KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How to Launch Your Real Estate Business in the Probate Niche

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

Summary:This episode provides a comprehensive, step-by-step guide for real estate agents looking to build a successful business in the probate niche. Listeners will learn the fundamentals of the probate process and, more importantly, the tactical actions required to get started. The discussion covers how to source probate leads from local courthouses, the correct empathetic marketing approach for contacting personal representatives, and the importance of building a network of probate attorneys. This is a complete business plan for establishing a profitable and service-oriented niche.

We're gonna start in just one minute. Okay, we're gonna go ahead and get started here. How you guys doing? Welcome to Probate Weekly. We do this every Thursday live at 4 p.m. Though, stays tuned shortly for an update on that. I'm Bill Grouse at Bill Gross Probate on social media or at Billgross Probate.com.

You get all of my links and contact information on such, if you're interested. So today I wanted to start up with a couple items. first why I do this call. And I talked about this some time of time. I started this podcast. Really, I started four and a half, five years ago. It was more of a conference call format,

pre-COVID. Freeconference call.com was a thing. And so I did a call in with other agents because I needed accountability. I wanted to share information as a way for me to build my business. And I knew that by working together, we could all be more successful.

That was the original concept. And we could ask when I started, well, why are you even doing this? How are you getting paid? And I said to be honest, I don't know. I know I need this call. I know there are other agents that do, but I also know that we do this call,

I will learn more, I will touch more people, I'll be more viable to my customers. At the end of the day, my customers, at the end of the day, I'll be more valuable. That means I'll be more successful with business. So that's why we launched this. And we moved to video format. Now, I will say that typically we do an interview,

most commonly attorneys across the country, probate attorneys, probate litigation attorneys, and estate planning attorneys, how to avoid probate, and also vendors that help us be better and help our attorneys be better in serving our customers. Now, I don't pay the guests, though it seems like most would be on it, but being attorneys from time to time, they have scheduled conflicts,

and so our guests this week had a lessment, scheduled conflict that came up, And so rather than replace them with somebody, I find when I look at my YouTube channel that when I do content pieces like today, I get way more views than any interview. And I'm surprised and my assistant encourages me to do this maybe once a month or so, one of every four or five episodes. So today we're going to talk about the question I get most commonly is where do I start to build my probate business? We're going to talk about that. But before we get into that, that's why today's content night interview. Why do I have a cold?

Well, I don't know why, but I do. So forgive me. I've got water, I got cough drops, I'm going to take a break and we'll hopefully hit the mute button if I have to cough. But I want to say without getting into politics of it, just the news has two men who are older than me, which is getting rare and rare as time goes on. One got shot, nicked in the ear, went to work the next day or the day after that. One has a cold and went home for four days. So I'm going to be the one who has a cold but continues to work. So that's always been my work ethic.

I always felt, and this is something I applied in my probate business, and if I outwork the competition in the long run, I'm going to win. So please be with me. Thank you for your support. And if it's something that shocks you, I'm sorry. And maybe skip, go to another episode or something. We are going to be moving this call. We do this now on Thursday's 4 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Eastern.

I did that initially because it worked for me. I never thought about building an audience or a platform. I really, that's the best I could do. Thanks, Tracy. The best I could do, because I was going to court every day from 745 to about 10, 30, 11, got home a little before noon, wanted to work out for an hour. And so I didn't want to start this before 2 o'clock

because it fit my schedule, my lifestyle best. Though that's changed since COVID. I don't go to court every day. I do go once in a while, but I don't go every day. I went this week on Monday and won a property, I mean, I'll go on a $500,000 property, but it's not that often. So really, we're gonna move this to the morning

which gives me more audience on the East Coast, gives me more attorneys on the East Coast, and I think we'll work better for me and hopefully for more viewers. So we're going to try that. Starting August 8th, you'll get notifications. We're going to move this to Thursdays at 9 a.m. Pacific, 12, noon, Eastern Time, and everything in between.

But you'll get notices. It will be recorded still, so if you missed it, it doesn't work, we'll still catch you there. We just will catch you live. And then we're going to go back to a Zoom format because I really think that agents need the interactivity. you know, excuse me, when I interview attorneys,

I think it's so important to be able to ask questions to see how to format them, to see how the attorney responds to them, and to participate. So we are gonna go to an interactive format. Stay tuned for that when we roll that out as well as coming forward. Last thing, if you wanna get in touch with me,

my information is at Billgrossprobate.com, Bill Grossprobbobate.com, and there's my link tree with all kinds of contact information to reach me, and other programs I have, other podcasts I'm doing, If you're interested in any that, we'd love to have you participate. Okay, today's topic, and also on today's topic, I have notes. We're going to start building my probate business.

Now, that will be in the email that goes out to those you who are registered, and the email that goes out after this call, it's already linked. So if you're registered, you've got a reminder email from me through my MailChimp. You'll see on there a link to these notes. And if you are not, and you register now, you'll get the email out tomorrow. And if you want to register for that call, go to probateweekly.com. If you go to probate, I'll show you what that looks like, probateweekly.com. And oops, that's disconcerting.

Huh. Why am I not getting, oh, I'm already there. Okay, probate weekly.com. I can just put your email address. You want to ask for your other information and register. You can also get it on other audio formats in past episodes, but if you do that, you'll get the link with today's notes. Or you can just watch online, maybe take a picture of them if that works for you as well.

Okay, let's get started. The one question I get asked all the time is, where do I start? I coach Probate Mastery on Tuesday mornings at 11 o'clock. That's a free coaching call, probatemaster.com. I do this podcast. I allow people on my LinkedIn, you'll notice I have a link where you can come in if you want an appointment with me. Pretty much I allow just by anybody to make a free coaching call and schedule a call or Zoom call with me. Pretty, pretty available.

So the question I get asked all times, where do I start? There's a lot going on. And I think people feel like they're a fire hose. And so today we're going to step through those processes of where to start. I've helped agents on my team start over and over again as well, as well as I've watched people start to get after a good start and start to get to a best start. So step one, mindset. All transformation starts with mindset.

Now, of course, you have to have a positive mindset. You need to listen to positive things. Don't listen to negative things. Listen to Grant Cardone and Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins and whatever floats your boat on motivational. Get rid of the news, get rid of the Netflix, get rid of anything that's not positive. You know, flood your mind with positive thoughts.

But specifically in probate, I made a list of five things you need to think about and accept to be successful if you really would build your business. Number one, it's gonna be hard, or I should say, A, it's gonna be hard. Pupes me all the time, what's the easiest way to get into probate real estate? Well, I don't know.

It wasn't easy for me because I figured if it's hard work, I'm willing to do it. The other guy or gal won't, therefore I win. So I'm always willing to outwork the other guy. And over time, if you do the hard work, it gets easier for you. And that's the place I find myself today, where I get business because of the work I did years ago. So, hey, get in your mind that it's going to be hard work to get started. It doesn't mean we go into a coal mine. We're not deep-seed divers.

We're not, you know, doing dangerous work welding on a skyscraper. paper, but you have to do some consistent work and it's going to be hard. You're going to get rejection. You're going to be out of nut. You're not going to know what to do when you get started sometimes. It's going to be hard, but be worth it, I promise you. B is it's going to take more than you think. So one of my coaches, Grant Cardone, which is he's famous for his book 10x right there.

I saw Uncle Grant down in Miami a few years ago. I've seen him a few times. Whatever you think it takes to increase your business, try to, Ask yourself the question, what would take to 10 times that? You know, I did, I think, two or three listings, as well as about five buyer sides years ago. When I relaunched my business, I'm going to be a listing agent. I'd ask the question, what would take to do 10 times that in listings?

What would take to list 20 properties in a year? Or 10 times. It was a lot of work. And along the way, you do about 10 times more of everything you do. I was doing one video a week. Today I put out at least, I think 20 total. videos a week. So what if you're doing is it can take a massive increase in activity and just know that. That's just how life works. C, the third mindset ID is listings. Make sure you're focusing

on listings. You're looking at people who have a problem with a property that you fix. That's a listing opportunity. For or D is find ways to be of service. Zig Zigger said, you can be anything in one life if you help enough other people get what they want. So you're looking for ways to be a service. So for me, probate is looking for ways to help people in the probate world be more productive, whether it be a family, an objector, an attorney, a vendor. If I can help them, they're going to want to do business with me. That's my focus.

And e-mindsit is business, it's a system. Too many realtors are caught up in chasing commission checks like an employee on a commission check. I'm a businessman. My commissions are the revenue to my business, and I'm implementing systems and procedures. I'm looking for who can solve problems, not how to do it myself. Those are the mindsets, and even one of those you can go on for an hour. Okay, now we have those mindsets clear to mind, the next question is, or the next step is you have to research your market.

Now, one thing is I find annoying, I watch a lot of probate training from other companies I think I've seen them all and I continue to and what I find is they tend to try to sell you the one system they have across the country in every state in every market large and small and I don't think the same tool works with every single job and so I think you need to research your market and master your market and generally speaking that's most likely going to be in your state and in your county which would be different than any place else.

For example, LA, I'm in Southern California. We have large counties. We have the largest probate court in America in LA County. And we have Renaissance and San Bernardi and Orange, which are large geographically, but per square mile aren't that packed with probate compared to other counties in the country. You have to know your county. Each state has its own laws. Each county has its own rules.

You have to learn the rules of your county court. So a couple of things I would recommend. And A, go to your online county probate website. There's online resources. There's the website will have great information that you can use either to learn or to share with their customers as content, local rules at that court, and then most importantly how to search for case information. There's probate notes, which are the case review, and there's documents, and there's

calendars. And every county is different. I work in a number of counties, but each one is different. If you're on my team, I'm glad to walk you through it and show you, you know, give you some personalized coaching on your county. But I say for the rest of you, which is fine, do what I did, spend the time. Go to the county court, see what's there physically. Go online. See what's there online.

And experiment, spend time on that. It's hard work, but it's worth it. So A is your, under researching market, A was online county research. B is visit your county court. Go there in person. You'll find in your county court, for example, like mine had, a Bolton board with some free resources. In LA, we have the LA County Law Library across the street, and they had classes, both online and in person. At the in-person, there were attorneys doing probate.

I had a chance to meet. So by going in person to court, you're going to learn the layout. You're going to learn where parking is. You're going to learn that even the court's called for 8.30, you've got to get there about to the courthouse. 15 minutes early to get in the door for security, maybe in LA, maybe different in other counties. So go to the court. C is your MLS.

I want you to research in your MLS, if you're a realtor, all listings have the word probate in it. How are they listed? How are they shown? In my MLS, we have a probate yes or no box. And then if it's probate yes, court confirmation card yes or no. And so I created searches both probate, court yes,

and probate court no. But I also did one where I searched the keywords because some realtors don't check the right box. In some counties, they don't have those boxes, but you can search in your keywords or there's other tags. So learn your MLS, learn how to do it properly. The other way you can do MLS when you want the thing you learn is find listings that you know are probate

and then look at their MLS, in my MLS, we call it the agent full report, full detail, has everything, all the information that you put in, find the same that you know is a probate, and then look at the MLS. And if you consistently find agents during certain things, you'll learn about them. Now, sometimes agents copy other agents what they think is best practices, only to not really learn why or what they're doing or to know what they're doing properly. But at least as a start, you'll also learn who really is during,

business in your market you'll be surprised at how little some agents do that talk like they do so much you also if you can research the property income and cross-reference to the probate case find out which attorneys are working with which realtors so it's great research in the mLS what kind of properties get sold at court with court confirmation what kind of properties are probated that don't need court confirmation all that's great info if you research your mLS i'm sorry about the cough i really am we're a soldier through this D is research via YouTube. Obviously, I'm on YouTube.

That's what I did. But I would research attorneys. I would research real estate in your market, probate, real estate, Wisconsin, probate real estate, Milwaukee, probate real estate, is it Racine County? I see Tracy, probate real estate Ventura County. Probate real estate Oxnard,

whatever the nearby cities are. See what other agents are doing, what kind of content they're preparing, what kind of information, and attorneys as well. And vendors. One of the missed opportunities by realtors are the vendors. That's how I've built a platform now where I get referrals

from national vendors and probate bonds, probate advances, probate loans, probate processing, paralegal services. YouTube's an amazing tool for research. Now I think I've put a lot of that content into my YouTube channel. Hopefully you'll find that of help as well. The fifth tool under research under E is executorium. A great resource, executorium.com.

I'll put that in the notes as a link. You go on there and register and what's neat about it is you'll find other vendors in your area. You also can put yourself on the list. You also can add your vendors and get them some free advertising in their area. Great tool for research. for research. Another one is make sure you pick your super niche. When I started this, I had the idea that the people I went to help were families because I saw the attorneys weren't giving them good business service and attorneys because they saw they weren't good at giving good business

service to their clients. So I went in looking to be in that legal services space, not that I'm attorney but that's where I saw the problems so I made a list of what I call super niches and make this little bigger so it's easier to see and then we also make this big there we go so legal or probate trusts legal non probate trust meaning divorce attorneys or other types of legal help eviction attorneys seniors nursing personal property like auction estates local real estate senior housing, estate planning, avoiding probate, wealth management, and accounting.

These are the most common that I've come up with. There's an infinite number of super niches. But as you build your business, you want to build towards one of those as your lead, as your main tent, the main pull in your tent. And be clear which one that is, and that way you can find within, when you find a competitor, they might be focused on seniors

and you're more focused on the law side, or you're more focused on estate planning, and that way you don't overlap, and they become colleagues rather than competitors. Okay, so that's where I would start. We have our mindset and we've done our research. I think it's really important to be clear on what you want to accomplish.

Third would be, what's your system for contacting people? Well, what's your system for contacting your current business? This talk today's really designed for someone who's in real estate and wants to do more. So what are you doing now? And whatever you're doing, you need to increase it with email, social media, postcards, and calls. Meaning, if you're a real estate nation today

who cold calls, then maybe cold call probates. If your nation does a cold call, but calls your past clients regularly and you have a database of 500 and you call them once a quarter, then we're gonna build your, we're gonna call your sort of influence, but add some probate content into your calling mix,

if that makes sense. And then as you're adding in more vendors, and attorneys and families, they'll be in your COI, your C-O-I, your CERV Influence, and you'll be calling them. It was an email campaign, which is why I started with myself, make sure you add everybody into your email and add some probate-related content towards your email. And if you're doing social media, now this is where I started. I had no real social media, no video presence at all.

And so what I had to do was start from scratch about three, four years ago. And I'll tell you, as a result, I have a real social media, no video presence at all. a YouTube channel today that has 3,671 subscribers. I'd love it if you subscribe if you like this content. And I average, in the last 28 days, I had 5,000 views and 343 hours of watch time. So people watching my content, you know, every day. It's amazing. So, but here's the thing. If you're not cold calling now, you're not going to start cold calling probates. That's my experience. I see companies try to sell that to agents. It makes no sense at all.

You're not going to change what you do. So if you're in business already, we would enhance what you do, add new content, add new material, add new product, cure mix. Well, how do you do that? Well, creating regular content by research and reformat from others, number four, and research and reformat from vendors. What does that mean? There are plenty of real estate agents.

who've done great content probate in their voice with their video on their blog that you should use to research, I'm not saying copy it, I'm saying they should give you great ideas and from there you can record your own video content. You can create your own blog post. You can create your own emails or the vendors we do business with. I talked before about executorium and there's another one I use trustinwill.com great material so what you want to do is create additional content that's ready to probate to mix in with what you're doing to your database and what's fascinating is that's how I started I started calling my son of influence and just said hey by the way I just want to

let you know that I've really put a lot of work into probate real estate I go to court regularly I work with attorneys I have a training program I've taken you know it's something I'm really committed to if I can help anyway and I got through the D's and I stopped I got I started getting business and I haven't never gone back to it so what I had was enough information to feel confident to call people I knew and who are new like and trusted me I had somebody who referred me to an attorney and she asked me all kinds of questions she she's just a nasty person we never did business But people like me saying, hey Bill, you know, it's so funny.

My mom has a property. She passed away. Can you help me with it? Or I have a question. And that's what happens when you call your database. So I would urge you just to add into what you're doing. If you're doing currently email, add probate content to your email. If you're doing social media posts and it's working for you, that's how you're driving your business.

I'm not talking about what you do that doesn't work. What do you that drives your business? Do more of that and add in probate content. If you're doing postcards, alter the postcard in about avoiding probate, about estate planning webinars. And again, if you're doing phone calls, just add that content in piece into your call.

And so you create the content and apply it to database. That's all really talking about here. Now, I will say you also have to add in regular education and accountability. So I host probate master's coaching call, Weekly Tuesdays at 11 a.m. You go to probate mastery.com. If I got to put that in the link,

for those you've got the notes. If you just go to probatemastery.com, you'll find the, oh, look at that. Just a second here. Okay, you can go there and sign up free weekly call with other agents, ask your questions, and it's a great opportunity to learn, share ideas and information.

Just call, Probate Weekly, It's moving to 9 a.m. in a few weeks, but for now, we just every week. You're already watching it. You're already subscribed to it. All theleads.com has a call. I'll put their link as well. And that's on Thursdays at 10 a.m. Also a good source. Now, they're more selling their system of data and postcards. So it to me is a little salesy. But It's worthwhile. I check in on it every week pretty much. I do it because I learn. I pick up one idea. It's worth it. And then Facebook. I probate weekly, free, post content, ask questions, participate, help other people ask questions, refer our business to other agents, look for attorneys in other areas.

Probatee helped us because another Facebook group. These are hyperlinked. Great sources of ongoing information where you can get leads and more importantly where you can contribute. You can add your content in these places and get more likes and views and all that good stuff and then lastly would be just basic sales systems networking right you have a networking system in place make this little bigger so it's easier to see so i'm Casey everhears with my networking coach for about four years now and there's a link here to his program networking riches fantastic free two-day training program i don't think he has been scheduled yet on books for august but if you sign up now you'll get notified when it comes out.

Free two-day program. He has an upgrade you can pay for it later, but I would say start the free content. If it helps you, then maybe invest in the paid content. And then real estate sales. I came through the Mike Ferry system. I also before that was using Don Hobbs as my marketing coach. And Don Hobbs has gateway to mastery.

And there's a link to that program as well on the bottom. But you need to have the mindset. So just to look back real quickly, the mindset right of what you're looking to do, Research and create the bullseye of what you're looking to get. And we've gone through those steps. And then add the content to your current system and upgrade your current system with more activity, more content, maybe more social media channels.

Maybe you're not doing video. You should add video. Take your email and record it on YouTube as well and send it out as well. That's what I started doing. I used to do an email database every week and I started using that email as the screen. for my video and now the podcast called Real State Market Update and let's see I'll show you the numbers that it's just it's just amazing the power of these programs so real estate market update in the last 28 days just that podcast it's not

gonna show okay never mind let me do this down across there we go just that podcast last 20 days I had 331 views watch time of 25.8 hours YouTube paid me money for the program and then this shows you each of those and how many views they got in the last just last 28 days so per month I'm getting that kind of I'm getting 25 hours of watch time for something that takes me about four hours of work not even now I don't think this is quite right this is a podcast and not the videos also or there's something like that to it my assistant knows those numbers because I know the views on the most current one got more but anyhow my point

of all that is the power of the social media leverages your time and so I'm just taking the knowledge I have and putting it out to people as I built my database to get more people to see what I do so again a quick recap your mindset right focus on what you need to do we know it's hard work we have to 10 times our activity but focusing on listings how to be a service and we're building business systems and procedures. From there we're going to research what we want to do. We want to research the materials so we're the masters of our area, whatever the niche and the super niche if appropriate in your

area. And it gave you different ways to go online to your county, go to county courthouse, your MLS, YouTube research, executorium, and finding your super niche. And then you want to add in your content and activity. or whatever you're doing now whatever's working let's just do more of it and do it better and create more value to it and then there's other ways you can stay in the game to both leverage your content as well as learn more and stay more and grow your business okay if you're watching this you've got people on youtube facebook interesting x.com is a free week and resubscribe this material and i get good viewership on x it's really

interesting for free very underrated if you're watching this live have questions on any those platforms go ahead and put him put in me and I'll be more glad to or if you have a shout-out if you have something you want to talk about because that's really what I presented today anybody so thanks for being with me with a cold I'm sorry I was just determined to get through this and not let it stop not as good as I like it to be but it is the content I have if you have questions on this reach out to me email me text me up a one-on-one call. I'm glad to help you walk you through it. But this is for somebody who is an established agency looking to build their business by adding probate or focusing on probate to add more

niches. Thanks Tracy. Thanks for your comments. This is not for a brand new agent. How do I get my first lesson? That's a different conversation and a different question. But what I will say is the probate business, if you're established agent, it's right in front of you. It's hanging on fruit right in front of you. And the way to get there is to help the people who already know, like, and trust you. Once you've done that, you can add in the strangers, meaning if you're doing a calling to your database,

I would call them all first about probate before I and subscribe to and buy and called strangers. If you're doing postcards your database, I would postcard my database about probate before I start postcarding strangers. See what works, get some feedback. then you can add in the direct mail piece to strangers same with emails same with all the other formats okay that's what i have today i don't see any other questions so basically i'm going to

wrap up a little bit get a little rest of my voice a little bit thank you all for hanging through with me i'm at bill gross probate and social media billgross probate.com is my website if i can help any questions please reach out to me as always make today your best day ever thank you everybody thanks so much