KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How To Start Your Probate Niche Business

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

SummaryNavigating the world of probate real estate offers a unique and fulfilling niche for agents who are ready to serve with empathy and expertise. This episode provides a comprehensive guide on how to build a successful probate business from the ground up, covering everything from understanding the legal landscape to developing effective marketing strategies. Learn how to be a valuable resource for families during a difficult time, and in the process, build a stable and referral-based real estate career.Key TakeawaysEducate Yourself: The probate process varies significantly by state. It is crucial to understand your local laws, court procedures, and the roles of key players like the executor, administrator, and probate attorney.Build Relationships: Success in this niche is built on trust. Focus on networking and building strong, compassionate relationships with probate attorneys, estate planners, and other professionals who can be a source of referrals.Lead with Empathy: The most effective approach is to position yourself as a helpful problem-solver, not a salesperson. Families in probate are often grieving, and a compassionate, service-first mentality is essential.Use a Multi-Channel Marketing Approach: While direct mail is a foundational tool, you can also leverage a strong online presence, educational content, and a professional website to demonstrate your expertise and attract clients.Keywords/PhrasesProbate Real Estate, Real Estate Niche, Probate Business, Real Estate Agent, Lead Generation, Probate Law, Estate PlanningCall-to-ActionReady to start a business that is both profitable and meaningful? Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform and learn the step-by-step process to becoming a trusted probate real estate expert!

How you guys doing? Welcome to Probate Weekly. So today I wanted to start up with a couple items. First, why I do this call. And I talked about this sometime 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 we could all be more successful that was the original concept and we're gonna 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 and at the end of the day my customers, at the end of the day, I'll be more valuable, and 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 to 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 of one of the, But being attorneys from time to time, they have scheduled conflicts.

And so our guest this week had a lessment schedule 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.

Before getting 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 gonna take a break, and we'll hopefully hit the mute button if I have to cough. But I wanna say, without getting into the 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, knicked in the ear, went to work the next day or the day after that. One, has a cold, 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 PM Pacific, 7 PM Eastern. I did that initially because it

worked for me I'd 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 in because I was going to court every day from 745 to about 1030 11 got home a little before noon went 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 do go once in a while but I don't go every day I went last I went this week on Monday and won a property I mean next grow on a $500,000 property, but it's not that often. So really we're going to 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 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 going to go to an interactive format stay tuned for that when we roll that out as well that's coming forward last thing if you want to get touch with me my information is at at Bill Grossprobate.com, Bill Grossprobate.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 of that, we'd love to have you participate.

Okay, today's topic, and also on today's topic, I have notes. We're gonna 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 mailcham 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 probate weekly.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 when ask for any 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'll just by anybody to make a free coaching call and schedule a call or Zoom call with me.

Pretty, pretty available. The question I get asked all the time is 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 gonna stop, 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,

you have 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 a list of positive things. Don't listen to negative things. Listen to Grant Cardone and Zig Zigler 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. your business. Number one, it's going to be hard, or I should say, A, it's going to be hard. People ask 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, A, get in your mind that it's going to be. It's going to hard work to get started. It doesn't mean we go into a coal mine. We're not deep

sea divers. We're not, you know, doing dangerous work welding on a skyscraper, but you have 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. Beas is it's going to take more than you think. So one of my coach is 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 to 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. 4 or D is find ways to be of service. Zig Ziglar 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 gonna wanna do business with me. That's my focus. And e-mindset 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,

and 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 that 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 gonna be in your state and in your county, which would be different than any place else. For example, LA, I'm Southern California, we have large counties. Do the largest probate court in America in LA County. And we have Rhinocide, San Bernardian, 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. A, go to your online county probate website.

There's online resources. Their 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, 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, under research, you can market, A was online county research. B, is very, visit your county court, go there in person. You'll find in your county court, for example, like mine had, a bulletin 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 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 it's probate yes or yes and so I create 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. What 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 agent put in finally see 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 You'll also learn who really is doing 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 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 company. 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, 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. 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 Executoryum. 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. Another one is make sure you pick your super niche. When I started this, I had the idea that the people I wanted 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 an attorney,

but that's where I saw the problems. 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 your 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 agent 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 CER of 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 the 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 pro base. That's my experience. I'm not going to, I see companies try to see 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 in 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 working to 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 in any way. and I got through the Ds and I stopped.

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 I knew liked and trusted me. I had somebody who referred me to an attorney and she asked me all kinds of questions. 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 to drive your business? Do more of that and add in probate content. If you're doing postcards, altering a postcard in about avoiding probate. 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 at your database that's all really talking about here now I will see 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 up with that in the For those you got the notes, but just go to probitmaster.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. This 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, already subscribe 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 to me it's a little salesy. But it's worthwhile. I check you on it every week pretty much. I do because I learn. because I learn I pick up one idea it's worth it and then Facebook I have probate weekly free post content ask questions participate help other people ask questions

refer our business to other agents look for attorneys other areas probably to help desk is another Facebook group there's 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, Casey Eberhardt's been 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 get notified

when it comes out. Free two-day program. He has an upgrade you can pay for 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 McFerry 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 more maybe more social media channels maybe not doing video you should add video take your your email and record it on youtube as well and send it out as well that's what i started doing i used to an email database every week and i started using that email as well as

the script for my video and now the podcast called Real Estate 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 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 the 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. 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 build

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 we're focusing on listings, how to be of 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 material, so we're the masters of our area, whatever the niche is and the super niche if appropriate in your area. And I gave you different ways to go online to your county, go to the county courthouse, your MLS, YouTube research, executorium, and finding your super niche.

And then, Then you want to add in your content activities 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 way 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 other platforms, go ahead and put them in. 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. set 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 person agent looking to build their business by adding probate or focusing on probate to add more niches. Thanks, Tracy.

Thanks for comments. This is not for a brand-new agent. How do I get my first listing? That's a different conversation and a different question. But what I will say is the probate business, if you're an established agent,

it's right in front of you. It's hanging on fruit right in front of you. 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, call it your database, I would call them all first about probate before I'd subscribe to and buy it 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 in the direct mail piece to strangers same with emails same with all the other formats okay that's

what we 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