$100K+ in 2 months after niching down to probates
$100K+ in 2 months after niching down to probates only. Stopped trying to market to everyone.
About
Adrian has been in real estate for seven years, starting in 2018 at a Southern California wholesale brokerage where he ran dispositions and then acquisitions. He went out on his own, first through agent relationships, MLS offers, and SEO, then rebuilt the business around direct to seller probate marketing. Today he runs a solo first to market probate operation across five SoCal counties under his company, The California Home Buyer.
Operating market
Southern California
Favorite features
The Challenge
Adrian spent seven years in real estate without calling a single seller directly. He started in 2018 at a Southern California wholesale brokerage, first running dispositions, then acquisitions. He found the deals, the company sold them, and he kept 20 percent of the profit. So he went out on his own. The new business ran on agent relationships, MLS offers, and SEO. "I didn't have a CRM. I just have my phone. I just had my computer."
He calls that version of the company a hobby, and the income proved it. "Last year I had, I made maybe like 15 or 20 grand in like the first seven months." Then the final two months brought in over $100K. The swing bothered him more than the slow months did. He wanted a business where a set number of calls produces a set number of leads and closings. Direct to seller was the way in, and he had no data system to run it.
What They Built
Stopping everything for a month of training
A post on X about stacking two lists pointed Adrian to DataSift. Inside the community he watched user interviews and the first to market challenge, then made a decision most operators avoid.
I just kind of stopped everything I was doing and for like a month just dove right into the whole REI SIFT dojo training stuff.
Daily probate pulls across five counties
He works five Southern California counties, anchored in Orange County where he lives, plus LA, San Bernardino, and Riverside. Most require a courthouse visit for probate filings, so a $70 a month service uploads them daily. He filters hard: full authority probates only, homes built from 1989 through the 2000s, under 3,000 square feet. Decedent name, petitioner relationship, case number, and hearing date go into weekly sheets, and a macro formats each file for upload.
Two skip traces and a manual check before dial one
Records get skip traced in DataSift, exported, skip traced again through Skip Genie, then re-uploaded. As a licensed broker he also verifies numbers in Forewarn. When one number shows up in all three sources, that is the number he dials first. "I love getting the pickup on the first dial and the first number." The up-front deep dive is manual and slow, and he credits it for contact rates that surprised him.
Running the sensei flow almost verbatim
Mail goes first: hand-addressed envelopes carrying a mail merge letter. Then three call attempts through Kixie click to call, each attempt tracked as its own filter. He had read community posts about 1 percent connect rates and spam-flagged numbers, so he braced for the phones.
I started click to call and I was like, people are answering and they're talking to me.
Records that go nowhere keep their status and wait in the rehash pool for the next pass.
Before and After
Before DataSift
- Tens of Thousands Spent on Masterminds That Never Fit
- Got Crushed Wholesaling Cleveland Virtually From New York
- Career-biggest payoff under agreement after a year of deep prospecting
- A 1,300-lead vacant property gold mine in two counties
- One shared database with his agent wife for three years
- Guru models demanded VAs and a big company he never wanted
- His investing and her listing business never connected
- Ten years flipping houses with no shared system
- One Call and One Text Found His Last Buyer
- A Deal About Every Three Weeks, Pushing for Two
- Eight Deals Working in the Middle of the Slowdown
- A $7,000 Mail Campaign Went Out at 56 Percent of Value
- Three to Five Active Listings in Every Subdivision He Underwrites
- Colorado Prices Down 9 to 11 Percent by May
- Callers Hunt Correct Numbers, Closers Take Over
- Returned Mail Tagged And Worked As Its Own Bucket
- 6 Deals In One Month From Year-Old Data
- Eight Months In Before Working The Data Right
- Bulk Dials On Call Tools Produced Nothing
- 100K Records Added, Team Spinning Its Wheels
- Mail, three call attempts, then the rehash pool
- 150 records a month, skip traced twice before dialing
- Full authority probates only, five Southern California counties
- 15 to 20 grand across seven months of last year
- Calling agents and MLS, never direct to seller
- No CRM, just a phone, a computer, and email
- $56K Largest Single Assignment
- A VA Pulls County Probate Data Daily
- $5,300 Total Expenses, About $441 A Month
- $210K In Fees From 7 Deals In A Year
- Every Conversation Started Cold
- No Pipeline, No Aged Database, No Team
- Random Calling On Whatever Records He Found
- Started September 2023 With No Probate Experience
- $95K Spread Closed In 21 Days
- All Four Questions Answered On Every Lead
- 120 Qualified Sellers In The Pipeline
- $1M+ Company With SMS As The Core Channel
- Tracking It All In Podio, Then Another CRM
- Doing What Everybody Else Was Doing
- Downloading Every Record Providers Would Give Him
- Churn And Burn Message Blasts
- One Contract For Every 10 Leads
- 100% Of Deals Sourced Inside The System
- $1M+ In Assignment Fees In 2023
- Almost All Deal Flow From Driving For Dollars
- Bouncing Between Tools Looking For One That Stuck
- Leads Tracked In Excel Sheets, Antiquated And Scattered
- First Flip Finished And Live On Market
- Partner Funding Instead Of 18-22% Hard Money
- Probate Cleared In A Week And A Half
- About One Deal Per 15 To 20 Doors
- Door Knocks The Foreclosure List Top To Bottom
- Severely In Debt, Couldn't Keep Up
- A Couple Of Years To Get In Gear
- Worked Hard For Two Weeks, Then Stopped
- 12 Years In Oil And Gas, Then Nothing Left
- $10K Deal From A Q3 Not Interested Lead
- Follow Up Brought The Seller Down $40,000
- Two First To Market Contracts In One Week
- Dedicated Caller Works The First To Market Flow
- Eviction Records Pulled Straight From Two Counties
- Outbound Marketing Completely Phased Out
- Credit Card Debt From Bad Marketing Advice
- Two Years Of Shiny Object Crash And Burn
- Absurd Data Subscription Costs Draining The Business
- $61,644 Net From A Lien List Rehash
- Tracks Wrong Numbers, Cuts Skip Trace Spend
- Emails The Township For Exact Lien Payoffs
- Rehash Filters: Mobile Numbers, No Response, Liens
- Next Day Follow Up Text Gets The Reply
- Lien Lead Silent Since February 2024
- No Follow Up Text After A Silent First Message
- Unknowingly Recycling The Same Data
- Pulling 10,000 Record Lists The Old Way
- 15 Heirs Signed, $37,500 In One Month
- Skip Trace, Upload To Sift, Call Fast
- Small Problem Lists Over Huge Data Sets
- Targets Deeds Of Trust 12 Years Or Older
- Checks County Foreclosure Postings Every Morning
- Bulk Absentee And Owner Marketing Dried Up
- 150 Mile Days Driving Project To Project
- Six Renovations Running At One Time
- Full Time Rehabbing Since 2015
- Sellers Now Calling In From Her Mail
- One Hot Lead Plus Tons Of Correct Numbers
- Mails Only The 54 Absentee Petitioners First
- Google Form Auto Formats Data For Upload
- Pulls Probate Filings Daily Across Three Counties
- Left A Company, Unsure She Could Pull It Off
- Tedious Copy And Paste List Formatting
- Struggled To Pull Data From Her County
- Years In California Trying To Figure It Out
- 135,000 Records Organized Into Buckets
- A Lead Every 10-15 Calls
- Pre-probate Inherited Niche, 60% Sell Within Two Years
- New Process Closed Its First Deal In 30 Days
- Thursday Deep Research, Offer Accepted By Monday
- PropStream Lists And Bought Probate Data
- Return Mail Dead-ended, Records Sat Dormant For Years
After DataSift
- Achieved Data Clarity
- Consistent Deal Flow
- Inconsistent Deal Flow
- Poor Marketing Flow
- Little Data Clarity
- Relied On Google Sheets
- Consistent Deal Flow
- Data Clarity / Organization
- Wholesales, Flips And Does Retail
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Didn't Understand Data Management
- Strong Real Estate Agent
- Wanted To Break Into Wholesaling But Didn't Know How
- Healthy Scale
- Data Driven Decisions
- Consistent Deals
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Inconsistent
- Little Data Insight
- Unorganized Bulk Marketing
- Strategic Focus on Niches
- Enhanced Lead Flow and Certainty
- Streamlined Marketing Process
- Efficient Use of Data
- Direct Mail & Deep Prospecting
- Broad, Unfocused Strategy
- Inconsistency in Results
- Dependency on Luck
- Marketing Clarity
- 6 Figure Months
- High Deal Volume
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Proper Data Management
- Weak Marketing Flow
- Poor Data Management
- Lack of Focus
- Manual Efforts
- Successful Scale
- Total Data Clarity
- Clear Marketing Approach
- Large Deal Spreads
- Improper Data Management
- Poor Marketing Method
- Inconsistent Deal Flow
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Clear Data Management
- Clear Data Management
- Successful Scale
- Many ways to close deals
- Large deal spreads
- Poor data management
- Unable to scale properly
- Poor marketing flow
- Smaller Deal Spreads
- Increased Deal Volume
- Platform Utilization
- Realtor Collaboration
- Funding Efforts
- Lots Of Deals
- Data Driven Decisions
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Sales And Marketing Clarity
- Poor Data Management
- Poor Marketing Flow
- Relied On Bulk Marketing
- Lack of Clarity
- Automated Acquisition
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Data Driven Decisions
- Structured Follow-ups
- Increased Lead Generation
- Achieved Sales And Marketing Clarity
- Manual Acquisition Processes
- Ineffective Marketing Flow
- Minimal Lead Insights
- Poor Follow Up Flow
- Inconsistent Lead Generation
- Lacked Sales And Marketing Clarity
What changed
The shift started with other people's interviews. Adrian watched them while his own pipeline still ran on agents and MLS. "I saw Tyler, his videos and he was talking about this first-to-market and I was like, what is first-to-market? Like I didn't even know any of this stuff." He recognized himself in the users on screen, people who knew the work but not the next step. So he copied the flow, uploaded verified numbers, and started dialing. People answered. The fear had lived mostly in his head. A month in, he can already see that missing ten records in a week costs him a lead.
The Results
The before and after fits inside one calendar year. First seven months: 15 to 20 grand total. Final two months: over $100K, five times the money in less than a third of the time. Those closings came from the agent and MLS business he already ran. The lesson he took was about focus, and the probate flow is how he keeps it.
Today Adrian works about 150 probate records a month across five counties, solo. Overhead stays near $70 a month for the data service, plus skip tracing tools. One honest number: at recording, one month into the flow, he had not yet closed a probate deal. He is fine with that, because probate is a long game and every record gets mailed, called three times, and banked for rehash. The target he is building toward is Sam Oneil's math: one operator, 150 dials a day, $800K a year.
I wanted to make it manageable, that way I could build on top of it.
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