In this episode, Certified Probate Experts share tips on how to make more money in real estate without In this episode, Certified Probate Experts share tips for how to make more money in real estate with LESS work: Chad Corbett and Bill Gross discuss housing inventory trends and why probate leads are a great way to grow your real estate business. Renee and Terry share updates on their probate real estate career growth. Agents, Attorneys, and Investors share exactly how to become the real estate version of the Swiss army knife – the problem solver everyone wants to work with. Meredith and Bill discuss how to change your mindset so you can lay the foundation for success.
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Episode #62
Training Topics In How to grow your real estate business: Real Estate Referral Networking Ideas
0:00 Probate marketing consultation (Marketing Coach)
3:14 Housing market trends and creating urgency for buyers and sellers (Real Estate News)
8:41 Networking with fiduciaries, guardians, and other agents in probate (Probate Networking)
22:37 How to get Attorney Referrals: Become the real estate Swiss army knife (Attorney Referrals)
Get Certified in Probate Real Estate
38:33 Why you should offer creative financing options like lease with option to purchase (Probate Deals)
41:15 Real estate motivation and the mindset for success (Business Growth)
Resources for this Real Estate Coaching Session:
- FREE TRAINING: Probate Fast Track
- Take Chad’s Probate Course and get Certified in Probate Real Estate
- Facebook Group: Estate Professionals Mastermind Group
- Alumni Group (For students of the Probate Mastery Course ONLY): Probate Mastery Alumni Group
- YouTube Channel
- Probate and Pre-Probate list providers
- Try Propstream Free
- Book a marketing strategy consultation
- Bill Gross’s Probate Weekly mastermind
- Recent content:
- Episode 61 Live Real Estate Coaching: Make more money in real estate: Tax lien investing, probate sub2, & branding
- Cold Call Role Play: Inbound probate lead role play | Real Estate Coaching with Chad Corbett
- Cold Call Training: VOICEMAIL MESSAGES☑️ “NOT SELLING” OBECTIONS☑️ PHONE CALLING STATISTICS☑️
- Relevant content to topics in this episode:
- Digital Door-Knocking for Real Estate Agents and Investors: A social media marketing checklist for B2B networking
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT How to grow your real estate business: Real Estate Referral Networking Ideas
Probate Mastery Group Coaching: Episode 62 of Estate Professionals Mastermind podcast
Real Estate Referral Networking: Fiduciaries, attorneys, and other agents.
Real Estate Marketing Consultation (Marketing Coach) [00:00:00]
All right. Welcome, everybody to the weekly probate mastery group coaching call, and the estate professionals mastermind podcast. We had everybody show up a little early today was pre-gaming sorry. I was late. I just finished a multiple offer situation. Maybe one of the last ones in a while.
But it was actually on this house. One of the very first probate houses I ever bought. So we just ratified a contract for more than double what I paid for it after 150 people came through in four days. So a lot of interest in the Roanoke market still. I want to start today with a kind of an announcement of a new service we’re offering right now, just for CPE, just for you guys.
So we have been hearing your cries for some real estate marketing analysis help. And we don’t have a full team of marketing experts, but we do have Katt Katt is phenomenal and she is so graciously offered a real estate marketing analysis. We’re only offering it for our CPEs. Katt has, as I said, very graciously offered some of her time and availability.
So she just put the link in your chat right now. So you can see on the landing page, that explains what this is. We’ve got two different offers. One is a marketing analysis consultation, which is a little bit lighter.
It’s only 30 minutes. It’s a great opportunity for you to go over some of your marketing collateral. So she can review that or go over some branding suggestions, go over your wording, your copy with just a little bit of a lighter. And then the second offer is a deep in-depth hour-long marketing analysis review, where you can solidify your marketing goals, and go through your marketing strategies.
You can also go through your collateral as well as branding suggestions, but this is your time. And she will customize her advice specifically for your needs. How do we go about setting up one of those appointments with Katt? Great question. Yep. I’ll go ahead and the answer is still on the floor here. So if you follow the link that Katt put in the chat here it’ll give you an option to choose one of the two appointments that you want, either that lighter consultation or the more in-depth review.
So you’ll click on that you’ll purchase. And then after purchasing the page will reload to an invitation for you to take you’ll fill out a form. So you’ll pay the page will reload. It’ll have a button for you to fill out a form where Katt just asks a couple of questions about what you’re needing.
And then from there when you are going through the form, the very last question is going to ask you to schedule your appointment. And then you will receive an email notification before your appointment. Perfect. Thank you, McKenna. Absolutely. Sorry, guys, this huge bolt of lightning came and my wifi just left, but it rebooted. So thanks. Thanks for covering the kind of, yeah.
Oh, we’ll start there. Does anybody have any questions on the marketing review or before we get started on other things? I just signed up for it.
So All right. If you have any other questions about that, drop them in the chat and we’ll circle back, but uh, – there’s lots of talking back and forth. It’s still 50-50 at this point. I think the bulls versus the bears, but curious to hear for those of you that are in a market that you’ve seen slow significantly and what you expect to happen? have you spoken to the lenders?
Housing market trends and creating urgency for buyers and sellers [00:03:14]
Do you expect buyer demand to drop even further after the fed meeting on Wednesday? Like, is anybody witnessing that? Like, I’m seeing it in Florida for sure. Renee. No. Yeah, it’s the opposite, and Roanoke still, but it is starting to show, and in some markets, we’re seeing days on market climb, price reductions happening multiple times in the first 30 days.
So the reason I bring that up, if you have sellers that are testing the price like if they’re trying to test the market, you might let them know like another half-point rate is likely, you know, we’ll find out more tomorrow. But you can create some seller urgency in the market because it does seem to be shifting in a lot of areas and real estate’s local.
It’s not a broad statement, it’s not going to happen everywhere at the same time. But what I learned in 2007, I saw. Something. And I saw seller inventory ramping up at the ski resort where I was working. And all of a sudden I went from 25 listings to 150 listings, and I’m like, I have more than I can service.
So I was like, I’m getting the hell out of here. So I said, I got to find, I don’t understand what’s happening, but I got to find cash flow to sell. And that’s how I ended up finding the indoor water park resort that we built in the smoky mountains.
But the smoky mountain was my recession market. I went there to weather the storm and the resort we were selling, it was like a true 12 cap. So I made a vow to myself to try to understand and see it coming next time. So I’m a little hyper-aware cause I’ve been looking for the signs. But to me, it seems very similar to those times.
Like buyers, sentiment is starting to wane and in a lot of places, sellers are starting to drop prices there. ” It didn’t sell in a day??” And they’re there, price reductions that like day seven, day 14. So there are some early indicators. Now I will remind you that the timeline of when I felt it I didn’t understand, what was happening, but that was in about may of oh seven.
I moved in June of oh seven. It was about March of oh seven. And I decided to move in. May I make the move the first week of June, we pre-sold, the project started construction, and made it all the way around. I think it was August or September of ’08 when the fed finally had to admit that there was a problem when bear Stearns and AIG failed overnight and the Lehman brothers.
And that’s when they had to let the cat out of the bag. So it was like the actual 2008 crash, 2008 crash. If you look at the BA the fed distress, the financial distress index, it happened right around June of ’07. So these early indicators that we’re seeing right now might be an indication that that, something is shifting, and Bill Gross,
I know you do market updates and you have a strong opinion on inventory levels. Feel free to jump in, but I have seen softening for sure, across the people in mind that work.
So the way I describe it is when I drive from LA to Vegas, there are stretches that let’s not say me, let’s say some other guy, might drive a hundred miles an hour.
Right. And then all of a sudden you see headlights and you slow down to like 65 or so you still going 65 on a straight freeway. That’s what it feels like now. And that I think that so many, some own out of the intensity, but still getting, buyer right after another buyer falls out of escrow, getting phone calls right away.
It’s still more intense than a normal seller’s market than a normal market. And when you look at the statistics, the foreclosures while increasing, or from a very low base is insignificant. Yeah. The inventory is way too low to drive down prices and some sellers therefore just decide not to sell and not to buy relocate.
And so it’s going to be tougher for agents I think to find business, why I think probate becomes more viable because people are still going to die and have to do something with the property. But I think a, from an overall market point of view values, I don’t see dropping. I saw a great analysis by Fannie Mae where they said, with inflation, it might be the home appreciation is well below the inflation rate might be five or 6% versus 15% or 10%, but still, that’s appreciation, not depreciation.
I don’t think we’re likely to see anything close to that. Unless things change dramatically. Now, Russia and Ukraine started lobbying nukes at each other. It’s a whole different ball game, but as we sit here, Yeah, I think it’s going to be a good, solid market But it’d be, when do we need to roll preseason work extra hard.
What I learned last time as a buyer demand, literally shut off in what felt like days. And there was plenty of supply, but when the buyers were done, they were done and then the market is loaded and that’s when downward price pressure began.
So that wasn’t a second home market. I know not many folks in this community specialize in second-home communities. That I’m not anymore either. I haven’t dug that deep. I just like David Pannell was on last week and he showed what did he say? They went from 14 foreclosures the previous month to 441, I think.
And I’ve seen that in just a handful of markets. I looked at black knight’s data and RealtyTrac’s data, and I can’t find the evidence that it’s happening widespread. It seems to be. Locally, not even regionally, but anyways, just wanted to give you guys a chance to share your opinion.
If you have a voice, if it does shift you, you do see that buyer demand plummet. That’s when you know, you start getting, explain to you, your sellers, so keep up on, on the market because it could move real quickly. If things do make a big shift with the appreciation levels we’ve had, and you can catch a falling knife with it, if you have probate sellers that are in probate quicksand, catching a falling knife can be as simple as actually getting the home on the market and not making excuses about cleaning out the garage.
And that’s a common scenario.
Working with fiduciaries, guardians, and other agents in probate [00:08:41]
So Renee what’d you got for us today. Hi guys. Bill always says it so eloquently. So I’m just going to go off the coattails of the bill and yeah, I’m just in terms of Los Angeles. It’s so interesting. I sold REO in the last down market and we just didn’t, we just know if LA like falls off a cliff then, we’re really in trouble.
So it’s hard to say, right. And there are so many different micro-markets within a county. And like, I always say Los Angeles is like a bunch of different neighborhoods trying to be a city. So the minute you have one opinion about one area or even one home, it doesn’t apply to another section. So that leads me to my win for the week, I had an opportunity to, and I’ll say it’s not really a listing appointment. It’s more like a cattle call, but I keep making it through the rungs. So, okay. It’s a gal that I called on an old probate/ I’ve been keeping up with her for two years and a half, two years.
I believe she was the originating executrix, but that didn’t work out. They hired a fiduciary, that gal was in Virginia. I live in Los Angeles, California. So that was always interesting. But anyway, she remembered me and out of the blue gave me my name. Cause I only called her like maybe quarterly or something.
Right. So out of the blue, she emailed me and said, I don’t know how this is going to go, but I lobbed your name to the fiduciary. And it’s in this area called Pacific Palisades, which is very high-end. This is a mid century modern home. That’s gonna probably be not, hopefully not a teardown.
It’s the originating owner and we just went yesterday. So I made it to the now second rung. And the third rung will be hard. Just cattle calling X number of agents in the area. And then she will present that to the family and they’ll make their decision based on price. Why I’m sharing that with you is like the win for the week.
It’s like, I feel like I’m in some sort of lottery, I keep making it like to the next level, but I did some networking with other agents. I do not sell at that price point and I do not sell in that area. So don’t be afraid to squad up with people who know better and You just never know what you’re going to learn.
I coach a lot with Chris Voss and he has something that he refers to as being the fool or the favorite. Are you the fool in the situation? Are you the favorite in the situation? And I don’t think that this completely applies to either because I even think this fiduciary is out over her skis with this price point, she definitely has her favorite agents, but they probably don’t even sell at this price. Or this type of special property. So that’s why she’s going broader. But I think sometimes in your career, it’s worth it to get in your car and drive a half an hour or maybe 45 minutes just to get in front of somebody, to see a new opportunity, to be in a new price point that you might not work in.
And like I said, squad up with people. It never hurts to maybe go to open houses and get to know agents at different price points. So if you ever come across something like this in your probate phone calls, you’ll be ready to go, especially if it is something that’s in the high end.
And by the way, this was just on a list like, like all high-end probates, it was just on a list. So be prepared for your day. But we’ll say, the next decision is the decision she’ll meet with the family. We’re going to send our proposal and she’ll meet with the family and they’ll make that decision.
It was cool to walk into a time capsule. The house was the originated by owners of mid-century modern homes in the Pacific Palisades and LA it’s gorgeous. It was lovely to be. Yeah, let me say that, as the luxury touches on those, like those early, the early to mid-fifties, mid-century, like, I had never seen it until I moved to Virginia actually, but here they have an in-ceiling radiant heat with like a really, like leave it to beaver kind of 1950 style thermostat.
It was radiant heat and then the corners, it looked like a perfect 45-degree crown, but then it was in the ceiling plaster. They laid the heating elements and the plaster. So I’m like where is the heating in this place? How’s it heated? There was nothing you couldn’t tell.
But it was like inside the plaster radiant heat, they had to surround sound throughout the entire house. And this was like 1950 construction. So you see some neat things from back in the day.
Yeah, it was cool. There were no, except for the kitchen, there were no like pulls for the cabinets anywhere in the house. So they were like seamless cabinets. So it just looked like one wall everywhere. You looked like, when you go down your hallway or whatever, you’ve got your closet, your sliding door, all that you can tell it’s a closet. You couldn’t tell there were closets anyway.
So you got to know where you put your stuff. At least you’re like, wait, it’s the third panel from the left. Pacific Palisades is a nice area, you’re going to have it yourself a several million dollar listing. We shall see, I will jump to the next two.
It’s interesting. I just a quick story, since Chad’s not here on the experience fiduciary.
So the number one realtor in probate and Los Angeles has some great relationships with some of those top fiduciaries. And I’ve just been represented by an investor who bought one of their properties at court confirmation. And I think for all the people on the call, I want to say, this is why I got in this training because she has some great relationships, but she’s not a very good real estate agent.
And she has a team and people in marketing and a prestigious name and office and all that. But they just miss the little details that in probate are so critical. They lose their in-house escrow. Who’s terrible, never in California. You have to get a copy of the certified order to start the clock on the buyer.
Never even got it. My buyer was anxious to close, so we push forward. But if the buyer were to drag their feet, they didn’t even know what it would take to force us to close. It took them eight days to get the initial escrow package out. So there are a lot of little details that some of these great agents make.
And I made some videos. I’m going to start sending to the attorneys to do in this particular niche of business. But I would just say on a bigger picture. The people who’ve been around a long time. They made a lot of money. In some cases, they’re very satisfied, very content. If you’re hungry, just accept what you have to dig.
You have to do to take down that business, don’t assume because they have the relationship that you can’t pry a piece away from it. Because just like you look in the jungle, there are hungry hyenas or get some meat from the lions once in a while, and that’s a start and then you can grow your real estate business from there.
That’s well said, bill, because I think too, like some of the folks on this call are in, big cities like we are, or maybe even be cities, but there’s enough meat on the bone. And I don’t know why that is. It’s like sometimes the human nature, like, oh, that person just has it all. Or there’s not enough for me.
It’s almost like a little bit of a lack mentality. Right. So I say it lovingly because we all go through it, but it’s like checking yourself mentally, right. First and foremost for everything. And then just realize that. There is enough for everybody. So come from an abundance mindset, just like bill and I am in the same city, it’s huge here.
And Bill is a different profile than me, maybe I’m going to resonate with somebody and he resonates with like all that, so it’s fine. Like there’s plenty of business to be had. So just put your mind to it as well that I think I know who he’s talking about and it’s neither here nor there, but she’s been doing this a long time and you’re right.
It’s just like some of the people that are high-end look at me like high-end agents in Pacific Palisades. Who am I? I don’t even sell, I don’t live there. I don’t sell there either, nothing, but I know that I can be of value and of service. And if I can partner with the right agent, that agent that I know who does know Pacific Palisades has a 0.0 understanding of what a trust is or fiduciary or anything.
And so when I was at least in there in that conversation, I was addressing her in that way. So we made a nice one, two punch, cause he would have just stood there and razzle-dazzled this lady and probably annoyed her, frankly. After all, she’s heard it all. So it’s important to like, bring on someone like ourselves or whatever, in that situation.
And Renee, I had a question for you. You had mentioned that this fiduciary was in another state. No, Tom, sorry. The originating woman who I called off the probate list, remembered me probably because I was consistent, frankly. It’s not like I had a cool conversation with her. She was fine. But she put my name in front of the fiduciary. I would have never gotten to her.
Oh, got it. Perfect. Okay. Cause I was like, how do you call fiduciaries? It’s a similar situation. There’s a fiduciary association, you can look it up, they have state chapters, you can become a, I forget what the title is like a member price and you can go to all their events and stuff and hobnob, but it’s a similar situation.
I have a colleague who’s a professional fiduciary and that’s how she is able to grow her real estate business. So she lists it herself and sometimes she takes one fee or the other, sometimes she gets both depending on the transaction. But do the math, I think we get intimidated when some high-end agent who does a hundred million dollars a year of luxury property and you’re going on a listing on a 25-minute property.
It sounds very impressive. But if they do a hundred million and it’s 25 million houses, that means they do four transactions a year. And what I learned in coaching, some of those high-end agents is that you can’t be good just doing four deals a year. You just don’t talk to enough people. You might have the reputation, or you might have the pedigree or the education or the connections or the Rolodex or the family tree to get those deals.
But it doesn’t mean you’re going to do a good job on those four deals. And those people tend to hire a lot of staff and assistance and a lot of old people, but now the customer is going to get service only as good as that staffer assisted, who only does four deals. How good can you manage people, if you only do four deals a year?
So that’s the thing I try to emphasize. You know when I do get a little over my price range and it’s something I’ve been pushing and pushing myself. I’m not in that range at all out of your market, that range typically. But I will say that I if that was your ambition, I wouldn’t back off on that at all. Because at the end of the day, the fundamentals are the same, and where there’s a difference, my experience is the sellers who want a celebrity, a realtor. They often will overprice the house because it’s about their ego. They imagine that the celebrity agent will bring them a higher price. That’s not true at all. A great agent will maximize the price they can get, but they won’t get them more, but just make sure they can close in the terms that they agree to.
And so I think that’s, I wouldn’t back off if that’s your ambition in life, I would back off it. And I didn’t in probate. I’ve gone after these people aggressively, politely, and professionally, but I don’t care how much business they do. If I do my job, I’ll get customers who need me. Okay. So it looks like Chad’s having some technical issues in Virginia.
I can’t say for the record that the weather here in Los Angeles is perfect. I took a walk outside it was 68 degrees. Light breeze, sunny views from the ocean to the mountains. Not quite as good as John Fraker’s view there in the background, but does anyone have any questions about John? I know you mentioned the PFAC.
Maybe you can talk a little bit about your member. Yeah, no, I’m not a member specifically. So, I talk a little bit about this. I go over this with every single one of my clients when I’m designing trusts and so forth. So there’s only a handful of states currently that professionally regulate people who are trustees are fiduciaries for other people.
Now, the category I’m talking about is not bank trust departments. Right? When I entered my career in the late nineties bank trust departments were about the only game in town. And then everything else was the wild west. Right? And the real problem is we had people who were taking advantage of other people by being fiduciaries for 10, 12 people, not related to them and not really knowing into the laws as it pertains to fiduciary account management and so on.
So California, this is the back in the two thousand decided to regulate it. And so the rule as far as the fiduciary is to go here is that if you are a trustee for more than one trust and they are not a family member, so you can be, as you can be a trustee for many family members you want but if they’re not a family member, you have to be licensed insured, regulated, bonded the whole deal.
So, that makes California fairly unique. I think New York has something like that. I don’t know if anyone watched, I think John Oliver did something on fiduciary as being a scam or overworked. And that is true in many states that don’t regulate it. So I’m part of a LinkedIn group for guardians and fiduciaries and the guy who started the groups from New York.
And he was complaining about that episode. I’m like, you and I are in the two most regulated states in America. Like we’re one of the few people doing this professionally, They had a guy in that show who’s like elder guardian for 4,000 clients. That’s not mathematically possible to check in on that many people, even if you were a company, let alone a one-stop-shop.
So, PFAC professional fiduciary association to California is our regulatory body. So they are the ones that make sure in the training, the education that everybody who enters the space and there’s a huge demand. The supply and demand issues you want to talk about. And lopsided there’s way more demand than there will ever be supply.
Every time I meet a new PFF, I’m like you chose the right industry. If you want to be, full of work with almost no effort, people will find you. But part of that is also finding somebody with the appropriate background for your client’s needs, right? So if you have a sophisticated investor client, they want a professional trustee to handle more sophisticated stuff.
Then you need a PFAC member with a business background, a law background, and a CPA background, but there’s a lot of people who enter the space from the healthcare side, which is excellent. But you just want to make sure that if you’re choosing a fiduciary for your clients, you’re picking somebody who’s in the correct lane.
Yeah. I used to when pre-COVID, when I went to court every day, I, there were, it was a whole class of people who are fiduciaries and they offered to for either no cost or the court rate cost be appointed as fiduciaries for guardians or children for conservatorships people who are incapacitated and the states.
And it, just to me, this to be thankless work, but I think they did that because then other attorneys would refer them business, and the judges would appoint them cases come away. They earn some of their business. But yeah, I mean it’s if you have the administrative mindset to make something like a PFF career go, it’s a goldmine.
Yeah. I agree. I have a friend who just got it because the supply and demand issue is so out of whack now and then I’ll meet somebody new and they get it. They get themselves over their skis because they get in the wrong lane, like a contentious family situation. Right. I had a case where we had a family pick the guy who was like his ink on his business card was still drying.
And no idea what he was doing. And he, and the family. That was my client that I was, trying to help keep from killing each other. Like if I met the guy and I said, look, if these guys could agree on the color of this guy, you would meet here. There’ll be, they’re being nice to you now, but I don’t want you to come in here and get run off when it hits the fan.
And he was like, oh no, I’m fine. And he was gone in a month. He quit, he made it, and I went over my emails. He made it about three and a half weeks. So you got to pick somebody who’s up for the family conflict if that’s your lane.
How to get Attorney Referrals: Become the real estate Swiss army knife [00:22:37]
And then on the flip side of this, for as a real estate agent or investor, but primarily real estate agents. I talk to agents who call me all the time, off offline, and say, how do I build my business?
How do I build a real estate business in probate and into their experience agent? The first thing I always go to is have you done some probate business? And they’ll say, yeah, I’ve done 10 over the years. I say well pull those ten files find out who the attorneys were on those files and then look to see where there are also fiduciaries people because the truth is if you got one of those right people and you’ve done a deal with them, it’s not a cold call.
You’ve done a deal with them. And if you approach them properly, you’ve got a relationship with them. And I’ve seen people build careers on one or two primary relationships. Now what that means is every time they do business, they transact with you. And then there’s the other party. There’s the other realtor, there’s the other, seller, there’s the other, whatever attorneys in the case.
Oftentimes these fiduciaries there are multiple attorneys you have multiple heirs and there’s a guardian, which means there’s a kid, but then there are the parents who want the money or there are the cousins. And what the money is. You have a chance to meet five or six attorneys in some of these cases.
So I always tell agents, go back to the files you’ve done already. First, look them up, and go into the probate file. See if you can find out who those attorneys were, reach out to them, and try to rebuild that relationship you missed. And also in the meantime, even to get a deal does not a probate lead generation just happens to be a probate.
There’s still an attorney attached to that. There might be a fiduciary who has a 4,000 clients attached to it, reach out to them. That’s the opportunity if you do your job properly.
Okay. Khalid says he looked it up for jerseys. Only bring up financial planners. A lot of the members of PFAC are affiliates. Right? So I think what John’s referring to is there’s a professional organization of fiduciaries professional But having been to that, there’s a group that meets a long beach.
For example, most of the people who attend their primary business are servicing fiduciaries. It’s like when you go to a BAR event I don’t know what it’s like now, but pre COVID, most of the people at the bar association mixer, were not attorneys, people were trying to get business with the attorneys that were there.
So that’s part of the business. The challenge of it is to get to the few people who have the bills. But the reality, I think Khalid is, might be most members are financial planners, but you’re looking for the fiduciary association. And those members are the ones who try to talk to yeah. Bill, bill, to be clear, the, for those who are unaware of P FAC is California.
So that’s the scene and P FAC professional fiduciary Association of California. And I, I don’t know whether or not New Jersey has our equivalent. Like I was saying at the beginning, most states don’t have regulations of fiduciaries the way that we do and the way New York does. So I don’t even know if New Jersey, they may, I haven’t looked into it because I’m only, again, I only practice in California, but if you don’t have, if you don’t have that type of fiduciary there, you can build a relation to.
The state planning councils, which is it, I’ve talked about that before, are financial planners, insurance, CPAs, attorneys, bankers, trust officers, the mixer, or the professional networking groups. And you’re shooting fish in a barrel there for the people you want to be in front of it must be an equivalent.
I think it’s what we call here escrow officers in other states, they call them closing attorneys. That’s because we’ve created in California, a set of attorneys powers that we call a subset for escrow officers. It’s the same basic job, but you’d know the right questions to identify them.
I’m sure there’s a way to identify who does, because somebody has to perform as a fiduciary. If somebody is found the paperwork for an underage child on probate in New York, they may not be professionally identified as a fiduciary, but that’s the job they’re fulfilling. You just have to find the right language to understand what the.
Okay. And fiduciaries and guardianships and guardianships and conservatorships are two great sources of new car purchase. Talk about them in the past for business. And they also tend to interact with a different subset of vendors, right? Like healthcare people, mental health care. So, definitely as a whole, there’s a whole world thereof business that is different than the standard probate lane that it’s worth talking to.
So who has questions, John? Thank you for being on the call with us today. And I guess Chad’s having some technical issues living in Virginia, I think is a technical issue. I’m so spoiled. I have not one, but two fiber connections in my office, in my home office. So I, we have one goes down. I just flipped the switch to the other one.
But who has anybody had a question here that, and they started at the beginning? I said, you guys, the more you participate for the camera’s off you make more money. And if you ask more questions, we’ll put more in the chatbox. You make them. Terry, shall I see your hand up?
Thank you very much, bill. I’ve been a member of the organization, the certified expert probate expert for a week and a half, and I have a list of already 10 vendors lined up. God, it’s amazing. And I have my first meeting Thursday this week with one of the primary probate attorneys, Houston.
Nice. He has an attorney. He has an affirm with four or five other probate attorneys with him. He happens to be a member of the golf club, the private club where I’m Marshall. That’s how I know him. And I also have a registered investment advisor from the club that I’m bringing into my team, but I’m going in to meet with this probate attorney on Thursday morning.
Any suggestions about I’m going to use the approach of value add with the team of vendors I bring to the table that does things that he isn’t able to do isn’t the hired to do, to try to create that relationship. And since I know we know each other, like, and trust each other I think I have a good chance of getting him to make referrals and hopefully his other associates, but any suggestions that you would offer my version out of the gate meeting.
So I would say that my approach is the opposite of Chad’s in the sense that while I am very active and do what he says to do to build my Rolodex of vendors and I interviewed them and call them and promote them and such, I think in sales, my strategy was always to only offer the client what they ask for.
So I have a tri-fold brochure. Has a circle with all the vendors on it and all the different types. But when I talk, when we discuss things, I said what types of challenges or things do you get involved with that you might like to delegate?
And I know Chad has that in his training, that script where some of the same things, we ask probate, a onetime. If you think about it, even though the attorney might do 10 or 20 cases a month, even then the same prompt comes up probably a lot. And if you solve the problem or minimize it, take it off their shoulders.
So I end up with attorneys talking about how I specialize in a certain type of probate where this court confirmation, and I actually will work with our paralegal and review the documents and review the probate notes. That’s one of the pain points that they often talk about. That’s a little different or out of the box.
And I just tell them I’m fine to delegate, getting during the publications I’ll put on my credit card and get paid back when the property sells I’ll handle. One of the challenges that attorneys have is getting the money to pay for the storage. The clean-out. I just tell them, to look at your agreement.
I’ll go ahead and put it on my credit card and I’ll manage all that for you and give you one bill when we close escrow or one bill once a month to pay on it. So I think anything that saves them time and money, you’re looking for their pain point and then whatever it is, you’ve got to figure out where to solve that problem.
And I always tell people, you either are the guy that solves a problem, or you have a guy that solves a problem or the guy the gal or whatever, but your job is to be the solution, not to have the solution you are the solution. Call me. And even when I have a paralegal hole, send me an email requesting documents on the property for research and the attorney will say I’m so sorry, you don’t have to bother with that. No, it’s not a bother. You can. I’m glad to research every property of every claim talked to. I don’t do it. My virtual assistant does it, but I don’t tell her that. But I’m saying I’m glad to talk to them all and call you back with the information. I have nothing more important than to research your that’s your problem.
My job is to solve the. I think in sales, our job is always a solve our customer’s problems, not to sell what our inventory is. Thank you. Yes. That’s exactly the approach I’m using what’s your pain point? How can I take that one difficulty or obstacle that you have, and I took that over and handle it for you?
How would that make your job easier? Or two or three? I think we also have to be, sometimes they’ll realize that they’ll tell you one and dig deeper and I often feel like I’m a dentist, you know that on about, you’re desperate, like a scrape, a tooth and a little bit of paint. They’re gonna scrape a little deeper when they find the pain you go deeper yet.
Cause that’s where the solution is digging deep. And I think with any sell situation, the more, tell me more about that. What, how does that work? How does that cause you problems? What kind of challenges does that cause you? So I think the deeper you go that’s more fundamental the sales approach.
And I think that I don’t want to offer 15 things. They don’t need it, I want to find the one or two things they think they need and then go deeper. I like it. Thank you.
Sure. John any particular personal experience of when people, I’m not sure how it is? You must have realtors approach you and then you also do the real estate sales any other insight on how to best approach an attorney, he has the appointment.
What does he do to convert that into an opportunity?
Yeah, I agree with what you were sharing. Bill, just, be a Swiss army knife, find a way of uncovering what it is that the attorney or all attorneys, not all attorneys, many attorneys are business owners, right? So even if it’s not a challenge of the dreggs of law, it might be a challenge in their business of some kind.
So finding a way of uncovering that through conversation asking those pointed questions, digging deeper, as Bill said, that’s where you want to be. Right. It’s funny. I’ve had so many conversations with professionals Leon, my business partner and I had in like 10 years. We had a sit-down with an attorney and a mortgage broker.
This is before I was licensed as a realtor. And they’re like, what’s your greatest pain point. We sat down and explained it to them. We said we would like more probates. We’re not allowed to solicit. We’d like to find out people who have recently lost somebody who may be unrepresented and may be looking for counsel in that area through some research.
We know that realtors and title companies have access to that kind of stuff. But we don’t and they’re like, oh, that’s really good. And then they disappeared. I never heard from them again. I was like the point of his lunch man. We like spelled it out for them, like how they could help us.
And they were like, oh, that sounds like a lot of work basically, and vanished. So, don’t do that. Do the opposite. Find out what their greatest business challenge is or professional and find a way of meeting those
That is the work that, that is the work, finding your customer’s problem and finding a way to solve it if you don’t want to do that, find other customers and solve those problems.
But one other additional point about this. I am not a realtor. I’m an investor. And I have a nationwide database of investors that I can work with for flipping purposes. And so I don’t have the same spectrum of offerings that you who are realtors do, but I don’t think that’s going to be a handicap, do you?
You have the exact same opportunity and what I would say two things, I would say that one is you can just find the right realtor on this call and now you have that and you, so you have everything I have to offer plus you. And the second is in my experience, virtually every attorney wants to find out more about investing in real estate and that’s the way to create a relationship.
It might not specifically be a probate real estate referral to you, but like anything else, if you help that person make money, of course, they’re going to talk to you about upcoming real estate deals. And then if they’re deals that have to be listed and you can’t buy them, you want to feed them to your realtor partner.
And the, his job is then to bring you back into some good real estate deals. So every attorney I’ve ever met when I had a chance to talk to them would ask me about how do I invest? What goals do you have? How do I find those deals? Everyone’s talking about making more money or building more wealth.
And so you’re that. And I also would just strongly, if you’re not a real estate agent in Houston and you don’t want to become one I would say find one in your area. And there are a lot of good ones. I’d be glad to make some introductions for you in that area because I think I think it adds a superpower and I also think you’re going to be regulated at some point to where it’s going to be probably mandatory.
I know Renee says that she pays for videos for attorneys that they can use as marketing. That’s great. That’s a common pain point. That’s even, it’s not a common pinpoint. It was a pinpoint to the one attorney that you’re talking to. Then it becomes a great solution. Right. And I’ve done that too. I interviewed her, I do the opposite.
I interview them, but my interviews get them. It’s funny. I’ll meet an attorney who has spent $10,000 and he’s at five videos and he has a hundred views total. And I’ll interview him and get more than a hundred views on that one interview. But I do the same thing to get some business from them. Okay. So Terry, they’re asking for your contact info in the chatbox, if you want to share that.
So somebody smart enough to hear here’s a guy who needs a realtor in Houston. Let me clarify that bill. I have an extraordinary list of realtors, commercial, one, single-family, and residential. If you’ve lived here for 40 years was in the business of helping them. I know a lot of realtors.
Let’s not, that is not an issue, but I’m certainly happy to have in my contact information, be willing to talk with anyone that has anything that would maybe give me a competitive edge. I would appreciate it very much. Thank you all. would say this then you don’t know the right one for this particular need because I’m not the right realtor to sell the house in the Palisades or Pittsburgh is that Renee was talking about.
I could do it, but the seller’s not going to fall in love with me because I don’t have that whole product mix. But I’m the right one to work with you. I’m talking to an attorney who wants to invest in property cause I’m the LA probate expert. And I have some things to back that up. So maybe you have a lot of realtors that you do a lot of business with, but you need one.
If you’re looking for probably a business, that’s a probate specialist or the probate expert of Houston. I don’t know who that is. I imagine maybe I do know it is. I just don’t know their names. I would say if I was at, if I was a Houston guy, I know your information, I track you down and protection right now.
Actually, if it was you, it was called in the Atlanta who here is in hot Lana, putting the checkbox, say I’m in Atlanta or I’m in the ATL DY 34 39 is asking for that. I think we should all be networking together. If you’re investors, why don’t you have a probate realtor, even if other realtors for acquisitions, other realtors for dispositions, other realtors for your house, but you need one to help you to lead gen and probate.
I think he should be partnering up with somebody. And what I call two bites of the apple, right? I have investors who call list and then I mark it the same list and we’ll commiserate on the leads and oh, you talked to my associates and the property about two months ago. So definitely I would say find an investor to work with if you’re a realtor and vice versa.
Okay. Anything else on that? On, on what terms do talking to an attorney or real estate referral networking ideas, or anything? I’m to Atlanta. that’s Hervic. Thank you. Anybody else? Any other questions? Challenges, problems.
Good morning. Good afternoon.
How are you guys went today?
okay. I can just tell you that the way you make more money is by participating. The more you talk more video you’re on just how it works.
It’s okay. If you want other people to make all the money, that’s fine with me. I’ll take it. I am not shy about it.
Gosh, I guess I haven’t been in this car for a while. Recognize to me the other name Melanie. Have we met before? I don’t think we have. How are you?
Hello, now we haven’t officially met. How are you great. If I was doing any better, it just would not. Yeah, exactly. I got a lot going on in the sweet too. I’m excited. Give me one piece of good news. Yeah, I’ll make sure I jumped in. I wonder what’s one piece of good news you have for the week though.
So far don’t give up, man. Do not give up. Nice. Are you an investor or a real estate agent? Both. So I started as an investor and I got my real estate license a couple of years ago, but just getting into the Tampa bay market. And I’ve got a couple of deals going and my whole thing was, and I don’t think you were on a couple of weeks ago and I talked about it.
I was so ready to walk. I literally was so done and Chad was on wake up. So, but I got a really good lead in, which has led me to so many other great things, so I just want to tell people don’t give up. That’s kinda my message. Because as soon as it starts, it’s it becomes a domino effect, right?
At some point you can’t stop. It’s incredible. The amount of people that need help. The just, it just seems like everywhere I turn now, I’ve got people reaching out saying, I need you, or, I can help you with that estate sale and all that. So it’s really cool. And I love it. I really love it.
It just it’s phenomenal. I’ll quit talking. Now we’re live on Facebook, so we gotta be careful what you say. No more politics.
Lease option for a probate real estate transaction (Probate Deals) [00:38:33]
Bill yes. Kevin, at the beginning of this time, Melanie was talking about some successes she had, I’d like to hear a little more about her story.
Sure. I asked her actually this question, she didn’t want to respond to me. Melanie, fans are demanding!
What would success have you had this? Yeah. So, I’ve been working with the gentleman in the St. Pete area and unfortunately this is pretty tragic. He lost his daughter, then he lost his wife. And so he was incapacitated, really not able to do a whole lot of things.
So we’re taking this on. It has just taken me around every corner you could ever imagined, from the estate sale people, landscapers, power washers and whatnot. I have built a whole network of people just dealing with this gentleman, but I will tell you that the joy and honestly the joy that you feel when you sit down with these people and you know that you’re doing something really good.
So I just want to urge people to not walk away. Cause I really was going to walk away a few months ago and I chose to just wait it out and see what would happen. And this one heir it’s just leaning on to so many different things for myself. This gentleman out looking at a few different homes and town homes and whatnot.
And we found one that we liked for him. And he was going to purchase that with either a HELOC or some sort of other private money until we could bridge over and sell his existing home which is over a million dollars. And he decided he didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to spend his money that way.
So I approached the listing agent and asked her, would it be possible if we could possibly do a lease purchase, lease options, something like that. And she said, no, now we’re, we are out three weeks later, the market is cooling. They’re not getting the traffic that they want. So she called me today and said, yes, we will do that.
So I haven’t done one of those. So I may need some help with that. but with that, this, the guy that I’m helping is an attorney and the people that are going to be doing the title work is an elder care, a state type of lawyer. So it has put me in a position to work with them. If we can get this gentlemen out of the situation that he’s currently in puts me in a great, lineup, it’ll be a domino effect.
It really will be So, my advice to everyone is just hold on, follow up with your clients. This was someone from like December. What else? So with that, obviously we’re meeting tons and tons of vendors that are going to help us obviously, move forward with whatever we need their help with and we can promote them on my site.
And also one last thing I do want to say about that. The lady that called me back, the listing agents that call me back today. She is a property management owner. Boom, boom. Yeah. And this was the biggest one of the week. And she said to me, you do know that I’m a property management team. And I said, I do.
And I’d like to meet with you. And she said, great, because we have a ton of houses.
Real estate motivation and the mindset for success [00:41:15]
So you guys, you never know where it’s going to take. You just ask a lot of questions, ask things that are all fair to especially, creative financing and things like that. Cause you honestly don’t know what you’re going to get.
What you’re in, dig up. If people are, at the movement the market shifting, you might have a greater opportunity to get a seller financing dealers, some sort of creative financing where you can acquire those properties for yourself. So that’s my little win for the week. So, you start off at the beginning.
You said something I think is right on, which is, so much of our real estate success mindset. I think 90% of transformation is mindset. So if you’re on this call and you’re trying to go from this, not wealthy to wealthier, not rich to rich or not successful with successful, it starts with mindset. And I think one of the things, one thing you had to change and just, I would just maybe urge you to pay attention to is.
If we think the victory is the check, I can tell you there’s never enough checks to win. I’ve had a lot of checks in the last few years. You’ve got to celebrate the small wins that lead to the checks because over time, if you believe in the system, those small wins will lead to the checks. Small wins like the appointments with referral sources, like adding people in your database, those having an agent call you back, have an attorney call you back.
Those are all important. Small wins. Add up over time. Inevitably it’s math. You have enough of them. You get a check, but you don’t get the check. Now you get the check a year from now. Sometimes Renee talked about, I think it was two years in coming and still not quite yet, but along the way, she’s also learned and grown on business today.
She’s better today because of the work she’s done on the deal have closed, not even the one that she is hoping to get two years. So now it’s really important that we focus on. The short there’s short numbers as well. Yes. Check’s important. Mine’s important. I run a P and L every month review online, my bookkeeper and QuickBooks, but every day, it’s about the individual victories.
Now we’ll keep you in the hunt every day. So congratulations, Melanie, keep it up. This party. I think you, you had in response to Melanie at the beginning of the hour, you said something to the effect of yeah. Keep going. There’s a domino effect. Yeah, because I think that, we think we plant a seed and then eventually a tree grows, but really it’s more like you throw some seeds and then the tree grows, but then two years from now, another one grows from the same seeds or some seeds blow off of that tree and create some more plants without your. And that’s where the domino comes from. It’s where deals you do yield new deals in the future without the same amount of effort. And so the challenge is going from zero to sustenance or zero to what you perceive as success, but your momentum is going to carry well past that point, if you stick at it.
And that’s where it becomes to some time it was for me, I want to say last year, almost overwhelming to keep up with the volume and you start your mind starts to say I need to back off. No, I don’t need to back off. Everybody else has to worry about that. I told my wife, sorry, I need you just got to figure this out because this is prime time.
Mine’s coming in fast and I want to get what I can. I want to build the business as fast as I can, but you, your mindset starts to play those tricks with you, but definitely our efforts today, yield results into the future that we can’t see. Sometimes we see a little bit of it, but we don’t see that. And that’s why you have to celebrate those victories.
You gotta, you have to get lunch when you’re making some money and paying the bills. So you don’t have to quit and take that off the table. But once it’s off the table, keep at it because that’s where the long-term success comes from.
The attorneys. I did a deal with a realtor. I did a deal with investor three years ago and I forgot them. They called me back three years later. I didn’t really, I keep them in my my marketing campaign system. I email them and I do social media, but I can’t say I really worked hard at it, but I created a relationship through.
And bill, I’ll just this is, we all know this, but I think I’m going to say something that’s just a reiteration that coats on your coattails of that. And you can be an investor or a realtor or whatever. I’m just going to speak to it. As in realtor language. I’m doing a transaction right now where I used to be at this brokerage that the buyer’s agent is at.
And we weren’t even really friends, like we were agent friends, but I like her character and I knew she’d be a good agent and all that. And so it’s just, it’s like these little micro relationships that you interact with, or maybe acquire over the years that creep back up.
I, her name is Gina. I haven’t seen Gina in six years, like literally seen her or talked to her and she just popped into my life at this open house. And it was like, we picked up where we left off and that wasn’t really influencing the transaction, but it didn’t hurt. Because at least in the agent to agent community, there’s a lot of yahoos out here and we’re all trying to get to the finish line.
And so at least you can breathe a sigh of relief where you’re like, all right, I know this person’s gonna like have their act together, but it just it compounds in some other weird way. So I liked your example, how you said, like the seeds, like blowing off the tree. That was one of those I didn’t plant that seed per se, but it blew off the tree, and so in here it is right, and we’re doing a deal and it’s going to be bright and there’s no drama and like, amen this is how they all should be. Right. So again, I’m stating the obvious, but just keep going, keep talking to people, keep going. That’s all you can do. Yeah. There’s a phrase.
That’s common in football, which is fame made famous by the new England Patriots when the most successful sports franchise in history, which was trust the process. At some point you had to have a process that you work. You have to trust that yields results and your job is to trust the process. That doesn’t mean you trust it forever, but maybe once a quarter, you review your numbers in detail, maybe once every six months and once a year do a business plan. But in between those time periods as a general rule and a quarter, I’ll never review my process. I don’t want to re I’m not going to add any new marketing. I’m not gonna change anything I do.
And I can change my schedule. I’m working that process. People will call me and I’ll say, let’s talk, in April, let’s talk in July because I’m working the process I have now right now between may and June, my wife wanted me to go to New York for family of a family event. And I bought her off with some earrings.
So I’d have to go because this is prime time for me. I got events I’m sponsoring and team building stuff going on. And I said, this is prime time for me, honey. We’ve had some holidays and all that, but this is not time for me taking time off and going to New York, which I love going New York, but I have a process.
I work and I try to stay on that. Okay. Claire asked somebody else in Arizona, even the easy put yourself It’s chatbox for Claire to reach out Claire. We’ll be sure to reach out to you.
Do your job as a standard response and quick spell check as well. Yeah. Do your jobs. So once you have a process defined, then your job is to do your job.
Your job is not do other people’s jobs is not for other people to do your job. Your job is to do your job and trust that they’ll do their job. Trust your team members. It just people ask you all talking about TCS. I don’t do the TCS job. I do my job. If I evaluate the tissue’s not doing good, I’ll change TCS, but I’m not gonna do the TSC job.
I’m not going to do the escrow’s job because I have my job to do okay.
Hey, I think we’re up against the hour out and exactly how this works out. But any, I would say this, if you wanna reach out to me, you’re welcome to I’m Bill Gross. And my website’s the probate expert.com. I host a weekly probate call, probably weekly.com.
You’re welcome to join that. That’s Thursday is a four o’clock. This call is every week on Tuesdays at noon. 3:00 PM Eastern and all the times in between. And you can find it on probate mastery. Probate Mastery is amazing. Chad was my first coach in probate. I had been exposed to others, but he’s the first one that really sit down, coached with and what a business plan with and changed my business.
I’ve done a video for them before, but I want to say that it was a life-changing experience. I saw the opportunity. I wrote out a plan. I worked that process and I trust that process. Sandy it’s probate, weekly.com. It’s on Thursdays at 4:00 PM. Pacific time. Loved to have joined that for free as well.
I’ll see you guys for next week and if I can help reach out to me, otherwise, have a fantastic week, everybody. Thanks for your help, John and Renee and all those Kevin and all those Terry, thank you for sharing your stories today. Appreciate it.
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