KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Probate Real Estate: A Business, Not a Job

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

SummaryIn this episode, probate expert Bill Gross, "The LA Probate Expert," shares his proven strategies for building a thriving and sustainable probate real estate business. He emphasizes that success in this niche comes from treating it as a long-term business, not a quick side hustle. Learn how to nurture leads over time, build a predictable pipeline, and serve families with empathy and expertise.Key TakeawaysThink Long-Term: The key to a successful probate business is to focus on nurturing leads over time. A "no" today can become a "yes" in the future through consistent follow-up and relationship-building.Consistency Beats Perfection: Don't obsess over having the perfect script or marketing letter. Success is found in making more calls, sending more mail, and taking more action.Be the Connector: Position yourself as a valuable resource to your clients by connecting them with vendors and professionals they need during a difficult time.Lead with Empathy: A successful probate business is built on trust and a genuine desire to help people. Lead with a service-first mentality and a compassionate approach.Keywords/PhrasesProbate Real Estate, Bill Gross, Probate Business, Lead Nurturing, Real Estate Niche, Probate WeeklyCall-to-ActionReady to build a successful and sustainable probate real estate business? Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform and get Bill Gross's expert insights!

Welcome to Probate Weekly. I'm your host, Bill Gross, at Bill Gros, at Bill Gros Popate on social media. And we do this every week. We issue a new episode. We're excited to have a return guest who also is one of my closest friends. Hawkshire was here recently. But more than that also help guide me on how to build my business space on attorney referrals. Now, he's not a probate attorney. He's not a real estate agent in the private space, but he is in a business and he's built a very successful business based on his relationship with attorneys and repeat business. David Notes is the founder of the National Center for Audio and Video Forensics. David, thank you so much for coming back.

My pleasure, Bill. Good to see you. And you're literally here last week here in LA, but now you're back home. So we have you here on our video. So glad you have time with you. Yeah, I got to see your studio in person. It was amazing. It was such a great setup you have there. I feel like people should see it. Why don't you show them? I would like them to see what you got behind the scenes. That's the other stand-up I have there and it has some other equipment. And I got a bunch of stuff for it.

A lot of screens and sound screens. Yeah, I have three screens here that I use. And then I have over there to stand-up with three screens to record from there. I love all the high-tech stuff. I love it. It's fun. You know, I think the differentiator is more the content, the knowledge. but the technology makes it fine, makes it convenient and easier and stuff.

So now your business is audio and video forensics, which is used, I believe, primarily in criminal, at least in your case, while audio and visa forensics are used a lot of things. Your business is primarily now based on audio and video forensic evidence in, I think, primarily criminal trials, and I think primarily that involves law enforcement. Is that fair to say? We do a lot with law enforcement, both investigating law enforcement, to be quite honest, internal investigations of police departments, but also when there's a police officer who's charged, that attorney will call us. But we work on a lot of civil cases, too. A lot of civil cases, we work on family law cases, federal, state.

We help somebody work with DAs or attorney generals on their investigations. it's really a lot of variety of different areas involving court situations. And just to kind of get that off the table, because really, this isn't really relate directly to probate, but your business is about taking, in some cases, audio and video and either deeply analyzing it or combining several pieces of evidence to create a contextual picture for whoever was investigating or the criminal trial or whoever's involved. So you really are taking this evidence, this information and help analyze it at a deep, technical level as an expert in that particular field.

Yes. Yeah. And then after we do that, we'll present it in court. Sometimes we'll testify. And even after all these years, I get very nervous in court. I'm not nervous because I'm going to be making something up. I'm just nervous because the stakes are so high for people. And I'm sure you see this too. And your clients and listeners, I should say, and viewers, they are facing sometimes millions and millions of dollars of that's at stake. And so it's a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure. Well, I would phrase the same thing that people call as fear as energy or excitement, right? It's the same physical component.

And it's how I learned in competitive speech that you can label it either way. That same energy can be excitement. And so I try to use it that way. But so in your case, you know, I remember you started with video production. doing like wedding videos and personal videos and family videos. And so, but at some point you kind of got into this area and developed. And again, for those you're watching in real estate, this is very important. You developed in expertise, meaning there's a million wedding videographers.

I remember going to weddings as you were later in your career and you stopped doing it, seeing other people still doing that because you had moved on to something that was both more viable business-wise, but more valuable to the customer. They wanted to pay you more money because you'd be more work. Talk about a transition from kind of a generalist to a specialist. Well, my dad has always been a businessman, and I've seen him transition from different jobs, different businesses over the years. That example to me was huge to see my dad started off as a pharmacist,

and then he bought a pharmacy as an owner then. He became, so he went from being like, you know, an hourly worker to owning the business as an expert and a pharmacist. And then he transitioned from that to something else he loved, which was rare coins and gold and silver. And so I saw this businessman adjusting based on his interest, based on what he thought the opportunity was. So I didn't feel, I wasn't as scared about taking big changes in my life, you know, and making big jumps in business. So when I saw an opportunity, and I liked. seeing opportunity, like looking around, seeing what I could do, seeing where I could fit in, what was interesting to me. I jumped to it, you know, right away I saw from working in, like,

wedding video stuff and bar mitzvahs, you know, and I, and then seeing my, the, the future, which was that everywhere video was popping up. Surveillance video, handheld video on phones, police were having video in their cars, and wearing them even. So all those opportunities, I just saw, wait a minute, I know video. Maybe I can, you know, and a friend of mine asked me to help him on a case. And then from there, I just said, wow, this is a great opportunity. So I wasn't afraid of taking a big chance. I was, you know, people can be afraid. They're like, they want to take the safe route. You know, I don't believe in taking the safe route. So just to recap this, and again, apply this to those of the world,

real estate or attorneys. What David just chronicled was first the mindset shift of being open to, you know, where can I create more value, where is there an area for expertise? And then you'll notice, he said passing, and this is a, I struggle for most real estate agents. His first piece of business was from a friend. In fact, I know that friend. But his friend knew what he did for a living. Now it was a little easier in his case because probably he'd been to a wedding or bar mitzvah or several and seen you doing video and knew that you did some editing. But he wouldn't necessarily know that you did final product. He probably found it through some other professional,

I'm guessing, whatever it was. Somehow the friend is, and I think for all of us, the friend is the first forward into the niche because they know like and trust us, and I'm sure he knew you new video, he didn't think you as the expert in that minor niche of, in that case I think was law enforcement video, but he trusted you and knew you,

if you wouldn't do it, you come back to him, right? Talk about you're a little nervous. You got their first assignment, but what was that like? Yeah, when my friend called and said, you know, I have this video. Can you help me? Like, well, I know video, but, you know, I'm not sure I can help you, but bring it on over, sure. And so he came over with this video that was on VHS tape, actually. And he's...

Gosh, for those you don't know that. It's a long time ago. That was great stuff when it first came up, by the, that was Rocket VHS. Right, allowed you to record all your own shows. You can watch them later. Now we got you on YouTube and all these different floors you can watch anytime you want. But you had to have this tape. So that was what the evidence was on was on this VHS tape.

But I knew VHS really well. I knew lots of different technologies because of my work. So the biggest, so all that stuff was easy. The problem, the scary thing, me was once it was all done and I was very, you know, careful with all the evidence throughout the whole process because I knew this got this police officer's life was on the line in terms of not life literally, but his marriage, his family, his kids, his job, his reputation. Facing prison. Facing, yeah, everything was a little.

In the initial prison, because if you're a law enforcement going to prison, it's a whole different experience. Right. Yeah. Yeah, scary stuff. So, you know, I was, I knew I probably have to testify, and it was just, you know, I want to be really careful with my evidence. So that was a scary thing. But I loved it, and lots of press was involved outside the courthouse. And, you know, it was kind of overwhelming a little bit. And then I realized, I could go into this. This is going to be the future. You know, this is going to be the future of courts. You know, I helped set up the court playback system because the court didn't know what is doing. And that's something that I wanted to talk about was attorneys really lack in technology.

They're really, they're very, well, not everyone, but a lot of attorneys are focused on reading transcripts, looking at the law, understanding the law, and they don't know the technology that could help. help them. Hold on a second. Let me translate this from I just a little bit, which is attorneys want to do the legal work only. And I think the best ones understand they're a business and their job is to satisfy their client.

But most of them struggle with that and want to just be attorneys and they need us as vendors sometimes to step out of our primary job into the areas that support them because they just don't either don't want to do it, don't know how to do it, don't have enough experience to do it well. And we have to look for those opportunities where we can add value to the relationship, the interest. So I get to real estate agents listening or the attorneys or listening. That's always the situation.

Try to find ways to better serve your customer. I'm sorry. Go ahead, David. Yeah, you're right. When you have some of you just, you're talking with a client, you realize there's a big hole in their knowledge. Maybe it has nothing to do with exactly what I do, like video and audio, but it might have to do a technology and I can help them. And I can say, look, before you go into court, test your computer and maybe go in the day before, plug it into the system in the courthouse, like things like that where I give them advice.

Like go into the courthouse, plug your system in with the exact same connection, the same room. Make sure it's actually recognizing your computer and it's actually playing the video or the document on the screen. It's simple like that. And they test it and they're so thankful. Maybe a week before they tested or a day before or half a day before. Just go in during lunch maybe or just before break. make sure things working smoothly because that's going to be a big frustrating hassle if you try to let's say i'll just give another example logging in online and your audio's not turned on you know like

it's every day i see people with that every day there you go so it makes you laugh but it's also really um sad and it looks really bad from a judge to a judge it looks worse you know if it's me because I'm supposed to know technology. So if it's me doing it, it's even worse. But it looks really bad in front of a jury. You'll see you're standing there in person, trying to show a simple thing to them on a screen and it doesn't work. And you're fumbling. It's a horrible situation. Right. Now, one of the things you said, and I think it's a prior skill that you've developed, is communicating with the attorney where those gaps are because my experience is, attorneys, for the most part, are very smart, right? They went to college. They went to law school.

to pass the bar, you can't, it's hard to be stupid and do all that, right? You've got to be pretty smart at some level. And also, they have a right to feel proud of their intellectual ability. They've accomplished something that most people can't do and deserve credit for that. Yet, it doesn't translate to being able to, you know, run a laptop computer or run a monitor. And so sometimes I find that I've kind of tiptoe when I want to share with them some advice on what to do, meaning it's out to you or me is very elementary. tree, did you check the plugin? Did you reboot it? And sometimes you say to an attorney and they, if you say it wrong, they're going to hear, oh, I'm stupid. Is that what you're saying? And it's not

the case. It's just I do this all the time. You do this all the time. They don't. And that's why they selected us. So talk a little bit about how you communicate and how you'd be maybe a little careful sometimes in that communication. And same with a judge too, for sure with a judge. Yeah, I'll give you something else that's related to this. How about, and we'll talk about whatever you want. But you have evidence, you know, as one of my attorney friends calls it, you have facts. They're bad facts. Okay. You're working for a client and their case is not good. But how do you kind of tiptoe? You can't tiptoe around that. Yeah. You just have to be straight with them and say, this is what I see. This is what I hear. And, you know, it can, if it's with a client directly, like it's not the attorney, sometimes I deal with the client.

they can get mad. You know, they can get, they want me to lie. They want me to say things that, yeah, they want me to say things that aren't true and they want me to kind of not say other things. You know, it can be very frustrating when attorneys pressure you in that way. And that's when I have to tell an attorney,

I can't tiptoe around that. I just say, I don't see it that way. Like that's not, you know. And sometimes, you know, they won't come back after that, you know, because they can't. Yeah. You know, but I'm glad because I don't want a client like that. I don't want a client tell me to lie.

So let's broaden that a little bit in that, and you've built a successful business. So much of it now is repeat and referral business, which is like, oh, everybody, but you only got there by doing a really good job. So, but you can't do a good job if you're working with bad clients. So talk a little bit about it takes some courage sometimes to fire a client like that. I have I've lost a couple hundred thousand dollars honestly from from firing a client. I don't know if I call it firing client but just not doing what they wanted me to do. Right. They had ongoing business.

I'm not going to not going to say who. I'm not going to say even the media, even the type of. It doesn't matter. That's not on the market anyhow. Yeah. But it's, and it's it's always been on my shoulder going, wow, you know, this client brought me a lot of business. over the years and then wanted me to do X. And I'm just not going to do that.

I'm going to keep doing what I think is right. And so it wasn't like I fired them, but they stopped right away with me. They're very upset and no longer gave me business. And that's, I probably lost a couple, literally a couple hundred thousand dollars in the last four years from doing that. But along the way, you probably weren't either as strong or as clear of what a bad client was and we're stuck

working with a difficult client. Talk about that and how that really hold you. We think at the time, well, I need the commission or I need the fee or whatever you call it. But at the end of the day, it really holds us back. It hurts us emotionally. It hurts us spiritually. It hurts us physically. Talk about that process of where you kind of, I'm sure there's a case where you learned the lesson and said, I'm not going to do this anymore, these kind of people. Yeah. Sometimes you don't know right away. Sometimes you work with a client for a year and it's fine. And then they somehow go against you, you know, like somehow something comes out. So, but yeah, it can be very stressful to work with a client who gets angry,

who gets abusive with their words, who, you know, threatens you. I had a client, I literally had a client call one of my other, my co-experts on a case. The client through another party called that expert and threatened them. Said if you ever do blah, blah, blah, right, then you'll never work with us again. And he was, he was saying it to me. He was saying it to me. And I just said, even though he wasn't saying it to me, he said it's my expert. But it was so it was couched very carefully to not say my name, but they knew exactly who it was for.

And the message got through. And those kind of things are really odd, really odd and stressful. But I'm really glad not to be part of that anymore. Right, because those people, at the time, you look at the commission or the hours or the money and think, well, I have to endure this. But the truth is it holds you back from something else. My experience is whenever I kept in to those people, something else popped up right away that otherwise would have been crowded out. So now your business has grown to where you get referrals and you get repeat customers, but you still actively do business development. So talk about the things you do specifically for business development with attorneys.

Sure. So I think, obviously, word of mouth system is really important. It's so important because we have such an esoteric. or a niche business that how does someone really hear about us? Number one, hopefully they'll maybe at a conference that I go to when I teach at a conference or I go to Bar Association meeting and I present examples of what we do, case studies to people,

show a lot of really interesting video and audio and how we adapted it and changed it and clarified it and prepared it for court creating exhibits. There's that. there's them of course attorneys have networks where they have their friends and they talk about where they're looking for a certain type of person so they will call on us when they tell their friend about us you know that's how those things happen but for new business for brand new business I also because of the niche nature of our work I do Google ads as well and that's something a lot of

people probably don't even think about, but if you can target the ads carefully based on the search that they do, then it can be very helpful. I spend thousands of dollars a month on Google Ads. Now, is this something that you do on your own or do you have a consultant that works with you on the Google Ads? How do you approach that? In real estate, there's a lot of companies approach us and say, well, they'll run the campaign, but they want to charge 20%? commission or more, the fees up front, those kinds of things. Yeah, I pay a set amount per month to someone who helps me to, you know, I've already had this going for many, many years. So I've gone through different stages. One was just on my

own, just writing up all the terms that I think someone like a paralegal who's actually doing the search, not the attorney themselves. If they're doing a search online, it's obviously an assistant usually a paralegal who's been assigned by the attorney the attorney says i need a video and audio expert i need a video expert to do this this so the paralegal types it in and i have to think of kind of um simple terms the terms that they would be using in their search right so i made a huge list of that and then we created ads out of that then i hired someone to help me modify that refine it and manage now quite a big bunch of ads that I have for every search. Because every search term that you type in, a different ad pops up, a different, some

different landing pages they call them. So once they click on the ad, then the person who's searching for our services goes to a particular page on our website that talks about that particular type of help that we would provide. And, yeah, so I pay them every month a certain amount, and they help me. And I found it to be really helpful. Do the people who click on the ads and go through this process end up with you? Or do you have a sales team that they talk to in book? Or how does that process look like?

So I have a case manager. So I almost never talk to clients when they first call. They talk to my case manager, who's a full-time employee. He handles all the incoming inquiries. He worked for me for four years now. It's very, I don't, how do I put it? It's a very laid back technique. So I just want, because a lot of people call us are not the attorney necessarily.

Sometimes it's a client who's being represented by an attorney in our case. So they're very stressed. They're facing loss of a huge amount of money. or the gain of a bunch of money, or they're facing 20 years in jail, or they're already in jail and they're trying to appeal. We get all kinds of calls from police departments doing initial research, initial analysis, initial work on evidence, collection even of evidence. But my case manager, he knows what's going on now, and he's very good.

He just listens as long as necessary to the person who's calling, gives them an idea of what they're talking about. If they're just trying to find like a single text message that they erased on their phone, which sometimes happens, he tells them what's going to be this much money to work on your kid. And they're like, oh, and they immediately, the call's over. But I don't have to deal with any of that. You know, it's too much for me. I can't handle all that. That's not for me. Once it's been gone through a few stages of conversation, then I might talk to the client, the potential client.

Now, did you start that way? You built to that, meaning did you always have a case manager to handle the ads? Or initially, did you have to handle those lead conversion calls, we would call them in real estate sales? And then over time, as you got more successful, you could cut your work hours and delegate that to somebody else. Yeah, I started off doing all of it myself. I was a one-man band. And that's the key thing. I think if you have a lot of excess money, it's one thing to start with ads and a case manager or sales manager or partner. But most of us have to kind of do the thing. And also as you talk as you mentioned. A learning process. You learn about it as you do it.

You also learn what to train your case manager in your case or in our case, maybe a salesperson to say because you can't, you can't hire them and really train them unless you really know that you've done that at a high level. So how long was it from when you started? before you were able to hire somebody to delegate to. Oh, that's a good question. Well, I was a one-man band starting in 2000, I mean, for many years, but like, say, 2001 was my first case. And that was an accident. As you said, my friend asked me to help him. In 2005 and six, 2006 was my second.

I'm one of the greatest human beings in my lifetime. You know, it just happens to be of your client is one of the nicest, most decent human beings. the world is created. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I'm very blessed. Yeah.

I was also the best man at his wedding. So we're very close. But in 2000. That's important because he trusted you and liked you and wanted you to help him. He also wanted to help you. That's important. Yeah. It was a fun process.

So 2006 was our first, our second case together. So 2001, then 2006, 2007 was the end of that case. So between one and six, Were you doing this work or still doing weddings and bar mitzvahs and other stuff? A lot of weddings and bar mitzvahs, yeah. Okay, so still scrambling kind of to build your business. Yeah. And 2007, when I finally decided, I'm going in on this.

This is where I'm going. So 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, a lot of that was by myself. I would say 2010, maybe before that a little bit. I don't remember exactly what year, to be honest. But somewhere 2009 or so probably hired someone to help me. as you know run the office, answer the phones. But it was a slow process. I remember writing up a plan for my business.

You know, it took maybe a year to do it really well. I still have it where I have all these jobs I imagined, all these different jobs for the business, broken up so that one person could take multiple of those jobs, right? Depending on their personality, their expertise, what their interests were. I knew I could break off those different jobs into different pieces and give them to different people. So that was my little fantasy thing that actually came pretty well true.

Things that I was bad at, for example, like financial stuff, which I'm not that good at. I'm not the best. I knew I'd have to hire someone else to help me with that. Marketing and writing I knew I was very good at so I could handle that. handling calls when they came in. I don't want to deal with that anymore if I could help it. So I hired someone to do that. So I broke off different things, bookkeeping, you know, taxes, of course, dealing with Google Ads.

I knew I could hire someone eventually to do all that. So a lot of, I don't have it in front of me, but there was a lot of pieces to the business, which was fun to write up. I wrote up a paragraph. I would have a title for each thing and a paragraph for each thing. And breaking it down, you know, many, many pages became my business plan. But again, you started doing all this stuff yourself and you only were able to delegate effectively because you had done it yourself.

You knew it had been done for the most part. Right. Or areas you didn't know so well, you knew you could hire somebody to improve, but you knew the parameters of the job. And that's the thing I think oftentimes we in business, real estate agents, attorneys, we about scaling we don't understand is it's really hard to hire people to do a job that you didn't do and train them properly it's not impossible but it's pretty hard to do effectively particularly in the core functions of selling and establishing new relationships well also i didn't have any

money to hire anyone in the beginning like i'm trying to pay myself you know and earn a living and pay rent and insurance and taxes as you run a business it's insane amount of different government like forms and you know this the state of I can't remember I have like every couple months there's like a new form I have to you know fill out again and renew taxes physical business like property taxes as is crazy so all that stuff I had to figure out and I had to pay all that and I couldn't afford it so as the business grew organically which is what happened with me as it grew organically and I got too busy to do something, I could then break off and hire someone to do that particular job.

Right. Now, in your business, there are, you know, are like a lot of people who do some video, some audio, and they can create a website, create a name, say they're an expert in this stuff. Right. It's, you know, unless you're an expert, you don't know how to distinguish between experts, right?

I mean, a lay person can't really tell between you and that other person, you can. Same in real estate, right? There's agents who are probate experts and they haven't done a probate case or they have done one or two, but they didn't really delve into the deep issues of that. I had a agent on the other side of my deal recently mocking me as being a probate expert because he thought I made a mistake on something where he was wrong. But how is it that you, you know, do you brag about being this? the expert, do you not brag, but how do you put forth your expertise to attorneys in a way that

they get you're an expert without sounding or appearing immodest or is it okay to appear a modest? I think there's a definition of what we're talking about. What does the word immodest mean? What's humility? And what is, all it is is that you know what you're good at doing, you're honest with yourself about that, and you tell them straight up what you can help them to do. Being that, you know, humil, like being arrogant means it's kind of like fake. You have fake skills, right? It's faking it. Being humble sometimes has the connotation of lowering yourself, you know, talking down about yourself.

Falsely. Falsely, yeah. That's the problem. Maybe, you know, overinflating what you can do or underinflating what you can do. I just help. I listen to my attorneys when they call me. I tell them what we can do. I tell them what we can't do.

I tell them straight up. And as I discuss their case and their issues, they realize I know what I'm talking about because I might bring up things that they've experienced in court. They've seen, and I can help them avoid that this time. I tell them about the evidence they have right now and ask questions about their evidence

that they might not even have thought of. So all that stuff together, it's just helping them. That's all it is. helping them from my experience and I have a lot of experience now so I feel confident about that and I feel comfortable also to admit when I don't know or when I can't help them and so I think what David highlights is you know there's two schools of thought one is you'll fake it to you make it pretend as though you're an expert you know try to figure out the talk and I've always said the opposite

be the expert expert just means you know a little bit more than your prospect a little bit more than your customer right using Frank Ebbing from Catch Me If He Can, how did he pass himself off as a high school teacher when he was in high school? The answer was he just read one chapter ahead of the other students and he knew that chapter. And so that's why I tell people, go online to your county, learn the forms, learn the procedures, go to the courthouse, walk the courthouse, where's the coffee shop, where's the bulletin board, who are the clerks, what's the security situation, what's the parking like so that you, when something comes up, you can, like David said, you can ask questions, what courtroom are you in, what department are you in, and you sound knowledgeable because you are knowledgeable not because you're faking it but because you aren't so I I really encourage agents in this business and attorneys as

well if you want to specialize in estate planning and appropriate to get referral to some other attorneys you've got to you know do the work of being the expert rather than just talk about being expert rather than the website and the Google ads and the fancy graphics and marketing materials just do the work it's not that hard and I think like in your case so so David in your case is there particular technical tools or processes that you learn during the year or ongoing basis or procedures and stuff that you are always working on to sharpen your skills and step to or conferences you go to what is it you do that helps you stay abreast of the expertise area

which is what's really driving your business I think and then I want to hear the answer from your from your perspective too how do you stay up on on the information that comes across because in my situation, I'm sure it's similar, things are constantly evolving. Yes. You know, the situations are evolving, the courtrooms are involving, everything. Technology is evolving. So we have companies that provided us software that go out of business because they're so niche, right?

Right. So small. And then they got bought by another company who then incorporates their software into a different software. And now we have to learn just right now. There's a new piece of software because the company, and literally they came out it's a new version a month ago, but it's not just a new version. It's a complete different user interface, completely different.

And the only way we can do the work is learn this new piece of software. We have to. So if a person said to me, do you know how to use this new software, I'll be like, no, I don't. But I've used the software that came right before them, you know, for 10 years. And I can figure it out. I can figure it out. And that sometimes what happens. People ask us to do something.

And no, I don't know how to do it right this second, but I can figure it out. I feel comfortable about that. And I accept the job. In fact, I rarely turn down a job anymore at all from not knowing how to do something. If it's related to video or audio or 3D imaging, cell phone work, hard drive analysis, whatever, I just usually, I mean, it's way off base. I can't do it. but I can usually say yes and then I figure it out. Right.

Yeah, you know, I have real estate agents coach and they'll say, well, I don't feel comfortable because I'll have a full rollo decks of all the different players for each of the things that might come up. Right. So what might come up? And they say, well, for example, estate sales. I said, okay, if I gave you a million dollars and said, you have 20 minutes, but you have to find the state cell person who's great to search a customer.

Can you find a great one? Well, yeah, of course. There you go. So it's not about can you. It's about how committed are you to this process. And to answer your question, you know, part of the way that I, you know, stay on point with the business is I talk to people all the time.

I do these podcasts and I learn from, you know, I primarily do podcasts where I interview somebody else. And I'll share with you, the truth is, I only interview people that I want to interview. I only do episodes of people who I want to talk to because I'm going to learn. If I can learn, even if nobody watched it, I've learned, I spent a half hour and hour learning from an expert in the business.

I've improved myself. Now, by the way, people watch my videos as a result find me to be helpful and call me and refer me business. And that's important. That's critical too. But if I wasn't improving it, it would just be a time second. That's why I think cold calling, you know, I tell people, I used to cold call for three, four hours a day to build my business. Yeah, I remember that. I remember you talking about it.

Well, in those days, though, I had to learn the process of talking to, people and effectively listening and being able to help solve their needs at the basic fundamental level. Now once you do that, it's no longer productive to cold call and somebody else can do it for me or there's other ways to generate those leads. But I think as long as the process is making you stronger, if you're an athlete, you know, you don't just lift weights because you have to play football. You lift weights because it also makes you stronger for whatever position you're playing in football. I think that you have to do the process that makes you better along the way and it helps in multiple things.

So again, I'm constantly talking to people and then learn and then really just two days ago, I met with this guy, and he mentions this website in a niche area, and I go online and go, oh my gosh, the whole world here I didn't know about it. I had a podcast, he has a blog, he has some resources, do vendors to call, all of a sudden,

like I had hours of work to do. I didn't know existed because I, in talking to a colleague, found a whole resource. So for me, I just am constantly talking to people who are really good at the person. When I am, I like going to conferences too with lots of other experts in my field because then I have someone to call who's not a competitor, although theoretically they could be a competitor, but somewhere across the country who does the same thing I do, let's say, and we can call each other and we can rely on each other, we can ask for advice. Would you take a look at this or do you have any person that can do like you said, you know, sales of property, maybe that you don't have access to, they know someone else who can do. do that particular job. So the expertise, once you meet people at these conferences, then you can

call them and get advice and people. And that's all that matter. It's just another person. I think the most important thing in my business really is that when I found people that I really like and I trust, and I can call them for advice and resources, and they just give it to me and I give them stuff. Yeah. I love conferences. I love being a conference as I'm like going to and coming from and at my favorite the conference is always the exhibit hall because you can meet a bunch of people like in an hour you meet 23 different people and different companies. The speeches I find almost always you can see one video or online like they're good and they're interesting to be in a big room. But I don't ever learn anything there. I couldn't have learned some other way. But to meet people at the exhibit hall and usually you meet the actual person who does the work.

You meet the actual software, the technicians at the conference, at the exhibit hall. You can meet, you know, so the owner will tell you how great the software is, but then you meet the guy who's in charge of sales and he'll tell you how it really works and where the limits are and the strategies and all that stuff. So I do love going to conferences as well. Okay, so let's talk a bit about when you get a referral from another attorney, right? So you have, you've worked hard and you built some business and attorney X, things. Thanks a lot of you.

Attorney White calls him and says, hey, I need some help with video or maybe it's a paralegal. And the attorney, the paralegal said, oh, the best is Dave Nuttowicz. You should call him and CAVF, phone number, blah, blah, blah. And they call you, what if anything do you do to the people refer you business? How do you keep that network tight? How do you, or, you know, what do you do if anything to kind of keep that process going? I should do more, honestly. I should do better.

I'm very thankful, of course, I try to email them and say, thank you so much. I try to keep track of that and I might send him a bottle of wine or maybe I forget to send him a bottle of wine. But I try to send him a thank you. One time we got a really big job and I had it custom, you know, it's alcohol custom etched, you know, a thank you on there. And I said, I said, here's to clarity, you know, and send him some alcohol. But I knew it was his favorite too because I asked a friend of his what his favorite drink was. and that kind of stuff. It's just thoughtful.

But the bottom line is my best way of saying thank you is doing a good job for that client. Because I've found that, now, what does it mean to do a good job? I've touched on this already. Sometimes doing a job means doing a good job for the evidence and it might not help the client. And that's a bit frustrating for them.

But they remember you. they remember that you're honest and that you can do a good job and that they can rely on you next time to also be honest and be real with them. They'll know what they're going to face when they're in court, once they've come to us. They know what the other side might have, right? So it's important for us to be completely transparent with our work. But sometimes the best way to say thank you is just really do a good job. and that makes that other person who referred them happy and good. If you do a bad job, it makes them look really bad.

You refer David to you, to me, and look what he did. I'm just saying that that can be bad for that, you know, that friendship that he had with his other attorney. So we have a big responsibility. Everyone who comes in the door to do the best we can, think outside the box, try to help them, like you said, with technology even. It's not in our main job, but to give them advice.

And that makes everyone happy. Last question, because we'll come up at the time, you mentioned a word and on your website, you say, get clarity. Now, when I think of you and I think of your business, I was surprised that that would be the words on your website. Explain to me what that means to you in your business in terms of getting clarity. Yeah, so the phrases that I came up with was get clarity. Now we're playing a little bit with, ah, yes, I see you brought it up.

So we're a little pun on words. I believe that, you know, so we get a lot of audio evidence and video evidence, and the attorneys don't even know what's in their hands. They don't know the details. They don't know how much information is embedded in that, in those pieces of evidence. So we help, let's say they have two videos from different angles. Well, one angle shows one aspect of the incident. Another angle has another aspect of the incident.

But when you sync them together and you can see them in unison playing, then it brings out a whole other level of meaning and understanding of what happened. When someone was looking, what are they looking at? Right? When they're looking, you know, when they're reacting, what are they reacting to? That means they heard something. Oh, okay. So when he's testifying that he heard, da-da-da, that's that moment.

So it can really help justify or prove their client's testimony in a lot of different ways. We also clarify audio. We take out noise and clarify video. But getting clarity also means, in kind of a more general sense, get clarity on your case. Understand fully what you're facing so that when the other side brings it up, You are ready. You are clear-headed. You're not surprised and how to react.

And how to react in court in front of a judge, whether it's trial or it's just a hearing. You're ready for all eventualities. And that's what I'm very careful about. I would say, yeah, I spend a lot more time on these cases than most people would. Most people, they bring in a video. They clarify I send it back online. Never hear from them again. I'm kind of obsessed over the details.

And we give it the first class service. We also charge for the first class service. You know, I think what's, again, to take away from that for all of us is you're giving, you're offering the customer what they're looking for. It's not, I'm the expert, I'm this, I win this case. You see a lot of self-promotion in all businesses. Here you have somebody who's looking, has a problem, looks and stumbles on your website as result of whatever referral or Google ads, and you're offering them what they're looking for.

I think that's the thing we have to always focus on. The true North Star is what problems a customer have, how do we solve it? If we do that over time, we build a business. Maybe we're not all as successful as the National Center for Audio and Visual Forensics founded by David Nohas, but we can certainly make a charge towards that. David, I know I've kept you a little longer than I promised, but I really, you know, I love talking to you. Again, for those you who don't know, he's my closest personal friends. So literally stayed at my house here last week.

We had great time with him and I've seen him over years. And my wife taught his daughter in high school. And we've been friends with Anodewitz's, I think it's too, with Noda. I think it's too, with Noda. Actually, because of your brother, Sam, as well, and your family. But thank you so much for taking time today to share with our agents and attorneys on this. And I just really appreciate you in helping us out. My pleasure.

Thank you for asking me to be here. David Nodes, the founder, National Center for Audio and Visual Forensics. And you can find him if you're an attorney or involved with audio forensic evidence ncavv.c.com's website right there you can make a connection with him and his staff David again thank you so much have a great one everyone and for the rest of you I'm Bill Gross this is probate weekly we do this every week and I'd love to have you come back again sometime if you go to probate weekly dot com you can sign up and get reminders sign up to get additional content

as well we're in audio formats video formats all the different places probably YouTube or at YouTube or at Bill Gross Probe on YouTube. If I can help anyway, please let me know. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.