Okay, this is working.
So I just stay consistent. I tried different letters. If one doesn't work, I'll try a different one. Like, I'll do a warning letter, and then a reinvestigation letter, and I just do different ones. And I've been successful myself. Personally, they wouldn't borrow me a pencil on my credit back in the day. Now, I have a great credit score. So, myself is my own testimony.
I tell my clients everybody is not going to be the same. It's different for every single person. So I'm not gonna lie to you: if you're looking for me to clean your credit in 30 days and everything to be off and you're walking into a mansion, then this is not the place for you.
It takes time. You have to have patience, this is not an overnight process. We're going to stay as consistent as possible and do what we have to do on our end, you have to follow your client duties on your end. And, you know, if you just stay positive, and just stay patient, you will see the result. I'm not going to lie; it probably took me close to a year and four months to completely fix my own personal credit, but I had evictions, repose, and so many collections of hospital bills, and I have no negative remarks on my credit as of today.
What's one piece of advice you'd like to give new entrepreneurs who are listening?
Don't get discouraged. It does not happen overnight. I had one girl that worked for me. She was not getting a lot of clients, but she would be consistent with her posting. And then, just one day, she just started getting clients, so many of them. She was going viral on the internet, she just was bringing in so many clients, and she's one of my agents that works for me now. And I just told her she would be so discouraged. Like I haven't got any clients. I'm posting every day, and you'll get the clients that have come back to you a couple of months later. Hey, I've been watching you every day I've been seeing you post your results. I really want to come and get my credit fix. I'm scared and blah blah blah, but once you tell them like the benefits of being a part of the Credit Clique, how we have a contract, how we give your money back if you're not satisfied, how we guarantee you to see results in 30 to 45 days or we're gonna give you your money back you get what I'm saying different things like that. Then they feel comfortable.
I don't like taking clients that are in between if you kind of don't know if you want to go with me, I don't want you to go with me, I'll tell the client, you know what, I want you to take some time and do some research and make sure that I'm the best fit for you. Because I'm not here to just take your money, I want to help you, but I want you to feel comfortable coming to me.
And that right there, letting the clients know that you care about the way that they feel coming to you saves a lot of chargebacks saves a lot of problems. And makes the client feel comfortable and feel like they can trust you. You've given them a direct line to you, you know, they can call you, they can text you, they know that you're a real person, they know that not just anybody's just working their credit. People want to hear you. They want to know that you are really a real person. And I know that was like that for me personally. So that's kind of my little spiel on that.
Wow, Nicole brought so much energy and passion to this interview! I love it. Make sure you tune into the whole interview here for more motivation and her secrets to success!
I'LL END BY SAYING
If you still need a Credit Repair Cloud account, check it out. It's the software that most Credit Repair businesses in America run on. Sign up here for a Free Trial!
And if you'd like to change lives and grow your Credit Repair business, check out our Credit Hero Challenge!
It's an amazing program, and we've got another challenge starting in a few days, so grab your spot right now at CreditHeroChallenge.com!
So take care, Credit Hero!
And Keep Changing Lives!