Negative Response: “Get a real Job”

Scott Costello All, Blog, Unhappy Sellers 22 Comments

Yesterday I got a probate letter mailed back to me with some words of wisdom, written by the recipient, directed towards me.  I’ve been lucky so far to not get many upset owners sending me mail as that is just the nature of the business.  When mailing out to probates you can really step on a nerve because it may seem a little like ambulance chasing to some. I thought it might be fun to start a new series of …

Must See Posts: Yellow Letters, A Big Check and 3 Words

Scott Costello All, Blog, Top Blogs 2 Comments

Here are some of the great posts I’ve read over the past few days from around the blogosphere.  I’ve last time I did a post like this it was received very well.   One of the funniest posts of all time was Steph Davis’ post about her big fat check.   Justin McClelland wrote a post that expands on an article he had written for my blog and it does a great job of explaining Yellow Letter marketing in ever more detail. …

Real Estate Lead Tracker: Progress Report

Scott Costello All, Blog, Lead Tracker 4 Comments

I’ve been working hard on the Lead Tracking program over the past two weeks and I am really starting to get excited about it.  It took me a while to settle on an interface that would be user friendly and easy to work with as well as expandable to include future modules/functions.  I tried 4 or 5 different setups and finally settled on this… It’s a very simple design.  All you do is click on a function on the bottom …

Probate Monday: Forcing Yourself Out of The Comfort Zone

Scott Costello All, Blog, Probate Investing 8 Comments

My next wave of mailings is ramping up so I expect to be getting some calls this week sometime.  I’ve got 85 letters out in the mail and another 80 postcards that just went out last night.  It’s going to be a busy memorial day weekend week because my summer hours started for work which meant that I now work 9 hours each day Monday to Thursday and then only work 4 hours on Friday.  I’m really able to get …

Great Tip if You are Anything Like Me

Scott Costello All, Blog, Probate Investing 14 Comments

One of my biggest annoyances when sending out mailers is making sure I have all the needed supplies.  I always run out of stamps, envelopes or even the paper that I’m using.  When I run out of these things it means a 40 minute round trip to the nearest office supply store to pick these things up.   This doesn’t work out to well when you only have a certain amount of time to put the mailers together.   At the end …

Book Review: Start With Why by Simon Sinek

Scott Costello All, Blog, Books 2 Comments

Maren Kate from Escapingthe9to5.com recommended the book Start with Why by Simon Sinek on her site about a month ago and I’ll pretty much read anything she gives a good word to so I went out a bought it. I’m really starting to enjoy books that are based on human psychology.  Being able to understand why people do what they do is mind blowing because in the normal scheme of the world people’s choices make no sense.  I mean, why …

Probate Monday: Plenty of Time to Think

Scott Costello All, Blog, Probate Investing 8 Comments

This past weekend was a very busy one.  On Friday after work my wife and I drove five plus hours down to Virginia.  To say it was a pleasant drive would have been an outright lie.  Here is a brief list of what we ran into… – Bumper to Bumper traffic as soon as we got started (it was rush hour) – Monsoon rains – Marble sized hail stones pelting our car – construction upon construction – DC Beltway – …

Probate: What Exactly Does It Mean?

Scott Costello All 3 Comments

Last week I came across a great post from Rachel over at mobilehomegurl.com where she took a commonly used word in the Mobile Home world and defined and explained what exactly it was.  I thought that was a splendid idea and I’m going to steal…err…borrow it (hope you don’t mind Rachel).   Just to throw a little more love her way, her latest Terminology Tuesday post was about the term “Deck”.  It’s another excellent post, so go read it! Terminology Tuesday …

Probate Monday: Lead Tracker

Scott Costello All, Blog, Lead Tracker 19 Comments

As I mentioned last week in Solving One Problem at a Time, I am in the process of creating a program that will help me track my probate leads, mailings and contacts.  It’s going to be an interesting project to say the least.  A ton of ideas are popping into my head all the time and my biggest challenge is going to be keeping it simple. So far here are the items that I will be including in the first …

Solving One Problem at a Time

Scott Costello All, Blog 10 Comments

This past week I made some positive strides which should help me out greatly in the long run.  What helped me most was when i took a few minutes early in the week to identify a few problem areas that have been hindering my progress and then came up with a “solution” for these problems. Just like Alcohol Anonymous and their 12 step program, the first step to solving a problem is admitting to yourself that you have a one.  …

Have you read these 6 blog posts?

Scott Costello All, Blog 9 Comments

I wanted to try something a little different with a post a see how people like it.  Every day I read tons of other blogs that pump out great information and I like to share what I’m reading  on my twitter page as well as at the bottom of my blogs homepage under the title Google Reader Shared Articles. One good practice to have when you are blogging is to call attention to other blogs that have helped you in …

Probate Monday: When Times Are Slow

Scott Costello All 6 Comments

I apologize for the lack of any real updates on how my probate investing has been going.  I’ve continued to send out my mailers and have been getting calls, but non have been motivated or really willing to sell at this time.  Instead of writing the same old thing every week about sending out mailers and talking about non motivated callers I’ve been trying to break down every single aspect of what I’ve been going through (talking with callers, keeping …