Probate Mastery group training provides education for real estate agents and investors every week. You will find value in these training sessions if you’re interested in real estate, investing, estate planning, financial independence, and scaling your business. They are featured as part of the Estate Professionals Mastermind Podcast.
Probate mastery group training features live questions and answers from trainer Chad Corbett, guest coaches, and certified probate experts in a video conference setting.
Live participation is reserved for graduates of the Probate Mastery (CPE) Certification Course.
Additional Resources:
Probate Mastery Group Training Resources:
- Probate Mastery Course – Get Certified and get access to participate live in probate group coaching.
- Probate Leads and Marketing
- Mastermind Group (Facebook, join free!): Estate Professionals Mastermind
- Catch This Episode and More On YouTube
- Ringless Voicemail, Voice Courier, and Appointment-Setting Services with VoiceLogic’s probate-trained team
- Gary Nash’s upcoming course. We will also post updates on our platforms to expand on what Gary’s doing.
Probate Mastery Group Training 3 – Transcript
Welcome everybody to the probate mastery group coaching call. So this is the first one of these we’re recording. . If we haven’t met already, I’ve worked with so many people. I just assume I know most of the phases on here, but if you haven’t watched the course yet, my name’s Chad Corbit, I’ll be the guy teaching the course and my right arm here is Katt Wagner.
So I don’t even know what we haven’t been able to find a job title that fits Katt. She grows too quickly, but Katt’s an amazing part of this and someone that really helps with everything that I do. Thank you for being here, Katt.
So who’s got something who needs help with a real estate question today?
How to get the courage to cold call probate leads – Probate Mastery Group Training Segment
Anybody have any questions, wins, challenges? I have a question. Go ahead. It’s silly, but I’ve been in real estate for 10 years.
That is pretty silly. When are you gonna retire?
When I get enough income property so I can have passive more passive income.
I built my business on cold calling expired leads, for sale by owners. So I have Mojo Dialer and I make calls for hours. I do my follow-up calls.
I have a pretty good prospecting system, but for some reason, it’s like I have a thousand-pound weight when it comes to cold-calling probate leads. I don’t know if it’s because they’re going through the hardest time in their life. And I had issues when my father passed away and it’s keeping me from interacting, but I know if I interact with people, I present value. So I need to get through that call reluctance that I never really experienced before probate.
Yeah. So something I’ve come to learn in all areas of my life is procrastination usually equals fear.
You’re afraid of something. And you do have a level of self-awareness like, you’re starting to question that and that’s a good thing. And only you will know the real answer to this. You may be afraid of rejection. You may be afraid of offending somebody who was as emotionally raw as you were like, you might be drawing a connection and projecting the emotions from your past onto your prospects.
And that’s creating a block for you because you think “I’m gonna hurt these people.” And you’re afraid of actually inflicting fear when you’re trying to offer care and help by calling them. I don’t think it’s fear of rejection.
If you’re using dialers, you’ve built thick skin in real estate. So I would say it’s the latter. You are probably identifying as the prospect and projecting those past emotions onto the present prospects. And it’s not serving you or them because if you can’t speak with them, how are you going to help them?
Challenge yourself and say, how is not having the courage to cold call probates helping anyone? If you can’t have a relationship with them, you can’t help them. The fear is rarely ever healthy. And we evolve past that point a long time ago, so run toward it and say, okay, I’m going to recognize this.
You’re empathetic to who you used to be, but remember you weren’t there to help you. The skillset you have now wasn’t there to help.
That’s why it was painful and scary and not a great memory.
But when they have a leader by their side that can say, “Hey, just let me take 90% of this off your shoulders,” then it’s a whole different experience. And think about that.
How would you have felt if the current William May could go back and help that William May, when he was in that deepest point of distress and turn that into courage?
I don’t know if Fed’s on here today, but he’s very ambitious and has gotten himself into a point where he’s got more than he can handle. My advice to him was go out to 2032 and write 2022 Fed a letter. And it’s a pretty magical exercise because it makes you associate yourself with the real estate agent you’re becoming.
You need to be thinking like a guy 10 years from now that is retired,that does have a passive income that quite frankly, he feels damn guilty about because it’s way bigger than he expected stay in that mindset and make that your motivation. That’s where you get the courage to cold call.
So 2032, William May needs to sit down and write a letter to 2022 William May today and say, man, I just wanna let you. No matter how embarrassing, how tough, how you know, how hard you had to work, let me tell you what I spend my days doing. Let me tell you how many zeros are in my bank account.
Let me tell you about my investment property rental portfolio. Let me tell you how my wife looks at me every evening when I come home because I only worked three hours and we’re still making seven digits, whatever that is to you, like tap into your heart and say, what kind man will I be in 10 years? Get yourself in the mindset of that man, and then write the letter backward.
And what’s really interesting about this. It will reveal things that you need to do the way you need to think that you really wanna uncover other than through like deep meditation, but like in order to have a hundred rental property portfolios, you have to act and think a certain way, and this letter will bring some life to that and don’t do.
This isn’t like a one time thing. Like you can always revisit that letter and amend it. Cause it’s life changes, right? Like our, what we want our hopes and dreams. They, we amend them all the time. So I do this probably once a quarter. I’ll sit down and renew that letter a digital time capsule. Yeah. And it’s capturing the mindset that you believe is required to be the man who that can clear the bar you’re setting.
And then when you feel like you’re gonna bother somebody, or you’re gonna hurt somebody go like consult with 2031 William and be like, Hey man, if I keep thinking this way, what do you think happens? You have to be empathetic and you have to let them. Maybe I’m afraid of that because it’s gonna bring back PA in my past of when my father passed away, I was going through foreclosure.
I had a divorce, all that stuff was hitting me at the same time. And I had a nervous breakdown and it changed me. I keep life simple. If anybody that I deal with, if they even in clients, if they’re like real. I have issues with emotions and stuff like that. I said, Hey, it’s nice working with you. Let me refer you to someone else that maybe can help you better than I can.
That tells me you’ve done some work. Like you’ve already wrestled your damn ego to the ground. That’s apparent right now you used the term nervous breakdown. So do you feel like you processed and moved past those emotions or did you repress those emotion? No, I think I let ’em go. It’s just, I’m a caring individual okay.
The way you opened that story, you said, I think I might be afraid of uncovering or opening those feelings back up. So the reason I asked the question I did, if you process those and moved on, that’s really illegitimate fear. If you knowingly repress those emotions. Then it’s a legitimate fear. You may open Pandora’s box, but it seems based on your level of confidence in telling the story and your level of self-awareness, I doubt you requested the emotions.
I would say you did the work and then dealt with them, something like that background on. So was it rebel, you had something to add. I’m glad to be back you back on here, looking and ready to learn more from you, but you know how I am, I’ve taken. Taught me before and applied it and we’ve done really well.
I have people amazed at the service that we provide playing with buttons, trying to figure out my phone, how to get you back up here. And I don’t know what I touched so sweet. All right. Cindy, you had something to share with. Yeah. I just wanna put this I’m. 61 years old, I have four children been divorced, been through domestic violence, been through a foreclosure, been through bankruptcy, been through the crash of the real estate.
And I am taking care of my 91 year old mother that does not like me. One boy Otis. She and I had a blood pressure raging argument earlier today, but it’s necessary because that’s a chapter that I’m in. Somebody needs to take care of mom. And when. Left Tampa bay area to come do this and call your county of Florida.
It’s a total different animal down here with regard to how things are done. And everybody that I have worked with, they say, it’s the compassion. They came to me from a Rainmaker that was a pushy car salesman, and that was their term, not mine. And I do what I do. I walk people through whatever path they have to be on to get to where they wanna be, whatever that looks like.
And. It makes me appreciative when they say that we love the way that you work. We love the way that you hold our hands. We love the way that you walk this through a very difficult process. So just keep the compassion out there and know how you are touching others. When you have that compassionate heart from where you felt you were in whatever shoes you were in at the time, that would come forward with your compassion and.
It will in the right time, if, as long as you’re not afraid of it, I give you props, miss Cindy, you have a lot on your plate and you’re still pushing forwards. So it’s makes me feel silly. Everything I went through has been a while back. So yeah, but I do have compassion when I try to help people and I try to go above and beyond because that’s my fiduciary duty.
As a listing agent, it’ll pay off. I now have a $905,000 contract. I’ve never had a contract that high in real estate. Yeah, you do good work. Good. Good for you.Awesome. All right.
Probate inbound marketing strategy – Facebook Groups
We’ve got a hand raise here from penny. Yep. So I just wanted to say that I got my first listing from the probate website and so that was awesome.
Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. That was exciting. So tell us how that went. Like they, they researched you for a while. Reached out, immediately reached out later. So I have a Facebook group where people can post their estate sales. So I asked her on there if the house was gonna be for sale. And she said eventually, so I went to the estate sale, we’re furnishing to Airbnbs.
So I’m always looking for interesting things. And while I was there, I gave her my card when I, and oh, I asked her if she had an agent, and they said they had a friend of a friend that was an agent.
And I said, here’s my card. If you do need anything, I specialize in probates. My mom has an estate sale company so I know how everything works.
And then when I got home, I just sent her a quick little message with the probate website. And then she messaged me the next day and said we wanna hire you to sell the house. And I went and picked up a key and that was it. Never even did anything besides that you’ve done a lot.
Well, you’ve done a lot of legwork to get to that point.
Oh yeah. So I had forgotten that you and your mother, I thought you had that business before. That is an incredibly good idea. If you didn’t take a note in the last minute, you just missed the hell of an opportunity. We should all be hosting our community estate sale platform as a Facebook group. Yeah.
It’s pretty simple. I don’t really have any group rules. I just don’t let other real estate agents into my group.
As far as what the consumers should expect, are they listing things for sale in there? Like a community yard sale?
Yeah. I’ll let them list anything.
Actually, if they have a AC repair company or anything like that, I let other estate sale companies come in and post their sales, different things like that. And then the only people I keep out are the wholesalers. Well, I don’t approve their posts. I reach out to them privately and let them know that I’m a real estate agent.
I get wholesale deals. So I’m looking for a lot of opportunities within this group, right? So obviously I’m looking for people that wanna sell their houses and are coming in to post moving sales or something like that.
And then also to network with wholesalers, different things like that.
And the only person I don’t let in is another real estate agent.
I’m gonna go ahead and put a pin in that one as the gold nugget of the day. It’s something that we should all challenge ourselves to just get up in your market. That’s amazing. Thanks for sharing. Yeah. And that wasn’t really the reason why I raised my hand. So do I have another few seconds?
Any benefits of a short sale for buyers? Probate Mastery Group Training Segment
I get a lot of things that come to me before they even filed probate. So I had one come to me at the end of December and the mom had passed away. There’s a reverse mortgage. I’ve done reverse mortgages a lot. So I know how they work. The son was a caretaker.
The son had a stroke right around when the mom passed away. He’s a hoarder in the house. So came in, they were able, they could potentially sell it. They were gonna realize $5,000 after paying the probate lawyer, paying all the real estate fees, closing costs, and they decided not to, they wanted to sit on it.
So obviously I gave them a listing agreement for six months. So that’ll keep the sun in the house for six months. And I said, let’s look at it at the end of six months because at one time.
I guess the mom owed money to the IRS and they just didn’t want any surprises where the family was gonna have to pay out of pocket because there was no money in this state besides the house. So I didn’t know if I was thinking big enough on this one. I do know at the end of six months, which is coming up in June, with this particular reverse mortgage company I can go ahead and write them another listing for six months and they’ll extend.
But I’m just thinking, I told the family, let’s just wait till the end of six months and see where the property comes in at. I need to touch base with the brother or the son that’s the executor or would be the executor if they filed, where is that magic number? Like where would you sell it? If you got $20,000 over what is owed or what could be netted, would you be able to sell?
Okay. It’s a reverse mortgage and they wanted to wait out the creditors’ period to make sure that there weren’t IRS or other liens that would actually create a negative equity situation for the estate?
They haven’t even filed probate. So I hooked him up with a probate lawyer. She talked to them, told them how much it was gonna cost. And they were just gonna realize maybe net 5,000 after all, everything was said and done.
When was that? How many months?
Date of death was in December.
So in June, that lender can move to recover the asset.
I haven’t protected so far with the listing agreement after the six-month mark. Okay. That’s what I’m looking at. You’ve got a short fuse where the lender can begin to recover the asset. Now they still have to go through whatever the judicial probate process may be in your state, but you’ve got a short fuse.
Now this probably is going to be a short sale. And the lenders are actually pretty open to that. I would recommend using a facilitator. Okay. But. They pretty much know it, it costs them money to get a house ready to sell, to pay attorney’s fees, to recover, stuff like that. So they’re better off to short sale it a few thousand short that way you get your commission.
Now, a lot of times the family will be like what’s in it for me. And really it’s just community reputation is the only thing like doing the right thing, trying to get a buyer in the home versus turning it into a rental and a nice community. That’s usually the only real incentive is a social incentive.
If they know the neighbors on both sides and they grew up in that house. They don’t want to rent it, sell it to who, whichever landlord might put whatever tenant in there. So you can use that to create a little bit of social leverage and say, do you think your neighbors would want to be able to choose or have you select an end buyer or just move any old tenant in there that will sign a lease?
And a lot of times they’ll be like, ah, mom and dad wanted that. I think we’ll try to find the right family to move in there and then they’ll take the short sale with you. Got it. Got it. Awesome. Thank you.
Sure next. So Lynette, did you have something to add that you had, you raised your hand? It may have just been in response to Penny’s idea.
I love her idea. And it’s like on the list of the billion things you do that you didn’t do. Yeah. So I appreciate the reminder and what I really got from what Penny said. I do have a question. I get stuck in analysis-paralysis.
And then I have a comment before I ask my question, I just vacated my property. There was a divorce in August of 2020 that took 10 years to do. It happened to be mine. So I vacated our 30-year family residence and I chose to flip the house. And I found my go-to junk removal place! So I got this really related to how to bring contractors in cleanout companies, painters, removers, junk landscape.
There’s no other way to do it than to jump in the pool. You can make your little list and make it nice and everything, but you need the plumber when it’s leaking! So I got a lot from that.
How do you let people know you’re Realtor that specializes in probate?
I have a situation today. This one’s close. It’s really close. We lost a family friend and a football coach.
And his kids are left with the estate and there is a home. And I know I can help. I don’t know, obviously not right now, but I don’t know when, and I don’t know how, and once this is over, I’m not walking in like this, what is there to do and how to approach cuz these kids are like 26, 22, 26 sitting on the monkey.
And I, here’s what I know not to do, go to the funeral and say, Hey, have you like, thought about what you’re doing with everything? That’s just asinine and nor would it be in me. And I don’t want them. In this particular instance, I don’t want some asshole handling this for them. And I see a little boy and I’m so sorry, Anton.
I’m so sorry. So that was actually gonna be my caution to you, is that your compassion creating too much of a boundary. You’re allowing someone to not know probate help is there. It’s okay if they see the emotion you just showed us.
You’re not gonna be able to keep that in three months. You have to process that and it’s gonna take time. The sooner you talk to those kids, the better off they will be, and you need to quit worrying about being judged.
You’ve been judged the whole damn time they’ve known you and they have an opinion of you already. Are you afraid of that opinion? Are you afraid of the reputation you’ve already built? Then go serve. Don’t let some bullshit thinking of I’m gonna offend these kids or hurt them. You’ve never done that in the past.
Why the hell would you start now? Don’t let them sit there hopeless and afraid while you can help them. You have to find a way to enter that conversation, but I’m sure it’s not going to be, Hey, what are you gonna do with all your stuff? You’re gonna say, guys, listen, when X, Y, or Z happened to me, I felt this way.
And I, if you’re not ready to talk, you don’t have to, but I have to tell you that I’m here for you. And it’s first as a friend, but if you need anything else, if you need help handling the estate, I have lots of experience, but I have to come over and tell you that I’m here for you. And don’t worry about losing the deal.
You’re not going. You got that deal a long time ago. Okay. That’s perfect. I wanna add, you said that you were afraid of someone coming in that would just be, would literally be an ambulance chaser from the marketing side, with all the leads. We’ve had an influx with the low inventory of people asking us about working death certificates and obituaries, and just trying to find any listing or acquisition opportunity out there.
So I think right now in this market, more than ever. There will be a higher percentage of vultures, ambulance chasers, the exact type of people that you wouldn’t want helping these families. And that’s a good way to enter the conversation on that. You can say, listen, I, you guys may have never thought about this, but you’re about to start getting calls from people who are going to take advantage of you.
And I just wanna let you know that I’ve been your friend for a long time. I won’t ever pressure you to do anything, but I’m doing you a disservice if I don’t let you know what to expect. Just like what you would tell a client when they let the listing expires, tomorrow morning’s gonna suck.
Get up at 6:30. But that’s a great point, Katt, and just let them know, listen, this is why I’m bringing this up so early. And it and what I just got related to is there’s really no way to know circumstantially what’s there. I know there’s a real estate asset and I know he probably has a teacher’s pension and things like that.
So the other thing that came up is, but these are kids. Like how I can come to the table and make sure people are loved and fiduciary above all.
Look how wide and ambitious those eyes are now. No more tears. So again, just like I said, I told William, thanks for being willing to show vulnerability that says a lot for the culture we have here, that you’re comfortable doing that. And thank you for doing that. Cuz a lot of people can benefit from that transparency and let us know after you talk to the boys, how it goes, let us know if any of those fears were legitimate.
Thanks. Thanks.
Hey Gary Nash, you guys have an American ninja warrior on here. Where’s your video, man? Yeah. Yeah. It’s a bad hair day.
I have those every day.
So does Gary Nash.
Student Loans and Real Estate Assets
Oh, Hey, in the past you’d said you’d be coming out with some content for passive protection.
and I know you have a lot of knowledge and wisdom there. Let me tell you exactly what I’m trying to accomplish, cuz it’s not your typical thing. You hear my son’s entering into he’s in 11th grade, but we’re thinking of college right now. We’ve checked out some schools and seen what funding is available for us.
And the big challenge with us is that I have a few, just a couple of multi-families that over the years have built up quite a lot of equity. The person who was consulting with us said. You’re not gonna get anything from any college cuz you have the equity. Does it matter if you’ve lost your job?
If or anything? If you got equity, they’ll just expect you to sell the properties and pay for your kids’ education. I had heard that there may be some creative asset protection strategies and I figured. See if you know anything before I spend a bundle of money on asset protection slash tax attorney who knows some way and or maybe there is just no way around it.
Yeah. So here’s the deal, man. Look at it as the parent of the kid who actually needs the scholarship fund, I can tell you ways to move money into an international trust and game the system. But ethically that doesn’t sit right with me. I was one of those kids. Like I carried a 4.0 GPA and I paid every damn dime of my college.
And so you think about those people, like when you’re trying to game a system like that, those rules are in place because they need to be like you, you’ve got to give gratitude where it’s due. You’re in the top 1%. Don’t game the system any more than you have. Give those other kids a chance. Like you can establish a Neva trust with a Swiss bank account and run it through layers of attorney, client privilege, and international jurisdiction.
But do you really need to like that other kid who doesn’t have that opportunity? Yeah, I hear what you’re saying. And I appreciate that. I haven’t bought a house in a long time. So I’m looking for, we don’t know when the end is in sight, but things are a little bit challenging.
No deals and I’ve been making calls. And the phone was not ringing, but the website came out from what I could see beautifully.
I want to go back to the finance part and I hear you, man, that probably wasn’t an easy answer to hear, but and it’s a lot of it’s based on just my personal beliefs and opinion, but that’s what you ask me for.
So do you have assets held free and clear? Okay. Do you have assets that you can refinance in a low interest rate environment without penalties? No. Okay. And how old is your child? It’ll be 17 in July. So he’s in 11th. And so when he turned 17, are you gonna get him set up with a discover card and have him start building credit?
Saturday was his first day at work working at like a burrito place down here. Yeah, I think discover, discover was the first card I had and I set that up. I think at 17 they allowed me. Maybe I had to wait till I was 18, to start working on his credit. And it’s unlikely that in this interest rate, in this environment, we really can’t raise interest rates.
Inflation deflation is still the force fighting the fed. So if we raise rates, we’re gonna kill the economic recovery we’ve had. We can’t afford to do it. So it’s likely that he’ll be able to get student loan. Debt. If it’s, if that’s necessary, just a little bit of nothing compared to the interest that most of us pay on anything else.
But anyways, that’s something else I wanted to say, I’m not just shutting you down and slapping your hand. Part of that opinion was based in this debt environment. Is unprecedented. Like you can get extremely inexpensive money to still make his needs are covered. Now, as far as your marketing campaign, you said you still have letters in the mail.
The phone’s not ringing. What’s your outbound marketing strategy? Are you making your calls and if not, why not? Yeah. I’m just looking to outsource that at this point I’ve had in the past success with. Inbound calls from outbound marketing. And it’s just not, nothing’s working and I’m doing not just all the lead strategy, I’m doing some other things too.
Yeah. And in my area it’s just low supply. Heavy demand and went into this thinking, Jesus, this is gonna be my savior. And there is quite a bit of probate, right? So I have whatever 400 leads I’m working, but, and I’m doing other marketing too, for other things, but it’s, you could stick a sign on your front lawn and the house is sold for way more than what you could imagine.
Realtors can’t figure it out. Things are just something that is selling for more than the ARV, without it being fixed up. It’s just, it’s unprecedented.
So having said, that’s another reason why I still believe that if I can get these people to not hang up on me yeah. And see all the other values, last few calls I made. I’m even just spitting out. Listen if there’s real estate in the estate, we can talk about that. And I’m even starting to throw in a 4% listing.
No, you’re not. Take that out. Why would you devalue yourself? Have they convinced you you’re not of any value? You’re screwing your peers as well as yourself. Quit playing that game.
Actually, I am surprised how many other realtors already dropped their prices to 4%.
And four and a half percent. Number one. That’s why you got a rise out of me because it’s a downward price race where everybody loses. You never cut yourself short.
One thing that I think can help is focusing on where the money comes from. We have a shortage of inventory, but like in every market you need to be wise and you need to be well known and you need to have a strategy when it comes down to presenting an offer.
Michael, you and Ele actually have similar business models. You guys might want to connect offline. She’s a firecracker. So you are careful to look out William, go ahead. I’m out here in Los Angeles, California. We have crazy competition. But I look at what my father taught me.
If you have a good relationship, the money will take care of itself. Also, I’ve been through a lot of training. When I talk to the client, I let him know that, Hey, I have three marketing strategies, 7%, 6%, and 5%. I do the 7%, 4% for me, and three percent for the buyer’s agent. If they don’t have the funds to fix up the property, I do little cosmetic stuff, slap lipstick on the pig, and get it sold.
But I let ’em know that 1% is a convenience fee and 6% I’ll say, Hey, 3% for me, 3% for the buyer’s agent. But Hey I know it’s UN unfair, but when the buyer’s agent looking at property, the first things they’re looking at is the address, the price, and their commission. So if they see you’re discounting in the commission, they’re not gonna show your property.
And then if they bulk at that, I’d say, let’s play a game right quick. Let’s say you’re a real estate agent. Just got your license can only show three properties and you look, on the MLS, there’s eight properties. That’s from 2% to 6%, which of those properties you’re not gonna show. You’re gonna show all the three.
So you’ve only been in real estate for 30 seconds already. You won’t show your property, let’s do the right thing and sign the contract for 3%. And then if I double ended, if I’m representing the buyer to make sure we have a smooth transaction I’ll do it for 5%. That’s the only time I’ll discount my commission, but it’s been a lot of times when I first started I was just scared.
The commission, but if you’re doing what you know, you need to do for the client, the money will take care of itself. Yeah. Thanks for that. What, I’m mostly an investor. So I really don’t work the agent side of it too much. I haven’t listed a property in years. I really like to flip homes and make them beautiful and get nice first time home buyers in these homes.
That’s my joy. So not that I won’t list a home, but I have in the past, when I bring it up, they see that I’m not, they’re looking for the local known Remax or the local known like number one agency down in ocean county. This is the first time I’m starting to. Consider not giving out the referrals to people who I consider on my team.
They don’t know where things are at. So I’m just going to consider listing it myself. Here’s what I did do, which was outside the box. I do have a, I wouldn’t call it a listing happening. That was another thing I was gonna ask you on is what you know, who I can outsource some of this stuff to. Yeah.
Outsourcing real estate cold calls to VoiceLogic
One of the things that I wanted to talk to you about was using an actual, one of the partners of ours, VoiceLogic.
This VoiceLogic has a product has three different systems that they do to help you outsource your calling ringless voicemail, which I wouldn’t recommend. You’re just asking for litigation.
These days, they have voicemail courier, which is an actual human who actually calls and leaves the voicemail. 80% of the time they hit voicemail and they do a manual drop 20% of the. They actually get an answer, a live answer. And 93% of their live answers. Listen to the whole message. It’s and the caller is hi, this is Chad.
I have a call from Michael Balducci or a voicemail he’s out on an appointment, but he wanted me to have you listen to this. Can you stick on the line? 93% of people will stay there. So that landing page cat actually did find it and it dropped it in the chat. You can click there and he also has live call centers.
That call center I’ve been in it. I’ve actually, these are friends of the, people that I’ve gotten to know and trust it’s Mississauga, Ontario, just outside of Toronto. So they have neutral accents and they call at a lower rate than most call centers. They have probate scripts that I’ve developed with them, that work they’re very simple, it’s high level.
We don’t allow the callers to get into specifics. We’re just driving them to your calendar. There’s a guy on this call that I was making fun of earlier. I actually, I greeted him and then made fun of his haircut.
What adds the most value to an investment property?
Gary Nash. I think you can help Michael. Gary is, has probably more experience than everybody else on this call combined at flipping houses.
And he’s got a really interesting skill set where he knows how to squeeze value out of a house that nobody else can see. And he’s actually in the process of developing a course to teach that right now. And it’s a course that I intend to promote in this community because I think that in this market environment, one of the best days to get into deals is to know how to unlock value and of all the people I know.
Thousands of people flip houses. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that can squeeze value out. Like Gary can through creative architecture and things like that. So it’s construction management, it’s by design. It’s a lot of things rolled into a course that’s extremely affordable, but if you’re getting priced outta deals in your own market, You can’t control the market value.
What you can control is the value that you put into the market. So if you raise your skill set and you become a better designer and you can raise an equity level by changing a floor plan, or one of the tricks that shocked me, I’d never, even this never even occurred to me. I’ve never had to compete in a market like that.
When I was flipping, I didn’t know that if you just raise a canal over a few feet above grade, then you can get closer to a lot line. If you have a property setback. And there’s little things like that, where Gary adds lots of square footage and usable square footage, and really improves a floor plan on a house that all these other investors are hitting 20, 30% below.
Gary say hello and let people know where they can learn about your course when it’s ready. Thanks for the pitch. Golly. Yeah. And we’re actually, we’re hoping to launch this week. We’re doing the pre oh, nice. We gotta catch up, man. Yeah. That’s why I jumped on here. So I was hoping to catch you and let you know, gimme a call.
This is said and done. But the class is, it comes with the design software. It’s assembly build it’s all the instructions on how to use it. Be an expert in that. And really just a couple gyrations, which I’ll walk you through. And then we talk about the deal analyzer tool. In fact, had a student yesterday who it wasn’t yesterday, it was last week.
They were, they found a deal and they were hoping to negotiate. She asked the person how much they wanted. Said 25, but somebody else had looked at it. I said, if you wrote a contractor 25, she goes, I didn’t bring one. I was like, okay. So then she went back. I said, call her up and tell her, you’ll give her the 25.
She said, the other guy already offered 40. 1000 for it. We looked at the deal analyzer. The wiggle room was 53. We could go up to 53. I said, charmer, tell her you want it. You’re not gonna get in a bit anymore, but if you can take it for 42, you will, you’ll do it right now. She’s got the deal, knowing that we had that wiggle room, I told her push came to shove, go ahead and spend 45 if you have to.
But, so she picked up the deal and I helped her put together a real value. Add it was 900 square foot, three bedroom, one bath we’ve converted into a three bedroom, two bath with a master suite. Nice. Look in. Literally, yesterday or two days ago she went and drew it. She put together, some drawings.
She sent it to me. I gave her some ideas. We tweaked it. Now we got basically a property. We paid 42,000. Looks like we’ll get 180 5, 1 94 when all said and done. So I give you learned the schedule. I tell you the types of contractors, the types of contractors, operations, and how to find the contractors. When to bid, ’em how to put a schedule together, how to put the contract, how to hold their hand to the fire.
You make your project go through, not get ahead on the payments. And a biggie is when you design all that money, you build all that extra equity into the property. You don’t want the contractors taking it. So I got these great techniques for a buyout that shows you how to get the most for the least, and to really get these guys bidding against themselves.
And it’s always been very successful. I owned a construction company for 20 years and my former father-in-law built a $2 billion year construction company. Taught me how to do this. So you’re learning from the best. There’s no question about it. There is a lot packages in there and we also do weekly zoom meetings for updates.
You can upload drawings, and ask questions, just like Chad. I use Chad as my role model. Guys, I’ll email you guys a link where to find Gary’s site and his course, and Gary, I think we’ll probably do ask the expert where you and I can really unpack it.
We’re at the top of the hour right now, Michael. I did remember my other idea. And one thing I’d like for you to try. In your marketing, since you’re not getting the response that you need, and you’re looking for an inbound response, an idea that I’ve been sharing with folks and they’re getting in the play is what if and very similar to Penny’s idea of having a Facebook group and telling people to go look there for an estate cell resource.
What if you weren’t marketing as a realtor? What if you could get your probate attorney to show. Every Wednesday at two o’clock or whatever time that might be to do an actual zoom meeting in your community. So instead of the call to action being, I’m an investor, I can do this. I can do that. Or my name’s Michael Balducci.
I actually founded the New Jersey probate help, which is a social enterprise right here in your town. As part of that, every Tuesday for an. Me, my attorney CPAs, and whichever of my vendors can make it on that day. Actually show up as a resource, to all the families in the community that I’ve had to file probate for this month.
So I’m reaching out because I visited the courthouse and I see that you’re unfortunately in probate, please join us on Tuesday at two o’clock. We can answer any questions you might have. You can ask, you can see how interact with other people who might be in your situation, but instead of trying to drive them to a commitment with you, like a phone call, For an appointment, try to soften that up a little bit in your market.
It might really be an effective contrast where you’re driving them to the soft commitment of come to this community service call. I don’t have a business. I have a social enterprise and we’re here volunteering ourselves transparently every Tuesday at two o’clock. Don’t ask us, come ask us any questions and just know somebody you’re in.
Like the first time you and I ever talked we had this discussion, you have a different culture. It’s gonna be unmoderated. So make sure that if somebody comes in, you’re ready to defend yourself. If they’re, if they do wanna be an asshole, but that’s a way that it’s a softer ask. Like you’re asking them to make a small commitment to come to something of value, not to actually come and to an appointment or to a phone call where they think they’re gonna be sold something or taken advantage of.
So one thing you might try is actually change up your call to action. If your call to action is get on the phone with me or meet with me and it’s not working, but you’re still making that effort. Try to drive them to something like touch. Number one could be, Hey, have you. I noticed you’re in probate.
One of the biggest things we see families struggle with is knowing what to do with personal property and worrying about selling it for too little. We’ve actually created the community resource. We have an estate cell Facebook group. Please go here to learn more and you can email that to ’em. You can put it on a postcard, you can leave it in a voice.
Don’t talk about real estate investing. Don’t talk about the house, build that relationship organically by providing those community resources like a weekly call or that, that group. Okay. Dave, did you have a question? I do right now. I’ve got a deal that I’m coordinating everything for a couple and. Like we’re getting bidding bids for redoing their siding, multiple biddings for landscaping.
We’ve got bids out for flooring, as well as repainting the whole house. And I’ve got a contract with them for listing the property. My wife is one of the team admins and she’s also got her interior design degree. She’s pretty much kind of taking care of most of it. One of the things I was wondering was, so is there is everyone else doing things with a separate contract where cuz right now I’ve got a listing agreement, but obviously we’re not on the market because everything’s being done.
So I wasn’t sure if I should have a separate contract to make sure that side of things that we get paid, if they were to decide to cancel the listing, I just wanna be clear. Are you guys, are you paying for the construction and the design or you G what’s your role beyond brokerage? We’re gen we’re being a general contractor.
Basically in coordinating it absolutely should get contracts signed before you put a dollar in it. Oh, we’re not funding it. So the sellers are funding it. The state, you’re doing that for compensation, right? Like your cost plus not as of this time, this is only my second deal. Okay. So first you’re playing the role of the general contractor as a value add because they decided to list.
Correct. Are you doing it in such a way that you’re not violating license laws? Yes. Okay. So you’re a concierge, not a contractor. Yes. Yeah. Have you done that before? Have you managed that? Not on this scale. Small stuff. Yes. But nothing like this. Here’s what I’d like you to get signed is a hold harmless.
If you’re not being directly compensated for that service, you might trip up, man. It’s not hard to hire a sub that talks a good game, ask Gary Nash, but a lot of contractors and subs they’ll tell you exactly what you want to hear. And by the time you realize it was a damn lie, it’s too late. So I would have talked to an attorney or somebody, but I would want some sort of a hold harmless if I were gonna step into that role, because you’re taking on the liability of a GC without the compensation of a GC, and it’s a hell of a good gesture.
And it’s a huge value add. But it’s also, it could be a liability for you. So if you’re not gonna be compensated as a general contractor. You probably don’t need a contract, but you, I would get them to sign something that says, here’s the scope of this limited service. Here’s acknowledgement that I am not a licensed contractor and will not be compensated directly for this.
And here’s a hold harmless in case I fuck up because who knows what might happen. Phillips. If you’re talking to us, you’re muted. It looked like will had something to say, Gary, do you have one thing, Chad, one thing I was listening to Michael and of course some other things other than talking commission, the biggest thing that I found out, as you said, we’re down here in the mic, we have about 1.2 months worth of inventory.
That’s actually, actually horrendous where a trained actually an untrained monkey could sell a house in seven days. You’re talking about your value-ad. People go to Nordstrom, not because it’s the cheapest place in the block.
It’s because of the services because of the value they feel. They get, we get more than the average agent out here, and I’m not playing that chase to the bottom. So one of the things is I know my numbers, I know what we do, and I show the value and then they see how it could actually cost them not going with us.
We have different options and different things with that. So I don’t know if that helps Michael or not. Yeah. So I, the link that Katt shared and hopefully Michael watches that I think I said this in there, one of, one of the most powerful quotes I ever had in my brokerage, the brokerage side of my career was price is never an objection and the presence of value.
Add more value instead of playing the price game with the other agents. And that’s, it gets a rise outta me because every time somebody does that everyone else has to defend against that. And it degrades the service and the industry as a whole, in my opinion.
So just keep finding ways to do more of the things like we’ve been talking about on this call, start a Facebook group, and do something of value to get attention. And when someone asks you to lower the commission, look, ’em like, look, ’em in the eye and be like, That’s interesting. What have I just, so I understand what the hell have I done to devalue my reputation in the first 30 seconds of our relationship?
And they’ll be like, I didn’t mean it that way and they’ll start to backpedal embarrass their ass and you’ll create a neural pathway. That’s, don’t go there again. And I do it and they never bring it up again. And so that’s interesting. So what it is about the personality that made you discount me in the first two minutes of our relationship and be direct, but you’re establishing a boundary and they won’t bring it back.
Because they’re afraid of getting their hand slapped again. So there are lots of little tricks like that, where you can create boundaries and you don’t have to really defend your value, but give them an opportunity to understand what value you really provide. Cause they’re really operating in their default mode network.
These other realtors are out there saying, I’ll reduce my commission. I’ll drop my pants. If you’ll let me come see you. And they’ve created this pattern of thinking and that, that becomes part of the culture and part of the industry. Eventually, if you don’t defend against it, so they’re expecting, oh, I’m gonna beat this guy up.
It’s you know, just like if you go to a market in Mexico, you’re expecting that guy. Yeah. I can get that for half of what he’s asking because that’s the market culture there. And that’s what happens when any professional starts reducing their fees like that. They create this market culture that works against them.
Probate Mastery Group Training Episode 3 Outro:
And it almost never works. If anything, we should be raising our price. Thanks. Thanks for coming back to that guys. Listen, I’m 11 minutes late, but we were having a fun conversation. So this guy is gonna have to, I’ll have to follow my sword here. I’ll try to figure out how to get these to stream, to face in our Facebook Group.
Next. Thank you guys so much for being here. It’s seen a lot of familiar faith as a few new ones. If we didn’t get to you, sorry, we could probably be here for hours. We’ll do these every week. Save it into your calendar. It’s 3:00 PM Eastern time. Thank you guys so much for being here and being part of our community.
And we’ll talk to you next week. Thank you guys.
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