A Good Kind of Probate Problem, with Brad Woodall of ProbateResource.com

0:00 Commonly in Probate Weekly interview an attorney or vendors that work with attorneys. But today I came across a guy who I saw on a podcast who's just phenomenal marketer has a bunch of stuff going on. It's a lot of fun and we've had a chance to meet and talk a lot of fun to talk to but more importantly educational about marketing and building a business and probate. Really excited to have Brad Woodall who is both he's the probate house guy and he's also probate resource.com and we'll talk about what those two are. Brad, thanks for joining me today.

0:27 Yeah, thanks for having me Bill. I appreciate it. I've been following you for a long time. But I think what you said to me was my, you know, we talked about the kind of the two different faces and really as three. I think there's as an investor sellers, there's resources for attorneys and or real estate agents to contact you. But you said to me you're really in the marketing business. That's really your business basically. Yeah. I'm a marketing person first and my widget is real estate. So, I've learned that and I've learned to in marketing, you have to understand your audience and your avatar of who you're marketing to and you have to speak a specific message to them. So that's why I created probate resource.com and I created probate house guy and then I have my other house buying brands that I've had for years and they all have a specific brand and image that speak to a specific narrow type of customer and it makes me appear to be that expert in that one niche and I'm not that jack of all trades, master of none. Although I kind of am but I guess I'm jack of all trades, kind of a master at some, right?

1:31 So, well, if you can't tell already, he's obviously a bundle of energy and has a lot going on. I think the purpose of this call is to learn not how we might work all our business with investors, right?

1:41 But as a real estate broker, you know, 10 20% of my transactions are an investment that's not appropriate for me that I look for an investor to work with. And guys like Brad love those phone calls or emails. And we'll take a bunch of them, go through, we'll talk about how that works. And just to kind of summarize what you just said, I'm going to quote Jay-Z, who I've never listened to, but I hear him being quoted, which is I'm not a what was it? I'm a business. I'm a businessman. Meaning he himself is a business. I think as real estate agents, I'm a business. You're a business. And you have some interesting approaches. Let's talk about first off the probate house guy that's facing to sellers. Talk a little bit about how you generate leads there and what your value proposition is as a probate house guy.

2:24 So probate house guy is actually facing for agents and attorneys and stuff like that. So it's okay get them mixed up. Probate resource face is like a sellerfacing brand for so this is probate house guy here. So that's my brand that I have out there. I have I created a podcast although I fell off the wagon on that as you know running a podcast is hard work. And I have a YouTube channel for that and I do some training stuff and that sort of thing. And that is my brand facing real estate agents and real or probate attorneys and that sort of stuff as a sort of a lead funnel to bring, you know, business in where I can buy houses, buy properties. I've been an active real estate investor now for 10 years. Flipped and bought hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of houses at this point in time. I'm in the metro Atlanta area by all over Georgia really at this point. And I you know I started marketing to probates in I want to say it was 2018. You know the old traditional way pull buying the probate or I was pulling the probate lists, right? And then I started buying them from a leads provider. And then doing, you know, direct mail marketing to them, just sending them postcards or whatever. And we were buying houses. And then my team got really good at doing probate deals because they're just hairy, right? They come with a lot of issues and you got they don't take they're not you can't close them next week. Sometimes these things take like a year to get them closed, you know, with all the drama. So, we got good at that. So, I created this brand for Probate Resource.

4:05 To face customers, which is a you know, it's a catchy domain, right? Probatresource.com. I've got a whole YouTube channel content to help home sellers, you know, there's all kinds of videos and things, everything about probate, and I even interviewed probate attorneys, and we have topics for each state and that sort of thing, just because everybody's going to the internet nowadays to solve all of life's problems. Right now, everybody's asking Chad GPT everything about their own life. So, I just wanted a way to be able to capture those that audience and bring in some bring in some more deals into our pipeline is really what it's all about. So,

4:44 So the first one, the probate house guy is more of a B2B. You're marketing other businesses to free business and the probate resource guide is to consumers more of a BTOC approach, but correct the same goal, finding the same kind of transaction just two different channels.

4:56 Correct. Yeah. So, let's talk about because I think you know I get a lot of investors who call me and I'd love to help people. I mean, frankly, one of the reasons I have the podcast is to help people rather than me calling them individually, I could, you know, leverage it by recording stuff. The thing that strikes me is that investors will give up. They'll look at two or three transactions. They run the two or three possible leads. They'll run the numbers and go, "this is too hard." They give up. And I and I don't think they understand how many deals like you looks at for every one you actually close and get paid on. If you were to estimate today in the last 12 months, take the number of deals you looked at, divide and I see when I say looked at, I mean just looked at the property, ran in some comp, and ran an idea of what your profit might be on it. You know, in the last 12 months, take the number of leads you looked at, divide it by the deals you close. How many do you think you look at for everyone you actually get paid on?

5:43 It's probably give or take around 10%. So about one out of every 10 that we look at. Now, those are leads because we procure our own leads that come into our pipeline. Depending on the channel, if you blended all the averages together, it's around 10%. One out of every 10. I've been doing this for 10 years now. So, I kind of that's kind of sometimes it's higher, sometimes it's lower. But I would say

6:05 I think without getting too specific, I my guess is you're bringing it what you're calling your lead a little more curated. You've already kind of run it through a cut or two of different information to get it to that point. But you know, even 10 is more than most investors. But I but I've experienced

6:21 And I' when I talk to investors, it's really a hundred total deals that they kind of vet through some number and they look at 10. They have a spreadsheet to get to one. But it's a that bottom line is you're looking at deals all the time, I would imagine.

6:34 All the time. I have a I have people that work for me that do it. Missy that's worked for me for eight and a half years. She really is our first sort of line of defense, let's call it. She qualifies all these leads and then they get passed down there and some of these, you know, we get a lot of online leads. Some of them are more retail and then we steer them towards a network of agents that we have. I'm an agent, too. Sometimes I'll list them, but I don't typically like to do retail stuff. So we'll usually farm them out to like if it's in a specific area, I know a rockstar agent in that one little town and that one little niche or whatever and that's their thing. So I'd rather just refer that to them because they're going to do way better at selling that deal than I ever will. And I'll just collect a referral fee on it. And you know, I still monetize that lead. So

7:26 So again, and you monetize a lead not so much to make money on the referral fee, but that probably covers some of your overhead to get the leads. Oh yeah. Down the ones you want, right? You pay for advertising, marketing, mailing staff,

7:37 And the referrals aren't your paycheck. The referrals are kind of the revenue stream that helps offset some of your costs. Yeah. Most people don't realize this, but if I haven't looked at the numbers in a little bit. I probably should get back in my CRM and look at it again, but as of a few months ago, our all-in blended cost per deal is like $10,000 a deal to get a deal. I mean, it's people don't realize it's very it's when I started it was like four, you know, now it's 10 to get a deal. When you factor in the overhead and the marketing and all the things baked into getting a deal, it's about $10,000 a deal.

8:13 And that's just to get the deal. That doesn't cover the paint, the carpet, you know, flip costs, escrows, and Yeah. And so I think so, first thing I would say is, okay, so you spend a lot of money to get to those deals. People don't who spend less money have to put time in or look at more deals than you do. So that's where your number's different. I think now I think they're at 100 because you're not spending as much, but they're putting their elbow grease in to get there.

8:36 But the conclusion is it's a lot harder to get a deal than you would ever imagine. Yeah. And it's gotten harder Oh, as time has gone on and, you know, when the market shifted about three years ago, it got even harder and we had to really pivot and focus. And I'm thankful that a long time ago I planted the seeds of like SEO and things like that and all this content marketing I've done and all these things are have in the past few years have begun to pay me back and now I'm getting a lot of free leads through you know SEO search engine organic website leads from our website that we used to pay for to get we paid Google ads. I was spending tens of thousands a month on Google ads for many years. So,

9:20 And so another way to phrase that for everybody else listening is he's built equity in a business. You know, a business creates equity value over time. The equity value doesn't get taxed, but it's there. And so, he's now he invested money and it cost him $10,000 a lead, but really might have cost him only $8,000 because he's going to get a free lead next month that offsets some of those costs. And that's the value. If you're just cold calling and you're throwing away the leads and don't do anything, there's no equity being built. If you're co- calling and building a pile, you have equity and the people who didn't b didn't sell this year might sell five years from now. That's a free deal five years from now. And that's where the energy comes in. Okay. So, you put a lot of energy in getting deals. That's the first thing. Second thing is that when I talk to investors on every single deal, even the best of the best guys who make a fortune with big teams and all that, they always tell me three things. I paid more than I thought I had to at the end. It cost me more to flip it or rehab it, whatever I'm going to do, and I got a little less than I thought it would at the end. Meaning that the margins are just under constant pressure,

10:24 Especially in the last I would say the last year or two. The margins have really gotten compressed, days on market is higher, which means my holding costs and time and my cash conversion cycle is longer to get the money from the deals. Yeah. I mean, everything I've never come in under budget on a rehab ever.

10:47 I hear that all the time. That's universal. Every investor always says that, right? Yeah. So, and so again, I want people listening to this to appreciate we think of investors as just money grabbers. You give a deal to, they get rich in every deal.

10:58 And the answer is, you know, sometimes they miss on deals and they're eating it and we don't and they don't come back to us to an attorney or Realtor® and say, "Hey, that deal you gave me, I didn't make 50,000. And I lost $10,000. We They don't We don't give them money back for that deal. That's

11:12 Yeah, you know, it happens once, right? Yeah. I actually just lost money. I've only lost money on three deals ever in hundreds of deals, which is a good track record, I guess. But one of them was just a few months ago, if you go check out my YouTube channel on Probate House Guy, it was a nasty discuss. Probably the nastiest hoarder house I've ever bought. And at the end of the day, it, you know, took longer. The re I went over budget on rehab. It took longer to sell. I got a bad appraisal. I'm generally really good at analyzing numbers and I just got a downright bad appraisal on this and I looked at the time and do I relist this? Do I not? I just decided to eat it. At the end of the day, I lost $2,500 on that deal. I spent six months on that project and put a lot of time, money, and effort into that project and I got nothing to show for it. So, you know, sometimes you win some and but like two weeks ago I just sold one and I made $94,000. So

12:07 You win some, you lose some, right? It's just it all works out in the end. So, and so in my experience, this is the profile of the investor you want to work with. This is a real business. He has real expenses, real wins, real losses. We all get approached by people who say, "Well, I'm an investor. I'll, you know, I get this all the time. I'll buy anything from the ocean to the desert, from the mountains to San Diego. You show me a good deal, I'll buy it." I'm thinking, "Dude, you don't even know what you're doing." Because even if I got you such a deal, you would choke on it if you don't know the area and it's too far away and driving, right? So that doesn't mean you can't farm deals out or fur deals out, but my guess is you have a particular format of what you're looking for that includes some kind of limits of geography, some types of limits on the deal. Talk a little bit about what you would buy or what you would pass on or maybe refer out.

12:51 You know, it's evolved over time and it evolves with market cycles. So, like right now I'm trying to avoid big heavy rehabs. I live in the Atlanta area and I don't particularly like to buy houses kind of in Atlanta proper. Just because working with a lot of those municipalities is a pain in the butt. They're just they're not easy to work with. I've been trying to get a permit on one project down south of Atlanta for like over a month now and it's ridiculous.

13:21 So, you know, that sort of thing. And then I've steered away from higher priced stuff. In fact, in the last few years, I've gotten really good at flipping manufactured homes, mobile homes, right? They're manufactured homes, but those are selling like hot cakes. If you can fix the title issues and if you can get, you know, the foundation certified and you can get it lendable with FHA, VA, all of the above, those that's the only thing affordable right now out there. And so I sell a ton of those. I've got two in the pipe right now. We're selling one next week and we're in mid-rehab on another one and I just sold one of the one I made 94 grand. I talked about that was a manufactured home I made 94 grand on.

14:02 Wow. So it's changed over time. It evol it evolves from year to year. Sometimes midy years you I'm always looking at what the market's doing and what's happening and I'm adjusting my strategy to meet that. So,

14:20 And I'm guessing you could do luxury if you want to put the time, effort, energy into developing that as a cycle. But that's a lot of investment time, effort, and energy for maybe limited opportunities to do business. And the people who do compete in that world,

14:34 They specialize in that world. Like they know every block, they know every designer of every house. Like you how do you compete with somebody, the good ones I've worked with, they know everything about those properties. And so, how could you compete with them unless you're at that level, right? So, you have to see out of that, I would think.

14:48 Yeah. Actually, before we got on this call, I was analyzing it's a it's an inheritance probate deal, and it is a lakefront estate on Lake Laneir here in Atlanta, which is a big lake, and it's a 1.7 million ARV. And I was running my rehab numbers on it and I realized I my napkin math was way off. I'm actually putting in my spreadsheet now. I'm up to $750,000 on the rehab budget in this thing. But I typically don't do those and honestly over the years I make way more money on the small base hit carpet and paint quick in and out. This business is about the speed of money, not I don't try to ek out every last dollar out of every la. It's about just turning and burning, turning and burning and burning. Same with listings. I feel the same way, right?

15:37 You know, I've bought and flipped properties, but micro there's only two things I'll spend money on. The 100 got junk and Molly maids and pass that take pictures put the internet MLS and sell it. If I do more than that on the stomach for that work I admire you guys. I just I don't know how you go to bed at night with a crew coming in you're writing checks buying stuff at Home Depot or through your vendor. I don't know how you even sleep with all that. But that's a different business entirely than what I do.

16:05 Yeah. And a flipping business is most people get into this, they decide they want to flip or they want to wholesale houses or whatever. In the investor space, flipping and rehabbing is a completely different business than the wholesaling space. Yes.

16:20 In the wholesaling space, you're a marketer. You got to market deals. You got to market to sellers to get deals. You're a marketer. If you're flipping, you're in the construction business. Fortunately, I have a little bit of a background in construction. And I even built my own house. But it's a completely different animal. Completely different.

16:41 So, let's switch a little bit to marketing. Let's talk about that because that's something that you have in common with Realtors®, other investors, with attorneys. At the end of the day, it seems to me marketing is about getting somebody's attention to take action with you at some level to convert that into business down the road. So, talk a bit about kind of your main focuses on your marketing for lead generation. You know, a lot of what I do is based off of a concept. There's a very well-known marketer Frank Kerna. He's been around for a long time. He calls it intentbased branding. And I've bought a bunch of his courses over the years or whatever. And basically I try to create content and things that help people and help answer their questions that they're resolved. That's why I created probate resource, right? Helping people through the probate process and in the process I am earning their trust and being viewed as the expert and I'm already kind of pre-qualifying those leads before they ever pick up the phone and call me.

17:39 Right. So, and I do the same thing myself and the reason I like that is I feel like marketing is two things. You can either make yourself look like something you're not and kind of fool people. I'm an expert and I'm a great Realtor®. Choose me and spend all your energy on looking like that. I have a picture with you and the team and you're all wearing black suits and you have a bunch of really pretty girls, right? Or you know, I know what I'm doing or I'm learning what I'm doing and I'm going to walk with you while we learn together, but I'm a hardworking guy. I'm committed to your success. I want to help you and here's what I'm doing to improve my game. And people say, "Wow, I want you to help me. I want to learn with you or I want to walk with you or when you become the expert, I want your expertise to help me in that." So, it seems like you've taken the second. I get so you know, you were on a call. I don't want to call it the company name, but so many of these companies that sell data, they're really just pushing buy the data, cold call people, here's a script, they'll make you sound good, and they're putting no energy into being good. They're being put no energy into how to really help a customer,

18:37 Creating resources like you are. So, you're obviously you're, you know, I feel like me, a fish swimming upstream rather than downstream. Talk a bit. That's a little lonely like at times you must say to yourself, is this the right way to go? It seems like it'd be easier just to buy the leads,

18:51 You know? Well, I still do that, too. I still buy the leads from that particular company. I've been a customer of theirs for a very long time. And but I only do direct mail. I've I tried cold calling years ago. It's just not my thing. Don't enjoy it, you know? So, just direct mail. I want people to come to me, right? That's easier for me in my personality. But a lot of people don't realize this from a marketing aspect. It's not about you. It's about them. So the more you make your marketing about your customer and knowing who your customer is and what their avatar looks like, what their likes, interests, and whatever makes them tick are and the problems that they're facing every day. If you can answer their questions and solve their problems and speak to them and not make it about you at all, then you're going to be way more successful. So many agents I see, they're talking about them and they're driving around in their fancy leased Mercedes bins that they can barely afford and they're wearing these fancy suits and blah. It's not about you.

19:52 Help the homeowner. Help them. What makes them tick? Why do they need you? Right? And if you make it about them and not about you'll be way more successful in the long run than you ever will just focusing on yourself. Now, did you start off you didn't start off mailing you started off by the day in cold calling and then you built up a some energy or how did you start the business?

20:15 Very at the very beginning I was doing my very first mailing campaign was an absentee owner campaign a list I pulled from list source. It was like 400 houses here locally and I was doing direct mail. I was still working a corporate job for years. I did that for my first few years and then I quit that. And then I got into doing Google ads and I started adding on the cold calling and when SMS was a thing, we kind of tried that. Realized that wasn't my thing. I've tried everything. But I've learned that me personally and my team, we're better being real. Like you said, we're us. Like this is me. I wear a hoodie and, you know, a hat and in the summertime I'm in shorts and flip-flops. That's my image and that's my thing. And I'm not trying to be something I'm not

21:06 And but I but I portray by helping people in all this content and everything that we do that we're the experts and we also portray to probate attorneys and homeowners that we close on deals. I actually buy houses. I don't just put things under contract and then cancel the contract when I can't make the numbers work. I don't put a house under contract that I'm not gonna buy.

21:28 So, well, and that's because I think you're also building a reputation that is an asset of yours versus what I would call anonymous business people. Like if you if I get emails from investors or calls and they'll say, "Well, I've closed, you know, 200 deals here in LA." I'm like, "Well, then how have I never heard of you,

21:44 Right? How could that possibly be?" Like, I'm not I don't know everything, but you know, if you're doing 200 deals as a buyer, your name would have popped up on something I would have seen somewhere along the line. Versus the ones who Yeah, I have people who start out and they're hungry and they want to buy property and good for that. I'm glad to help them if they're honest. I'm glad to help people out, but it just seems to me that this industry is so full of anonymous kind of fakers that be very careful as a listing agent who you know accept offers with and get an escro with as an investor. I'm sure same thing. You got your own concerns about who the seller is, who the agent is, representations, and things like that.

22:23 There's slimy people in every business. Before this, I was a fraud investigator. My job was to put bad guys in jail for a living that were committing identity theft and stuff like that. I did that in corporate America for years. So, I kind of am decent at reading people. And I've seen the snakes come and go over the years. There's snakes in every business. Been in real estate. There's a lot of snakes. So, you always got to be cautious who you're working with and make sure you have everything in writing. Always have it in writing.

22:50 So, the majority of the people watch this podcast are real estate agents. And so, I'm sure you know the deal is that you do some listing. You mentioned yourself, but primarily you don't. And also geographically all those all those areas. So, I'm sure you've seen listing agents who do real well and you've seen other agents who start and start for the big bang and fall apart. What are one or two of the common characteristics of those that make it in the business that you say this guy's going to make it or this guy is going to make it and you find out they've built a nice business and they're off to the races? What's that one or two common characteristics that you see?

23:22 Grit. Just people that just grind. I mean, at the beginning, you're going to grind. Like you mentioned earlier, you either have time or you have money. And in the beginning, you when you don't have money, you better dedicate a lot of time and effort. And then over time that pendulum shifts and then you've got more money and then you can buy back some of your time. People that understand that and leverage that and leverage relationships and obviously just are genuine. The best agents I see are genuine people. They're not We've all dealt with the hard-nosed agent that's trying to negotiate a deal and you're like, "What are you doing, man?" Like, "Let's just make the deal. What?" You know, just be a person. We're all people at the end of the day. Just be a person and you'll be way more successful and you got to grind and you got to market yourself. You got to market for customers. You can't ever take your foot off that throttle ever.

24:20 You know, I interview a lot of attorneys and I have the privilege of interviewing some top attorneys. Yesterday in particular was a was a founding partner at a good midsize law firm. And people often think, well, they're so busy they want time to talk to me. And the answer is no. They're talking to people all the time. They're on the grind every day for a certain amount of time talking to people to generate business for the law firm. And we as Realtors® or investors, we think, well, I don't know any of that. I just want to, you know, open my mail and get checks and deposit it and but I'm going to build a big business. No, it doesn't really work that way. You got to be on be on the grind. I think that's a good way to put that. So, that's what you see on the positive. On the negative, you must also see people that crash and burn. You know, you know, like I said, you're on podcast and such. What are one or two of the big mistakes you see people make that lead them down the path that's not gonna be successful?

25:06 They don't answer their phone. A, and B, they don't do what they say they're going to do. Like just do what you say you're going to do. And that goes a long way.

25:16 You're like in second or third place if you just do that, right? If you just return your phone calls and then don't do say you're going to do something you can't do and do what you say you do, you're already like of all the Realtors® in your area, you're like in second or third place. It's not that difficult. It really is. It's that simple. That's the golden formula for being successful in real estate, right? Imagine that. Really, any business. Just answer your phone.

25:37 It's true. You know, I had a client who's buying a relocating $2.8 million purchase in a really nice area without service. I found a mortgage person refer me to a Realtor® and I called, text, and emailed the Realtor® because this is an important client to me. I have a whole bunch of real estate for them, and I want to take care of them. So, I'm not just referring it. I'm not getting referral fee for it. I really want to take care of them. And like an hour later, I get this chat response and I realize it's a chatbot. I'm thinking, I just called you for a $2.9 million referral and you're so busy that you need a chatbot to chat with me. Like, I don't want to talk to your chatbot. And I and so that person called me a day later and said, "Hey, so and so said you were referring me a buyer." I said, "Well, I did, but I got your chatbot. Frankly, that's not the service I'm going to refer my valued client to. I work so hard to get them. Why would I turn over to your chatbot? And so I feel like with all this technology on one hand, it's very powerful. It's helped me do some great things in my business, things that astound me when I do them. At the same time, I see a lot of agents waste a lot of time on things that don't. So are you where are you on this scale? Is artificial intelligence revolution we're in now? Is that something you're embracing? Do you see it happening? Is it the vendors you work with that are embracing it for you? Where are you in the relationship to the changes going on in our economy?

26:54 I use it as a tool. I could guess I kind of a techy guy. In fact, right before this call, I was having chatgpt help me build a SQL server. I used to be a database SQL guy. SQL server database to put on my Mac because I've never run you can't run them on Mac. You have to run them on a Windows machine. So, I'm using that and I used ChatGpt to do this lease recent marketing campaign. If you're an attorney, maybe you got this piece from me recently in the mail or you're about to get it in the next day or two. I use it as a tool, but I don't use it as the end all beall,

27:26 Right? It's another tool in your toolbox, and you still have to manage it appropriately. And I think it can help leverage, but nothing beats talking to a real person. Like you said, from a from a like a sales perspective, real life matters. All of our calls are live answered. The phone if the if you call if you call the number that you're going to give here, it's going to ring to Missy who works for me first and she's going to answer it. Or if she doesn't pick up, it's going to ring to my cell phone and she's the first line of defense, right? And any customer that calls us, if Missy doesn't answer, it rolls to a call center that we pay money to every month to live answer. I use a company called Call Porter. And they live answer every call and if for some reason they don't answer it then goes to a voicemail. But I don't use chat bots or anything like that. I just for our business, for certain businesses, it's probably okay. Although they enrage me anytime I'm trying to type one, it's like I just want to talk to a real person,

28:28 Right? You know, so I don't think I'll ever use those because I like real people, real life. I think that's our advantage, right? I think if I wasn't as good as you, I might need some chatbot to help me. But if I was as good as you or as I feel like I am, I there's no chatbot this as good as me when I talk to attorney. There's no chat about as good as me when I talk to investor on my listing. That's what I do. And I got an army of people helping me be better at what I do and taking off some of the tasks. But I think you're spot on there. And so talk a little bit about I'm sure you get approached by real estate agents. They see your property that you're selling or they see the property that you bought and they want to be the agent to work with you. And I'm sure you get a lot more inquiries for that than you ever can accept because they're just not really appropriately presented. So talk a bit about what would be the right way for a Realtor® who want to work with you. They're in your metro area. They want to work in probate, but they also want to come from being a partner and contributing, not just getting business from you. What's the right way to approach you? What might be something that you'd be interested in? Well, you know, we do work with some agents and especially specifically in the probate space. And I need someone who is knowledgeable because like as we all know, this is not an easy type of deal to do. These are complicated. You have to be a therapist and you have to be an agent and you have to know all the like have a rolodex of contractors to refer them to if they need help with whatever. So, if you're an agent and you want to work with me, you need to know like you need to know your stuff. You need to have some experience in the game so that I know that when I hand over John Smith the seller to you, I know that you're going to take care of them and you're not just going to blow them off or you're not going to botch the deal. And the same goes with my a good my buddy from college is he's a probate attorney and he actually we refer deals back and forth to one another. He just did a whole estate plan for my parents. And one of the we

30:32 Did a video and one of the things he talks about is like he says, "I need to know that when I refer a client to Johnny investor or Johnny agent that they're going to take care of that person and they're going to get the deal closed and they're not going to screw them around." like as long as they can trust that person's going to run that ball to the finish line and maintain that

30:53 Level of transparency through the whole process, then you're good. But if you know, I need to know that can happen first before I refer to and same with contractors that I work with. I never hire contractors unless they have done business with someone else multiple times. And I always give them a few small jobs first and I gauge how they're going to perform before I give them any larger amount of works. I never go out and just cold hire some random contractor. And I've only gotten burned by like one guy one time and he was good for a while and then some family stuff happened and he started making bad decisions and I cut him loose, you know. So it goes the same with any vendor you're working with. You just I got to know I can trust you to hand the ball off. That's all.

31:46 So in you work in Metro Atlanta which is I think with LA I think it's the number two now but one or two largest probate cities in America though Atlanta is different LA in that in LA we have one court for the whole county and in Atlanta you have multiple smaller counties. Yes.

32:03 I'm sure that means is done a little differently in each of those counties. Not a whole different, but there's some procedures and things and personalities and different judges and different locations that I don't deal with. But I would imagine as a real estate agent, if they pick one of those counties and really focused on it and knew the rules, knew the judge, knew the word the courtroom is, knew where to get a cup of coffee when somebody goes there, that'd be of interest to you or value to. They're specialized in that one area.

32:28 Correct. And the same goes with like probate attorneys. Typically, I'll work with an attorney that's kind of like the expert in that specific county. Even though they could probate cases in any county in the state if they know and work in that one county, I refer those people to them because I know that they know all the ins and outs. It's the same reason why my CPA only does real estate investor clients only, right? Because he's the expert in that little niche, right?

32:57 And in that county, they know who the judges are. They know who the probate attorney is, reviews the notes, they know the clerk, they, you know, they know the phone number. They know the schedule.

33:07 Could another attorney find out? Of course. But it's different than when you work with the expert. He knows Dal County or whatever county you're doing business with like nobody else. And that's really what that we're all looking for. Wow. Fantastic. Well,

33:19 Look, I know we got a little bit over what I had scheduled you for. I really appreciate your generosity online and in other participation and with us today u Brad Woodall who's both the u probate I got this one right probate I always mess up the names on domain sorry about that probate houseguy.com which is the professional forwardfacing for real estate agents and or attorneys that you're looking for somebody to work with particularly in Georgia he services others as well feel free to reach out to him watch his social media and all that and then separately he's the probate resource for consumers. If you're a family or a state administrator, executive and look for help getting your home sold, this would be the place to come to where he has some great content on how that gets done. And then again, his contact info is on the screen. 44977-4765. Brad, thank you so much for your time today. I think, you know, we learned a lot. I learned a lot. Always appreciate learning from you and thanks for your time.

34:14 Thanks for having me, Bill. I appreciate it. And for the rest of you, this is Probate Weekly. We get together every week and we most commonly interview attorneys, but today we had an investor. I thought it was important to learn whether you're an attorney how he markets as well in his thinking, how to refer out to attorney to investors. And then obviously for real estate agents, these are the kind of people we want to work with. So if I can help, I'm at Bill Gross Probate on social media. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.