From $3,500 on her first deal to mastering investing in probate leads with Sharon Vornholt

What is going on, Investor Thrive Nation? This is the Painless Flipping Podcast, and I'm glad to have Sharon Bornhold. Is that right, Sharon?

That's right.

Awesome. And I'm super excited to have you today because we're gonna be talking about how you got started in real estate, your journey, so everyone that's listening that's brand new or trying to get their first deal or is struggling to be consistent as a real estate investor, they can learn from your experience, how you got started, and now you're, you're You're working with probates, you're teaching people how to use probates, and that's a great lead source. So look, we're going to— you're going to be able to learn a lot today, everybody, and I'm super excited. So just remember, the Painless Flipping Podcast, the reason why I call it that is getting into real estate doesn't have to be painful if you listen and learn from the right people. So that's why I have Sharon. We have experts on here, and Sharon's going to teach us again how to get into probates and how she got started. So Sharon, you want to give us a little intro into who you are so the listeners can get to know you a little bit better?

Sure, Nathan. I had another business at the time and a realtor came and asked me if I wanted to go to a REIA meeting. And I said something like, what's a REIA meeting? And she, she took me to the meeting and that was 25 years ago. And, uh, I've gone since then. And you know, your network is the place where you meet all the players. So, um, I started investing, invested part-time for 10 years, uh, buy and hold, fix and flip. I went right into fix and flip. Didn't wholesale a property really till 2008 when the market crashed, and then I became an accidental wholesaler.

Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people did at that time, right? They're like, I don't want to buy any flips.

Okay, no, Pete, you didn't want to hold the flip is what you didn't want to do.

Definitely, right? Because you didn't know what was going to happen. Do you feel like that's kind of happening a little bit right now? Some people are a little hesitant to flip, uh, with the market, or not so much?

You know, I think I— there's an investor in this area that's 80, and he has a saying, or he's above 80, I'll say that. He says, I've made money when interest rates were 3%. I've made money when interest rates were 18%. I just did it differently. So I don't think there's a wrong time to invest in real estate. It corrects their cycles. And the worst time— the best time to have gotten in was yesterday. The worst time is—

yeah, that's pretty good. I really like that. So Uh, let's talk about, I kind of want to learn about your, your intro, your story. Um, you said that someone just invited you, Aria, and you just went and from there you learned. Why did they decide to invite you?

Well, I owned and operated a home inspection company, so I knew a lot of realtors and she said, hey, I'm going to this cool meeting. So do you want to go? And that was really my first introduction into the fact that you could make money and not be a realtor. So it was, we had a large group here at the time, probably about 500 or 600 members. And so I just was— opened up a new world for me. And it's possible to invest in real estate while you have a job. If you have another business, you can do it part-time, and then you can go full-time. And I didn't do that until 2008, which, you know, was the best of worlds and the worst of worlds, of course.

Wow. Well, you said at that time they had 500 and 600 members. Is it more now? Or is it less?

It's probably, you know, went down during COVID people quit paying their dues, and then it came back up. I think we have over 700 active members now, and on any given month there's 200 or 300 people at the meeting.

That's amazing. Wow. And what area are you in?

I'm in Louisville, Kentucky. Mm.

Got it.

Okay.

That's a pretty good lively group then. That's— I think here in Utah, I don't go to the REAs as much, but no, definitely that's a good turnout. So let's talk about your first deal because a lot of our listeners, they're either trying to get their first deal or they're trying to be consistent. As they do fix and flip, wholesaling, whatever their strategy is. Tell us a little bit about how you got started, your first deal.

Well, my first deal was a rehab. So growing up, my dad was a general contractor and I used to go along with him, you know, being the oldest and the most well-behaved of 4 children, I got to do that. So I learned from an early age about construction and I didn't— I don't necessarily recommend people start there, but for me it was a perfect fit. And the deal went great. The rehab went great. I sold it. I knew a lot of realtors, as I said, and one of them knew I had this property. And he approached me and said, I think I might have a buyer, you know, I'll sell it to my buyer for 3% commission. Well, that seemed like a great deal for me. I had the house priced right for a realtor, should one show up, because this was a retail sale to an end buyer. And what happened was everybody ended up making more money than me. I made $3,500. My realtor made a lot more than that. And the whole— the person I was selling it to, through some special program I had gotten, I had reluctantly agreed to pay closing costs because I didn't know that that was going to be expected of me. And I hadn't factored that in. Right. What happened was, the seller got back over $8,000 at the closing and in cash. And I was, that was the, and you're like, I flipped this thing. Yeah. I mean, really, I just paid all their closing costs and they got back $8,000. It was like, okay. So I learned a valuable lesson then that if a realtor ever said, this is what we expect you to do, I said, fine, but I have to raise the asking price because never again did I ever lose money that way. I didn't lose money, but I lost money out of my own pocket.

Well, let me ask you this. So did that relationship last with that realtor? Did you continue to work with them or did you kind of feel jaded a little bit? Like, hey, they might've taken advantage of me a little bit.

I felt jaded because this was a person I had worked with in my other business for more than 10 years. He was a good realtor, but he knew how to get, how to get a deal for his, his buyer. And he 100% Uh, didn't tell me some of the information I didn't know. So I never made that mistake again, but that's a heads up to people.

Well, I think that's a lesson for everyone. It's like, hey, you know, he might've tried to win on one, but if he would've treated you, you know, win-win scenario or was transparent, you probably would've done many more deals together. I'm assuming. I don't know if you did do more deals.

Well, we, we know we would, we would have because I was rehabbing at that time and he was heavy in the first-time homebuyer market.. But yes, it made a difference in the way I felt about him for sure. So then I just went other routes with other, other investor agents. I like working with investor agents because they understand both sides of the business.

Wow. So everybody listen to that as a— if you're— for the people that mostly watch this, if you're a first-time investor getting into it, it's not worth making extra money if you got to burn people, right? Like if you got to, you know, if you're going to make an extra $2,000, $3,000, but you're, you, you kind of upset the seller, the buyer, whoever you're working with. It's always got to be win-win. And I'm assuming you've probably seen that throughout your life as an investor. You've seen a lot of people that have that mentality of abundance and they want everyone to win and the other ones that try to take advantage. Do you feel like you've seen a lot of those people come and go?

I have. And I think the people that are here long term, they realize that real estate investing is a long game and it takes but one really mistake to mess up your reputation. And in this business, your reputation, your credibility is the most valuable asset that you have.

Wow. I love it. Thank you for that. So let's talk about how you got into— you right now, you teach people how to get into probate. So how did— I think it's really interesting if you're a new investor, you can see, okay, you did your first deal, but now you're teaching people how to get their first deals, how to get deals through probate. How did you get there? And what do you do right now?

Well, I did it like everybody does it, one property at a time. You know, I explored different strategies. I really loved rehabbing, but from a business perspective, it's a lot riskier than wholesaling. And it's odd to me now to think that I was in this business from 1998 to 2008, and I had never once wholesaled a deal because I mean, to me, it just wasn't in my world. But in 2008, when I started wholesaling, at that time, coincidentally, I discovered probate leads. I had never heard of probate leads. And I did not realize that it is the, I think, the most valuable lead source on the planet because these people have someone that's passed away. By law, they're going to have to sell the property. It's not a matter of if they're going to sell it, it's when they're going to sell it. And every single month there's a new group of leads that come out and you get the opportunity to help these people through a very trying time. And it's an opportunity. They're either going to list the property or, um, in a lot of cases it's a distressed property or it needs updates. You know, it might have a new roof and brand new windows and orange shag carpet or metal cabinets or some, you know, cosmetically it's a disaster.

Yeah. We've seen them. They're crazy. They can be weird.

Yeah, but so once you learn, and once I started working with probates, there was literally no information. There is very little competition even today. If you think about how much your competition is on the MLS and you think about, well, this in Louisville, maybe they get 20 letters. Let's say they get 30 letters. Guess what? 90% of those people stop mailing on or before the third mailing. So all you've gotta do is set up your systems, your direct mail, And this is the way you reach probates. You don't text them, you don't call them because Nathan's somebody's mom or dad, you know, it's— if you work the plan, go the plan, and then they sell, they will sell the property. And it's a great niche.

Yeah. And it sounds like a consistency game, right? Like you said, a lot of people stop after the second and third. And when I was new at wholesaling, I, I thought you'd just send out— well, I told you this on when I was on the podcast, on your podcast. I just got a coach and I just sent out all my mail in one hit. Oh no. And you were like, come on, no. And that's, you know, that's the reaction you gave. And that's, but that's what a lot of people think. They think it's just one blast. So kind of tell everybody that's thinking about getting into mail or that strategy, how, you know, how to do it correctly.

Well, we'll just use easy math. So my strategy is, uh, you mail everyone every month. So this month, if you put 50 people on your list from probate leads, and this is, uh, going to depend on your population of your, your area. So my population here is about a million-ish with the outlying counties, which is pretty small. It's not Chicago, but you're going to get somewhere— good leads. Now, I filter out the really bad properties and the really high-end properties that are going to be sold on the MLS. So I'm talking mid-range properties here. You're going to get somewhere between 70, 80 to 100 properties. So let's just say for easy math, you got 100, which you're not going to get that many, uh, in this population. You get 100 this month, you get 100 next month. So over the months, as they start dropping off, you might be expected to build a list of about 800 leads. And guess what? You didn't do anything but show up and collect those leads. They just happened. You didn't go You know, it's, it's a verifiable steady lead source. And what you do is you mail them every single month. And I use a special letter and it, it's a low type, low-key letter. And it tells what I do. And it says, basically, I'll be here when you're ready to sell. Very low-key. And people love that. There's no aggressiveness involved. There's no getting there first because these people decide to open the estate when they're mentally ready to open the estate. But that's when you know that you can buy the property. When the lead shows up, the probate's been opened. They have raised their hand and said, I'm ready to sell the property.

Wow. So they, they mainly probably call in, correct? Like call back?

Yeah, they'll, they'll call back. And once they've called you or reached out to you, they could, they could even reach out through your website. So you should definitely have your phone number on there. If you're going to work probate, you need a probate page on your website. Site that says, you know, this is what I do. But once they have called you, then you can feel free to call them or text them or reach out that way. But it's just they do— they feel you've disrespected them if they've had a death in the family and you just knock on their door or you pick up the phone. You can kind of see that.

Of course, right? You're not going to reach out to you, right?

Yeah, you're not going to win any points. But remember that indirect mail 81% of your deals, not your calls, your deals will come at or beyond your 5th mailing. Like I said, most people quit mailing at or before the 3rd mailing.

I'm a result. That's what I did.

Yep. You just got to stay in the game and you don't need this gigantic list. You need consistency. You need a consistent message, a consistent brand, and you have to be there to be of service to people. And they love it.

So tell me about the consistency aspect. Is it 12? Would you do it every month for 12 times for a year? Or at what point do you stop? Because you say people stop after 3.

What happens? No, no, don't you. In general, probates in this day and age will probably be settled. The probate will be settled in 12, 14, 15 months. So as long as they're on the list, that is, they haven't so they haven't listed the property, it's not sold, I mail everyone every month as long as the property's available.

And you verify if it's still available by— do you cross-check those to see if any of them are listed?

Every few months, every— initially we just mail out and people will say, you know, I've got the property listed. They'll call you back and say it's listed. You could go that step and verify each one. But Nathan, they're going to self-select out. You would waste so much time rather than sending those 100 letters. And, you know, you should send a letter, not a postcard, of course, because again, what are they going to think if you say, oh, I'm contacting you about your property that's part of an estate? They're just not going to like it.

Yeah, that makes sense. So when you're sending out this mail— so I used to go to the county when I first started, and I would go and pull the records, and there would be— I think there'd be executors, right, of this, this day. And then there was, uh, I can't remember who else was on there. Executors, executors and everybody else that's not. What do they call that?

The heirs. The heirs.

The heirs.

Okay.

So one thing that we kind of— I struggled with when I was trying to figure out this was which one do you mail? Do you mail the executor because that's the one that's making the decision, or do you mail the home that's potentially no one's living there?

No, I can tell you, you mail the executor, the personal representative, as they're called. They are the decision maker. And as part of the probate process, the court will give this person a formal paperwork. It's called the letters of testamentary, and it will say, John Doe named Nathan Payne in the will to be his executor, or in the absence of a will, the judge will look to who is the logical person. Is it a spouse? Is it a child? And that person will be appointed the administrator. That, that person jointly is called the personal representative. Either side, it doesn't matter. They have the same rights and responsibilities under the law, but that is the only person that can sign a real estate contract. It's not the— the heir could be the executor, but not necessarily. And I did a test mailing the executor and the heirs, and it was a big waste of money. The executor is the decision maker, and you really only need 4 pieces of information to work in probates: the name and address of the deceased— that's the property you'd be buying— and the name and address of the executor. That's it. You don't need case numbers, all this other stuff. You just don't.

So it sounds like consistency, it's finding, um, mailing the right person and getting the right records. So let's talk about that, because in Utah, that's not like a list that you can pull off of any of these other services that's that accurate. Maybe you'll get the information a lot later, but, um, you have to actually go to the county here for like Salt Lake to get probate. Is that the case where you are and what you, what you teach? You see a lot of people have to actually go and get it, or Yes, but that's been that way, Nathan Payne Payne.

There are over 3,300 counties in the US and each county has a different process. Some counties are online and in my area they were always in the newspaper, which I thought was terribly old-fashioned. But guess what? It had all 4 pieces of information that you needed. So I will say this to you. Every week they're opening up new counties that are going online, counties like mine that were never online. Are now you can get the leads online. So don't give up on that one. That's a rapidly changing thing. But you never want to have to go to the courthouse because it's not scalable unless you get somebody to do it for you.

Exactly. That's— that was kind of the difficult thing. We'd go— this was like 5 years ago, right, when I was doing it. I'd go and then eventually we did get the login. I think you had to pay a certain amount and qualify for like that, have access to that. So let me ask you this. Are you proponent for, you know, let's— I live in Utah, but are you saying like maybe I could do Kentucky as well? I could just get that information or Arizona or something else? Or do you recommend— how do you recommend someone going about that if they want to do probate?

Well, I think if, if you're a beginner, you need to invest in your own backyard because you know where the streets are, the neighborhoods are, and, and that's where you gain your experience and you become safe. You become a safe— you know, it's safe for you to invest. Once you have mastered all of that, it's not my thing to invest in other areas, but I know people that do it very successfully. But you have to have agents, you have to have people and boots on the ground. You have to have a team in place. And like I said, I know, I know someone that's in Barcelona, Spain, that invests here in the US, but he grew up here in the US.

You know, I think that's such a powerful lead source that, you know, a lot of people maybe because it's a little harder to access or you got to jump through some hoops. They're just like, let me just grab something else. Let me grab another list. But you're right, every month. So let's, let's do an example. I get a probate list from the county I have access to. I pull it, then I mail it and I put it into a campaign that mails it for 12 to 15 months consistently. And as people call me back saying, take me off, we take that mailer off. Is that kind of the workflow? But you're sending letters and not postcards?

Yes, I have a, I have a mail merge ready template over on The Louisville Gals Real Estate blog. There's a, there's a freebie over there called the Probate Investing Starter Kit. And I'll give you a direct link for that. And yeah, it's a mail merge. They can go to SharonBornholt.com. Okay. Let me give you a different link.

ProbateInvestingSimplified.com/starterkit. Okay. Let me, let me type that in there for the comment section just to make sure I got it right. So say it one more time, Sharon.

No, let's do this one. Probate Investing Simplified.

ProbateInvestingSimplified.com..com.

/starterkit. Starterkit. And what comes with this? So I had— there's a letter in there. I have a graphic of the entire probate process that tells you what happens as the estate is opened. Now, there's a little— there are little differences between states, but that's pretty much the straight line process. And then I explain some of the terminology and the processes in there. It's completely free. You can get, you can get that, but you can. So you would get your list. And what the process we always had is real quick. And my daughter worked with me. She would go through the, she would go through the leads on the tax assessor site and she would go, yes, yes, yes, heck no. Yes, yes, no. That was the sorting process. She literally went through it in an hour or two. So right away, that's how you got rid of initially, you got your list down to properties that you would actually want to buy. And once you do that, then we would start the mailing process. But in general, you cannot do it as cheap as you can, as you can outsource it now. So don't do it in-house. Yes. Okay, so 2008, it was about $1.50 to send out a letter, and that was when stamps were 30-some cents. Stamps are what, 60-some cents now? Right. You can get it done for you for under a dollar. You never have to do this miserable process yourself. Wow. So, yes. So it's amazing. The technology has changed. It's all great. I'll give you another resource that you can type.

Yeah, yeah. Curious, really quick, you might be answering this, but the mailhouse that you use, do you use anyone? You recommend anyone?

I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you a link. And what it is, is it's an affiliate link for a free CRM. So you do the math on that one. So it's SharonBornholdt.com/envelo. It's small i. N-V-E-L-O. Now I'm going to tell you what the magic is here. This is a great CRM. It's completely free. And their sister company is Open Letter Marketing. Do not— you can go to Open Letter Marketing and look at their stuff, but go through this link because in the dashboard of the CRM, you can order your mail directly from this CRM. And using my link, you get 10% off forever.

Let's go. I think I— so I-N-V-O?

No, I-N-V-E-L-O. Envelo. V-E-L-O. It's— this is dynamite. He gave me a special deal for people that I forward over there. You all get 10% off your direct mail forever by using the link and going through this, uh, the free CRM, which by the way is awesome.

Well, you know what, that's, that's— you're definitely giving out some gems right now, so this is great. Um, before I put it into the chat, it's, um, SharonVornholdt.com/invelo. I-N-V-E-L-O.

That's all small letters.

Uh, I put that in, it's, it's not pulling it up.

Um, you must have— do you have it spelled right? Let me—

if, if you want to see what I got right here Um, I have it right here if you can see that.

No, I could— oh my gosh, that's small.

Yeah, I know, it's super small.

Um, is this S-H-A-R-O-N-V-O-R-N-H-O-L-T? Yeah,.com. Um, forward slash Envelo. I-N-V-E-L-O.

Yeah, yeah. You know what, you know what I think it is? It's the internet that I use at my office. Sometimes it's just for some websites it locks it. So it's not anything with your website, it's just the internet I have. So let me put that in there. That's a really nice give as well. So you're saying, hey everybody, you're going to give the starter kit of what to mail, you're going to show the mailhouse to use it. And really, it honestly sounds like someone would just need to find the, the service. Well, you said they do this, but they don't get the list for you. You get— you give them the list and then they mail it.

Yeah, you give them the Excel spreadsheet. You would download your list or put your list, send it to them, and they do the sequential mailings for you because the letters that I use, which are on the letter series that I use, is only available in my course. But it's the same general tone progressing along the way with the letters. Like, you know, you'd have your introductory letter, then you might say, hey, it's Nathan Payne Payne. I'm just checking back in to see how the estate's coming. And then you use the rest of the letter, but it walks them along the path so that they feel comfortable working with you.

Do you have a, what's the word, someone that pulls the data for you or a data service that gets the probates? Or you might have answered that already. I just want to verify.

I am going— I'm working with someone now that is has been very successful. Get back with me on that and I'll, I'll let you know and you can put it out to your people. It's, uh, they are, they are researching areas for me where they were never, um, available before.

So what, you're in, uh, Utah, Salt Lake City, but I'm working, um, more in the Tampa, Jacksonville, and Orlando area. Like, that's where I'm focusing on. So it's you, Salt Lake City, and those areas, uh, and I'm sure, you know, Florida's got it locked in. I probably— you probably can do it there as well.

Yeah.

Yeah. So let— yes, because I, you know, there's so many different ways to market. There's so many different lead sources, tired landlords. There's, you know, there's pay-per-click that a lot of people are doing now. There's mail, cold calling, you name it. So it's just you find your niche. And the thing I want everyone to know is, you know, it's not about chasing the shiny penny and not saying that this is a shiny penny that they shouldn't chase. I'm just saying, You, if you're doing something and something is work, something else is working for someone, you know, it's not that what you're doing doesn't work. Maybe you're not doing enough of it. Like me, when I did mail, I said mail doesn't work. Well, I did less than 3 mails. I did less than 3 times. So a lot of nuances, a lot of things that you have to look at yourself and be like, am I not seeing results with marketing? Because maybe I'm just not doing it right. Or, you know, I think a lot of people just don't do it enough and do it the right way. So thanks for letting us know what's been working for you. That's really cool.

That's fun. Awesome. Thanks for having me today.

Yeah. Yeah. And one last thing I wanted to say to everyone here. Most of the probate deals that I've done have been good experiences, and— but I found them through like door knocking or mailers or— not, sorry, not mailers, flyering neighborhoods. And then they just happen to be in that situation. So it's a great lead source. So, Sharon, thank you so much. And do you have anything you want to say before we head out?

I would just say hang in there because it's— this is an easy business and it's— but it's not It's simple, but it's not always easy. So just take it one, one property at a time, one step at a time, and never stop learning.

Thank you, Sharon. I really appreciate your time. And thanks for all the gifts and the, the diamonds or the gems you've given my audience.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Talk to you later.

Bye, everybody. Thanks.

Bye.