Family businesses need more than just legal documents to secure their legacy.
Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast, we’re talking with Paul Deloughery, a probate and estate planning attorney with over 25 years of experience working with business owners and families.
We explore how Paul can apply the Before Unit framework to attract his ideal clients - business owners who need more than standard estate planning. By selecting the right audience and creating a compelling offer like his "family benefits plan," he can build trust before prospects even consider hiring him. This approach transforms his service from reactive problem-solving to proactive relationship building.
Paul's story about reuniting an estranged family shows the power of this approach. Rather than waiting until after death creates painful conflicts, he's creating a new category of service that addresses the underlying dynamics. This perfectly demonstrates how patiently educating and motivating people, and presenting the right offer can create breakthrough results for professional service providers.
Key Takeaways:
Focusing on the "who" you want to be a hero to is essential before determining your best service offering and its price point.
Creating a "family benefits plan" instead of a "family constitution" demonstrates how language choice significantly impacts client perception and engagement.
Building a prospect "vending machine" requires clearly articulated outcomes that prospects can visualize and would willingly pay to achieve.
The concept of a "stress test" for estate plans provides a concrete, marketable service that appeals to proactive clients who already understand the importance of planning.
Using carefully chosen emotional language like "avoidable surprises that derail even the most cautious estate plans" creates more engagement than technical legal terminology.
Focusing on specific, tangible outcomes (like peaceful family Thanksgiving dinners) makes abstract services concrete and compelling to potential clients.
Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 258
Dean: Mr. Paul, there he is. Hey, Dean. Let's start out with, maybe you could do name, rank, serial number, just so we know who we're talking to and can register it. And then what your, overview of what you do and what we're hoping that we can accomplish today.
Paul: That sounds great. Okay. Name, rank, serial number.
so my name is Paul DelougheryI've been a probate and estate planning attorney for about, oh, 25 years, a little bit more. And, and what I've noticed. so I got into, doing, probate litigation, which is, where the families are all fighting over, what's left over when someone dies.
And, just, I could go on and on with crazy stories where, siblings, yeah, siblings spend 20, 000 fighting over a 5, 000 Rolex watch or something like that. and, what I've, I guess what I've noticed is two things. one is that, so at any one time I have. I have maybe 80 litigation cases going, that I'm juggling and, I've noticed almost no relationship between, whether there's a trust or, whether the family had a trust or was there a will or something like that.
Like it's that would be like saying,do red cars tend to get in accidents more often than blue cars or something like that. Maybe, but it's just very incremental, and it, and then meanwhile, there's, this push by estate planning attorneys and financial planners and so on that, Oh, you need an estate plan because then you can avoid probate.
So I live in the, I live in the world where that's, I see that's not really the case necessarily. and. And what I have noticed is there's a relationship between,so pretty much all of my cases have. Some messed up element to them like in terms of like family dynamicsand not just the dispute but what causes the dispute
Dean: There you go, yeah, so the root cause is usually
Paul: like there's a oh, I don't know someone in the family has an addiction or there was a Childhood trauma or, some, something like that or, family secret or, just poor communication.
something like that. so that's what I have noticed andwhat I want to do, I, so I've come up with,a solution like that kind of fills, fills in the gaps for people who have an estate plan. And, that in just real quickly, it involves like checks and balances and a way of making sure that, when mom's 87 years old, that the caretaker doesn't, convince mom to, transfer the home and all of the accounts to the caretaker, things like that.
so what I want to be able to do is to reach, to reach families who would be willing to spend a little bit more than just having an estate plan,and really what it needs to be is like on an ongoing basis, like a subscription kind of service, to,to help them,to help prevent those kinds of issues.
Dean: So in a way, what is this kind of like a free estate, pre probate or pre, incident like insurance in a way or oversight or what would you describe?
Paul: Yeah. So I would say it's more like a. Maintenance program,like for your car or something like that, like you buy the car,Yes, exactly. And now, not everyone is going to want to spend more money over and above, the estate plan documents, but some will. And like I've worked with, frankly, business owners. Tend to, they tend to have this kind of an issue and they tend to also have money to, a little extra money to pay for it.
So for
Dean: 25 years, you've been doing this and you've seen presumably thousands of situations like this, you've had thousands of cases. is there, if we were to retroactively, Look at them and where the problems arose, where the issues came up, what percentage of those would have been solved if they had this service, this thing that you had, if you look at it, even if you just take the last 100 or the 80 that you currently have, how many of them would have been better off if the,if they were improved?
engaged on that level, if they had the service that you had, that you offered there?
Paul: Oh, they would have all been better off. all,completely avoided the conflict. I'm not sure about that, but they would have been definitely better off. In
Dean: what specific ways? are there, is there a pattern of, is there a handful of categories that this would fall under, that it would, that it would?
Solve or lesson or, I'm just looking for if we're creating here, whenever, ultimately what we want is, I always take the mindset that you're coming on here that we want to grow this, that you want to get more, More people. So if we could create a vending machine that is, that we put money in and outcomes, a new, client, the bookending of that always starts with what are you capable of?
What's the best thing before we ever talk about price before we ever talk about what it is? Let's just talk about what your true capabilities are, right? If you could, if people would just get out of their way, right? and let you do the best thing that you could do for them. What would that be? And then let's look at what would be the impact of that.
Economically, from a, pain and suffering from a, thing, what would be the impact of you doing the best thing that you could do for somebody? And then we can figure out what does that need to cost and who's the ideal person to take advantage of that, right? What are the characteristics?
Paul: Sure. Okay.
Let's see. okay. So one, one is, I mentioned a business owner, where, I can't get into a lot of details, but I helped
Dean: and that's a hundred percent. And that's part of the sexiness of what you, what we'll be able to draw from is redacted, redacted issues. So that, yeah. Categorically, without giving specifics.
Paul: Yeah. um,I've noticed that, business owners, are busy when the kids are growing up and there's a pattern that usually the oldest child Was the most neglected and then, and then the other kids started to like the parents started to have a little bit more time for the other kids.
And so the younger kids have more of an idea of, like.what, I guess how hard, mom and dad worked,but also just had more time with mom and dad because they, but usually, and this is totally just a oversimplification, but, um.so the oldest child doesn't relate to the other kids because the other kids, think everything's fine and all this kind of stuff.
and meanwhile, the oldest child has, is um,traumatized almost, from not having mom and dad around. They
Dean: were there in the,the ramen noodle days in the apartment and everything started, right? Yeah.
Paul: Yeah. And. That creates a friction among the kids, among the siblings,and then As the business owner gets older,they want to be able to enjoy their retirement and they really want to watch their grandchildren play together.
But as, like in this one situation I was brought in and,the family paid, 75, 000 over, over the course of nine months, to, to work with them. And, and. Yeah, that we did a whole bunch of things. we implemented a family constitution and a code of honor and just ways of communicating.
And, at the end of the day, my clients were able to, while they had a family, like a family vacation that they planned for everyone and flew everyone, up to this resort and they got to watch all the grandkids play together and it was like totally worth it.yeah, that was,
Dean: you see that thing that I've seen in the real estate world that there's, grandparent wars in trying to build the cool grandparent house, right?
Like the bunk houses and pools and making it like a wonderland. So the kids, the grandkids want to come to. This side of the, grandparent . that's the thing. , I think that's like a new power move, is having the,the bunkhouse and the things,the room with the bunk, beds for all the grandkids.
so if you look at that, I get that as a, As a thing, what kind of practical solution, or what kind of, I can imagine that those things are amplified if there are step siblings, even that's even a bigger thing that if the older kids were there in the original and then the, Step siblings got, or half siblings got Rich Dad as the, the thing, that there's a difference, in that, because there's probably maybe some estrangements, or some, That's right, type of things, a lot of sensitive, absolutely dynamic issues, right?
That come up. So what kind of practical problems does that present? And what sort of practical, actionable solutions does, have you uncovered?
Paul: so the,
the problems that presents,
see, the issue is that the problems don't really present themselves from my standpoint, as a probate litigation restraint, that problems don't really present themselves until later when the parent dies. but that's
Dean: what I mean, you're seeing that they come and I'm wondering from what
I'm trying to find where the solution that you're offering is going to be like a prevention, thing, right? If it, or a solution for that, and how it's practically going to make sense to do something about it now. that there's some, there's an inevitability. To death, and there's a sense that it is coming and it's going to happen.
There's also a universal, tendency to want to avoid any talk of that or an acknowledgement of it. And I, this, Conversation with a couple of financial advisors. I asked them,what do you wish people would be more open to talking about? And that's what they said was a state planning was one of the things like if they were willing, to have that conversation and do some proactive planning, it could make a big difference.
And I, that. I said that what my observation is that most of the time when people are talking about estate planning and things, they're talking about it in hushed tones and somber kind of things. And the, just the hard facts of reality,
Paul: this is the
Dean: thing. And estate planning, even the name of it sounds like that's for rich people or it's the kind of thing.
AndI started thinking about the practicalities of it, that if there were a way to, we already have, it's an inevitability that we're going to die. We already have a universally accepted euphemism for unlikely and untimely death being, you never know, we could get hit by a bus. Or whatever, right?
that's something could
Paul: happen. Yeah,
Dean: we could get hit by a bus, right? that's like a universally accepted thing. And I said, what if we just started, preparing it like that, like getting people on board with the idea of preparing Their bus binder that became a real thing that they say, because nobody wants to bring that up to the kids or to bring up to anything, but just from a practical measure of saying, we're perfectly healthy.
Everything's fine. But if you never know, if we get hit by a bus, here's the binder with everything you need to
Paul: right
Dean: place, Yeah. So that's why do you find that died without any level of estate planning? Say that again. how many people of the 80 let's just use your active, caseload that you've got right now.
How many of those people, did not have any estate planning? Planning things in place in terms without a will or without a trust in place or, there's certain baseline things that would just be like 80 percent of the way there.
Paul: you're assuming that, and most people do assume that an estate plan is going to fix this.
I'll say that, okay, before I said there's probably no relation, no relationship,I will say that probably the majority, the majority of the cases did have an estate plan, but it's not but it was,it was done in a way in a lot of, in most of my cases, I think, there were documents that were implemented in a way to, that disinherited the kids or, gave everything to the pool boy or, something like that.
yes, they did have a trust, but it gave everything to the pool boy. So it's not like it fixed everything. and yeah, what. Just a couple of things. That's all
Dean: that matters, right? Like really the thing is, if that was the final wishes of the parent or the deceased, if their final wish was to give everything to the pool boy, mission accomplished, right?
Yeah. that's who's the, right here, or who's your,
Paul: yeah. No, you're right. yep. Nothing wrong with that. I think what happens. so here, let's take one situation, of, undue influence where there's, because I'm here in Arizona, and, Let's say there's a, son that lives with,lives close to mom, here in Arizona, and there's another son out of state, and just by the very nature of things, the son close here is able to spend more time with mom and because of that, is able to, take mom to the grocery store and take mom to the doctor's appointment
Dean: about that just recently, like a funny movie where all the siblings moved in to grandma to their aunt who was rich, that they Wanted to move in and get in the will for the, yeah.
the thing, right? Yeah.
Paul: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. so,yeah, for sure there's, that does happen.
W
what, two things that came to mind. you were talking about how people talk about estate planning documents and hushed tones or, talk about this,I think there's a psychologically what this taps into is the very fundamental fear that all of us have and I, philosophically, or I think it's called the fear of annihilation.
the fear that we're going to be gone and not matter, and that really triggers something. So people do want, people want to like, be able to purchase something on a transactional level, that will, fix it. And what my challenge is that I happen to know that just because you have a will or a trust doesn't by itself, make sure everything's going to be fixed and you're going to be, remembered as a good person or, by your kids or, the kids are going to,take their inheritance and invest it wisely, or they're not going to fight each other, all that kind of stuff.
So there's a matter of education, and that's really, where my struggle is. And I, What I think what I need to do is just start telling stories, about, how you've
Dean: got, listen, the whole, have you ever seen those farmers insurance commercials, right? The, we know a thing or two, cause we've seen a thing or two, right?
They just told the stories, illustrate the things, name them like they're memorialized. They, yeah, we saw that we had, we insured it, we covered it.
Yeah.
the situations, right? It's that's the thing. I was laughing about those, the squirrels throwing the acorns at the car or whatever. So you in your, 20 plus years of doing this and the thousands of matters that you've seen, you probably have that farmer's insurance level of, Fool me once, you've probably learned many lessons, many things.
And I'm sure that even To this day. Occasionally, there'll be something like, huh, that's new. Never saw that before, and I think that part of this thing is that, Dan Sullivan has a great saying we were looking at. This is who do you want to be a hero to right? And that's really the when I said, what's the best thing you can do?
We've got a pair that With a who, with who is the beneficiary of what your capabilities are. And
Paul: um,what would be great is, for example, to find, business owners where they're great at running their business or, maybe professionals are great at, they know how to make money.
and. they did the best job they could as parents, and now there's some, dysfunction or,just lack of communication, lack of,uh,relationship in the family.and they need basically just some coaching, coaching to them to, to become, step into a role of a leader of the family.
I would love to do that. And then, and then what else? Um,there's a certain element of,educating the kids or trying to get, because what I've noticed is, yeah, the parents can be convinced. Okay. Yes. This is what we need. And then the kids are like, whatever.
Where were you 20 years ago? and, I got to go to work in the morning. I don't have time to talk about this nonsense. but, I, I think there, if I could get in front of people, if I could get in front of the business owners or professionals who have this situation and just start training them, I, I could do a world of good and it would take some time and everything, but,but yeah, it's not a transactional thing because they have to learn new habits, learn new,different mindset and new skills about how to,how to communicate and everything, active listening, blah, blah, blah, and all that kind of stuff.
Dean: so
Paul: is it,
Dean: is there, how would you measurethe, outcome of it, like, how would you, how do you,what's the payoff of the thing, why is, because anytime somebody is making any sort of financial transaction, there's a payoff or a,and a value exchange and in their mind that this is valuable
Paul: to,having the family together for Thanksgiving, that would be the payoffand a lot of the families that I deal with, they haven't had that for years.
Dean: So this is all, that's family dynamics pre, you're talking about before somebody dies, you're talking about,
Paul: yeah, possible, yeah.
Dean: Setting up the, having a better family dynamic, like healing or doing all of those things, before, before it's too late, really is what it is, right? That you're, so this is, I think we're mining the situations that you're in right now.
could be good indicators of potential things that you that could have been solved or avoided with. Some intervention,years before.
Paul: one little tidbit, that I'll throw in. I've started to, to talk to other estate planning attorneys. And I've sent out a survey to a whole bunch of different estate planning attorneys.
And the majority of them, would see a benefit to referring their clients to something. to something like this,and they, they see the benefit, you know,I think most of state planning attorneys understand that, just having the documents by itself doesn't necessarily guarantee everything's going to be perfect in the future.
And yeah, they're just, they're, there just isn't. there, there isn't any, widely available solution other than, what I'm talking about, doing, and yeah, that, that might be a good referral source, and I've thought about, I'm not sure, maybe
Dean: So you're looking at this outside of legal work, this is not Yes, correct.
This is not per se legal work. correct. This is family dynamics counseling. correct. Or, that kind of thing. okay. Yep. So that changes.
Paul: Yeah, which is great because then I can scale nationwide and I'm not just stuck to, and, other estate planning attorneys aren't going to see me as.
Competition because I'm not trying to take work from them.
Dean: You're trying to make their work easier in the end or whatever. Yeah.
Paul: Yeah. and right.
Dean: Exactly.
Paul: Yeah.
Dean: Okay. and so do you, is there an element of family counseling involved in this or what kind of flavor are we getting into here?
I
Paul: would prefer, I would prefer coaching. Yeah. I don't really have a counseling background, but more coaching.
Dean: Okay,
Paul: consulting,
Dean: Okay.
And so I look at it that there's like a vending machine for trying to create it from your perspective, we're looking out at the possible market for this and saying, these are the likely people, but in order to build a vending machine, we have to build it from me. Transcribed by https: otter. ai We have to build from the prospects facing forward, that they look at what would they stock their vending machine with of their desires and outcomes, that if they could push a button and have that outcome delivered, they would cheerfully do that.
And you mentioned Thanksgiving, everybody getting together for Thanksgiving. what would besome. If we're going to stock the prospect desire vending machine with, tangible outcomes. That's what it's, that's what it's all about really, right? Is what is the outcome that they would see as valuable enough that they would put in the money and push the button.
Paul: Yeah. Um,
the concrete outcomes you're talking about.
Dean: Yeah. Tangible outcomes. How will they know, what's the confirmation moment that they're going to know, that confirmation moment of Thanksgiving dinner with everybody at the table and it's all,the peak family bonding experience. That would be like, if it's been years since everybody's been together, that there have been longstanding rifts.
addressed or done. You mentioned the Thanksgiving dinners is one of the things, but what would be the other, what would be some of the other outcomes that you could steer towards?
Paul: Okay. Yep. Yep. so there'd be a,some of this is like organizing a business, like creating,and if it were a business, they would have standard operating procedures and there would be a way of, Oh, making decisions.
And, resolving conflict and so on the family, the way that looks, there'd be what we call a family constitution, where, and I know that sounds so that sounds very grandiose and important. And I think most people would think, that's, that's just. Ridiculous, because all I have is a house and a, bank account.
so why should I go through all that effort? So this is maybe not for that family, but for a family with, more at stake. Um,it makes sense to have this where, it,and
Dean: I get it. There's going to be a meaningful estate that is, that's going to be,potentially life changing for the family members, right?
That there's a difference between that and who gets the good China or right, whatever, we're talking about if there's what level because there could be a monetary level of this, that are we talking about if there's, is there a difference between the dynamics of how this could impact if there's a, 10 million estate or a 20 million estate.
What would be
Paul: that is a fascinating question. And I've given a lot of thought to that. So here's my take on it.
If a family has, let's say 50 million, then they qualify for what's called a multifamily office, which is, in a multifamily office isa glorified, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get some hate emails from this, but it's a glorified,investment firm that provides some ancillary services, but those ancillary services are important and, they actually provide ways for,for dealing with family dynamics and all that kind of because there's enough,the family has enough invested that this, the organization or the, the company can actually buy people or not buy, pay for people to help, help resolve conflicts, help with things like that.
under that, there's just not really much of a solution. So where it gets really, but then under a certain level,how do I say it? under a certain level, yes,it's, it would be valuable for the family, but I think we're like the real sweet spot is, I think would be somewhere like.
Let's say 20, 000, 000 or above that. that's where they don't qualify for this thing called a multifamily office, with the, a plug and play solution like what I'm talking about. and the other solutions, um,offered by, typical estate planning attorneys, you get a will, you do this, that, that doesn't solve all of the other issues that they have becausethat's the point where there's enough money at stake where, where it's,here, I'll drill down to one of the, One of the real issues, so the real issue is not necessarily right now, but if the, the parents with 20 million, if they think ahead, the danger is for the grandkids and let me spell that out.
Okay, so right now, everything's fine, they have enough money, they can go on vacations and, buy new furniture whenever they want and all that kind of stuff, and the kids, the kids were able to, you know,they don't necessarily have to work as hard, and go to college, they can go to college, all of that stuff.
Right.
The danger then is for the, at some point, because the kids have less of a work ethic than the parents had, and the grandkids have less of a work ethic. At some point, the money runs out. And now you've created a horrible situation because now the grandkids. don't have a work ethic, and they have expensive tastes.
So that,
Dean: that's an interesting thing, right? I've heard, I work with a lot of financial advisors, and one of them talks about the,the difference between the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts, that the, and essentially saying that the, what they're guiding their clients to do is to set up opportunity based trusts or inheritances that you, if you go to college, we pay for you to go to college.
If you start a business, we pay or invest in your business. You're not just getting one fifth of the, you're not just entitled to a fifth of the, thing. Regardless, we're backing the family. opportunity. And I was thinking about, as you said this, the family constitution. It might be an interesting thing to have a family benefits plan that sounds more like, Oh, I'm going to get something here.
That constitution sounds legal. Yeah. Yeah.
Paul: No, that's a great idea. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So
Dean: much of it is language, right? It's all going to come down to the words and the ways that you present things, you know?
Paul: Okay. No, that's good. That's good. So,so there we have it.
Dean: Have you done, are you, is this a new thing that you're trying to figure out how to do or is this something that you're currently, you're, you've got people who are engaged with you on that level in the coaching, element of it right now?
Paul: I want to figure out how to get the people I know how to serve them. I haven't figured out how to get them.
Dean: yeah, and that's the thing like you're it's the difference. Have you ever heard people talk about vitamins or painkillers, what you've got is that after there's an incident after somebody dies, and it's in probate, they need to get them through this process but nobody's interested in.
vitamins to prevent what's going to cause the pain, Um,part of the dynamics they have to overcome.
Paul: Yeah. I guess one of the, and what I'm offering is,both. So the killer element is,it,what triggered it. like in this one family that I helped,he, he, the, the father was looking,he wanted like,he wanted to leave a legacy he, but it's difficult because most people don't search for that,they were searching for like how to resolve,the felt need was just that the one child, was ostracized.
And, so one part of one branch of the family was you know,Not in communication with the rest and so he, he wanted a way of resolving that, so there, there was a pain, and yeah,it wasn't, you mentioned family counseling, I don't think that's necessarily what it, what they needed, and then the issue, someone who creates a successful business, they, they're very smart, they know how to solve problems, and, like this one fellow, he assumed that he could just do things on his own, but the issue was he was part of, he was part of the problem.
I'll just spit it out. because he was in the situation, so he couldn't, He couldn't be part, figure out the solution while also being part of the situation that was, created the situation or created, the problem. I didn't say that very well. But, so he, yeah, he, it needed an outside person to come in and facilitate, Yeah, just to facilitate communication and figure out what's going on and be, go back and forth a little bit, not that I necessarily want to do that the rest of my life, but I think there's a way of, I think there's definitely a sweet spot of families that need some help where,yeah, and, where I can, Talk to them, give coaching, give guidance, and, really move the needle for them in a way that they can't just by going to a typical estate planning attorney, for example.
so what I've thought about maybe is. writing a book that I would send to estate planning attorneys and then, but, trying to figure out what would be in it for them to, give up on
Dean: that. That's what, that's what I'm trying to draw out of you is what is in it for them.
What would be the outcomes that,that you could help them, achieve. And if they're, if you're talking about business owners, it's an interesting thing that if they were to think about the enterprise of their family going forward that there's their desire to set up, everybody to have the opportunity to really grow what, is going to benefit future generations of the family, as well, so take somebody who would be thoughtfully,invested in that,As an intention, right?
a lot of times there may be, you're not gonna, I think it has to be leading with a desire for people who want to set up, their, their family for the greatest success going forward. Um,if there's little, if there's things that they can do, as opposed to, I always look for the spectrums of this, right?
if you look at that, there are people who have, positive family dynamics, who have, the grandparents are, or the patriarch is still, married and has kids that have kids, and everybody is,if we draw a line that they're happy, or that everybody still is harmonious kind of thing together.
And then there's on the other side, all the way from,the older brother and the younger brother don't really talk. There's some rift within the family, in that, or their step siblings or the half siblings that never really integrated or. It got together all the way down at the other spectrum, which is they hate each other.
They're at war. And if you look at that, where on that spectrum are the people who can benefit the most from, from this, and is it,An intervention level or a prevention level. they're, you look at the timeline of that, right? It's
Paul: yeah.
Dean: like you're probably getting involved at the level where it's too late.
Now I
Paul: am. Yes.
Dean: Yeah, that's what I mean. Like that. That's the moment that if you're thinking about, prevention, and then intervention would be the closer thing or whatever, or then Resolution or something, that would be
Paul: but let me mention something and,I'm not answering your question because I don't think I know exactly how to answer it, but we're on the script.
What's that?
Dean: This is the work. That's okay. And that's the idea is that you're not sure we can't build a vending machine to build something if we're not sure on who this is for what it's going to provide for them. So
Paul: I have it. I have a tidbit. As an estate planning attorney, because I also do that, I know that one, one of the, Oh, one of the issues that estate planning attorneys have is, Not staying in touch with their clients and this is just very typical So it tends to be a one and done service you come to me, you sign a bunch of documents I give them to you in a fancy binder and I you know, say thank you very well, you know thank you and a percentage of estate planning attorneys will stay in touch with their clients, maybe sending an email or something like that, but it's not, it's not typical.
I would say that it's, the minority of them, minority of estate planning attorneys will,follow up on the anniversary of signing the documents and just say, are there any changes something like that so that's I was thinking about how I could maybe offer that as a service, but then you know that takes me into a different tangent I wanted to, I want to provide, coaching for families, but now I'm getting into a.
service offering for estate planning attorneys where I'm, what am I doing? Am I offering to, provide a newsletter that they could send out or, to help them stay in touch with? I think there's a
Dean: good piece of that, that I think that's a viable opportunity that if you take this, evergreen or, equally, valuable things that I think there might be an opportunity for like a.
Let's just find a working title, call it like Patriarch Magazine or something like that. It's like the things that would be a journal for,and I'm a big, fan of creating what I call word palettes. So I would take some time. This would be an exercise that I think would be valuable for you is taking the time to I used to do like a 50 minute focus finder with this where I'll set a timer for 50 minutes and I'll just have a notebook and I'll just start brainstorming and putting thought streams and words and phrases and things that would That you would hear.
And so what I'm trying to do with that is I'm trying to get like you said, family constitution and my mind goes to what would be another alternative that family benefits plan is a different thing. We've used words like, with a financial advisor. We did, Postcard so replacing the word mistakes.
So if you said like the three biggest estate planning mistakes that people make is one thing, but nobody likes to admit that they're going to make a mistake. It's a blame word. So replace the word mistake with surprise, like three avoidable surprises. That derail even the most cautious estate plans or the most thorough estate plans or whatever now you've added a You know that anybody could you can't help that?
There's a surprise but the fact that there are three of them and you use the word avoidable. That's a Responsibility word in there, right? So we're not blaming you, but we're saying it's up to you There's three mistakes or three surprises that could happen And if you know what these surprises are, you can avoid them, how many people would not want to know what that is, right?
So you're just getting, with the language, getting people leaning in. So I would be inclined to just write down those phrases and words and things that would,get what you're Your understanding of what the mind and conversations that are going on among your ideal prospects, right?
What are the things that are on their mind? And from there, that's where you can pick the words to articulate what you're feeling, what you're seeing, what you're, what they're already seeing. Because that's the big thing, is you have to convey it to them. In a way, we're almost 50 minutes in to having a conversation here, and I'm not sure that we're crystal clear that if anybody was listening that they would have a clear understanding of what we're trying to accomplish, and not, there's nothing wrong with that, just understanding that's where we are, that's base camp one is you've got to have a way to articulate what's the thing that We're offering as the benefit,
Paul: right?
and the best idea I have right is to tell stories about,probates, probates gone wrong or,
Dean: tell me one story like that. Tell me one story like, tell me one specific redacted situation. And it doesn't have to be a current one. It can be from 10 years ago or whatever.
Paul: and I'm just random because I, I could do 50, but, sure.
Okay. let's see.dad died. mom and dad, collected a whole bunch of, dolls like that. That's what they did. they would go to these, traveling shows and they would sell these, collectible dolls. And so they ended up having like just a house full of these things. and then, let's see, mom died first and then dad, dad died, and Um,what ended up happening, it turns out that the doll, this is a side tangent, but dolls actually had an infestation of little gnats in the little hair and all this.
and there's so much personal property with coins and all this kind of stuff. And um,one of the kids, adult children got appointed, And there was no way, there was no way that she could,inventory all of the things because it's just too much. So she got a, uh,estate company to come in and inventory everything.
And it cost about 55, 000,to inventory and sell all of the property. And then the net proceeds to the estate were like 60, 000. So it was a net profit of 5, 000, but not a whole, but you had to do something. So it, and then, there were other things, but the, one of the sticking situations is that, there's a child, I won't say.
Um,I won't say the sex, but there's a, an adult child living in a house owned by the deceased parent. And, and it's been six years, six years that, that the. Kids have been fighting over what should happen, and, was it a breach of fiduciary duty for the one daughter to have brought in this estate company and pay so much money, or, but we don't know what the other option is, and then the one child living in the house is complaining that it's taken too long to administer the estate, but, but meanwhile, she can't administer the estate because There's someone living in the house and you can't sell it.
Andand it goes on and on. And, finally we have a different personal, a different executor put in place right now. Who's hopefully gonna start moving things along, but that's just dragged on and six years.
Dean: Yes. Got it. And so what would that, so how would that have, benefited from, is there something that they could have done preventatively or what would, like Oh, for sure.
Their legal cost involved. What would be, yeah, what would've been the solution that you would've identified in?
Paul: Oh, the, yeah. So the estate ended up paying, like I said, about $50,000 to this one company. The estate has incurred like 120, 000 of legal fees, just for spinning wheels and everything, so it, it could have been solved by, having, mandatory, mediation and arbitration provisions in the documents and, and having a, where instead of spending years going through the court system, it could have been resolved in three months,for example, that, that would have been, that would be one great solution.
Easy fix.
Dean: so this is an interesting, thing. It's almost like getting a, is there an element of creating almost like a stress test for your estate plans or your things? This is what the surprises could be or, That could be an interesting,
Paul: Oh, that's
Dean: a great idea. Yeah. Like financial advisors will often do a stress test on your portfolio.
Paul: Yeah.
Dean: And see what happens if interest rates go up or interest yields go down, or the market goes up, or the market goes down, or real estate goes up or down, that they're putting stress tests on, historical norms and outlier outcomes. Yeah, I
mean, it'd be, yeah, it'd be a matter of a 70, 75 point, Yeah,
Paul: test or whatever, like you car in and you get the, forget what they call it. But, Yeah, something like that. Yeah, that could, it would take a little time. Someone would have to actually do it. It's not like you can, just, I'm trying to think.
Dean: No, but that's part of it is that.
yeah. No, that's a great. Like getting a home inspection, right? getting a home inspection before you buy a house. So you're not going to buy the house and then find out that you've got an infestation or that there's,that this is, that the foundation's crumbling or all of those things.
there's a really good,there's a good use case for that in a lot of ways. and just thinking about practical things for people who already have, if your market is like a state, planning. People who already have a state plans, and this is like a supplemental, thing because typically they're already on the point that they're forward thinking people were not taking people who are head in the sand, not thinking right.
It's not a state planning at all and trying to convince them that they need to do a state planning. You're talking about the proactive people who've already crossed the line of they've went ahead and done some estate planning. And this surprise test may be a way of ensuring that what their intention was in doing it is actually going to happen, or here's the ways that it could be.
Might not happen and what you do to change that or to prepare against that,
Paul: I mean I can see What, how do you get people to raise their hand? the, so the offer would be the stress test. And then how do you find people? it, it could just be ads, or,
Dean: they're in, they're invisible prospects.
you start looking at, I was looking at it, that's level one of building this prospect vending machine is that, there are, Knowable. There's 8. 1 billion people on the planet right now. But if we narrow that to the relevant people that we're trying to talk with, these are you're talking about what would largely be invisible prospects because there's no registration of an estate plan.
You don't know. That somebody has an estate plan like, that they own real estate or the ownership is a visible prospect, thing, but you can build the parameters of somebody maybe by age, by net worth, by business owner, by, if you, by geography, if you take it to. Just Arizona, for instance, or Scottsdale or Phoenix specific.
That there's within a radius of where you are. That's how I would start. Anyway, it's art with your local, geography and say, I mentioned working with a financial advisor that we identified. they, their sweet spot of what we were looking for is people with two to three million dollars investable assets that are 62 to 67 that are home owners living in a million dollar plus home with, that are married and conservative voters.
That was a thing. So we found within a 20 mile radius of their office. We found, over 4, 000 of those people just within a 20 mile radius of their,in Florida here. And so I imagine if you just drew a 20 mile radius around Scottsdale, that if you identify what the parameters are, that would probably make somebody your ideal prospect.
That becomes now your visible prospect list of people and to start then floating that, then we're on the next layer of that is what's the message that they need to hear? in order to,they need to know that you exist. First off, they're not even thinking about it. Primarily. It's like there's enough pressing known problems that people have right now.
They're probably worried about their arthritis or their knee pain or their,brain fog, or is this Alzheimer's whatever, there are probably so many. known problems that they're trying to solve or look around that they're not Proactively thinking about finding problems that need to be solved, you know in the future There aren't gonna be a problem until they're gone in a way and so really it's an interesting dynamic So you need to find the subset the tippy top of that of people who are Proactively, if you took a thousand people who meet all of your demographic requirements, you take, you wonder how many of those people actually likely have an estate plan.
Paul: Yeah, so I realize we can't talk all day here, but,but,one thing that would trigger them would be if they've already gone like they've gone through a probate in their own family. Yeah. And that's usually what prompts people, oftentimes that's what prompts people to want to come to me and do the planning is like they just went through something in California, for example, and you know the family had a big dispute because things weren't set up right and all this kind of stuff.
And so they, they want to be more proactive.yeah, there is a subset there.
Okay.
Dean: Something to identify. that's your thing is really thinking about what is it that, we can put on the vending machine for them that they can see that this is an outcome that I would like to get. And they know that it exists and they need to have the desire for it and they need to know that you provide that outcome and this is the price for it.
Yes. Please push that button. And get that outcome.
Paul: Okay. okay. Yeah. um,
I guess it's just,the people looking for what I'm talking about,know that they need something more than just an estate plan because they will have. Maybe seen it in their own family where, maybe their own parents had the will or the trust and still there was, arguments among the family, or, something like that, or the one brother ended up taking everything.
and so they, they realized that they need something a little bit more. And,so the vending machine would be, something like, uh.yeah, you're right. I need to come up with the words for that's
Dean: the thing. The thing about the vending machine that makes a vending machine work is that you can have multiple items in it, but you've got to have, there's got to be something in position one, a machine with the window looking at it, that you can clearly see, oh, that's a Snickers.
I want, that's what I want over and you push one a and you put in the dollar and outcomes, the Snickers. Yeah. And if it's like the peaceful Thanksgiving dinner, with the whole family together, if that's in position 1A, what does that cost? And that's, I want that. or whatever other issue, whatever other thing you have to be able to clearly articulate what those outcomes are that you can help, provide.
Paul: I really liked the idea of the stress test. I can run with that for sure. Create that and start, just start marketing it and see where I go with it.
Dean: and maybe that's part of the thing, right? that same pattern that we used with the financial thing, right? Three avoidable surprises that derail even the most cautious retirement plans could be the same thing of three avoidable surprises that now derail.
was a word that we chose in that word palette of the perfect emotional, visceral representation of the words that people use when they're talking about their retirement plan that we are on track to retire in three years. So the worst thing that could happen if you're on a train that's on the track is that you get derailed.
That's a visceral. Visual, emotional attached word. So three avoidable surprises that derail even the most cautious and cautious was a word that was chosen in lieu of conservative because conservative is a weapon or it's been labeled, it's a word that nobody wants to be labeled conservative, right?
But everybody should be And could be cautious, cautiously optimistic of the things and retirement plans indicate that you've got a plan and that you're on your way, so if you were looking at that pattern there, there's probably a better word for derail. and there's probably a better word for cautious, but if we said three avoidable surprises that do something to even the most something estate plans.
Paul: Yeah,
Dean: that is a thing that's going to draw people in, curiosity wise, especially if they're people who are the kind of people which I'm assuming would be the best suited for this are people who like to dot the I's across the tier plan for everything. The people are 20 percent who are already interested in making things go as smoothly as possible, right?
Sure. Sure.
Paul: No, I think it's great
Dean: progress. I think that's a good, that's a good outcome for your first conversation about it,
Paul: No, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah,
Dean: this has been great. I'd love, where can people reach out to you if they wanted to,have that kind of a conversation?
Because I imagine we're going to people who are in that, in that situation.
Paul: Yeah, just my law firm, let's see, it is suddenwealthprotectionlaw.com. and the idea there is, like when people,I named it, I named the law firm after, like when people come into an inheritance and they blow the money or don't know what to do anyway, so that's the reason for it.
Dean: we'll keep our eye on that. And then I will see you in some of the genius network. Absolutely.so we're going to continue the series on the vending machine. So that would be good. I'll connect with you there as well.
Paul: Okay. No, thank you. Thank you.
Dean: Awesome.