#21 Damian Younger: Mastering business credit to fuel his dreams

This episode explores how to build business credit with Damian Younger, a business coach and owner of Coach Damian LLC. Learn about the challenges of building business credit, scaling a business, and the importance of authentic self-presentation in entrepreneurship. Damian shares his journey from struggling with personal credit to mastering business tradelines, offering insights into effective sales strategies and client retention.

Coach Damian website: https://www.coach-damian.com/Early-Access-List

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With regard to credit building features: Scores are calculated from many variables; some users may not see improved scores. The Nav Prime Card is a business financing product and may not be used for personal, family, or household transactions.

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Chapters

• 0:00 How business coaching and credit building can grow your small business
• 2:48 How to build business credit and get approved for small business funding
• 4:50 Tips for managing cash flow and business finances in your first years
• 9:09 What are tradelines and how they help you build business credit faster
• 11:46 Net-30 vendors and tradelines to start building business credit
• 14:36 How to separate personal and business finances to protect yourself legally
• 17:27 How to sell authentically and build client trust as a small business owner
• 18:34 Finding your authentic voice and confidence as a new business owner
• 21:55 Biggest challenges small business and real estate entrepreneurs face today
• 27:30 How to get clients without social media: The power of cold calling
• 30:56 Building rapport and closing more deals through relationship selling
• 34:27 Client retention and referral strategies for small business success
• 36:25 Systems that scale: How to organize, follow up, and grow your sales pipeline

Transcript

Damian Younger (00:00)

I wanted to apply for some funding I got denied by a bank. I didn't really know much about business credit. I didn't know much about the process. I knew that I was a business owner looking to jumpstart my business, it was a huge stop sign that I ran into almost like a roadblock when they're like denied. And I'm like, “Wait, that's not part of the plan.

So that was a big wake up call from me that, okay, I need to really start focusing more on this whole business credit thing. I'm spending a lot more of my time using my personal credit cards, taking out personal loans. So that led me down a completely different road to just learning more about what business credit is, how important that is, and how can I get more of it?

Catherine Giese (00:43)

Welcome to Main Street Makers, a bi-weekly podcast that features real, local small business owners who have transformed their passions into profitable businesses. Learn from fellow small business owners on how they overcome challenges, find opportunities, and create thriving operations that make our neighborhoods more vibrant, connected places to live. I'm Catherine, and this podcast is brought to you by Nav, the business credit platform that believes every small business owner deserves the chance to succeed. Nav Technologies Inc. is a financial technology company and not a bank.

Banking services are provided by ThreadBank member FDIC. Now, let's get to this week's show.

Catherine Giese (01:19)

Welcome back to Main Street Makers. I'm really excited to welcome Damian Younger, a business coach and owner of letstalkaboutfunding.com. We have a lot to cover about building business credit, how he scales his business and more. So welcome, Damian.

Damian Younger (01:34)

Thank you for having me. How are you doing, Catherine?

Catherine Giese (01:38)

I'm doing great. It's a Friday, so we're moving and shaking. Yes. Totally. So first of all, I'd love for you to just introduce your business, talk to us about how and why you started it.

Damian Younger (01:42)

Fridays are always great days. It's just naturally a good day for Friday.

So I am a real estate prospecting coach. And what I primarily do is I work with real estate agents to level up their phone skills with strategies, sales tips to set more appointments over the phone. So that is my primary business. And I also have a secondary business, which I also work with business owners to build their business credit and to get access to funding.

Catherine Giese (02:17)

Yeah, that's I imagine that you ran into a lot of business credit problems and that's how you discovered it because that's how most people discover business credit. Can you tell me that story?

Damian Younger (02:27)

Yeah, so that's a fun story. A normal day to day, you know, as I typically work with real estate agents on a one-on-one basis. You know, I help them to fine tune their skills, help them to, you know, to become better communicators. So at the time, you know, I kind of had a light bulb moment saying, okay, well, instead of, you know, I can only fill my calendar up with so many people working one-on-one. I decided to kind of switch gears a little bit and take all of my expertise and put it into more of a sales training course. So that's what I was working on.

And you know I decided to kind of put some videos together some modules and really make a really interactive and dynamic sales course that's just about finished up so along the way I started to get together a home studio I wanted to apply for some funding because you know you know there's some things that were expensive and I got denied by a bank. 

And so I didn't really know much about business credit. I didn't know much about the process. I knew that I was a business owner looking to, you know, jumpstart my business, you know, really get this thing off the ground and start promoting myself to more people. And I think it was a huge, you know, stop sign that I ran into almost like a roadblock when they're like denied. And I'm like, wait, that's not part of the plan here. I needed some funding so I can kind of get the rest of the pieces together. 

So that was a big wake up call from me that, okay, I need to really start focusing more on this whole business credit thing. I'm spending a lot more of my time using my personal credit cards, taking out personal loans. And I'm like, okay, well, I can only take out X amount of loans and I kind of need some more financing. So that led me down a completely different road to just learning more about what business credit is, how important that is, and how can I get more of it?

Catherine Giese (04:18)

Yeah, that's super interesting. I feel like that's such a common story, too, of people leaning so much on their personal credit and wanting to find a different way forward.

So it sounds like you're not super financing adverse, which some people are, some people aren't. How do you think about taking out personal loans and business financing to fund your business? Like what are some of the calcs and the risk assessment that you run?

Damian Younger (04:42)

Well, you mean with business loans or just loans altogether? Well, I think, your average person… if you're looking to start a business and you don't know anything about business credit, the first thing you got is whatever's in your bank account. So you start with what you got first. You check your checking account, your savings account, and you look into whatever credit card you have available and you start there first. So I think that's what I started with. That's what most people started with. Next step is I apply for a personal loan and you start chipping away at building the business. So the big thing that I realized after

I had gotten into a ton of debt to get the business off the ground, to get everything up and going, is that there is another way. And that was the way where it's like, man, I really wish you guys would have told me that before I took out all the personal loans and the credit cards and the savings account and stuff like that. 

For me, like I said before, it took me down a long road of learning about what business trade lines are, how to properly establish business credit, how to really get my ducks in a row to properly get my business off the ground so that once it is off the ground I'm starting to look more professional and more serious to lenders to where I can actually start to get the credit that I need to really get this business up and going.

Catherine Giese (06:03)

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense to kind of like dig into that more. What were the first few years of running your business like for you financially? Like what were you using to manage your finances? What was your focus?

Damian Younger (06:16)

Yeah, was just what I had working with clients one-on-one, wasn't really a big name, I'm just starting out. So a lot of me working with any agents was basically just word of mouth. I would make sure that I would give them an awesome experience, really help to level up their skills. And I said, hey, if you know anyone who's looking to improve their sales skills over the phone, here's my name and number, have them reach out to me. So that was kind of really the extent of what I was doing. 

But as I start getting more serious, I'm like, I should really start marketing marketing myself the right way. should probably start running ads or some type of marketing strategies and really start ramping things up to get my name out so I can help more people.

And you don't really have a roadmap with these things. There's nobody saying, okay, Damian, well, you definitely want to start with doing this, and then you want to start building a business, I think you want to start that. We're kind of figuring it out as we go, and that's just a regular day as an entrepreneur. It's figure it out. Ran into a lot of issues. I learned a lot of lessons, financial lessons that didn't really get me much of anywhere, but it's just hard learning lessons.

That just kind of slowly, really ate away at my finances, you know? And when you're putting so much time and money into it and you're not really getting anything back because you don't have a roadmap, you start to kind of realize, okay, what are my other options here? And that's kind of when I really just discovered, you know, the building of business credit really establishing a relationship with business trade lines to kind of help streamline my cash flow, help kind of free up some of the funds that I had or didn't have, or maybe that I was waiting to have, you know, as I really kind of kicked this thing off. That probably was about a year, year and a half of a journey as I was really getting my sales course off the ground.

Catherine Giese (08:06)

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. That's a common issue with a lot of businesses that you put money in, but you don't necessarily get paid at the right times. And so it's kind of hard to manage your cash flow and you need to have certain things to help bridge it. Do you have an example of something that happened in your business and how you kind of discovered that like trade lines or another financing option could help?

Damian Younger (08:31)

Well, number one, I made a huge investment was super early on in my coaching career and I was looking to launch webinars. So I'm super excited about it. I put all this time and money and I hired an entire webinar team to help me get my webinar off the ground. And I'm looking to run ads and I'm paying for all of this resources and stuff. And it didn't pan out at all. It was a huge investment and I'm like, I don't have a dollar to show for it. That was just a huge learning lesson. mean, if anything, it helped me to get more clear on what exactly it is that I do, who I'm looking to help, and what it's really going to take to get this off the ground. 

So pivoting from there, instead of, hiring people to do it for me, I decided to kind of take a step back and really do it myself. So that's when I decided to put together my own home studio, which is what I operate from home. A complete video studio, the mic, the camera, the works, a full operational studio to really get serious about this. 

And discovering those trade lines, there was a lot of equipment, desk equipment, office equipment, having the relationship with these trade lines really allowed me to get access to all of this equipment to help get my business off the ground, help get that studio off the ground. And especially if I didn't have the funds necessarily upfront, I was able to establish the relationship with a trade line, get some of this office equipment off the ground, and kind of like I said, be able to kind of streamline that cashflow and free up some of that money. 

So that was really huge for me. And I'm like, okay, this is nice of these trade lines have, you know, net 30 accounts, which they give you about 30 days to pay back. Some are, you know, net 60, even net 90 accounts. And I'm like, you know, most of the time, the way I'm thinking is I have to have all of the money upfront now. And sometimes, when you're paying stuff out, you don't have all of the money, you know, upfront right away. And it just was like, okay, this is huge for me to really start looking for more vendors, diversifying, you know, or creating more relationships with these vendors and freeing up my cash.

That was huge for me.

Catherine Giese (10:45)

Yeah, having that flexibility is really key and like really the biggest perk of using trade lines. And it's funny because those are often easier to qualify for than like credit cards and loans. Yeah. One question that we get a lot is what trade lines should I get? Like, do you have a list? Like, what vendors should I look for? How did you go about that process of finding the right vendors?

Damian Younger (10:50)

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

So it's interesting you say that. So when I had first gone down the route of not getting approved for funding, I had actually sought out a business credit coach. And so what he did is he kind of sat down with me and said, hey, I want to learn more about what your business is, what your goals are, what you're looking to achieve. And so once I kind of told him all of that, he was kind of recommending, okay, with where you're at, since you're a new business, you don't have any business credit, you're brand new. like, same as with personal credit, you don't really have any credit. So I recommend starting with a couple of these, I guess you can call them starter accounts or starter vendor accounts, as you can say. 

So we recommended me starting with three starter vendor accounts to kind of get my credits established, make sure you're paying them on time, pay the invoices on time, but make sure that you're looking for vendors that are going to directly help your business now. So for example, I'm in real estate, I'm looking to put together a studio, getting trade lines that primarily help with construction isn't necessarily gonna benefit my business. So he was saying, start with these three, they have a lot of office expenses, maybe even getting a fuel card, maybe even something that's going to be able to track your business credit, your personal credit, some type of software, which is what introduced me to Nav as well. And kind of starting with there and then kind of building your way up there. And then once you get those established, we'll start to introduce you to more trade lines as you go along. So that's kind of the extent of how my journey got started.

Catherine Giese (12:46)

Yeah, it's very sound advice to make sure that you're getting trade lines that are actually relevant to your business because part of building business credit is you have to be using the trade lines that you have. So you can't just get a trade line from Home Depot and never use it. It's not going to do anything for you.

Damian Younger (12:51)

Right.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Exactly, exactly. So for me, I was really like, OK, I need to make this stuff count. I think when you start to establish the trade lines, it helps you to get really clear on, number one, what am I paying on my personal account that I can start to move into making it more of a business expense. And obviously when it comes to tax purposes and just running your business, you really wanna have a nice clear separation of what you're spending personally versus business-wise as well. 

So for me, that really helped me to get clear. Most people, like I said, they're just using their debit card and they're just swiping and getting whatever they need. So that was a big wake up call for me as well.

Catherine Giese (13:36)

Yeah, that's a really good point to making sure that your business and your personal finances are separate. It is important for tax reasons, but it's also important just for like your sanity to like keep everything.

Damian Younger (13:46)

My goodness. It was a lot of learning lessons in the wrong side, you know, to get here. And we're still learning every day for sure.

Catherine Giese (13:56)

Yeah, do you mind sharing an example of when you were maybe mixing your personal and business finances and.

Damian Younger (14:01)

Everyday. You go out and get gas. mean, especially when I'm just starting out, even just down to… personal cell phone. I had a personal cell phone that I'm just available for whatever and I didn't even think to really get a business cell phone and a business line established. I look at my utility from my internet and my phone and I'm like, okay, well, that's something that I use regularly. If I'm a coach that works from home, I should probably look to switch that over from my personal into that business account as well. And then also, the elephant in the room, I should probably have a business account. 

That would probably help out instead of putting everything on my personal checking account. So those are probably my top three that I'm like, okay, I got to get this stuff done right now and start getting myself serious. So yes, it has, it definitely has. And like I said, once that's established, I'm like, almost everything's a business expense now. Now that I'm looking at what I'm doing from even putting the gas in my car to sometimes just going out and having dinner with the business partner just talking business, know, I mean, all those are our business expenses and I'm thankful that I have this card, okay, because I'm talking business 24 seven, I'm all about talking business credit, let's talk real estate, let's talk growth, let's talk marketing, we can talk about it all day. So I usually can't be quiet and if I'm out having dinner, I might as well make it count.

Catherine Giese (15:31)

Yeah, totally. It is funny how actually making that separation almost changes your mindset. You're like, maybe like a real business now. And these are business expenses. Yeah. Did you have a moment out of curiosity where that switch happened, where you're like, I have a business now. Like, this isn't just like a side hustle for me.

Damian Younger (15:41)

Absolutely, absolutely. It's huge.

Man, let's see. I would have probably thought when I was putting my webinar together. That's not something that a lot of people talk about. It's kind of like an underground way of marketing. Some people are familiar with it, some people aren't. But it can be really effective if you use it the right way. So I think with me really, really getting clear, like, OK.

I'm not just talking about it, I'm really doing this thing. Like I'm really putting together a solid offer of what is it that I do.

Why should people care? And what do I have to offer somebody that's going to make them trust in basically giving me money? And if you're not really clear on that, nobody's gonna give you money. And I've had to find that out the hard way that you have to get super clear. It's not just talk about, got some cool stuff. If you guys wanna hit me up, maybe, maybe not, that's not gonna work. And I had to learn the hard way that you need to get it.

incredibly clear on what you're doing, what you have to offer people and really get serious. And so for me, I had to stop saying, okay, the money's not coming in, the money's definitely going out. I need to really fine tune some stuff so that I can, you know, make sure that when I am launching this thing that it's going to kick off the way it needs to kick off.

Catherine Giese (17:11)

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. being really clear. And I think, a lot of business owners who are new struggle with feeling like they're being salesy or like they're being dirty. Did you like struggle with that at all?

Damian Younger (17:21)

Yeah.

In a way, and I would probably say for me, because I hate sales.

And it's funny because you're like, wait, Damien, aren't you in real estate? Don't you do sales? Yes. And so one of the things that I coach all the time is, you know, I'm not in the business of sales. I'm in the business of creating relationships. And if you're here creating relationships, the best way to do that is to be your most authentic self. If you're coming off salesy or if you're coming off kind of schemey, that's a quick way to not only not attract customers, but you're not going to really get anything off the ground. So for me, as I was building this thing out, as I was building my webinar from, you know, my

My mission statement to what I do, how I can help, I had to really stop and say, okay, what is my most authentic self? Who am I and what exactly is it that I'm looking to represent? And so when you're sitting there with a blank piece of paper and you're really kind of like writing that down.

you don't have really anybody to bounce it off because this is your business. This is exactly what you want to do. And so for a lot of people, they kind of struggle there because they don't really know. OK, I'm not sure what my most authentic self is. And so that cuts out all the scripted stuff or the salesy stuff. Like this is who you are and who you want to be to the world. 

And so for me, that was like a, that was a real awakening moment that, and it took me, it took me some time, you cause I think some people, you're not really sure how you want to be perceived or portrayed to people. Who am I when it comes to the business person? Cause sometimes people know you personally, like as, you know, maybe you've tried other businesses or you're a serial entrepreneur and you've, you know, you've sold Kirby vacuums and cell phones and this, and now you need take me seriously to sell your home. It's like, okay,

I don't know if I could take you seriously. being your most authentic self and really owning up to who you are, that was really huge for me. And it took me some time really to kind of really get clear on that.

Catherine Giese (19:20)

Yeah, that's really great advice. I'd love to dig more into your process there because you can't see your own back. You know, it's like there's certain things that you just don't know what you don't know. what was the process like of figuring out what your authentic self was and how to show up that way?

Damian Younger (19:26)

Yeah.

I don't want to say trial and error, I would say, maybe intuition. But I think you really just have to cut out the noise. And for me, one of the things that I coach first and foremost is I'm not a big social media person. I believe that social media has a lot of distractions. 

And if you're a brand new business owner, social media is there to influence. It's there to distract you and if you're listening to a lot of people, it really dampens what your message is because you're listening to your favorite person, you're listening to this and it really makes it hard for you to say, okay, who am I though? And so one of the things that I've done is I took off social media altogether. 

I don't think I've been on social media for probably the better part of about a year and a half as I've been building this sales course to, like I said, to really get as authentic as possible. I didn't want to have any background noise. I didn't want to have any distractions. So in order for me to be authentic, I need to really kind of sit with who I am and what my message is to the world. And that was kind of, it was kind of tough. Social media is our best friend. The first thing we do, we wake up, we check our Facebook, we check our Instagram, we check our, we check our Snapchat, you know, we see what's going on in the world. So to really stop that and to

to get incredibly clear on who am I, what am I doing, what am I offering, who am I gonna help? To really get clear and to really start focusing on that, the amount of clarity that I've gotten from eliminating the outside distractions has been huge. And I think that's why I'm so excited about what I can offer people because I know this is my most authentic self and I know I'm incredibly clear on what my product is and I know it's gonna be able to help a lot of people.

Catherine Giese (21:18)

Yeah, I bet that also has resulted in it potentially being very unique because you're not following all of the real estate, social media influencers or whoever it is and being influenced by the way that they do their courses and stuff.

Damian Younger (21:33)

Absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah, I believe that my course is gonna be completely 100 % my authentic self. So it's like, if you don't like me, you're not gonna like the course at all. And that's the way it's gonna be by design. I want people to get a really solid dose of my energy, my personality, all that right up front. And I was able to get that clear, like I said, by drowning out all of the outside noise. And so I'm super excited about it.

Catherine Giese (21:58)

Yeah, that sounds really exciting. Kind of on that note, we know that you have like a bunch of clients through your coaching business. What have you found that's maybe like the number one challenge that they're facing and how do you help them work through it?

Damian Younger (22:13)

So when it comes to real estate, the number one, the biggest challenge is, especially for a real estate agent, is how do I get my clients? I think a lot of people get into real estate. You watch the Selling Sunset on Netflix, and everybody's looking great, and they're having lunch all the time. It's awesome. It's great. We all like to watch it.

Catherine Giese (22:30)

I love selling sunset.

Damian Younger (22:35)

And so it inspires, I can definitely do that. I can put that suit on and look great. I can do that. And so, just like me and everyone else, you get your real estate license and you're like, okay, what now? And what most people don't know is when you get into the real estate industry, the first thing they say is, okay, pick up the phone and start making phone calls. And you're like, wait, wait, what? What happened to the selling sunset? When do I start looking cute and going out to having dinner and stuff like that? Like, when does that part come?

And so what a lot of agents aren't really aware of is that the majority of being a real estate agent involves being on the phone.

You have to go out there and specifically go out and prospect and get your clients on the phone and you have to have sales skills. And I think a lot of agents start to rely on making posts on social media or they're hoping that clients come past their page and that's just not how you're going to be able to get business. And so one of the things that I had to learn the hard way is that

That's not gonna be an effective way of doing business. And so the first thing that I teach agents is that you need to really start getting clear and doubling down on improving your sales skills. Because if you don't have any sales skills, you're not gonna be able to hide behind social media. You're not gonna be able to make a couple of posts and somebody's gonna say,

Well, hey, Catherine looks great inside of the house. I'm definitely going to hit her up to sell my million dollar home. Probably not going to happen. They don't know who you are and you haven't earned any kind of trust. And so in the real estate industry, it has a 90 % failure rate in the first year. And what I believe is that's due in part to a lack of skill. A lot of agencies, they don't have the training from the brokerage. They don't have the confidence to make the calls or they didn't know that they're making calls. And a lot of people just don't want to cold call because they don't want to get

They don't really know what they're saying. They don't have that confidence. So they eventually get discouraged and they quit. They're out of the industry just as fast as they got in. And so my coaching basically revolves directly around improving those sales skills, helping them to get more confident on the phone and giving them some strategies that are incredibly effective to have effective conversations and set their own appointments so that they can get business for themselves.

Catherine Giese (24:47)

Yeah, that's so interesting. I have like two follow up questions about that.

My first question is we've been starting to hear a lot from business owners like you who say, you got to just get on the phone. You got to just go talk to people. You got to just go knock on doors. It's very like old school. And I think it goes against a lot of the wisdom that we see on social media, which is like, no, you just you start your account, you blow up on social media and like that's how you grow. What are your thoughts on that?

Damian Younger (25:15)

Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Don't do it, guys. I'm a contrarian type of person, and I'm the opposite of the status quo. So I actually have an e-book that's going to be coming out, and it's actually going to be titled, Friends and Family Last. And so basically what this is going to be revolved around is reaching out to friends and family for business. Posting on social media. 

Those should be the last two ways of prospecting that you go about. And I know everybody who talks about you should be looking and hitting up your friends and family first and going on social media first, but a lot of people start to realize you're not getting any business that way. And it's incredibly competitive, especially if you don't have a clientele. You're a brand new real estate agent. Nobody's going to trust you. I'm not going to trust you. If I'm selling my million dollar house and you post a stock photo and saying, hey, hit me up if you want to buy or sell any real estate, I'm not going to hit you up.

And you also have to think as well, your ideal clients, they're not on social media scrolling around looking for random agents to list their homes. So you're in the wrong place when it comes to finding your ideal clients. So if you're putting all of your efforts on making these posts, hitting up friends and family, what happens if you do sell a couple of homes from friends and family, what?

You're going to keep harassing your friends and family. Hey, it's me again. Let me know when you want to buy or sell. me again. There's only so many friends and family you have that can want to buy or sell. So eventually the elephant in the room, the one thing that you're ignoring are the strangers, are the strangers that are going to be the ones who want to listen to you because they don't know who you are. And if you have the sales ability, if you have the confidence to pick up the phone, say, hey, this is Damian with whatever brokerage, you know, and you have a really solid introduction, you have the confidence you can you can get as much business as you want over the phone if you have the skill and the ability to make it happen.

Catherine Giese (27:10)

Okay, that does bring me to my second follow-up question, which is, are you able to just preview with us? Like, what does a good pitch look like? How is it structured?

Damian Younger (27:19)

So there's different avenues when it comes to cold calling, one avenue that I teach and what my specialty is, is in expired listings.

So an expired listing is typically a home that was on the market for a certain amount of time. Let's say you worked with an agent before, Catherine, you had it on the market. It sat there. Unfortunately, it didn't sell. Six months go by, your contract with your current agent expires, and then boom, it comes off the market. So that contract expires. 

When that typically happens, just because the home came off the market, that doesn't mean that you changed your mind on selling. Let's say you needed to move across the country because you had a job offer or you were having a child or you wanted to upsize or downsize. Nothing's changed. Your motivation is still the same, but the agent you're working with for whatever reason, maybe it was the market, maybe it was the price, maybe the agent didn't do a good job, whatever happened, the home didn't get sold. And so that's what's called an expired listing. And typically when that happens and a home does come off the market, it's kind of free for everybody.

Because what we don't do is, you know, if I'm an agent, I'm not going to try to, you know, pillage you because you're working with an agent, you have a signed contract. So let's say, for example, your home does come off the market. It's off the market. It's free for all for any agent. Now, when that happens, we can get an alert if you have a CRM or a prospecting method. Any agent is free to give you a call, say, hey, Catherine, I saw your home came off the market. I want to know if that's for sale.

Is that home still for sale? So a standard pitch that I would use is, hey, Catherine, this is Damian with ABC Realty. I saw your home over there on 52nd Ave came off the market. Is that still for sale? And so you would say, no, it's not for sale, or maybe it is for sale. Great. I see you're working with your agent, John. Did he give you any kind of feedback on why this home came off the market? Help me out here. What's going on with your home?

And so essentially what I want to do is I want to kind of start to introduce myself, really be confident with what I'm looking to do. And I just want to find out if that's something that you're still willing to do. Do you have that motivation to sell your home? And if so, I want to get that conversation going, build that rapport with you. And if you're still my goal here is to set an appointment with you over the phone. Because if we can get this home for you sold and you're still open to working with an agent like me, I have an amazing opportunity to book an appointment with you right now, set it up for later on this evening or tomorrow. 

And I just got my first lead basically, I generated my own lead without having to pay for it, without having to ask anybody. This is just me cold calling you out of the blue, striking up a conversation, building rapport, finding out what your motivation is and confidently setting an appointment. And so if you can start to do that over and over and over, that's how you can generate your own pipeline of leads without ever touching social media, without ever bugging friends and family, making them feel uncomfortable, without having to post or do anything. All it takes is just picking up the phone, having confidence in yourself and having solid sales abilities. So that's the nutshell of what I teach.

Catherine Giese (30:31)

Yeah, I love that framework. It's just like knowing the right opportunity, understanding the pain point, building rapport, and then just closing the deal. Yeah.

Damian Younger (30:38)

Absolutely. So yeah, so essentially

The course that I have, I break it down into four modules. The very first module that I have is called Nailing the Intro. You have to really be confident with what you're asking. Really be clear on who you are, where you're from, and why are you calling? I think sometimes people get a little wishy washy or you don't have the confidence. Hey, Catherine, I'm not quite sure. You have a home? Maybe are you thinking about selling?

At the time, if you work with an agent and your home didn't sell, you're probably a little pissed off right now. You hired this last agent and he said he was gonna do the job and he didn't do the job. So you're probably not in a good mood. And now you have some guy like me cold calling you at probably eight o'clock in the morning. You're like, who the F are you? And now all of a sudden you wanna sell my home? No thanks.

Click. So that's kind of a regular day, you know, in the cold calling world, But like I said before, if you have the skills to kind of go in there with a really confident introduction, kind of go past, you know, that barrier or those objections, there's a lot of opportunity on the phones and a lot of agents really kind of overlook those opportunities. And it's a great way to get your business started and really make a great income for yourself.

Catherine Giese (31:50)

I love that. have one more question on this. What about retention? Because I imagine you build this client base, you want to keep them and maybe get referrals from them. Do you have any advice for that side of things?

Damian Younger (32:03)

Yeah, so I also am going to be putting up just follow up strategies when it comes to just keeping in touch with your clients, whether you work with them, whether they look, because for example, I always teach that not all people are ready right now. Let's say that now the timing isn't right. I did give you a call. had a great introduction, but now it's just not the right time. Maybe it's winter time and you want to actually sell your home next spring. That's six months out. So what do I do now? Do I just kind of write that stuff down? 

So I really teach getting organized, following up with your clients, making sure that you're staying in front of them. Not only is it via phone calls, sometimes there's promotional packaging you can put inside the mail where you're always just staying in front of the client, letting them know, even if you didn't do business with me, hey, Catherine, I really appreciate the conversation. Here's what me and my team are doing in your area. Here's some of the homes that we sold in your area. And when you're ready, we would love to add your home to this list. Here's our contact information.

I'm still gonna give you a call. Hey, Catherine, it's me again. We talked three months ago. It's Damian from ABC Realty following up. You said you wanted to get your home sold in springtime or a couple months out. Let's go ahead and get together for about 15 minutes. I wanna show you the plan that I have put together of how we can get you top dollar for your home. Boom. 

And now I position myself to set an appointment with you to meet with you because I had that follow-up ability and that skill set to make sure that I was that agent that's right in front of you when you are ready. And that's the kind of stuff that you'll appreciate because you'll probably think back, man, that last agent really didn't message me at all. That guy kind of ghosted me. And of course my home didn't get sold. So when you have a person like me that has that type of ability, you'll start to see the difference in skill set very quickly. And you'll start to see how many appointments get set with that skill set.

Catherine Giese (33:51)

Yeah, I think that just begs again one more question. Just just one more. ⁓ How do you actually organize your clients and make sure that you're following up? Because I can imagine that the list gets long yeah.

Damian Younger (33:55)

Yeah, ask away.

So it's funny because I teach group sessions and sometimes I'll do like master classes and stuff like that. And when I was really fine tuning my coaching business and really figuring out what do agents really want, at first I was thinking it was the skill set, you need to have more skills. But what I found out is that a lot more agents were more concerned about the question you just asked. Where do I find these people? How do I stay organized? And so that was a part of my course that I'm putting together. I call it Systems for Success. And so what that basically means is I encourage all of the agents that I coach to always have a really dynamic and robust CRM system.

This is basically your hub to not only where you find your clients, because you don't know where to find them. Where are these guys at? I don't know that Catherine's home came off the market yesterday. How would I know that? So really having the right platforms that not only has the right information that lets me know your home just came off the market, it also comes with the dialer system as well. So I'm not just manually dialing one phone number at a time. This is a platform where it's auto dialing. I'm hitting Catherine up. Next, I'm hitting this person up. So now I'm getting in front of as many contacts as possible because the name of the game is sales.

And unfortunately I have to talk to a lot of people. You might not be ready, but the person might be ready after you. It might not be the two of you, but the third person. So I need to talk to as many people as possible. And so making sure that I'm not only getting in front of as many people, I need to make sure I'm staying organized. 

So one of the things that I teach which is not only implementing that CRM system, because that's going to be basically your moneymaker. You want to use that CRM system every single day, but also staying incredibly organized and making these high level notes to where, OK, Catherine wasn't available now. We have a follow up for six weeks out. I'm putting notes in my calendar to where I'm getting pinged. So I need to contact all of these people that I've had conversations from now to the of the month. 

Let's say I just added 50, 45 people to my pipeline. Those weren't yeses now, but those were maybes and maybes is a yes that hasn't happened yet. So I need to make sure that I'm organized with the notes of our conversation so that once that time does come, I'm ready to capitalize on it. And that's something that you're going to remember the conversation that we had. So staying organized and having those systems is absolutely vital.

Catherine Giese (36:23)

Yeah, love that. It sounds like there's so much value in this course. Where can people find

Damian Younger (36:27)

It's going to be huge.

You can go to my site right now. I'm going to be revamping, it’s at coachdamian.com. So it's just going to have a landing page. I'm kind of teasing it right now because I'm about 80 % complete with the course. I'm filming every single day. I really want to make sure that this is as helpful, as informative, and as dynamic as possible because I really want agents to know that having the right training, having the right processes in place is going to give them everything they

And to be honest, having that stat of 90 % failure rate, me, that's unacceptable. There's no reason why you have agents that are coming into the real estate industry and they're leaving just as soon as they got started. And I was one of those ones that almost left due to a lack of training. And I always told myself that once I figure this out, and I will, I'm going to level the playing field. 

I'm going to make sure that every agent has the processes, the skills, and all the resources that they're gonna need to be successful. Because in my opinion, I believe there's plenty of business out there for everyone to be successful. And so I encourage all the agents to level up their sales skills, get confident, get dynamic, and go out there and get your business.

Catherine Giese (37:40)

That's a beautiful message to end on. Thank you so much for joining us, Damian. I feel like I learned a lot and there's a lot of value here for people, not just in real estate, but I think in all industries about growing their client base. So thank you.

Damian Younger (37:53)

Absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Catherine. This has been great.

Catherine Giese (37:58)

Yeah.

Catherine Giese (38:00)

Thank you to our guests for sharing their story and thank you for listening today. Keep in mind that every small business is unique and there is no such thing as one size fits all advice. So only take what you find helpful. We look forward to next time.

Catherine Giese (38:12)

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