Content Marketing for Probate Real Estate & The Truth About Mail Marketing

Full show notes: https://probatemastery.com/content-marketing-vs-direct-mail

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In this episode, real estate agents and investors dive into content marketing and video strategy for probate lead generation. The effectiveness of direct mail marketing is questions. The group shares tips about probate situations involving mobile home sales, dealing with property not in a trust after death, and pre-probate. It’s a great time to be in the probate real estate niche and we hope we can help you learn the ins and outs each week!

🕛🕛Timestamp Navigation 🕛🕛 (YouTube Links)

0:00 Build the service you would pay for (Business Coaching)
8:15 Content marketing for probate real estate (Real Estate Content Ideas)
13:20 Daily business routine for a real estate agent (Business Development)
19:04 Probate sales with mobile homes (Mobile Home Sales)
22:32 The truth about using direct mail for lead generation (Sales Coaching)
26:02 Differentiating yourself from the competition with laser-focused service (Real Estate Referrals)
31:22 Pre-probate letters and marketing tips (Pre-Probate Leads)
35:27 What happens when property is not in a trust? (Probate Process)
42:24 Live Chat Q&A

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Transcript

0:19

Hey, good afternoon. I'm Bill Gross, and welcome to our Probate Mastery Mastermind or State Professionals Mastermind. This is based on Chad Corbett's Probate Mastery program for real estate investors and wholesalers and real estate agents who wanna build their business and their equity, by building their real estate business using prob. And related business probate would include in my mind, estate planning and estate businesses and things like that. We get together every Tuesday at noon Pacific

time, 3: 0:48

00 PM Eastern. I'm Bill Gross. I'm not a coach or an employee of the company. I am a practitioner. I used to come on this call every week, because I needed this as, part of the. Tools to build my business. And then I've been with us to kind of fill in when Chad had some competing obligations and I've been able to keep it going. And I was just reflecting before I, before I started taking questions. If you have questions, it's meant to be participative, so if you watch this, I replay. Put the questions in the chat box. If you're on live though, come on the Zoom call, we'd love to have you. I put a question, the chat box on the zoom or raise your hand. I'll call you live. I'd love to get it and make it interactive. The goal of this is to make it interactive and let me explain how I kind of came up with. I was just listening to a a story by, um, Floria, what's his name? He's a football analyst, and he was describing before he'd lost his, before he'd launched his podcast, that he was inspired by Paul, Peter Criss of the rock band KISS and he said KISS. When they launched their, their act in the seventies, they built the act because he asked, so how come he gave us how you come so successful was inspiration. And he said, we just built the act that we thought we'd pay for. Right. And, and back in the seventies, you know, rock bands, they just came out and played. Maybe Mick Jagger danced around a bit, but there wasn't, there was a guy who bashed his guitar on the stage, but there wasn't fireworks or power technics and lights and costumes and makeup. But KISS thought, and again, I'm not saying it's good or bad, just, uh, the history of one of the most successful bands in. Business-wise in history, they, they like the theatrics, they like the makeup, they like all that. And so they built the, the, um, the business that they liked. And because they liked it, they brought their passion to that. And so I would say the same. That's the opportunity you guys have personally. This call for me is something that I need and, and, you know, please forgive me for indulging me. I'm a practitioner. I'm in real estate every day. This is all that I do for business. I, I'm gonna have some related income and I have some past income, but, my daily business is looking for people who need to sell property. I'm a real estate broker and I f focus almost exclusively in. Probate and related businesses, probate, estate planning, bankruptcy attorney, attorney referrals. And so I built a business that I needed and wanted, and one of the components I needed was this comradery. It's, it can be a difficult business, losing deals, working with a customer, finding out they're not gonna sell, they're gonna keep the house after a year of follow up. that happens. That's part of the job. But if that happens once in a while, and I, I, believe me, I've been selling a bunch of houses. I'm doing really well. Why do I do well? Because I don't get discouraged. One way I don't get discouraged is I have this community to reach out to and participate with. And by giving back to the community, I get back from you guys tremendously. And so I would just urge you all to take that approach to your business individually., build the business you want. Don't build the business. I built. Don't build the business. The vendor who sells you data tells you to build the business that you want. Chad does not sell data really. He sells, I think, a dream. He sells a dream of financial independence, and he teaches the tactic of giving in order to get, and really, I was thinking about., like how the wheel, or I don't know what you, what the term he uses. All the different services that when offers on probate and in reality that I've kind of honed in on those third or so services I've identified. One or two or three is where I make a living and other people who f focus in on one or two or three like me. It's the legal services. I'm not an attorney, but I'll find the right attorney, I'll give people good tactical advice. I'll review the document. I know other people are successful in this business and they focus on the construction piece cuz they enjoy that part. Nothing wrong with that. I know another lady who focuses in on adult care referrals and has built a business on that. Not to say that none of us would do the other. 29 services are available, but you don't have to do them all. You don't have to take that plan and live on that. You can design the business that you want. So I would urge you to think about that and feel free to ask questions towards that. I've built a fantastic business. I relaunched my career at 60 years old four years ago. I make more money in sales I ever have. Each of the last three years. I have a full pipeline of pendings and listings for next year. Going to. With a lot of momentum, and I'd love to share that message of opportunity and op and optimism with all of you and encourage you. We should all together, work together to lift ourselves. To do better. It's amazing to me when I host real estate events, I ask realtors, how are you doing? How many would say, Ugh, terrible. The market's terrible. And I'm telling you guys, cuz we, most of you, I, I've talked to over the years, it's not terrible for me. I took a listing last week. I got a pending in escrow right now. I think I have another listing. I'm signing here today, tomorrow, Mike. Hey, DERs. Like, how are you doing, Chris? Oh, I'm doing good now. Wasn't doing too good. Like I'm, I got that. I, I'm doing pretty good business-wise. Like, I'm doing better than last year and year before and last two years I did pretty well. B, why is that? Because I've been working hard now. I, I don't work more than 40 hours a week. I really can't. I'm older now. I have family commitments as such, but I work effectively about 40 hours a week on building my business every day. And I believe if all of you do. Any of you who do that can do the same thing. It might take 90 days, it might take six months to have the business up and running like it did for me. But I assure you, if you put that effort in, that possibility is there for you, especially if you focus on what you can do to help other people.. So that's what I wanna start with today. Just an idea of building the business you want to work in, the business that you think people would pay for, that there's customers for because of your experience. Okay. I'm off of a soapbox. Uh, and then just, uh, if you have any questions, please raise your hand or put the chat box. And just before, I just wanna point out two resources that are available for all of us. One is in Facebook, there's Estate Professionals Mastermind group. There's over 6,000 people in this. And you come in here and ask questions. People do all the time. These guys you have, like, this is, where's one question? I need help on the deal. I don't know how many hundreds or thousands deals Rick Hartman's done and Daniel Murray's done and Chad's done. But between the three of these, this is kind of like asking a quarterback question in high school and getting, I don't know, Peyton Manning and, uh, Tom Brady and, uh, pat Patrick Mahomes to, to answer your question, like that's what's going on in this. And so you got some real benefit, some real power here. And then the other option, the other resources free for everybody is the probate EW website. Where there's the podcast, which this is the podcast, but you can watch it on YouTube or other formats as well. There's referral directory, there's different products, and then on the podcast there's all kinds of, um, archives that you can search particular questions and get particular answers on. And I get regularly ask, ask questions from. And refer them to this, to this spot as a place to go to get your questions answered. So those are some great free resources available. Okay. First hand up. Uh, bill, will you share the details of your weekly routine? Okay, I'll do that in a second. Let me go. I see Courtney's hands up and Courtney is all that in a bag of chips these days. We better catch him while we, we still, well, he still recognizes the little people. It's corny. What's up? Hey, how's it going, bill? Thank you so much, uh, for, for your time and all, especially what you said. Uh, I, I really am enjoying creating the content. I, I, I'm enjoying trying to find the voice, the audience. I'm assuming that it's folks who are looking for probate questions and probate answers. Part of it also seems to be geared towards, practitioners too. So sometimes I, feel a little schizophrenic. The content I'm putting out, but I know that'll work itself out as I continue to think about the avatar. But I wanna share one hack that I had and then ask a question to you all. I think it's a hack and so I'm really trying to learn the, uh, Durham County, uh, probate, estate procedures and looking through pamphlet. And so all I'm doing now is just taking as A P D H, of course is a hard copy, but I, sent the P D H A and printed it out in, um, in a Word document. And then I'm just copying, pasting and changing. I'm just literally creating videos on each section so that I can learn, okay, what is the responsibility of this or that, or what is the procedure for a qualified person? And then that's like a four minute, five minute video that I'm assuming and hoping that, you know, people who are asking questions are. Are, uh, looking up so that provides good content and I get to learn. So killing a lot of birds with one stone. Okay, hold on one second for everybody watching this. He, I'm gonna make fun of you a little bit, but I'm, but this is to your credit. It's pdf. Oh, what'd I say? P D p dh. It's like for somebody who says you don't know how to do the technology, he doesn't have to write letters. Okay, but he did not let that stop him. Nope. He still printed out and he's cutting and pasty that he knows how to do. Right. That he figured out and, and, and you go again just to. Because I followed your story here a little bit to share with those who maybe are just jumping across it. So Courtney has a YouTube channel and you're a primarily investor in wholesaler. Is that your primary business? Not a real estate agent, but primarily investor wholesaler who's creating content to get interest from home sellers in the area and has magical formula was to go to his local county, which offers free resources. Would you paint that again, Courtney? Was free 99. Free 99 my favorite price. Print it out and all he is doing is you're, is taking bits and pieces of the free resources and makes a video. Now look, he's got a million dollar smile. He's got a lot of energy. But, but here's the thing. We have to understand. We're gonna attract the people. We're gonna attract, you know, I don't have that look, but people who are gonna eventually do business with me are gonna meet me. So I might as well let them know what I look like, right? There's no, so, I, I, it, you gotta be genuine. You gotta be who you are with this, number one. Number two, the more you do it, the breader you get at it. So when you did this the first time, Courtney, was it a. I'll No nervous for you. Oh, absolutely. It still is, but I mean, I got big goals and I'm not gonna let that that stop me. Mm-hmm., you bump, stumble all the way through, but I'm, that's just, that's part of me. I think that hopefully that's appeals to people they know. I'm not, uh, I don't have all the words said properly, but hopefully they see that I'm genuine. at least that's what I try to be. So, so, let's stop. There again is a lot to pack. So everybody here who's a little scared when it's time to be on video and share yourself with people, raise your hand. Okay. Yeah, you still can do it, right? You could be scared and still push record. Right? One of my favorite, coaches in video, I'm trying to blank. You know, we get older here. YouTube, what's his name? I wanna say Cael, anyhow, it just says Just push record. Just push record. Do it. So I started doing YouTube shorts, 15 second shots, and I get about a, I was averaging a hundred views. Of six seconds, which is like 15 minutes of you time for a one minute video. Crazy. So you're scared. Anyhow, Courtney, but you did it. So let's talk about it. What's it, what is happening as a result of your doing the, the videos? Well, I'm, I feel like my, UPS or unique sales proposition is getting stronger because I'm almost repeating it over and. I'm getting better at researching, like not putting myself in a position, like I'm just a part of someone's journey. So instead of thinking about what I would like to put out and create, I'm thinking more about the client, whether that's the, uh, you know, the buyer or the family's helping out with. So I feel like it's making me, my, my value that I know I bring tighter and tighter and stronger and stronger. And it's a, it just, it's a lot of fun. It does speak to my personality, so I'm enjoying that and hopefully it. I, I cold call every day, and that was, was one of my questions going to be about. But hopefully it will pull me away from cold calling because I'll begin to have a lot of referrals that are coming through and, as the, podcast built and I'm meeting a ton of folks. Like folks in here, if you all want to be interviewed, I would love to interview you and learn about you all and put it out there and all. Cuz uh, you know, that's how I grow and that's how I mean repeating what Bill said. That's how we grow the business. So it's, it's awesome. Yeah. And I think that this leverages the other things you do. It doesn't necessarily replace them. It leverages your phone call and it leverages your appointments, it leverages your networking. And when people see your video, you have 384 subscribers. It took me a long time to get to that. So, Very jealous. You're doing a great job, man. Just really, really, really impressive. All right, well, thank you for rock. Can I, can I ask a quick question though? Um, yes. It's, it's, uh, not as well. I cold call every day and I was listening to, many folks and I heard some folks say that, um, they'll call the lead once a month or once a week, but I feel inclined to call every day until, um, until I get someone. But I, I don't, I don't leave a message. I just, you know, let it ring three times and rock and., but is there any negative side to calling every, if I haven't contacted you now, if I've contacted you, then I'll put you on a communication cadence based on our, our conversation. But if I'm trying to reach folks, I haven't reached them. I wanna call them every day. But is there something I'm not thinking about that maybe kids kicks off or puts me on a do not call list or no? No, but here's the thing you wanna think about. You know, when you do marketing, you wanna track your.. So I'm not so arrogant as to tell you how life is in Durham, North Carolina. I'm sure it's different than life in la, right? We're different markets, different cities and, and maybe like I'm in the city of la, maybe Durham, you're on the outskirt. I don't know. I'm just saying we all have a different reality that we have to be real with our reality. So I would say track your numbers. Here's the key. How many contacts you make per hour while you're prospecting? If you're talking about prospecting, not lead, follow up, not setting appointments, not service. I'm talking about lead prospecting time. You gotta get to eight contacts per hour as a minimum.. And the problem of calling the same people over and over again is many of those people are never gonna answer for whatever reasons they are. And if you and I, I used to have, uh, um, guys I was supposed to be coaching at my company, there's one particular, and he hated me cause I kept saying the same thing to 'em over and over again, which is he would call every expired listing forever. And I would say to 'em, look, once they have an answer three or four days in a row, You know, archiver for 90 days come back, they'll still be there. Apparently he had thousands that were that old. Yeah. And he would be on the phone with a dialer, with a triple or quadruple dialer, dialing all four in averaging four contacts per hour. And the problem is you're not talking to enough people to make, to make a living. And so track your numbers. I would say generally speaking, make three attempts. Uh, and I generally don't leave messages on strangers, and then I would archive that data for 90 days and try again as the general rule. But you need to track your numbers and be scientific about it. And then feel Freeman who's done that. Share your numbers. If you have data, you know, cord come. Backa shared the data. I'm glad to hear it. But, um, because I don't want you just to say, oh, that's Bill's rule and always works. No, it doesn't always work. Different markets are different, different times of the year different. But what isn't different is if we track your numbers, you'll know the right answer. I appreciate that. Okay. Thank you. That's great. Thanks. Cool. Thanks Cor man. Thanks for sharing. Come back, let us know how it worked out. Okay. I have a couple questions at chat box: would I share my details of my weekly routine wow. So my basic, my basic routine is I start my day at eight o'clock, which really means I'm at 7 45 at my desk, clearing out emails and, and reviewing my calendar ready to go. And from eight to 12, my goal is business development. My goal is to talk to people who can even, even, even need to sell a house. Or it can refer me people who can sell houses. Now today, I don't do any cold calling that looks, I, I do call referrals. Uh, I get a lot of people who wanna call me, so I have appointment slots booked up. Most work days between eight and 12. And then I video people. Part of my business development is, I'll call, I'll talk to attorneys and I'll video them and put them on my YouTube channel or vendors insurance, termite inspectors, things like that. So, to me, that's part of my business development. So my goal from eight to 12 is business development. I take a break for an hour. I walk, uh, or, or go swim for an hour and have quick lunch at one 30, come back and then have, and my goal is to have appointments. The rest of the. Or I have podcasts a couple days a week. So ideally my afternoons are, are interviews and appointments and video in the morning is business development. And that just kinda keeps my head in the right game of where I need to be. Um, wait it go. Uh, anyone mis registration others cat with the link for problems on solutions? Okay. Kat didn't hear that she lost the election. Don't tell. I know. She'd be really disappointed, um, with that. So, um, let's see here. Krista Maor has a great program doing the video. She does. I like Krista Maor. I was on her on her in her group on Facebook, uh, uh, this morning. Uh, responding to something. I think she does a really good job. I was watched her video in the market. Um, I'm trying to think the, the, the, the person that I think is the top of the game in, um, video coaching is Think media. And boy, I'm trying, I'm trying to blank on the name of the, I watch 'em all the time. There's three or four different kind. Um, uh, speakers or coaches or trainers in Think Media, but there he is. Uh, I'm drawing a blank on his name, but gosh, probably getting old is there. Go meet the team. Oh, there you go. Sean Cannell. Sean Kennel's phenomenal and I've really followed a lot of their fundamentals. Now, keep in mind a lot of coaching in social media is if you wanna be a social media business, I'm not. I'm a real estate broker. I'm trying to. A real estate business. And so they put a lot of energy into what I would say are the, are the trappings and the look. And um, whereas I would trade a listing for. 500 subscribers. Uh, I went, I want the listing cause the listing is more business for me and relationships. So you had to, you had to kind of take what they tell you and orient it towards your business. But I will say Sean Cane has been instrumental in pushing me to be authentic, pushing me to record, pushing me to put out a lot of content. And I think those are the main fundamentals. Joyce, I see your hand up. Love to have you in and share with us what's going on. Um, I had an interesting experience. on my, uh, one of my leads from a tl they called me from my, uh, my letter that I sent and asked some questions like, how much do attorneys charge? And, and they got a bill from their attorney for, about seven times the amount of, of taxes that they were gonna have due. On the property that their mother owned. And so I gave them the, estate charge for attorneys and I called my friend at the assessor's office in Orange County, California, and they were just a couple of days short, left to go for Proposition 19 because they're gonna live in the house. And so I was able to get them., they're less expensive taxes, so I'm expecting from that a listing. Nice. they have a house that they're gonna live in, but they have a, a triple wide, big, trailer, you know, home, mobile home. I don't know how you do a, a mobile home. Is there any kind of a resource for where you. Find a mobile home information? You mean in order to sell it or what, what do you wanna do with it? Yeah, they, they're gonna wanna sell it as soon as they get it cleaned out. Is the mobile home, uh, attached to foundation is attached to what The foundation.. So mobile homes, Uhhuh, by themselves are not real property. They're personal property. Uhhuh , a mobile home. I'm just summarizing at a high level, and it varies by state, but in general, in California, a mobile home though attached to a foundation is real property. Usually you're leasing the space, so sometimes you can buy the space.. So you have to find out where is a mobile home? Is it in a mobile home park, and is it on a rental space and is it attached? Sometimes they're up on blocks, sometimes they're attached down to the foundation. Once they're attached to the foundation, they're real property and they're eligible for real estate type mortgages. When they're not. They're it's personal property and worth less. Then obviously, if the lot's included, so you have to find out when somebody says they have a mobile home, does that include the. Or not. And is it, is the property attached to the land or not? It is in a park. Does that mean it would be personal? Uh, probably more likely not. Probably more likely. It's attached usually in parks, generally speaking. In California, you're in California, you're in Orange County, right? County, Uhhuh, ? Yeah. Generally they're, they're in a park and they're gonna be attached and there's utility hookups and they pay a monthly fee and they maybe have a lease or something that would be real property. So they're listed in the mls. They're people who list and sell mobile homes. Usually each park has like a SP one agent who kind of. Focuses in that park and if you just search the MLS in that park, you'll find who ideas maybe refer it to them. Oh, great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Sure. My pleasure. Um, okay. Thank you. Uh, just for jumping in, um, Vince, I dunno if you're on the call, you wanna come in and ask some questions on this. So Vince asked, would an intro letter followed by a time date for phone follow up be appropriate . So Vince asks a question I get asked a lot, which is, should I mail instead of phone call? Again every market's different. Where I'm in LA the average probate petitioner gets like 30 to 40 letters. The average attorney gets 30 to 40 mailers as well. So to me, that's just not effecti but in more rural areas, I imagine you might be the only person for sure I would mail if I was in a rural area and there's no other. Working this system. So it depends on where you are. You gotta track your numbers. In general, I'm at a stage in my career where I wouldn't mail anything unless I'm gonna call them as well. Mailing is very expensive. One mailer in of itself is not effective. Generally you need to have multiple mailers. So when you say that multiple could be six times a buck, each is six bucks times hundreds of leads a month. Because if you get a 2% response rate, that's fantastic. With direct. So you're talking about investing thousands of dollars to see if you get your money back. In general, I think peop uh, agents and investors turn to mailing too quickly without being on the phone, because I believe the purpose of the mail is a generate phone call. And if you're not good on the phone at converting leads, then you're not gonna be, you're gonna spend money on mailers. They're gonna call you. You're not gonna be good at converting them . I do believe if you start on phone calls you can add mailers and at some point and maybe pull out of the phone calling, but I think you first have to learn the dialogue of what to say and how to say it to be able to convert leads. Otherwise, you're just never gonna learn that and there's no shortcut to that. And I also think sometimes people like mailers cuz it avoids rejection. I have news for you when they call you, you're still gonna get some reject. It's gonna hurt more because you've mailed so much, you're so excited that one or two rejections are gonna hurt even more. So I don't think mailing will help you avoid what I think you're trying to avoid. I'm, I'm kind of mind reading here cause you have a microphone, but I'm saying in general, when agents ask about mailing, it's a trying to avoid the phone call. Now if you're build a good business, whatever that means to you. in your mailing and I'm sorry. And phone calling. Let's say like, like Courtney said, he's cold calling every day. At some point, if Courtney has money, he wants to reinvest and add mailing to that mix. Great. Because now he knows how to convert those leads that come in. But if you don't do that, I think you're really just throwing your money away. And I talk to agents every day who mailed out once and quit cuz it didn't work every day. So don't be that.. Okay. And again, I'm not selling mailing, so I can say that with all sincerity. Um, Chris asks, have I seen an increase in probate trust leads and deals? Has there been any geographic focus you've seen? Nationwide or California? I'm hoping anybody else's input personally seems about the same to me. Uh, I've been working hard. I got, I got some good leads. I got some good deals. I got some good escrows, some good listings. I need more. I always need more. If you know anybody who's looking to sell property in, in Los Angeles or California, please let me know. I can't say I've really measured the diff, the distant difference, but there's a few less court sales this time of year in court, and the probate leads are about the same monthly. I can tell you the filings in Los Angeles County are about the same on a monthly basis, so I, I haven't seen any real change one way the other What's your process and finding referral is not currently in your trusted group? I'm always looking for people who talk to multiple people to try and get them to refer people to me. So I'll give you an example. I have a listing, uh, I'm sorry, I have a buyer lead. I don't work with buyers that often. I have investors offered on a property and we need to a termite so we have to order the termite. Now, I know a lot of realtors would avoid that and have their TCO or whoever do it, but I don't have a termite vendor, so I made a point of calling the company. They recognized me. I talked to her on the phone. I interviewed her on my video to get her in, in to promote her a bit and try to pitch her on coming to our virtual sales meeting. So, you know, how do you, I build relationships. It's. One activity at a time. All relationships are one step, one process, one phone call, one email, making the extra step, the extra phone call, um, that other people don't do. So I don't know I have any particular, um, uh, uh, nugget for you events other than to say that I'm always looking for people I think can for me business or can really give my customers better service, that in the long run will get me better business.. Um, okay. Steve says, um, I'm having exceptional skills. Steve, you left off. I'm handsome and charming. That surprise you can coach you also work at it. Well, thanks Steve's very nice you to say. Thanks very much. Um, okay. And so Matthew says that mobile homes are sold like an automobile in most states. That's true in California as well. Again, unless the mobile home is attached to the ground, then the transaction. Both the partial property of the mobile home, but attached to the ground, the real property. Um, okay. And how do I differentiate my value add versus other realtors that market my same geographic area to attorneys mysteries or fiduciary? So Chris RAs ask a good question, how do I differentiate myself amongst the hundreds? And you know, it's always interesting to me., and I don't mean to put anybody else down. I, I'm not judging anybody, but all the time I get, uh, I'll talk to somebody who's an attorney or a friend and they'll say, oh, do you know Betty Boop? No. She's a probate expert in, you know, your area. And I look up Betty and her website has, she's a probate expert, but they look in the MLS and she doesn't do any business. And, and so I think that too many salespeople focus on the marketing side. And not enough on the, the value proposition side. So when I market myself, I say, you know, I'm not a, I'm not a marketing coach, but if you wanna know what I think has worked for me to be effective in marketing, what I've learned in my long career, I would say one thing is that you want to be, that your brand, your value proposition should be. they used to be different. There's 10,000 realtors, a hundred thousand realtors in my area. I, we've all been to a networking event where people introduce themselves and yet the realtor, after realtor will say, I specialize in a first time. Buyers, investors, homes, condos, second homes, log cabins, bridges, industrial, commercial, you know, And, and, and we all kind of glaze over and forget who they are. But whenever I introduce myself as, I'm Bill, I'm the LA probate expert. I specialize in probate and legal real estate in Los Angeles. And so I really focus in on that to everybody I talk to in marketing. I'm only gonna do something where I can dominate it or be the only one. So for example, I don't go to LA Bar Association. Events. I, I, I went there to learn originally, but from a marketing point of view, like they have a networking event. I think they had it last week. I didn't go because there'll be 20 realtors there. And I don't want attorneys to look at me as, I'm one of 20, I'm one of one. If there's a smaller bar association, Santa Monica, central City, um, uh, Pasadena, where I'm the only realtor or I'm the only affiliate, great. I'm, I'm willing to do that. So I think it's important to stand. and differentiate yourself. And I don't, I do think that in general, realtors are looked down on by attorneys, so I don't wanna look like a realtor. I wanna look like a probate expert. And so I to urge each of you to think about what your area of expertise is, and you want people to look at you as the expert in that. maybe it's YouTubes, maybe Courtney goes on to become a YouTube influencer in his market area and he interviews businesses and gets publicity that way. Great. Then he's not an investor, he's a YouTube builder, whatever market share person, whatever the words work for you. So I think you have to think about that. So I would say, how do I differentiate myself is I'm laser focused on the value I create and I wanna be the only person in that market presenting that way. and I jumped into that market to fill it up. I couldn't believe nobody else was doing any podcasts on probate in la. So I jumped in and, and took off and built a national platform with it. And I think to this day, I don't think there's anybody who's trying to build a national business based on real estate in probate. And I'm doing that. I have team members and we're trying to build out 50 states and we work with vendors to get referrals. That's what we're, I'm doing. Okay. Thank you Steve. Yes. You're forgiven. If you call me enhancement charming, then you're forgiven for sure. Um, okay, we talked about that. Uh, Randy? Yes. Do I mark it to pre probate and probate leads ? I both ask my questions, should my direct mail be different? If so, can you briefly explain how you differentiate? So I don't mail out to any petitioners today, whether they're pre probate or probate. I did pre covid when covid hit, I stopped everything and kind of re redesigned my entire marketing business. Moved everything to offline, to, to what call online stuff and like this, and have not gone back to any mailers. Um, pre probate, the only ones who I know who do pre probate and have built a business do several different verticals. And then one thing they do is they also combine the verticals. So if, if somebody's a distress and a pre-probate and a vacant, that's like three points and they make sure they, they hit those more than they do the 2.1 s or the 1.1. Um, I don't though market to pre probates. I think they're promising and interesting. and then probate leads, I buy data. but I don't mail to them or email to them or cold call them. I, I more work referrals and work with attorneys and, and sources and use the data to look up cases than I do to actually ma market to them. But if anybody else here on this call mails out, and I, and here's the thing, there are other programs that sell the. And sell the, sell the mailing service and they're gonna tell you how good it is. And they're only gonna tell you how good it is. They're not gonna tell you for anybody who, who doesn't do it. And then people call and say, why didn't convert? Cuz they'd make the phone calls. And I feel like there's almost like the, uh, the abused wife syndrome. You can always blame somebody for not making enough phone calls, cuz nobody's ever gonna make all the phone calls They. and I found that with the Mike Ferry system, that's easy to keep them in coaching. If you can just beat on them and it's their fault, then your coaching is never really held accountable. I don't know the mailing works or not in all markets. I'm sure it doesn't work in all markets. I don't know if it works in half of the markets. Um, but to, to tell somebody it will work. I don't think I'll just say this. I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna tell you, test it and see what your results are and track your numbers. But I also will. If you're not calling first mailing in the hopes of January F business on the phone calls, you're probably not gonna get enough phone calls to ever get good at converting the leads to make that payoff. Um, okay, so that's my soapbox. I'll get off of that. Um, Chad says, hold yourself out as a real estate expert, only introduce the real estate. Uh, uh, the practice if necessary. Okay. I, I'm not gonna say disagree with, with, uh, him, Vince, I would say, uh, you know, when I tell people I'm a probate expert, many don't know I'm a real estate agent. They know that can help solve problems related to probate. So I do think there's some truth to that. If they, here, I'm a real estate broker first, they assume certain things, so I don't want that either. So I definitely hold out my area of expertise being probate real estate. And I would say for the rest of you, whatever that is, and it might be that you have all these services to families the way. Chad coaches in it might be pick a subset and really go deep on those. A couple subsets. Again, I'm in a very large metro area, one of the largest in the country, so I have to specialize more. I suspect in smaller suburban rural areas, you can be more of a full wheel service approach, but I think in LA that's gonna get that message can get drowned out a little bit. Steve says, my approach to pre-pro is different as you're obtaining a referral from a trusted. So, um, yeah, I get, I get pre probate referrals. Basically, I get people who call me before there's a probate and help them get the probate filed. So in that sense, I'm working at pre probates, but I'm not targeting them. I, I've often thought maybe I buy the pre probate data. And I run Facebook ads to them and that they'll come to me that way perhaps, uh, or just invite them to my podcast or something. I've thought about that, but to be honest, I've just, you know, not done that. I've not been that busy where I need to market to be probates. Daniel, see your hand up. Let's get you to unmuted in here. How can we help you? Uh, a couple things. One, um, you told somebody last week, they were saying how they got, they got, uh, a bad call and the personal swearing at them, whatever. You told them two things. It's either, either they're acting outta love or they're acting out of a cry for help. And that really helped me this week. I had someone. and uh, I was able to just text her and calm her down and eventually got a thank you and a smiley face back. So nice. Not, not any sale, but just trying to change the energy for that person. Well, hold on one second. Not a cell yet. I believe you're gonna get a cell out of nowhere and not know it comes from, and that's why. Nice. I believe that with all my heart. Good deal. Thank you. And then, the other one was more of a, a technical. I think I'm gonna use this to try to talk with an attorney just for the opening conversation, but I still wanna ask, I had a guy who his wife passed away. They had six properties. I'm a little confused. I don't quite know what to ask him, but he has, he said his trouble is he's trying to get the property so he, they have a trust. The properties are not in the trust. They bought, they have the trust first, bought the properties later. Classic., but the, they have a trust account where the money is in the trust account. Sure. And you, you can't spend the money to take care of the properties. Were you trying to close that FU account and get the properties transferred to his name, I think, does that make sense? Classic, classic case. so, uh, first off, your first point, just for those who who weren't on last week, what I was describing was, a belief I developed, uh, as a result of a, a great book, of course in Miracles says that all communication is either a cry for. Or an expression of love. And so when you talk, call people on the phone and they're mad, they're mean, they swear aren't you. Just know it. It might not be you. It's they're expressing some pain they're in. And you can, as long as you hear that, and don't take it personal act appropriately, um, but just know it's not you necessarily. Um, that's the first part. The second part, Daniel, um, you're in the state of Washington, correct? Yeah. So, uh, I know California law real well. So what he's describing is people create a trust. Now think of a trust like a. So imagine you go down to the, you know, wherever you would buy a vault, the hardware store, or the vault store, or the gun store. You buy this huge metal vault. It is powerful, strong, cannot be burned, open, cannot be broken, open, blah, blah, blah. And you install it in some secret place in your house, and it's bolted to the wall, bolted the ceiling hidden behind a fake wall. How effective is the vault if you don't put your stuff in the vault? right? So if you leave your gold and coins and guns and valuables outside the vault and somebody breaks in your house, the vault is of no value, right? So that's what happens when people write a trust. The trust is like a legal vault and don't put the assets in the trust. Very common. Two, a couple common scenarios. They write the trust, as Daniel said. They later buy houses and they'll buy them deeded with the trust. and don't put them in the trust. That's a common case. Second case, this common is they have a property that's in the trust. And this was more common years ago. Lenders would make them deed it out of the trust to refinance and they forget to put it back in the trust. Um, and so those are common cases where people have assets that they probably. Meant to have the trust, but they're not in the legal protection of the trust. What do you do in California? There was a famous case, HAAD. H E G G S T A A D, I think it's called a Hanks stead petition. You make a petition to the court to say, Hey, really, these assets which are not titled in the trust should be in the trust for this reason. Maybe they were in the trust document and never titled into the trust. They didn't change the title on the, on the deeds. Uh, forgot to move them in. Or maybe they meant to have everything they ever have in a trust., and this was left out for no apparent other reason than mistake. And in California, generally that can get moved into the trust and whatever advantages that is for the family. I don't know the state law in Washington, but I would ask an attorney about that process. And again, in California's called the Stead petition, um, I'm sure I would guess in some states it's no, uh, I know like I think it was North Carolina. The answer is no. If it's not in the trust, it's not. Uh, and the kind of figures California would be d. I, I don't wanna get into politics of it, but doesn't surprise me. That's our law or our rules. But in, in other states, I do know there are some states that will allow you to say, well, should it be the trust? Was it meant to be the trust? Well, you're saying to that they can use that type of, uh, the petition type thing to get the, the six properties into the trust in California. So I think you need to ask an attorney does that exist in Washington State and the term you might wanna use is, is an equivalent of a stead petition in the state of Washington. Okay. And then what about the funds he has in the bank account so that now at that point that he could use the trust account to manage the properties financially? Is that what you're saying? Well, yeah.. So you're saying the bank counts were titled in the trust, which means the trust assets. Right. The houses are not in a trust, right? So if they can't get them in the trust, they become part of the estate and sometimes they're owned by two different people. The trust might distribute everything to the favorite son, and the probate might divide things equally amongst the good son and the bad son, for example. And so, so if you have money in the, in the trust, you may or may not wanna use it to maintain. the estate or probate estate properties. There's some strategies there that why you might, why you might not want to. So it gets a little complicated. So the first thing to figure out is can those properties be put in the trust? And if the answer is no, the next question is, well, what's the practical difference? There's certain tax laws, there's certain, um, privacy differences. Uh, but also might be that, um, again, California, we have a set rules of absent of will. Uh, and he may, if he has a trust, there's another question. So there's a trust. Usually as part of the estate plan, there's a pack part of the package where they do a will as well. And so the will will say, any assets, not titled that I want to go to, to my good son. So you have to find out in his estate plan, does he, maybe the d maybe the assets aren't in the trust, but part is a statement. Plan might include a will and the will might determine where those properties. effectuate through probate. Um, and that will or may or may not be valid. So those are things you should consider. Okay. Okay. Excellent. Okay. Thanks for that. Sure. Um, Chris says, can I share any complex deals you're working on? Hmm. Um, I have a really good one that, that, uh, it's gonna close escrow in another 45 days. I'd love to talk about that one. Um, I mean, look, a classic case for. is, I had a case where a probate attorney who I'd worked with in referrals from Mia Case, where her client through probate, owned half the property with his stepmother and the each owned half the stepson lived outta state to him was just money. His stepmother, she, she had other assets that she was. And she was happy keeping the property cuz a motion made her feel good. But in California there's two parties who equally own the property, 50 50. If either one wants to sell, then they can force the sale. And she resisted that. So it went to a different attorney for what's called a petition action. So I have a parti, I have a probate client referral goes partition. Now there's two attorneys, one representing him, representing the stepmother. And the challenge is, The, the attorney who represented my, my, the, the guy who was referred to me, of course he likes me, he's referred by the attorney that works with me and there's generally a presumption the other attorney's not going to. So the challenge is how do you work your way toward the other side? They're already competing with each other. They're no lies to each other. How do you get the other attorney to least allow you to be the agent of record to sell the property? Cuz. One agent can sell the property. It's easy for them both to say, we'd both like our agent, let's pick a third. I don't want that to happen. So I had to really reach out and work that client and work that agent and, and share my expertise as a probate, uh, realtor to. Get them to agree to let me list the property. So I would say that's something that, again, it's not automatic and, and no matter mailers and phone calls guarantees that that's the benefit of being an expert. That's the benefit of learning the language, learning how to approach attorneys in a way that'll be effective with them. So maybe that's a, a story I can share enough about me. I think I mentioned a small, simple strategy from observing probate realtor who was able to obtain additional Oh yeah. Uh, who that Christopher asked that question. So last week I mentioned a small, simple strategy. I learned from watching in court another agent. So there was a, a case where I was there and there was another agent. and um, I think either it was a different case or it was the same one and her client won to mine loss. But at the end of the case, this was a court confirmation case where there was a buyer and seller. And then the estate brings the case to court to confirm the sale. And a California you can overbid the sale if you are willing to pay more by 5% plus$500 and show up with a 10 10. Cashier's check made out to the estate and are willing to waive all contingencies. Well, that's pretty bold. It works on fix and flip houses to some degree. So in a $500,000 house, they're bringing the sale to the court to confirm you'd be willing to pay $525,500 and have a check for $52,500 made out to the estate, not to cash, not to escrow to the. and be willing to buy the property as it is with no contingencies. So at the end of the, at the end of the sale, this, I watched this other agent and what happens is the listing agents all try to play games. They all in my way, for the most part. They're more focused on their commission than they are their client. They said more energy in the MLS protecting their commission than they do the client. And one of em, we'll, we'll put some verbiage in that says that the commissioner split 50 50 no matter who. But the probate court in California says that the listing agent gets paid commission up to the prices they bring to court to confirm, and all of the commission over that on the overbid goes to the buyer's agent. It says it in black and white. So what's happened is you have a listing agent, agent who's trying to say, no, I'm gonna entitle to split that 50 50., but technically that contract is overruled because even though we're members of the mls, the MLS says that their rules are superseded by California state law. And so it's really a battle. And some of these, some of these agents will make an issue with a judge, wanna argue the point. That's why when I go to court, if you look in the back corner, there's a blue book. I bring it with me as the California probate code. I've, I have do here to the page that has the commission. and I present that to the judge and I say, look, based on public code 1 0 1, 0.101, seven oh 0.3, I'm entitled to the full 5%. And the judges will look it up and, and there are judges who've I've done multiple times go, yes, Mr. Gross is right, and he's entitled to the full 5%. So the 5% on the overbid, 5% on $50,000 could be $2,500. I get all of that instead of half of that. So I've had cases where I've made, just watching that. And then afterwards I walked up her and asked her great gal from Kelly Williams in Long Beach. I'm trying to blank on her name. I try, I forget names, but great gal, very nice. I've done it three or four times. I've probably made $12,000 just because I learn from her how to get the extra commission that the court, that the probate code, you know, allows me to have. So there you go. So it's worth going and paying attention.. I hope that answered your question, Chris. Um, if the props were in the trust prior, probably a lot easier. Get back in. Um, so Terry says, going back to the case, we talked about if the properties are in or outta the trust, and again, I'd say California, if they're in the trust, deed out a lot easier, get back in. But in some states, once, unless you deed it back in that, that, that state doesn't care. I think North Carolina is one of those that doesn't matter. So it again, depends on your state law. Most things will vary by state law. Um, does anybody successfully invite personal representatives of Zoom calls for questions, similar bill's doing with a different group? That's a good question. Who has a call to personal reps for questions? Now I will say I've done that with estate planning clients. Um, but I've never particularly market to personal reps. I love the idea, uh, uh, personally. Um, there was, there used to be in LA pre Covid, the LA Law Library, which is across the street from the courthouse, would have monthly a session for free for personal representatives that was led by an attorney and I would go to that. That was fantastic., um, Chris RA rules mandate the agent commission of 5% be split 50 50 or could a probate listing agent market at 4%? Yes. The listing agent can market it at 4 0 1. Now everything is up to the judge. So if you felt that was unfair, you could., point that out to the judge and say, uh, that that was, uh, that, that commission's unfair. And the judge can, can definitely make whatever changes the judge wants to make. But generally speaking, when they offer, uh, 5%, the listing agents can offer 3, 2, 4, 1, however they wanna do it. I've seen zero commission. Now, here's what they don't know is when you offer zero commission, all of the overbid definitely goes to the buyer's. Um, and then the, the court will require you to get your Sure. What you would've got otherwise in California probate code. Um, would the commissioner come up a full authority to the press representative? No. These are only limited authority cases with court confirmation. We're talking about on a full authority, unless somebody objects. Now, that's the other thing people don't realize. Full authority is not, you can do whatever you want to do. It's kind of like you can do whatever you wanna do as long as nobody object.. But if, if there's other errors and they object, if they don't sign the notice of proposed action and they object to what's going on and they say, Hey, you're not serving this state properly, you should be offering a, a more competitive commission rate, then, then now you have a, a legal case and, and they both confide over that and get whatever they. Uh, Terry, you're welcome. And if you ever use that trick, please let me know and I'll introduce you to the gal who did that, and you can thank her as well too. I think I sent her a Starbucks card as a thank you one time. Okay. I think we're coming up on the hour. Yes. Yeah, I just wanted, this is Deborah and I just put something in the chat very quickly. I'm working on a course for PAs and I'm trying to figure out how to attract. And what my material, so I'm very early on in this, um, this idea. But I think that would be good for them. But I, I don't know how, how to get 'em, I guess. So I would probably have to go through an attorney. Of course, they would be there to help, you know, give their, their information. You were gonna question for Proba, what's a pa probate attorney, pa a personal, uh, representative PR executor, prs. Pa. Yeah, pa, what did I say? PA pr. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a great idea. I think training them would be great. I think it'd be great resource for them. I know attorneys have done that in the past. I think you also could be partnered with an attorney to do that and get their business as well as part of that. So, Okay. Thank you. Uhhuh, . And Christopher, what percentage of new filings in LA are pro per probate filings? Christopher, I have to get, I have a spreadsheet. I could run it, but I would say by, from memory, um, about, um, 10, 15% are pro per. Now it's a little deceiving because sometimes they're filed in the name of an attorney, but the attorney's not really handling the case. Sometimes there's a paralegal who's doing it. It's really pro per, but they're filing the paperwork on a limited representation basis. But I would say about 10, 50% don't have an attorney to file. Um, probably cases. but I actually, in actual data, I could, you know, if it, uh, those are kinds of things. That's why I get the data so that when people, when I wanna ask that question, I can look at it and I update from time to time. Um, that information. Um, uh, monthly, um, how many are filed in LA County? There's about 400 to 500 probates filed monthly, uh, for probate cases. but not all cases go through 11 'em drop out. So it's um, some of these numbers, I mean if you wanna be technical, but there's about four or 500 new case numbers issued in the probate court in LA County monthly. Okay, I think we're gonna wrap up. That's, uh, 1258, so I think it's a good time to, good part to end. So real quick, let's just go back free resources to help you build your business. Probate mastery.com. Best place to go. You'll see on here, there's a referral directory. There's the podcast. Which is what you're on right now. There's YouTube channel, all kinds of questions with, with clips. That is a good looking guy. Who is that guy? What a nice picture. Um, and you can sign up there to get email reminders. You can see all the different. Formats that is offered. So definitely go to Probate Mastery and sign up there. Also on Facebook, you can go to the Estate Professionals Mastermind, and then also if you're a graduate of the UM, probate Mastery Program, there is an alumni group, probate Mastery alumni. Uh, that has 1600 members. There a little more higher, a little higher level questions than answer. You have to be a, uh, an alumni of the program to participate, but if you are, make sure you get in there and participate. As far as my programs, I'm Bill Gross. I host probate weekly. Okay, oops. I host probate Weekly on Thursdays at 4:00 PM Set up@probateweekly.com or see the past episodes@episodes.probateweekly.com. Love to have you join us there as well. Usually there I'm interviewing attorneys or vendors, whereas I try to make this call more about. Answering questions and more content based. So thanks for everybody on the call. Have a great week for those of you, uh, like me with Jewish Happy Hanukkah. For those you are Christian or celebrate, uh, have a merry Christmas. For the rest of you, enjoy your time off or whatever it is you do. Have a great holiday. Thank you all for participation and we'll see you all next week. Bye-bye.