Pitching attorneys on a probate checklist marketing piece | Probate wholesaling script

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Show notes: https://probatemastery.com/attorneys-probate-checklist-probate-wholesaling-script

Episode segments:
0:00 What is a Certified Probate Expert? Branding tips (Probate Real Estate Designation)
16:21 Court approval and confirmation for probate sale (Selling Probate)
18:54 Using a probate checklist for hyperlocal marketing with attorneys (Probate marketing)
23:26 Exclusions and exceptions to probate (Probate Process)
25:19 Wholesale contracts, muniment of title, and buying wholesale probate properties (Wholesaling Script)
33:37 How to let friends and family know you specialize in probate real estate (Probate Script)
37:39 Probate checklist for collaborative marketing (Probate Attorney Script)
44:27 Networking for Estate Planning and Assisted Living referrals (Real Estate Marketing)
53:40 Letters of Intent: Are they binding for a real estate transaction? (Real Estate Contracts)

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome everybody to the weekly probate mastery group coaching call and they stay professionals mastermind podcast. I'll start with an apology for the lightning. I disappeared last week, bill and everybody else. Thanks for stepping up and having my back. It actually took out the switch. So I didn't ever get back online until the next day or like one 30. We got a good turnout today. How can we help? And how can we do it? Terry Schell I'm going to call you out here, sir. tell us, what's your path been the last couple of weeks? Well, I'm glad you asked me. I was reluctant to even mention it, but I had an extraordinary experience. This past week with my first meeting, with a probate attorney, I love these stories and my God did I get an education, Chad! Fortunately, I was blessed because I know the guy, this is a 40 year probate attorney that's a member of our private golf club that I've met Marshall at two days a week, Wednesdays and Sundays. And so I knew of him and his wife for years. I didn't know he was a probate attorney until somebody asked me what I was doing. And I told them about my probate experience. And they said, well, you gotta talk to IRA, got a hold of IRA's wife. She was playing that day. And I said, I'm now a certified probate expert, Louise. I'd like to talk to your husband about helping him with his probate business, but not from a legal point of view She said, I'm sure he'd love to talk with you. Set up a meeting with him for the following Thursday with eight o'clock in the morning, with a box of 12 donuts. Well, it turns out he just moved and he's an office of one now, but he's been in the business 40 years and he had my card and he said, Louise told me that you told her you are certified probate expert. He said, now, Terry, I'm not trying to hurt your feelings. I'm not trying to offend you. I'm trying to be very honest with you. And he said, I got a very simple question and I'm going to ask it because if you had given this from another attorney like me, like a probate attorney, you probably wouldn't have got your foot in front door. And I said, why is that? He said, because you say you're a certified probate expert. By whom and what the hell can you do? It hit me like a ton of bricks and he said, I am a probate expert practicing after law school, 40 years in the field. And what the hell could you possibly know? And he said, I'm not trying to offend you, Barry. And he really was. He gave me a, he was priceless, Chad. And he even then went in to say, you've got to rebrand your marketing instead of be calling yourself a certified probate expert, you got to change that handle. And some suggestions, irony wants two or three suggestions about elder care, a consultant or something like that. And he said, I'm leaving town, my wife and I felt next two weeks. So I've got to get out of here. I get back, I'm intrigued by what you're doing here. I told him about the linear group of vendors that I lined up with. And he said, I want to know more about that. I want to brainstorm this with you further, but you said, I'm going to tell you who your market really is and who you should be approaching. Priceless stuff, Chad, he said, you need to be going after a 70 to 80 year old spouse or retiring the last surviving spouse, 78 years old, that is going into probate. That has heirs that are out of town at least. And preferably out of state, they need the kind of help that you can give them. And what he did know was I had already had scores of probate, elder care attorneys from the directory here in the Houston markets, but he said, please don't go around giving people the idea that you're a probate expert. You're a certified probate expert. You'll get laughed out of town. And I thanked him profusely. And it's wondering if you've probably heard that in four, but I got set back on track very quickly with this experience. Yep. Thank you for sharing that. That's the fourth time in my career. And since CPE was created in 2014, that's the fourth time, I think it's the first time it's ever been documented on video. One thing I didn't consider when I created that name, that I felt encompassed what I actually did. So I had expertise in all areas of the probate situation, not in the legal aspects and I didn't ever want to present myself. So the alternative was advisor, right? I'd always viewed myself as an advisor in my real estate company. So I had, certified home seller, home buyer advisor, like CHS, a CHBA,. But with this, I thought, it really is expertise. So it's by definition, what I didn't account for as the word expert in the legal field has a certain connotation. They are conditioned in law school: if you testify as an expert, you have to have credentials and these credentials have to be recognized by these institutions. I didn't account for that. I have another designation that I believe scales that even attorneys would want to earn. It's not the word expert. I have been debating this and John Fraker just showed up. John, if you missed out Terry got criticized for calling himself a certified probate expert by an attorney. And there's one of the things I've been debating going away from it. I don't want to undermine the, the integrity of that certification because thousands of people have earned it. I'm considering actually changing that and reissuing certificates for this reason. But it's four out of several thousand and we've had, like hundreds and hundreds of people who walked into an attorney's office and got the opposite reception. And they were just like, oh, well, could you possibly teach me about probate? And then they realize it's the service side that they're experts at their service experts and probate, not legal experts. And it usually is not problematic. I'm glad you brought it up though. Cause it validates it. Maybe it's time for us to, as we move the community toward including more legal experts or more legal professionals. Other designation might make more sense. And just had me a footnote to that. I have also a member of the club that is a certified financial slapping what's the handle certified financial advisor. And he has authenticated and he's got the credentials of the lawsuit deals with high-end individuals and dealing with their estate planning. And I told him what I was doing and now he owned. The other hand has said, I sent him an email about what I can do with the different vendors that I work with. And he added me to his advisory group for his clients. In fact, he said, I want you to give me a call this week and let's go to lunch. I'd like to talk to you more about how we can work together because he's again, that high end network clients said he wants me to be exposed to and refer back to him with some of the work that they might want for their own financial planning down the road. So it was, it was a double-edged sword, but the real kick in the rear end was from this 40 year old probate attorney 40, not 40 year old, 40 year experience, right? Yes. 40 years. 40 years of experience. Yeah. So John Fraker is a probate attorney and he's whether he uses it or not, he's taken the course and he's got a CPE designation. What's your opinion on John? Like just, really candidly is, do you think that's putting the word expert in this trap paints the wrong picture and triggers attorneys? Or do you think it's just a select. Not, ultimately not to me. I have a slightly different read being in California. The one word we're not allowed to use and I can even use for myself as a specialist, which is odd for those who are not familiar with California state bar has a specialty designation certified specialist in estate planning, tax, whatever the subspecialty is. And the state bar polices that very heavily. If I use the word specialist about me in anything that's probate or tax or any of that stuff, unless you go through their certification, take their tests, meet their criteria, blah, blah, blah. You're not allowed to even use that word, which is ironic because. You would think of specialists as being less than expert, right? But they it's their marketing brand here in California. So obviously I don't tangle with my boss, the state bar of California on things like that and just keep specialists out of it. I personally have no problem with expert, maybe in other states they have some equivalent thereof that looks like, you know, an expert. Is there a state bar's designation for something, or it means more than just, what we meet in conversation. What's your and really just your intuitive reaction to ' advisor?' Yeah. If I call myself a probate expert or a probate advisor versus a probate expert, yeah. Is a generic harmless word, except that some financial advisors might see that on their turf. Obviously everybody's trying to stake out their own niche, right? CFEs CFA is blah, blah, blah. Everybody's trying to have their own, I guess lane. I personally don't have a problem with probate mastery experts. I have zero problem with that for myself. But again, if other attorneys are thinking there's an expert witness or kind of stuff, I mean, a lot of people get upset about a lot of nothing. So yeah, especially attorneys the reports. The notes that I took in that meeting 10, just step away and the others, the other handles that he suggested are and he mentioned the elder care was the way to get to these 70, 80 year olds and that they could really use our services, my services. He said, if you named yourself something like an elder care service coordinator or an elder care probate, personal. The two that he came up with right off the top. And how does that sound John? Sounded like a community college to me. How many people? It sounds boring to me. Shouldn't reconfigure the whole program based on one attorney. No offense to other lawyers. No. And that's been a conclusion that I've come to the other three times we've had this come up, Terry. I come back to the same conclusion. Like we have thousands of successful attempts at CPEs creating solid relationships and immediate referrals with attorneys. We have four instances that I'm aware of this pushback from attorneys. for me rather than dismantling, like we have, these certificates are printed and hanging on office walls in every state. So it's never been so problematic that I felt like we had to change it out because you can see just in this short conversation that any one of the designations will ever please everybody. It triggers far fewer attorneys than it impresses. But next I want to hear from Bill Gross. So Bill is somebody who has proudly presented himself as a probate expert, he's done it in a courtroom with the attorneys in the courtroom and has built those relationships. And I'm curious bill, if you've ever had any criticisms or if you've had conversations around this. So I never had anything specifically on the designation. I did call, I had a very good friend. Who's an attorney who doesn't handle probate, who referred me to his good friend. Who's a very big probate attorney in LA. And I called her up. She asked me how many probate listings I'd sold in LA county in the last 12 months. And the answer was zero. And she said, well, I'll come back when you have some success. And it really upset me. And I spent the next year and I did more court confirmations in LA county than anybody other than the court vendor in the next 12 months. And I, when I called her back, I left a message. I sent her email. I've never heard from her ever again since, and we looked through the data. She doesn't do that many deals. Anyhow. I think one of the things I've noticed is there's a few attorneys that do more than one or two a year. Very few. And the ones that you want to a year have a lot of opinions on the matter. And so I, first thing I would do if I was Terry is just check how much business has this attorney really done? Because we project onto other people our insecurities. Why would somebody say that b in California, I think we have a million realtors who are licensed and we have about 900,000 who present themselves as probate experts. And I think that other courses, this is why I, you know, stuck in and been hopefully an important member of probably mastery is the other courses spend 95% of our energy on marketing and 5% really on creating value for the prospect or value for the attorney. And I think a real expert creates value for the customer. And that's the distinction. I think that when somebody would say that to me, they're saying that my value proposition isn't clear enough because if somebody asked me, well, what makes you an expert I could easily answer the question based on my expertise. I can imagine somebody who's new to this, it would be hesitant. And I think that therefore you need to spend time learning the procedures and processes, for example, and know this is a part of your training or coaching. This isn't very interesting or attractive. You can't sell this, but I always tell agents, you really want to learn probate real estate in California. Why not print the probate addendums and the probate forms and read them? Because there's so much to learn just on the forms that you already own by virtue of your membership in the MLS. Why don't you go on the MLS and search properties that sold or probate in last 30 days and see who the listing agents are, read the remarks see how many there were with court confirmation and without. And so I think that I would always come back to an agency, start with, if you want to be an expert, it's great to come to the training and classes, we talk about how to get listings how did it get sales, but make sure you spend your time really learning the subject matter so you can wear that mantle. So when somebody asks you, are you an expert? Your answer is, well, you know what? I have a database of every probate that sold in the last 12 months. I can tell you, the listing agent was the buyer's agent, who the seller was, who the attorney was. We all have access to that data. Do we actually look at it? Do we actually try to study it to learn? So that'd be, my challenge is I would take away from this. On the title matter, I would say to anybody here, let's step up our game and be the experts. So when somebody asked that question, that's our opportunity to close the sale rather than something we have to avoid. And that's the intent. Thank you, Bill. And that's why I'm here. So there are some comments for anyone who might be watching this recording there's comments and the zoom chat about, Well, why not just throw real estate in there? And I think it's important. I'll explain why I didn't. Other courses, like Bill said, they focus 95% on marketing and selfish intent. And that's not what I wanted. What I learned early in my career and what's taught in this course is don't be a hungry real estate professional. If you want to be a successful probate expert, you need to learn to let that sit in the background. You, you get that out when it's time, but you earn rapport, and you earn the conversation by helping them address the bigger problem, which isn't the real estate, it's the probate. So having a ' certified probate real estate expert' then I isolate your skill set down to one thing. And they assumptively think all you care about is the real estate. Where if I can teach you to provide a solution that can be delegated without you doing all the work, without doing un dollar productive activity, then I give you three dozen reasons for a family to reach out and find credibility in your offer. It's not just a real estate offer. It's a service offer and you get paid through real estate services. Other people get paid for the other services, but you get the social credit for having all of those solutions. So that's one of the reasons I like it doesn't include real estate because that's inconsistent with the approach that I found to be most effective in actually getting your foot in the door. And 90% of success in this as learning how to speak with the personal representative in such a way that they feel like you're presenting value, not trying to take something from them. So that's why real estate is not in there. Other people have said forget about it. You'll never please everyone. And that's true. It doesn't matter what I would ever call it. You're never going to please everyone. So I am very interested in growing the certification or evolving it or innovating it to where it's more encompassing. So elder care, estate, trust administration, probate, all of those things that we find ourselves having discussions about with these families. So that has been front of mind for me for the better part of the last year. One last thing that Katt dropped that I wanted to comment on is, we do in fact, have CPE's taking the stand in courtrooms as compensated experts. It has happened Rodger Lecy, so he's not here today, but Rodger is one of them. He gets paid to sit on the stand and testify in court. So like CPEs are in fact being used as legal experts in a courtroom, at least in Arkansas or in Arkansas. Well, thanks for that, Terry. I'm going to come back to the same conclusion right

now: 15:07

Dismantling something that's become this valuable to this many people, just because one attorney has an opinion on it is not anything I'm willing to do right now. The other thing that I wanted to say. A couple of months ago, I'd never published a code of ethics. And for any of you that are new to the course, I know Elizabeth Hernandez, you just finished this week. You now have a code of ethics in the course, this conversation as why it was important to me to add that. So if you haven't reviewed that, if you've taken the course a long time ago, we have adopted a basic code of ethics. I am tend to expand on that and have it incorporate even more, but I would encourage you Terry, to point them to review that code of ethics. One of the reasons I did that is so you guys can add that to your website so you can actually provide, the code of ethics and the standards of behavior that we subscribe to as, as a community and, and build credibility, said, I always used the point of contention as an anchor for the conversation. Right. I'm glad you asked, let me tell you what it means to be a certified probate expert, and then you just differentiate the hell out of yourself and they're like, oh, okay. Well, yeah, so I won't belabor that anymore. Tony, you've been very patient. How can we help you today? Thank you. I have a question. I heard somewhere that we can close the sale on the property before the probate is completed. What state are you in? Florida, you need court approval, but yes, that's true as long as, so the process is they filed the petition. Once they've gone through the hearing, they get their letters of testamentary, they then have the authority to sign a purchase agreement or a listing agreement. Once you have, like, if you go straight to a purchase agreement, you take that to the probate attorney who takes it to the court, the judge, as long as they don't see in Florida, I've seen assets sell for 20 cents on the dollar with court approval. It's not so much about like California, where they want to create an overbid process and make sure they're maximizing price. They just want to make sure that there's no, that everything's being done transparently and there's no abuse or no one's being misled. So I've actually never in between my experience and my partners in Florida, previous partners, I've never actually seen one not approved, but I've seen them bought for as little as 20 cents on the dollar. So it's typically a one to two week delay from the time you get the purchase agreement signed until it actually gets court confirmation. And you're allowed to move forward to closing. When you say purchase agreement, you mean the contract from a buyer? Yes so we can go ahead,we can list the property. We can sell the property. Then after we have a contract from a buyer to buy the property at that point is when that gets submitted to the court. Is that right? That gets sent to the attorney. The way I heard is that the attorney files a motion to liquidate the assets. And if the personal representative is okay, then that's when the judge says, yes, that's fine. We agree. You can liquidate the assets before the probate is complete. Is that, how is that how it's done? Yeah. So the house can be sold. The money gets wired from title into the estate's bank account, as long as they're bonded, or the bond was waived in the will which it normally is if there was a will- there's other ways to get that waived- but worst case scenario, they have to buy the bond. And then that gets released, that check gets sent to the estate bank account to help settle out the other liabilities. The distribution cannot happen until the final, til the closing is completed, but you can sell real estate in most states. That's the case like in Virginia, we don't even need court approval or confirmation. We get the letters. We put the home on the. We sell it. We close. The money gets wired to the estate's bank account. Florida's a pretty easy state, there's just one of those extra stuff you do have that extra step. In states like California, it's much more complex and takes considerably longer because of the process. But the heirs can, sometimes that process can force the price up on the assets. So one of the things that I encourage people to do is actually approach probate attorneys with an offer of value to help them market their firm, their services, but not in direct solicitation by simply sponsoring a piece inside of your mail pieces. Are you doing direct mail? We're only doing like. Like on the properties that we sell, we, we send those out to the neighborhood, to see if we can get other sellers, but not really for probate. Like for PRS, we're not doing that direct mail for that. So you're just phone prospecting right now. Just phone prospecting. Okay. One of the things that is a useful exercise and we usually present it as a value to the attorney by offering to include this piece in all of the direct mail pieces we send as you approach them with an offer to sit down and collaboratively create a probate timeline or a probate checklist that is hyper-local, or like in your county only, and then you give them the credit at the bottom. You, you let them know that it's not a solicitation it's simply a piece of value created by this law firm and this attorney in that firm. So you give them an opportunity to ride your coattails from marketing standpoint, you know, about 20% of cases are going to be pro per or pro se with no attorney representation. So when those people realize they're in over their head, they've got a valuable piece of piece that they've been using along the way as a checklist. And if they ever get stuck, they look at the bottom of the checklist and they see right there who can help them. You might find a way since you're not doing direct mail, you may find a way to actually electronically distribute that and still provide value to the attorney by saying, Hey, let's sit down and walk through this exercise. I'll make sure this is posted... we have a community Facebook group for families in this county in Florida that are going through probate and trust administration. I'll make sure that we post that in the file section so it's a community resource. So you can still find ways for that to be valuable for them. The benefit to you is you get to create a relationship with an attorney who realizes you're way different, you're cut from different cloth. No one's ever walked in their office and asked to provide something valuable to the consumers; they're walking in the office, asking how they can get a deal from them, right? So you can still create the piece. The big benefit to you is that you get a one-on-one lesson in probate law, the probate process and legal and non-legal aspects right there in your backyard. So it's a very fast education, but the nice side effect is you have a residual relationship and you've got someone typically that won't charge you to do that because they'll benefit more than the 200 bucks they might have charged you for an hour of their time. They're going to benefit much greater than that by being in your network and being in front of your the audience that you're marketing to. So you could also turn it into if your phone prospecting, you could say, hey, listen, my name's Chad. I've got a team that helps families in probate. Oh, we got it handled. Okay. Well, listen, that's what we hear from nine out of 10 families in the beginning, we realize it's early, we're still willing to reach out because we know how much we can help. I want you to write something down, even if you hang up on me after this, that's okay. But I want you to write something down. I know that this can help you because it's helped every family we've ever helped. Can you please go to www. myprobateresource. com, whatever I'm pulling URLs out of the air, it can be Jacksonville, probate, checklist. com and there you'll find a PDF that will give you step by step instructions that your attorney probably hasn't given you. And you just simply download that. And you let me know if you're stuck. If there's ever any of those bullet points that you need help with, or you would like to delegate, we'll be here for you. So www dot Jacksonville, probate resource. com. And did you get my phone number? Did you, is your caller ID captured? Okay, great. I'm going to leave the ball in your court. I will follow up at some time when I have time to do that, but otherwise just know that we're here, go there and download that. That'll be a roadmap for you as you progress into this. And then step back, just wrap up the call. The whole point is to use your phone prospecting to get a conversion, you can capture their email address for the download and then you just produced a conversion. So now you can nurture them with a series of videos, email drips, whatever you wanted to do, but you can also use it as an electronic lead capture tool for the people who say, I don't need your help. There's nothing you could possibly do for us. And what it'll show you through Google analytics, you'll see how many of them are full of it. And they were just trying to run you off because their default mode network has learned if they just tell people that they leave them alone, but their curiosity will be proven through your Google analytics tracking. You'll see how many of them actually went visited the page. Thanks! Can I interject something about Florida probate? Yes, sir. Okay. One thing to be cautious of is depending on the area, like I'm in Palm beach county, probate doesn't necessarily mean that the house is included in the probate. So what I would suggest is doing a little bit of research, go to whatever your county here. And you can do research and you can find out how the property is deeded, because if it's in a life estate or if it's a trust, or if it's joint with survivorship, then there's a good chance. It will not be included in probates and they won't need letters of testamentary. They can just sell the house because it's not included in the probate. Yeah. And that's the case in every state guys. So if people are more savvy and they hold title in certain ways thanks for including that chip. So Tony in, in session one, we talk about the exclusions to probate. So the most common, people have titled assets in such a way that they transfer on death. The overall gross net worth of the estate is below the probate minimum for the state, things like that. We know there's an 82% chance that every probate contains real estate, but there are exceptions to that because people may have had a proper estate plan. The good news is though those are even better because you don't have the restrictions, but you have all the same social motivators all the problems, even with trust administration. Even more affluent people might have a living trust, they're still subject to their own emotions and overwhelmed, and they can find themselves stuck in trust quicksand, just like a lot of probate people forget stuck in probate quicksand. So our offer is just as valuable even if the real estate does not have to be probated or part of the trust administration. If the real estate exists and the family doesn't need it, and they feel overwhelmed, our service is just as valuable to them as it is a typical probate, PR. Sherri you're up next. Good to see you. You too. How can we help you today? I was talking to we were working with my husband and I went to check on a house recently, and they're saying it's in probate, but Doug Landry is in our group. And um, he checked it out for me in that we were talking about it. The Houston group got together last week and that was fun. So while we were talking, Doug pulled up Galveston county where this house is at. And and he said that he doesn't see any record of it in the probate files under the deceased name, the decedent's name. So my question is when I was asking the wholesaler,"so who's going to sign off on this property. Who's, what name is going to be on this contract that we're signing?" So the sister right now is the one that's in charge of setting up and and working with this wholesaler and she agreed to the price that we came back with. Her brother was not in agreement with the lower price that we offered. And so now she said, fine, you don't like what I'm coming up with. You handle it. So I was asking who's the executor here, who is in charge of the probate process in this family. And I couldn't get an answer. And according to Doug's research on the county records, it's not filed. So in this particular case, the gentleman had some mental disability. And so I'm wondering, and I guess this gets around to my question. If the sister was his guardian and he was 56, when he passed away, if the sister was his guardian, would she have been able to be the signer on the contract? I know power of attorney ends when someone passes away. But does the guardianship end? If he was alive, she may have had the authority, you would need to prove that she had that authority. What it sounds like has happened is someone who really doesn't understand the probate process has they've given bad advice to a family, got them to go into a contract, went and sold the contract, and now they're realizing what they didn't know. And you're caught in the middle of it. It's very common. We had an, a very unfortunate story told in our Facebook group this week about a family that was a pre-probate lead that, they created a hell of a mess for them. And it's unfortunate. This is why we don't use the title investor, realtor, agent, broker, real estate, anything, because there are a lot of people out there approaching this with ignorance instead of a valuable offer, they make this way more stressful for the family. It sounds like based on the facts that I've heard, there is no probate. So someone needs to determine, was there a will? If there was a will, who was named as the executor or executrix or administrator? And go petition for probate. If there was not a will, someone needs to the brother or the sister, someone needs to decide who's going to have the authority and petition for probate. I would doubt that the contract that you think you're purchasing is valid or enforceable. It's probably not a deal. You can talk to the wholesaler and say, listen, either you learn to give them better advice or step aside, and I'm going to go help this family. And you're not, you're not making a spread for muddying the water for me. But somebody needs to walk them through the process and help them understand. Now, the one exception there is in the state of Texas, there's something known as muniment of title. And I would want to make sure that hasn't occurred with this asset, because if that were the case and it was passed through muniment of title, then they may have the authority to actually sell the home. That's the one exception that I can think of. Okay. How would I check on that? Make contact with the family and ask them if they've ever applied for that? It's it doesn't happen automatically. They would have to have, gone through the process. Are you direct to seller from a communication standpoint? No, that's what I was just going to ask. Is it some protocol than I would be stepping on if I stepped around the wholesaler? I would say, " listen, let's go approach the family together" would be my first offer. But if they can't get out of their own way, I wouldn't hesitate to contact the family. I wouldn't try to cut them out of their own deal, but I would make sure that I can put the deal together because I was sold a piece of paper that was invalid. So if I have to go validate the deal for them, I'll ask for permission once. But if they want to stand in the way and I can still get direct to the seller, I'll go get a valid contract and I'll still pay him because he brought the deal to me. But a lot of times, people who try to protect their seller relationships will end up standing between you and the seller. And the deal will never get done because they don't have the skillset to explain the process and walk them through it. Even if you do, if you can't get to them, they're cutting off their nose to spite their face. I've seen it a ton of times. So just say, respectfully you'll get paid either way, but you either need to step up or step side because someone needs to help the family navigate this, and make sure it's a valid enforceable contract that you're trying to sell me. Right. Right. I did ask him about who was, who's going to be signing the contract. It is not a contract because the brother refused our offer. But when I suggested that there might be something wrong with the names on the contract, or maybe the person signing the contract is really not the one to sign the contract. He said, are you concerned about title? That's not an issue here at the, title's going to be clear. So he got a little defensive when I brought that up. But oh, you're telling me, you're telling me there's not a contract between a wholesaler and I'm sure there is a contract there. Yes. But I did not sign a contract because the brother did not agree to to what our terms were, but that wholesaler was trying to assign the contract to you, correct? Yes. Wouldn't actually tell you who you were, who the seller was? He did not, but it's on the it's on the county records. So it's not difficult to find. The person who passed away was the only person that was on the mortgage. The sister lives in the same area. And you said mortgage, did you mean mortgage and title? Title, yes. So when I so when I pulled up the obituary, that's when I saw the sister's name and I just did a quick search on her and found her in the area. Okay. So if that contract was written, it doesn't matter whose name was on it. If the estate requires probate and the house was not passed outside of probate, then that is required. That's what you have to figure out. And the wholesaler, if you, I would sign an assignment of contract agreement with the whole, well, I mean, your price might not get through anyways, assuming that you guys saw eye to eye on price, the seller shouldn't have a say in it. I mean, The wholesaler is the one that can reject your offer like did he tell you what he bought it for, or he, or she? Yeah. They may have offered 150 and you're offering 125 and that's why it's not working out the seller might not even be aware. What I would try to cooperate with the wholesaler and say, could we just call the seller direct and see if we can work this out? If they were being deceptive in getting the house under contract, and weren't transparent as a wholesaler that can sometimes be impossible because they can't set up a conference call with someone when they said, we're going to close on this deal. Sometimes it's hard to work through things like this with wholesalers because of the expectation they set when they put it on the contract. They're trying to be really sneaky about it. Not disclose. The best wholesalers I know that are doing millions and millions of dollars, they're fully transparent. You know, "We probably won't close on this. We work with tons of investors and if somebody makes us an offer, oftentimes we'll pass this because we don't have enough crews to do them all." And then when you have to set up a conference call or bring somebody by to look at the house, it's like the family's like, oh, this must be one of the guys he was talking about. He can't get to this deal. So he's going to let one of his investors have it, but then you can have pretty transparent conversations back and forth with the wholesaler and with the owner. But if it was set up differently, sometimes it they won't let you have contact. Cause they're afraid it'll blow up. But I would just, the first thing I would say, what is the number on your contract? Like it's you got my word, I'm not going around you. I'm just trying to figure out a way to make this deal work. What did you buy it for and why won't my number work? And then if, if there's a spread in there for them, like maybe they just want to make 50 grand and with your offer, they only make 20. But either way, it can strengthen your relationship with the wholesaler. You can have a professional conversation about it, but it should teach you a little bit more about what your roadblock is, but there's a chance his contract may not be valid anyways. Right. And I have one other quick question. I have some friends, two friends recently passed away and so I'm reaching out to their families and letting them know what I'm doing. And it's awkward, frankly, because. I don't want to add to their burden right now and have them think about things. I don't want them to see me as an ambulance chaser, but at the same time, if they're overwhelmed and they need some help, I want them to know that I can help them. So I am reaching out anyway. And, we sound too good to be true when you try to explain to somebody what we do, it sounds too good to be true. And I know in the back of their mind, they're thinking what's the catch? What do you charge for this? And so how do you answer that question? Or how do the people on the call answer that question when people pose that what do you charge for what you do? Hey, this is Sherry. I know we haven't talked in a while. It really started to hear about Frank. I remember the time we went down to El Paso together and could shut that bar down. That was a fun weekend, right? Listen, a lot of my friends think I'm a drug dealer. They don't really understand what I do. Because it's so different. Most people have never heard of it. So I know what you guys are going through. The reason I know is I've been helping a lot of other families that are going through the same thing. So I'm was known as a certified probate expert. You've probably never heard of that. But what it means is I help families with any and all aspects of the probate situation. I'm not going to go any further than that until you tell me, Hey, I'd like to learn more or there you give me a specific way that I can help you. But I do want to let you know that I'm not just a realtor. I'm not just an investor. Like there, there's a lot of things that I do to help a lot of families. And regardless of how small or how big, if it's part of the probate process, I have an entire team of people and usually, what is a mountain to you is actually a molehill to us. So whenever you're ready if you need help just please let me know. And we'll grab lunch. We'll catch up and I can understand what exactly it is you need in that moment and put the right person on it. That sound good? And you just approach it like that. So you're not hungry. You're not going after the real estate, you're not risking a personal relationship. It's just, they don't expect you to offer what you do because who has ever heard of it. Right. A lot of times the personal representatives are there. They're in this position for the very first time ever. They think realtors put signs on yards to make Lexus payments. And they think investors are a bunch of devils that are just running around, trying to steal people's souls and their checkbook at the same time. It's whatever their perception is. So it's just presenting again, differentiate yourself and just say, listen a lot of people. And I use the joke because literally my friends and family don't, even some people, I don't believe even know what I do. So I just make a joke. Like, my, my family thinks I'm smuggling. Drugs for the cartel sometimes, but actually what I'm doing is I'm they never see me because I'm so busy helping families in your position. And that comes with cleaning out houses, getting things, getting suitable housing for surviving family members using senior moving services, getting family members into and to, sometimes public housing sometimes assisted living. Sometimes even memory care, we have relationships with nursing homes, you name it. We've helped in little tiny ways like helping somebody, set up a trash can and put it back the, in the garage. And we've done things all the way up to partnering with the family, flipping the house on their behalf and making hundreds of thousands of dollars of equity that the family wouldn't have had. Otherwise it's everyone has a thumbprint. We really focus on the needs of the family. And then we just, we create, we create the solution right there. So I just wanted to let you know there's nothing you have to say right now, nothing I'm going to ask you to do right now, other than. Just like, I just want you to know you're not in this alone. It's going to get overwhelming. You should expect that. But when it does, please call me. That's perfect. Thanks Chad. Yup. Renee, I love your hat by the way. Thank you. You can take the girl out of Virginia, but there you go. I was listening to you, but then I had a quick detract, I was distracted for a second. I do want to utilize this probate lawyer done now a couple transactions with, to do this probate checklist. What's actually on this? If you were her and her sitting across the table, how am I pitching this? So the way I approach it as, " listen, Renee, I know you're a practicing probate attorney and you must be pretty damn good at what you do. Cause I see your name all the time when I'm actually at the clerk's office. And when I'm, looking for families to explain what we do. I've got a team of people here in Los Angeles that help families going through probate with everything, but the legal aspects. And what we're looking for is to plug in with attorneys who are already helping with the legal aspects and providing all the additional services. So my goal is to bring more efficiency and a higher level of service to your business and my own. Now as part of that, we market early. We go to the clerk's office, we get the information, we reach out through community Facebook groups, through direct mail, through phone calls, and we actually make people aware of our service. We're not pushy, we're not presenting ourselves as just real estate professionals. We are willing to delegate all of the non real estate work, but have all these pre-vetted professionals who meet our standards, that we're willing to stake our reputation on. We've already done that legwork. And I'm sure you have some of those people already, but the one that, that I want to highlight that I haven't highlighted is a probate attorney that I can trust sending families to, who may be pro se or proper. But also once we finished the estate, I want to have a firm that I can send all the estate planning referrals to, because if I have my way, I will only help one generation of a family in probate... and from that point on, it will be trust administration. I got a bit of a favor to ask.. Can we sit down and co-produce a probate checklist for Los Angeles county, where we start with all of the non-legal things. So like, Choosing a funeral home verifying the funeral home, notify social security to send the death certificate, getting copies of the death certificate, all the things leading up to the probate... then all of the legal aspects once probate begins, and then all the things that need to happen afterwards to close it. If we can just sit down and take 30 minutes, walk through this I'll color, everything that's legal in one color, you can even choose that and everything non-legal will be another color. At the bottom, we'll give you a space on the footer that says, this is not a solicitation for legal services. This was provided as a courtesy by your law firm and the attorney within your firm. And that will be part of our digital marketing. It'll be part of our print marketing. It'll be part of our phone conversations. We'll even have it, it'll be downloadable. So even the people we don't speak to will have access to this through our marketing channels. And it doesn't violate the anti solicitation laws that the California bar places on you. It's an opportunity for you to get your name out, and for me to be able to say, I have an estate law firm that I truly trust to handle probates, that I have as a fiduciary. That word is very important to me, and I know it is to you as a legal professional. I view myself as a fiduciary. So it's important that I know the law firm I send them to holds up a standard of service that I expect from myself. Am I in the right place?" Okay, perfect. So thank you for that checklist. Like if they just are overwhelmed in their brains, that's what I'm thinking. Like, what is that checklist that I'm just asking them? Like, what do you expect from the clients? Like you just said the death certificate. So all those things. Okay. And I've got to circle back and get back to this. I've got a house being sold and the house being, just finishing on a rebuild. So one of the things that I'm um, need to finish to provide to you guys as a piece of software with this already done. So it's 3,149 county specific checklist. And we will actually be able to slap your photo and logo on it, as well as your attorney. So the offer won't be sit down and do this work with me. It'll be sit down with me and agree to this standard of service and I'll make sure you're the featured attorney in our platform that gets given away to every single, personal representative, whether they want to do business with us or not, we're going to offer them a free version of the software. So the offer will get stronger once I have it prebuilt in software. I just need to finish that. Okay. I want to just add to that. One of the things I've been doing, so this is more of an agent thing, but I guess it doesn't even matter for those people on the call that are not agents is as like a closing gift. Fine. You can bring the bubbly or whatever, their choice of beverages and all that kind of day one for key exchange. But I've been prepaying an hour of time for the attorney, so that even if they're a client that is a young, first time buyer or whatever, they can at least have that conversation. And I'm not actually prepaying it until they actually go. So if you guys are like, well, I don't have $200 or $500 or$600 just wait until they go. And that's another nice way to build a rapport with a attorney that may not be as busy. Like my gal is a one-off, she chooses to be a one-off and she handholds people through that process. Whereas you can imagine in Los Angeles There's a zillion people. You don't even really end up talking to the attorney. You have all the minions in there and people can get lost in the process. So she went in a different direction and that's what I would choose to actually hand off. I don't even care if they're the number one probate attorney in LA. I want somebody to have that experience where they don't feel like they're getting lost in the process. Choose your people wisely. And use that as the closing gift. What, with what Chad said, you're going to be my last, family that's ever going to go through probate or whatever, be the resource. That's a way to instigate that. So anyway, just want to throw that in there. Thank you. Yeah. And for those of you who haven't heard us talk about it before, if you're walking a steady flow of estate planning or referrals to an attorney, you're proud. You're very unlikely to be invoiced for those hours of time because that's their, that's how they run their business. They're there the biggest reward, the biggest compliment you can give them as a qualified referral. So no, not every one is actually going to move forward, but hopefully they can at least get them to write a will. They may not get a trust, but then you give them an opportunity to have someone who's ready, ready. The pain of what they just went through is fresh in their mind. And they have, they just got their inheritance distribution so they can afford to establish a, an estate plan. So it's unlikely that your attorneys are going to bill you very many times when they see the quality of your referrals. They're going to encourage you to send as many damn people as you can. That way, as long as the referral quality is there right now, if you're bringing a parade of people through the door that are hung hauling, and didn't really have a true intent to set up an estate plan, that's different. But a lot of times you don't even have to pay because it's the value is there. And the referral guys, it's 3 59, I'm going to run a little over, but rich, what can we help you with today? Hey, how you doing? So I just have two questions, I guess I get to the most difficult one first. So I got an idea while I was sitting around in an office that I have read. Where I noticed there was a lot of senior citizens coming in and out there were in canes or there were being assisted by someone, but I realized there's a rehab place. Is there any way we can actually give businesses like them? And it's like, I don't know how to put the question, but I got the idea. Like maybe I can boost them with another attorney team up with an attorney where I can set up maybe a like a simple webinar or something like that, regarding, this is a good example of how we can use community, Facebook groups build a community Facebook group to build a professional referral network. You're a rehab facility. They can, they're dealing with seniors who have health conditions, right? Who may are more likely to be forced into a different living situation. So you can go start at the front desk and build a relationship. Hey, my name's rich. I felt help a lot of families through elder care in a state of state administration. Sometimes that's, guardianship, sometimes that's probate, sometimes that's trust administration. But the bottom line is we've got a team of people that help families and that light life stage and through transitions. We have a community Facebook group where we have an expert actually teach or, give them, give their time to the public every Wednesday night from 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM. And I'd liked if you're okay with it, I'd like to put this stack of business cards, other, or the group cards that actually, when you talk to somebody who needs someone in the elder care industry or the estate planning or a state law industry, like you can give them that card and they can, have a resource that's full archived calls from social workers, probate attorneys, trust attorneys, elder care attorneys you name it. We've had nursing home employee like nursing, home admissions all things that are relevant to them in the stage of life they're in. So is, can I leave this stack of cards here and then come back every couple of weeks and just make sure that, That you still have enough, and you can do that with anything, any of those people that I just named, you can do that in nursing homes, you can do that in medical equipment, sales places, you can do it in rehab facilities. You can give them to nurses that you know, that are dealing with families that are just lost because they own assets and they can't get Medicaid to pick up bills. And they're devastated because they, they need to sell their house. Anyways. It's anyone who has contact with the aging population or people who have experienced a death in the family, you can make that offer to them. And this is where I've got to get to this too. I really want to build the course to show you literally step by step, how to build an extremely valuable community Facebook group. You can put your flag in the sand, no one will ever compete with you. If you've got an attorney, have you, and all of the vendors that you invite to present our group admin. So they have ownership in the group. You say, listen, this isn't my group. This is our group. And the only reason, the only way you're getting into the group is if you actually fit and you ha you want to present value to our audience if you're just here to make money and, Just look at this as a one-off thing, I'll just go higher. I'll find one of your competitors to contribute to my group and literally be that Frank about it. And what you're going to end up with is probate attorneys who are looking to scale their business by providing value. You're going to end up with social workers who know that they're not going to get paid a commission, but they did that benevolence that led them on a career path as is still a motivating factor for them. So they'll stay they'll do they'll work late one night to be able to say that and have it recorded and available and evergreen format. So you'll find a class of professionals that match your values and every single week, the group becomes more of a. Because you get more members, but you get more content for all the incoming members. So then every time you see something, that you're going to be adding members, adding community members from, the not the consumers, you'll be adding them naturally through the group. They'll be requesting to join the group, but you should also keep adding vendors and you add them as a group admins. So it then comes up in their feed and they have an opportunity just like you see all of us coaching each other, and students coaching students, and students that are admins. Like it's the same concept, like creating the environment. You'd be the one that gets the social credit for creating the environment where all these professionals have a captive audience of all these consumers who need help. And you create a trusted resource for valuable help for. And you create a captive audience to advertise, to provide that value market to, for all your vendors. So it's an offer of value. It's not like, Hey, when an old person comes in, could you send them across the hall? You're actually giving them something of value and it's an opt in. They have a choice whether they engage with you or not. Okay. The last question was that when you when you find the roll out that that course on the attorneys on the, so I put it on the back burner just because the next three weeks of my life or super-intense I've got to the next step is to get the John and the other attorneys together as a panel, we'll make some some decisions on, on, the final curriculum of that. I would like to say that we will deliver it in July. It's the latest. But I have I've been off more than I could chew with trying to do two houses at the same time and all of this and farming. They've Glenn, how are you, sir? Hey, doing good. Thanks. How are you doing Chad? Well, how can we help you? Hey, got a quick question. I ran across a different situation that I'm not normally used to with the attorneys. Most are geared more towards the estate planning and looking into trusts and do probates here and there. I ran into the opposite where he does a lot of probates, but does minimal estate planning? And just wandering, but he does a will. He suggests the will and the durable and all those minimal types of things, but you said it very rarely does he ever do trust. So I was just wondering if there's any other different way to approach those types versus your typical estate planning attorney? No, I what I've found like in Virginia, very few people have a living trust. L very few people have a will, but the attorneys, we do estate planning in Virginia. They're seemingly convinced that a will is good enough. I, I don't really agree for, especially for higher net worth individuals, but there it's, you're, there's a culture around this. Like obviously the west coast is the culture is heavily leaning toward everybody should have a living trust where on the east coast it's quite different. You don't see that many at all. You'll see lead counts. Like I always use San Jose in long island or two demographically, similar places. Where you have 1.9 million people roughly in either place. And like in San Jose, you'll have 20 to 25 probate filings a month went on long island, you have two to 300 per month income levels, demographics. There's a lot of similarities to population numbers, but it's way more, the culture on the west coast is as it's way more common to have a living trust than it is on the east coast. So it's not necessarily, you need to do anything differently. That might just be, the culture in your area. Like the people aren't used to, they're not the attorneys aren't used to getting the trust business, even though they would make more money. They're not focused on. That cause they know they can write wills all day long and that's what people want in that market. So the approach isn't really, what I would do, I would lean on him and be like, Hey when you do write a trust, you make quite a bit more money. Right. And it's like then than a will. Oh yeah. Sure. Well, how about we find a way that I can steer some trust business your way, because I really believe that. And I'm not trying to give you advice. You're the attorney, but in mine, my estimation for anyone with a higher net worth, they're better off having a trust than just a will. Right. Okay. So how about I bring some referrals over here and you brush off like brush off your skill set. Let's see if we can scale your firm. And if they doesn't get excited about that, you're probably in the wrong damn place. Right, right, right. Great. See, I was going to ask you too, is that that kind of mind map, or I forget the name of the. Software that's related to Google. I think that you had all put together, is that available on the mastery site somewhere? Or which one is the one about how my brain handles the conversation? Yeah. It's that Venn diagram and it goes on a different monetize every real estate conversation. Yeah. Yeah. It's in session two about midway through session two, where I show you how to craft your offer. I actually, it should be linked in the course there. All right. Perfect. Thank you. Yep. All right. I am 10 minutes late. Hold on. I think that I need to, Hey, five minutes. Sorry. I was supposed to be at a contractor meeting 10 minutes ago, but your last, before he kills me. Okay. So I get it. I've got one of my own going on. So this is more of a comment and then maybe a suggestion at the end. So I have a so I don't do mail outs. I get referrals and I have a previous client that had. A great niece with a niece who, so a 35 year old man died and the sole heir of the estate is his daughter and mom and dad weren't married. And we we were told it was suicide. Now there's a murder investigation. So this is my first murder investigation. So it's I just I'm very grateful that I have the facility to have the conversations. One of the first things I said to the family is locked the house up and sure enough, whoever's being whoever the suspect is, was in there trying to do whatever they were trying to do in the house was locked up and secured. So the police department have asked the family to stay. Meaning not file probate until they can see what the suspect is doing with the money. Anyway, so I just, I wanted to share that could be a possibility because it never occurred to me and to the way it occurs to me for their real estate, because that is one of the primary assets. There, there are some insurance there's no, will people are reeling. Does a letter of intent. Makes sense in this case. Yeah. I let her LOI, they're only worth the paper they're written on, or maybe not even that, because you wrote in the paper it doesn't have any other use, but they're very valuable from a psychological standpoint. It's we are conditioned. Like if you write, especially if you write something down, you're committing to doing that thing and you can add scary language to them, but it's the since you're never gonna, it's only worth the amount of money you're willing to throw at it and lose in court. But usually it doesn't come down to that. I use LOI as a way to say, this is just my commitment to you and yours to me in case you have to explain it to anyone else who's not here. Let's go ahead and put this in writing. So you know that when the time is right, I'll be here to serve you. So just write it up and have it signed. Filing your desk, you file it in your desk drawer. That's about the, the only place it's important, but all it's, you're just getting a psychological commitment to live up to the agreement. But yeah, I if there's any kind of delay, that's the best thing that you can do is just get a letter of intent because in their mind, like they're neurologically, they're like, okay, I committed to that. That has to be done. I have to and in order to maintain my integrity, I have to do what I say I'm going to do. And then it doesn't work with everybody. Some people could care less, but for most people LOI are good way to re. Stave off competition. Oh, the thing came from, this is one, one of the two attorneys that family has engaged as gave him some really lousy, real estate advice. And I'm like, okay, so there's an opportunity. Aside from all the the fields and the hearts, and all that things that we all do they're, they need help that they need actual service services provided. So anyway, that's all I, well, you've got a beautiful Aussie peeking over your shoulder there. Tell her we said hi, I got to run. Yes. Thank you so much for a great call. We'll see you guys next week. Next Tuesday.