Serving Families Through Loss, with Paul Cooke

0:01 Welcome to the Executorium podcast. I'm Bill Gross at Bill Gross Probate and Social Media. Really excited to have today a good personal friend, also a mentor, colleague, and mentor in terms of spiritual life, and he'll talk a little bit about that in the background. Paul Cooke from Athens, Georgia. Paul, thank you so much for joining us today. It's good to be here, Bill. So, how tell give us a little background. How I know you're in real estate, but how did you get into real estate in particular? How's your practice focused on helping families in many cases that have personal losses? Yeah. Well, I've got about 23 years of being a pastor in my background. So, I'm still doing pastoral work, but I'm not I'm not vocational, so I'm not getting paid for it. I still do some things with our church. so I've I've been like I said a pastor, served many families and friends and individuals through very difficult times and I found that it's just followed my it's followed me into real estate as well. So, I've had a lot of opportunities even more recently that just been dealing with a lot of probate you know, either people moving into that phase in their life where they need to make sure that they have all the documentation and all everything set up legally or they're actually walking through it with parents or loved ones. And so, it's been it's been very helpful from that standpoint. And truthfully, I mean, we've done that with all four of our parents. So, it's something that's dear to my heart. I definitely have an empathy and an understanding of what folks go through to be to see a loved one either coming to that place or a loved one passing away.

1:55 Now there's the there's the you know hard technical side of that meaning probate, real estate, attorneys, accounting, tax laws, procedures, vendors and such and then there's the soft skills which is doing all that with a an appropriate level of sensitivity to families errors or whoever it may be. So talk a little bit how those two kind of work together or can be a challenge that you have to work around. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's one thing to have the technical side and that's that's one reason that I've I've connected with a number of different probate attorneys in the area that just really excellent. In fact, you know, one of the attorneys that I refer people to are attorneys that we personally use ourselves and have used in the past and just seeing how they handle people and the sensitivity that they had towards people that are walking through probate and probate issues. So, from that standpoint, I think they go handinand glove. the there's got to be a sensitivity, but there also has to be the ability to, you know, when you walk into a parents home that maybe you haven't seen for a while or maybe you have and they're they tend to as they grow older, a lot of them just can't take care of their property as they did before. And they would have liked to take care of it in a different way, but things collect.

3:24 It's kind of like rabbits, you know, things grow and so you move them into some sort of home or they pass away and then you've got to deal with everything that's in their estate. And I've got companies that are very sensitive to this that come in and they will do anything and everything, including clean the house after they've moved everything out. They will do either an estate sort of sale or they will move everything into storage. Whatever you want them to do, they will do. And their integrity is second to none. I've used them personally, but also just have seen them over and over again and how they how they deal with people in the midst of it. And that to me that's that's just as important as the legal aspect is being able to walk people through the emotional decisions they have to make. I mean they look at all the things around and they say well how can I get rid of this or Yeah. What am I supposed to do with all this stuff? Yeah. And helping them to just gently walk through those scenarios is is very significant. Now, Executorium is a service that's been created by the founder George Compton to help families go through that. And one of the has really I would say three components or four squares, but three components.

4:54 One is directory of service providers. So, if you click on this and you input Clarke County, Georgia, you get among other people Paul who's in Wat Watkinsville. And then there's some estate sales companies and some other vendors. And I think that this opportunity for you, Paul, and for these other vendors to get other vendors on here so that families have a chance to meet people and find good vendors to help them with their business. And in your case, you can look up on here and find people maybe you're not aware of. And then if you click down on Paul's link, you get him and his personal information. And so that's the purpose, one purpose. The other is directory of government resources. you go online and you can find in any state where the laws are made or any county where the procedures are different information for filing probate forms and trust forms and federal IRS forms. And if you actually put in the actual county that you're dealing with, you'll see Clarke County with an e Georgia and they'll have they'll add the Georgia state law as well as the county information. Very helpful I think for families who are starting out and want to do some things on their own. And then the last two pieces, articles and learning. I think they're kind of the same, which is information both of interest to the to families who are in who are executors, administrators as well as professionals, and resources we can use to help promote them. So that's the basic part of Executorium. So and Paul is a Realtor® who services for us the Athens, Georgia, University of Georgia, and the Bulldogs are headquartered. so talk a little bit about what do you do for business development? Obviously, you can't, you know, call somebody, hey, anybody die in your household? I want to help you sell your house. Not the There are people who do that. There people who buy list of deaths and biteries and probate filings, but I know that's not what you're doing. How do you How is it that you end up attracting business in the space? Well, a lot of it is via word of mouth through attorneys, through some of these other companies that I have relationships with that I've worked with that either are they are an estate sale company

7:02 U and truthfully, I mean, a lot of it is also through the through these pastors that I've had relationship with since 2001. So, yeah, I get I get calls in on a regular basis. I'd say probably averaging 8 to 10 a year at this point. Wow. So, encouraged by that and yeah, and that's that's generally how I get most of my business. Nice. Well, again, and Paul's based in Clarke County, Georgia, the services of Greater Athens Marketplace. his phone number [phone number]. His website is paulhasthebuyers.net.net. Talk a little bit about Paul, you having the buyers. I see you advertise, and market for some home builders in the area. Describe a little bit about how you handle that business. Yeah, I've got I've got a few different avenues of buyers. I've got buyers that will buy for cash. So, this is very helpful to know that, especially when somebody's got an estate and they just don't want to deal with, you know, everything that's there. They just said, "Look, we just need to go ahead and move this." So, one of the things that that happens is I've got cash buyers that can come in. Also have another company, Scriber, that actually comes in and helps to finance. because a lot of times it's going to cost you between5 and $10,000 to bring on an attorney and to walk through the probate process. Who has that and discretionary funds that they can just drop for a year, sometimes maybe two years before the estate is settled, you know, who has that kind of money? Most people don't. And so if not, then this company can come in and help to finance that so they can get everything rolling. and not only just finance that but help the attorneys to expedite the process as well. So very good as well and then also just being able to bring in these other these other companies that can

9:05 Come alongside and do everything even updating the house if there are things that need to be taken care of and that's what that the family wants to do and they want it to be updated. just had a in fact just closed on an estateowned home and they ended up using a number of they had they had a water problem in the crawl space which isn't unusual in Georgia and had one of the companies that I recommend come in. They fixed it in a matter of days and they fixed it at a fraction of the cost of going to, you know, some of these national branded, you know, crawl space experts and they fixed it and they did it at high quality as well. So, it was just advantageous for the family across the board. And then also of course being able to bring it to the general market and that's going to bring the higher price but also it's going to take more time. Well that's the advantage of working with a local expert. You know where there's no local experts these national companies can fill in but when you have somebody like Paul you can call and know who the local vendors are who going to be of service. So again, paulhasthebuyers.net in the greater Athens, Georgia area, Clarke County, Georgia, Watkinsville specifically, and phone number [phone number]. Paul, thank you as always so much for your support and raising the standards of our industry. Really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks Bill.

10:34 Appreciate you. And this is the Executorium Podcast. I'm Bill Gross, at Bill Gross on social media. Feel free to call, text, or email if I can help any way. May tell your