Building a Probate Team, with Gary DiGrazia

0:01 Really excited today to have a colleague and a competitor and a mentor and an educator, fellow educator in the space of probate, Gary DiGrazia from eXp Realty who has his own probate team and he and his partner have the Probate Hero Collective YouTube channel where they post great information on probate and have I think a special focus that I don't talk about as much on investing. Gary, thank you so much for making time for us today.

0:26 Oh, thank you, Bill. It's a it's an honor to be with you on your podcast. I you know I love what you're doing and I know you deliver a lot of value to your viewers. So it was it was an honor to be invited on here and just talk with you and share with you and our viewers on what we're doing in our little slice of the world probate real estate. And I think it would only be appropriate to shout out the memory of your father who I also inspired so many people in this space and I one of the first people I learned from at eXp about how to invest, how to use the probate model, how to use as initial real estate. So really excited to help continue that tradition hopefully with you and your team and such. So let's talk a bit about building a business in probate real estate, whether an attorney or an investor or a Realtor®. I think there's certain common threads. I know that you've built a good team and are and are in a mode of adding more people to the team. Obviously, being in the right team is a big part of it. What do you what are the personal characteristics that you see of those who go from starting in this and floundering instead to starting in this field and building a business? So, as I'm sure you can imagine, I'm contacted daily, whether it's via email, phone call, or direct messages on social media from agents that have always wanted to get involved in probate, they know whether they know nothing about it or whether they've kind of toe dipped in it. And what I'm looking for when I interview an agent that wants to work directly with me now you know any agent has the right and the availability to purchase my training program like I don't you know whoever wants to purchase it can purchase it but to work directly with myself and my team I don't just letting it's not a it's not an open door policy like I want to interview and bring on the right agents and one of the most common problems or negative attributes that agents bring when they come to me is they're looking at probate as like some silver some silver bullet. Like, you know,

2:29 They're going to be able to start today and by the end of the week they're going to have probate deals in the pipeline and this and that. And that's just not the case with probate. It, as you know, there's quite a learning curve to it. And it's understanding the terminology and being able to present yourself in a highly educated way in a very finite niche of the real estate industry. You have to almost be able to converse like an attorney and at the same time give full disclosure that you're not an attorney and you're not given any legal advice. But, that's the biggest thing that I look for is what is the agent's long-term goal with probate real estate. What's their approach? Are they looking for a me for me to wave a magic wand and all of a sudden,

3:19 Do you have one? Matchcoin. You know what? I'm all out. I had to order some more. But, you know, if I can kind of disseminate that by my interview process with agents and I can tell within the first few minutes if an agent really has it or if they don't. Now personally, I think every agent who respects their business and takes their business they take a real professional approach to it like they don't treat it as just a job, but it's a career for them. I think everybody like that absolutely should have probit as part of their business. It's stable. It's not affected by the economy or the market conditions. It's a ground floor to whatever it is that you do. I've recently had a lot of luxury agents that have been contacting me that they've they finally had that light bulb pop in over their head, you know, after watching my YouTube channel or following my social media. The light bulb, you know, didn't just go off. Exploded over their head as they're thinking to themselves, well, my business fluctuates with interest rates and this and that. My business is either hot or cold. It'd be nice to have something like probate to just continue something steady while I'm still focusing on my luxury business. And you know, that's the that's my goal and my mission statement in business is I want to be able to impress upon as many professional real estate agents as possible. It's only a good thing for you to add probate to your business. It's a stable, repeatable business model that once you get past the learning curve, and the learning curve is different for everybody,

5:02 Right? There's an agent that just joined our team. He's from the San Jose area. He's been a broker owner for 30 years. Owns his own brokerage and he's been involved in probate. He's done probate transactions, but his system, he didn't really have this tailored systemized approach to it,

5:22 Right? Kind of firing from the hips. And it was after engaging with us on our YouTube channel and then meeting my partner Ray in person and then conversing with him, then conversing with me and starting to kind of get a little bit closer to what we do. That's when the he saw the writing on the wall and he ended up just bringing his brokerage over to eXp and partnering directly with us. And now he's got deals in the pipeline. But he was able to have success right away because once he got into the training program, the learning curve was much smaller for him

5:57 Because he's had all this track history. He understood the terminology and things of that nature, timelines. He understood that. He just needed to have an organized approach on how to deliver all of that content in a conversational manner that's going to give the person that he's speaking to at the estate to give them the idea that he's the right person to be talking to that he knows exactly what he's doing. He's the man for the job in comparison to the hundreds of other phone calls that he's getting from other real estate agents who are treating them as if they were just another real estate lead, which is the biggest that's the biggest fault that I see in this niche is you have agents that are prospecting diligently and they're very good at it. I'm not taking anything away from their skill sets, but they're shifting gears from calling expireds or FSBOs or their soi or what have you,

6:56 And then they're grabbing their stack of probate leads and they're just rifling through those without changing their approach, right? And that's why most agents fail at probate is because they treat it like it's a regular real estate lead, like it's a regular seller lead, and it's not. It's completely different. So when I'm interviewing agents, I'm looking to find from them number one, what are what are their daily habits? What's their daily method of operation?

7:23 How do they get business now? What are they comfortable doing? And once I learn what they're comfortable doing and they have the right vision with probate, they understand that this is a marathon. It's not a sprint. I'm able to help them take our training program and then tailor it to best fit their business practices because a lot of agents, believe it or not, are just not comfortable picking up the phone cold and calling somebody who's just lost a loved one and trying to have a business conversation with them. And that's okay. We have we have a system that we can introduce to those types of agents where they can still have success. But then you have other agents that, you know, they're gunslingers. You know, they'll call anybody and they have the gift to Gab. They're a they're able to talk to people on the phone and build rapport quickly. And we tailor our same system, but we tailor it to meet those specific skill sets. But at the end of the day, it's really I want agents that are I'm going to spend my time with agents that understand probate's a marathon. It's not a sprint. Yeah, you might go two or three months while you're learning the basic terminology and the timelines and disclosure exemptions and things like that. You might go a couple of months without putting any deals in into your into your pipeline, but eventually it's going to click for you and that's when you start seeing the fruits of your labor and deals will start stacking up.

8:56 So, it just takes consistency and it takes that thick skin of never giving up, just staying with it. Really,

9:05 There's a lot to unpack there, Gary. You know, really, we have a 4 hour of podcast material you just dumped on me here. So, let me go back a little bit. One of the things you mentioned was when people come to you, I mean, great. It was gold. That was just like solid gold. If you're watching this, back up and listen to that three times. So if I get the same phone calls and I feel like you mentioned luxury agents I and you use the term silver pill or silver bullet. I feel like people call me and say what's the easy way to build an appropriate business and I say I don't know. Like I work at this every day. I work pretty hard. Now I don't work as hard as I used to. You know I'm 66. I work about 33 hours a week. Very structured, very consistent time schedule and activities. Very controlled. But when I'm working, I'm working. And when I'm not, I'm not. And I think that when the point that you made was you said like, "What are you doing daily?" Because when I ask that question, I usually get blank stairs and daily activities. What do you that? I'm like, "Well, don't you have something you do every day to generate business? Like, do you phone call? Do you knock? Do you know, go on social media? Do you go to events? Like, what do you do daily for three, four hours a day to generate business for you?" And the lack of an answer is always the answers to why they're where they're at. And I don't care what you do, you better find some way to generate business. So that's the you can't coach that, right? They either have the desire or they don't have that desire. You can direct them if they're beat up. And the other thing you think you said was a marathon and I know for me sometimes that metaphor doesn't work because I think well I'm not that skinny really fast running guy.

10:37 But like at the LA marathon, a lot of people like me who train for a year and just keep moving for 26 miles and finish the marathon. Yeah. And I think that's more like the analogy that you just got to train for it and put the work in. And so let's talk a little bit about that. You mentioned your training class. What are the types of things that an agent doesn't know when they start that they're going to specifically learn? You mentioned the conversation and how to talk to a prospective customer. What are the types of material that they need to learn about or maybe crystallize how to convey that to somebody?

11:10 Sure. Great question. So, where the rubber meets the road with probate success is being able to convey the correct message specific for that individual's situation. No two probates are alike. No two probate files are exactly the same. It's not cookie cutter. So you can't grab like for example, you know, I was Mike Ferry trained when I was very early,

11:38 200 2005 when I started in real estate before my dad even let me get into probate. He had me learn regular real estate through Mike Ferry. And the beauty of that was I would take the same expired script and I would go through, you know, all my expired leads using that same script on every single potential client. Probate's different. Probate is more tailored questions. It's asking it's understanding the terminology to ask the correct questions to draw out the information and then from the information that you're receiving. That's how you shape the conversation to deliver value, to represent yourself as a probate expert without having to say that you're a probate expert. Because you get more you get more credibility when the person on the other end of the phone call identifies you as a probate expert by the conversation you're having as opposed to you putting probate specialist on your business card or your email signature or by introducing yourself as, "Hey, I'm Gary. I'm the local probate specialist. That means nothing,

12:48 Right? But when you can convey the knowledge and the experience through asking the correct type of questions that draw out the information that is specific to them and then you tailor the conversation around those ideas that mean something to them. That's how you build rapport quick and that's how you identify yourself as a probate specialist in their mind,

13:13 Right? Which is going to elevate you tenfold. You know, I used to I've listened on your training. I listened on your father's training back when he was doing that. And the thing that I noticed different than the other trainings I listen to, and I've taken five or six different courses I've paid for, and I, you know, if I learn a little bit at this stage of my career, that little bit is worth a lot to me. So, I'm always open to learning. The thing I noticed is that the other training courses, I won't name names or disparage them, but 80 to 90% of their time is on cold calling techniques and scripting, very little is on the mechanics of the probate or solving the customer's problem. It's how to act like you know how to solve the problem as opposed to learning the tools of the trade so that you can be prepared to solve the problem when they have it. And I think that's the thing that strikes me about your approach is you really are giving them the technical tools to be the agent, not to sound like the agent that the customer is looking for.

14:10 Exactly. That's exactly right. Y and I think this is, you know, Okay. So, obviously, probate, you know, when I entered this business, one thing I learned right away was it's very dispersed geographically, meaning you work hard to develop relationship. And it's not uncommon that either the dece the probate administrator executive or the attorney has cases in multiple jurisdictions that a normal Realtor® wouldn't service. Right? I'm in LA County and you know I've done business every year in about eight or 10 different counties and not because I market out there just that's the natural reach of my business. Whereas if I was a normal Realtor® I would probably only be in LA or maybe occasion Orange County. So I joined eXp for that reason. I kind of put together gee I can't be in all these places. I need some help. Talk a little bit about how your team approaches the geographic diversity within California of you know listing property. I know you guys do stuff all over the place. Talk about how your team kind of approaches that.

15:08 Yeah, so my father and I when my father was here with us that was our plan. That was why we joined eXp right at the beginning of eXp when they started. I think my father was agent 241 and

15:22 He helped build California. Wow. And that's that was his vision. That was his goal was at that time before when we were at Remax,

15:31 We only handled the few counties that were right around the greater Bay Area, right? And he saw the opportunity with eXp to bring in other agents from all over the state of California and train them up to a level of expertise where they can be an extension of him. He still, you know, would as I do today, like I have one coming up in Southern California, a couple of them actually. I still handle the backend probate documents and I'm the one who's in engaging with the attorney and working side by side with the attorney and I'm doing all that stuff. But we have that agent down there who understands how probate works, understands the timelines, and is that boots on the ground, that face in front of the client, that day-to-day contact, right? To be able to service the client at a high level,

16:27 Even though I'm not personally down there, right? So, I mean, you nailed it. That's exactly why we moved our business to eXp was to be able to grow geographically. And now we handle all 58 counties in California.

16:43 Like I mentioned, I have a few coming up in your neck of the woods, a couple coming up in San Diego. I have a couple up in up past Sacramento, which is an hour from me, a couple coming up in Sonoma County, which is two hours from me. And I'm not driving back and forth all the time.

17:00 I just have brought in the right kind of agents in those areas that I hand those listings off to. They are the boots on the ground. They manage the listing. I handle all the probate related paperwork behind the scenes and make sure that we close on time, that everything's compliant according to probate code, and I'm the person that's dealing with all of that stuff. So, eXp has given us that ability to expand our probate business to wherever we have trained agents that work, which now we're in all 58 counties in California. And I think the every company will say that they're national, right? I worked at Keller Williams and Century 21, you were at ReMax, and they'll all say, "Oh, we're all over the globe." But the reality is each, you know, city is a different business. They happen to have your brand. They don't know you from Adam. They'll care about you from Adam. Whereas eXp is different. We have a common broker of record. We have common you know compliance requirements, paper requirements, systems to help us work together. And so whether they're directly underneath you or your fur out within the eXp system, it gives us some real unique advantages. I know I couldn't change at this point. It's just it's too ingrained in my business that it works too well for me. So one of the things that's come up recently is, you know, one of the real challenges of building a team was, you know, giving the agents the support. That's always been the challenge at every company is how do you onboard them? How do you integrate them? How do you get them on company tools? How to get them into a program and working. And I know you guys did that at a high level, but not as high as you wanted. And now eXp added another layer of support called the co-sponsor program. And you and I worked on this recently where an agent might be connected to you on the local area and me on probate or vice versa, but they really get two people helping them where they used to get one. So talk about that, how you starting to integrate that into your team building program.

18:56 That right, that right there opened the floodgates. Yeah. Because it all comes down to support for that agent. Yes.

19:04 And I've had to turn agents away before that have come to me from the East Coast and wanted to do probates in their area and work with me and I honestly had to tell them, I'm not going to be able to provide you the level of support that you're going to need, right?

19:19 I could refer you to somebody that can sponsor you and give you that support, but it can't be me, but you can still go through my probate training. Right. So, with the co-sponsoring now, like I'm you probably know one of eXp's biggest agents out of San Diego. His name's Pete Middleton.

19:36 Him and I are co-sponsoring an agent right now in San Diego who's doing probates with me, but he's going to be able to leverage the support from Pete's team in San Diego. He's going to be able to use his physical office and work out of there and be a part be a part of that ecosystem and that support group while at the same time working directly with me and my probate team and having the support that our team provides as well. So that all that this did the co-sponsoring which is why I love it so much is it gives so much extra support to the agent that's coming on board to eXp that just a couple of years ago we didn't have available

20:15 You would have right you had you or Pete right and they might have liked Pete because he was local but he knew nothing about probate might have loved you on the probate but you didn't have the local San Diego

20:25 Resources and now that same agent for no extra money gets both. Exactly. Yeah. So, it's just it just made it great. I mean, you and I, we're working on a co-sponsor right now where it's just like you said, he's gonna have both of us supporting him. And he happens to geographically he lives closer to me, but he works with both of us on the probate side. And then the same thing with Pete Middleton. You know, he's in San Diego. That's where this agent lives. And once I once I told him that this was an opportunity, oh, he w he was elated because the main thing for him was, I'm going to need support. I was out of real estate for a while. I'm getting I'm going to need a an office. I'm going to need an ecosystem around me. You know, how does that work with you being all the way up in Northern California? And when I when I told him how co-sponsoring works, that was it. He pulled the trigger and, you know, he's off to the races. So co-sponsoring has, in my opinion, it not only has been advantageous to us who are already here in the eXp world, but it's just given so much extra handson support to agents that are new to eXp that we didn't have before. So, it's a huge advantage to anybody right now, anybody watching this that wants to get involved. Like, you can have Bill and I in your support group working directly with you. So, it just really made it a better situation for agents that want to come on board and have the best of both worlds. So, support geographically and support in a very specific niche if that's what they're looking for. I did the same thing you did with Pete with another big-time name. I know Jesse Zakorski out of San Diego area.

22:13 The agent lived in El Cajon, same exact city as Jesse, has an office and I know Jesse, let's co-sponsor this guy. He's all great. Let's do it. And the customer has a place to go as well as he and I meet weekly to get his probate business off and running. And again, it gives that same agent twice the support they would have had six months ago had they joined. And so I think it's really exciting time to be with the company. Yeah.

22:34 So, let's talk about the kind of the business. I think for those of us who are in the business and doing it well, doing it regularly, at a high level, you know, on one hand, my business has never I don't think it's ever been better. It's certainly great, you know, really at the top of my game. But it's a culmination of time and effort and energy. It's not it's not magic. I'm surrounded with agents who are struggling. One of the things I'm good at is kind of dring out that noise and saying, "Okay, well, you know, I am sorry to hear about that and I'm here to help if I can help you, but I don't let it convince me that my business is bad because mine isn't bad. If I work, I get paid. If I don't work, I don't get paid. It's kind of that simple." How do you keep your mindset clear? And then more importantly, you team of people underneath you. How do you work with them to keep them focused on the job, which they if they do it, they're going to get success. And if they don't do it, they're going to have some challenges.

23:24 The key is all in the followup. That's what that's where the bulk of our training is on the followup. And the rule of thumb that my father used to teach that is ingrained in me and that I teach to the agents that I'm directly working with is you want to consistently have five conversations going at all times every week. The goal for every agent that I train is create five conversations. So the five from this week will become followup next week and your follow-up list will organically grow. But what happens to that follow-up list is they actually become deals. So they move out of your follow-up list and they become clients. But then you're every week you're adding to your follow-up list because your goal every week is to get five brand new conversations going. So that we try to keep it as simple as possible. I don't try I don't we don't want anybody overthinking it. Definitely not trying to reinvent the wheel. My father designed exactly how all this works. I just took it to a little bit of a of a higher level only because I incorporated a lot more technology to it. But the rule of the thumb, the rule of thumb is still the same. Focus on five new conversations a week. That's one person to talk to a day.

24:46 Day one. It's incredibly doable. And if you do more than that, well then, hey, you're crushing it. But even if you're hitting your goal of five new conversations a week, you're be you're profitable. You're going to eventually turn those into deals because those five new conversations go into a follow-up system where our CRM is doing 80 to 85% of the work for you. And from the follow-up system, the m the majority of them do become your clients. And it's just a revolving door. As long as you're continuing to create those five new conversations a week, you're going to have a pipeline that is going to get filled and you're going to be able to consistently fill that pipeline because every week we're delivering brand new leads. As long as the leads don't go away, Bill, the system's not going to break. The only thing that breaks in the system is the agent. That's it.

25:46 So, describe obviously conversation doesn't mean I walk in the grocery store and say hello to somebody. Describe what that those five conversations in particular what those look like. What's the minimum standard or how you define one of those five conversations?

25:59 So, the initial conversation when we consider it a cold call, which technically they're not necessarily cold calls because we've already sent them stuff in the mail and we have a reason that we're calling them. It's not just out of the blue type of a conversation on, hey, Bill, I'm calling you because I sent you XYZ, but the convers the that first conversation where you're actually interfacing with the estate is an information finding exploration more or less. We're asking questions to learn about their unique situation. And we're taking notes the whole time. We're filling up that lead sheet. We're filling it up with everything specific to that one client. And then at the end of the conversation, it's not a close. There's no call to action. It's simply, you know, I understand, Bill, that you mentioned you have this, you have this, you have this. Well, hey, how about I how about I send you an email where I can get into more detail about how we can provide solutions for X, Y, and Z. And I'm going to include an actual real pro probate real estate guide for you that you can download that will help you with everything else that involves selling real estate during probate. You know, do you happen to use Gmail? And that's a key phrase that we train all of our agents. We never ask somebody, what's your email address? It's just too intrusive when somebody hasn't met you.

27:17 As harmless as that question is, when you're talking to somebody who's never met you before and you are a salesperson on the other end of that phone call, all of the walls are up. So you have to find ways to allow them to say no where that no answer actually means yes.

27:36 Yeah. So when we start a conversation, it's never, hey, Bill, you know, is now a good time for us to talk. You're going to say no. Get away from me, sales guy. What if I if we Hey, Bill. My name's Gary with eXp. Is now a bad time for a brief chat? Well, no. Now is not a bad time. They're able to say no, but that no means yes to us. So that's how we start our calls. And then at the end after we are after we go through our factf finding mission and we have all of the details of what is pertaining to this specific probate file, then it's just simply, hey, you know what? I'd love to share with you more detailed information on how we can help provide solutions to X, Y, and Z. We name out what they already mentioned to us. I'll send you an email. Do you happen to use Gmail? Whether they use Gmail or not, right? Yes, I do. Great. Spell out your Gmail for me. No, I don't. Oh, okay. Well, spell out your email for me. Either way, 98% of the time, we're getting the email address. I mean,

28:35 Nice. One person I spoke to yesterday, when I when I used that little close there, the response was, "I don't use email." Well,

28:46 What am I supposed to do then? Well, luckily for you, sir, I have all this in print material. I'll mail it to you. I address But that first that to get a good conversation going, it's just to open up the lines of communication, right? To actually get them to agree to the followup,

29:05 Right? And when they say, you know, yeah, here's my email address. I'd love some additional information on how you can solve these problems. They've now just invited you to follow up with them,

29:15 Right? And we have, you know, the we have the template temp template plates. Excuse me, my tongue got tied there. We have the templates of how our emails go out, but every single one has to be edited before it's sent. And it's just a couple of things. It's just really what are what's the situation with this specific file. And it's not much. It's not a it's not a rewriting of the whole email. It's just a couple little bullet points that you're that you're changing there. And then once that email is sent, they go into the CRM. The CRM is designed to push out valuable information that is that is tied to their timeline. So if I was talking to you, Bill, and we had our initial phone call and I plug you into the CRM, I'm already going to know what date you are going to receive your certified letters when you're going to court. I'm going to know if it's full of limited authority. I'm going to know how many heirs there are. I'm going to know everything that I need to know about your probate file from that initial conversation. So when I add you to the CRM, even though the CRM is pre-built as far as when stuff goes out, I'm able to go in there and based on the dates that I learned from talking to you, I'm able to just make little small adjustments to it. So, emails that go out talking about, hey, your hearing dates coming up to be approved as the executive and receive your certified letters to testamentary, those aren't going to come out after they've had their date. We're going to we're able to set it up to where it goes it reaches them a day before or a couple days before they actually have their period.

30:52 So, the main stuff of the followup is all timed to each individual case. And that invol that includes emails, text messages. A lot of the text messages that we send out are push and pull. So, we're putting out another question and we're getting them to engage with us.

31:13 And at the end of that engagement, we usually will lead them back to an email that's coming with a link to a video. And it's all it's all created ahead of time. Like we know where we're going. We have the roadmap. So, if I know that I want to send you an e an email with a video that talks about the value of certified letters, why that's important to selling a piece of real estate, how they're used, I'm going to t that text message that goes out is going to be tailored to that. So, at the end when I say, "Hey, be on the lookout for an email where I'm going to provide a link to a video that explains what's going to happen at your hearing date, why the certified letters are important, how we're going to use them when we sell the estate home. Everything's already set up and teed up. There's no confusion." And that's how you deliver that next level value to impress upon the potential client that Bill Gross is the expert for the job. And anytime he calls me, I'm going to answer. Anytime he texts me, I'm going to respond because you've already you've already developed that relationship of being a value giver. You're not wasting their time.

32:31 You're not asking them if they want a CMA on the property. I think real estate agents hear about these systems every day. I mean, I think a day goes by, I don't get approached via email, text, something, advertisement about a CRM. And the problem is for an individual agent, the overhead to design it to be appropriate for the probate business is so great. And the few companies are in that field, it's all very generic and inappropriate. It looks like AI designed it all. And what you guys have done has gone the next level which is because you have a big enough scale team in the probate space to customize these powerful tools for probate and like you said to have the individual agent customize even that. I think that's important. I think that's the distinction between trying to compete with Zillow and Facebook and Google versus using their technology as an agent that's empowered. But I you know look you have very sophisticated systems. I don't have that because I don't have the size myself to build those things out. I can refer people to your team because you have the way we put together and complement with some of the things that I do that might be different. But, you know, hats off. I know you guys have done a fantastic job with this and I'm just really impressed with it.

33:41 Thank you. And, you know, we try to make it as easy for the a for as we can for the agents that partner with us because I mean, I'm the guy who built the follow-up campaign. I know how time consuming that was. And I'm constantly going in to just revamp it and add things to it. So, when an agent partners with us, whether you and I co-sponsor or they come to me directly, that's always the big question, like, you know, who's going to help me set up the follow-up campaign, right?

34:11 And because we're all with eXp and we all of the CRM that we use are interchangeable, I simply just send them a little token and they click on that token and the whole campaign automatically populates for them. Done. Right.

34:28 And now all we have to do is go in and just change the signature to their name, change the photo to them, and then at that point, it's just the maintenance of when you talk to somebody and you put them into the CRM, all you got to do is just pop in there really quick. They gave you everything on your note sheet of what you need to change. You go in there, you change the data when they get their letters, if they're administrator, executive, yada, what the property address is. Boom. Send. And then everything else is on automatic pilot. Your CRM will tell you when it's time to follow up and actually call them and check in. I mean, it's it really takes 95% of the labor off of the agent's shoulders. And all you really have to do is know when to send out a postcard and know when to call them. That's it.

35:13 And as a businessman, you can improve the system, but it leverages over all the people in your team rather than just you. So, that's where you're going to make some changes to things that I just, you know, as an individual practitioner aren't going to do. It's not worth it. But for you might have 10, 20, 50 agents impacted by that change positively. So, it just makes the value of those changes that much more successful. And I just felt so many agents are distracted with a lot of the technology that isn't appropriate for them at their level. And I think a lot of these things are happening or very appropriate at your level as a team and our company level. And we want to make sure that we're able to take, you know, take advantage of those.

35:49 Yeah. We try to keep it as simple for the agents that are working with us as possible. As simple as possible. Yeah. Yeah. And so let's kind of just cover real quickly. I know a piece of that your father used to really get into. I don't I don't know that I've heard as much from you on it lately of investing using the probate approach as an opportunity to develop investment opportunities. As a real estate agent, I have to say I got into business to be able to make money as an investor and I've made good money especially this past year as an investor fix and flips. I actually do more wholesaling not as an agent and there's important compliance and rules about all that. Talk a little bit about the opportunity for an agent to you know add to their wealth and add to their income stream by being an investor rather than just purely an agent.

36:41 Absolutely. And I think if someone is a investor, whether they buy and hold or they buy and flip, I encourage them to get their real estate license if they're looking at probate real estate as a source of business.

36:56 Because you're not going to be able to buy and flip all of them. And those ones that you can't buy and flip yourself, you don't want to just walk away from money that's on the table,

37:08 Right? Put on your real estate hat and turn around and list it and help them sell the property on the market. Right? When I explain that to a lot of the investors that I've worked with, they see the writing on the wall and they're like, "Yeah, why would I not have my real estate license?" Of course, you know, you got to disclose that, you know, when you're purchasing a property, but what not, but who cares, right? You disclose it. I'm a licensed real estate agent, but I'm buying this as an investment under XYZ LLC or whatever, right? So, for real estate agents that also do buy and flip or buy and hold for themselves, probate's a great resource for that because you're contacting and getting in with the estate so early on before they can make any legal decisions. They don't have any authority

37:53 To do anything, right? So, as long as you have that skill set to be able to number one, stay consistent and number two successfully build that rapport with the estate. If the if that estate home happens to be in a situation where it needs to be sold for cash off, I have one right now coming up in San Jose where you cannot this is not you can't put it on the market. I mean, you can you're only going to get investor deals from it. It has to go cash, right? So, you will find those situations and because you've already put in the leg work of being a confidant with the family and providing them value that is useful for their unique situation and you were in there so early, right?

38:42 Just by you doing that, you've eliminated so much competition. And when it does come time that they have that legal authority to sell the property if they want an allcash deal, you'll be the first person at the door to have that opportunity. And then from that point moving forward, it's math whether the numbers work or they don't. If the numbers work, you got yourself a deal. You just have to make sure that you do it without representing the estate. You just want to you just want to be on the buyer side. You don't want to represent the estate and sell it to an investor off market.

39:15 Yeah, that's when you practice. Yeah, it's bad practice. It's greedy. It smells bad. The whole thing is bad. Yeah. So, you make a great point that you get early in the process. I think I would add to that.

39:26 All investors need to look at more deals. If you're a real estate agent looking at probate listings, you're just looking at more deals. As an investor, you have investors that call me after I sell something saying, "Hey, how come you show me that deal?" Well, I don't know. It just moved a little quick. But I'm looking at the deal as with my eyes on as an investor. I think lastly for investors, you know, if you also do some listings that pays for lead generation. So I think it's a it's a synergistic business to do both. And I've always, you know, look to do more real estate investing, but you have to compliant and meet the highest standard of ethics. But at the same time, there's opportunities that I get that I wouldn't otherwise and I would take advantage of those and use those to build my wealth. So I think you're right on that. And the other thing also is understanding where we're at in the market.

40:12 So if it's a slow down market for whatever reason, that's where we're taking more of a cash investor type of an approach as opposed to letting the house be on the market for a long time where, you know, there's utility costs and there's other things that have to that have to be paid every single month. Maybe the estate for their unique situation, it's more beneficial for them to just be done with it right now. And there's all kinds of different little attributes that would create that unique situation. Maybe the administrator or the executive lives out of the state. There's all kinds of different reasons why the estate would benefit from a quicker cash no you know don't need to deal with anything type of a sale and you find more of those opportunities at least I look for more of those opportunities based upon market conditions the when the market is a little bit healthier and properties are selling within 30 days on the market which is where I'm at now I ad I always advise all of the clients that I'm working with, even though the property is a quote unquote investor type property, but still put it on the market because I'd rather have you look at five or six different investor offers and let me drive the price up that way as opposed to just handing it off to one investor offmarket and only having that price to deal with,

41:43 Right? So, I always approach my clients based upon where the market is at. And even if they want a cash deal, if it's a solid market, whatever county they're in, I go over those numbers with them and I explain to them, you'll be in a more advantageous position to realize a higher sales price if we expose it to more cash investors as opposed to just selling it to my one cash investor off. You know that's just the right way to do things in my opinion. They appreciate you more that way. But if the market turns and it's a much softer market and properties sit and they're vacant and you know this and that and the reasons present themselves that they would much rather just be done with it now. Well, we have those resources as well. So, I let the market dictate for me how I approach the estates where it's a it's it is a cash investor type situation.

42:44 Well, look, Gary, you and I could talk for hours. I've always enjoyed whenever you get do get together. I wish it goes quickly. I kept you a little long today, so I apologize. But for those of you who want more, he has a great podcast, The Probate Hero Collective on YouTube is a link. We'll put it in the banner as well down below. They do a podcast. You also have training programs and such for people looking to take another level. And if you're interested in joining this team, they have a whole program with that. If you're interested in joining XP, I can talk to you as well about supporting you. So, Gary DiGrazia, phone number [phone number], Gary. DiGrazia Jr. Jr. EXPY.com and the YouTube channel as well as the probate_hero. If you want more information or reach out to me, I'd be more glad toward you. Carrie, thank you so much for taking time. I know you're real busy with your team and your business. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

43:31 Hey, no, I blocked out time for this. I've been looking forward to this. You know, it's always great to connect with you. So, I appreciate you inviting me on and it's as always it was it was fantastic just communicating and talking with you about probate. I love doing that.

43:46 I love talking probate all day long too. Thank you, Gary. Thank you so much. Say hi to Ray for me as well. Ray Marquez is a former broker of record at eXp Realty as his partner and a great guy. Helped us go. Hey, well, look everybody, thank you so much for joining our episode today. Probate Weekly. Every week we get together a new episode with top producers in the business, often most often attorneys, in this case a real estate agent and team leader who I think is really exceptional. We also talk to vendors. If you have somebody that you would like me to interview or you want to be interviewed, put it in the comments. Like this, subscribe to this, reach out to me if I can help anyway at Bill Gross Probate on social media. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.