Speed networking in real estate, the CPE Designation & seller price objections

Link tree: https://magnumopusproject.com/linktree/
Full Show Notes: https://probatemastery.com/speed-networking-real-estate-referrals-probate-podcast

In this episode, Certified Probate Experts discuss speed networking in real estate, the CPE Designation elevator pitch, seller price objections, and using software as a lead magnet. We hear success stories from Larry and Brian on building referral relationships with attorneys.  We also hear about Jessica’s 12 listings and why she targets NODs in probate with out-of-state personal representatives. David and Bill discuss why the one-to-many marketing approach is the greatest way to scale your real estate business. Tune in and see the progress these probate agents and investors have made in the last week!

Navigation (YouTube Links)
0:00 Real estate mindset coaching: Success and opportunities in 2023 (Mindset Coaching)
5:30 How to sell inherited timeshares in probate (Probate Sales)
11:31 How to offer free software as a lead magnet (Probate Marketing)
26:06 B2B networking at luncheons and seminars: What is a CPE? (Referral Networking)
33:24 Brian’s Elevator Pitch for networking events (Attorney Prospecting Script)
34:30 Real estate agents specializing in seniors and residential living (Real Estate Coaching) (Mom’s House Reviews)
40:09 Handling price objections from motivated sellers with market updates (Real Estate Objections)
44:50 YouTube content production schedule (Content Marketing)

Learn more at www.probatemastery.com

Transcript

0:19

Welcome to the Probate Mastery Alumni call. We do this livestream every Tuesday at at 12 noon here

at Pacific Time, 3: 0:24

00 PM Eastern Time, and then put onto YouTube and to other social media platforms. And more importantly, it's on the website, probatemastery.com and it's kind of edited there and there's a wealth of information there for free. There's more for free than anybody else gives away. And you should take advantage of it before you start paying for stuff, especially when you're starting out your business, feel free to check out the free content. Feel free to come on here and participate. This is meant to be participative. I'm Bill Gross, and I'm not a full-time coach. I'm a full-time practitioner in probate real estate. I'm based in Los Angeles, California. I have a national team of agents that we're building out a national platform, but I do this every day. I talk to petitioners and attorneys every single day and agents on my team and try to help them do better. I missed a few weeks in the past, but I'm back in business guys. So gal. So thank you for for inviting me back, welcoming me back to the call. I appreciate it. And so again, it's meant to be participative. If you have questions, put it in the chat box. If you put a queue in front of the question, I'm more likely to catch it. I'll do my best. Feel free to put in the chat box your name, contact info, and where you do business and if you're a realtor or an investor, and that way we can do some networking while we do this at the same time. Obviously more valuable if we can get a referral here or there. I want to share two thoughts before we get started. Kind of give you a flavor of kinda where I'm at in this business. Number one, why do I do this? I love this. I love talking to agents about how to be better at solving probate problems. I just did another mastermind. Started at 11 o'clock, so the prior hour, I did it for about 50 minutes with a smaller group. But guys I've met with several other times high volume agents who do probate as well. And, and so he asked me, Why do you do this? And I said, Do you know, I have to think about, Cause I love it because I believe that if you focus on helping people you'll enjoy what you're doing and you'll make more money than you know what to do with. My first coach was Zig Ziegler, and he said, You can have anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want. I actually coached with Zig in person in Dallas, Texas a while ago for a week. It was amazing experience, and he lived that. And I would just say that if you can find something you love to do, not all the time, I'll be honest with you, out a 40 hour work week, there are some hours I just wanna kill. But for the most part, I love what I do. I love helping people and I love being conversation about probate in particular and bring those details and sharing those details. So if you're not loving what you're doing, look, nobody loves it when you're struggling financially. That's the hard part is to get off of that. But if you're not loving what you're doing and you are making money, try to figure out how can you do what you love more of. And I believe that that will help you be the key to being better at it, as well as enjoying up more and making more money in the long run. The second thing I wanna say is that, people talk about the time that we're in, the season of the business, where the market's headed. I don't predict the future. I have a crystal ball of my shoulder there. You'll see the crystal ball behind the subscribe button. I, I, it doesn't work. I got one just as a joke, but I don't predict things. I try, It's a reminder for me that I'm gonna deal with the play with the cards I'm dealt right now. We're all dealt with cards we have today. Today. Rates are in the sevens today. People are dying and have probates today. Whatever's true in your market, and I really focus on dealing with the cards I have today, not predicting the future. But that said, in my career since 1986, in real estate, it gets harder all the time. I think that's the nature of all businesses. I'll give you an example. One of the greatest books ever written on business was in Search of Excellence. It was by McKinzie consultant, famous book. They took 50 of the best companies in America and studied them. I had worked for one at the time, and what made them great and one of the things that made them great, they used McDonald's as an example. In those days, great in terms of success and finances and such. In those days, McDonald's only focused on a few products. They had hamburger, cheeseburger, big mac, fries, melts, fish sandwiches. They had like 10 products, and in those days, that was what they made them. Great. Well, guess what? I don't eat a McDonald's cause they keep kosher. But I know their menu is like ginormous. When you drive by, you can see, because all businesses get more competitive all the time. And so I think in real estate, if you look at it as, ugh, it's gotten harder because rates went up. It's gotten harder because the total sales are down. You're gonna talk yourself right outta the business. You're gonna talk yourself into all kinds of bad things. Don't worry at the marketing harder work about worry about you getting better. The purpose of this call is to help you get better as a real estate agent, I believe, by learning about probate real estate, learning how to solve problems, and I think also maybe raising the bar in your expectations that our expectations should be. There's always problems. We, as realtors get paid to solve problems. The money we receive, there's reflection of the problems we've solved for our clients. And I, I guess there's another way to look at business, I guess some real estate agents, it's like a beauty pageant from where I sit. Customer calls up, their house is perfect. They interview five agents. They all come in one printer than the next with fancier market material. That's not my business. I wanna work with Bill, I need your help. Can you help me with this problem? That's what gets me excited. That's why I enjoy what I do. And I have to tell you, in the last three years, I've made more money than I ever have in this business by far. I invite you to play the game with me. I invite you to enjoy what you're doing, invite you to create value for your customers along with all of us. On this call week, That's the goal of the call. Okay. So question first up is from TJ Cannon and TJ says timeshares. Do we know anyone who I can refer to in Florida and South Carolina? Tj, what kind of situation are you looking for? A sales person to sell a timeshare? Are you looking for somebody who can help liquidate a timeshare? Get out of it. What are you looking for? Growing timeshares. Hi Bill, this is Meredith. I'm under TJ Cannon my husband. The, the client I was talking to today has timeshares that they have in Florida, Fort Lauderdale and South Carolina, and that's her biggest issue. She doesn't know how to get rid of 'em. In a probate case or just in general? Yes, probate. Whew. And what state of probate being handled in. It's in Michigan. So first thing, obviously you might wanna talk to an attorney about what the options are. In California, you can either sell the property during probate or you can close a probate and transfer the ownership. The problem is in other states, you know I can't speak to Michigan, but in California, you can't change the ownership in Florida from California. So what would happen is you'd set up a subsidiary probate in Florida and another one in South Carolina. Okay. Assuming the title's held in the real property. The timeshares o often are held more like stock certificates. Or limited partnerships, which are not jurisdiction dependent, but like a stock, you would change names. Okay. It's also possible when they did the timeshare in that format, they named a beneficiary. So I would check and see. Oftentimes customers use the same timeshare company like Marriott for multiple locations. So it might be the same company. And I would check and see when they bought it, did they name a designated beneficiary? And if not, how do they hold title? And generally they don't own the real estate, the own, the title is Marriott Timeshare Corp. And you own shares in that. And just like stock through probate, you can change shares of stock if it's not real property. And I think technically, I believe a times should tech in California, I believe technically is not real property. I can't speak for Michigan. Okay, so Meredith, you're a real estate agent or you investor? I'm a real estate agent. And quick pitch. Where, what city are you in? We are out Grandville, Michigan, in Grandville. And what school is in Grandville? There's a big culture now. There is Acquaintance College. There's Grand Valley. Grand Valley. Grand Valley State. Grand Valley. Grand State. Mm-hmm.. Yeah. So I think they play basketball. I think they played, I went to a game at a local college, so Grand Valley. And do you, do you do probate regularly? Is this new for you or is this something you've been doing for a while? I've been doing it for about a year and a half, Uhhuh, and just getting over my probate, hesitant to make the phone calls., It's been a struggle for me. Well, I, So in your case, I would definitely call back the customer is there beneficiary, how they hold title? But you all, this is also a good excuse to talk to an attorney that you might have a relationship with. Okay. So generally speak, I wouldn't call an attorney who doesn't specialize in probate. But in this case, you might have an attorney that you've done business with. You know, they do contracts, they do family law. There's a little bit of a bleed over and they might be able to answer the question for you. They might know or have some experience. The other thing is I I'm a Los Angeles and I belong to the LA Bar as an affiliate membership. Just like in your board of realtors, you might have affiliate members like mortgage people, escrow, cuz they wanna be in your organization. I'm in the Bar Association as an affiliate. Our affiliate has like a chat thing where people ask que attorneys ask each other questions and answers all day long. Amazingly informative. And so you might wanna look at your Michigan State Bar and see if they have that in a place where you can ask questions. Maybe it's a Facebook group or something else. Oh yeah. That's a great idea is for everybody. I think all, all of us as professionals, you might wanna find a way to join your local bar and then if there's a, a method that you can ask those kind of questions to. Okay, thank you for that. Are you doing a, so are they doing a probate? Is there other resources, other assets besides the timeshare? Do they have a house they have to sell or, Nope. No property. That's why she was very hesitant about the timeshare. She was like, That's my biggest stressor. And, and it they don't have any other stocks or bonds or other amounts, . Cause in most states it was a dollar amount that the value exceeds, that triggers a probate less than you don't like in California, it's 1 67 or something where you just do an affidavit to change the asset. So the timeshare, as you sell it, of course it's worth a certain amount of money and that might just be an affidavit. And I, rather than bring my probate. Okay. Thank you for your time. Sure. Good luck. Thank you so much. Thanks, Meredith, let's see. Good. We got a bunch of people with their names and numbers and contact info in the chat box. Oh, Kat put in there that did this OnDemand Demand series, put together free training on vendor teams and referrals. There you go. There's more free training every time you turn around with these people. Katt and Chad, there's more free training. Not they shouldn't buy stuff but I always tell people, do the free stuff first. And then you'll get so addicted that you'll, you want the, you'll buy the training. Like me, you know, Katt one day announced they're doing some marketing. I just bought it. I mean, what the hell she was gonna do. And I had some time with her to review my marketing with me. So but that was after I made a lot of money. I reinvested.. Glen Award said, Glen Award. D says, Excited about role play. Glenda, what do you mean about role play? Wanna role play and I'm fine with that. No, you guys had it listed as one of the services or features that are coming soon, so I'm excited about that. It's gonna be the next on demand series. That's the next concept for Yeah, the one we're launching next. It's gonna be like a Thanksgiving launch. Like I'm paying attention here. I'm supposed to be paying attention. Sorry about that., he was ready to role play though. I'll roleplay, I'll role play. I do all look, I talk all day long to people, so I'm glad to role play in particular. I mean, I do talk to petitioners usually after they've been referred to me. I don't cold call Petitioners today. I do cold call some attorneys in other referral sources. I'm glad if anyone wants to role. That can help out. I'm glad to Larry your hands up. You're next up. How can we help you? Bill, good to have you back. Thank you. Although your replacement wasn't bad. I know. I heard you compliment him and I felt really bad on the, on the replay, like, come on. But if you compliment to me that, that was nice too. So thank you, . I take it very seriously that how, how you guys rate me versus Chad is very important to me. Yeah, well it's very close. Very close. I, no, no big deal there. Back. So I see that we got, So my question was I've been studying, I'm going back on, on again because I didn't catch all of it the first time, so second time around, I'm looking at this estateexec, which is a, got a heavy emphasis with attorneys. So I'd love to hear your take on it. And I see that we have Brian Wilson. On the call, I would love to hear his thoughts on best practices. I'm meeting an attorney tomorrow to kind of present that and I would love just to hear, you know, the best ideas to get the estateexec software. Honestly, I took the EARN program, I taught a little module on it. I took the whole program, loved it, had some great stuff. And, you know, I kind of feel like Chad sold us a, a toolbox of tools. That's one tool I've just not used yet, cuz the other ones are working pretty good for me. So I can't speak to the exec a state exec software personally. I do work with a estate playing attorneys all the time. I just, and I use the training for the program all the time. I just don't use that software. Brian, if you're in the call, you're gonna jump in and share like what you're doing with it and, and with the best practices. So yeah. So Larry, about the, well fir first of all, Bill I went to a financial planning lunch today. And it was, I was taking your advice about going to the courthouse. I went to this financial planning lunch today. There were a hundred CPAs, trust attorneys all kinds of guys. None of them had ever heard about a service that we, that we offer. They were all blown away. So I have business cards from all of them that I've got today that they all want to talk with me in the next two weeks. So that's one thing Courthouses Bill recommended. I recommended to go to these luncheon with these guys that you, you, they, they've never heard of what we do anyway, so, Larry, I did bring up the fact that I worked with Dan Stickel over at EstateExec.com and that it is a free piece of software that we provide. We refer to it as a free piece of software. We make sure pay free in my, in, in my business. I pay for it. It's, I think it's a hundred dollars or 90 bucks or something like that. Dan froze the price for us as long as we're through this with Chad. So it's 90 bucks for us. I tell them it's free. I tell them I'm happy to set them up on a free trial if they would like and they go in and take a look at it and I just type their attorney's name in it and I send it to'em, and I send it to 'em. If they want to use it, I am glad to pay for that fee for the attorney because they're gonna give us referrals. But that's what I do. Larry and I tell them that the, or at least what I told, I told today, I just, I just kept saying this, this piece of software will eliminate the administrative drag that you have around capturing everything related to the estate. And it will centralize it. It provides transparency and it helps you to better manage your clients. One of the guys asked me, Well, do you put, you know, do you put everything I said? It is not a one size fits all. You don't have to use all of it. You can use one piece of it if you don't want to have bank records in there. You don't have to put bank records in there. If you have an antique card that you don't wanna put in there, as you know, for the beneficiaries to see, you don't have to put it in there, said, But it is a tool and it is a ,piece of software, that separates us, I think from everybody else, everybody else can go in and say, Hey, I'm a real estate agent. I've sold deals in trust before, and I can help you. Okay, great. But I don't think anybody else can go in there with this piece of software and say, we have partnered with them. And that's the language that I use Larry. We have partnered with the estate exec. So Brian, like when you, like, let's say you go like, I'm going to an attorney's office tomorrow. So do you have a methodology of like, you know, all I told her is, I said it's a software solution. Pretty much what you did. That I think it could be a game changer for you. She goes, How about tomorrow? So we're on. So you walk in, how are you going to present that? Cause if, I think there's one thing that's a hole in the process right now is we don't really have a defined way to present that product that seems seamless to me. so Larry, I don't, I don't pretend to be the expert or the developer of the software. Okay. So I don't do that. I just say it is an additional tool that we have that we provide to our clients and it helps to eliminate administrative direct. So that's number one. I don't pretend to be an expert and I've never demoed it live in front of an attorney. Okay. I tell the attorney what it does at a, what I consider to be a 30,000 foot level. I, I, I don't get down into the weeds of the software and I tell them, Hey, if you aren't interested in a demo, if you're interested in a free trial, I can set that up for you. But I use it, Larry, just as a piece of the overall puzzle that we can solve a lot of their challenges that currently, you know, they don't wanna deal with right now. So let, let me kinda do some background for you, cuz I think this may help people that are also considering doing the same thing. My second appointment was yesterday and really I was there just to get their feedback on the local administrative probate guide which actually turned out to be far greater than I thought it would be. The attorney was very involved in customizing it for our county cuz she knows the rules better than I do. And she was very interested in getting that right. And we spent about an hour on it. When I got done, I said, so what if I told you I had a software program that could take all that, what we just did, and actually put it into a software program, kind of like Quicken, if you will, that has all those fields that we just did all lined up for you. You can be able to share it use it however you wish. And she was like, Can you come back tomorrow? So now we're on for Wednesday. So I'm like, okay. I mean I haven't spent a lot of time in it, so I kind of put myself under the gun in a way. So, so Larry, I would tell you the one thing that I did in trying it is I signed up for it. Right. And I, I believe that Dan gives that to us for free. I don't remember paying for my account. As a part of Chad's thing. I think there was some code that we had to put in there in order to get it, and it's in that course, but as part, just to be clarify, as part of the EARN program, it was free as a part of the EARN program. Thank, thank you. Bill. But Larry I put in my house. I went in and I put in my estate. I created, what does my estate look like? I went through, it took me maybe 30 or 45 minutes to create my estate. And what does that look like in the software? What do the reports look like in the software? And I thought that that was extremely Nice eating your dog food. The term there is eating your own dog food. That's the software term that they use in, in companies is if you use the product yourself. And if you don't use yourself, then, how effectively can you market it versus, So like, like Microsoft, there's a point where they were using Gmail and they had to ban Gmail if you work for Microsoft. So Bill, now that you're done with dog food, I'm gonna run back to . I wanna talk right about the details, if you will, Brian, so I sent off an email to Dan Stickel yesterday, and let me do this just, just for the sake. There, there are lot people on the call who have not taken their own program and the people actually, so do you just set this up a little bit so they can follow along some, I know that. What the heck the guy guys talking about. That sounds interesting. So let me just kind of step a little bit. So this calls free and you go to probatemastery.com. There's a lot of great free content. But one of the things that Chad, the company does is sells a program called Probate Mastery that's designed to help a real estate agent or investor understand the process of marketing to families to get either property listed or property sold as an investor and how to build that into a business that's called Probate Mastery that Chad does. It's a on-demand course that I think it's $499. For people graduated program. There's another program called EARN, Earn Attorney Referrals Now, and that program I think was $499. It's a separate program. Once you've learned the probate business, how do you get more referrals from attorneys. Within that program? It was all, and that was, I forget how many hours it took me to do the program. A lot of stuff, and I, and full disclosure, I taught one of the modules, but I taught less than 10% of the whole thing. One of the modules is this product called Estate Exec. It's a software program that you can get it, You don't have to take the program to do it, but if you take the program, they wave the upfront fee and in the program teach you how to use it. And so Larry, Brian's taken it and run with it and implemented it. And Larry, who took the EARN program is, is asking questions on how to implement more effectively. It's available to whether or not you go through the EARN program, but if you do the EARN program, there'll be some basic teaching on what it means, as well as some discounts that probably will pay the coaching program if you actually use it. Okay. So that's those who don't know what we're talking about. Hopefully now they know what we're talking about and we won't talk about dog food. Larry, back to your question. Okay, so circling back, the process would be to register the attorney on a 10 day free trial so the attorney can play with it. At the end of 10 days. They love it. I know they will. So then we'll go ahead and, and I get what you're doing. So I, I do the same thing. I'll step in and pay to license that product for that attorney, correct? Okay. So then what my interest was, was being able to stay in, involved in it. It's free, Mr. Attorney, as long for your, for the new estates that you open or the new probate cases you open. It's free to your clients so long as you come back through me, I'll create the estate for you. You'll tell me their name and address and some very basic information. I'll create the estate and then I share it back to the attorney, and the attorney can then, and then we can also share it with. The the PR if you will, the personal representative. That's how I understood it. How about you Brian? Is that pretty close? So Larry, I'm a big fan of delegation and once we provide the tool to the pr, I would be more than happy to walk the PR through the setup of the tool, but I would not recommend doing it for them. I think if you do it for them, the likelihood of them actually getting their hands into the tool significantly decreases. I gotcha. Okay. Somebody asked in the chat, Brian, do I pay each PR license with with EE[EstateExec] the answer is yes, because it's a hundred dollars out of my pocket. And the commission for the property is, I mean, it's an exponential return right on, on the investment. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Look, I have no excuse for not, I took the earn program. I've just been busy and traveled these holidays and all that's done now. I have no more excuse going on. So I made a note to myself to get into the, to sign up for the EstateE xec and, get on the ball in this cuz it's a fantastic tool. I've just been really busy with this, so, so I know. So this is how my brain works. I know eventually some people will get around to thinking like this too. What do you do when there's no real estate involved? Are you still, are you still paying that, that fee as well, Brian? Do you feel like it's just the cost of doing business? So far I have not run across that... everything that has been referred to me has had real estate. Okay. Number two. I think if it's a multiple, Well, I think asking, you know, the question you just asked me, I, I think yes. I, I think that I would pay for it if it was an attorney that I either had a relationship with or wanted to develop a relationship with. Gotcha. Okay. and If I spend a hundred bucks and that person doesn't, call me back then you know what? I spend a hundred dollars on Google Ads last month and I don't, you know, some of those clients didn't call me back either. So I, I just feel like that particular thing is a cost of doing business. Plus it also helps to support Dan, who is supporting us. Hey, very good point. His software, so, you know, I, I think there's some symbiosis there and I, I think I would, Yeah. Yeah. So it probably, the chance of them being drawn to the estate exec software if there's no real estate involved, it's a probably a pretty simple probate and the need for that may not be as great. I think that's, I think that's an excellent point. Without real estate, you may be dealing with a less complex estate. And I did talk with Dan about this as well, and Dan recommends that, if we want to provide them with the license, we can go ahead and do that. And then if they need help Dan does have a support team if there's anything outside of what we can't help them with. But the basics are, it, it is pretty simple. The way that Dan built the software, it is pretty simple. Someone who was non-technical I shared it with and they were able to navigate it just fine. Okay. So your best practice would be Mr. Attorney when you have a probate case, you'll open and utilize the software, let me contact them and set 'em up. Is that you're, once you're getting involved, Yeah. So the attorney, the attorney says Mr. Pr I'm gonna put you in touch with Brian. He runs a business here called Hybrid Estate Solutions. He will help you with everything, with your personal property and your real property. And he has a piece of software that will help us all stay connected as we go through the process. Here's Brian's number. I'm gonna send an email to you and to Brian connecting all of us, and then I'll let Brian take it from there. Yeah. I, I think that's the better idea. I like that better than, coming through the attorney. If any time that we could talk directly to the pr as part of that solution.. It would be interesting to see how many attorneys feel comfortable turning us over at that point or not. What's been your experience? I will tell you I was surprised. I was surprised last week. I mean, I've shared this with you guys last week, but I was surprised at the luncheon today at how many people would,

just tell me: 26:17

oh my goodness. I've got something I'm gonna, I'm gonna send it to you today. Or this is great. I'm not working on anything right now, but the next time that I do, I'm, I'm calling you. Once you make that initial connection, then it goes back to what Bill and what Chad have been coaching, which is you have to nurture those relationships the same way that you would a potential buyer client. Except this relationship with the attorneys is much more professional, HandsOn, face to face, that's the business that they deal in. Whereas we made drip campaign our buyers to death. I don't have any real plans to set up my attorney referrals on drips. It's gonna be much more phone calls or stopping in just to say hello with a, something for the office or whatever. It's all a relationship business, is what I gathered even from today. And just making a contact with all these people is is what matters. And maintaining that. Become the lead magnet for you to start the relationship. At the end of the day, I don't care what they say to you when they talk to. They're only gonna trust their client to you if there's a relationship at some level. And then Katt also reminds us, there's EstateProfessional.org, which is a referral network for estate planning. And as real estate agents, you wanna get on there and fill out your profile. And the goal there is to create a referral network for inbound outbound referrals. So great. Yeah. So the burning question, I know that's on everyone's mind, is Brian, how did you get invited to the financial planner's luncheon? Cuz we're, we're all waiting to hear how you did that. There just happened to be this one here locally that popped up. I went as a guest. I had to pay $40 to go as a guest. I signed up online and they said, Who's your, who's your sponsor? Or who's your whomever? And I said I said, Oh, I don't have one. I was, I was interested in. And they said, Well, we're gonna let Mike Balin be your sponsor cuz he's the current president and when you get here we'll just introduce you to Mike and then he can introduce you to the group during, That's what I did. Right. I had that down as a to-do. Yeah. There, there was a group in, in Southern California. I'm in West Los Angeles and the group here is in Long Beach, the biggest one. I used to work near Long Beach and so I went to one once. It was huge bunch of attorneys. Now, unfortunately, there when I went to, had a bunch of realtors and the kind of realtors, I really, I don't wanna look like them. I don't wanna be like them. And there were just too needy and too salesy and, and so, but the, the networking was fantastic. The quality of the people there was amazing. Today it's just a too bit of a drive for me to go to. And, and the time is not good, but, Definitely look up in your market area. And there are financial planning organizations, wealth planning organizations, estate planning organizations. There's training, there's coaching. They have events. There's one in San Diego, I think in December that would normally go to. So I think there's all kinds of opportunities for this. If you look in your area and all all you have different areas, I would take a look in your ear for those opportunities where you can meet people. But the key there, I think, is there's a process you wanna distinguish yourself. You don't wanna be another realtor. You wanna be, in Brian's case, the expert on a estate exec or some other feature that you're an expert in. and Bill, I, I do wanna piggyback on what you, on what you said. You also mentioned however long ago that when you went to the courthouse that you dressed like an attorney. A hundred percent. So, I mean, you guys see me every week. I have I have golf shirt and golf pants. That's my normal attire. But I put on a suit and tie and went to this lunch and they didn't in, you know, they didn't introduce me. He said, he said, how do you want me to introduce you? I said, I want you to introduce me as the president of Hybrid Estate Solutions. Beautiful. And I have CPE on my, little name tag that they gave me. And everybody was like, What's, Well, what's cpe? What's c what's cpe? And I said, I'm a certified probate expert. that little name tag, every one of them had their own little designations, like on their name tag. Yeah. So in that little world, that little name tag designation, that meant something. It's big to attorneys. Designations are really big to attorneys and to accountants because they live and die in those I should say in California. And maybe other states too. But in California you can't be a trust in estate attorney, like you take special courses only through the bar and then on your profile in the bar will show that you have that certification. Unlike realtors where we take third party classes, like Chad's CPE is a third party program, but for attorneys it's usually through the state bar. And those designations are important for referrals and attorneys will only refer to other attorneys that have those designations. So when you have that, they're definitely interested. That's good stuff, Brian. Yeah. And the suit, and I, I would just say to guys, you wanna dress like an attorney, You wanna dress like the high priced attorney., the best example for that is a TV show Suits. Those are the highest priced attorneys in the world. They're merger and acquisition attorneys, dark suits. They wear briani, I would say doesn't mattered. Look You can get a cheap suit, dark white shirt, silk tie. That's the look for men, women, wherever the equivalent is for that. And they always used to carry a bag on rollers, cuz they're so important they have papers in their briefcase. I just had my lunch in my wallet and remember a coffee mug or something in there. But good stuff. Bill, I did have one other question. So we're talking about attorneys. So I did, you know, I was on a roll, so I went ahead and called the, the county Bar Association to find out about affiliate memberships. I needed to get that done. It turns out they don't have an affiliate membership and I was a little surprised. So I told 'em I was surprised. And they said, Well we do have events where you could help sponsor. Would you be interested in that? There you go. And I said, Perfect. And they go, Well, tell me about what, what's your interest with attorneys? So it opened that discussion about what I'm doing with probate and estate planners and all that stuff. And then they were just like, Oh, well that would be great. So can we put you on the list to contact you? So even though it's not in my county, I may join another county, their bar association, but at least that's the way that you could get involved. On your own local, if they don't allow affiliate memberships. And if they don't have affiliate membership in your county, look at the state. You're in Texas, right? So, Oh yeah, that's right. You're not Tarrant County, but a state of Texas affiliate. And then also I know people who do continuing ed, I have a title rep who got certified with the Bar Association of California to offer continuing aid classes on probate. So he actually teaches attorneys and built his business. And that's another option in, in certain states and. Great question. Great. Okay. I'll have some more questions next week. So Brian, do make sure you're here, . Cause I'm gonna ask Bill and Bill's gonna go, I dunno, Is Brian No. By next week I'm gonna know no, by next week you can ask me whatever you want. I will say also, and thank you Brian. I will also add you guys a great resource online. The Facebook group is a Probate Mastery Alumni group where you can ask questions there and I've seen many people in this call there to answer questions as well as Katt and Chad. So feel free. And then Lynette dropped in information on possible source for timeshares. And Khalid's going to an estate planning workshop tomorrow. There you go. There's all kinds of them. Different areas have these programs. It's not like it's as organized as you might think for estate planning or fiduciary, but there's, in any major metro city, there's definitely people who are looking to get together in those areas. Brian was, say he has some question in the chat box. What's your elevator, elevator pitch to these professionals? It's very simple."We have a we have a business that helps people going through the probate process to do the things that they either don't wanna do or don't know how to do." That's it. There you go. And then what the event you went to was a estate planning workshop or estate planning association, or what was the group you went to? It was a financial estate planning council membership meeting. It was on real estate succession planning. There you go. That sounds perfect. I went to one once they had, the topic was on particular thing in probate California is called a Oh, I'm drawing a blank on it. Where you don't put property in the estate, in the trust you meant to. And can do it afterwards. It's a a particular Heggstad bill he petition. Yeah. Yeah. And so there was one of the lead attorneys did it on Heggstad. He gave copies of documents and the history behind it. It was an amazing luncheon. They learned all that at the luncheon there. So go there to learn the content as well as to network. I think that's important. And then Katt put, There she is on the spot. Put down more of what Brian says, his quotes and the scripts and such. A lot of thanks, Kat. I don't see a Thanks, Bill. I see a lot of thanks Ka there. Just, I'm just saying I'm not, you know, needy or anything, but feel free to, I'm just noticing that. Okay. Stephen, what's up with you? How can we help? Hey I've been getting invited a lot to these luncheons with different senior communities or Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Saw that. You know, and some of that's like kind of BNI- like, and basically I was gonna ask if it was worth my time, but having listened to what you guys were just talking about, gosh, if I could get into like, lunch with attorneys or estate planners, that sort of thing, that probably sounds more beneficial than being around a bunch of loosely affiliated professionals. The, the problem I had in some of these senior community luncheons, like, Oh, we already have a couple of realtors, but these people don't have any designation. Like, I look 'em up in mls. They may be sold small house past year. I mean, it's just that kind of thing. I actually interviewed, there's a company called Mom's House. Actually interviewed the founder on my, on my no YouTube channel. Someone's saying No, I am Bill, but I'll, after you make your comment I will chime in. Sorry, I went to the thing. Oh, okay. Okay. So what I'd say is there's a whole approach of those people who sell senior living. And I met another real estate agent who that's, she got a couple of probate listings and I said, Well, how'd you get 'em? And she said, Well, my best friend is a sales rep for the senior living facility. I said, so tell me more about it. Well, a regional company and they have like 40 properties nationwide. They have seven properties in the area. How many reps like there like her are there? It was like 13 reps and said, Well, she's your best friend and she gave you two probates this year. Why aren't the other 13 reps your best friend? Like, what are you doing to market to them if you enjoy that business? And so I'd say to you, Steven, is that's a whole channel. There's a whole channel there called Senior Living people. What I would say is that for some people, if you enjoy working in that space and meeting those people being invited to a senior housing event, you're really only going there to meet the salesperson for that event. You're not going to meet the attendees, Right? How you know that. And then, and the question I ask is, what value are you gonna bring to them to help them? One would be to help'em market the event. You know, I'm a real estate agent. I'm, I'm next expert in marketing. Maybe I can help you get better attendance. I could follow up with the clients. We can work together on some marketing if I was in that space. Yeah. So again, the, the question I always ask is, what can you do for them that were in the business? Dave, I know you had some, you, you had some comment. You went down on that. I went to the three day event [Mom's House event] and there, St. Louis? St. Louis. Nothing bad about the company or what they're doing. Let's just say that they're ramping up mm-hmm. and they're charging a lot of money to be in the ramp up process to give you leads for this. And everything that we're doing, and we're, you're teaching here, Bill and Chad's teaching, they're telling you to, to not do it really all the work of networking, all the stuff they want you to network with the nurses or the, the placement agents, and they want you to be in their network to do it. So nothing bad about the company at all, regardless if this is public video. But I think everything that you could do with regards to building your business, With probate, with 55 plus community, with the financial planners, with the attorneys, , but also include a couple of those reps and go visit some of those housing. So you could start being in that world, but I don't know if I'd go all in on it. Well, I, I already do. I have a 25 rotation I go through, you know, I, I go once a week, just Thursday afternoons, and I meet.. Wow! Some of the reps at these assisted living skilled nursing and independent living memory care. And there is a need, like a lot of 'em have some real vacancy problems be because in the aftermath of covid, so I'm getting more calls from it. The thing that's coming up is there's some affiliated people.. I won't work with placement agencies anymore. I've had too many bad experiences with these placement franchises. But these sales reps are really just always invited me to come to these luncheons. And some of these other people, it's like, well, I mean, I can go just to save face, but I don't know if it's an effective use of my time. I think that's really the question I'm asking. I think, yeah, the answer might be for you going once to any of them might be.. If they do it monthly. Maybe that's where you pick up a junior agent or a buyer's agent and, they go to build those relations. That's how I looked at it. And it's different every state, it's different in every area, different every market and competition and it's different on what you wanna do, how you want to approach these people, you to find your right plan. But And Bill, and what we're trying to do, if you really think about it, we're trying to get us our freedom back, our time back, right? You know, I wanna spend more time with my boys and my wife now than I do want do, doing all this real estate stuff. I really do. And when you build a business where you have to go visit something or go network with somebody, you're committing to at least once a week, once a month, twice a week, whatever. If you don't have capital, you don't yet have money coming in, you're gonna have to prospect that business and get to know people, but try to figure out how you could build this business off the capital. If I spend 20 grand, how am I gonna make $200,000 a year? You know? That's the conversation we really have to have. Yeah. I, I get so frustrated and I spent the first part of my career not doing that. I could do more damage in a day sending this mail out, than I do if I go to a network meeting, you know? I also think the way to look at is there's people you're meeting and there are relationships, you're.. So I always look at how many people do I meet that I wanna have a relationship with. If I go to a meeting in amount of time, I expect, you know, a certain amount of people per hour that I meet new potential referral sources. Going back to the same place is just maintain the relationship. Well, if they're giving you business, what a nice way to do that. You don't have to take 'em out to lunch, They're already at the network, Maybe by them lunch at the network or whatever, but you need to think of it strategically and watch the numbers. What, how many people are you meeting? And then, getting referrals from them, how many relationships you're actually keeping and take a business approach to it. And that, I think that the answer's probably more there cause you're tracking me numbers. Sure. Does that help with that? Yeah, that makes sense. Great. Let's continue, come back and, let's know, how this continues, Stephen. Okay. Fantastic. Good. Jessica hand up and your next, I think gonna be the last question for the day here. So let's get you, I, Hey you're kind of in my area. I, we have a team that we work in Los Angeles. It's Riverside and San Bernardino. I wanted to see, and I know it, it's an issue across the nation. The market has changed. It's not changing. But with properties, how are you convincing? Not convincing, but what is the conversation you're having with your sellers? The estates, the prs, that you're not gonna get top dollar anymore. We're not seeing the crazy multiple offers. The, the market has shifted. My team, we have, I think it's 12 listings right now. Majority of them are pocket, they're tear down . I mean, it's almost land value on some of 'em. And some of the estate, the prs are just thinking that they're still gonna get these crazy numbers because of the last two years. Well look, managing the sellers especially the market is really one of the key skills in this business. And I tend to be all that in that area. You know, I look back and I see the business I lost in the last year that I didn't get, because somebody else, I think in most cases, lied to my customer or prospect to get the listing.. And then eventually the market is the market. You know, one thing I've learned is, the market's the market. The property's worth what it's worth. And they're not gonna get any more than that if you do your job marketing it properly. Sometimes they don't get market properly. Sometimes in probate, realtors feel like they've earned the listing and the right not to market a property properly, but to double end it or to buy it themselves, I don't, I'm not one of those, my job's to market and sell the house. So, on the flip side, I will say, unlike my initial training with Mike Ferry, which was take care of your listing at a price that will cause it to sell or don't take it, I'm fine with saying to them, Hey look, it's, I did this recently. Hey, the property's worth 2.3 million. If you wanna list three six, fine, but I'm gonna give you statistics and every month we need to evaluate it. If you have to sell the property, you have to adjust the price. It's not me, it's the market. And make, and I have an email that documents it all. So you don't come back to me 90 days later and say, Well, you'd sell it at 3.6. No, I didn't. I told you would never sell for that. And then you have to do your job every week. Give them an update. How many, you know, inquiries, offers, views, various online. You have to have that as part of your mechanics. And at some point if they, if they're motivated, they'll adjust the price. Then if they don't adjust the price, it means probably they're not motivated. Not much you can do about that. So I had a listing last year that expired because the seller wasn't motivated. She didn't have to sell and some guy called her up, Oh, I have this magic formula up with hard to sell properties. And he listed it at what we had it list that they didn't sell. We had an offer at a lower, much lower price and here was a year later and he sold it for the same price. I had an offer on that. She turned down a year before, so you know that he'd do as well. And I had, I was limited authority, which mean they had to have court confirmation. Since then, the person had had passed and he was, and she was, it was a conservatorship and he passed in the trust. My point is, this guy didn't do anything but sold the property for the same price I had a year before, under difficult circumstances. He lied to her. but bad on me for not being more effective and explaining to my customer what the options were and staying in touch with her afterwards to not get the listing again. So I think you'd look at it as you're responsible for communicating with your sellers effectively. And if they're not getting it, what can you do to help better explain things your customers? There's no other question to ask. It's not them, it's not the market. it's our business. And so I don't have any magic for 'em other than I work at that all the time saying them data, the numbers and, but I will take listings over price cuz I have a game plan. I'm gonna tell them, we're gonna review it and adjust it if you wanna sell it, and if you don't wanna sell it, that's fine. I, can't make somebody sell something they don't wanna sell. And go get another listing with somebody who has to sell. I love people who have to sell property. I don't really like listing for people who don't have to sell. Yeah. We do a lot of notice of defaults, the, the reverse mortgages from probate. So I have, I don't know, I think six of 'em right now that are in NOD. So those, they have a little more motivation. The others do and they don't. I think they do and they don't, and that's the challenge is when people go up to distress properties, we assume they wanna sell, but they really don't wanna sell. That's why they're distressed. They, they rather prolong it forever if they could. And no, these are nods from reverse and like the prs are outta state. It's, we kind of follow the same formula as David we work with out-of-state first and then Okay. But I'm saying there are, maybe not your kids, but just for everybody else listening, there are people who are facing foreclosure who you go, Well, you have to sell, you lose your equity. And they're all, Well, I just don't. I don't wanna do anything. I don't wanna sell, I don't wanna pay because they can live there for free and they don't have to make a decision that day. And so for some of us, sometimes we, we assume because somebody's in distress, we know logically they should sell. Doesn't mean they want to sell. We have to somehow educate them so they understand what their options are and, and if they don't, that's on us, that we're not being effective in explaining it in the way they get it. So anyhow, Jessica to be continued. No, I got a question for you. Yes. I love your schedule and what you've done with the YouTube stuff. So can you explain what your goal and every day I'm seeing you post something that's really the activity that you're doing and the schedule that you're keeping, Is that, how are you managing that with your business? And try to give me the It's crazy. It's nice. So I'm a student of Gary v. Gary Vanderchyuk and I heard him say recently that you have to smother people with content today to get attention. Like the books you read a year ago are no longer valid. Whether it be covid or the business game, more competitive or whatever, I have in mind to do as much as I can. I have my own live stream on Thursday, probate weekly.com. You're all welcome to join. I live stream, I get by 80 agents on that. I used to do an interview and then I have a VA who cuts that into pieces. We post that so, live, then it goes streamed and it goes cut into pieces. And then I interview people during the week and, and anytime I have any prospect, I'll interview them and put that video online and try to, and might be able cut that into pieces. And then when I just am motivated to do something, I'll just do a video and post that. And so I looked, I realized I was posting 10, 15 videos a week if you really go on my YouTube channel. But it's given me great lift. It's given me great, you know, tension and great Yep. Credibility with prospects. But I, I can't say been scientific about it. I'm not as young as I used to be, so I don't have the energy. I'm not gonna work the hours I used to work. So within the time I do work though, I wanna be productive and efficient. And I focus on, as I was saying to Steven just a few minutes ago, how many people I talked to, how many people watch what I see in video per hour. And that's the key metric I really follow. That's the one thing that drives me kind of nutty about all the networking you can do in person and the things that you could do by having a good CRM and just putting people in there that you talk to and you keep the relationship going. Right. Well, so I look at this, I look at the networking as new. For me, it's all new contacts. So I go to one event a month that's 10 minutes to my house. There's two 50 people in the room and on average come back with about 10 business cards of people that I wanted to add to my crm. And I just scanned them to my VA and she puts 'em in my crm. Nice. And I sent 'em an email. But if I get 10 in a, it's about three or four hour time commitment to go now I'll see another 50 people, a hundred that's nurturing those relationships. But I really track the, the number of new relationships. Otherwise I'm not gonna go to an event cuz it's just not worth my time. So, to go to a financial planning event to meet one or two people by the time I get dressed, drive there, park, I'm there for an hour or two, drive back. It's a three hour, four hour commitment. You know, I can't normally get, the numbers don't add up for me to just find the business. I'm glad you got dressed for this call.. Yeah, for you. David. That is for you. Okay guys, little over time. I'm sorry we went a little long, but I think we had a really good discussion today. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it. I know I did. Again, I'm a practitioner and I wanna be honest with you, I do this call cuz I, I need it. I learned from it. I learned a lot today myself on the Estate Exec. I'm gonna commit to you guys that I'm gonna be on EstateExec and next week be able to answer some questions. So Larry and David in particular, or Larry and Brian in particular, thank you for your help and as well, Jessica and the other people with great questions. Thank you guys. We do this every, every Tuesday, noon Pacific, 3:00 PM Eastern. It's also on probate mastery.com. This is the Probate Mastery alumni call. We do it every week and record it. I'm Bill Gross. You have questions going to the Facebook group, ask questions there. Thank you guys and have a great week. Hey Bill, real quick. Thank you. Can I get everybody, since I am working on my profile in the estateprofessional.org, will y'all please go endorse me, please? I'm gonna try to be the first one to a hundred endorsements. No I won't, I want endorsements than you. Thank you.