Deeds and title transfers in probate, joint bank accounts, and probate cold calling motivation

Deeds and title transfers in probate, joint bank accounts, and probate cold calling motivation | Podcast episode 103


Watch on YouTube

🕛🕛Timestamp Navigation 🕛🕛
0:00 EARN Course for real estate success (Real Estate Education)
7:33 Probate is the best real estate niche! (Probate Niche)
10:22 Transfering real estate title on probate property (Probate Sales) (North Carolina)
17:20 “Real estate time”, unclaimed property, and missing heirs (Probate Sales)
29:21 Probate Marketing Ideas: Websites, Content, and Attorneys (Probate Marketing)
45:34 Joint accounts and probate (Probate Process)


📖📖Links & Resources 📖📖
12 Ways to get real estate business with probate cash advances: https://probatemastery.com/get-real-estate-listings-deals-probate-cash/

Get certified in probate real estate with the Probate Mastery course: ProbateMastery.com

Join our referral directory: http://www.estateprofessional.org/

Explore guides, freebies, and more popular content with our Linktree: https://magnumopusproject.com/linktree/

Check out a wholesale real estate probate story on a recent episode: https://probatemastery.com/probate-wholesaling-script-podcast/

Join our Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/estateprofessionalsmastermind

Learn more at www.probatemastery.com

Transcript

0:19

Hey, it's Bill Gross. Welcome to our tuesday noon Pacific Time,

3: 0:25

00 PM Eastern Probate Mastery alumni Zoom Call. We get together every Tuesday at noon to talk about all things probate. So if you're a real estate agent or investor looking to build your business, and primarily if you've started or involved with or an alumni of the Probate Mastery Course, taught Chad Corbett we're here to work together to. Help each other's business, help us grow, help us be more productive help us be more successful in our practice. So, I'm sorry, off last week, last minute emergency personal situation. And thank you for the kind wishes and, and we're progressing there. I'm glad to be back and I'll just tell you I'm not. Full-time coach with this. I mean, I do a little bit with probably mastery. I do have a, a affiliate code on some things. I do get a little bit of, but really for me, that's more fun. The, the truth is I'm a full-time real estate broker and I build a real estate team. I have agents across the country, 35 agents looking for more. I do this cuz I need this because I'm building my business. And to be great at something, I have to constantly be improving, learning, growing, getting better at what I do. And so I came on this call regularly as an attendee and when Chad wasn't able to make it due to some personal situations, I stepped in. But I look at myself more as the team captain than the coach here. I'm really more hoping all of us will participate and, and challenge ourselves and give better service to our customers. And approve our businesses. And the purpose of this call is to share what's working, what's not working, work out common problems together, and to push each other and to support each. Separately, I do have my own livestream. I do probate weekly.com on Thursdays, 4:00 PM Pacific,

7: 2:08

00 PM Eastern, and that's my YouTube channel which is Bill Gross Ex P. And there I actually interview attorneys. I use that for my lead generation. I mean, there I can be a little more shameless in developing my own business. And, but I do think that's good content. To supplement what Chad's done and that, but I do believe that you have great resources here on the Probate Mastery website and on Chad's YouTube channel as well, where he's interviewed a number of attorneys and other vendors many times. So hopefully that's helpful for you Also. This is about business, so feel free to put in the chat box. I see. Winston welcome. Are we on it? But feel free, I'm sorry. The dog in the background is, Part of life working at a home office. But feel free to put I in the chat box, your name, your contact info, what you can bring to the party to help other people, what you're looking for in your business. And cuz let's do some business together. It's all about doing business. You wanna share with you just real quick before we get started just kinda my thought of where, where are we? You know, I'm a, I'm older than most of you. I'm, I'm 63, turn 64 next in January. And I've built a business where the truth is, I don't need to work anymore unless I want to increase my net worth to have a better lifestyle for the rest of my life. I mean, I can live on what I have. But I have some big dreams and goals and I'm continuing to push and work towards those. Plus I love what I do and I wanna create an impact on people going forward. So I work as hard, I think as anybody because I'm clear my goals I put a good effort in every day. What I wanna say is this time of year is very tempting to get off track, and I would say that if you're, if it's right for you, take time off. Take time off, whether be family or personal or holiday or religiou. I'm fine with that. I take off my time that I need to for my family and for my religious practices and, and a certain amount of, you know, a proper amount of vacation and rest time and such. But when I'm supposed to work, I work. The, the challenges this time of year is, is challenging because about half the people we talk to, attorneys, clients and such aren't working or are working at a holiday pace. And the challenge is not to get caught up in the holiday pace, but take advantage of the holiday opportunities. What's that mean? You're gonna get about half the people now on the phone or from meetings that you might normally, but the half that you get ahold of are ready to do business right now. So you can go deeper in relationships with them. You can ask for more. You can get time to meet with'em for breakfast or lunch or coffee or drinks or whatever. It's, you do. This is time to up that activity of being with people, however it is that you're with them in person online at events because people more the people who you do talk to are looking to do. And the ones who are checked out are checked out, and the people who are left, unless they're disciplined like I am, and hopefully you are, they're a little off their game because less people around and they, things are quiet around the office. So take advantage of the opportunity if you're gonna work this time of year. I'll tell you, I'm working this time of year through the end of the year, take off the holiday. I'm not Christian, so we don't do anything for Christmas. I said today I do a lot of computer work. I took off Thanksgiving Day about half it to I buy a new computer and new screens and new camera and got new stuff coming in. So while things slow down, I, you know, put my work in investing in things that will pay off for next year. So I challenge you that if you're not gonna work or shouldn't have worked, But if you should be, think about what you need to be productive this time of year because your customers and your, your prospective customers and the business people depend on you. Depend on you. And we're not at this just to get listings or get sales or get properties. We're in this to create value for people. That's how we get paid. And so if you're in the business of getting, creating value for people, then you wanna do that regardless of the time. Okay. That's my little 2 cents. I've got my soapbox. I'll get back on if you guys don't ask a bunch of questions or have some things to talk about in the chat box. I see. What is the attorney referral program? So the program that Chad offers is called E A R N, which is earn attorney referrals. It's on the Probate Mastery course. Let me see if I can find that spot there real quick for you guys and put the link in there of chat if at earned. There you go. And there's Katt with a link. Good job, katt So, yeah, so on the Probate Mastery Program I would think of that as kind of a general certification or general overview. People often ask about certifications. I don't know how important the little logo is in your, in your email, but I do know that you're come from, that you understand what people are looking for and how you can create feedback that is important. And so the probate training, there's free probate training, then there's the Probate Mastery course. And then there's the EARN course. So Probate Mastery is a training and certification program, and it's about $500. If you click on it, it's I think it says 4 99. And then the earn course is the next level. If you wanna focus in on developing. Attorney referrals, then that would be the program to take that on. So hopefully that answers that question. So who is a victory they wanna share? Who has a problem they wanna share and need some help with? I have a couple I can share. If you guys don't. Go ahead Courtney. What's going on man? Thanks Bill. Thanks Kat and Chad and everyone. This is, uh, I just wanna say for the last maybe three weeks uh, going to the courthouse pick, pulling leads myself, brought donuts. They treat me like Norm from Cheers when I walk in there now. They just say, they just are so excited, lit up. They uh, are, are so helpful down there. I've been able. Interview the assistant clerk and record that and just get tons of information and wow! Start and skip tracing. And I, I come from wholesaling where I was in Baltimore for a couple years and I, I cold-call all day long. I don't mind cold-calling, but I uh, decided to dig deeper into the niche of probates because it's, it... I wanted. I wanted to provide more and, and to, to get more out of it. And these leads have been so amazing to call, like the, the energy and the feeling that I'm getting from from the folks... They're first, like, what? What in the world are you doing? And they're not really as... they're kind of incredulous first, but they're like, after they hear and like I explain what's going, what we're trying to provide. They're just so happy and so, so excited. They're just a different type of energy than coming in. I mean, I've never came in with it. Let me buy your house. Let me buy your house. But still the confidence I have knowing, Hey, this is. the reason we provide a service. It's been pretty amazing. And so it's been awesome being able to find a ton of problems that I don't have the answers for, that I'm now responsible for finding the answers for. Beautiful. So here's, I tell people, if you don't have problems, you're not working hard enough, right? Right. My day is full of problems. Now I'm solving'em all day long. That's how I get paid. So I'm glad to hear you have a problem. We'll, let's talk, we'll take him one by one, but just before we go any further, I just wanna stop there cause I think 90% of the people don't get to this spot where you're at. Mm. Okay. And, and for those of you watching this, did you see his energy when he talked about making these phone calls? Mm-hmm.. It is a great one! And I'll tell you why. Why do you think it is that you're excited to make these calls versus maybe other calls you made in your career? Well, I, because I know I'm bringing value. I know I'm, I'm there to listen, and this is... stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. That is deep! That's the whole money right there. So let's say it again. The reason why is because why? I know I'm bringing value. See if you, if you pretend you bring value, well, I have a certification that makes it look like I'm bringing value or I'm a realtor with fancy pictures of me with a team of people who aren't really my people to look like I'm a team or to look like I'm a luxury agent.... we hate making those calls. But when you know you really bring value, look at the energy in his voice. I, I wish I could go back and replay it. If you're watching on video, go back. The smile, the energy, it just felt great to hear him. Who wouldn't wanna talk to somebody like that, who's calling you to bring you value? Anybody will talk to him. I'm sorry to interrupt, but that was just too good. That was my.. No, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. And and so maybe one I'll, I'll present that maybe folks can help me with. I think it's actually an easy problem. I actually already connected him with an attorney because he has a property that was willed to him and. He's trying to sell it, but he needs to have the property deeded over. The attorney that he's working with says he can have it deeded over, but I thought it would be a, a simple solution. So I connected him with an attorney. He does have a niece who's living in the property that he's kind of not, he doesn't wanna kick her out, but he definitely wants to sell. So I'll just keep Helping him out and supporting him there. But I think the easy solution is, hey, I connected him to the attorney and he'll be able to look at the will and be able to deed it over it and have to pay transfer tax and all that. I'm assuming that's, well, hold on. Let's talk about that for a second. So you're in Atlanta, where are you at? I'm in Durham, Durham, North Carolina. North Carolina. Okay. So I don't know the law of North Carolina, so I don't wanna pretend I do. But in most states, when you say deeded, from who would deed the property to him? The person, the decedent. They're not gonna be able to deed it. Mm-hmm.. So who can deed the property from the decedent to him? I have no idea. Well, the judge in probate. Probate judge. Okay. Probate or the judge can authorize him to sell the property without deed. Right. So there's two ways you can, you can inherit the property by going through probate, and at the end of probate, the judge authorizes transferring the deed from the precedent to you. Or you can get authority to sell the property from the court in probate, and then the, the property is sold. Now, there are other deeds that you don't need to go to probate court. Again, I don't know the laws, North Carolina. I just wanna stop you there and say, when we give referrals to attorneys, one of the frustrations I hear all the time and I've experienced is I seem to give out more referrals than I get back in business. So the currency then could be, instead of expecting referrals back. Could be the education. And you could say, look, I have a client, but can you explain to me? Cause I'm, you sound like a smart guy. Can you explain to me what the process is? And that the attorney should tell you what I told you with authority of how it's done in North Carolina. I, I just can't do that. Okay. But I think that you would, that, number one, you would learn, and number two, you show the attorney you're learning. That's the kind of realtor they wanna work with. Right, right, right. So in California for sure, the solution would be even if the property and the will passes it to your client, the fact the person who needed it, PA or willed it passed means the only solution unless it's a spouse, is probate court. Okay, and the two ways would be either one, if he wants to keep it at the end of probate court. The property's did to him, and the other is if he just wants to sell it, he files the probate court, gives him authority to sell, but the money goes to the estate to be determined later at the end, which usually works for people. Gotcha up a little bit. That helps a tremendous amount. Gimme a chance. Ask some questions. All right. And can I have one more? I'm sorry. I don't mean to take You have a hands up. So you got the floor recording measure. Oh, here you go. Here we go there. So, and when you're this good working this hard, you get to the further line anyhow. So go ahead. Yeah, that's make it happen. So there's a person has the property willed to them. In The will, I read that they have six months to decide whether to keep the property and then the executor can sell the property. No one in her in her family wants to keep the property. So she wants to sell. But unfortunately, she already had, well, fortunately for her, I guess, but a developer wants to buy the property from her, but the developer is like, Hey, I can't buy this property until it's cleared probate. And the people in pro the clerks apparently told her, I'm not, I haven't confirmed, but the clerks, I haven't, I didn't go down today to confirm, but they told her, according to the, to the lady. That she has to sell the property first, that she has to sell the property while it's in probate. But the developer's like, we have to wait till after probate's over to buy the property from you. so again, I don't know, laws. North Carolina. In California, when you buy a property in probate court the, the executor or administrator gets the authority from the court to sell the property, whatever that looks like. In, in California, if you have, if you're bonded and have full authority, that's all you need. You file a notice of proposed action, but you can sell the property. Oftentimes buyers say, well, I'm, I don't wanna buy a property in probate court because I wanna get, you know, there might be liens in the property. That's a misconception. The full authority gives you the right to sell the property as a normal retail transaction. They're gonna get title insurance clear of any liens. So maybe the developer doesn't understand that and you want to clarify that. So I would say the other person you might wanna talk to in your market would be a title representative. That can give you what the title company needs to give clear title, and more importantly, in your area. Also, you have real estate attorneys who we call escrow officers who just handle the transaction. They usually work with the title company. And so by talking to the escrow or the real estate attorney, they might connect you with the title rep they work with to explain what's needed. But generally speaking, in most states, again, I don't know North Carolina. Mm-hmm. the developer who wants to buy the property. It can happen while in probate. Now the difference would be in California when the property is sold to a developer, the proceeds, the money doesn't go to. Seller or the heirs, it goes into the probate estate and then the probate estate isn't divided until the probate's closed at the end. That's California law. Okay. I don't know. what it's like in North Carolina. I imagine it's the same, but you might wanna ask on my YouTube channel, I interviewed out of Raleigh a great real estate attorney and paralegal, who does planning. But they were in Charlotte. You're in uh, in Raleigh. Yeah. Durham. Right, right next door. I can throw a rocket and hit Raleigh. Okay. So lemme see if I can find it real fast. Anyhow, , I would find your real estate attorney. Mm-hmm., or what we would call escrow and I would find the title rep and they should be happy with both of those. But to me it sounds like a solvable problem. Once the developer understands that buying a property in probate, they get full title. Full everything. Clear of any liens no, no worries. Now they might be concerned about the, there's squatter in there. Mm-hmm., you know, or the condition of the property. Those are different things, so, Okay. Appreciate that. Awesome. Thanks so much. Oh, and I have to say there's a lot of people I've been listening for a while that inspired me. There's a guy up here who's been talking, David, gentleman out of Atlanta, and his story has really been inspirational, so I appreciate that. That really encouraged me to, to get my butt down to the court office and and really step in. So thanks for everything you all do. This is an awesome. community Thanks. You too. Thank you David Young to talk about cat's on the line. Now Katt put, did I beat you to at, you know, Katt I'm pretty quick. I know you get a lot of love in this call. Okay. Real quick, poll who here likes, who do you like better? Katt or me? So either put Bill or Katt in the chat box. Let's see if he gets more love. Uh, Matt, Driscoll you're, I Matt Driscoll, I see your hands up. Thank you Courtney. I'm gonna take you out and Matt Driscoll, what's going on? I have a quick question. I kind of fell into a probate. I talked to you actually this morning when I called you. Oh, okay. Hey, Matt. So, so I found the air of this one particular person that passed away and it was a homicide and, and I guess the pro, the attorney finally took the case. And they had to hire a genealogists to make sure that he's the only heir. How long does that normally? You know, Matt we talked this morning and I was a little quickly, I had a little limited amount of time, but I wanna share a concept called real estate time. Versus regular people. We as realtors, we expect, like if somebody calls on a sign or when we're brand new, a buyer, lead calls or seller lead calls, or pass client calls or center influence a. We expect return calls. You know, it's measured in minutes or in seconds in terms of online advertising, and that's how we live. Most of us have cell phones and even when there's offices where after hours are checking messages and somebody calls us, we expect them to call us back within 10 min. If we text them and we get a response back immediately, we're like, what the heck's going on with this guy? That's real estate time. Most people don't work like that. Attorneys you call leave a message. Like today's Tuesday at here I'm at, at LA 1223. If I leave a message for tri, he might call me back Thursday or Friday. He might not call me until Monday and say, oh, I'm sorry, I got, I was busy last week. A real estate agent will never do that. Now, several estate agents will never call you back like a listing agent. They just won't call you back. So when may I ask a question? How long should this take? Well, I mean, how long should it take? Not very long, but I would say that generally people don't move as quick as we expect them to. That's the nature of our business. I have a case for a listing and the client hired a paralegal to do the probate, and I was pushing her to get a. The petition for court confirmation completed so that once the buyer cleared contingencies was, I expected any minute we could immediately file the form. And I reviewed the form already early last week, the week before. So it's been sitting there. Theoretically, I gave her back an email, all the changes to make, but I never got back from her. The final draft to review before we. So now the buyer waves contingencies on Friday. Of course it's Black Friday, it's, let's call it a holiday weekend. And then she, she emails us today. Well, I was off, I'm a little bit behind. I won't get to it until Friday, and I'm thinking, well, hopefully it was only 15 minutes to update the form with the edits I gave you. Wish you filing it now. Like this minute, because if we wait three days, that's three days later till we get the court hearing at least. Right. That's real estate time. Most people don't work that way. Well, now there's a difference between that in statutory time, which is certain things you have to wait to give people a chance to answer errors and creditors and such. So it depends on state you're in. Well, this is, this is my issue I guess that I, I guess I have a problem dealing with in my head. It's an asset that's deteriorat. Because there's three broken windows on there. There's no utilities on. It's getting winter. There's three broken windows. You're looking for errors, right? Supposedly, I only found one who's 88 years old loading in South Dakota. So why? I don't understand why the attorney can't just get the judge to sell the assets, put it in a escrow, and when they find all the heirs, right? Was never married, didn't, didn't have any kids. And he has an 88 year old that I found. Well, what state is this? Texas. Yeah, so again, I can't speak to Texas law in California you a couple options. One is you can file the probate and if you get a and when three days you get approved as full authority or even limit authority, you can sell the property. Just keep the money in the probate estate and do exactly what you wanna do. Number two, in California, you can also use some sort of a temporary administrator if there's a conflict or an issue and say, don't, don't appoint us as. Administrator but appointed says a temporary administrator exclusively to sell the property and put the money in a blocked account. So there are ways that can be done. You need to talk to an attorney in Texas that can help you with that. Well, I mean, I, it is with an attorney right now. Well, okay, let me back up. When I say an attorney, I mean a knowledgeable probate expert attorney who knows what he's doing. Okay. In my experience, now, I, I don't mean to slam attorneys, but it's the same knock I would have on realtors. 90% of, well, in LA County, 90% of probate cases are handled by probate attorneys who've done one probate in the last 12 months or less. Well, and, and so they'll, and they'll get a complicated one and which I'd say full authority means there's one error. There's nobody's arguing and they get when it's complicated, they've only done one complicated one in their life. They don't really know the process of getting court approval. So just because an attorney's doing it doesn't mean they know anything. One thing about attorneys as a group, there's no group that sounds more like they know what they're talking. When they know nothing about what they're talking about, that's the nature of attorneys. That's why almost all politicians are attorneys. They sound like they know we're talking about, they know nothing. So the challenge for us is you can't tell an attorney you don't know anything. You can barely even offer them help when they don't know what they're doing. It's a, it's a, and I'm not saying that if you flip flipping, I'm being honest with you, one of my biggest challenges, how do I help attorneys when they need my help, but they don't understand they need it. Their egos in. And I have to learn how to tiptoe around that. Right. So you're asking a good question and I wanna say regularly I have clients who have to change attorneys cuz the attorney they have has no idea what they're doing. It requires expertise. It happens all the time. Okay. Thank you very much. Yeah. Don't be. That's why we need to meet attorneys. We need to know the good ones. We need to know the how, to find the difference, how to, how to explain that to our clients so they get, Hey, I worked with this guy. He's great. Here's what you guys doing wrong. A, B, C, and D. You can wait around all day long or we can get this property sold. I already talked to Joe. It's exactly what we can do. Here's how you substitute, and we're off to the races. Okay, so let's see. The votes are in. It's not looking good. I'm gonna go ahead and vote myself like 10 times, you know? Okay. Not fair. Not fair at all and you can't suck up to the people while we're voting. Ka that's also not fair. Richard says a special class for that in the first year of law school. Yeah. Look, the nature, I was on a debate team in, in high school and college and the track was to go into, into law and in by, in competitive debate in high school and college, you literally. Argue one side and then you argue the next side, the same argument back and forth. So you learn how to sound authoritative, arguing both sides the same argument. Well, they both can't be true. You can't believe they're both true. How could you argue both of them? So that's the nature of attorneys and I. I, I think most of'em appreciate that and understand that. In fact, that's why in my experience, the great attorneys will tell you they specialize and they have a very clear focus. When you see a website that says, we do DUIs, family law, probate, incorporations, civil litigation injuries, you know, they're not the right attorney for the job, or they have a bad. Well, my title company is the one that recommended him. The homicide detective is the one that also knew of him. Doesn't mean anything. That doesn't mean anything to me. The title company. Okay, let's go about one by one. Title company. Might have gotten business from him, might get business from him, but not probate. And they like him, and, and it could be, he's a great guy. He could be the nicest man in the world. He could be, was the most upright, upstanding, wonderful human being in the world. But if he doesn't know how to solve a probate problem, he can't serve your client. Right. And this seems true with the homicide detective. I mean, that's just a random thing. How's he gonna know? I wanna know somebody who's done 20 probates. They'll tell you who the good probate is for the bad one, but, but a homicide attorney maybe comes across one every couple years at most. No, knock on him. Again, he might be a great guy, but you're looking for somebody who, if you go to my probate into my Facebook group, probate experts, we have a bunch of attorneys there. If you go into the Probate Mastery Facebook group, there's some attorneys there. Post your questions, you'll find some attorneys who'll jump off the page. I know Bo Bowens in Houston. We're, we're in Texas. Are you fort? Bit of ways, but I think they might do business. Theirs. The laws are the same in the state. The practice is vary by county, so you might wanna check bill bows on my pre Facebook group for sure. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Steve Carney says the third is the Edge and needs to argue that one too. Okay. So, okay. A lot of love for Katt there. I don't know guys, I'm feeling a little insecure here. Did I miss any questions? and maybe you can put the link in the Probate mastery Chad Corbett has a Facebook group associated with this called Probate Mastery Alumni. and great place to be questions asked, I learned stuff there literally. Every day. Literally. I was there last night and there was somebody who asked a great question on insurance, which, you know, laws vary by state. And so I went to my insurance agent and not only did I get a little more color to the laws in my state, but we have a nice little segment. We're gonna video for my social media, so great. There's a link in the chat box. The probate mastery alumni group, fantastic resource. Additionally, I have my own probate group in Facebook called Probate Experts, and you can join that as well. And love to have you there to share leads. We do get petitioners. We've had people from other countries come in, can't really help them personally, but it's interesting to learn. We have attorneys there as well and investors in resale and real estate agents. Okay. Who did my KV core website has Austin. That's so funny, Matt. So Matt's asked me my website, so I'm with the xp and so they give us a it's part of the package of a technology package called KV core, which I think is called conversion. It's available to other companies as well, but xp, all of us get it as part of the package. Then I, I. All the leads.com for their website, but I, with their permission, I copied the content onto my KV Corra website, and then I've created my own. And so if you go to my website, I'm the la probate expert.com, the la probate.com. And, and I, again, I think that's a good resource for everybody here. I'm the far right of a bunch of probate resources. I have a list of all the data sources. I've come across the different coaching companies. Other information I find inf, you know, helpful so that I did on my own. So I, I, I paid for the probate content from all the leads and then the rest of the collection stuff is my own, my own stuff. Okay? So lemme see if I get the, the link for probate experts. I'd love to have you guys join. And then my website is the la probate expert.com. Okay. So let's see. Make sure, yeah. And then cap points out. Also, make sure you get your listing in the estate planning. estate professional dot. Directory. If you're, if you're probate mastery alum or a cpe as we call'em, you get priority ranking. But it's a good place to put information and also to reach out to your vendors to help 'em with their business. So check that as well. Thank you, Katt. You know what, okay? I'm gonna stop saying thank you because you, you still have more votes in me. I'm hoping to win the election here at the end. So we'll see how that happens. Larry, what's up man? Bill, you have no shot, so give it up. Come on. Larry. Did you vote for me, Larry? No. Okay. I, I'm sorry I can't answer your question, then we have to kick you out.. I should, I didn't put a heavy hand here. This is not fun at all. So I've got a couple of rapid fire questions for you. So you ready? Go. Okay. So I've got a referral. From another probate case that's gone south and the applicant has fired her attorney and now she needs another one. So I thought I would go talk to some attorneys about that referral. So I'm gonna head off when we get done with this call, I'm gonna go see an attorney about this referral. Any pointers as I go in, it's a, it's an attorney I've never met. I've checked them out. They do a lot of business in the probate space. So I wanted to use that as leverage to go have a conversation I normally wouldn't have. Any thoughts about how to use that? Well, I wouldn't tell you have a referral now, unless you have already, but I would say truly. You. I know you do, but I'm saying I wouldn't tell 'em that you do. Okay. Uh, Because you, you, my approach is if they're not one, to gimme a little bit of time on the, on the idea that I'm calling them to learn about their business, to understand how I could refer them effectively. And I would say that, so I'd like to meet with you on the phone or meet in person so that if I do make referral, I can make it effective. Instead. I've met with you and we talked before. If they don't understand the value of that, then they're probably not gonna be the right attorney for you to work with down the. Okay. And for me, I, I asked to interview them on video and I say to them, Larry, I'd love to just do a short five or two minute video with you to talk about your business and how you do things. That way if I do have somebody to refer to you, I'll also link the interview and that'll make the referral more effective. Do we have time to do that? And there are cemeteries who don't have time to do that, and they're like, okay, whatever. Seems silly to me, but but that, that's a good weeding out of the, the, I think. One area that real estate agents are shocked when they get in this business to find out is how, how hard it's to get attorneys refer to business and how little comes back or how much you have to do to get business back from the attorneys. You would think that and, and we could talk about this for a long time, but just a short, Dan, you said rapid fire. So keep it short. And since you're voting for cat, not me, I'm not gonna give you all the information. I think it's true at all relationships. Grand Cardone says that even if your product or service is clearly the best in the market and you give away for free, it's 10 times harder to sell than you would ever. And so when you're trying to sell yourself to an attorney, it's way harder than you imagine to be. I'm not saying therefore not to do it. I'm just saying set expectations and commit to the process, it'll work itself out. Okay. So, not a drop by, but a, a phone call would be better. Well, I don't think I would drop by and announce. I don't think that sets the right expectation to the attorney. Once I've met them, I might drop by, but if I'm, if it's a first time and I'm trying to understand the right person to refer, the way I think of it is when I refer a. A, a case to an attorney for a listing. You know, I have a 10 or $20,000 commission check now that I'm trusting them to handle. And frankly, I've had the attorneys mishandle that and I've lost the listing as a result numerous times before I figured out, hey, this isn't gonna work. I need to have iron fat control in the process. Process. So, I think you want, you do. It's not about you getting business back, but at the end of the day, if you're not getting business back, it doesn't pay for the system for you to help people. So it has to include you getting business back from them. And so you have to expect, I think, to have more control in that process. So I would, I would say I'd rather you talk to five attorneys to find one than go see one and then send him business and not get the result. Does that make sense? Perfect. Okay. Well then I will recalibrate and do that. Is there anybody else got questions? I got a couple more for you. Go ahead, Lori. Okay. So, I was just tell me, you can vote for me instead of Cat now. You can't have another question. You're, you're, you're gaining on Cat. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. You got, you got a puncher's chance. Okay. Thank you. So, , so, another question would be like, and this is for the group if anyone's doing this, but Chad talked a lot about doing co-marketing with attorneys and I'm just curious. What that might look like. Has anybody done some co-marketing with attorneys? This is something I'm looking to do, but I really don't know what that might look like and I didn't know if anybody has done it and if they would like to share that, that would be, that would, I think it would be beneficial to the entire group. That's a request I guess. Anybody wanna jump in that? Feel free to put the chat box or raise your hand. I'll share with you. I've done a little bit. I've offered to do it a lot. And in particular I found an attorney who does a fair amount of marketing and I found his marketing. Intern and I promoted people to come to their webinar and of course I've interviewed him on my website and, and had him as a guest on my probate weekly show. And we're talking about doing some, some more things going forward as well. Doing some recording some videos together. They'll go on their website, we'll go on my website and we'll use as well. So we're starting to do that. But boy, I've offered that a lot and I haven't done much and it hasn't yielded a lot. So again, it's a lot of work. But I do think that it's about establishing relationship. So I, I would say that would be worthwhile to do. The, the key is as long as it's beneficial for both of you, meaning if I interview you and put print on my YouTube and I get views that's already paying off, if you don't get views because of it. But then again, for me, when I've referred attorneys, I've linked the YouTube with the referral and that becomes effective. So, okay. That I didn't think about the YouTube the interviews and stuff like that. That's a great idea. How about like anybody doing any mailing? Like with their, if they're mailing the PRS or the executors, anybody doing something like that, they'd have any collateral and. If Larry, Larry, I can hop on here. I I'm also in Texas and that's one of the things in my on my thing to do for next year, one of my goals because in Texas our attorneys are already, are already on file with most of the petitioners when they submit. Probation paperworks their petitions. So the the challenge that we have doesn't go along with Chad's recommendation to try to refer those attorney names. And so one of the things that I'm thinking about doing is kind of adapting Chad's idea of. A chart or some sort of a infographic kind of a thing that shows all the different steps and the things that the attorneys would do and the things that, that's not realistic to expect those attorneys to do. And so, just tweaking that just a little bit and then having that attorney on there as well. But but I don't see how. How we could incorporate the ma. What I can do is incorporate the attorney in that infographic, in the probate letters that I'm already sending out. Right. But it wouldn't, it wouldn't necessarily be for those people to, to to call up that attorney for the case because more than likely they already have one unless they need to change. Like Bill suggested a minute. Well, and that was gonna, that was gonna be my point. I, I haven't talked to a lot of them yet, but Bill, I am starting to see a trend where attorneys don't all make it to the finish line. They get replaced usually cuz it's just poor communication. A lot of the people just don't have a realistic expectations of the process. And I think that maybe some of the attorneys just assumed, they understood that this was gonna take a long time and they didn't need to tell. And I think has a mistake on their part. When you talk to 'em and ask 'em what their biggest challenge is, and they'll say The attorney attorney doesn't return my phone calls. They don't, they don't to get back to me in a timely manner like you were talking about earlier, that our time is 10 minutes. Theirs is 10 days. You know? Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I, I don't often get customers to tell me they're really happy with the attorney, unless it's a complicated litigation. They win at the end. But in probate and probate administration, I just rarely get that the opposite. They feel like they got, they had to pay too much, and they don't feel like they got the service. And it always surprises me that the attorneys, of course, they're trained not to sell. Which I think is a mistake, and that's why when I talk to attorneys, I say, listen, you're not gonna sell people and using you. I'm a salesman. That's what I do. So I can sell them before to choose you, but I also will continue to sell you during the process. And you need that. You need somebody who's going to be holding the customer's hand and when it's a problem. Get your attention right away. They may not feel comfortable telling you that they haven't heard from you and they need to hear from you, but they tell me that I can, I can tell you right away and you get on it. So that's the opportunity for us being salespeople, is that we can create value for the attorney that way. But that, I hear that all the time. They're just not happy with the service, not happy with the lack of communication. The big one is the bill that, that they don't send out. I would think you'd have to send out like a monthly bill when I advanced money for an estate. I use PayPal for my invoicing, but even though I know I'm not gonna get paid to a closed escrow, I, every time I add an expense, they get a copy of an updated invoice and they get one every month of what's outstanding. So they see when I, when I charge the item and when every month what the bill is. So they're not surprised at the end. It's not complicated With technology today, it's easy, but there don't do that for some reason. I don't know why I, I don't know why. That's good. I got one more. If we Iain on the attorney track, yes, we can do that. Just I need you to say, bill, I vote for you, not Kat. Then I can get one more question from you. I, I defer . Okay. Go ahead, ask a question. Ka . Go ahead. That's so funny. Okay, so staying on the attorney thing. Now you Bill, I know that you, you built your. Purely work in attorney angle, so this is more pointed to you, but as I understand it, attorneys, you know, I, I kind of got lost a little bit in the earn course when Chad starts talking about the limitations attorneys have in terms of marketing their services. And I guess where I got lost with that was like, can they, can they be specific? or can they, do they have to remain like a broadcast? Like if they were doing pay per click, you know, for example, how specific could they be in targeting an audience? With that? Because I think there could be an opportunity to do some marketing and create an evergreen system where you have referrals that are estate planning clients that these guys would, or gals would really. But I'm just curious, you know, what is their limitation? And I know that we don't really have MI many at all in terms of getting really detailed and targeting where my understanding is that the attorneys are somewhat limited. Can you shed some light on that? So, well there's three levels I would say. First off is some states the restrictions on how much marketing or selling they can do, and that varies by state bar. Each state bar has different rules of how much you can advertise or what you can advertise, or what types of things you can advertise. There used to be none. My father was attorney old school. You could put your name of your law firm in the phone book. That was it. And older attorneys see billboard. For personal injury. To them, that's the lowest of low that you're, you're advertising and you're creating maybe false cases. So there, there are certain bar restrictions of what they can or can't do as far as selling people and calling them and soliciting probate business, for example, is restrictive in California than, say, Personal injury or other type bankruptcies or other cases. So the state law, second is none of 'em want to do it because they all believe their attorneys and like we all do, even realtors the same way. 9% of us wanna believe we're so good. People will call us with business. That when you ask an agent, where do you get your business from? And they say, Well, 9% of it's from referral. What they're saying is, I think I'm so good. I'll just sit here, wait for the phone to ring when it rings, I'll get business. And that might be, you'll get what you get, but you'll only get more if you put some effort behind it. And then the third, I think, is that most attorneys. Don't take the time to learn how to do this so they don't do it well. And so like anything else in life, you don't do it well, you don't get good results. And all else was frustrating. And so that's where I try to step into them and say, look, I'm an expert in email marketing. I'm an expert in building a social media brand for a business for a small business like mine. I did what I did for me. I wouldn't use the same style for you because you are different, but this is what my results are. And so I think that my, the opportunity for us is to offer them our expertise both to market, how to market their business, and. To market with them, that generates business for them. So I think you're on the right track. And I think that's a great value proposition is even just, just evaluating their pay per click. You know, a lot of attorneys and probate in estate planning do pay per click. There's a, there's a number of consultants who, that's their business teaching attorneys how to do that. They charge 'em a lot of money and if you have special expertise and can for free. Evaluate the program, give them some insights or suggestions, connect them with a cost effective service or cost effective virtual assistant. You know, I used to deal with real estate agents. I had a virtual assistant and I would, for cost effective money, I would take their database and upload it and get it into a mail program and send out content for them weekly. It was all kind of done for them and they either paid me a fear, they joined my company. So, but I think that's a great opportunity for you. So again, to recap some states, What they can't advertise or not. Second, you know, most of 'em are, they don't wanna do it. Nobody really wants to market. We all wanna be lazy and just answer the phone. And third is, even if they wanna do it, often don't know where to start and they just aren't very good at it. Gotcha. Okay. Well, it's a good place to start, start to talk about that because I could see that being a, a A real pressing need, particularly for attorneys that are too proud to say they need business, but they do. And well all do. We all need more leads coming in. Absolutely. I, I had a guy today, I called to do an interview and he asked me, he said, well, look, I'm part-time, I do video work also. And so I rather than just do a Zoom call and record it, which I'm, what I'm doing, I'd love to come to my office and I could record you. Now he's an hour away from me. I really wanna go. I mean, he isn't doing much business and if he does video part-time, but he is not doing much attorney business. So, you know, I'm in position to say no. If I was a new agent breaking in. I'd hustle right out there and get with him as fast as I could. The more people you talk to, the more business you're gonna get. So, depends where your business is. But I think the idea of offering people, I'm calling him to offer him, you know, he has a channel with great videos and his views get like three views and five views. I have a channel with, with fairly rough video, and I get a hundred, 200. Which one would you rather have? He hasn't figure that out yet. So, Gotcha. Cool. Hey, thank you Bill. Thanks. Thanks so much, lawyer as always, other than the part about voting for Kat, really appreciate having you on the call today. Okay. Who else has a question problem, challenge? You got? Whoa, we got about eight, seven minutes left last, or who has victory? The report. Okay. Here's a question from Courtney. Courtney, you wanna jump in here? And before I read that, you wanna just kind of tell us what you're working on here or, or, Sure, sure. Yeah. So, the young lady says that her, her mom and her have a joint or account her mom passed away. They started funding the account so that they could pay for the monthly mortgage until all the probate and things were taken care of. The clerk told her that she, that that money in that account is a loan that I assume would have to be paid off and all. But she's thinking or she's saying, no, that's, we don't, we're not, my brother has does not want that paid back. That's not a loan. And she thought or felt that since it's transferred to her, since it's joint accountant. I think she's survivorship, but transferred to her death. She assumed that it's her money. So, she wanted to know is this loan or where could she get better advice. Well, it, again, that's gonna be different in North Carolina than other states perhaps, but it depends on the title of the account. So if you take an account and you each own a portion of it, and upon death, half is one and half is the other, more commonly, it's either or upon death and it transfers over sometimes. I had a, I had a aunt who passed who she. She had my sister as power of attorney. She thought that meant it was a joint account. But, but power of attorneys expire when the decedent expires and the accounts closed. So, generally when the decedent passes, because the social security numbers reported by the bank and then the Social Security Department now when, when there's death records, has social security. That gets reported to banks and they usually shut down the account right away. So I'm not sure there's a timing issue on your account or not. And that might be a clue because if it, if it was all the seeds account, it'd be blocked. The fact it's open might mean that it's both of theirs. So it depends on how it was titled when they took out the account Normally will have you fill out the forms and we'll, You know, upon death, would it, you know, is there a beneficiary? And then how you take title, are you and then if you don't and you're not husband, wife, You know, state laws vary. Some by presumption would be like joint tenants, meaning one passes, the other one gets it, and others are like tents of common where if one passes is split 50 50. So that's really a question for an attorney in North Carolina to handle, to give you the right answer on that, I think. But are you referring to the to the ownership of the property or the, I think she's asking about the account and though it's the same. Okay. It's the same thing. Oh wow. The property there, there's a legal. Title to the property. There's legal title to the, to the, the money. And so it depends on how the count was opened up or taken out. And you, when you open a bank out, they ask you how you holding it, and then upon death you wanna name beneficiary. So it would really depend on how the count was titled and if there was beneficiary named or not. But again, I think that's a question for an attorney specifically. Now the clerk might know and, and, but I don't know. The clerk knows how the count was. Right. You'd have to go to the bank and see and they're not gonna answer questions, but for the person on the account. So if it's the personal rep should go to the bank and verify how is the account titled? And is there, is there any beneficiary named for either party? They, if it's a, if it's a joint account wouldn't, all she need to do is show a death certificate and she could cash that account out, but there wouldn't be anything holding that back. She doesn't need to probate. That account, I wouldn't think if it's a joint. Well in California you would, I can't say, oh, well you gotta everything in California. Well, yeah. Now I say over, there's a small prob account amount, so if it's below 162,000, it's more of like a paperwork and you file it and it goes through An expedited basis. So, but there is a process that says the court has to prove it. So, but I don't know, North Carolina, the laws vary. So I would, I would definitely check with the attorney on that matter. All right, thanks. Sure. Okay, so wow. Timely flew today. I don't know if it did for you guys or not. Hopefully it did, but it did for me. I really appreciate getting back with you guys today. We're gonna wrap up today. I'm Bill Gross. This is our Probate Mastery alumni call. We do this every Tuesday at noon Pacific, 3:00 PM Eastern. It's recorded and so if you wanna see past episodes or this episode, again, go into probate mastery.com and it's also on the YouTube channel and then Katt, who lost today's balloting does a great job editing it, making it look all pretty, and putting videos on the vinyl ball. I'm gonna count real quick. I won election 32 to 14, so thank you for all those who supported me. I counted 'em all. Right Here, they're all, there's some mail in ballots came in after you guys voted so in keeps, you wonder what happened with all that. But again, as cat put in the chat box go to the Facebook group, probably Mastery Alumni, and you definitely set up for the estate service where you can log yourself in. And more importantly, I think offer that to vendors you work with, like accountants, attorneys that would be of service to people looking for estates. And you wanna make sure they know about the, the service so they can send their clients there as well. And I think that's it. So until next week, bill Gross signing off for Chad Corbett and the Probate Mastery Program. Thanks so much everybody. We'll see you next week.