Stop Using Personal Credit: Ali Badi’s Playbook for Business Credit and Real Estate Growth

Ali Badi (00:00)
What people, common misconception that people make is, I’m just going to build business credit and not realizing that the business credit stands on top of the personal.

So if your personal is all the way down here, your business credit is going to be all the way at the bottom, but it’s going to take longer to build. But if my personal credit’s up here, guess what? I put my business on here and within six months I can have, at six months, I can have a stellar Dun & Branched Eat paydex score. I can have a stellar Equifax score and can have a stellar ⁓ experience business score

Scott Bursey (02:02)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast, the show dedicated to equipping you with the fuel to scale your real estate portfolio. I’m your host Scott Bursey. And today we’re tearing down the biggest bottleneck to growth. Securing high limit non-recourse funding. We’re talking about moving past small personal loans and building true institutional level business credit. Joining me today is the funding acceleration expert, Ali Badi.

of the score machine. Thank you for joining us today.

Ali Badi (02:37)
Thank you, Scott, for having me today. I’m looking forward to the podcast.

Scott Bursey (02:41)
Absolutely. And we’re talking about the score machine today and how serious investors need to shift their thinking around business credit. It’s not just a tool for emergency cash. It’s an accelerator for portfolio growth. And Ali, for our listeners who might not be familiar with you or the score machine, can you give us a brief overview of your mission and your focus?

Ali Badi (03:07)
So our mission is to take people out of the darkness and bring them into the light. A lot of people don’t realize how to get institutional lending and don’t realize how to get, how to be institutionally ready. So what we did was we created an AI software that actually brings you there with our strategic partners who pull your credit, pull your understanding, get you to where you need to be. Because the biggest recourse that people don’t understand, institutionals lend on the personal credit, even in the business. So what we tried to do is,

Prepare your personal credit to get you lending in your business and then shift your ideas and your knowledge to business where it needs to be when you’re all institutionally prepared.

Scott Bursey (03:49)
Absolutely. Well said. Let’s start with the biggest misunderstanding about business credit that blocks entrepreneurs from assessing capital. Let’s be honest. So the focus is always on minor debt, not demonstrating capacity at scale. Stop treating it like personal credit. It’s an asset acquisition tool, not a safety net. What is the fastest, most ethical

way investors can add tangible depth to their business credit report this week, Ali, if they wanted to.

Ali Badi (04:26)
So, tangibility with adding debt or let’s say we’re going to add funding. Okay, we’re going to add people to get the actual debt that they’re looking for, which is actually getting usable money. And the way that comes in is by first off, looking at you personally. So the bank realizes as a business is young and still doesn’t have the tax returns, doesn’t have anything that it needs to fund on its own two legs, we need to look at the parent.

Think about this as a child when you were 18 years old, you wanted to buy that brand new Camaro. Any,

any souped up hot rod, any souped up car. I don’t care. Male, female, you wanted that car, the Jeep, whatever the case may be. You went to the dealership that day and guess what? You walked in, you’re like, I want to apply. You get denied immediately. Why? Because you have nothing. So guess what you got to do? You got to go home with your tails in between your legs.

Scott Bursey (05:56)
I

Ali Badi (06:11)
Go home to mom and dad and ask mom and dad, hey, can you co-sign for this car? Now what happens? You now have just set up the thing for somebody else to say that you are viable, you’re gonna pay your bill. Well, guess what? You’re doing the same thing with your business. You are the mom or dad of your business. And if you are the mom or dad of your business, you have to get it to stand up on its own legs. Well, how do you do that? Your credit would

Your personal credit report tells the bank if the risk of the business is too high, I will assume the risk. And the way that I assume the risk is by putting my personal credit score up and I personally guarantee the risk. Is that something that everybody wants to do? Absolutely not. But do we have to do it to build up quickly? Yes. If you want to get 25, 50, $100,000 today in your business,

You have to assume that risk. And that’s the key. You have to. Go for it, Scott. I apologize.

Scott Bursey (07:13)
Yeah.

Crucial point, Ali. Just crucial. Vendor lines are only fundamentally sound to the extent of the report the major commercial bureaus have. You know, if it’s not reporting to D &B, Experian, or EquiFax, you’re just paying bills, not building leverage. Couldn’t agree with you more. And on that note, how can an investor move past the 500k funding ceiling and qualify for

Institutional credit.

Ali Badi (07:48)
You have to show that your business makes money. What is told by us by our accountants is the business doesn’t make money. Well, risk assessment. They’re going to ask you for your taxes when they ask you to view your taxes in your business and you say that you make zero, but you’re claiming all these numbers and everything shows in the account, but you’re claiming zero. They’re going to be like, wait, how are you asking for over 500,000? But yet you make no money.

That’s the thing you can, you have to make the business show that it makes money. You have to make the business understand that it makes money to get through the debt ceiling because that’s the way that they’re going to lend you money. That’s the way they’re going to go about it on the business side. Okay. That’s the key. We want to show that we make.

Scott Bursey (08:38)
Absolutely. That’s the enterprise shift. Underwriters look for corporate structure, clean docs, and zero personal guarantees. It’s moving from small purchases to a sophisticated asset-backed strategy. Point well taken. And Ali, many real estate investors blur the line between personal and business expenses. How critical is this separation to achieving high-limit funding?

Ali Badi (09:08)
So what happens is, you know what, must say the truth over here. I’m known for doing the same thing and dabbling in the same thing, but you have to get, you have to clean up your books for bank accounts. For bank accounts is the key. The bank account where the money comes in, the bank account where your expenses go out of, and I mean expenses like ⁓ in this case with a real estate investor where you’re gonna pay your plumber, where you’re gonna pay your carpenter, where you’re gonna play the appliance guy, where you’re gonna pay all the…

All those all those people that’s where that comes out of those your expenses. You have your savings account which is for your taxes and then your last account which could be for miscellaneous but you also have to take a paycheck and that miscellaneous can go in payroll. Some people are a little small so I’m going to say with the smaller one but the bigger guys your fourth account is payroll and guess who’s on the payroll you are.

You have to be on the payroll and Scott

Scott Bursey (10:36)
Absolutely. Yes.

Ali Badi (10:39)
What happens is how do they get caught up in the trap? They get caught up in the trap because they don’t pay themselves a sophisticated, excuse me, not sophisticated, they don’t pay themselves enough money. And that’s the key, pay yourself enough money. If your business is making enough money, pay it.

Scott Bursey (10:57)
It’s the difference between being funded and rejected. Banks demand corporate separation. That is such a great point. That is such a great point. And beyond that credit score, what corporate details like EIN establishment or business address are dealer deal breakers for institutional lenders, Ali?

Ali Badi (11:21)
So no home address, no fake phone numbers, no UPS store, no, what you would call it, what was the name of the other one? UPS, FedEx, Kinko’s, no, any mailbox store that’s in your local area, don’t go get that garbage. Go get yourself an actual regency, any of these other companies that have a place that you can rent out, that you can go in.

all that stuff and show that you have a corporate address. They look at this and an underwriter looks at all this stuff. Now I’m going give you guys a little bit of a dabble of what I used to do before I got into the AI game. Google Maps. Have your business registered on Google. Have reviews. Have people talking about your business. If they’re not talking about your business, you’re not legit. When an underwriter and I literally just had somebody here five minutes ago.

I said, I can’t even Google you to me, you don’t exist. Bingo, the underwriters think in the same way. So all this stuff has to be aligned where you’re looking at that. You want to have a trust pilot account. want to have a, what’s the heck is the name of that other one? Forget about it. I’ll skip over. But you want to have these accounts where your people can see you. have this ability. You want to have a website. You want to have your website that points to that Regency address.

You want to have an online phone. use a company called Quo, Q U O dot com. I don’t even going to drop an affiliate link over here. Take that one. That’s a great company. You can do text messaging, can do a phone number and it goes right on your cell phone. You need these things to show viability. You need it.

Scott Bursey (13:04)
Absolutely. Deal

breakers period. Lenders are looking for businesses that look legitimate. A physical address, dedicated business phone, and a fully established EIN are non-negotiable signals for structure.

And Ali, let me ask you this. What big nugget or advice do you have for our audience here today?

Ali Badi (13:34)
Readiness starts when you’re ready. What happens is, is people don’t, they’re ready at the wrong time. Readiness starts when you’re ready immediately. When you start putting in that I need to, I want to start investing. I want to get to that next level. I want to push to that next level. I want to get to that plop and you’re not ready. You’re never going to start, but when you’re ready, you’re going to start making the investment.

You’re going to start putting yourself into that thing. doesn’t matter how long it takes because now you’re ready. You’re ready. Your mindset is set to it. You’re ready to go and attack the world. You’re ready to go do what needs to be done. And that’s when readiness starts, when you’re ready to actually execute on it. Because what happens if you have personal bad credit? You’re not going to stay involved in fixing the credit because you’re no longer ready. If this is costing me too much money. this is taking time. this is that. I need to get my inquiries down, but I don’t know how to do that.

Now this is the next piece. I don’t have enough money to get started. And now all the roadblocks start happening and instead of jumping over the hurdles, you just stop behind it and you’re no longer ready. You just stop, you pause and that’s it. Be like, kids, and you work in your nine to five.

Scott Bursey (14:45)
Great, great advice. And finally, what is one action item our audience can execute today to immediately improve their funding future?

Ali Badi (14:56)
So I would normally say go on the software. I tell everybody get into the software. The reason that I’m getting into the software is just to view your account and view it in such a way where it actually makes sense.

You want it to make sense to you. You want it to be broken down easily to you. Basically our software is so easy that if you can drive a car, you know how to use the software. Red means stop, green means go. And that’s how we have it. That’s literally how we have it set up. But

On top of that, one thing to do is learn about your credit. Learn about what makes it tick. Software does that, but if you do like, Ali, I don’t want to spend money on the software. I’m not there yet. Fine. Learn about your credit. Credit Karma is not the best place to be. Get out of Credit Karma. Get out of these places. Go to Experian, go to Equifax, go to TransUnion, pull your actual report.

start learning how to read your actual report. After you learn how to read your actual report, then you can start to actually attack the things. Credit Karma is not what everybody should use. The reason that we created our business is because Credit Karma was giving loans, well not loans, they were giving advice to people to go apply and then ruining an inquiry because they didn’t pull from the bureau that they have.

So that’s why we don’t use those things. We utilize the big bureaus. get our information. Free annualcreditreport.com is another good one to get your first credit report for free. All three Tribuero merge. Take a look at that. Get in there. Understand how to read the report. When you read your report and you build your personal, then you can start building your business just as fast.

people, common misconception that people make is, I’m just going to build business credit and not realizing that the business credit stands on top of the personal.

So if your personal is all the way down here, your business credit is going to be all the way at the bottom, but it’s going to take longer to build. But if my personal credit’s up here, guess what? I put my business on here and within six months I can have, at six months, I can have a stellar Dun & Branched Eat paydex score. I can have a stellar Equifax score and can have a stellar ⁓ experience business

And that’s the real hack. Your personal credit is the hack because I can literally show you over here.

In my drawer over here, all business credit cards. All business credit cards. These are all business credit cards that I have. Why? Because that’s what we do. That’s what I do on a daily basis. I pull business, pull personal, I pull everything.

Scott Bursey (18:18)
Ollie, we’ve covered a lot of ground here today and I know people are going to want to tap into your brain. I know that for certain. For the listeners who want to build with you and just to follow your play-by-play journey, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Ali Badi (18:34)
Instagram is MrISellMoney nice and easy. And then the best way to actually get locked in with us is the score machine. So it’s thescormachine.com get locked in with us and just get into the brand. And what happens is we have a community, we have everything with the score machine that comes free of charge when you buy the score machine. So if you spend $197 to get in, you get

access to everything. I’m not a mentor. don’t upsell mentoring, coaching, and any other stuff. No, we give it absolutely away for free because the whole point is for you to be able to fund yourself.

Scott Bursey (19:13)
Absolutely. Thank you for joining us today, Ali, and for sharing those vital insights.

Ali Badi (19:20)
Thanks, Scott.

Scott Bursey (19:21)
And for our listeners, we appreciate you. If you got value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We have more conversations coming up with operators just like Ali. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.