KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Probate Weekly | Dominating The Niche

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Welcome to Probate Weekly. I'm Bill Gross, at Bill Gross Probate on social media. Let's talk today about what it takes to build a business, focus on probate or launch a business. Now, what I want to say in anything in life, you've got to start with good fundamentals. My father was a great literally coach. Literally the little like Phil Mahabras named after him. And he started every year the first practice without the ball. And they would just go from base to base to base. We talked about all the scenarios so that everybody knew what they're supposed to do before they started playing with the ball.

That's called fundamentals. Famously, Vincent Barney, the greatest football coach ever, who the Super Bowl trophy is named after. We get down the ground and watch the snap from the center to the quarterback to make sure it was done properly. John Wooden famously starred his practice every year with players learning how to put their socks on properly and tie their shoes to avoid blisters. And it sounds redundant. It sounds silly. are the keys to success in any endeavor, particularly business. So we talk about launching or building a probate launch, marketing launch.

I look at it as a program, you're in business already at some level, you're launching a new program, what's that probably going to be? So what I want to say is that you have to start with the fundamental most. So first off, I want to say being a great probate real estate agent isn't enough, you have to find a smaller area to dominate. Meaning, when you take the programs like probate mastery, I took it years ago. Just learning all the things that an administrator or petition needs to know is helpful. But that's not enough.

You really need to have expertise in those areas. What do I mean by that? Amongst that the wheel of services we provide to customers, cleaning out properties, estate sales, auctions, pest control, selling houses, accountants, attorneys, is having, everybody has now access to Google. Everybody has access to people in that circle. But to no one deeply gives you permission to be an expert in that area,

and the glow of expertise will flow into other areas. And so while years ago it was enough to be a probate real estate expert, with all these areas of tools that we had in the toolbox, none that we knew well, today you really have to pick one at least or two or three, and be the expert on those tools. So rather than offering everything.

And then you take those tools that have an expertise in and you offer them to everybody in your world, every name, address, phone number, email, and social media. Because what you don't know is your first probate deals are already in your database. Now this is the area that everybody fights me on, 1D. However, you have to build your foundation first. I hit it.

because every realtor hears this and rolls their eyes. But here's what I'm going to tell you. You can build a probate-focused business in a niche. If you first have a business, how do you do that? You have to have a database where you keep everybody, keep track of all your prospects, and then add into that what's called lead generation. And then you email out your area of expertise. You post on your social media, your area of expertise.

And you build that list of people. Because your first probate deals are going to come, probably from people already in your database. You're not going to know this, but the family you sold a house to four years ago where the husband owns a business or he's a trucker or whatever, his wife might be a paralegal in a probate office.

That's the business you want to get. Or the attorney who you knew five years ago who was doing bankruptcy, maybe now is doing probate and trust administration. Or has such a case and needs help with it. That's why you have your database first. So what we're talking about is, Once you've built your foundation, I do a class, an email mastermind class from time of time.

I offer it to my team members online for free as well. You have to have that foundation built. Once you do, then you need to pick what I call your super niche. Probate's a huge topic. It covers everything in real estate. Great probate attorneys also get involved in real estate law, contract law, family law, not because they want to, but it overlaps and spills in these other areas. Likewise, we as real estate agents have to realize it's a big topic and pick one silo to be the

expert on your market area. And also it's big geographically. Probate real estate tends to be spread out more than when you just farm a local neighborhood. So these are some of the super niches that I've either worked in or help have team members working in currently. Legal probate trust is obvious. This is the one that I work most. I mostly look to work with attorneys who specialize in the legal side, the legal details,

litigation, complicated. Now the downside of this is they tend to be smaller rather than larger. The larger states aren't as frequent. But typically it's a smaller case, multiple errors, not educated, who inherit property and need an attorney. There's legal non-probate, meaning you can market to attorneys who don't specialize in probate. If you're the probate expert, understand how to help them, either referring them to probate attorneys or a probate service like Scribner.com, then you become the expert to those people

and their problems in how to solve those. Working with seniors is a whole area, meaning primarily helping people decide to move out of their home into more suitable housing, maybe memory care or senior living facilities. There's people specialize in that niche. Along the way, developed expertise in that area, how to communicate with them, how to market to them, and come across probate as a result of customers who moved years ago.

Nursing, the probate nurse, Mowing Hands in Tampa, Florida, shout out. This is her area of expertise, working with nurses who work in that senior area. And by being an expert in that niche, that doesn't mean she doesn't get other business, it means that's when she puts her time doing her business development.

Personal property, there are people in my team, who focus on auctions, estate sales, you can do nothing, but work every single estate sale and every vendor in your market area. And talking about the probate legal side, because they often get calls and somebody's passed, they don't know what to do, and they want to sell the stuff, but they also need attorney to handle the house or other more complicated matters.

Local real estate, the senior housing in your area. There are realtors who, and I have one of my team, who does this, where he sketched, counts out every senior facility in, in his case, Athens, Georgia, Atlanta, Georgia area. It has inventory of all the properties. Those videos of those properties. Offers them to people who want to move those properties.

Estate planning, a whole separate niche of attorneys who just do a state plan. Now you might work with the more online cheaper services. And then when people go to execute those administration, they might need an attorney at that time or an accountant at that time. wealth management people who inherit property need you something with a non-real estate and by helping them by finding those people who deal with wealth management and those issues that are involved with the wealth managers you come

across probate real estate that's be sold as well I just spoke to such a group an hour ago hour and half ago of people involved with wealth management and advising families primarily stocks bonds and those finances and businesses but they also have real estate they need to dispose of and that's kind of how I got into one of the the largest states that I have. Last is accounting. There's specific accounting for probate. There's specific accounting for trusts.

And if you find bookkeepers who do that work, offering them, representing them, helping them get business from attorneys and other appropriate parties, could be a niche as well to work in. But you gotta find your super niche and go deep with that. Develop content of that. There's vendors nationally have content

in each of these areas. That you have to make your own, that you have to post your own videos, or post your own social media, by being an expert in one of these niches. What I would not do is talk about each of them. What I would do is talk about one of them and go deep. My niche also is more national.

My goal, just full disclosure, is work with national vendors, creating referrals for other agents on my team. Okay, compliance, obviously, once you decide to launch, you have to change your MLS, you have to change your email address, your website, and all those things,

make sure you have to have to change the right logos and names and contact information that's appropriate. Now there's online services that you want to also use that are free. One is executorium. Great service. Not only can you be on their registration form of national services to administrators of estates, but also you can promote that to the vendors in your area and also market to the vendors who are on there already.

call those attorneys, call those auction houses, call those other services. And then find your local services and offer them a free listing as a way to help them promote their business. Another one is FairSplit. FairSplit is an online service that helps estates divide up the personal property. It's an online service. You take pictures, the AI puts them online and then the errors rank them. It's an interesting service that's free.

are some paid upgrade versions but nice to the customers that use it are free I have the fair split vendor on my YouTube channel I interviewed him and go into detail that but fantastic service to offer to your attorneys or to your nurses or to your accountants or whoever's involved and there's others I have a whole bunch of others when you're my team will go through them and make those introductions next you need to have a networking component to your business meaning you've got a find a way to talk to people who meet your niche and be effective with them. One of the ones I use is Casey Eberhardt.

He's been my networking coach. He's one who really encouraged me to launch my YouTube channel. And really three and a half years ago challenged me to do a YouTube a day. And here I am three and a half years later with one of the top 30 real estate agent channels in America. And I really don't use this for anything other than educating my customers and doing business I'm not selling anything else. So Case is a great service and if you go there's a link to his program. In fact, I'll put it in the chat box.

If you're, if you actually email me or text me, I'll send you back the link because he has a particular program that I also can offer you some free membership benefits for. So if you're on my team, please text me, email me out, I'll send you that particular link. And all my links, why I say this are on link tree. I should I should put that up there as well. Let me just, I'm sorry, I'm not quite as organized on this as I should be. If you go to link TR.e slash Bill Gross, and you can scroll down here and get the networking riches event and sign up for that as well if you want to.

So a lot of the services I talk to are on my link tree. That's my best place to reach me. So what Casey does is, I think, helps small businesses build their business and gives you tools to do that. And so what happens is now you're going to coach your niche, your. nurses, your accountants, your attorneys on how to build their business, help them build their business, but first you make sure yours is done right and you're on point and then you share what you do with other people.

And so I invite my clients into cases program, I invite all of you, because you can help you with the fundamentals of networking and how to build your small business. I also invite people to join events I attend, like upcoming Grant Cardone's event, like upcoming a Tony Robbins event and so what I'm doing is trying to help people in fact you know I put that on there and then I also need to put in the if you're in Los Angeles I also promote the Lerick event which is the real estate event and then there's an upcoming Greg Cardone event as I'm saying this out loud I'm realizing I do more than I think I do but my point is you need to you need to have a system in place

to go to events regularly promote events and then provide events to your database people to leverage those people who are hosting those events for your benefit and their benefit. Number six are you need to work on your real estate fundamentals. Now there's a lot of different systems. I came up through the Mike Ferry system years ago. Don Hobbs is the one I recommend now and I'm part of. We have 900 agents on our team. We have daily script work and role play. We have great speakers that come in, events that you can promote to your database. He had Bob Berg from the GoGiver, the author, on a monthly call recently. So this is a whole organization,

Interstircle Resources you can check out. And if you want to set up to meet him, you can click here and see him in his group setting. But definitely, I would definitely check out Don Hobbs as a sales coach within real estate. You know, there's Mike Ferry, Tom Ferry, there's a million of them. But you need to have somebody who you're working

on their fundamental system all the time in improving your business. Now you also need to launched in social media and Facebook. And so one of the groups that I have, obviously, is probate weekly that I would encourage you to post your probate and trust related content in, ask questions, look for referrals.

Because that's how you're gonna build your business. And I'm surprised more of you don't do that. Couple of you have, having seen good results, more people viewing your YouTube channel or whatever else you're promoting. Love to have any probate or trust related content. on the website for free. Probate Mastery is another one that I think,

now I don't really have permission to say you should put your content there, but referrals, contact information to learn, introduce yourself to other agents in the air to get referrals, and you should post everything you can there. Now, if you're on Probate Weekly on this call and you're on my team, definitely shout out and say hi. I'd love to say hi to people and support those.

Audra asks me, do I have slides? I don't. Now make you a special deal, Ardra, if you send me an email, I'll text you back a link to this. In fact, anybody in this call, if you send me an email and say, please send an outline, I will send you back this document so you can have all that. You have to take all the notes, okay? Thanks, Ardra. Okay, probably weekly. You should be in the call every week. We have a trainees on here all the time. Have a question that you find interesting to know the answer to you to share with other people. And if you're on video, turn your camera on, especially if you look like Audra. Because then I'll bring you in, ask the question of the attorney, and now you have a snippet of social media that you should be putting on your social media for free.

I'm going to put you on an audience with an attorney. If you ask an intelligent question and give you an answer, you'll get a one minute, two minute or so, free piece of content with a leading attorney in the topic area. I love to have you do that. Brian Nolan asked, am I going to the agents helping agents meet tomorrow and and the answer is yes. Not only am I going to that. Again, my link tree, agents helping agents live event. That's linktr.e slash Bill Gross.

Yes, I'll be there. Not only going to be there tomorrow. I am doing a workshop with Ben P. I'm building your YouTube channel. Everybody should have a YouTube channel. Now, they should be the same as mine. They should be your YouTube channel supporting your business. And that's what we're going to talk about tomorrow.

I think do we charge we're gonna charge money for that I think we're doing for free yes free if you mentioned my name is free how's that okay where were we from my weekly call come on ask when I have an attorney in your market area you're crazy not to ask a question and have your camera on it's free I don't get that one free 99 yes Brian is free did I say it's free I don't talk to most of the nations and otherwise company resources now some of the things we do a lot of things I offer free to anybody If you're with our company, we have Facebook's workplace product, which is a whole other place to put your social media posts to get more people viewing it. Big mistake real estate agents make, I see people who promote YouTube with this wrong advice.

They say don't include realtors and don't include your own company. Wrong. When you're building your YouTube channel or building your social media, he wants me as eyeball as you can for free. Really let YouTube figure it out over time who wants to watch your stuff. Don't worry about it. There's nothing you're going to give away that's a secret that somebody else is going to copy and do as well as you. The market is way too big. So definitely share within your company platform. If you're at EXP, where you're in my group, you have some additional opportunities to do that. And that's how I built my YouTube channel so quickly,

was in addition of posting my own Facebook group and other sources. I posted inside our company and I emailed to every agent I knew. Some agents don't like it. Literally today. Some broker I used to work with, one to unsubscribe. And she couldn't figure out how to unsubscribe. figure out how to subscribe from Melchimp, whatever, you're an idiot. Fine, I don't care. I have a job to do. I have a family to feed. I have a movement to create. I have you guys to

help. I don't let one person who wants to unsubscribe get in the way. And if it's 10, I don't let that get in the way either. So you've got to learn how to be strong and put your message out there. If you believe you have a good message that's worthy, then you won't let that slow you down. Okay, so those are my fundamental steps. Now, what I do when somebody joins our team is we customize them and then we're supposed to do is meet weekly to implement these steps. There's a lot to do. You've got to get your email database right. You've got to get the cadence of your social media done and right. You got to get into action calling people to interview and rather than cold call, I much rather you cold call people in your super

niche. So again, going back here, if you're super niche, well Brian Nelson, thank you for the super chat. Glad to help. Any time, man. Love superchats. That's kind of fun. Kind of weird, I'm really not to do. Brian, thank you so much. I can't even have words for what, how much I appreciate that. But to go back, the problem I just have

when they build their YouTube channels, they say I don't know what to talk about. That's because you've been found your voice. Find your niche. And I promise you you have plenty of talk about forever. You can literally wake me up at three in the morning, though I don't recommend it. I can watch my face off in five minutes

be ready to talk about, probate real estate from a legal perspective for an hour. And you can do it again this next day and I can do it again on a different topic. Because I love that topic so much. The reason why you don't have content is because you haven't found the topic yet. You're too broad, you're too generic, you think you're like every other realtor. But when you get clear on the value you can create, you'll talk about it all day long, because you want to help other people.

And so that's why it's so important to find your particular, super niche that speaks to you, not me. Maybe it's cars, maybe it's coins, maybe it's samurai swords, maybe it's two or three of those. I don't know. Find your comment. And then what happens is you'll be interviewing people and posting social media on a regular basis and consistently creating value. And the thing I learned for my first coach was Zig Ziglar is you can have anything you want in your life if you help enough other people get what they want. So, thank you, Brian. That's fantastic comment and Adra, your support as well.

Anybody else have questions? If you're watching, I see people asking questions on YouTube and I see we have a good size audience on Facebook and LinkedIn as well. If you have questions, feel free to put them in there. I can respond to them in real time and I appreciate that. Anybody? And then again, if you want to get the outline to this document, just email me and put in their outline of marketing launch and I'd be glad to get that to you.

And if you're interested, look, I'm looking for personally a team member in all these niches in every state. I'm uniquely positioned with the XP Realty, which is a national company. And my goal is to why I do real well in my niche, which is Los Angeles County, legal probate, and I go hyper-nitch, court-confirmed sale business. That's my specialty. But at the same time, I built a national platform, and I'm looking to bring other agents into that national platform. So if you're interested in talking about how can I help you build your business? Free 99 love it. I just sent you an email.

Adra, thank you so much. Yeah, free 99 is my favorite price for, I think, just about everything. And oftentimes you don't get what you pay for. What I tell people when they consider a coaching company is consume the free content first. If you can't get launched from zero to your first couple deals for free, the content they have isn't enough to build a real business. I literally was our presentation over this week on a company that approached me. They want me to help build out a large group underneath me.

And they proposed for me to sell their white label coaching program. And I said, you know, even if it's free to me, and I'm making money on it the way they laid it out, I was going to make money at every sale. I don't know your coaching system. I'm open to learning it. But I also don't know people who've used it and are successful. I'm not going to sell it. There's no way.

They're not going to give away for free because it hasn't yet created the results they're looking for. They have to sell it because if you knew what it was, you wouldn't buy it. That makes sense. When your system's good, you don't have to sell it. People sign up for it and would be engaged with it. And that's the goal of all this marketing, is to be so good that attorneys or families want to hire you to sell real estate

because you're indispensable in the process of them going through probate or trust administration or litigation or wherever they are in the business. or wherever they are in their lives. That's the goal that we all want to be on. Okay, so let's see. What other questions? I don't see. I see, I just email, great.

I will send that back to you when we're done. And that's what all I have. I'm sorry that our guest today, unfortunately, and I give them permission when I book them. I don't want to make it sound like they're a no-show. They told me head time that they were running late with a client meeting. And when I book appointments, I always tell people that, you know, this, this is, the interview is meant to supplement your business.

And I am hopefully going to interview him into a pre-record and we'll run that as a separate episode later. Okay, I got your email. Thank you. Otherwise, I'm caught up with everybody. So this is a little shorter session. Any questions before we wrap up on how to launch your business, build your business? I would love to.

Look, I'm glad to help you, any of you, I offer free coaching. call 15 30 minutes on how to launch your business but if you're really looking to work together again not as my team underneath me but as my colleague i would love to find somebody in different states i'm in la county love to find people in different counties and even la county different super niches other than legal i would love to help you launch a business in that area and work together's colleagues and build a business i started this just to share with you i've often been done a presentation called relaunch your business at 60 or later. I did. It was five years ago in March that I was fired by a stupid company. I was a coach and manager and

recruiter. I was a top recruiter. I don't even to this day don't know why they let me go. They never told me why. I didn't do anything wrong. I've asked, nobody's ever the problem was. I've been in coaching and recruiting for about 10 years and done really well. I was the top recruiter every company has ever at by a mile. And I had to go back to production from scratch, but I had no leads, no listings, no business. And I put some time in to plan ahead and determined that probate was a niche I wanted to be in and developed a strategy. I literally spent five days going to court in the morning and writing my plan out in the afternoon and built a business plan that I launched. Now as you can imagine, that changed with COVID hit.

My plan was going to court every day and that had to start. stop and to relaunch it with a video and you're seeing now the kind of 2.0 version of my probate business but from day one i've built a business where every day i had more people into my funnel more people into my system i learned more every day i created more information for my customers every day became more valuable every day toward today business comes to me i don't cold call anybody i don't call email anybody i don't mail out anything cold um i do call prospective interviewees on my channel which is a different and they'll call call me back and when you get booked. So I'm here to say that this program works if you work

it, but it's about building a business not being a commissioned salesperson. If you're interested in learning how to do that, I did it on the XP platform because it was a unique opportunity to build equity. I have stock in the company. I have revenue share, recurring income as a result. I can show you how you can do the same thing. So if you're interested in that, I'd love to talk to you. And even if not, you just want to meet and talk about how to launch your business. Feel free to hit me up for a free coaching call. I would love to do that with you. And then we can help each other.

Thank you all for being on the call today. I hope this was helpful. I think it was. This seems like a topic we've got a lot of engagement on. Thank you to Brian again for your super chat. Thank you for Audrey, for your engagement. The rest of you with the questions we're watching. As always, make today your best day ever.

Thanks so much, everybody.