Al Jones: Having a PERFECT 850 Credit Score!
LISTEN TO FULL EPISODE ON:
Al Jones knew what it was like growing up with bad credit. If fact, he was often on the receiving end of nasty creditor calls as a child. By taking messages that he'd relay to his mom, without realizing it, he helped negotiate credit payments on her behalf. Fast forward to today and Al actually boasts a PERFECT 850 credit score. Hear his story as he shares more about the freedom he's built by building great credit over his lifetime. Al is also the author of the book "My Journey From Bad To Excellent Credit" and is the founder of a game/app Lyrics Guru which he also pitched to Shark Tank.
In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:
- Al noticed an influx of calls from collection agencies. He gets phone calls from bill collectors for his mother.
- Without realizing it, he helped negotiate debt payoff between his mother and the collection agencies.
- He started to document his process, from having bad credit to excellent credit, he watched multiple DVD series, listened to multiple CDs, and read multiple books.
- Al shifted gears and decided to write a more narrative book. That is now his journey from bad to excellent credit.
- With his spare time, he created a song lyrics trivia word game called Lyrics Guru. It is available on Android for Google Play, as well as iOS on the App Store.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro and overview on Al’s career
06:31 - Al decides to document his process from having bad credit to excellent credit
07:54 - How he shifted gears and decided to write a book
16:23 - Al shares what to do with credit reports are your scores
19:20 - What Al’s advice for inaccurate credit reports situation
26:38 - His identity theft story and how he handles it
39:25 - When Al created a game application and how it started
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Full transcript here:
Mike Swenson
Welcome to the REL freedom podcast where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some REL freedom together. Alright, welcome, everybody to another episode of the REL freedom podcast. And today I've got Al Jones here and Al is known as Mr. Perfect, or at least that's the nickname I've given him. Mr. Perfect 850 FICO credit score and the cool thing about Al is, it wasn't always that way. And you've had a journey, you know, with with credit and building your credit score back up. And so you know, we talk a lot about financial freedom. And we talk a lot about having good principles that we can use going forward.
Mike Swenson
And Al, you're a great guest to be able to share your wisdom and experience with that. In addition to having a perfect credit score, Al's got a book out "My Journey from Bad to Excellent Credit". And so you going to share some great principles in that book. And then you also are a game designer. And so we'll we'll dig into that a little bit later. So why don't you just take a minute or two, and share a little bit more about yourself and your story.
Al Jones
Thank you, Mike, for having me. Thank you for having me. Again, I'm Al Jones, a personal finance author and game developer. I'm a current resident and native of Phoenix, Arizona, after years of making poor financial decisions, and thinking it was the norm, I decided to take action, make a change in my life, and document the process along the way. I'm here now with a perfect 850 Phyto score. And I'm ready to share my story with you and your listeners.
Mike Swenson
Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Al. So why don't we just go ahead and kind of dive right in. So talk a little bit about because I know you know, your story with your credit to that actually goes back to when you were a young kid. And and you know, when you were at home, and you were you're getting phone calls from from credit card companies and whatnot. So why don't you just start right there. And we'll kind of talk about the journey up to today.
Al Jones
Back in the 70s, late 1970s I was in junior high. And around that time what was happening was I noticed a an influx of calls from collection agencies and the collection agencies back then I don't know if they've improved their practices, but they were really brutal back then. And what they would do is they would call at crazy hours, eight o'clock, nine o'clock or so at night. And most of the time I was at home alone mom was working multiple jobs sister was out doing our thing. Brother was out riding bikes, you know, BMX bikes and whatnot, with a friend. So I was the one that was fielding calls mom and dad had divorced, years back. So again, I was at home a lot and answering the phones. bill collectors were calling saying, hey, you need to tell your mom she needs to pay tomorrow. I mean, dude, just brutal.
Mike Swenson
I should quick say for those for those younger listeners that may not know this is before answering machines right? And and before we had these things where it said scam likely on our phone or unknown caller ID so so you're calling you don't know if it's your buddy down the street. It could be anybody else. So you answer the phone because you didn't know who it was that was calling,
Al Jones
Right. So I pick up the phone, it was the at&t slimline one that are hanging on the wall. So anyway, pick up the phone. Hey, you know, this is Mr. Smith. Um, well, I'm here to call I'm calling for, you know, Mr. Jones, like, Oh, no, I'm taking my cell phone bill collector again, so didn't hang up. That's a bad that would be a bad thing to do. So pick up the phone, take you out in the message. And I had a notepad that had areas where I can actually take notes that they would call drill in my ear on what she needed to do. I would take copious notes for them. And again, I'm a little kid taking little notes, and they're drilling my ear, I take the notes, I'd hang up the phone after telling you the bill collector collection agency that I would relay the message to my mother.
Al Jones
Mom gets home later on that night. Mom, here's a list of all the people that cause you, this is how much you owe. If this is when they're expecting to pay, you know, receive payment. Well, I can't pay this. I can't pay at this time. Well, can you pay? What can you pay? So it got to the point to where I was negotiating settlements for my mother as a little kid. And she said okay, well if they call back tell them I can pay XYZ and I can pay at this time. All right, so next day goes on phone ring again, about the same time I pick up the phone. Hi Mrs. Smith. This is Al Jones' and I did relay your message to my mother and she will pay you on day x at this amount Is this okay? I replied, wasn't, you know rude to them. And it got to a point to where after they realized they started realizing that I was being a responsible young man.
Al Jones
And they were going they started to go easy on me. And I was negotiating settlements. Okay. Well, we agree that she will pay X amount to kill your mother this Yes, sir. Yes, sir, she, I will make sure I will, I will tell her, then the phone call started, the route calls start to eventually go away, she started making her payments and so on. Fast forward. Years later, I picked up the same pattern, I saw it was a bad thing to do. But you know, I'm thinking, Hey, this is the norm. It's supposed to be like this, people are supposed to be calling you. And you know, you get a credit card from college. And you just spend it to take your friends out to pizza. And you just keep spending, spending spending. And eventually that stuff starts catching up with you. So fast forward years later, after multiple divorces, multiple bouts of identity theft, I said, This is insane. This is absolutely insane.
Al Jones
Now come on, you got to do something about this. you tired of sleeping on the floor sleeping on the couch, eating chili and spaghetti day in and day out. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. This is insane. So what I decided to do is to document the process my process, from having bad credit to excellent credit, I watched multiple DVD series, listen to multiple CDs, read multiple books. And Mike what was happening was I would read the books, listen to the CDs, watch the DVDs, and the majority of them that were out there that books were hundreds of pages in like the DVD sets were 45 set, you know, in a set CDs, three fourths in CDs that and my brain at the time could only soak in a chapter in Lake. So I said, Alright, if I'm going to do this, my brain can only handle about a chapter like surely someone else is in the same boat.
Al Jones
So the first book that I wrote was a chapter like than the new book that I've got now that we're talking about in the chapter like also, but the first one that was a chapter in length about 50, some odd pages, that was very technical, call this phone number, right, this specific paragraph in a letter, go to this link, it was too technical. And what happens is when you do something like that, after the book is printed, well if the website goes down, if they change the number, you know, it's irrelevant. So I shifted gears and decided to write a more narrative book. And that's what I've got now that my journey from bad to excellent credit is more of a narrative. In addition, we've incorporated I've incorporated a workbook element to where you read a chapter in there, and you can kind of take notes. So if you want to share your experience with someone, you can make your notes and then pass it on to somebody else. So here I am with a 850 FICO.
Mike Swenson
So let's kind of dig back in a little bit. So for people that maybe haven't had the credit experiences in the past where they've had bad credit, just talk about like, what, what do you lose out on by by having that bad credit? Like what was that like for you? You know, some people that maybe haven't struggled with that they're like, Oh, I just go get a loan, and I get approved. And I'm good to go. So talk a little bit about the struggle of of trying to work through that for those folks that haven't experienced or maybe they're too young to experience. So they just haven't yet fallen into that trap. Share about that a little bit. What was that like for you?
Al Jones
Not having good credit, you lose out on options. In a previous broadcast you had you talked about what is freedom? To me, freedom is options, the ability to exercise your options. If you don't have good credit, you walk into a store and kind of looking around like wow, I would like to buy this I could buy that and they generate you're a hard inquiry on your credit. And they kind of look at you a laugh, like, go away, go away. You can't do it. So it's all about for me, it's about options. So having excellent credit and my freedom and being able to have those options.
Al Jones
It reminded me of a few weeks ago I was in one of the local shopping malls kind of walking around waiting for my iPhone to get a new battery. Yep. And I was walking around the mall and Mike I was walking into mobile Double store just kind of, you know, doing some window shopping waiting for the battery to be installed, and the feeling of walking into every store and knowing alkane I can buy this, this, and that, if I wanted to. Yep, that is that that's my freedom might be my mental freedom, my financial freedom, so not having those options. That's what it's about.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, and, and if you think about I mean, obviously I'm you know, I'm in the real estate industry and we talk about, you know, getting approved to buy a house, I know, it's the same way you know, with with buying a car, we just kind of think about a couple those big ticket items, you know, your your credit score impacts the rate at which you get approved for stuff, which is ultimately going to affect your payment. So it's kind of like, you know, you talk about like, the rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer, in some regards the opportunity on a loan is if you're, if you're rich, in the sense of you have a great credit score.
Mike Swenson
You've shown that you've been able to manage your money, make your payments, and that you don't have too much credit out there, they're getting to give you a better rate, which helps you to save more money, and if you if you continue to pay it off, so it's kind of like they're, they're giving you a line to be able to the you know, kind of like the the Express Pass, if you think about it at like an amusement park, you know, you go to Disney, and you get the Express Pass, like, you know, it's it's your opportunity to save more money, and to build more wealth, because you're getting a better rate. And for some people, it could be the difference of hundreds of dollars a month in your payments. And so now, you know, with great power comes great responsibility, right? When you have a perfect credit score, it would be nice to say I could buy whatever I wanted to, but you want to keep that credit score too.
Al Jones
So that is correct. I want to buy, right. Yeah, I want to buy. Also, an element of trust in having excellent credit, and you know, good credit and whatnot, is that you are responsible with your finances. And if you, for example, go to, you know, somewhere and you want to apply for a job and they generate your credit, and you're working in finance, some in some way. They may question if you are responsible enough to handle their banking, verifying as well, if you Val can't handle his own finances with the, you know, 675 credit score, why am I gonna hire this guy to to work in my business as a buyer to buy stuff to manage the the books for my company? Sorry, next.
Mike Swenson
Right? Because Yeah, in some regards, you're managing some sort of financial responsibility, if it's not directly making financial decisions, you're, you're still financially responsible for something in the company that you're working for. So yeah, I can see that makes a big difference. You know, to for those people that maybe don't understand, you know, what, what goes into a credit score, it's also how many lines of credit you have out there can impact that, you know, if I just had one credit card versus having lots of credit cards, then and all the, you know, apparel shops that want to extend you, hey, save 100 bucks, you know, or $10 applique first purchase with this credit card, if you start to open too many of those, you know, I remember and and those guys, those guys and gals are good at what they do, because they get paid for the number of credit applications that they open.
Mike Swenson
And so you know, let's just say you're spending you know, let's say it's maybe a before school shopping spree or something, you got to you know, get kids new clothes, let's just say it's a number that's attractive. So 200 let's say you spend $250 on clothes or back to school items. It could be you get 10% off it could be you get 20% off and you're thinking okay, 2550 bucks. Yeah, I want 25 or 50 bucks off. And you know, before they even they even finish their sentence about you know, Hey, would you like to open up a blah blah blah count I always say no. And I remember one time the guy asked me said you don't want to save $50 on this purchase you know that's that's essentially his his tie down. And I had to say no, I don't because you understand there's larger things at stake I could I could spend $50 here but if I forget to pay that off the the ramifications of that decision makes the big difference.
Mike Swenson
So yeah, so what what else so kind of talking about what goes into the credit score, you've got the the line of credits, the number of credits, how long each of those credits is open for I remember when I was a first time homebuyer and I looked at my credit report and it's like well, I've I've paid everything off Time, how can this is my credit score, it's like, well, you've only had this account open for however many years, so that matters, too. So part of it is you just have to get a little bit older. And then to what, what percentage of your line of credit, you know, let's just say, Excuse me, you've got a $5,000 limit on a card, if you're only spending $500 a month, you know, out of your $5,000 limit that looks different to a credit card reporting age or a credit reporting agency than if you're spending, you know, 40 $500 a month and you're paying it off too. So it's kind of the percent of credit used. So yeah, anything else you want to add to that?
Al Jones
Ah, one of the credit and going back to your story about the school that reminded me of when I was applying for actually started taking classes at one of the local universities, they had this long table out there and you're registering for class, you've got the long tables, Citibank, discover back then. And of course, along the same lines, surely you want to fill out this credit card, we'll give you a toaster, we give you a T shirt, and she Oh, surely you want to save, it's like, Wow, man, all right up to $250 credit line, sure, sign up here. And then if you don't pay it back, then you're in trouble. So I can relate to that. As far as the credit reports in scores, what I tell people to do is to download their credit reports and scores from each of the three separate notice I say separate each of the three separate credit bureaus, Equifax comm experian.com and TransUnion, calm, most of them from my understanding, they will what you pay, you can download a PDF of your actual credit reports and scores should still do that now.
Al Jones
So order from each of the three. And often people will see or was the offers that will say, get three for the price of one. Don't do that. Don't Please don't do that. What happens is, let's say you are on experience website, okay. And you see an ad that says get all three for the price of one. Well, we are ordering from Experian. And what you need to dispute anything on each one of the credit reports of yours is a confirmation number. So if you order all three from Experian, well, if you find something wrong on trans unions, which could be old data, you're going to need a confirmation number you call TransUnion. TransUnion is gonna say Okay, so what's your confirmation number? Let's you know, blah, blah, blah, well, that's not our confirmation number.
Al Jones
That's from experience. So yeah, then you're going to have to end up ordering a brand new report from that. So please order from each of the three separate credit bureaus, get your credit report and score, check it out, dispute any inaccuracies, and just keep working at it, cleaning it up. And you don't have to have just one credit card. I've got multiple credit cards, but it's a matter of managing your debt. And I say debt is like a report card bill is based on trust. It's a report card on how you manage your credit.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, so for people then that, you know, maybe have a couple of blunders on their credit report. You know, what, what advice do you have for people, if it's, you know, let's just say the example of you know, getting approved for a loan for a home. You know, we run into a lot of people where, you know, I don't, you know, I usually refer people to a lender, the lender has that conversation with them. But if they need to take, you know, six months, nine months a year to restore their credit or repair their credit, what's some advice that you can give to people that, you know, don't have the credit card, or the credit score that they want right now, what are maybe some quick tips or some ways that they can hopefully turn turn that train around more quickly?
Al Jones
That and that is a problem and seeing people want it quickly. And that's not the game. You've got to be patient you got to wait, keep ordering your credit reports. And if you see some inaccuracies, just keep tabs of what it's about what's on your report, and is not going to drop your score when you do your own inquiry. If you have somebody else to do it, then you know it's going to drop your score but keep tabs with it on a regular basis, you know, once a month once a quarter and just keep managing your your credit stay within your lane. And over time, you know the market is cyclical. So over time, it's going to come back around so don't get so antsy well I got to get a you know gonna get a house today. Got to get a house By the end of the year, it's going to go up, it's going to go down. So just be patient. That's what I tell people.
Mike Swenson
Yep. And there is some, there's some good tools out there to help you monitor that, you know, if if people do want to pay for that, I know sometimes, you know, because I'm signing digital documents, and sometimes they have to verify my identity, the company that I've used to, that that gives like a little credit alert to as soon as I fill out a form that says, you know, this was an, an address, I was at associated, or a previous car that I've had, as I'm answering a security question for my job, I get an alert within the next minute on my phone from this app that says, hey, something, you know, something was triggered. Now, it's not a credit poll.
Mike Swenson
But it was because I answered a question to verify my, my identity, I have a tool on my phone that that, you know, kind of monitors that kind of stuff, and it happens instantaneously, within, like I said, within a minute, I get an alert, you know, so I think that's important too, because sometimes people have, you know, hiccups that come up, I know, at one point in time, I had somebody that had tried to fill out a loan application with my information in another state. And, and, and one time that showed up, so when I was doing my yearly, you know, credit check report, and I saw that that had come up, we were able to take care of that.
Mike Swenson
So, you know, this day with with identity theft happening, you know, it can be a big deal. So, you know, it's, it's, it's worth it to understand your credit score to spend a little bit of time because what you don't want to have happen is somebody opens an account on your behalf. And, and, you know, negatively impacts your credit, and you didn't even know, so you have to stay on top of it enough to know what's going on. And then obviously, if there's issues take care of them.
Al Jones
And that has happened to me multiple times. One time comes from multiple victim of identity theft here in Phoenix area. I was living in Texas for a while. And what happened was somebody opened up a mobile phone, you know, account in my name. And another one happened with at&t, someone opened up a telephone another landline account with my name, so I hadn't generated my credit report in a while. Next thing I know I get a call from at&t. Okay, at&t says, Hey, you owe X amount of dollars, because you open up an account you went past due, and it was in Texas multiple years back. It's like, I haven't been in Texas for years, and didn't even live there. Well, you've got to prove that you didn't live there. You know, at that at that time. Oh, great. Okay, so what I had to do was I had to the place that I was living in at the time here in Phoenix, the property was sold and converted from an apartment complex to a condo.
Al Jones
So I had to call the new owner of the property and work with them to see if by chance they had any records, and what are the chances any records of previous renters in that building? So a few weeks or so later, the rep comes back and says, Hey, Al, oddly enough, we were digging through some of the boxes, and one of those warehouse rooms or the storage rooms. And we have, oddly enough, we found proof. One of the rental agreements that has your name on it. So she faxed that to me, I kicked it over to at&t. And oddly enough, even after having that they were still questioning the validity of that and eventually turned around and said okay, we you know, we believe Yeah, and then cleared it off. So it can be a challenge, again, had multiple issues similar to that, but the one with at&t really sticks out?
Mike Swenson
Yeah, well, I just gonna share for some people. So so you know, I mentioned you know, you have a book "My Journey from Bad to Excellent Credit". You know, just just a couple the chapter headings here, because you were kind enough to share this ahead of our call. You know, I've got it. So here, you know, it talks about the importance of routines and high expectations, time management, perils of high risk activities, decision making, and emotions. These are all things that we talk about when we talk about financial freedom is you have to have a plan.
Mike Swenson
You have to will take the time to make the plan, execute the plan, and then stay disciplined with your plan because just like building financial freedom, building wealth, gaining that it's the same type of philosophy for getting out of credit because if you start to put some some good pluses on the board and then all sudden your life Hey, I really want that and you buy it, you find out you can't really afford it. And then you can't make some of your payments on it, it takes you right back to where you before. So I think just you know, with a lot of these great things, you have to have discipline you have to be able to manage your your emotions, make great decisions, and ultimately build great habits because you could be good for a year two or three.
Mike Swenson
But you know, once again, me being in real estate, you buy a new house, now it's all sudden, I want a new couch, I need new furniture, I want to you know, maybe get a boat and now all sudden people you know, you've had such a good run up to where you're at now you've put yourself in the hole. So that you know that can happen. You've got to you've got to stay sharp, just because you have an 850 credit score now doesn't mean you couldn't have less rent in the future. You know, we're talking about, you know, building wealth, you know, gaining financial freedom, and part of that is getting a chance to do what you love. And I know one of the things that you've been working on is you've got a game that you've you've created Why don't you just take a couple minutes and chat about that so we can we can kind of hear about your your passions here moving forward and what you'd like to do.
Al Jones
What I created is a song lyrics trivia word game called lyrics guru and lyrics guru it's available on the app is available on Google Play is available on the App Store, we've got a playing card version of the game as well as a game will Kaka Willa fortune, kind of pick a will. So Louis guru how you play it, what you do is you try to guess the correct word found within the lyrics of the song.
Al Jones
For example, in the app, you download the app, and we gave you a list of categories, rock and roll, for example, then we gave you a song title, blue suede shoes, no Elvis song, they will give you a list of four words, and which the player has to do is they have to guess which one of the four words is found within the lyrics of the song. So if you would guess step, don't step on my blue suede shoes, you know, it's a word step into the song lyrics, then you get that correct, the object is to get eight correct in a category. And then you've got to get eight categories completed, then you're the lyrics guru.
Mike Swenson
So that's awesome. So let's talk a little bit because we, you know, we're we'd like to cover entrepreneurs that, you know, come up with different ideas and talk about how that came to be. How do you go from having an idea like that to all sudden, now you've gotten an app on the phone, talk about that process, a little bit of an idea to fresh and I know, you had I had heard previously that you had also been on Shark Tank, where it attempted to be on Shark Tank, but just talk about the process of of taking an idea to fruition, because I think it's helpful to inspire all the entrepreneurs that you know, that like to listen to this, this podcast.
Al Jones
I say it all started when I was a child, my father had a very diverse music collection, LPs, and I was at home a lot. So I would open up the LPS, I would read the lyrics, and the stories, a lot of the songs from the 70s had stories and stuff. So I was really enjoy reading the stories with the lyrics. And fast forward, what I wanted to do was share my love of music, words and song lyrics with the masses. So fast forward, I decided, you know what, I want to create an app, I thought it'd be kind of cool. That's what apps you know, really started kicking off. I'm going to go ahead and created an app for that to share my love. So what I did is I charted my game logic, using Visio. PowerPoint, if and then so you click this button, where would it go? What would it do? So I charted it out, then I submitted a request for proposals to various coding companies here in the US, and in India, wound up finding a great company that I'm currently using now.
Al Jones
And they were working together to do the hard coding for the app. So got them to work with me to develop the initially the Android version of the app. Then we developed the iOS version of the app, got that going and out there, did some videos, teaser videos and whatnot. After that was going then I was at a local event that was dedicated to those with disabilities. We already had the app going, things are going good. Then after the event was over, someone tapped me on my shoulder after they heard about the app and they said hey, how when you're going to create something for those with disabilities, Oh, you know what the aha moments like? Oh, so I thought, wow, you know, okay, so go back to the drawing board with the team and said, Alright, we've got to create something for those with some sort of disability.
Al Jones
So we needed to create a playing card version to keep the trademark going. And we created a playing card version of the game, which you also see on the website, labor guru.mo bi, you see a playing card version of the game, and that playing card version of the game is or was initially designed for those that have visual challenges, those that are colorblind. So we've created a playing card version of game for those that are colorblind and further marketed it to senior citizens for cognitive rehabilitation therapy. So they play the game, they'll say, you know, rock and roll, blue suede shoes, and don't think about Wow, yeah, I dancer, that song in a sock hop, you know, kind of thing. So it helps them with their memory that
Mike Swenson
I was gonna say, I'll quick add to that, you know, my grandmother had dementia. And, you know, and I've heard this too about other folks that, you know, there's so many things that they forget through life, whether it's remembering people's names, you know, remembering people, you know, relatives, that sort of thing. But they, they always seem to remember songs, and lyrics, right. And so that stuff really does matter. It's not just, it's not just like, hey, this would be nice, if but, but that's really important. Because, you know, you can still hum a tune.
Mike Swenson
And it's so funny, because, you know, every now and then, as my kids are watching, you know, something on YouTube, and I'll see where it shows, you know, suggested episodes, and, you know, you know, my phone has a has a innate sense to, to know what I like. And so it might have a song from, you know, 20 years ago that I like, listen to, and every now and then I'll click on it, and it's like, those lyrics come right back to me. You know, it's like, I maybe haven't heard a song in 20 years. But because I listened to it so much when I was a kid or so much when I was a teenager. It was like, it was like the next day, you know, and so that stuff's awesome. So I love that.
Al Jones
The other thing we did at bat for after the playing card, we got that rolling. And what we did was playing cards, we found local organizations that assist those with visual challenges. So we've got their input. And then we've used those groups as beta testers, we've got the retail version out. So that's out now again, for those with having colorblind as well as with the seniors for cognitive rehab. then fast forward, we received an opportunity to go to a casting call for Shark Tank that was in Palm Springs, so I got the wheel in the chat will it has the Wheel of Fortune kind of look to it, you spin the wheel and land on a category blue suede shoes.
Al Jones
Then they host what gave the person that song title on the word list. And if they get it right, then they get the panel so it's just similar to Wheel of Fortune thing. So anyway, we're Palm Springs. And what happened was while standing in line, I'm behind the group that is with the product. Butter cloth. So if you've ever watched YouTube and you see shark tank with a toss up talking about the product, butter cloth, they were the group immediately in front of me so next thing you know I see Metta World Peace, who the NBA player
Mike Swenson
I'm a bit I'm a basketball fan Ron Artest, over the basketball player formerly known as Ron Artest.
Al Jones
Ron, Ron rolls up with the guru. I'll say hi to get a picture with Ron, you know, blah, blah, blah. So he was in their group was in front of me. So we're going through the whole line. And when I was going to do my pitch just before actually jet before they let any of us walk in to the final door. We had to go to these different conference rooms. Before we go into the final door. They said when you pitch you have to ask for money. Really, I didn't need the money. What I had wanted to do was work with Mr. Wonderful so if you ever watch Shark Tank, and if you're watching Mr. Wonderful still want to do the licensing deal with you. So what I had wanted to do was a licensing deal with Mr. Wonderful I didn't need the money and I was strictly wanting to do a licensing deal and I wanted to license the lyrics guru brand.
Al Jones
So the television production companies could create a lyrics guru game show peaches amp was really popular at that time and is still popular out there. So in my opinion, lyric guru game would rival beaches and we did not have to pay for any royalties on songs being played. Like they're doing on beach at them all ours is song titles, which has no copyright protection and random words. So it was a win win. But they wanted two people to ask for money. So before I walked through the door thing, okay, what am I going to ask for? I don't need the money. Okay, I'll ask for 5000. Really, you're gonna walk into shark tank and ask him for five G's? No. All right. All right. All right, this is all in a matter of two minutes. So then I said, All right, How about 50,000? Now that 50,000 you can do a second mortgage on your home for 50 G's. Then I said, All right, 500,000 I'll use it for marketing. But they didn't take the deal. So hey, I'm still here. So if you got some connections in the DB production company, and you want to do a licensing deal, hey, let's talk. So here I am.
Mike Swenson
Awesome. Well, it's fun to see you, you know, think about, you know, just in this short time together, your your your upbringing, where you're answering calls from creditors, and, and now all sudden, you're able to fast forward and have a perfect credit score and, and be able to do fun things like this and to be able to give back to others as well, you know, like you mentioned with you know, the the other opportunities, other offshoots of your your app, so, so that's awesome. So that's, you know, being able to be responsible, build good habits and experience some of the the joys on the other side of that.
Al Jones
At age 55, on December 29. That is what I've gotten to retire from the government gig that I've got now doing it, we're dying at age 55. retire, actually turn 29. Right wish, turn 55 on December 29th, and then retire on the 30th. And just walk in, that's a good, that's a good feeling. So I'm looking forward to that, too.
Mike Swenson
Awesome. Awesome. Well, congratulations on that. And thanks so much for coming on and sharing your story. For people that want to get a hold of you. I know we mentioned your book, as well, but But where can folks find you? And where can folks get a hold of you and learn more about your your game as well?
Al Jones
Check out the game that is available on Android for Google Play, as well as iOS on the App Store. And when you do your search, search "Lyrics Guru App", three separate words that'll help you find it a lot easier. So that's where you can find the game. You can also check out more information on the game at www.lyricsguru.mobi. If you want to track me down personally? Feel free to send me a friend requests on Facebook facebook.com/alton.j.jones. Yes, so you can find me there. Instagram and Twitter. track me down on the handle, Light Eyes Media. I'm easy to find.
Mike Swenson
Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for coming on now.
Al Jones
My pleasure.
