
How I Built a $500K Credit Empire in 14 Months | Jack McColl DSH #1239
Unlock the secrets to building a $500K credit empire in just 14 months! 🏆 In this jam-packed episode of Digital Social Hour, Sean Kelly sits down with credit expert Jack McColl to uncover his game-changing strategies for leveraging 0% business credit cards, optimizing personal credit, and scaling your finances to new heights. 💳✨Â
From insider tips on building relationships with top banks like Chase and American Express to hacks for maximizing credit card rewards, this episode is packed with valuable insights you don’t want to miss! Discover how Jack went from struggling entrepreneur to credit powerhouse, helping thousands secure $100K-$200K in business funding—no tax returns required. 🚀Â
Whether you’re looking to fund your next big idea, invest in real estate, or simply take control of your financial future, this is the ultimate guide to making it happen. Learn about business credit benefits, the importance of personal credit profiles, and Jack’s proven mentorship program, Credit Stacking.
🎯 Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and join the conversation for more eye-opening stories, expert advice, and inspiration on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🙌 Don’t miss out—your journey to financial freedom starts here. 🔥
CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Business Credit Strategies
01:18 - Jack's Entrepreneurial Journey
04:58 - Sponsorship Message
06:00 - Money-Making Strategies
07:17 - Securing Additional Funding
08:58 - Age and Credit Impact
11:44 - Credit Space Changes
12:20 - Understanding Credit Points
15:52 - Application Process Tips
18:08 - High Credit Card Limits
20:00 - Lessons Learned in Business
26:50 - Connect with Jack
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GUEST: Jack McColl
https://www.instagram.com/jackmccoll/
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Full Transcript
want to do is apply for too many personal credit cards too quickly. So no more than two,
opening two personal cards in a six month period. Oh, wow, that's pretty low.
If you do that, you will see denials. Damn, for sure.
And that's why another good tip is people should really be intentional about the credit applications they're putting in not only business credit applications, but the personal credit applications. all right guys we got jack here today someone i've been trying to get on for a while man been killing the credit game brought brought a stack of cards for you guys to see so he's not capping wait what's in that book uh this is my main stack this is my small stack my priority cards and then i just haven't got another book holy and then I have another probably 30 on the table right there.
Dude, that's insane. I need to get a bigger book.
Dude. So you got over like 200 cards at this point.
Probably getting close. And they are mainly business ones, right? Yep.
Primarily business cards. I think that's the better way to spend between business and personal, right? For sure.
Big time. Business credit has major, major benefits.
So it doesn't impact your personal credit score. Exactly.
There's really two main benefits that I see. One, the accounts of the business cards don't report to your personal credit.
And then two, you can get approved for way more, way quicker. Yeah.
Credit's been a game changer. I actually started this podcast thanks to a 0% credit.
Nice. Because that gave me 8, 12 to 18 months to kind of figure stuff out.
Yeah. And, uh, yeah, I was able to pay the cards off within a year and got a hundred K, you know? Perfect.
I think for, for anyone not making a million dollars or more, this is the easiest way to borrow money by far. The easiest way to borrow money.
The only thing you need is have a strong personal credit profile. You can literally have a brand new business entity.
If you build relationships with the right banks, very easy to do. Optimize your personal profile.
It is quite easy for a brand new entrepreneur to get approved for 100 to 200K. Wow.
Even still to this day? For sure. Nice.
So it hasn't slowed down? Has not slowed down. Nice.
For sure. Because I did mine about a year ago.
I didn't know if it still worked. Yeah.
Honestly, we're getting better results than ever before. Wow.
And I think that's kind of a combination of probably just having the amount of data that I have. So I have the largest coaching group in the business funding space, about 3,000 people.
Then I have a done for you funding program called Scale with Funding, where we have a done for you approach of getting people approved for this type of credit. And so we just have so much data on exactly what works really, really well.
And we just find really specific correlations and continue to help people get 100 or 200K. I love it.
So if someone has no income, does that matter? So with these business credit applications, it's just stated income, stated income and projected business revenue. Got it.
So none of the income is verified. Sometimes if you project income that's too high, you'll trigger a financial review and then they'll ask for tax returns or ask for you to connect your bank account.
But if you stay below certain thresholds, it's not verified income. That's a good trick to know, right? To know those numbers.
And that's part of the correlation of just having all this data is each bank differs with that certain threshold. So Chase, you can project a lot higher without getting this request.
American Express, they're a little bit more strict. And so we have projections at American Express that are a lot lower than other banks.
And we've just really dialed in what are the best projections per bank. And those are the ones you want to use on the applications.
That makes sense why Amex would be strict because they get the most chargebacks. Amex does get a lot of chargebacks.
And that's why even the rate is increased when you use Amex, right? For sure. It is more expensive for a business owner who accepts credit card payments to take Amex because the fee is high.
Yeah. And it's like a big percent jump.
I think it's like 1% more. It is expensive.
Pretty crazy. But Amex and also Chase, I think, is the two best banks to build relationships with because they have the best business credit products.
So the best 0% cards, these cards come with big sign-up bonuses. The 0% is for 12 months.
And then another huge reason why I really love Amex and Chase is because when you get a new 0% card, you can transfer that limit to another 0% card in the future. So let me just give you an example.
And I've done this at those two banks and also Bank of America will allow this, not all banks. So if you get a $50,000 0% interest business credit card, you spend on it, you invest that money, you pay it down, then you apply for another
0% card at the end of that 0%. Say, for example, you only get another $20,000 approved.
Well, you can move that previous 50,000 limit over to that new 20,000 limit card. So now you have 70,000 at 0% for 12 months, and you can do that a third year and a fourth year.
Holy crap. It is crazy.
So I will say you can't have the first card maxed out and then get a second one. You want to bring that balance down.
Got it. And then any of the available credit, you can then move to that new card.
Dude, that's such a good hack. All right.
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Take the next step in your career by starting at srgpros.com, srgpros.com. Sometimes you can't make the money back in a year, so you might need an additional year to pay off the money, right? That certainly helps.
And so like if someone has a maxed out card and they need more funding, you can always go to different banks to get a different limit and then balance transfer to a different bank. The first strategy I just mentioned really is beneficial where if you can pay that balance down, then you can get a new card at that same bank
and then move the available limit to that second card.
But when you need a balance transfer,
that's when you want to take advantage of different banks.
So say you had a $50,000 card maxed out at Chase.
Well, if you go to Bank of America or American Express,
they usually can't see what Chase has lent you
because it's a business credit card.
Oh, wow. So you can still get good limits from those banks.
that's good to know is there a fee for the balance transfer three to five percent okay so you got to factor that in but that's not too bad actually yeah small fee but then it allows you to have zero interest for 12 another year sometimes eight yeah that's that's huge man because building business ain't easy you're not likely to be profitable in a know? Yeah. So a lot of times where people will strategically plan out two years, so they get 50 to 100k on a few cards, and then they keep a couple banks open.
And so they can still get those cards in one year to then balance transfer over to those other cards. That's smart.
So technically, could you just keep making LLCs and do this? You can do that. Ideally, it's best to do it with two entities.
If you have more, if you have four entities, I would recommend to pick the two strongest LLCs. Strongest in terms of age and the entity type.
Nature of business, I should say. So the lower risk, that nature of business is, the easier it is to get more funding.
That makes sense. And do you know which businesses are lower risk? Anything, businesses with lower risk or anything with lower overhead.
So generally e-commerce, drop shipping, consulting type businesses, anything that doesn't have a ton of overhead, like restaurants, construction, those are higher risk businesses. So anything with less overhead.
But one thing that's actually really important is when you go into the bank to open up your business bank account, they're going to ask you, what is your nature of business? So they can give you this NAICS code. This classifies the risk of your business.
And so I always recommend business owners when they go open the bank account to do a little research on this NAICS code and think about what you can kind of tailor it to be to kind of lean into a lower risk category, not to be misleading, but you know, you don't want to lean on the higher risk side. And usually there's a few codes you can choose.
Whereas someone has a brick and mortar gym and part of their business is online fitness coaching. Well, that's kind of a consulting, that's an online service.
So I would lean towards the low risk fitness training online instead of the brick and mortar gym. That's one way to just lean on the favorable side.
Yeah, that's super smart. So you said age matters.
So what about buying aged LLCs? Buying age corporations can help because when you have an entity that's over two years, it is easier to get funding, but it's not the most important thing. The most important thing is having a strong, thick, optimized profile on the personal side.
And so the age is, when it comes to credit, there's many different levers you can pull. There's business credit scores.
There's the NAICS code, there's the relationships with the bank, there's the age of the entity, and then there's the personal credit profile. The personal credit profile is the most important thing.
If that is strong, you can get high limits on a brand new business that's two weeks old. One benefit of a two-year-old business or more is you can then start to get business lines of credit.
So business lines of credit work almost like a bank account where you can just transfer money from the business line of credit into your checking account. And then you're paying interest when you're borrowing the money, but it's so easy to just transfer money back and forth.
The interest rate usually comes at between 10 and 15% in 2025, but it can be very beneficial depending on the opportunity. If you got the right investment or the right player, I've seen people use credit cards and buy houses.
Isn't that nuts? They literally do 0% credit cards, buy a house, put it on Airbnb for a year. They make enough to pay off the interest and more.
It's super's super mind blowing. A lot of people I've helped have done exactly that.
Yeah. Cause to make a hundred K like would take the ordinary person a full year where you could just get it in funding and like probably a month if you have to build your profile out.
Right. Yeah.
And I think when it comes to like borrowing the money and putting it into a specific investment, like real estate, you just need to make sure there's a clear line where you'll make the money back and pay off the card. And think about what kind of timeline is that.
One thing I did at the very end of 2024 is I bought Bitcoin mining machines at the end of 2024 on two 0% cards that totaled 40,000. So I bought the Bitcoin miners on those two cards and I got a great tax deduction.
It came out to like 85% deduction of that purchase price, just how it works on Bitcoin miners. And I won't make enough money in the year.
Well, hopefully Bitcoin 5Xs, but even if it does, I wouldn't even sell the Bitcoin to pay off the cards. I'm just budgeting some of my income to pay off the cards in the meantime.
But I still was so confident in Bitcoin going up over time that it made sense for me to take that risk to use the 40 grand on 0% to buy those miners, get the tax deduction, and then I'll just pay the cards off with other income and just not sell the Bitcoin. That's interesting.
Is there any upcoming changes to the credit space? Anything that Trump's proposing? Well, he's proposing to put a cap at credit card interest, which I think is ultra favorable. It makes it a lower risk credit product in general.
So we'll see if that goes through. That's pretty much the biggest and most significant one that I've seen, but that would be a good
thing.
In general, I think the banks are going to lend a lot more.
I think a lot of people are quite bullish on the economy.
And usually when that happens, the banks are lending more because they want to fuel that
expansion.
Absolutely.
So that'll be good for you.
Hopefully.
And there's a whole other side of this business, which is the points.
So not only are you getting funding, but you're spending that money and getting a crap ton of points, right? You probably have millions of points, I'd imagine. Yeah, I do.
So nuts. I've gone on vacations, flights, hotels, just points.
Nice. Yeah.
That's one of the benefits people don't really know. For sure.
There's just so many benefits of these 0% cards or really credit in general. Like not only do you get the money to put in your business to make more money, but then you're getting all these points by having the top cards.
So you'll get a hundred, 150. I just got a signup bonus for 250,000 Amex points on my Amex business platinum.
It was a targeted offer, but I literally just got approved for it a couple of days ago. Wow.
And if you cashed that out, if you just cashed it out, which is the worst way to do it, it's worth just under $2,000. But there's certain strategies in the points game where you can transfer the points from the bank to the airline to find much better deals.
So you can get a 10 times better valuation on those points than if you use them in the bank portal. Yeah, you just got to keep your eye out for those transfer bonuses, right?
Transfer bonuses is another strategy to tack on top.
So when you transfer the points out, you get a bonus.
Here's an example. I transferred points from American Express to Hilton.
I think I transferred 185,000 Amex points.
And because there was a,
I think it was a 260% transfer bonus, it turned into about 480 000 hilton points wow so i transferred 180 000 it turned into like 480 000 that was the math and then i booked a five night stay in bora bora at the conrad with those now 480 000 hilton points and i got that for free instead of spending $10,000 cash. Damn, that's nuts.
And you could do that once a year, probably. You can do that a lot more than once a year, depending on how many points you have.
Yeah, I guess you got to spend to get it. But that's so cool, dude.
Yeah, I did that in Mexico and Cancun. It feels wild that that's even the thing.
It is crazy. It feels like an absolute cheat code.
Like the two things, again, it's being able to borrow this much money as a newer business owner with no tax returns. It is an absolute cheat code.
Like for someone that's trying to get out of what they feel like they're stuck in, get out of the matrix, get out of nine to five. you know it's to make money, but it's a lot easier to make money when you have access to money.
It becomes, I believe, easier to make money if you have the access and the easiest access to money that I have found is through these zero percent interest cards. And I struggled in business for so many years, having the biggest constraint of capital because I didn't know about this for seven years as an entrepreneur.
I self-funded two businesses. The third one, I brought on an equity partner, had to buy them out as a nightmare.
And then I learned about this amazing credit product and got approved for just over a half a million dollars in credit in a 14 month period. I dumped a lot of it into e-commerce stores and they absolutely ripped.
And I'm like, wow, this had such a life-changing effect on me. And if I didn't know this, being an entrepreneur for seven years, there has to be so many other people that don't know about this.
And I became so good at getting these high limits. I knew I had to help people.
So I put together my mentorship program, credit stacking, which is about 3,000 people, and then put together my done for you funding service scale with funding. And we help a lot of people get this type of capital.
Yeah, it's important people watching this to have someone like you because there's a certain application sequence, right? So if you're watching this, thinking you could get 50 to 100K, it probably is impossible. There's a lot of small things you have to do in a very specific order.
And the first thing you need to do is make sure your profile is in a position that's attractive to the underwriters. And there's just so many different things that they're looking at.
Things like the amount of accounts you have, the balance of your utilization, the amount of inquiries you have in the last six months, the amount of limits if you add all of them up. And so if someone, for example, doesn't have more than 15,000 in collective limits, then you would want to apply for a high limit personal credit card.
And so I have a very specific list of these high limit personal cards that I've seen to give great limits. So Chase Freedom Unlimited, Chase Sapphire Preferred, the Built card, and I'll put City Strata on there as well.
So increasing your personal limits really helps with business funding limits. So that's just one of the things they look out for.
And one thing you do not want to do is apply for too many personal credit cards too quickly. So no more than two, opening two personal cards in a six-month period.
Oh, wow. That's pretty low.
If you do that, you will see denials. Damn, for sure.
And that's why another good tip is people should really be intentional about the credit applications they're putting in not only business credit applications, but the personal credit applications, because more than two, it will start to create denials. So you want to make sure that you're applying for a personal card at a good bank that you want to build a relationship at and on a card that you think is going to give a good high limit, like those four that I just listed.
And there's two main ways to build a relationship with banks. That's through bank accounts and through credit cards.
And so why would someone want to get a personal credit card at a bank that doesn't have 0% business credit cards? If that's your goal, if your goal is 0% business cards, then you want to do everything you can to build a relationship with that bank. And one of the ways you do that is through their personal cards.
Got it. So it's like a, like a ladder almost.
You got to take certain steps, right? For sure. Um, what's the highest limit you've seen on a credit card? Um, I've personally got a hundred thousand on one card.
I help a lot of clients that work with me, uh, to get 150,000 over two cards at chase, which is the best you can do before they ask for tax returns. got it 150 is where they cap it and generally they do 75k per card and so if you do that twice it's 150k um we do that um frequently that's nuts dude it is nuts black card there's no limit right uh there's spending power so with the charge cards on american express there's there's no limit but there's spending power so kind of um depending on your payment history they can increase that spending power but the black the black card um uh it's a hard card to get you have to spend several millions of dollars on a yearly basis and uh that spending power starts off very high yeah i don't have it but uh two my friends friends do.
I haven't been invited yet. Yeah, same.
I'm patiently waiting. Yeah, I need to spend more.
I heard they give some favorable terms to influencers, though. I bet.
Sometimes you don't have to spend the millions. If you're watching this, I'm ready.
I'm waiting for my invite. It's like 10K a year.
I don't know if it's worth it. Yeah, I don't know.
It's more of like a flex, I feel like. It's more of a flex.
There's many benefits that come with the card, like concert tickets, and you get a private number you can call. When you go to LAX, they bring you on a car on the tarmac up to the plane.
Oh, that's cool. Which is pretty badass.
You don't have to deal with the lines. I like the lounges at the...
How they have their private section at the Amex lounge at the airport. I feel like that's cool.
I've actually never seen someone in that section.
Really?
So they must be super hard to get, those black cards.
They're really hard.
I had a friend spending a ridiculous amount of money for several years,
and he's like, dude, they still haven't given me the invitation.
And then finally he did, and he was super happy.
It was like a badass card.
You just got your pilot license.
Are you going to buy a jet on a credit card?
I will hopefully buy a jet on a credit card um i will hopefully buy a jet on a
credit card i did just buy a plane cesna 206 it's a six seater um but uh hopefully i'll be able to buy a jet on a nice card some good write-offs with that right big time are they bringing back the 100 this year um i i think they are one really cool thing about aviation uh the asset class on the bonus depreciation it's been one year behind so like in 2024 it was 60 bonus depreciation you could take on real estate yeah uh it was 80 on the aviation asset class and so now aviation 60 where real estate's 40 got it so i i still got that 80 benefit um in 2024 but i do think it's coming back to 100%. You know, Trump's a real estate investor and is a huge proponent of it.
Yeah, that's why I got the G-Bagin too. Nice.
You know, over 6,000 pounds. Yeah, I got the GLE 63S a couple years ago, back when it was 100%.
Let's go. Yeah, I've seen people use this credit method, get cards, and then rent them out too.
There's all stuff you could do there's a there's so many ways you can make money yeah once you have it like you said that's the tough part because me making my first 100k took two three years of grinding same same um i i made that in revenue uh rather quickly but to keep 100k and then to like have that to roll into something else it took me several years um because I was self-funding my first couple of businesses. And it was very difficult.
And when you're strapped for cash, I had 5,000 bucks to my name when I started my first business. And it was just a very slow turn.
It's profitable, but it just takes so much longer. And life's pretty short.
And I like taking a little bit of risk. And when you do the the rewards better and so um that's what i see with this type of credit product absolutely yeah when you're young i feel like that's the best time to take some risks total and the more you fail the stronger you get yeah like when i fail it's not easy sometimes of course but i learned to be grateful for those hardships and falling on your face because, you know, you just know you're stronger after that.
What were your biggest failures or lessons along the way? Well, one I briefly mentioned is on one of my businesses, I brought on equity partners. I literally gave away 51% of the company and we were selling these inflatable loungers that got super viral.
And we were one of the first to market in the United States. It came out in Europe.
We were first to market in the United States. We were selling tens of thousands.
But we wanted to go really big. We wanted to go really big.
And we knew we needed a ton of capital to do that. And these specific two people had a bunch of money.
They had all these different
relationships and they were really going to ramp a lot of things up for us, allegedly, and gave them 51% of the company. And ultimately what we were trying to get done didn't get done and our contracts were weak.
And so we had to buy them out. So that was the biggest mistake, just not properly bringing on the right partners,
not having good enough contracts. That was my younger 20s.
But what I did know at that time was I needed money to really take this to the next level. And so that was the risk that I made.
Let's bring these people on. They have the money.
But it didn't work out. Yeah, that 51% thing.
That's always on Shark Tank. That's always what they're debating about, right? Yeah, that 1% is what controls the company.
Totally. That's the decision maker.
Crazy. Yeah, that's a good lesson.
That's one of the bigger mistakes I've made. Another mistake I made was a business venture right before that.
I was selling hoverboards. And also super viral.
We were like pretty first to market and we were selling the product. We didn't have the patent for it.
Someone in China had the patent for it, but we were selling them in the States and there was a lot of companies selling them in the States too. I think technically infringing the patent, but we were doing our thing and we started to get into conversation with Mark Cuban.
And my business partner reached out to Mark Cuban on his, I think it was called Whisper, his new app. We got in touch with Mark and Mark was actually going, he was in talks with the patent owner to try and buy the patent.
And he wanted, he was giving us some interest about doing a deal with us because we had the best brand. We had the best content, the best brand for these hoverboards, had all these influencers promoting it.
And we were, we were great looking from a social media presence. Um, so Mark was like, Hey, I I'm interested in doing a deal with you guys, but I'm not going to get into business with anyone who's infringing on a patent.
And so we had the decision, do we keep selling this product and technically infringing on this patent and make probably a million dollars or more? Or do we not sell through the holidays in the most viral season of this product in good faith to potentially work with Mark Cuban? And we had a letter of intent from him about this possible deal. We decided to hold back in good faith to do a deal with mark cuban and uh he then did not buy the patent wow yeah that's rough so you skipped out on q4 we skipped out on q4 it was the most viral year for hoverboards i forgot the year i remember 2015 maybe yeah it was it was the year it was the christmas we would have made a killing we had the best brand so many youtube influencers were promoting my dad said my dad was leaning on the on the side of uh hold hold back and hopefully do a deal with mark cuban my business partner jared gets he was like dude i think we should keep selling and uh we ended up holding back and you.
And you know, that's just one of the things you learn.
Shout out to Jared.
He's been on the show.
Shout out to Jared.
Yeah.
Awesome.
He's revolutionizing the e-commerce dropshipping space with his company, right?
Totally.
Yeah.
I'm an early investor.
I remember that.
That was before they started catching on fire, right?
Before.
Yeah.
And then they got banned, right?
That's pretty much what ruined that product.
All the knockoffs were catching on fire. There were literally times where we would ride the hoverboards in the airport i would i would ride them onto the airplane and then pick it up yeah like down the jet bridge they didn't care and then they started our competitors started catching fire yeah and they started cheapening out on the quality yeah damn that's wild though that took it down i will, enforcing that international patent would have been super expensive.
If you only did like a million, they probably wouldn't have came after you. Exactly.
It would have had to have been like millions for it to be worth it. And that's why we weren't worried about selling in general.
It was just for this pot blowing the possible deal with Mark Cuban. And we kind of got pushed around a little bit little bit by him and he's a multi-billionaire again.
So the Mavericks, shout out to Mark. Well, dude, it's been awesome.
Where can people get funding if they're interested in working with you? Yeah. Scale with funding is our website.
It's my done for you funding service. So I help people on a daily basis.
Many people get approved for a hundred thousand dollars and zero percentage credit for 12 months that's scale with funding.com my instagram is jack mccall uh jack mccall mccoll i appreciate
you guys thanks for tuning in sean absolutely thanks for coming on man i'm gonna open up a
new llc and use you guys and i'll i'll post on my instagram the results cool cool sounds good
awesome dude stay tuned guys peace