KGCI: Real Estate on Air - The 8 Hard Truths of Building a Probate Real Estate Business

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

Summary:This episode provides a no-nonsense guide to building a profitable real estate business in the probate niche. The host outlines eight challenging but essential steps, emphasizing that success requires consistent effort and a long-term perspective. The discussion covers the necessity of mastering legal terminology, building empathetic communication skills, and establishing relationships with key professionals like attorneys and fiduciaries. It's a highly tactical episode for agents serious about generating a steady stream of high-quality leads by serving clients during a difficult time with professionalism and expertise.

Okay, we're going to get started here because I'm in charge. Let's see, we got about, we have 30 seconds ago. Welcome to Probate Weekly on Bill Grouse with a cold. At Bill Gross Probate on social media. And this is probate weekly. We do this every Thursday. Let me get the visual lined up here real quick for you guys. There you go, because we have fancy graphics.

Probate Weekly. Hosted by me every Thursday at Friday. for P.N. Pacific time. If you want to sign up, if you're watching this on a forwarded or recording, put your email address, you'll get reminders. If you scroll down, you can also step on your favorite audio platform and see past episodes.

Normally every week we do an interview, I say most weeks we do an interview, but it was funny, the most popular episodes where I do what I call content, things that I share of my business, questions I get asked, things like that. So unfortunately today we had a cancellation, one of our attorneys, a little mixed up, he's in trial.

So my sister said, you know, people I love when you put together the material and share the advice of what they need to do with their business. And so I said to where, you know, one of the things I get asked all the time is what I knew to build my business and I want to tell them it's hard. And she said, tell them that.

So today our topic is gonna be eight hard things you have to do to build your project business. Now, some of you go, well, I want the easy way. I get asked this all the time, literally every week. What's the easiest way to build my probate business? And I tell people, I don't know. I didn't look for the easy way. I think the easy way is a trap. As real estate agents, I and you, and I'm a realtor full time, I sell houses. I'm not a coaching company. I'm not a probate data company, have anything to sell, other than the American dream. I get sold. like you every day, text, emails, hey, just do this,

you'll get three listings a month. And I've seen it all, try it all, and know most people who do it. I've very do some of those people to you that I think are the best, but in general, we get sold a lot of shiny panties. The reason why is the process of building a business is hard work, it's a grind.

And we are so quick to get off that grind, we'll do anything that sounds easy. But you evaluate people who are really successful at anything, you're going to find that they did the hard work. You find three things. One, they had a coach, a leader, mentor, a teacher, a rabbi, a priest, somebody who helped them along the way. You need to find that person. I have a couple. I've had a networking coach, Casey Eberhard, had a real estate marketing coach, Don Hobbs, and other coaches over the years.

Number two, you have to have a process, and you had to work that process every day. We talked today about some of those things. And third is, you have to have a group, colleagues, some ahead and you, some behind you, some behind you, to pull you along that you work for, so it becomes about helping them too. And that's my goal of this probate weekly, is you guys are my team. I don't think, I'd like to think myself as I'd like to become Tom Brady. I'm not of probate real estate. But in matter what, whether you be the quarterback superstar or one of the stars of the team, you have to have a team that you play for.

That when it gets hard, you want to pull them along with you, help them along with you. I was watching this week the video of Tom Brady, his remarks entering the Hall of Fame for the New England Patriots. And I recommend that you guys watch it. The link I'll put in the notes down below. it's phenomenal. One of the things he says that to me was so important is that it's hard work. You have to be willing to do things other people aren't. In order to achieve success, there's the link down below if you want.

And I'll put it in the show notes down below as well. You have to work hard. And in probate real estate, the mistake people make is it gets sold to desperate realtors who are, you know, desperate and think, well, I'll just try this. I'll just take this class. And then the class, well, you just mail out postcards and then deals come at you like rain. That's not it. It's hard work.

You have to work at 90 days minimum. You have a process to help you do that. So I want to share with you guys what I think are the eight things you have to do that comprise the hard work. that if you do them, I assure you you'll be successful. Not because I'm selling it to you. Not because I made it so. That's just the way life works. If you do these things, you'll be successful.

But they're hard work. They're not easy. I'm not going to teach you the easy way to do this. I don't know the easy way. I get to ask that all the time. Number one, get clear on your niche. Now, there are realtors who, I talked to $1.1 today. Well, I'm a lender, but I want to add probate in.

So she took a class on probate. Of course, they told her we'll buy our data, mail out postcards. She mails me an email. Nice lady. She has no idea how much work it takes to build business. Well, I just want to get a couple of listings from probate. Well, hell, everybody would. It was that easy.

You got to find your niche. You can't be a lender and a realtor and a insurance. Look, you can do all of them above average. I've met a number of people who do five things all about above average and you add all the income together and it's kind of above average. But if you would be great, you'd be successful in anything, you've got to pick one thing and master it. Now that one thing can have a couple angles to it, you can have a couple streams of income,

find your niche. Now in LA we have a huge probate market, so I focused in on kind of the legal services niche within probate real estate. In other areas you might focus on your county, you might focus on, and we'll focus on, and we We've talked about this before, nurses, seniors, reverse mortgages, pro-bay advances. There's a lot different ways, and I have my YouTube channel, a number of ways you can build your business,

but you can't find yours and work that. You can't just do what they sell you. They sell you the easy way that's easy to sell, but it's not gonna be productive. Just buying data and mailing postcards or sending emails or saying texts will not build a business. If I'm wrong, send me your information. I'd love to be told I'm wrong, but I don't think that's the case.

Okay, there's number one. Number one, find your niche and work the heck out of it. Be the master of your niche. Number two, nobody likes to hear this one. Master the fundamentals of your database. Everybody, when I tell them, this, yeah, okay, but tell me the next one because I want to talk to new people. It doesn't work that way in life. It's like telling a football player you don't have to watch your nutrition, you don't have to run, you have to lift weights.

Of course you have to lift weights. Of course you're in real estate and you're building a business. You have to master your database because your first probate deals, your easiest probate deals are the people you already know in like and trust. Yes, you need a prospect for more, but you got to start with what you have. You post the content to those you have already and they will help you find new people. people. But you've got to master your database. You have a CRM, a customer relationship management system. But it can be cheap, it can be spreadsheet, Google Sheets, can be Mailchip. You have to be able to mail out to it. You have to post to all those people, social media

content, and stay in contact with them. There's a lot to that. But you have to master those fundamentals. There's a program, I have a link tree, if you want to a link, a TRD, dot E. slash Bill Gross. Link TREE slash Bill Gross. I have on there all of my various links and programs.

If you scroll down a little bit, next week is networking riches. Free today event. Mastering Fundamentals of Networking with Casey Eberhardt, my networking coach. Free.

So I definitely urge you to check that out. That's my linktree. e.e. slash Bill Gross. Okay. So you've got to master the fundamentals of the database. Master them, not just have a database. Use it.

Like I email out something to my database at some level. Everybody gets something every week. Every appropriate week they get something every week. I even have emails I send a week. I've accumulated everybody I've met in my database over the last five years. I have 13,000 people in my database. You've got to master it.

Those are fundamentals. Number three, you have to know your numbers. If this is a business, this is a hard thing. You have to know your numbers. So I every day check my hot leads, listings, pendings, and then close you today. I checked it every single day.

In my to-do list, every day, 8 a.m., I check my numbers. So I'm clear I'm looking for listing today. I'm looking for listing every day. I need a new contract. every week. I'm on that like a dog and a bone. I know my numbers. Every week we evaluate how many new email addresses we collect from various sources. I use Eventbrite, Facebook, LinkedIn, various sources. Even you only use one or two. Is your database growing? What was it last week? I have a spreadsheet. Last week it was this, this week was this. The increase

is X. I tracked my numbers every single day and every single week. I check my YouTube channel. I compare myself to the top YouTube channels of real estate every month. Now, I'd be honest, I don't do it. I designed it. I have a virtual system that does that work. But I look at my channel and how it compares to competitors every single month. You've got to know your numbers. It's the hard work of business.

Now, don't spend all day doing those things. Having your niche, you need to design. Master your fundamentals and knowing your numbers is something you do. couple hours a day. Number four though is commit to a system or process to generate business. Now when I started in real estate, I used the Mike Ferry system. Excuse me guys, I'm battling a cold. I don't have any fever, I'm in good shape, but I'm just kind of, I'm determined to push through it. So thanks for suffering through it with me. When I started I was the Mike Ferry system

we'd be cold called every day for four hours and I had to contact 40 people a day. did that for years. When I started a probate, I went to court every day. I would leave my house at 7.45. I got there at 8.15 in front of the courtroom. The court opened 8.30, so I was there for 15 minutes every day. And I stayed there until 10.45. I did that five days a week.

That was my lead generation system. I met people. I didn't door knock. I was at the court. But I did something every day. Today, my business generation is social media. So I either interview people or call people interview every day before noon. That's my business.

I do my business generation activity every day. You have to have your activity. It could be cold calling, going to offices, going to court, door knocking, mailing, or posting on social media. But it better look like four hours a day. You can't just post something once a week and wonder why you're not getting, well, I guess you can't wonder why you're not getting business. You're not getting business, you're not putting the time in.

You got to put in the time. So you have to commit to that system, what's your calendar look like. And you block out the time to work that system, whether it be door knocking or phone calling. And that's what you do. And you schedule things outside that time. Or if you interrupt that time, you reschedule the activity afternoon. But that is your business. Building your business development, that is your business.

That's the hard work. As Roachers, we all like to say, well, I just do a good job so people come back to me. It used to be, before Zillow that was. Now, too many of our past clients go to Zill or Redfin and they're selling those leads and we don't get that repeat business we used to get. We don't get those referrals we used to get as much. We're going to work harder, competition is tougher. Everybody wants to put you out of business.

You got to be hard. So that's number four. Commit to your system. Number five, learn regularly. Somebody called, a lady called me today and kind of gave me the, oh, you're the LA probate expert. I said, well, to be honest, my expertise relies on LA County court sales confirmation. But in that area, I am the expert. And I can say that because I've done the work.

What area of your business do you do the work that you've mastered? For too many of you in California, you even read the probate purchase agreement addendum or the probate listing agreement addems. But at a minimum, you should read those. I know every word of those. I've also read the probate code. That's the blue book right there. That's California Probate Code. I've also read the LA County Superior Court rules on probate.

I've read the Orange County rules on probate. I watch YouTube. I watch videos. I watch other companies coaching. It's hard to watch. Most of the other coaching companies is 90% sales of their database and their data and their mailers. Very little content.

But I'm thirsty for the, the content because I want to be the best I want to learn it every day how much time do you spend learning hopefully this program is an opportunity for you to learn I interview attorneys across the country have had people say well what do I care if that journey is out of North Carolina because the principles are the same we're trying to learn to be better at a craft some of you think the reason I have the attorneys on is for you to cold call them no it's to learn it's to learn either how to interview them like I do or learn from them the principles of probate and real estate Hey, if you're watching this live, feel free to put a comment in.

Lynn Davis, happy Thursday. Nice to talk to you again. Lynn Davis, put your contact in for me in, if you want. But she's a local real estate investor slash realtor in a former ask officer here in Southern California. Okay, so number one, just a recap, define your niche. Two, master fundamentals. Three, know your numbers. It's a business. Four, commit to your system. Five is to learn regularly. Number six,

the hard work of being successful probate is you have to master sales and communication. One of the keys in our business is we deal with a very diverse range of people. I have customers who are literally on welfare, drugs, drugged in operators at one end, and I have multi-millionaires to the other end. I have people with no business occupations to the other end. And I have to communicate with all of them. So communication is an area, negotiation,

how to control your emotions. You know, I used to think, well, if you're a commercial role tour, you must know more than me, be successful. Nonsense. I had communication with a commercial role to yesterday. He was just so emotional. I just said, don't look, stop.

Just send me an email, man. There's no reason to get emotional. I can't follow what you're trying to say. You're so upset. And in fact, he did, and we solved this problem. So we talked to different types of people, more people. We also deal with attorneys, which is a whole different world. And so we have to learn how to communicate effectively

with a broad range of people and a broad range of scenarios. Not just grieving, which is part of it, but emotion about money and businesses and old family competitive issues. Mom like me more than you. Mom like to earn more than me. All that comes up in a probate and way it doesn't through other business. So there's books on communication,

there's classes of communication, but this is the hard work of the business, is learning how to do that so you can be good at it, you can be great at it, hopefully. Number seven, I think this should be obvious, but maybe it's not so sad. We focus on listings.

The leverage of business, real estate, is listings. We have a listing, the whole market works for you. What does that mean? Well, I had a listing. Actually, I had a case where I was a fiduciary for the estate and we listed a property for sale. And the buyer, you went to escrow, and then the buyer's jerked us around. It's actually a realtor slash investor buyer. And the listing agent I had hired, he actually referred us to the business. I said to him, just send a cancellation and we have a backup offer. Let's light of the backup offer and get this guy.

out the door. And really? I said, yeah, what do I care? I'm just selling the house to make money from the estate. And this, this, uh, realtor was used to getting into people's emotions. I said, I don't, I don't have emotion on this. It's just a business deal. He's being dishonest. We have a contract. He either honors in and he steps aside. And that was on Friday, a Monday, he wired his money in before, what are you calling us? In fact, he wired in too much money needs us to refund him the difference, which is funny. That's the part of being on the listing side. We want to focus on the listings.

And so you trust that process. One of the big mistakes make, agents make, is we get sold so much nonsense on marketing listings. I have a young gal working with one of my listings and she hired a photographer. No, no, we don't need a photographer. It's a probate listing. House is vacant. We're going to get people in the house. We don't need to entice people to come.

people to come. This isn't like drive to North Previll Hills, it comes to your mansion. This is a nice single family home in Anaheim. But if you're in the market, you'll show up at the open house or show up on a lockbox with your agent. We don't need fancy pictures to sell the house. We need to create competition and get people in the door. So here's somebody who doesn't have any money who's insisting on spending money with a vendor and I'm telling you don't need to, just use your iPhone. Because when you have a listing and you're looking for listings and probate, I'm not, not competing with other home sellers by putting cookies in the oven to make it sound like I'm working hard.

I'm working hard. I'm selling my client's house for top dollar. I don't have to pretend to with fake staging and fake photos and all that nonsense. I do things that sell the house for top dollar for my client. Number eight, here's also hard work. Put yourself in front. Put yourself in front. I don't know if lens on the call or not today.

Put yourself in front. You know, when COVID hit, I usually go to court every day to generate business. And when COVID hit, I had to stop because I couldn't go to court. Court was closed. So my networking coach, Casey Everhart, networking riches, shout out to Casey, challenged us to use video to promote ourselves. Now, video's gotten more competitive than it was three and a half years ago, but he challenges to put something on video every day for 30 days.

And that's what I did. And that led itself to this podcast and other activity where if you go to my YouTube channel, YouTube pays me some money, not a lot, monthly, more than a cable TV bill, I guess. I get about 20 hours a day, 70s a week of video watch time. Phenomenal, leveraging of my time. It's an amazing opportunity you have.

Here's the thing. A lot of what they teach you about YouTube is, selling you classes on to YouTube. You need to create content that your prospects want to see. It's a way to leverage you, not create a YouTube channel. So for me, I put content out like this, educating my attorneys, the realtors of my team, realtors are a firmy business, vendors I work with, and how we all become more successful.

And that content can be watched for hours. I create this YouTube today for half an hour, or video for half an hour, being YouTube, we'll get about 200 views, and about 10, 20 minutes, we'll get about 300 minutes of watch time. It's phenomenal. You gotta put yourself out there though. And I know you're comfortable,

I know you'll feel like you look good, whatever. I'm me, look at me, I'm 65 years old. I have nothing but gray hair anymore. I used to have some black hair, it's all gone, it's all gray. You know, I used to be very conscious about wearing a dress shirt, You know, I want to be relaxed. I want to feel good. I want to move.

I want to, you know, be comfortable. One of your attorneys, I do put a dress shirt. I respect to them, to be honest. But, you know, use what you have. When people meet me, they're going to meet me anyhow. I can't deny that. So I might as well play with it and work with it as best I can. But put yourself out there.

Now, that might mean going to events. It might mean doing video. But just know the hard work is putting yourself out there. This is hard work for me today. I have a cold. It would have been easy to put on a recording or something else. But I love this. I love having an audience.

I love you guys. You know, I get phone calls. People watch this. Every day I get one or two. Hey, I watch your thing. I really appreciate you taking time to help me. And can you help me? I just love doing that.

It's been the honor of my life to build this audience, to build this business. And, you know, my first coach was Zig Zigler. And I built my business on this quote. He said, you can be anything one in life if you help enough other people get what they want. And so that's why I work it every day. So, me asked when I launched this podcast four years ago, what's your plan, how you can get paid? And I said, I don't know. I don't know, I don't care.

I feel like I'll help people. It'll work itself out. You'll have to figure itself out. And it has because I did the hard work. So here's my challenge to you. I gave you eight hard things to do. Commit yourself to this business. This is the best opportunity in real estate ever.

Your competition's scared. Your competition's distracted. Your competition is sitting on a Zoom call learning how to do something that's stupid. They're not helping their customers, answering questions to their customers, solving customer problems. You do that, you'll own your piece of the business, the part that's appropriate for you. Okay, but you watch this I see on YouTube,

on X. It's been a great source of late. Just FYI, it's free to stream on X. If you have questions, feel free put the chat box. I'll answer them. Feel free to put your contact information in so we can refer business to you and do business together. And like I said, this is a one-off about once every, you know, eight or nine episodes. We get a late cancellation and I'll substitute some content. I hope you found this helpful today if you liked it. Let me know. If you didn't like to tell me why. If you didn't like that, my voice was scratchy. I'm sorry, I made decision to go forward with it.

My late tree information is there below. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions. I want to see any things that I'm working on. Okay, I don't see any questions in the chat box. We're going a little short today, but again, as you can tell, I'm still struggling a little bit of my voice, we'll try to save some for later. Hope you guys have a great week.

Great week next week. Thank you, Lynn. It was nice meeting you, by the way. and I hope to have you as a new friend going forward. For those you reach out to me at Gros Probate social media or link to treat the different ways to reach me. If I can help a new way, feel free to make a phone call or text or email.

We'll set time to talk together. Make today your best day ever. Thank you, everybody.