Stop Using Your Own Money: How Business Credit Can Fund Your Growth

Hannibal Collins (00:00)
everyday redundant administrative task. You need to be doing the things that grow and scale your business, making the decisions, the high impact, the high value task. so she had me hire a virtual assistant. She was so generous. some people just tell you to get one. When I couldn’t figure it out, she gave me her very own virtual assistant until I can hire my own. So she was very unselfish. when I did that my business transformed because I didn’t have to do the all the phone calls, the emails, the

Quentin (00:18)
Yeah.

Hannibal Collins (00:28)
I didn’t have to mail the letters, lick the envelopes, all this type of stuff—

Quentin (02:04)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I am excited to be here today. I have another fantastic guest. And listen, the name of the company is Forum. And this gentleman specialized in Credit funding, also credit repair. He’s a keynote speaker at conferences.

Hannibal Collins (02:11)
Yes. Yes.

Quentin (02:27)
And so I’m so excited, has a non-profit. So this brother is all about servitude as well. So

Hannibal Collins (02:31)
Yes.

Quentin (02:32)
I cannot wait for us to peek through the lens of Mr. Hannibal Collins. Mr. Hannibal, how are you doing today, sir? Absolutely, man. I’m so glad you’re here with us, sir. And listen, Hannibal, I’m the type. I like to dive right in. So I would love for you, man, to tell the people what’s your main focus these days.

Hannibal Collins (02:39)
I’m doing great. I’m happy to be here. Absolutely.

Quentin (02:52)
And then if you don’t mind, give us a little bit of a origin story, kinda how you got to the space where you’re at.

Hannibal Collins (02:57)
Perfect. So my main focus is to help entrepreneurs get the capital to grow and scale their businesses, to hire others to invest in their communities, things like that. I also want to teach kids chess and financial literacy. So I did start a nonprofit to do that, to have that initiative. So I help people improve their credit if they don’t have a great credit profile. If they do have a great credit profile, I help them get travel awards and perks for the amount of spend that they spend anyway, or I help them get money from the bank to invest. so my origin story. initially I started with not great credit. I had a five hundred credit score. I got rejected for eight different apartments in New York City. that was like really, really tough. The only place that took me was next to a funeral home in a rough neighborhood, and I had to pay five months of rent to move in. And that was about a fifth of my income. And that was a very— that was a wake-up call to me that bad credit is costly. So I had to learn consumer laws to fix my credit. I sent in disputes. And back then it took about four rounds. Each round was 30 days back then. Now rounds of disputes are 45 days, so it’s a little longer. But I fixed my credit in four months. I took it from a 500 to a 740. Then I helped some co-workers with it. I cried at work. I helped some friend family members with it. And then I started a business with it. the business was not thriving initially, like most businesses don’t, because I was doing it all myself. when I hired a mentor, my mentor taught me how to delegate, how to outsource—

Quentin (04:16)
Yeah.

Hannibal Collins (04:20)
How to bring people in, have teams and systems. And that transformed my business. the second I hired a mentor, that very year I was making like 500 in January, 1300 in February, 1500 in in March. And I live in New York City. You cannot, you know, handle your cost of living with 1500 a month. when I hired my mentor, it tripled after that. So I made 3,900, which is you know, 4,000 almost triple, making 1500. Then the next month it went to 9,000. So it tripled and then it doubled. Because I had a mentor that told me the things that I didn’t know. essentially she said to me, Hannibal, you’re great at this stuff. You understand this, you present it well. but why are you doing it? I didn’t know why she asked me that question, right? It went over my head. I thought maybe literally like, Well, I’m, you know, I want to help people, things like that. She’s like, This is all great, but why are you doing it? She had to ask me about five different times. and then she had to spell it out for me. You shouldn’t be doing the menial thing.

Quentin (04:58)
Mm.

Hannibal Collins (05:14)
everyday redundant administrative task. You need to be doing the things that grow and scale your business, making the decisions, the high impact, the high value task. so she had me hire a virtual assistant. She was so generous. some people just tell you to get one. When I couldn’t figure it out, she gave me her very own virtual assistant until I can hire my own. So she was very unselfish. when I did that my business transformed because I didn’t have to do the all the phone calls, the emails, the

Quentin (05:32)
Yeah.

Hannibal Collins (05:42)
I didn’t have to mail the letters, lick the envelopes, all this type of— that you have to do in your business so I can focus on doing the things that make an impact. once I did that, I had another mentor subsequently and he said that he doesn’t do anything that’s not a five hundred dollar an hour task or more. It has to be a high value task. Anything you can hire someone else to do for twenty dollars or less, you should do that. I’ll give it aside to be like surface level, more for your everyday person. I hire a house cleaner, not because I’m rich or anything like that. if you hire a house cleaner, it can be fifteen, twenty, thirty dollars an hour. But me s— me getting three hours of having my house clean, I can say I’m gonna save ninety dollars. But did I save ninety dollars or did I cost myself my value of what I give? If I’m teaching someone business credit and and they sign up and and I take an hour to consult them and they sign up for a thousand dollars or for a tier that’s like three thousand to five thousand dollars did I save ninety dollars or did I cost myself a lot if they sign up for credit repair and they enroll for four hundred dollars essentially did I save ninety dollars for three hours or did I cost myself twelve hundred with my specialized skill set? So you need to focus on that. So having a mentor help me systematize everything, delegate things, get my time back, which is the most important thing possible. It’s it’s things that you don’t have to worry about. If you’re a business owner, you have to think to yourself if someone has an issue with, you know, Rihanna’s line, Fenty, do they call Rihanna or do they call the teams in place? So you need to have— you need to delegate, you need to outsource, you need to have systems. Whenever I go to teach at conferences or to investment communities or at schools, people are still getting their credit repaired. When I’m away on vacation or anything I need to do, people are still getting business credit and funding without system because things work without you when you have a team. So that’s essentially how I started. I started humble, nimble, I had to learn all the consumer laws to fix everything. once I did that, essentially I was able to grow and expand and have a team so that things work, you know, more systemat— systematically, pretty much.

Quentin (08:34)
Yes, sir. Man, Hannibal, thank you. Man, thank you. You just dropped gems, major gems in like five to six minutes. So thank you, man. Thank you, man. I appreciate you sharing where you are, kind of how you got started. And I do, I mean, I might ask you a question. You may even give me a redundant answer, but I may ask you a question in a minute because I want to get into some operational stuff. But before I do that, I kind of want to get into some, like actually kind of a little fist— a philosophical if I get that word out.

Hannibal Collins (08:38)
Thank you. I learned that from it. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Quentin (09:04)
Philosophical question, man. So I often say on the podcast that destiny has no wasted moments, right? Meaning as we go through life, we’re building momentum, right? Like and we’re strange— changing our strategies. We’re learning from our success. We’re learning from our failures. So I would love to know, man, in your journey, your business journey, what are some things you learned about yourself? What has this journey kind of revealed to you about you? Has it been disciplined, being humble? Like what are some things that learned that made you learn about you, man?

Hannibal Collins (09:11)
Love— I love that. So you have to always be a student, and I’m always willing to be a student. What I would advise to anybody, I spend an hour a day learning things that pertain to where I’m trying to go. So it could be about investment, credit, finance, tax advantages, real estate, tax liens. I’m always trying to learn something, even in things that I’ve been in for a long time. I’ve been in real estate and credit for a really long time. In 2011, I was a realtor. Then I started managing luxury buildings downtown Brooklyn. Then I was an acquisition manager for a real estate investment company and we bought about 75 properties in Bed-Stuy. So I’ve been in these fields, but if I go to a conference, I’m gonna act like I know nothing at all. because it’ll be that one little niche nugget that changes everything, that transforms everything. So if you can be humble enough to not act like you know it all, you can always learn something. So if you’re always learning that compounds, so I— I definitely implore people to do that. And that’s what I learned about myself. I take a lot of joy and pride in learning, having different experiences, sharing different perspectives, being around people that are like-minded, that you can definitely go to the next level with. So yeah. And I— I’m sorry, giving that too, because if you— to whom much is given, much is expected. So if you are the beneficiary of people pouring into you, you should definitely want to pay that forward and empower other people.

Quentin (11:12)
Love it man. Love it, man. Now I know— Absolutely. Hannibal, don’t come dropping Bible on me, man. Don’t don’t come no Bible, because you you’re gonna get me started. But no, I I love it. That’s you too. Home much is given, much is expected. So I— I’ll give you another one of my one of my favorite Bible quotes. Proverbs 11:25. It says, When you refresh others, you in return will be refreshed. And so that’s why I believe in servitude. I believe much is given, much is expected, because if you do it the right way, it it it increases the economy.

Hannibal Collins (11:27)
Thanks. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Quentin (11:54)
That and it just keeps going back and forth. You refresh somebody, you in return gonna be refreshed. So I love it, man. So I— I mean I know you put you put a VA in place that was big, even housekeeping. And I I I’m I’m I’m I’m with you getting your time back, that’s big. and this may be you may give me a redundant answer, but I’m still gonna ask. What’s one operational thing you put in place the last two years that have made the biggest difference in how you run your business?

Hannibal Collins (11:55)
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. Hmm. so I am again, all these concepts that I benefit from, I haven’t made these things up. I just learned it and I adopted and I implemented, right? because my my initial mentors have taught me to do systems, I just refined it and implemented and kept doing it concurrently. So I use SOP, standard operating procedures, and I do that multiple ways on multiple layers, in different— just essentially different ways. So I’ll do it in a diagram way. I’ll also record my screen. I’ll also audibly say stuff. So if you have something called Otter.ai, it’ll take everything that you say and it’ll transcribe and it’ll make a video. So that’s a audible word written out SOP. Then I always also use something called scribehow.com. Like scribehow.com. They actually— it takes your— you press a button and everything that you do, everything you click, it’ll make diagrams.

Quentin (13:10)
Yeah. Yeah.

Hannibal Collins (13:18)
And it makes a SOP out of what you do every day. So I do that. everything I’m doing. you can use this internally and externally client-facing. So I have client-facing SOPs for like how to enroll and things like that. But then I have internal ones to tell my team, hey, this is how you do billing, this is how you do support, this is how you dispute, this is how you do that, this is how you process that. So I use SOPs with scribe how, but then I also use what most people use, which is Loom, L-O-O-M. When you screen record your screen and you say, Hey, I’m doing this. This is why I’m doing this. This is the intention behind it. I use all those systems to document over and over again, and I make that redundant. At this point, I have like 800 videos in the spreadsheet of how do you do billing, support, customer service, disputing, anything that you that you need to do, anything that I used to do, I have documented how I do it, how I expect it to be done, and then I delegate it to my team. And further than that, when they do the task every day I have them document it. So I have so much redundancy of how you do stuff. It’s just the way like you in McDonald’s, any McDonald’s you go to, it’s gonna be the same formula. you can plug in any 17-year-old and they’ll drop the fries, squirt the ketchup, two pickles, onions, things like that. They know exactly what to do. The same with Target. So you need to have SOPs. when you have that, it can be more consistent. When you step away, things can still get done. so those are some of the things I definitely implemented. and they give me time freedom and location freedom when I’m able to— yeah. Also you have to— mindset wise, you have to trust your team and empower your team. that’s a harness to a lot of business owners. They feel like they’re the only one that cares enough and knows enough. I don’t— I think that’s a limiting belief. and you should be hiring people that know more than you are more skilled than you. Actually, the reason my business transformed, I told you guys about guys about my first VA that gave me my time back, but then my second mentor, he challenged me more than just having a VA. He said, You need an executive assistant, someone like very skilled that you’re paying well. and he got on me for a long time. First, he was nice about it. So he said, Hannibal, if you do this, if you hire an executive assistant, I will pay for like $10,000 worth of podcast equipment, right? So that was him incentivizing me to do what I needed to do. I didn’t do it. I procrastinated. I had fear, right? I didn’t— I have a business. I don’t get paid every Friday. I only get paid when people sign up for my services. So I’m like, how am I paying someone full time when I only get paid when someone signs up for my services? So I didn’t do it. Ten months later, he he he reaches out to me and he says, I told you 10 months ago, two weeks and five hours to hire an executive assistant. Did you hire an executive assistant? And I’m like, no, what happened was— so that’s him holding me accountable. in retrospect, I know why he was either so nice about it or so holding me accountable about it is because if he can refer a bunch of business to me, he needs to know I can handle that capacity. If I’m doing everything myself, I cannot handle that capacity.

Quentin (16:51)
Yeah.

Hannibal Collins (17:08)
Now, fast forward when I hired that executive assistant, want to transform my business even more. I got way more of my time back. And there are things that you’re so good at, and there’s things that you’re not so good at. I’m the visionary, things like that. I’m not the most organized. I’m gonna be honest with you. I’m not, it’s not my skill set, it’s not my ministry. But when I hired that executive assistant, he set up some spreadsheets and systems and funnels and things like that. There were people that didn’t pay me for eight months that I had no idea.

Quentin (17:36)
Yeah.

Hannibal Collins (17:36)
Because I’m in the— I’m in the weeds of the business and not able to, you know, look down at a— a bird’s eye view on the business and things like that. So when you hire those things, they’re gonna augment your strengths and weaknesses. so those are things I implemented. they took my business to another level. So—

Quentin (17:40)
Yeah. Man, again, you dropping gem, sir. Thank you, man. Thank you so much for sharing. Hannibal, what’s next for you, man? What’s the next real goal? What are you looking to solve at scale next?

Hannibal Collins (18:02)
So I love helping entrepreneurs serve that challenge and investors, entrepreneurs and investors serve that challenge. people understand that they need to hire teams and do things like that, but they say where’s the money for it, right? So I help them get business credit and funding to pay for those kind of things. you can get business credit cards to pay for most of the expenses that you have. So I don’t know if most people know, but ADP is a huge payroll processor that most people use. They have an integration called Plastiq, where you can pay for payroll with a business credit card. So now you’re not using your revenue or your cash reserves or your savings to pay your staff or your contractors and things like that. You’re gonna be using your business credit card to pay for that. And that same expense that you’re spending that $3,000 a month, $2,000 a month, or if you’re paying a VA $900, $500 a month, it’s not coming out of pocket. That same money that you’re spending can now give you rewards for that same very level of spend. and you can even pay yourself. People don’t pay them— That’s another thing investors and business owners need to do. You need to pay yourself. If you’re property managing, you need to pay yourself. the reason being is if at some point you outgrow doing that or don’t want to do it, you’ll have to bring on someone and your numbers don’t quite work the same if you’re not used to the overhead of paying someone. So all this stuff is very important. So I help business owners, you know, understand exactly the lender compliance that’s needed to get approved. Whereas nine out of ten businesses fail in the first year statistically because they don’t have the capital to grow. And most businesses don’t get approved. The SBA says 85% of businesses do not get money from the bank. And people don’t know why. The reason, the deep down reason, is they don’t meet lender compliance, what lenders care about. So I help investors and business owners understand what a lender is looking for when they try to get you approved so you can get funding for that. on the personal side, they have to tell you why they’re rejecting you. On the business side, they don’t have to tell you why they’re rejecting you. So I want people to have an understanding of that. So I have an entire platform that walks people through some of that stuff.

Quentin (20:01)
Man, listen, I I’m a— I’ma circle back because you’ve been talking about your relationships. You’ve been talking about mentors that’s help you. And I want to state it cleanly, man. I want to hear your philosophy on how important relationships are. And man, talk about some of the people you have in your corner. I mean, even if you want to name drop, man, because you know, these people sound like they have been very important and and you know, to you. So tell me— talk to me about the importance of relationships.

Hannibal Collins (20:23)
Absolutely.

Quentin (20:28)
Your philosophy on it and I always really help you, man.

Hannibal Collins (20:30)
So relationships are really important. I’m a part of a number of organizations. I’m a part of an organization— we’re a bunch of men that go to different states every quarter of the year and we do community service. we also— we gather and we network and things like that. So every month we go there to different states. I’m also a part of other groups that are not particularly for men, but they— we all welcome each other. So the men’s group welcomes women, the women’s group welcomes men. So I’m a part of the women and real estate community. where women— where real estate is a very male-dominated centric industry, they’re developers, contractors, everything like that. So I teach them business credit and funding. And when you have accountability partners, people that think just like you, it helps you overcome those challenges. And you can even cross market and benefit each other and work with each other and augment each other, everything. Title goes hand in hand with, you know, insurance goes hand in hand with contractors, developers, all that architects. All those things need to collaborate. So you need a community that you can trust. That’s the hardest part. Finding a good contractor, getting referred. Like, how do you find that? Community is very, very important. So I work with the women in the real estate community. I work with the developer community. one of my mentors was Jay Massey. that was one of one of my— the mentors I had, Shan Moy, things like that. But I always try to learn from everybody and collaborate. I learn as much as I teach. I’ve often— I told it a bunch of conferences I teach at colleges and things like that. And every time I teach, I learn just as much. So I’m more than happy to do that. There is something I want to tell your audience as far as allocating money. Well, there’s two things I want to tell your audience. with the real estate investors, when you invest, you learn things the hard way. So I want to tell the newer investors to start to have some reserves on hand for when things happen. So I recommend that they allocate 2% aside for vacancy, right? five percent of the rent roll I mean. So when you get money for your rents, you’re gonna allocate two percent for vacancies, future vacancies, five percent for major capital expenses. I recommend eight to twelve percent for property management. And if you’re doing it yourself, you need to pay yourself that. I also have a budgeting breakdown that I did not invent. Again, I did not— I’m only about to be 40 next year. So I didn’t make any of these concepts up, but the the people that are financially literate, they follow these things. It’s a pay yourself first concept. The first thing you’re gonna do with any amount of money that you earn from any sources of income, you’re gonna set aside 10% to invest. First, you’re gonna set aside 10% to save. Second, you’re gonna set aside 10% for growth. So growth is things that make you better at making money. That can be hiring staff, that can be hiring a mentor, that can be systems, that can be any of those things. 10% is gonna be to play unapologetically. So me, I go to Brooklyn Nets games. Unfortunately, the rival team just won. I go to Brooklyn Nets Games. I go to Brooklyn Nets games, I go to concerts, I travel the world, things like that. So you do unapologetically what you want with that 10%. Once you spend that 10%, you have to stop. 55% is for bills and 5% is to give because whatever you give reciprocates back to you. so those concepts, if you have a plan for money versus not having a plan, when you don’t have a plan, it goes to what you need to do and what you want to do.

Quentin (23:20)
No, yeah.

Hannibal Collins (23:44)
And nothing propels you forward. If you do the pay yourself first concept, you invest first. Your investing is offense, saving is defense, but money loses value every year. So you need to invest to augment that. So you’re investing 10%, you’re saving 10%, you’re learning and you know improving yourself with 10%, you’re spending 10% to play. It’s like the— your cheat day, your ice cream on the weekend for eating right and being in the gym and things like that. fifty five percent is for your bills and five percent is to give. And that— that definitely takes you like really, really, really far.

Quentin (24:18)
Alright man, you got any more gems you wanna drop before we get out of here? Cause brother, you dropping gems, man. You dropping gems, man.

Hannibal Collins (24:21)
I feel like I mostly talked about mindset, but I didn’t really give people actionable stuff about credit. I— people start from everywhere. So if you’re at the beginning, if you’re having a challenge, by the way, credit is no indication of your acumen, it’s no educ— indication of your education, your stature. I have accountants, doctors, engineers. I even have people that are pe— professionals, lawyers. every— people that are in a finance industry that have financial issues, and it’s because credit is never taught. So if you’re having a credit concern, if you’re ever wondering what your score is, why it’s there, or how you improve it, you just have to understand it’s all about five factors. the first factor is payment history. That’s 35% of your score. Your score is a range from a 300 to a 850, so that’s 550 points. 35% of that is payment history. 35% of 550 is 192.5 points. that’s how often you pay on time, and you have to pay on time every time, over 97% of the time. There is no margin of error. So if you’re ever gonna be late, you’re gonna call your creditors, you’re gonna say, Hey, can we make a payment arrangement or can we pause my payments? Or you just don’t be 30 days late. So that’s the factor one is 35% of your scores payment history. 30% is how much you’re using. You have to use less than 30% of your available limit. I recommend that you use one to 5% on the personal side. When you get on the business side, you can use the entire limit. But on the personal side, I want you to have some restraint. So that’s 165 points. That’s 30% of your score. The next category is your average age of credit. It’s a track record of how long you’ve had credit. You need to have credit on average over four to five years. Anything less than four years is considered fair. Less than two years is considered poor. So you need to have a good average age of credit. That’s 15% of your score or 82.5 points. The next category is gonna be account mix. they need to know that you can handle installment accounts and revolving accounts. So installment accounts have a beginning and end date. That’s your mortgages, your auto loans, your student loans, your personal loans. That’s the storm of accounts, then you need to have revolving accounts. Revolving accounts are your credit cards. So when you have that account mixed, that’s 10% or 55 points, and the last 10% of 55 points is inquiries. Anytime you apply for something, it’s going to be a hard inquiry. anytime you check your own credit, it is not a hard inquiry, and you should have a pulse on when your credit is. Now, as far as inquiries go, it is not the points, it’s only 10%, it’s only 55 points, but it has a huge impact because if you have more than three inquiries in six months. That can be cause for you to get rejected. If you have more than five inquiries in two years, that can be a cause for you to get rejected. So you need to sequence out. what I help business owners do and investors do is I help them understand which bureau each bank is pulling from. So we can only get one inquiry on TransUnion and get two credit cards from that. One inquiry on Experian and get two credit cards from that. One inquiry on TransUn— and get two credit cards from that. When you sequence it and you minimize your inquiries, you will be able to get approved. so it’s things like that. that really once you understand that foundation and you get your personal credit right, you’re gonna be in good standing. Then you need to just structure your business credit profile the right way and you’ll be good to go.

Quentin (27:39)
And sir. Thank you, Hannibal. Yeah, man. Yeah, man. Well, listen, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you, man?

Hannibal Collins (27:41)
So yeah. It’s it’s a whole lot you could discuss around it. Yes. So my credit repair side is called FICOfinesse. FICOfinesse, so that’s at FICOfinesse on all platforms. My business credit is called FINLIT Form. It’s also on every platform. So if you either go to at FICOfinesse or at FINLIT Forum. You can find me there everywhere. I do give free one-on-ones. I’ll give a Zoom to— to people. I’ll break down for about 45 minutes sharing my screen exactly what you need to do on the personal side and the business side to understand business credit and personal credit. I also have a free community that you can join. I have a bunch of free ebooks, audiobooks, there’s an ask a question section, there’s a marketplace for people to share deals. There’s a bunch of wins we share wins and things like that. So all the free resources there, ebooks, audiobooks, you can go to community.finlitforum.com. Again, that’s community.finlitforum.com. And I have a bunch of resources there. my name is Hannibal Collins. you can just look me up. I’m on all those platforms, LinkedIn, everything like that. So I really like working with investors and entrepreneurs. I get the pain, you know. We don’t want to use our money. We— no one teaches us this stuff. We learn it the hard way. So I definitely want to help.

Quentin (28:53)
Yeah.

Hannibal Collins (29:04)
If— if I help an investor get money or I help a business owner get money, they’re gonna hire other people. They’re going to, you know, help their community, they’re gonna improve their community. So it’s really, really rewarding work seeing people get over the hump of those challenges. So—

Quentin (29:17)
Yeah, yeah. Well listen, my friend, let me say, man, three things to you sincerely. First, thank you for your time. I think time is our most precious commodity. You talked about giving us— getting our time back. So thank you for your time. I mean the fact that you’re here to me, that means you value this conversation. So thank you. secondly, thank you for your story. Thank you for showing up as your authentic self. I believe stories have a way of planting seeds. We may never see the for real growth, but the seed is there. And so you planted some major seeds. So thank you. Lastly, sir. Thank you for the way you think your mindset and bringing that mindset to the one. I greatly appreciate you coming on today, man. Absolutely. But listen, y’all heard Mr. Hannibal. Listen, his information is in the show notes. Please go get in contact with him. Let him help you. So the information is in the show show notes. Please get in contact with him. But definitely make sure you’re subscribed here. Because I promise you, we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people, just like Mr. Hannibal. So, sir, thank you again.

Hannibal Collins (29:48)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.