KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Organizing An Estate

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

was inheriting properties, other assets. You can choose a very narrow focus, just doing your business, your transaction, or a wider variety of services. As a real estate agent, my coach was Chad Corbett and appropriate mastery. And really, the first thing he started was to learn how to help solve the customers' problems, whatever they are. And in the course of doing that, we need to meet other professionals in related fields who can help serve our customers as well, as well as well as work with a big value to help us build our

business, number one. Number two, obviously people are working with the people we want to work with. We want to learn what they're doing well so we can do that as well. So I'm really excited today. I came across Joan McCreary, who's in the estate and home organizing business through another professional. I'm in Southern California, the L.A. area. She's in Northern California. But in some regards, we do with some of the same people, some different. We have some similar approaches, some different. I had a private talk with her previously, and I just had be fun to share with her. and probably weekly, Joan, thanks so much for joining us today. Hi, Bill. Great to see you again.

So give us a quick start. How did you end up in the business to stay at home organizing when you were your little girl where you're playing with Barbie dolls and organizing the house there? How do you end up in the space that you're in today? What are you, my brother? Yeah, absolutely. I was playing with Barbie dolls and organizing my space. That's exactly right. In fact, I'm excited to see this new movie Barbie because I was a Barbie fan. But really, I was the kind of kid who was always reorganizing my mother's kitchen cabinets, and we had a huge storage closet. And I was always the one going in there at least once a year to reorganize everything. And just kind of came naturally to me.

I've always been an organized person. But I think the thing that really drew me to working with other people's things was working actually in the schools when my kids were young and learning that people are coming. to life in so many different ways. And I'm interacting with people from all different cultures and backgrounds here in Silicon Valley and finding that people had organizing problems. Sometimes it was school papers. And other times it was mom and dad or aging. And they got to deal with all the stuff that they've had all their years.

And so when my previous career in the medical device arena went away, I had this opportunity to stay at home with my kids, engage in the school system, and then learned that I really needed to work with adults. So when I started looking for a career, this would be my third career, really, the organizing field popped up and I thought, wow, how fascinating I can use project management skills, I can use my administrative skills, I can use my educational skill that I had developed as teacher working with teachers and it was perfect and I started attracting clients who were what we call chronically disorganized that led to working with special populations like seniors and that led to working with their families as they were clearing out homes after mom and dad

had moved out of the long time home so just a quick housekeeping this is going to respond to them or if you're watching a replay will come here information my goal my vision was created national satisfactory for me. So I've created my own. And so I want to use this. If you have a, if you're so inclined, put your name, your contact information, and then what you service, what industry you're in, if it's a real estate, an attorney, or whatever, put in the chat box, we'd love to engage with you as appropriate.

And last, the way you participate. So put in the chat box, if you would, are you a real estate agent, most people here are in what state you're in, or are you real estate investor, or you other vendor, and if you are put vendor and then a comma and what you are. I can guide the conversation to the right spot. So Joan, for me personally, one of the best books I read as an adult the last 10 years was Marie Kondo's The Life Changing, Life Changing Magic of Tidding Up. Tidding up. I've always admired Japanese culture. In that book, I've told you, help me spiritually understand. I'm a pretty organized person. But I also help me,

I often have to talk to other people. I'm not going to say my wife. my wife, I'm not going to say that because that would be rude on a national call, but other people who need help in that area. As a professional, I also deal with that all the time. Talk a little bit about your theory. How do you see the, what framework do you use to help people get started to organize things and be productive? So I respect Marie Kondo and I really admire the impact she's had on our organizing industry. Just, you know, rising tide floats all boats, right? Everybody benefits. from that type of exposure. And certainly we are on a big wave right now of organizing interest, shows on television, podcasts, books, you name it, it's all over the place.

My personal philosophy, and keep in mind that I am, my experience comes really with working with people with deep-seated organizing challenges, right? Not just, I want to get my closets looking better. that we'd be real goal-oriented and recognize also that aspirations and reality sometimes have a big gap in between them, right? So people who think that they want to have a space where they can have people over, but they're not willing to put anything away, and therefore they're going to perpetuate their state of disorganization and chaos in their homes. by the way, can't have anyone over syndrome, chaos, they kind of go together. So yeah, my my approach is let's set some goals and let's try to figure out what we need to do to make your aspirations realistic.

Like a business planning or project kind of approach, it sounds like. Almost, yeah. So a lot of times people come and they say, they're like, I know I want to do better, but I don't know how to get there. And I think one role that the organizer can have is to help them chart that path, right? I know what can happen. I can envision how it will work. You don't know how to get there. I will make it work for you.

One thing is also in my life, I think I'm one of the most organized in terms of physical organization, people I know. Meaning my desk is always tidy together. My home area, my dresser and things like that, everything's put away in a place somewhere. That's kind of my operating principle. And my wife wasn't, and she had to hire somebody to help organize things because she couldn't get it for me. Is that a common experience where somebody brings you in as a third party, either kids for the mother or? Absolutely. Super common. It's great. If an organizer feels confident in that role, which I do, I love to come in and help people. Like sometimes the reality is it's the difference between one party and the other, right?

Roommates, partners, spouses, whatever. He said, she said, or she said, doesn't matter who they are, but they're just not aligned. And that's very common. I'll tell you, my husband polar opposite to me in terms of organized. He's not. How does that happen? I don't know.

And that's pretty often. It's not uncommon, right? That you have people who are really different. And I think there's still a lot of room to grow. In fact, I tell him he is one of my best learning experiences, knowing, you know, being able to co-exist with him and to help him where I can and recognize what I need to bring in outside help like you did. Outside help really neutralizes a lot of the obstacles, which tend to

be in the baggage that we carry, right? So what I find in the estate side or even working with seniors, we get adult children who say mom or dad need to change, mom or dad say they're trying to tell me what to do, I don't want anybody else making decisions for me yet. I'm not there yet. I can take care of things or take care of the decisions at least, even if I can't get on the stool and get things down off the shelf. So an organizer can come in, be the baggage less party, let's say, probably same age range as the adult children, but no agenda, right? We're no judgment, we're accommodating, we listen to the stories, we don't tell them they're wrong, but we can also nudge in the direction that they want to go.

As long as they're willing to do the work with us, we can get them there. So where I work with home organizers is two completely different worlds almost. One is the families that have means have more assets typically planning ahead a little bit are more likely to plan ahead on their, you know, finances. Those are the people who are going to do in the state, plan ahead of time. So I will market to people in that world and I'll share and me and network with the Joan McCurry of Southern California, South, you know, different areas I do business in as a way to kind of parallel up with that group of people. So that's one area I work in. The other

area is more probate, which to me is somebody died. There's an heir who lives out of state. Even they lived an hour away, it feels like they're out of state. And mom and dad let things go downhill. Mom and dad may have spent time in a facility for six months. So they wouldn't be at the property. The property could have, you know, the water had to get turned off because it was broken or the gas leak. The place is a complete mess. It really just to be cleaned out and determined what gets sold, what gets donated, what gets trashed and handle that.

So those are two different, in my mind, those are two different lines of business. this, which is the one that I think you're in the former, more than the latter, or do you do both? Where do you kind of fit into those two boxes? So I do both, but you're right. My work tends to be more on the trust level of clearouts. There definitely are more available funds, usually in the trust. Probate is a little, could be a little bit more difficult. And it's interesting because there's challenges with both.

types of estate resolutions, right, in terms of the court having oversight and having requirements that you may have to report into a probate referee. You may have to do inventory, evaluations of the tangible personal property. And then with a trust, you may not need to do that for the courts, but you may have to do it for beneficiaries who are arguing. And you get a lot more conflict often in the trust area. then you might in a probate, in fact, where the courts are going to make the decisions about who gets what. And in the trust area, people tend to have a little bit more conflict, I think.

I also understand what you're talking about with the derelict properties, where you see a lot of maybe benign neglect, things have fallen to the wayside, lack of maintenance. I definitely have seen this in trust properties as well as probate in my area. I am always surprised to see a property that has not been well-maintained when there is a well-established trust. But often I also see that these are properties that maybe have charity beneficiaries, didn't have family engaged and involved with the trustee, with usually the senior person who's living maybe alone, what we might call an orphan senior. And so they didn't have a support network to help them maintain things or whether

they're living in the home or in some kind of care. But we're lucky to have we learn quite a bit and he's become a good friend here to our show and just in general, Courtney Rollins. Courtney asked a really good question. I want you go ahead and ask you Courtney and again, keep in mind we're talking both about Joan in her business specifically and then we're also talking about in general the industry. I appreciate it. Thanks for the words.

Thanks. It's great to be. There's always great information. I was warning, John, like, do you see in the space that you're in? Do you know anyone that provides, like, health and safety assessments of the homes? And do they see you as a trusted advisor that could say, hey, this home is actually can be safe to stay in if we do these steps right here or looking at the, you know, the situation, this home may not be deemed safe.

And I'm thinking about different questions about what that is there a liability there or do you have to contact other folks? And the reason I ask is because I know in the senior world it seemed I'm not to know that I just came to realize in the senior world how much falling is as an issue. Especially as my dad has gotten older and he's been in and out of the hospital and they actually, you know, have him walk around with sign that, you know, says fall at risk, fall risk. So this is one of you all provide any type of assessments here. Yeah, super great question. I think you're, that's so astute that when you have the opportunity to go into somebody's home, whether you're a real estate professional or any kind of senior advisor, then you have this, been this opportunity to influence somebody's life in a very positive way. And sometimes that is looking out for care and services that they need beyond what you offer.

Okay, so I want to put it into that larger context because that's how I certainly look at it when I go and somebody says, hey, can you come over and can you go help my mom and set up it, you know, one to one, just meet her and see what you think if you can help her out. So I'll go and very often I think, hmm, I am not the person who's needed right now. What they need right now is somebody who can come in and do an assessment for this person's welfare. And that doesn't necessarily mean we have to contact. something like adult protective services or some social service, but there are people who can come in and evaluate. So usually they are going to be either some kind of social worker or some kind of what we call a geriatric care manager. Sometimes even someone who is a certified senior advisor, CSA, which is, I believe a national designation, can go in and make these kinds of things and anybody can be a certified senior advisor. Some real estate professionals are. But I would generally, it's going to be a care manager. Those people are either called geriatric care managers, their elder care managers, life care managers, and there is a whether their kitchen is safe in terms of, you know, stuff on counters that's interfering as food preparation or is a fire

safety has you know fire hazard that kind of thing I will go in and tell people that I think they've got some safety concerns and I can make some recommendations I do carry errors and omissions insurance or that purpose because I am giving advice and that's what E&O covers right so there is a potentially in California's supremely litigious state so as Bill knows we're gonna cover ourselves a little more carefully, being cautious about what we make those kinds of assessments. And they also, the care managers, not only are going to be able to weigh in on the physical surroundings, but also on the health of the individual, so that physical health, the mental health,

being able to recommend any kinds of mental health assessments, physical therapy options, Maybe they need to be referred to a gerontologist or any other specialist. That's a great role for a care manager. That is awesome. It seems like it fits right in line with what, you know, Bill and Chadden, everyone sharing with like holistic approach to helping the clients. But what you just said, the last part, that really perked my errors as far as the, I've never heard of that type of insurance.

And I actually thought about. Oh, errors and emissions? Yeah. There was an admission. Yeah, I wrote it down. I have to because, you know, I've quite often find myself saying I'm not an attorney. now to give me legal advice of sharing my opinion. But I thought, do I need to give folks who are contacting me

and I'm just supporting them and trying to, you know, guiding through my opinion? Do I need them to sign some waivers, say, hey, you heard that Courtney? I mean, I don't want to get too complicated, but I'm, you know, I'm a wholesaler and investor, so I don't necessarily have a broker or that type of overheads or support when it comes to, you know, legal protection. So thanks for that as well.

I'm considering that. Very good. Excellent. jumping in. Yeah, and I think for all of us, we have to have to be clear that when you get out of your lane, you run the risk of giving advice. As a real estate agent, I have areas of mission insurance for my business. I don't have it. I'm talking about somebody else's business. And that's where you bring in a professional who does. They can give that advice at the same time they're protected. And, you know, in the nature of probate and trust is you're already done

with people who've been to an attorney once. And I've seen that happen. So that's a good point. So let's step back a little bit from the delivery of the service to kind of the business side. I know that I saw you market yourself on an event with a colleague. I think that's what I caught my attention in the first business. I think it was a colleague from Southern California that I worked with. Tell me a little bit about how do you go about building your business or is it at this point just all referral coming to you? Or do you have any particular activities that you use to help you build your business with people who can refer you?

to families, which are the same people we're looking to talk to. Right. Well, I'm very pleased to be in a space right now where the networking and marketing that I've been doing for the past eight years or so has really kicked in and it's just been flowing steadily for the past two years. I think I finally got it dialed in. My business is fairly unique as just for everyone who's on the first. the call, organizers have a lot of different niches, and it's hard for the marketplace to differentiate between all these niches. They don't know that there's someone out there who can help them go through their estate, who can sort through the drawers and cupboards and everything and figure out

what's there. People don't know that that help exists. And they're starting to get, you know, the idea that there's the Marie condos and the home edit people out there, but they don't know. all that there's people who do photo organizing, that there's people who do productivity organizing, that organize, that specialize in organizing attorney's offices. I mean, it can be really, really niche. They can also serve as conservators and power of attorney and all sorts of different things. So in California, this is a very trustworthy and professional group of people, and they have a lot of a state business and probate business, right, trust and probates. So Bill and I work with these

individuals in California. I don't know about the rest of the country too much, but I do recommend that you look them up and try to learn about what they do if you're not already connected. These people who are heavily into the estate administration business pass a lot of business to real estate professionals and to organizers and to me in particular. I've also been networking with professional groups that have a lot of estate attorneys in them. And these attorneys, they don't always administer the probates or the trust, but they advise on all of them, right? So they will have clients that they're advising who have been named as probate administrators, who have been named as successor trustees.

And they will guide their clients to my business because I have now a track record here. So those, so word of mouth is definitely the big thing. I have found that networking with related professionals is powerful, but also networking with people who are in the same industry as I am, that is professional organizers, is equally powerful. So when you specialize in probate as a real estate professional and you've got, a colleague in the same brokerage who doesn't, a person is probably going to come to you, either to partner with you or something or to at least make a referral so that you can, you know, you'll have that opportunity. So you want to push your skill set and your expertise

area to as many people as possible, whether they seem to be parallel professionals or related professionals. So there's a lot to impact that you just gave. And I just want to kind of recap it a little bit so we don't miss any of the gold that you just put out there. You really give us three different strategies. One is there are specific networks of people who deal in this world, estate planning. And I think that while it's licensed in California, the organizations are more private. And it's more of a business. It's a business of state planning network.

And there's a couple competitive ones. And so networking with estate. planning or related industry specifically attorneys specifically, number one. Number two, you talk about general networking with attorneys and other people who deal in this space. And I think that's also a great strategy. And the third one you mentioned, I think everybody who's a realtor should look at.

And this is one that I've worked out quite a bit. The unique benefit of my company, EXP, is we have agents across the country. On this phone call, I have a bunch of colleagues. And I've met with them and talked to them. and it makes it easy to do business in our company and to share information is within your own office or your own franchise or your own company. And so, and I'm looking to add to that. So anyhow, everybody's into that let me know. But those are three different strategies, any one of which you can make a living at, right? You could just work a state playing network groups

the rest of your career, never get them on. You could just work related industries, as attorneys and home organizing organizations or you could even just work realtors and make a good living in a those suits if i just wanted to do an interview with joan we could record it and i could i don't know go to the beach for the day we do this on purpose because i find that we learn more we participate we learn more and get more out of it when we participate i also would give you the the opportunity to step up and be recorded and so that's a very valuable well let me ask you John. So you let's say you go through your life and are able to refer their clients. Yes, the whole point of the story is that she asked the question, can attorneys refer

clients? Yes, they refer amongst each other. The attorneys who do, you know, criminal law, who don't do probate or stay planning, who meet a customer. I said, well, I don't do that, but my friend Joe does. And so if you find an attorney that does a state planning or does probate work, you and introduce them to other attorneys that they're friendly with for that purpose as well. Okay, so, Joan, I'm sure that you must get approached by, maybe have it, maybe haven't, other real estate agents in their probate space, or seeing them, of course, your business, or seeing them, of course, your networking. What are one of the two of the things that you see the best people, the best realtors in particular,

let's talk about that because that's most of our call. What's one of the two things you see the best realtors doing on the business development side to help them build their business that maybe the others aren't doing. That's a great question. You know, when I see real estate professionals who are really, first of all, really listening to the needs of all the parties that might be in a probate case, right? So they not only understand that there are these multiple parties, but they're listening to what their needs are for each case and able to articulate that back.

So this is part of just good listening, right, and good interpersonal relationships. When you communicate, you hear that, you know, the attorney's got a need, that the courts have a need, that the family has a need, that the organizer has a need, and what, how are the, and understanding that these are all going to have to be addressed, and you can't just barrel through the process, right? Right, because they, so these real estate professionals are listening to deadlines that are needed, to documentation that's needed, to where the approval is going to be needed. So in a probate sale, you may or may not know, the court has to approve the actual offer. So you have offers that come in and the court is going to tell you that you can or can't take an offer based on what they think the property is going to be worth. And sometimes it's kind of going to make you tear your hair out because it's not realistic or it doesn't seem to match what the market's driving at that moment. But you have to go back and work with the courts on that. The attorney is going to take that offer.

And you're going to go back to the court and they're going to say, here's court, here's the offer. And are they going to sign off on it or not? So you have to know those kinds of things. You cannot accept offers on behalf of the client without that kind of approval from the court. So if you don't know, if you're not listening to all of the terms of each case, you're going to really kick yourself in the, you know, kick yourself. and it's going to backfire on you. So that's what I see that the most successful

real estate professionals are listening and taking it all in. And that's why we do this call, right? Because you have a chance to learn at other people's mistakes and problems. I see it all the time where attorneys as well as real estate agents don't really know the process and think they don't need the inventory and appraisal

though just provide an appraisal. That doesn't work in California. It might work in other states, but you need an actual court process, probate referee, completed M-20-Payor report. And I've seen attorneys argue with a judge, and I know you're not going to get anywhere. There's no way the judge is going to deviate from that requirement. It's just, it's just too common. It's just too, maybe in an emergency or life and death for sure,

but in the normal course of business, they're just never going to go for that. So you need to learn kind of the processes as well. So I think you asked you both questions, what the, we're the best do and what, what do the worst do? So let's talk about business development. What do you see, Do you see real estate agents in your space doing business development successfully? And what are they doing to generate that business? Besides doing a good job in getting referrals and earning them, what do you see them doing from a business development point of view from the activities, if anything? Well, one thing I have admired is the people who will put on panel discussions or workshops for their community,

whether that's at, you know, a senior community or whether it's at a condo complex or wherever. Maybe it's in your own office and you're just inviting people who are on your mailing list. And they're putting together people like myself and a senior placement advisor, maybe an estate planning attorney, people who are in the space that are going to influence the outcome of any potential sale that comes up, right? But what it does is it's a learning opportunity for this community to come in and hear from other senior service professionals. And that's what I wanted to, I do want to emphasize that senior service professionals. Okay. So there are numerous people who are. Let's all chant that together. Senior service professionals. Okay. Right. Okay. So,

So who are senior service professionals that you could invite to something of this nature? Well, we talked about geriatric care managers already. I mentioned senior placement advisors. So these are people who generally take a commission from senior communities to place an individual in an apartment, a cottage, or whatever unit that they're going to buy into or rent in these larger communities, right? then they're moving out of their home so then you can presumably sell their home for them. So the placement advisor is a very important professional for your potential buyers to meet.

An organizer is great because we help with the downsizing, the preparation, the mental parting of with the things and the physical parting of the things. A move manager is another one. They often are called a senior move manager. I am also a senior move manager. There's a national association of senior move managers. There will be one in your neighborhood. Who else?

Let's see. Well, we talked about the state attorney. There could be a tax preparer. There's just no end to the number of people who are in that space of senior service providers. There's literally no end because in other ones that you're not involved with on the real estate transaction, probate bonds, probate advance companies, there's a million other logistical and legal providers and service providers,

document signing people. The key is to find the one or two that line up with how you do business. You know, if I was doing more higher end and looking more for estate playing attorneys, Jones is kind of organizer I'd want to work with because I find when the families are moving the physical stuff, they're cleaning up the met, the physical space is a reflection of the cleaning up the mental space, which has been holding the back from getting the estate plan done properly. And maybe it's been saying there, the attorney did it for two years.

They never signed it. When they get in the mental space that they're getting rid of stuff, that to me is a great sign that they're more open to doing the work and planning ahead of time. And so you want to find, she mentioned a few. There's an endless supply. If you really think about it, find more into it that really fit into your space. Al Abdala is a top top roasted agent in the probate space out of Michigan. Al, what's going on, man?

You got a question? Let me get you unmuted and see. Hear me now? Okay, cool. So, good as picture. Wherever you guys are at. You're extremely sharp with what you do. And I got to tell you, I've been doing probates for probably 25, 26 years now.

And it's an interesting world for those of you guys that do it or buy it or, you know, wholesalers or whatever. tell you this much. The question I had for you, Joan, is so, you know, I deal with properties that either it's a hoarder situation or there's just a lot of stuff in there. And, you know, family get into the personal sentimental stuff, get their stuff out of there and whatnot. And then I assess, when I first look at, I assess, is this an estate sale where I need to actually do an estate sale, get the company out there and organize, or is this like a trash out, or is this a donation? It's basically what it comes down to.

So your world, your part right there, because sometimes I don't have time to do a whole estate sale because some of the companies need three, four weeks by the time they come out, they organize and clean and all that stuff. And sometimes just tell the family, get all your stuff out that you need, that you guys are personal, you know, sentimental. And let's just roll with donating the rest and trash them out because at the end of the day, I've got investors that will buy these things with all the stuff and junk in them, right? But to get top dollar more money for the state, getting it cleared out and just broom clean is enough. Don't paint, don't carpet, don't this and that. Where do you jump in and you say, okay, Al, you know, I'm going to come look at this property. This is what I'm going to do or this is what I can do.

I am so glad you asked that question because so I have good news and bad news about how I'm going to reply to this because I, I love. I love my real estate professional colleagues. They are valuable partners. But one of the challenges, I'll try to put this as nice as I can, that I have with working with real estate professionals is I get a family or I get a realtor who they're ready to explore.

And this comes from, they're going to get, coming from different perspectives. The real estate professional is almost always going to say that the best time to sell is now. It's never in the future. It's always now. So as soon as we can get this on the market, we might get this on the market.

I'm not going to say that that's wrong or not, but that almost always happens. I have two or three professionals that I work with that will be willing to always wait and do what's right for the family emotionally. And by emotional, I don't mean just the lingering, everything is important to me, but also the grief that they're dealing with, the stress they're dealing with putting mom into dementia care. There are so many physical, mental, emotional stresses that happen in this process that I am, I hesitate sometimes to even give them any. referrals to real estate professionals because I know how difficult that next step is with the

pressure to get things cleaned out and get the house ready to sell. Now, sometimes there is no choice. You've got a reverse mortgage. The clock is ticking. You have to get this on the market that legally or financially no wiggle room. So that's a different situation than when there's not. Okay. Now the family comes to me and says, hey, we've got this house full of stuff. We've taken, we think we've taken what we want, what can we do to get this cleared out and then move on to the next steps. So this is how me being in the middle, hearing, you know, knowing that there's this market pressure always there to sell. And then there's also the family need to process and process mentally as well as process physically. This is what I suggest. One is that you don't know

what you don't know. Okay. I give a talk that that is the headline. You don't know what you don't know because when you go into a physical space, you just don't know what you're going to find there. A lot of times people say, you know, dad just kept everything. It's all junk. It's been there for 50 years. Well, the secret is that the best stuff is usually on the bottom. It's the stuff that's hidden. That's where we find the thousands of dollars in cash. stocks, gold watches that have been tucked away. They were college graduation presents. It was a gold watch from grandpa.

Dad never wore it. He forgot about it. It's the stuff that you have to dig out that is the value monetarily. But also sometimes in terms of mementos, it's the stuff that's buried that is the cleanest. Everything on top could have, you know, you have dogs and cats. You might have rodents, might have bugs. It's the stuff that's on top is almost the worst condition,

especially if you have a hoard. It's the stuff that's on the bottom that tends to be the cleanest. So that might be a surprise. But I don't like, as a, as coming from my profession, my own personal perspective is that you don't just go in and throw stuff out. You should at least have someone go in and look through it and then decided it should be thrown out.

So that's a great point because that's personally what I do also that and I tell some of the family don't know what they don't know. So tell me, you know, Al, we've taken all of our stuff out and if you guys somebody can trash out, clean out, donate, you know, to Purple Heart or whatever, Salvation Army, whatever, go ahead. And a lot of times I tell them, listen, guys, my estate sale companies or trash out companies, a lot of times find money, jewelry, valuable. even like antiques or stuff that, you know,

we don't even think is worth money, it's worth thousands, so, okay? And then it could really, I'm like, yeah, I'm like, you know, you guys might go through this stuff for days and weeks and months and never find anything valuable, but may not know it's valuable. So that's when I bring my estate sale crew,

and I tell them, listen, just, let's dive through this house, just kind of pick through it. And you guys tell me, is this even worth picking it apart and selling anything and doing an estate sale, organizing it and cleaning it and putting the tables and all that stuff?

Or is this, you know, hey, let's just take whatever we can to the dumpster that is for sure garbage, right? And they also go through books. Sometimes in magazines, they find money. So this happened. One time, a great story would be the estate had no money, like zero money. And this house was really worth like barely anything, right? And the attorney asking is like, Al, what do you want to, you got an investor for this?

Like, we got no money in this estate. And the sisters live in California, oddly, okay? and I never met them. And I said, you know what, the house needs a lot of work, the mold, the water, it's been flooded. There's 5,000 records in the basement that could have been worth something, had somebody paid attention to this house and not allowed it to flood, you know? In Michigan, we have a lot of basements. And so I knew this was definitely a trash out, clean out, mold, you name it, it had it.

The one most important thing to the family that they wanted to find was their dad's purple heart. So I purchased this home thinking I bought her, you know, flip, I don't buy my own listings or estates. I just, I don't want to get involved in that. I just sell them and do what's best for the estate. But I kind of saved this estate some money. And I got it. I bought the house, but I told him, I promised you one thing. My estate sale company is going to go through. And I called my state sale company. They're like, oh, this is way too dirty, too messy, too, you know, to go through. But I told what I needed. I said I needed this purple heart that there is extremely important to them. They went through this whole house. I kid you not. It was the dirtiest, ugliest

experience I've ever seen in my life with gloves and masks and the whole nine yards, went through and picked apart the whole house and found that purple heart for their that was for their dad. They didn't find money. They didn't find valuable. They didn't find jewelry. They didn't find nothing. And they found like the other stuff, but nothing, not worth anything. To me, and I ended up selling it to my investor just because it was too much for me to handle, you know. And to me, I didn't make any money on the deal. If anything, I covered like the money it costed us to pick through this stuff and do the trash out and clean out and whatever we had to do. But to me, the win was I got their dad, their purple heart. So like you were saying, Joan, sentimental,

people just don't know what they don't know. And sometimes, you know, it's not the money part. To me, it's not the money. I'm not driven by, I'm service driven, not profit driven. So Right. And I totally admire you for doing that. It is over and above. But it also brings to mind something that I found really interesting. You've probably all encountered this. And that is that real estate professionals do so much for their clients. And sometimes, I want to say, like, staying in your line, doing what you really do best is sometimes the best thing to do for your clients. if you had been selling that house, bringing somebody else in to do that where they're getting paid either through escrow or directly from the trust, if there is a trust or probate funds, if there is probate funds, would have been, you know, a great thing for someone else to do so that you could work on, you know, get more cases. I don't want to say you did the wrong thing. I think you did the right thing because I don't know if anybody else would have really gone

to that effort in that particular situation to find that problem. heart. So that's amazing. But I do find that a lot of people tell me, oh, I wish I'd met you last month because I just finished clearing out this house. I had to bring in three dumpsters. And I said, well, who went through the house? Oh, I did. Like, aren't you selling the one listing the house? Well, yeah, that's why I did it. I don't think that's really, you know, I don't think people, I don't think clients expect the real estate professional to clean the house, to sort the house to sell the things. You're dealing with the real property, not what we call the tangible personal property. So when you have that opportunity, consider looking in your area for someone who

can do this. There are national associations that you can look up professionals by zip code or by city. I'm going to throw a couple out here if it's okay, Bill. So hoarding situations, people who have hoarding behavior, we really don't use the word hoarder because it's, even though it's used on television show, it is a very pejorative term. And so the people who are actually dealing with any kind of hoarding disorder, they feel a lot of shame and stigma from that. And NAPO is the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals. And that one has a wide range of organizing professionals, including estate clear out professionals like myself. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much for all that. Al, thank you for checking in. Appreciate having you. Okay, so good. And I wanted to bring out one other. There was a question from Debbie in the chat about whether she recommended the family review everything top to bottom before the organizer comes in. And that is not, that is up to the family if they want to do that. But one of the services that I provide is you don't have, the family can look first or not look first.

We go in and we do what we call it discovery phase. So we from top to bottom, inside, outside the house, under the house, in the attic, in the garage, every place. We are looking for everything and figuring out what's there. We'll throw out the really obvious trash and recycling, but we will give the family a chance to review what we've found, whether they've looked through the house or not. Right. So sometimes we're finding the stuff that they overlooked. They didn't have the time to do it. They didn't know what to look what they were doing. They were overcome with grief. They had other estate issues to deal with. And this could be for probate or for estate, right? So it can go for either scenario.

But the organizer can come in and do that exploratory work first. And then once we figure out what's there, what the family is going to take, then we can craft a plan for how to get rid of the rest, whether that means an estate auction. We do online auctions, whether that is an estate sale, or whether that's just rehoming us. everything. And yeah. So I'll ask the question also that I have is when you come out to do that initial valuation, is there a charge, you know, an initial consult fee, or is that something you do to look for the business? What's that first phone call look like? Yeah, so the phone calls are free for us. I'm happy to talk to anybody anywhere in the country, actually. Anybody wants to call,

just ask questions about how this works, what they should be looking for. I'm happy to talk. with them. If I go out to a job site and I and they want a consultation, kind of a strategy setting, then I'll charge my hourly rate for that. I don't have a charge for making it just an estimate, but if they want to know like, well, how are you going to do it all? That's kind of like showing them my hand, right? So there's a charge for that. Got it. Well, look, I certainly appreciate for all those of you in the columns, she learned a lot. Again, the goal here is a couplefold.

One, she's a great resource we can use for our business. Number two, she's an example of how to build a business that we can imitate or learn from some of her strategies and tactics. I just really appreciate your time with us, Joan. So let's do a quick advertisement on you. So once I get a hold of you, you conveniently have their own fantastic. And so I appreciate being on today. Reach out here and then naturally as well, give her a call because she has networks.

she can plug you into and directions she can point you into as well. So Joan, thank you so much to being on the call today. I really appreciate your friendship, your help, look forward to some business within the Northern California area. Thank you. Thanks so much. And for everybody else on the call today, I'd love to have you join us next time. You can find me in social media at Bill Gros Probate across social media platforms. I appreciate you guys being here. Have a fantastic week. If I can help reach out, as always make today your best day ever. Thanks so much, everybody.