How to Use Secure Cards to Build Credit

Are you an Amazon seller looking to improve or repair your credit score? In this episode, Lyann Nguyen shares her expert strategies, tips, and success stories for building both personal and business credit. From common mistakes to actionable tips you can do today, this is a must-listen for anyone looking to take control of their credit.
 
So why is credit important for Ecommerce entrepreneurs? As Lyann puts it, “dreams cost money.” Building a strong credit score can open up opportunities for funding and investment, allowing us to bring our dreams to life.
 
Whether you’re just starting out or looking to improve and repair your existing credit score, Lyann’s insights are sure to help. Tune in to this episode and start your journey to better credit.

In episode 439 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Lyann discuss:

• 01:20 – Lyann’s Backstory
• 02:50 – How She Got Into The Technology & Finance Space
• 04:25 – “A lot of my clients are E-commerce sellers”
• 04:30 – How Lyann Met Melisa Vong
• 06:40 – Is Credit Important For Entrepreneurs?
• 07:44 – “Dreams Cost Money”
• 09:05 – Will Your Corporation’s Credit Be Based On EIN Or SSN?
• 11:05 – Strategies To Build Your Personal Credit And Business Credit
• 14:50 – Common Credit Mistakes E-commerce Sellers Make
• 17:20 – Success Stories From Lyann’s Followers
• 20:45 – What Are The Different Types Of Credit?
• 29:35 – How Can You Repair Your Credit Score?
• 29:30 – Piggybacking On Someone’s Credit
• 31:11 – Negotiating With Lending Companies In The Amazon World
• 33:35 – Lyann’s 60-Second Tips
• 37:10 – How To Get In Touch With Lyann Nguyen

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Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we’ve got the Credit Ninja who has helped hundreds of e-commerce sellers, celebrities, and other professionals have the best credit that they can. How cool is that? Pretty cool I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Did you know that just because you have a keyword in your listing, that does not mean that you are automatically guaranteed to be searchable or as we say, indexed for that keyword? Well, how can you know what you are indexed for and not? You can actually use Helium 10’s Index Checker to check any keywords you want. For more information, go to h10.me/indexchecker. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS free, unscripted, and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And we’ve got somebody very relevant to the e-commerce world here. First time on the show. Lyann, how’s it going?

Lyann:

It’s going great. Yeah. So nice to meet you at the sellers’ event.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes. Sell and Scale, I think where we first met Melissa introduced us. And don’t me just a little bit about what you do, but I wanna get your, your whole back story. You know, I haven’t asked this before, so like this is your first time in the show, so let’s, let’s get to know you. I just found out a few days ago you actually live in Vegas, right?

Lyann:

That’s right. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Is that where you were born and raised, or?

Lyann:

No, I was born in Vietnam. I’m an immigrant. Moved to California, so the fall of Saigon, which is the biggest war of all the Vietnam War. We immigrated to the US in Irvine. And from there we lived there. And then I went to school there. I was actually pre-med in school and then decided not to go that path.

Bradley Sutton:

Where was this also in Irvine? UC Irvine?

Lyann:

UC Irvine. Yeah. How’d you know?

Bradley Sutton:

That’s an eater>

Lyann:

Isn’t your headquarters in Irvine?

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, our headquarters in Irvine.

Lyann:

That’s awesome.

Bradley Sutton:

I work from home now though, so I don’t have to drive at all from San Diego. I don’t have to drive all the way up to Irvine anymore. But very familiar with that local college. I referee sumo tournaments. They rent out what do you call it? The, no, that’s Long Beach, the pyramid. No, that’s, see, I’m gonna get confused. That’s the pyramid is at Long Beach at Irvine. I’m not sure what you guys got for sports center, but anyways, I’m very familiar with the college. You said you went pre-med, but then what happened?

Lyann:

Yeah, so I decided not to go that path cuz it’s such a tedious career. I was cutting up cadavers those dead people and I couldn’t talk to them and I got so frustrated cuz I’m such a social person. I decided to–

Bradley Sutton:

You could talk to them, but they just won’t talk back to you.

Lyann:

That’s true, that’s true. And I can’t help them anymore cuz they’re kind of dead. So I decided to pack up my bags and travel the world and what I found was money rule the world. Learning about how powerful money and access to capital is really intrigued me. So that journey of self finding and searching brought me back to the United States and I decided to get into the finance world that led me into the technology side of finance. So my background is actually technology after I decided not to go into med. And that technology company is a data technology company. You like the word data, right? Data technology company located in Fountain Valley, which is not too far from Irvine.

Bradley Sutton:

I was born in Fountain Valley Hospital. Believe that or not.

Lyann:

No way. I know what that said. Right next to Miles Square Park. Right?

Bradley Sutton:

Well, I don’t remember cuz I was a little bit young at the time, but I assume so.

Lyann:

Oh my God. So we’re like neighbors growing up. And so it’s a credit technology company that, it was during the.com 1998 and during the.com crash of 2000, that led me out to Las Vegas where I started another tech company that handles money transfers. So debit and credit transactions. So I’m in the technology finance space. That’s how I ended up in Vegas.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting. Interesting. Okay. Now have you ever sold on Amazon yourself?

Lyann:

I have not. I have been buying on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

I think we all buy on Amazon. Yeah.

Lyann:

We all buy on Amazon, but a lot of my clients are e-commerce sellers.

Bradley Sutton:

I was gonna ask like how did you meet, like Melissa who’s been on this podcast before? She’s the one who introduced us. Yeah. How did you meet her then? This

Lyann:

Is a very interesting story. So I’m a, I’m the co-founder of Penthouse Mastermind. Penthouse Mastermind is a mastermind event for all young entrepreneurs. So whether they’re an e-com, a YouTuber, a forex trading or a business entrepreneur. We used to do these events in Las Vegas, Arizona, Beverly Hills, and Miami. It’s all over the place. And Melissa was one of the speakers at my event, but I happened to not be at those ones that she spoke at. But when we finally were speaking at the same event in Arizona, we spoke on different days. So I didn’t meet her, I just heard about her. And then we communicated via Instagram, this is what great thing about social media. And I told her, we were supposed to meet, but I spoke and I left, and you came the next day at my event. So we just bonded in that way. And then finding out that she’s an Amazon product developer, I’m like, that’s really like our audience right there. So we kept asking her back for more speaking engagements. But when I met her, I met her at 10x Growth Con, which is, I don’t know if you know Grant Cardone.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, yes. I mean, I don’t know him personally, but I know who he is.

Lyann:

Yeah. So if you look right here, I’m on an app called Clubhouse, and I’m standing right next to Grant. So we’re speakers on that app. So I’m big influencer on an app right there. So we’re actually speaking on stage right now. And so I met Melissa in Miami at the 10X event. And we just, we just bonded. We just spent time together. And from there she spoke at my other events in Park City, Utah. And anytime there’s a big event like Build Your Empire or any of Dan Fleischmann’s deals, we always spoke at those events. So we’re keynote speakers at these e-commerce entrepreneurial events. That’s how we bonded.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. And then your specialty, because I think it was say like your Instagram handle everything is, they call you the Credit Ninja, is it?

Lyann:

Yeah, the Credit Ninja.

Bradley Sutton:

Credit Ninja. All right. So let’s talk a little bit about that because sometimes I think everybody understands what credit is, and why it’s important in the real world. But then now like, Hey, I need good credit to buy a car, to buy a house, this and that. But now as people transfer from like working for the mankind of jobs, and then now being their own boss and, and running their own e-commerce business, then the need for credit is a little bit different. So first of all, is it as important, more important or what, like somebody who’s becoming their own boss? What kind of credit score? Because I bet you there are people out there like, oh, who cares about credit anymore? Cause now I’m just employed myself.

Lyann:

Yeah. It’s more important. Okay. When you work for somebody else, you still need credit. Cuz if you’re trying to buy a house or a car, which you need to get to work, right? You need to have a roof over your head. You still have to have that personal credit. Now, when you’re building a business, that’s even more important because it’s all about access. Access is my favorite word in the world because it’s access to, number one, knowledge, right? Access to capital. And I’m gonna make a statement that’s gonna really hit a lot of your viewers, dreams cost money. Dreams cost money. When people think about it, I have an idea to sell this stuff, I have an idea to build this, I have a so, so idea. They don’t have the money behind it. So it becomes what’s called a pipe dream.

Lyann:

So having credit is one of the core components that everyone on this podcast has right now, we have one thing that is a lottery ticket. Do you know what that is? It’s just Social Security Number. Everyone that is in the US and in Canada has some type of Social Security Number. And that’s the number that describes your behavior on how you use money. How do you use credit? And that number can either approve you or deny you Sure. For access to capital. That’s as simple as that. If I could say how important it is. So when you’re trying to build a business, you gotta have that foundation to start building it correctly and being really laser focused. Otherwise, you can’t start a business, you can’t scale a business, you can’t sell your business because we all look for exits, right?

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Now I have a question then. This is just something that it might be a dumb question.

Lyann:

Not a dumb question.

Bradley Sutton:

So I think most of us understand that like, hey, we’ve got credit scores, right? And it’s tied to our Social Security Number, like you said. And you know, the higher the number, the more people will be willing to give you a credit card or low-interest car or whatever. Actually, I’ve applied for loans, for example, that Amazon gives or, or lenders give for my businesses, and with Amazon, it’s registered as a business. I think I have a corporation or something. I didn’t handle the details, but yeah, I know I’ve had to give my Social Security Number, but also registered for my corporation is like my EIN number. Now, I’m assuming a company can be based on similar credit, where it’s based on the EIN number? Or it’s always based on the principle owner’s Social Security credit history?

Lyann:

So it’s both. Okay. So when you start out a business, you’re building up your EIN, but EIN doesn’t have anything yet. So the banks are gonna rely on your Social Security Number first. So after you establish some relationship with that Bank of America or Chase or whatnot, then they start what’s called EIN only, which is no personal guarantee. When it’s a personal guarantee, it’s gonna tie to your social. But when you start a business relationship or corporate credit, they want us to see what you are all about. If they can trust you as an individual, after a period of time they start to go, oh, we know who Bradley is, he’s good to go. We’re just gonna put that truck or that box truck or those supply or that line solely on like training wheels. So your training wheels are like your Social Security Number. After a period of time they kick that training wheel out and you are just riding your bike without the training wheel. That’s your EIN or you’re done in Bradstreet. Or it could be your Experian and your Equifax Business Scores. And that’s where you want to go eventually, cuz you can scale bigger.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Yeah. All right. I’m starting my own business. Start of the business on Amazon. I’ve got my corporation set up. I’m my own boss now. What are some strategies on how I can build, or continue to build my personal credit and then start to build my business credit?

Lyann:

That’s a great question. So, with your personal end, what you wanna do is awareness. You wanna be able to track your credit. So the first thing is to get into a subscription credit reporting agency. So experian.com, it’s a paid service. Remember, you’re running a business you need to invest in. The most important thing is your file, your data, right? Your data on credit. So experian.com, you can get all three reports. It’s like $30 a month, but it’s worth it. Remember, it’s a write off for your business because it is for your business. Or you can go to Identity IQ and get a link. I have links there if you guys wanna hit me up, that’s fine. That way you can track all three credit reports. That’s the first step because you wanna see what’s on there. Is your address is correct, is your employment correct?

Lyann:

You wanna clean it all up. This one address, this one name. Don’t have like 10 million names. The more names you have. Now when they pull that, they’re gonna go, why is this person doing aliases? You know, it’s bad. Are they trying to be Jason Bourne one day? And you know, like Frank Abil there next day. So you gotta make sure it’s one name, okay? One address. You don’t have to have your phone number. The less information they have on there, the less mess up they could be. Okay, now you wanna look at all your account. Are there any collections on there? Are there any charge offs? Any late payment? You wanna make sure what does it look like now as I’m starting the business? Then from there you start getting the right credit cards. There’s, you gotta hit the right bank. So hit up Chase first.

Lyann:

Make sure you get all your Chase relationships outta the way cuz they are the most difficult ones. So make sure you sequence these cards right, then you build good history. You gotta make sure the pay on time. Why is this important? When your score is optimized, you can now start getting what’s called business credit cards. So the bank that you’re at, say you’re at Chase or Bank of America, they, you can get business credit cards with those banks, but because your credit score is optimized here, you can start getting business credit card. But here’s the beauty part. Beauty of this is that once this line comes like 20,000 and you start using some of these lines for your Amazon or Walmart automation business, whatever it is, it doesn’t report on your personal. So you can always maintain that optimal 740 plus score because now it’s reported on your business side that debt doesn’t show up. So even though you’re buying supplies or equipment or advertising and all that, it’s on this end. So this was always preserved, you always look optimal. And why I say that is, I just pulled my credit last week. What does that say?

Bradley Sutton:

850. Okay. I’ve never seen that number on mine. I’ll tell you that.

Lyann:

Okay. So this got pulled from my credit union, which is a FICO score. I always look for the FICO score. It’s a perfect credit score. So I’ve been doing this for 31 years from the data side to the consumer side. It’s a long time. I started when I was two years old. No, I’m just kidding. But understanding how the data works and how they report, you are gonna get a leg up above everybody else. So that’s my little tip is starting from the credit, personal credit to the business credit.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Now I think people understand like the most common things that would negatively screw one over when, when they’re talking about their credit. Like, you know defaulting, just not paying, paying late, things like that. But just what are some other things that especially e-commerce sellers, I’m sure you talked to hundreds of them. What are some of the most common things that you’re like make you face palm? Like I can’t believe you did that. Or like, the most common things that you’re trying to help people to, to, to turn around and not do anymore.

Lyann:

Number one problem is missed payments. Because e-commerce entrepreneurs, YouTubers, I’m gonna do air quotes too busy cuz they’re flying around the world. They’re traveling, they’re digital nomads and they for some reason forgot to make that one little payment. And then it goes into 30 days in 60 days, this is gonna drop their score down anywhere from 150 to 200 points. That’s gonna make them unfundable. So having things on automatic pay is gonna be a tip that I’ll give at the very end, but missed payment is a big deal. Second thing is they’ve maxed out their card without realizing that they almost hit the limit that’s gonna drop their score down. And I’ll give you a tip at the very end when we round up our conversation and also you know, really not paying attention to offers. If they have a zero interest offer and they forget that it ends like in a month and then they forgot about it, then they start getting charged on the interest and they’re like, oh, I didn’t even pay attention.

Lyann:

Of course, we’ll round that up on the tips at the very end. The last thing is really having a reserve. Because when you’re an Amazon seller, a Walmart seller, an eBay sale, a Facebook market, I can go on and on cuz I’ve touched all these different clients. They don’t have reserves. They don’t have reserves because for some reason something unexpected happens, for example, their payment processor maybe Stripe or whatever it is, Cloak, PayPal, they shut them down for something where somebody did a refund or they did a chargeback, then now all that a hundred thousand dollars is held in that fund and they can’t pay their credit card because it’s due array cuz they bought such so many products and so many Facebook ad now they’re in default. So those are the most common problems that I’ve seen because these are the client problems that I see in the e-commerce space. Does that answer it?

Bradley Sutton:

Oh yeah. Okay, good. So those are the bad things. Let’s not make it all doom and gloom. Give me a success story. Something good that like, you haven’t seen yourself sold on Amazon, but, but you know, tons of Amazon or e-commerce people, but what’s an example of somebody who did the right things the opposite of what you just said and thus had some pretty good results based on that.

Lyann:

Yeah. So there’s so many success stories that actually over better than all the negative stuff. So it actually, a lot of people who start e-commerce, if they do it right, they get the right credit cards, they get the right scores, they get the right business credit card, then they’re building out their corporate. So I’m gonna give you one of the success stories is that they were able to scale their business. They were able to get Facebook ads because they have so many different credit cards and different relationships and a lot of them are zero interest. So if they were starting it right and they have a year worth of zero interest card and they only have to pay the minimum time is on their side, they now have the opportunity to scale quickly in a period of a year, instead of waiting for four to five years and with different relationships with different banks, now they can be their own bank and say, well I need Facebook ads.

Lyann:

I’m gonna grab it from this bank. I need to buy supplies. I can go to and get Chase. And that’s gonna be five times points and then on and on. And then they’re able to hire VAs. They’re able to get software like Helium 10 or they’re able to get convert kit that has the way to manage their emails or they can bring in people to do their graphics for their supplies. I mean like this they can buy thank you cards. Coupon cards graphics for their bottle. These are my products that Melissa is gonna be helping me put on Amazon. So it’s not like I haven’t had anything on Amazon. It’s a matter of yet. Okay. So those kind of things are all funded by a credit card, business credit cards, and then you have purchase protection.

Lyann:

So if anything goes wrong, you can call your bank and say, I’m not happy with that product. I bought that inventory. I’d like to be able to deal with it and have that credited and if you can contact them so you have all these insurances and all these points that come out of it. And instead of using money to travel, because a lot of these, they would have to go to China, well they could use the points to pay for their trip to go back to China and book a hotel. And it’s all because they use credit cards instead of cash, a wire or debit card because the side benefit outweighs just using a debit card or cash. So yeah, I mean we’ve had five figure owners go up to eight figure or nine figure because they have access to capital cuz they can scale at such a faster rate. And then they have cash flow through all these different credit cards, these lines of credit and so forth. So all in all, growth is there, access is there, and then being able to pull the trigger if they need a software or if they need a solution, they’re not held back by making that decision. I think that would be my success story for these sellers.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All right. Cool. Now I’m just getting started and there’s credit cards I know, but there’s lines of credit. Like what are all the different types of credit? Because you know, that C word is not just some people just think it’s credit cards. Some people just think it’s getting a loan from the bank. But, but what are, what are all the different kinds of credit that people should be taking advantage of when they’re starting their own businesses?

Lyann:

So first we have the revolving credit, which is your credit cards. You get a credit card by applying, you put in your information, you put in how much you make, and also your credit score would be computed. So you get a credit card and I could just show you visually, but it could be any of these credit cards, right? I have a whole book. There’s a hundred cards in here. Okay. I owe nothing

Bradley Sutton:

A hundred. Good grief.

Lyann:

I collect cards for a living but I owe zero on them. So when you get these credit card, each one of them will have an offer. You might have to spend 3000 and you get x amount of points, right? So those credit cards you could use, especially in the business credit cards, you can use it for all your businesses. Then when you build a relationship with these banks, they offer you what’s called a line of credit for your business. So it might be a purpose loan. So they might offer you $20,000 to put in your business to buy inventory or to hire staff or so forth. And those come with a fixed amount that you pay every month. So if you get a $35,000 loan, you may have to pay $800 or $900 a month.

Lyann:

And you have to ask them if I prepay, earliest there any penalty. Cuz you need to ask those questions. What have you opened your Walmart store and you did a killer month or two months and you are able to pay this down? Well you should have the option so you don’t have to pay these fees and early termination or whatever it is, early prepayment. So that’s another line. And another thing is these banks also give you equipment loans or American Express, what’s called vendor accounts. So when you have a good relationship with American Express, they give you all these different products and services. The key thing is calling them every month and finding out as a business relationship with you. I already used my credit cards, you gave me a line of credit. Do you have any vendor accounts there that I could use to buy all of my supplies or products that I wanna test? And they would say, well fill out this form and if they’re an approved vendor, you get $50,000 that you could just build directly and we’ll pay them directly and you could just pay us. And so there’s so many different products out there, you just have to build that relationship with the bank to find out what unique product it is. So it’s all relationship based that’s my little tip for everyone. Is that answered?

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now let’s say it is what it is. A lot of us maybe haven’t had the best of credit. Yeah. And we want to turn that around. You know, our, our credit, our personal credit, we’re talking about like, like our and so some of these things we can’t get 30 credit cards cuz we get denied all the time. Yeah. Cuz we got something like I got something on mind. Like I unfortunately got in with a wrong crowd of people and then everything for the company got on some of my credit cards and I was the one on the hook and had to default on them and everything. And so I didn’t have to do bankruptcy or anything. But that stuff has been on my record for a while. You know, other people just maybe had a couple of late payments here or there. And then like you said their score went down 150 points or something. What are some ways that somebody can start building that score back up?

Lyann:

Well Bradley, just understand that you are not the only one. A lot of people are going through that. Whether it’s because of their business, the health, maybe their job got eliminated. So it’s never too late to start. So again, finding out what your credit score is the first step. And if for those people that say, well I can’t afford the $30 a month right now cuz I just barely am making, it’s okay, go to Credit Karma. It’s a free app. At least it doesn’t give you the accurate score because it gives you a vantage score. But you can actually see how many collections are on there. You can see how many late payment, it’s a free app so you can log in and find out and then you have to come up with a game plan.

Lyann:

Okay? First of all, contact these different collectors and find out if there’s a way that you can negotiate that down. But don’t call them unless you have a little bit of money. Other than that you can start disputing it. There’s different ways to dispute on these forms. You can contact the bureaus and actually dispute and let them know that you’re unsure about this or you don’t recognize it. Because how many people forget what they eat last week. If I asked you right now, what did you eat last week? You’d be like, I don’t remember. Well there’s so many credit cards and so many things. So the actually truth is that I don’t recall or I don’t recognize this or this is not me. And then force the bureaus to find out if it’s you or not. Because then it’s on them to figure it out and it’s a 50% chance that they’ll come back and say, oh, we didn’t find anything on it.

Lyann:

And then they delete it. But you have to be diligent on this because the more that you do this, things will start to slowly get off. If you do nothing about this, the score will either stay the same or get worse because you let it fester. Okay. So that’s my little tip for someone is get a free report just, or you can go to annual credit report. You get a free report from the bureaus and push put the box that says I got denied, which is kind of true. You’re not lying. They will send you a report, you’ll see the whole breakdown of all of them and then contact each of the bureaus. I mean, you don’t have any money right now, so you might as well have the time to contact them. And the more things that falls off now your score would get a little bit better. And then the second tip is go get a secure card. I know it’s probably gonna cost you a couple of hundred dollars, but you’re building trust with the bureau again and $200-$300 is nothing to pay.

Bradley Sutton:

Secure Card means that I have to pay up front for it.

Lyann:

So you can go to like, Discover has it you can go any of the major bank, bank of America has it. US Bank has it. Citibank has it go in there and say, I’d like to open a Secure Card so that I can build my credit again. You put two or $300 if you wanna ball out and put a thousand, that’s great cuz then you have a bigger limit. The cool part is you never lose that money. That is money that is secured and they’re building a trust with you over six months. If you have really good payment history, keep those. If you buy it like a pack of gum, pay it off right away. Keep that really low and now it triggers the algorithm. Now you’re gonna have stacking on their positive data and all that bad stuff. The late payment, now it’s gonna be in the background.

Lyann:

So over time those late payments will not affect you as much when you stack on some good stuff. It’s like putting makeup on. If I didn’t have makeup on, you’d probably see my little freckles and all that. Well those freckles are the late payments or the little scars or the little imperfections. It’s putting makeup on your credit report by doing these Secure Cards and showing the system that you are actually having good payment behavior. That’s, that’s the best tip I can have. And over time, when your score gets a little bit better, you can now start applying for those cards. And even if they give you a $500 limit, it doesn’t matter still, those will actually stack on it. Another tip is adding, well, we’re gonna do the tips at the end. So we’re gonna save that. I’m gonna give you some tips at the end. I just want to give you everything.

Bradley Sutton:

A little bit off the wall question. Yeah. go for it. Something I did. And okay, so like I said, I had some credit issues. And so like, I couldn’t even, I still don’t think I qualify for brand new credit cards. Like I’ve tried. I can get caught. Like I don’t have terrible, terrible credit. You know, I’ve bought cars and stuff like that. But for credit cards I would always get denied. So my dad has like, excellent credit. So like I would get him a credit card and then I would put myself as an authorized user. Usually, it would ask my Social Security Number too. Now I know the principal beneficiary or the negative side of it is my dad, like for that credit card cuz it’s under his name and his social. But me as a sub-user if they did ask my social whatever the activity is on that card, whether it’s me buying things or it’s my dad. Yeah. Does that help me build my personal credit back as well? Or it’s only affecting, my dad’s credit?

Lyann:

No, it’s gonna help you. And here’s the key part. If he has cards already in his own name, that’s more effective than opening a new one. Why? Because those cards would be older. So if dad had a Chase card, for example, that was 15 years old and he has great history on it, he adds Brad on there as an authorized user and make sure you call the bank to put the social on there. Okay. So it’s solid. You don’t have to have the card tell dad don’t give me a card at all. I don’t need the freaking card. Yeah. And that history now it’s called mirroring, it’s gonna piggyback on his card. Your data is gonna float from him to you. Your data never goes to him because it’s always one direction. It’s like donating blood. If I donate it blood to you and it’s really good blood, I don’t get the blood back.

Lyann:

You get my good blood. Do you see how it goes? I have to tell these stories so people understand. You don’t need the card and you still got the benefit. It’s called piggybacking on someone’s credit. Make sure you are with someone like your family or someone that you trust. And that dad doesn’t miss any payment because if dad miss a payment because he’s out in Mexico, wherever partying, you will get ding too because now that one month or two month of late goes onto you. See how it goes? That’s a trick though.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting. Alright. I learned something. I was doing the first half, I was like, I know it get credit, I wish I would’ve known that a couple of years ago.

Lyann:

There’s a little tweak to it. It’s like software. You mean someone can download a software, but if they don’t know the little, little nuances Then how they’re gonna know how to really optimize, right?

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Good. Good. All right. Now in the Amazon world, especially a lot of people, once they start get they get going. They, they qualify for, for different loans and things like that. Lines of credit. Because what a lot of these lending companies in the Amazon world they can actually connect to like your Amazon account and they could actually see like, oh yeah, this guy’s doing like $50,000 a month, et cetera. But whatever the case is, they might start getting offers or maybe I’m trying to seek out a line of credit or a loan, and all right, this company, this bank gives me an offer like, all right, hey, we’re going to this, this percentage rate and this is the time you have to pay it off. Do I need to accept pretty much whatever they offer? That’s it. Or do you think there’s wiggle room? And then if there is wiggle room, how do I negotiate to try and get some better rates?

Lyann:

Yeah. So what you wanna do is take down their information and then call them and tell them, I see that you’re offering this and this and this. The other company is offering me a better rate. Would you match it? Or I can go to the other company, always use one bank against another. It’s the only time I make the statement, it’s the only time that encourage polygamy in the banking world. You gotta have a lot of bank, and the reason for that is that you can always use one bank against the other.

Bradley Sutton:

Sister wives.

Lyann:

Sister wives. I like that. I like that. For sure.

Bradley Sutton:

Sister banks I guess you could say.

Lyann:

Yeah. I mean, interesting. It’s very competitive world and especially the statement that you made is they see what your flow is. They see how much volume you’re bringing in. So you’re like, you know how good my numbers are.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah.

Lyann:

Do you want my business or it’s okay, I can go and compete. They want your business. So they’re gonna go, okay, well we’re, we’re, we’re charging 9%. We’ll we’ll make it seven. Would that be good? Okay, let me think. Let me call the other bank. Or do you want me to not call the other bank? You gotta be a really walking negotiator every time because it is your business. The lower you can get those rates, the more that you have cash flow. It’s all about cash flow. And it all boils down to access to capital. It all boils down to, you need to have time on your side because these payments come so fast. If you have time on your side to flip it, that’s when you’re able to make money.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Very interesting. All right. Yeah. Let’s do some maybe rapid fire. So some 60-second tips here. Atleast one I need, but let’s see if you can do some multiple ones and what’s some quick hitting strategies that people or our e-commerce listeners out there.

Lyann:

Let’s do it. Okay. Number one, you want me to start? We got 60-second tip. First, we talked about keeping track of your three scores. Get cr experian.com or Identity iq. And if you have zero money and you’re broke as no joke, go to Credit Karma, get that account, put it on your phone, monitor that and find out what needs to be done. Number two, fix all your personal information, your name, your address, your employment, your phone number. Clean it up till you have one of each. Don’t have a whole bunch of stuff that would actually help clear a lot of bad data.

Bradley Sutton:

Wait. Hold on. Yeah, on on number two. Where do I go to do that again? I know you mentioned it earlier, but I forgot to write it down myself.

Lyann:

No problem. You can go to experian.com or Identity IQ and the part where it says personal information, you can dispute a lot of that stuff. Or on Credit Karma, you’ll see all that information and then you’ll see like their name, address. The report doesn’t look right, you can contact the bureaus. You can just Google phone number.

Bradley Sutton:

So directly from like these experian.com and these.

Lyann:

So you call them and then they’re gonna say, can you can you send me a get, make sure you get your utility bill because or your bank statement that has your name and your address, you would have to send that to them and a driver license to make sure that that’s your one address. You are not living in 10 different places. That’s gonna actually bump your score anywhere from 20 points to 50 points. Just that one move because it’s data. Number three, spreadsheets get to love spreadsheets and everyone has access to free spreadsheet. It’s called Google. You can set up a Google email and in there they have Excel spread, it’s called Google Sheets, which is Excel. You can create Google Sheets on there. And I want you to put in there the name of the card or the loan, the due date, the reporting date.

Lyann:

That’s the date that re reports to the bureau. That’s really important to know that date. The limit of that credit card or that loan, the balance, how much do you owe on it? What is the monthly payment? And then the last section you wanna put notes. If there was an offer of I gotta hit $2,000 to get $50,000 points and the due date is gonna be six months from that date, that’s a drop debt date. And if you wanna get those benefits of those points, you gotta hit those dates. All the payment. Make sure you pay your payments on time, set it up call, you can log into your account and say, every month on the due date, I wanna take it out from this account. It’s automatic. And make sure the first few months, make sure that it works. So that way the banks talk to your bank. If you miss a payment, you’re gonna drop your score. If you are on time all the time, your score will go up to the 850. Okay? The last one is keep relationships with the bank. Contact them. Bid one bank against the next. Learn how to get notes. Take your notes down and talk to them. Cuz if you negotiate a really good rate, that’s more money that you’re saving to put back into your e-commerce business. 60 seconds. I’m done.

Bradley Sutton:

I love It. Hit it. All right. This is awesome. Now I’m sure we’ve just, you know. Scratched the surface here of, of all that can be talked about and I ask all my questions, but maybe there’s some customers or some listeners out there who have other questions. So how can they find you on the interwebs if they’d like to reach out.

Lyann:

Yeah. So you can go to lyannnguyen.com, which is my name. So it’s Lyann, it’s my first name. Last name is Nguyen. Or just follow me on Instagram. It would be @ninjalyann. I used to have Credit Ninja, but you know how Instagram is, they’re always hackers and stuff. So that’s my new Instagram. But follow me there for tips and DM me the word “list” on Instagram. And you’ll be part of my newsletter. And I’ll keep you posted on all the stuff relating to credit, e-commerce, YouTubeing, all that stuff that’s tied into credit and finance.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, Lyann, thank you so much for your time on this podcast. Definitely wanna reach out to you next year and I’m gonna give you an update on all that I’ve implemented from, from what you’ve what you’ve taught. And I know people will be reaching out to you as well because this is very important stuff. So appreciate your time.

Lyann:

Thank you so much. And I will see you again. Maybe in California, cuz I’m in San Diego a lot.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, let me know and then we’ll get some coffee or something.

Lyann:

All right. Thank you.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, we’ll see you.