How to build a probate business with probate coach Bill Gross: Clarity in marketing, messaging, and team building

Hey, good afternoon. This is the noon Pacific time, 2:00 PM central 3:00 PM eastern, probate mastery group mastermind, normally with Chad Corbett. And unfortunately, for some personal reasons, Chad’s not able to be on the call today and asked me, my name is Bill Gross, I’m a student and practitioner of Chad’s and his work.
And so he asked me to jump in as a substitute teacher, so that means that I ride the chalkboard. You cannot throw the eraser or chalk at me for these you old enough to know what that means. And the goal here today is to continue. I can share with you what I do every day. I’m a real estate broker. I don’t sell, software or coaching or anything.
I just sell houses when people need them. And I find houses for investors. All my lead gen is in probate. I took Chad’s class two and a half, almost three years ago, and built a business around what I understood he was teaching me. And as a result, I’ve done tremendous business. I’ll share with you within my company.
I’m at the XP Realty. Our standard of excellence is iconic and tracking on that goal for this past year. I closed. If you go on the MLS 42 sides, 30 transactions in the last 12 months. And again, all my lead gen has been probate. I do get some past client business. I do get referrals, but I started, I wasn’t having a production three years ago.
I came out of management and coaching, and I knew about probate real estate. Just, I mean, just a quick story on me. I’d been in the business for a long time. I knew about probate. I knew the basics like many agents I’d done a couple, but I didn’t lead generate at all. I got into management and coaching recruiting and got out of that.
after three years realized it was a dead end. And going back to production, but I didn’t have one listing. I didn’t have one buyer. I didn’t have one lead when it started. I knew. I had a Rolodex, I had a desire.

And I took Chad’s program at that time, which was probably Mastery’s three days. it seems like three or four hours a day, like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
And I took it and recorded it and listened to it that night. And I listened to it intently while I was writing out kind of a plan. And one thing that Chad did on that call was he challenged us to go to court and see it live. And this was before COVID and see the process. And so I did, I live in Los Angeles and I put a suit and tie on and I went down to court probate court for a day.
And I realized that most of the action kind of happens at the beginning of the day from eight 30, till about 10 o’clock. And I went back the next day and I went back the next day. I just said, well, I’ll go for the rest of the week. And the end of the week, I said, wow, this is fascinating. I was learning so much about the competition, what they do well, what the competitors don’t do.
What I could do better, learning about the process of probate to help, how to figure out how to get business. And I went there every day. Um, and over the first 30 days running a very detailed business plan of lead-generation just specifically within probate and launched my business in April 2019.
So about two and a half years ago from scratch and in 2019, I forget how much I closed 2020. I closed about 30 deals, and this year, I’m on track to close 35 sales. I’ve about 42 sides and about 30 sales over the last 12 month period. So I built a nice business. It sounds like a lot more than it is in Los Angeles.
We have some big transactions. Mine tend to be much smaller because probate does, but, I built a business that has given me a consistent income and business, as well as building a team, as well as I think building a future, a business I can work on and it’s really all using Chad’s, philosophy, his vision, building on the information he gave us and using that as a start.
and I tuned into these calls regularly, and I’m very in touch with what goes on. I And I’ve taken every other coaching program I’ve seen, I’ve paid for them.
just to learn, to be an expert, actually mark me as the LA probate expert.com. but it all goes back to the fundamentals and I tell people, I, Chad gives way more for free than any other company I know. So definitely think you’re in the right spot. Uh, so I’m a little humble today to be asked to fill in.
Chad’s enormous shoes or Chad’s, uh, mobile shoes. Cause he traveled. He’s been traveling all over the country here late of late. And I haven’t quite done that. I have big feet though, so I could fit his shoes, but I don’t think I quite have his style. And unlike Chad, I speak quickly and I can mumble at times.
So, feel free to raise your hand, feel free, to put a note in the chatbox. If you have a question, what I will tell you is that I normally don’t do zoom calls during the day because I’m a broker I have a business to run. and I, normally record, you know, watch recorded material after hours.
I mean while I’m doing work. But when I do go, I’d like to be, I know that the more I participate, the more value I get out of it. So I’ll challenge you to put yourself on the line and I know for some of you it’s uncomfortable, but I think self success, self-growth. All growth is at its core uncomfortable.
It’s about being, getting comfortable with what we we’re currently uncomfortable with. So I encourage you to turn on your cameras, unmute your phone, ask a question, participate. If you have a question, there’s a lot of people that watch this program and just know that you’re doing a service with the other guy or gal who is watching, who doesn’t have maybe the courage you do to ask the question.
I know it can be tough. I saw one hand up when we started and now I see that it’s down. So I don’t know. That means she gave up on us and left or not, but, um, okay.

So, Jamie. Jamie has a hand up. And while you in your use of Jimmy first, Jamie, where are you from?
What area? I’m from Seattle. Seattle, Washington. Yeah. I think you told me you’re getting into real estate. Yeah, I just recently started getting into real estate. I’ve been a nurse for over 20 years in oncology and I’m ready to make a jump out of that. I’m semi-retired right now. so I have, you know, I have the chunk of money to kind of start investing and figuring out what I want to do with it.
And real estate has been really interesting to me. I’ve owned my own house. I’ve had a couple, um, properties myself as the landlord. So, um, but my question is I took the class probate mastery and I like it because I. I like the servant part of it. Um, however, how do I start this process? If I, if I don’t have my license yet?
I mean, I know there are a couple of options, but, um, it feels like I’m kind of taking the cart before the horse. If I, you know, don’t do any, if I don’t get my license and then do that, or can I still, great question. So when people get into it as an agent, they have one or two goals it’s to increase income and, or to build wealth, right?
So increase, create income by creating transactions we get commissions on, or that we flip for profits, or we sell for-profits. We build wealth by finding properties that we want to keep as long-term rentals, most commonly. So in this program, I’ve met numerous people that are either agents or not agents.

There are plenty of investors, part-time investors, and full-time investors. He used these same principles without having the tool of being a real estate agent. Now I am a real estate agent, so I can only share my personal experience. I also invest and also buy flip property, but I would say if your goal is to get your license, is that what I heard you say? You’re in the process of getting a license? The marketing’s the same, it’s the same people you might be approaching as an investor. And I do think that, as a real estate agent, I, often approach estates, petitioners, or initial administrator executives of the estates who have property, you know, who just to sell it for cash. And so you’ll change your hat at some point, perhaps, or you have to change the disclosure. You know, when you’re an agent, you have to be clear upfront if you’re acting as an agent or acting as a principal. If I’m, if I’m talking to a homeowner and I think I’m going to want to buy the property as an investor, I don’t tell them I’m an agent.
And I make sure they’re clear, not representing them, but if I want to list the property, once I tell them an agent I’m kind of stuck going down the road cause I have a responsibility now to them to look out for their best interest and not use that information against them. But I would say if your goal is to get into it, I wouldn’t wait for my license.
I would put together a plan for an investor marketing approach to these homeowners. And then at some point when you begin your license, you can decide, do you want to change the marketing to be appropriate for an agent? I am looking for the. Or, and one advantage you might have would be that maybe bring on some of your team to act as the investor I’ll share with you guys.
One of my tactics is I partner with investors all the time. I have one, I would say my closest partner, who we do our marketing to homeowners and marketing to attorneys because once we’ve had the data, we can market to the same person twice from two different angles. I call that two bites at the apple, right?
You can take a marking letter that you might mail to a family. Hey, I see the property is possibly for sale. And I’d like to represent you as your agent, you can send the same person, a letter from the investors later had, has he have a property for sale or maybe for sale? I’d like to make you a cash offer.
And so we coordinate that data. So as you find out, properties are already listed, we pull them off the list or whatever the story might be. But it gives us really kind of Intel to work both sides of that, of that equation. So you might start as an investor would get your license. You might try to solicit a friend or colleague to continue to market together.
And it also cuts some of the costs upfronts. We share a virtual assistant. We share some of the marketing costs as a result of partnering together if that makes sense. Okay. So come back and tell us how you’re doing. Okay, Jamie!

Robert asks what market I’m in, I’m in Los Angeles, California. LA is the largest probate court in America or a sometimes close second to Atlanta.
I think Fulton county I believe it’s the largest consistently. so obviously a large Metro area. And so what I, what I want to say is what works in it doesn’t work in other areas, obviously like any business. I would say our Metro area might be 20 times bigger than some, but we probably have three times the competition.
And I’m not saying that negatively. I’m just saying, you know, the competitors all kind of do the same thing and if you avoid them, even in my market, there’s plenty of business to be had. It’s ridiculous how much there is. but I’m in Los Angeles, California as a probate agent, I work really, I would say, uh, my goal is for all of California, but certainly all Southern California.
And I’ve listed this year in eight different counties in Southern California eight different counties in California of which five are Southern and three were central and Northern California. So hopefully that answers that question. Great. Who now, if you guys have any questions, feel free to jump in here again, the substitute teacher, but I believe I’ve taken Chad’s program and worked with it had been successful with it.
I, um, create my program. Not coaching, will kind of supplement it. When Chad was doing this, I felt like I wanted to place for us people who are working it to get together and create some more comradery amongst agents. And I’m strictly agent-focused. So I do a promo called probate weekly on Thursdays at 4:00 PM Pacific time, probably weekly.com.
So I talk about probate every day with investors, wholesalers attorneys, literally there’s a program in my I’m a member of the bar association, even though I’m not an attorney, I’m its affiliate member. And I watched their programs as well. So, I’m in this business every day. This is what I do. This is all they do.
Uh, can we get your podcast? Sure. Robert Love to have you come on probate. We did a calm let to have you join. And then I also have available bill gross, exp if you want to check out the past recordings of it. but again, I think it was, I think, different. I, all the time people ask about the data, I refer them back to all the leads and when they ask about coaching, while there are numerous programs, I recommend Chad’s.
And I think Chad’s program. Is particularly good in that it’s about the content, not just the marketing. And I find the companies that focus on marketing missed the mark. You know, what I tell people is what’s critical in your marketing is your come from, you know, if you come from the right spot, then you can at least aim the right direction.
It hits something. If it comes from it’s just to get a transaction. Real estate is a very difficult business. You’re constantly out looking for your deals. If we’re come from being of service, you’re going to accumulate people who appreciate you and respect you, and want to work with you. And we’ll give you business.
You don’t have to worry about it as much. So that’s a big part of the business, uh, is your come from. but yeah, so I do teach that regularly, so great.

Richard de lA Cruz. I see a hand up. How can I help you?
Okay. I’m looking to, uh, get into, some sort of a YouTube kind of launch where I will have at least three or four videos regarding the probate where instead of sending them to a website, I will, I can send them to my videos, but my question to you, Bill, what will be, what will be three to four questions that are some challenges come up in probate?
Cause I’m new at this. I haven’t even, signed up for the Probate mastery. I have not taken the whole thing. Yeah. I just really began. I just got my leads last. week So I’m new at this, but I know there is an immense amount of potential in this, in this niche, but the point, so, going back to the question is what, what would you say, what will be good?
Three to four videos that you can come up with? What are they, you can ask for some challenging questions that they might come up the okay. Uh, Richard, what, what market area are you in? Where do you, where are you looking at? That’s a good question. I’m in Queens, New York. However, I subscribed to Nassau, which is like 35 minutes away from me because Queens is already taken up.
So I’ll deal with, you know, driving out another 30 minutes or so. I understand what, why you’re not marketing in Queens. Oh, well the Queens probate leads have already taken someone else. So it wasn’t available. It was not available through all the leads.com you’re saying. Right? Exactly. Okay. So, and then if I said to how what is your marketing strategy or what.
What’s your business plan in a nutshell, what’s your, what’s your approach gonna look like? Um, well the question more broadly I mean, I’m not sure exactly when you say business priority. I mean, so here’s what, here’s how I would say, you know, uh, I, I don’t know that Chad teaches it the way that I do, uh, back.
I don’t think he does, but there’s a lot of ways to get business and probate. I teach a class called 11 ways, and these are the little ways that I’ve used 11 different individual tactics. The way I look at it is the case. The probate case is the target, and you can attack the target from multiple angles of attack, you know, in the military, you know, there are bad guys, you know, behind a hill, you can send infantry, uh, and they can lob mortars, but you also can send in the air force and drop bombs.
You could have the Navy send missiles, right? There are multiple ways to get it. The same spot. I don’t mean to think of our customers as, enemies like that, but there are multiple ways to appeal to them, to get to do business with them. And so you need to think of the way or ways that you’re going to tack them and example the post in the group last week on Medicare, you can make a whole career if you listened to what Chad was talking about.
Um, I don’t, because it doesn’t match up with me. I’ll get to that. But if you just did what he said on that one thing, which was approaching the people who would know the families that had Medicare clawbacks or Medicare liens or such, and you just approach that, that could be a whole career. Just that one tactic.
Now, my premise or my thesis is if you attack the same people from two or three angles, you B if you track them for three angles should be four or five times more. Because there are synergies between your marketing one plus one if you work together as three, not two. So I’d say to you, you have to get clear on what your marketing is.
And when I asked that question, what I would recommend to you is what you need to do, and here’s what I did when I started from scratch. I knew real estate. I knew the process. I knew the procedures. I knew the forums. I didn’t know. I didn’t have any clients in real estate. So I did an inventory of myself. What are my strengths?
And I want to play to those. So I’ll give you an example. One of my strengths, I’m older. That’s a weakness in that. Maybe I don’t have the same energy as when I was young, but on the positive side, I have experience. And I think when people see somebody older, they all things equal. Assume them be a little wiser.
They assume they have some experience. I have gray hair. I look older. Um, I like to wear suits and ties when I go to court. I would dress very formally. They’re a realtor to show up in a polo shirt. When I go to court or go to lunch, the attorney, I always wear a formal dark suit, white shirt, Brooks, brother’s tie.
And I liked doing that. Some people can’t, I like that. So I look at my assets and say, well, how does that work for me? So I marketing included going to court as often as possible meeting with attorneys, as often as possible, you follow me, I’m looking at my assets, what are yours? I don’t know. You have to do a self-assessment of where you’re going to do well.
I’ve met people for example, who were paralegals and, they knew paralegals and attorneys. They did estate planning and probate work. That’s a big advantage. I didn’t have that. But if you have that, you need to work on that asset. So you need to assess what assets you have to your business, and then think about how do you want to attack these cases?
Yes, you can buy the data, uh, and you can call or mail, or, but I would say to you, and also. What else are you going to do to get to those people?

Does anybody else have a question? Uh, is it Ivanov? How do you pronounce your name? My first name is Dan.
I can’t figure out how to change my last name these first, as you probably guess I have technical challenges. Uh, I haven’t figured that out. So my question is a bit of twofold, full, any kind of piggybacks off of Richard’s as well. My strategy is closely modeled behind yours and I’m very interested in the attorney aspect of it.
I’m in Sarasota, Florida, which is Southwest Florida. I spoke a couple of days, whatever a week ago, left two weeks ago, affluent community. You can’t do probate here without an attorney. Um, Struggling to find the people that need help with guidance that way, because you can’t do the probate without an attorney here.
Pretty much almost everyone knows. Grandparents are here from out of state. Their affairs are very well tidied up. You might have some slips here and there, but for the most part, I found that when I would cold call or when I was pulling the list, cause I will do it myself. I have some spare time.
So I do it myself. What I call the property’s already listed. They’ve already had an attorney. So I’m trying to kind of, you know, get it on a front end and make the relationship happen with the attorney. So the lawyers, I approached the couple, and I suggested the cross. The mutual cross-advertising to where I would have a QA, like a flyer.
And then I, you know, whatever pepper a neighborhood with, you know, not your regular realtor care about you to try to promote the attorney and the importance of an estate plan. Even for young people, old people, whatever. I put out a question in the group one day, I didn’t get anything. back, has anyone done, have you done a cross-advertising with an attorney because of their solicitation laws?
I don’t want the stepping to legal ground to where first of all, if you want to sound like someone that knows what they’re talking about, I should know how to phrase that, um, when he comes to the, to the cross-advertising. So, do you use a flyer? Do you have any model that I can model my, my cold advertising with, with the attorneys? My first question Yeah. Let’s take one at a time, just cause I’ll, I’ll forget the first one when you’re in the middle of the second one. And there’s a couple of things I’ve done, in this area that I continue to do that are fruitful. So marketing with attorneys is difficult.
I didn’t ask the question. Are you an agent or you an investor or both? I am. I am licensed, I am an agent. So you’re approaching people to list a property with you. First is your primary focus. I’m a full-time cop. So I guess my, the way that it’s worked out for me.
‘ cause I do real estate part-time and I’m a deputy. I injured myself, so I have a beard, but, um, that’s kind of, my, it’s easier for me to get in contact with some of the attorneys or the lawyers around because I have friends, for sure. I’m not, you know, there are the different realm of what I’m used to in the big, from the beginning, because I’ve, you know, used to dealing with the criminal aspect of it.
The, um, but my question is you’re not, you’re approaching them from a business point of view today as a real estate agent to list a property and help them sell, not as an investor, your primary entrees as an agent, right? Correct. Yes. Correct. So there’s a couple of things you can do. first off marketing with, with attorneys, I find, you know, every business has this kind of way of the normal way of operating, right?
Like people to first, thanks for your service as a deputy. Appreciate you keeping us safe while we’re sleeping at night and while I’m selling houses, Yeah, people have a way of doing business and every industry kind of has that methodology. And I find with attorneys, I don’t know, Sarasota’s law I used to live in Boca.
I hope to move back to Boca in a few years… that almost every turn, if you call them up and have a, a vague reference to them. Uh, gee, I was talking to Joe Smith, his attorney. He mentioned that you work in a state planet to learn about it. can we meet full lunch? I find that any, almost any attorney would meet for lunch. Now that may or may not be a strategy when to pursue, but that’s just that’s one avenue.
So when I started, I did a lot at that. I would call them up and I would never ask them for business. I would never talk about approaching. I went more for the relationship. That was, that was one way to market to attorneys. The co-marketing problem is we as realtors think of ourselves as marketing sales consultants. Attorneys don’t and they, discover this while they, when they get there in, into practice.
More of their life is about being businessmen and less about their life as being an attorney. They have to do the legal work as the delivery, but they need to spend time on marketing and business and hiring people and accounting and other things that have nothing to do with law. and they hate it.
They hate talking about it. They hate doing it. They look down on it. So I don’t know when I worked with attorneys to co-market with them, I just never found a way to position myself though, as effective with one exception, an estate planning attorney is always looking to generate business. So what I found was that I could interview them.
I do a zoom call with them. One-on-one I do. I built up my weekly call. So have them come in as a guest on my weekly call to promote the concept of estate planning and then their particular service. I believe, and I know Florida enough to know that you’re better off with an estate plan and a living trust than you are without it, not as much.
So in California where it’s even more of an issue. But I do know that it’s effective. and so one tactic would be to contact attorneys you know, if you already know them, I would invite them to lunch. If lunch works for you, I don’t know your schedule. If lunch doesn’t work, then I would say, just calling him on the phone and talking about your business and asking them about how they build their practice, if it’s, if they’re doing estate planning, and that, that kind of work would be an effective way.
They use it all the time. I interview an estate planning attorney once a month, twice a month to my show. And I regularly try to bring them into my system. That way I’ll also share with you. I don’t think that everybody has to have an attorney, even in Florida. I’ve interviewed Florida attorneys.
I might show, and I’ve interviewed a service that I’ve used in the past. That I’m proud of is called easy-probate.com It’s kind of like legal zoom, but all they do is probate. And so for petitioners who don’t have an attorney, Or aren’t happy with attorneys. It’s a very inexpensive way for them to pick up the pieces and get the probate process through.
So that’s worked well for me. I am also on the trust side connected with a company, trust, and wills. I’m interviewing them on my show as well, but I’ll give you a shortcut version, which is again, they’re like legal zoom, but they just do, trusts and wills. Very inexpensive. They’ve done thousands, I forget the number. I want to say hundreds of thousands or so. But also you can give them a discount. You can email them a link as a client to say, here’s a 10% discount. They charge six 15. If you use me it’s whatever, five 80 or whatever for a couple, to do, uh, a living trust, which is nice. and you can buy them in bulk if you went to buy them individually.
So that’s, that’s a service that I use and I’ll be promoting that on my, on my, program here in a couple of weeks. So hope that helps you a couple of things to think about, but I would, I would say I would go to petitioners who don’t have attorneys. Okay. Uh, if you talk to them, they’re not happy with their attorney.
I try to steer them out of attorneys. I’m not working with that attorney and then estate planning. I co-market with attorneys and I know drives some of them crazy when I tell them that I think that every, several living trusts, not everybody needs to use an attorney to do it because they’re not that complicated.
There are people who all they have is the one house and maybe they’re married. They don’t need an attorney estate plan. The estate plan is more for mixed families, multiple divorce kids from divorces, you know, businesses, which is 50, which is 50% of the United States. Well, then the other 50 to get the 50 that don’t into a trust and wills and get one done.
And the ones that do need that, of course, then they need to get that. So. as far as the lunches and, um, yes. I’ll tell you attorneys eat more lunches than cops do. So yes, they do that. And since cops are filled after all those donuts and coffee, they don’t have, and we plan for lunch after breakfast.
That’s what we do. But, uh, as far as the attorney, so that’s been my approach. I contact the offices or I contact an attorney long story short we’ll figure out how to meet. We’ve met. I’ve met with multiple attorneys and lawyers that way. The one that I, well, one that was receptive to looking at literature as an idea of what I would suggest doing co-advertising when he said to put something together and let me look at it. Cause they do have the guidelines and I want to make sure that I’m within those guidelines so that when he reviews it, he can give it the green light. And I’ll take the first expense without having to ask him to share that. And then I’ll circle prospect, the neighborhood, or whatever he may be and I’ll mail it out so that we can see if we can generate some business together.
I’m looking for some idea or a guideline of what that brochure may look like. So that it’s actually, I don’t know, in compliance and, and concise enough to where it won’t lose interest and he would be agreeable to using it. Yeah. I, I don’t know. I don’t want to give you an answer for something I haven’t done personally.
I, I like to say the advantage I have here is I do this every day. I can share. I’ve been doing it for a while. I’d be glad to show you what I did. Um, but anything else is just conjecture. Mailing pieces. It’s a complicated business. The people who mail, uh, spend a lot of money on it, you have to do it at scale.
The one that I tell you is everybody knows who’s made a living mailing does tens of thousands of pieces monthly that they test it and they find it and then it works and they do some big, big numbers to make it scale. So I don’t know that you’re going to find what you’re looking for or not. I don’t know.
That’s going to be an avenue for you. I have, another idea for you to think about that will come back to you. I see. Winston has his hand up. Once you have a question I can talk to you about what I do. I, maybe I misunderstood you, you say 50% of the people who don’t need an attorney. Is that correct? I think, uh, Daniel was saying that 50% of people.
Don’t need a complicated, living trust, but are either married or single and have a property, no kids from prior divorces. So they would have I answered based on what you were saying, as far as the families that don’t need an estate plan, a complicated an estate plan unless they’re, divorced families or there’s more dynamics to it.
And I said that pretty much puts us at 50% of the country. I would say that 80 or 90% of cases in LA county, I can’t speak to other counties, but LA county, 80%. Now you don’t need an attorney. If they use a good service, like easy hyphen probate.com. Now he’s having probate has an attorney. If you need.
But to be honest, they do a better job with the paperwork than most attorneys do. And since most pieces of routine, they’re going to do a better job. So I will say at least in LA that night 80% would be better served using EZ- probate than they would with an attorney. If there’s only one it’s just a simple process.
That’s a condition, which would you have an alternative answer to that or concern of that? Okay. Now we’ll start to understand where they need or the necessity arises. I mean, so that’s as fast as the estate planning because I was looking from the perspective that without estate planning, you have to go into probate and I live in Northern California, which means that when I need to pull it is going to be costly.
So it’s what is really what thing for that test. Well, the estate plan will avoid probate is the cheapest money. If you prepare like anything else in life, you prepare, you avoid the problem. Once you need probate is like I said, there are all kinds of probate cases that need attorneys. You know you have, uh, I had a client who passed into the decedent had a girlfriend who said she was a wife, and he, he married her somehow secretly. And so she’s entitled to half the property, which isn’t necessarily true in California, but you got to litigate that process.
And there’s another lady who died. And, she pulled out a document that said that the decedent had authorized her to live there as long as the last animal was alive. And she was taking care of four cats and three fish and two birds and a dog or something. So I’ve seen all kinds of crazy litigation and that’s where you need to have an attorney.
But if it’s just processing the paperwork and filing them for one piece of property, in my experience, you’re gonna get better service from a probate service that’s professional and highly experienced and successful than an attorney. Here’s a statistic in LA county. When I download all the cases, 95% of cases are done by attorneys in probate, who’ve done one probate or less in the last two years. and I think customers understand how important it is that attorneys don’t know what they’re doing. They haven’t been a probate court. They don’t know their probate notes. They don’t know the process or procedures. So, okay. I got asked again to repeat the website, EZ-probate.com is the service I use, for clients who don’t need a probate attorney.
And then trustandwill.com is a company that I use to recommend for trust accounts. And I do that and I can offer a discount, my customer. I could pay by either of these companies, anything, I just believe in the process, and am willing to help out with it. Okay. Dan, another thing I wanted to circle back to that other people might be interested in.
Oh, I’m sorry, Stephanie. Yeah. Thanks. Um, so I had a question, I heard you talking about, you doing a weekly call every week. So I’ve worked for an investor for the last two years and we worked probate leads. I got my license relocated to Savannah, and I’m now implementing probate as my niche. I have partnered with a local company called it’s a nationwide company, but it’s the local branch, which is a care source that, moves families from their property into assisted living. She’s now exclusively working with me because of my experience in probate. And I am interested in jumping into any more, any other calls for probate stuff. So if you’re doing a weekly call, I just wanted to know where I can find that so I can join in for more ideas as I build this niche for myself. Sure.
I host a call every Thursday at 4:00 PM called probateweekly.com. You can register there. I don’t sell anything. I’m just an agent and love to share and work with other people and maybe look for ways to work together and help make some money together. So love talking about Stephanie, about more about what you’re doing, and seeing if there are ways we can help you expand other markets.
and then all of them it’s recorded on my YouTube channel. Bill gross exp is my YouTube channel where you can go to probateweeklyepisodes.com and see all the past episodes, but love to have you there with no, thank you, Stephanie. That sounds exciting. I’d love to catch up with you and find out what you’re doing and see if there’s some way we could work together on that because real estate is a collaboration game.
The more people get together. That’s why I do it. again, one plus one is three. If I can find a way to work with you or share an idea with you, we can work on it together. We can both make more money. So you got another,

I think it applies to everybody. I’m, I’m sure it’s more of a California thing than other states.
but, deadbeat tenants and probate property. Um, you know, I guess, I guess that’d be, might be harsh term. So, people who don’t have a clear, legal right to be in the property, in probate, in my experience, go together quite a bit. Now I think a lot of us because of LA and, you know, we just happen to have, we have, it’s shocking to find out we have the highest percentage of poverty of any, uh, state of the country. I, that wasn’t the case when I was younger, but that’s true today. And probate tends to skew lower income. And so as a result, we end up getting probates regularly that either has squatters or tenants with questionable agreements or perceived relationships that have no legal bearing on the property to the heir. Ex-girlfriends ex-wives who weren’t tied to the property and such… cousins who’ve been living there for 10 years. So it’s a regular part of our business, my business, to work with eviction attorneys and to work with this landlord advocate services, the more militant tenants get the more we need to have these professional services and they tend to be ex-law enforcement officers.
Um, and you find the right guy who knows the law and can work within law properly and can take a property again. I think that’s more of a California thing, but it’s probably true in some other states. Uh, we have a property right now that, that with this tenant, with this person in the property, we can’t get intake pictures.
We can’t do inspections. We can’t sell the property, can’t show the property to sell it. Can’t hold it open. We could sell it as-is for about $450,000 and an investor will take over the problem. If we can get her out and clean it up a little bit and whatever itself, about 600 to six 50. So there’s a lot of money on the table.
If you find somebody good at getting problem people out of the property, you can make some money. And I would say to you as former law enforcement, my guess is certain private investigators. And that’s part of the process because they’ll lie about their disabilities, they’ll lie about their relationships.
And I just find that those people in that field tend to be former law enforcement and you’d have a better relationship with them upfront than I would. So I would look into anybody who does that and has experience of that nationally or can share their experience with that nationally, let me know, Stephanie, your hands up.
Did they hit a button there with you? Yeah, I have to go through that with two situations right now, and I’m not sure where to go with it. The first one, um, two of the heirs will not remove themselves from the property. Um, and they are saying that they have rights to it, so they’re not going to leave.
And so I’m guessing in that kind of situation, I’ve had the girl I’ve referred her to an attorney because her job he’s for an attorney that I work with. Um, so we’re waiting to see whether or not she has to go to court and the courts will force the sale or what we can do.
The other one was her son’s house and he had a roommate. The son had served him with an eviction two weeks before death, then he died. And now the lady that the mother has, the executor of the estate has evicted them twice and it has failed in court to go through the eviction process.
So now I don’t know, now we don’t know what to do, but she’s on a fixed income, so she can’t afford an attorney. So what can I suggest to her? Is she pretty much just going to lose the house or is there a way for us to work around that so we can get them out and get it listed?
So that problem, I think, is going to be growing, uh, elegant in a political discussion, but I just think there’s more of these situations every day than there were. These things didn’t happen 10 years ago with a frequency they happen today and they seem to be growing, number one. Number two, I’d be very careful about referring things to an attorney.
I just find as a general rule, they’re just too quick to take the case and some money and not, not as quick to get the job done, I’m in the results business. I only get paid if I get my seller the house, a price they agreed to, and sign the papers and close the deal. I don’t get paid to string things along for two years while we play around.
And unfortunately, attorneys do get paid many cases along the way. I do find that the attorneys that like every business, the top 1% are amazing. The top 5% create great value for their customers and the bottom 80 or 90% like real estate agents are pretty much worthless. And you’d be very clear who you refer your business to.
And I also find like real estate agents, that attorneys and even more so like doctors, the more specialized, the more valuable they are to their customers. So there are attorneys who work in this field, but they work in a very narrow piece of it. And they don’t go out of that and they’ll refer it to somebody else who does the other pieces, the guy who’s willing to start the eviction and then do a partition, then file the probate.
Trust me, I don’t know every state, but that’s generally not going to be a good solution for you and your client. So I would urge you to look for specialists when you can to find somebody to do the job. And while I don’t have any answer in your area of Georgia and I don’t have a Rolodex that quite goes that far.
That’s why I’m on this call. That’s why hosting my all is to build that network up with people, because if you find the right attorney for this problem, and then there’s a partition action here in California. I, I think it’s also called that in most states where you have two owners of a property, one wants to sell one doesn’t in most states you can force an open market sale at a fair market price to force the sale for one or one or of the owners.
Now there’s some controversy to that, and I don’t want to get in the politics of it, but I will say that you want to find an attorney who can help your clients that specialize in that niche of the business, but the attorneys. You want to find a specialist, not a generalist.

Manuel, I see your hand up manual Fernandez.
All right, I wanted to piggyback on the lawyer thing for Florida, I am a Florida real estate agent and, uh, this was something I looked up a long time ago, but, in Florida, except for very few cases, an attorney is required and any legal questions you need to push that onto the lawyer. And so let me clarify, I agree with you a hundred percent. I don’t ever give her legal advice.
I’m not allowed to in California, either in almost every state, uh, the bar has created the bar association, w which turns blowing to have been able to get codified, that nobody can give legal advice. It, that rule has been in the past. So broad that for example, legal zoom couldn’t exist. One of the rules was that not only that, that all law firms had to be owned by attorneys.
So that seems a bit unreasonable because hospitals don’t have to be owned by doctors. Why would a law firm have to be owned by attorneys? And as a result, the laws have loosened up a bit ez-probate has an attorney and they meet the criteria and do business in Florida. They’ve done hundreds and hundreds of probates in the state of Florida and are experts on the law.
So when I say not to go to an attorney, but to go to the service, I’m more referring to their format or the way they look to a client. As you’re not going to walk into an attorney’s office and pay $400 an hour to get started, you can go online, maybe get on the phone and use a credit card and spend a hundred bucks to get started.
But man, you’re right. number one, certain laws states require attorneys and in my experience, EZ-Probate meets those requirements at 50 states and has done multiple in those states. Number two, uh you’re right. We should never give legal advice. That’s what the attorneys are for and I’m always careful not to give legal advice to clients, but make referrals to someone you can help them.
Okay. Does that help clarify a little bit? Yes. And there was, um, I wanted to piggyback on for Richard’s situation, he was saying he’s a new agent and the New York. My, my thought would be to start advertising, you know, go ahead and advertise, go ahead and put yourself out there. But at the same time, go ahead and educate yourself
Uh, so you’re not, you’re not wasting time in either direction. Yeah, that’s a good point. when I coach agents in this area and coach with my team, I tell them that they need that this is the business. Now, some people have a job called a real estate agent, and I work for somebody else.
That’s a job. But when you’re in business as a real estate agent or a broker, and it’s a mindset, it’s not now legal decisions. If you’re building a business, you need to have a business plan that will take you out two years. It’s going to take two years before start hitting your stride.
That doesn’t mean you won’t get your frizz deal for two years, but you need to have a marketing plan where your average prospect is two years from now. So you’re starting now to get leads and planting seeds. So two years from now that steady crop starts coming in. That’s my experience. And the first two years are challenging because you’re grabbing the exceptions there that are shorter-term deals.
I don’t think this marketing, like any other, is designed to get deals within the first 30 days or 60 night is that’s not to say you won’t get some, but the majority will come out to your, so you have to have a longer perspective and your activities. Okay. any other questions, raising your hand?
I think Figured out how to change my name! Congratulations! A couple of things, as far as the, uh, and I want to mention something to Stephanie and this is not legal advice. And I think you and I chatted on one of the threads. I find from the enforcement standpoint, I find it that a lot of people. Kind of leave a little bit of the evictions out. The importance of naming every person or using the terminology to evict everyone in the house, because it, at least for Florida, probably other states as well, tenant laws, landlord, tenant laws, once you establish residence, which in some cases means a toothbrush and three shirts.
Florida just adjusted the time frame that I guess it’s about two weeks or so, once someone’s established residence, they, they have to be evicted themselves. And that could have been, you know, somebody shacked up one of their girlfriends that their wife doesn’t know about. you know, whatever that may be, but they establish residence.
Then they take the whole, the process takes individually. They have to be evicted out unless the eviction has the wording that everyone in the home has to be out. Now during probate where people don’t want to sign, I don’t even know if they can sell the house, so I wouldn’t even know how to start evicting people at that point.
However, in just general, squatter tenant or whatever difficult tenants that’s that has to be just worded properly. And a lot of people want to do cash for keys. In my opinion, that’s a lot of luck and that’s a lot of, uh, you’re hoping for the best, but it’s not a plan because if they renege on the agreement, you could be a couple of hundred bucks out, or you could prolong it by another three months or six months or whatever you may be.
So my suggestion is to go the legal route and see how that works out because those are the only people that have the authority to do it, otherwise you’re hoping on a handshake with people who’s already not compliant with whatever it is that you’re asking them to do. So they make promises. Yeah. Now the other thing, as far as the lawyer aspect of it is, you know, when we talk about expert, I found that most of the lawyers that I’ve talked with, they’re happy with people like us, that we know the difference between a personal representative who has the authority to sell and some of the terminology. I don’t think that they’re looking for very in-depth knowledge of the probate process. They just want more people that are going to solve the problems. I kind of call it to conflict real estate to where you come up with some suggestions and you have the team available that you can go and ask to resolve some of the issues that the families go through.
And when given legal advice, you know, I tried, I outsmarted myself one day. I try to talk a little bit more than I should have him to a lawyer who said that I am not as familiar with the law as a, as an attorney, which, you know, it kind of clipped my wings and I, and I realized that simplifying it with them, it’s easier than over-complicating it.
And saying that you were just. I don’t know, a fountain of knowledge when it comes to their field. So, well, I will say that, yeah, attorneys don’t ever want me to tell them I’m an expert. They have to always be made to feel like they’re the smartest person in the room. And I’ll say this, in general, there’s exceptions in general attorneys, their key skill is that they sound like they know what they’re talking about even when they don’t. That’s why all politicians are attorneys, every single Congressman and US Senator in the United States, other than maybe a handful than three or four are attorneys because they sound like they were talking about their practice, that thinking on their feet, it may or may not be accurate.
And so the problem that you have is that people will pick an attorney to represent them because they sound like they know what they are talking about. You can’t tell me anymore. Literally, I’ve had CA I have cases every day where I talked to an attorney where I know he’s made a fundamental error and I’m trying to tiptoe in to help him see the mistake to fix it.
So our client can sell the house. But I can’t just say, dude, I’ve done, you know, I’ve sold 30 properties in probate court last two years and represent buyers 15 times. And this is your only court sale ever. Let me tell you, and I track every single sale you your, your mistake here.
I can’t say that you know, so you’re right. You have to very much tiptoe around, I’ll tell you in California today, you know, like literally today, eviction courts have nonprofit organizations with people with recent law school graduates who either have a law license or don’ts who are stopping tenants in the hallway saying, do you have legal representation? We’ll take your case. And the first thing they do is tell them, cause in California, you have a choice to have a civil trial with a judge or a jury.
They know the jury’s cause of a COVID will delay things six months. The first thing they do is acquire a jury trial. So this process, and this is a political movement. That’s I assure you it’s in California. It’s gonna come across the country, this area of the, of the work. I’m not here to, to, to get into details today.
And I’m not an expert on it. I’m an expert in the problems and I’m an expert in solving the problems, and every state’s a little different. Every market is different but in many. These problems are opportunities. And I would urge you to find the best practitioner I found just last week, a great landlord advocate, and I have two listings that have tenant problems.
I think he solved one of them which has been stuck in the mud for months. I believe I’m going to get paid here in about 30 days. So I would urge you, as agents or investors find the experts in those areas. Don’t learn it to be the expert, know enough to find the expert and put them in a Rolodex and use them.
And that’s what Chad talks about in his coaching all along. Okay. Hey, I hate to use that to wrap it up, but let’s continue the conversation if you want on the Facebook group. This was not live-streamed today because of some technical issue. I’m not sure why just know that Chad wanted to be here today, but for personal reasons, can’t, we shall keep him in our prayers and his family in our prayers, if you’re such a, such a, a mindful of that.
but I sure appreciate the chance to help you guys today. My name is Bill Gross. Uh, I’m in that chat there regularly. I’m on this call somewhat regularly, but I’m always able to help so if you have questions at any time, feel free to reach out to me, call me, or text me, or email me in blind here to help Chad does this call every week on Tuesdays, we do at noon Pacific 3:00 PM Eastern and whatever in the middle is depending on where you live.
I appreciate you guys being here, probate mastery group and the probate mastery alumni group as well. A thank you to Daniel and Stephanie and Manuel and Winston. And if I left anybody off, thank you for stepping in asking questions. Really appreciate you guys. Make it a great week! Okay. Thank you so much.