What happens if there is sudden death in your firm and what happens for planned succession?
Steven McClelland joins us today for practical tips and valuable insight on this situation. Not only because Steven has dealt with this first hand in his firm but also because he believes that as attorneys, we have to come to the realization that we are replaceable.
With a staggering stat of 72% of attorney’s not having an “after death” plan in place, he is on a mission to share how to make this practical and possible.
Episode Highlights:
01:05 Where do you start when it comes to getting prepared for: When the owner of your firm passes away?
02:39 Meet Steven and why this is his passion
09:27 A couple practical actions are …
12:00 What about your spouse?
15:40 These few documents are helpful ….
18:49 Where do you put your documents for people to access after death?
21:04 What about if the person doesn’t actually pass?
23:10 What about your bills? Who pays them? How does this work out?
28:10 If you put together ONE document for your firm … The most important document would be is …
29:15 How plans for death affect the ways the people you love process through death.
Jim’s Hack: Deep Questions Podcast by Cal Newport
Guest Tip: Create a video of instructions for your team in case you die. Also think of creative ways to support and connect with your family and kids after death as well.
Tyson’s Tip: Use this easy editing app called InShot for assistance with your Reels etc. (lifetime access for $34.95)
🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube.
Connect with Steven McClelland:
Resources:
- Join the Guild Membership
- Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
- Follow us on Instagram
- Join the Facebook Group
- Follow the Facebook Page
- Follow us on LinkedIn
Transcript: When the Owner Passes Away with Steven McClelland
Speaker 1
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.
Jim Hacking
Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking
Tyson Mutrux
in today’s emetrics What’s up you
Jim Hacking
me impure dyslexic fashion, as we so often do running things around backwards, we are very pleased to present what was a guild presentation with our good friend and guild member Steven McClellan on what to think about when your firm leader passes away. And Stephen has a ton of great tips. And because it was so valuable, because we wanted everyone to hear the important things that Stephen had to say, we decided to for the first time ever, turn the guild meeting into a podcast episode. So without further ado, Steven, welcome to the show. Hey,
Steven McClelland
thanks, Jim. Thanks, Tyson. Glad to be here today.
Tyson Mutrux
So let’s get started. Where do you want to start when it comes to getting prepared for when the owner does pass away? Meaning it could be it could be us, right? It could be could be me, I could walk outside and get hit by a bus, which be really hard because we’re not on the street here. But if I walked out and got hit by a car or something, you know, we got to be ready for it. So where do we start with that?
Steven McClelland
Well, you’re right. I guess the two big issues are incapacity, right? Or what happens if you die suddenly, and something that we have in common is, you know, the flying, and that really brought on the new meaning when my wife and I, you know, started talking about us flying, and I took her on a date one night over to a state park and, and she said, you know, how’s our estate plan? And I was like, you know, well, I’m an estate planning and elder law attorney. And, you know, I thought I need to tweak this up just a little bit. You know, it gets more real when you know, your wife’s, you know, the life is in your hand, right?
Tyson Mutrux
You’re not light, I really, it really started getting me to think more about my mortality. I remember flying and it was like, one of my one of my first solos actually was one of my first solar cross countries and I, and it was, the weather wasn’t the greatest right? And I it really got me thinking about life in general. But like, Okay, what happens, like if me and my wife are in the plane, and we crash, but also like, what happens to the firm, to the firm just go away. So yeah, it really does get you thinking. And Tiffany said, she said, I wish I had this training about 20 months ago. Thanks for doing this guys. So important, Tiffany, thank you for sharing, because you’re the reason why we started this. So very, very good.
Steven McClelland
I listened to Tiffany’s podcast, and it really it hit me because her story was very similar to my story. I am here because of succession planning. And so I guess that might be the best place to start is kind of how I got into what I’m doing. And things are a little different. You know, whether you’re a solo or you have an associate or a larger firm, you’re probably going to do different things. Right? So when I was in law school, I started clerking for this older gentleman who had done estate planning and elder law for a number of years. And he had been looking for somebody to take over his practice. He wanted to slow down, take some time off. And so it was a great was perfect, a perfect opportunity for me to kind of come in, I was young, I was hungry, right? I wanted to bring some great tech. And it was perfect. We had a great philosophy on life. And he was just the perfect mentor. And what happened there was he had cancer that there was a possibility would come back. And sure enough, about a year before he died, they said he I remember he came in, in this very office, he walked in and said the doctor said cancer is back in I’ve got a year to live. And at this point, it was a second round. And it had metastasized. And so he said, you know, we had talked about it many times before. But that’s when it really it’s a gut punch. I mean, you you felt it. I mean, it was, oh, it was terrible. So when I was listening and Tiffany’s story, all those feelings of that moment, right. And so our plan was immediately he said, I want to walk away from this. None of this matters, like the clients don’t matter. And so in our plant, we had a plan, we had a transition period of time, it wasn’t a sudden death, which is kind of what we alluded to with airplane. So there was the drafting of the motions to substitute counsel taking over his cases. And so we had a plan to we send out a letter to his clients, we make sure the phone number transitioned over so I would have control over that number, which was very important, because we do estate planning, and that phone number is everywhere. It’s on business cards, and it’s in binders, right and So keeping that number was extremely important for families they call and you know, that would help business. So that was a nice way to do a succession planning, if one can be a nice way where you can think about it methodically and have a smooth transition. I’ll tell you a funny story about about that he tried to tell the bar or local bar, he said, Look, I’m dying, and I want to surrender my license. And they wouldn’t let him do that they wanted him to go in front of a judge to declare he was dying. He got this random letter from the Supreme Court, it said, This is stupid. I’ve got like, nine months left, I’m not gonna go spend my day in court declaring with a die, so he’s like, Would you please take care of this when I’m gone? And so I had to send them letters afterwards, like months and months, they still wouldn’t believe He died. And I’m like, No, here’s, you know, that was a silly thing. I thought that was the most insensitive thing I think the bar could have done. I don’t know why he couldn’t just voluntarily surrendered his license. Interestingly, his malpractice carrier said, you know, you’ve been with us for so many years, we’ll cover in detail coverage, which was interesting. As lawyers, you kind of want to think about maintaining that for maybe three years or so after you are done practicing, however much that is just keeping that in reserves to pay that, because that’s typically how our, our policies, we don’t have a current space policy, we kind of have to buy tail policies, at least that’s what most of us have. So that was a joy, that transition was a joy. But that’s not what I see in my state. We have a very rule state, and we have lawyers that just their glory is to die in their office or die in a courtroom. So the court reporter can get that final breath. I don’t know. Do you guys see this? In your states?
Tyson Mutrux
I see quite a bit with it. Because like traffic attorneys, I’m like, why are you still doing this? And I’m still running around from court to court. But
Jim Hacking
when we get to Missouri bar journal, I always check the back to see one have I been disbarred and to have I died, but most of the people in back who died It’s like 8587. But then you’ll see someone that’s like 38. And you’re like, oh, man, and then you’ll see someone from your law school class. So yeah, it’s I mean, certainly lawyers are working too long. Yeah.
Steven McClelland
You know, and that that’s probably discussion on making sure you set some money aside and retire. That’s my plan. And I want to be done at 65. Right. I love what I do. But the truth is, I want to be a grandpa, that’s more, that’s what I want to be more than anything in life. So we had a guy in one of the towns were up in office, he was literally taking clients two weeks before he was dying, like he had cancer too, and was signing up people two weeks, and another we got another guy, he’s 93 days still doing the state planning clients. And I’m thinking, you know, you’re, you’re not going to be there when, you know, the family is there. So, so I’ve done different things over the years after he passed, I was a solo for about three or four years. And so I had another attorney that I reached out to and said, you know, if something happens to me, I’d like you to kind of manage this firm. For me, it was kind of an informal agreement. I see that a lot in our area, I had prepared a letter in the event of my death. And I told my wife just give this letter to this attorney and make sure my wife knew who this attorney was because my I love my wife. She doesn’t work in my practice. She’s a medical provider and doesn’t know anything about law. Right? So in running a business would be disastrous for her. I’m sure she could do it. I shouldn’t say that. But that’s not her thing. Right? So I said, Look, this isn’t a this is a good attorney, she couldn’t have told him she wouldn’t have known a good attorney for the bad attorney. Right. And, and as as attorneys, we have to come to a realization that we are replaceable, right? cemeteries are full of irreplaceable lawyers, right? So, of course, you’ll never feel they’ll take care of your folks the way you did, but you got to find someone similar, right? And they can least help out. So I had that for a while. And that was a pretty good plan. And then thanks to maximum lawyer growing right, and hearted Associate Attorney. And so things got a little bit, a little bit more complex, right? I’ve got I got more people on staff and having an associate attorney, I thought it’d be best that she take over for the practice in the event of my death. So a couple of things we’ve done from a practical standpoint, it’s very practical stuff. So number one is I set my payroll out typically every quarterly, I do quarterly reviews with everyone. So I set payroll out for three months. Okay, so something happened to me, that’s kind of taken care of. So there’s at least three months if I die on New Year’s Eve, well, that might be a problem. But just getting people on salary is kind of my preference. Not you know, hourly, is kind of a pain, right? If they’re hourly and keeping up with the time so I try to get them over to salary as quick as possible. So Oh, that was my number one, their concern is I want them to keep working right? Number two, as a state planning attorney, we have very far horizons, right? And you would expect us to be thinking about the end in mind. That’s something we repeat a lot in the guild start with the end in mind, what does intake look like? But the truth is, is when your practice is over, right? And so how can you set up your people for success? Well, if they don’t want to stay there, well write a letter of recommendation and stick it in their file, right? So if they if they do have to go somewhere, how impactful that be is like, hey, my last wish, you know, this employee has been amazing. And they’ve done well, the only reason why they’re not working for me is I’m dead, they really couldn’t have helped that, right. But something along those lines, I think can be helpful for them, right. And then when you’re talking to your people, and that’s part of your quarterly meetings, that gives them some comfort, that you’re thinking really about them, right, that they’re not going to be without a reference letter, or something like that makes sense. 72% of lawyers 72% of lawyers do not have a succession plan. That was from a 2017 Rocket Lawyer, what you called a survey 72% I believe that’s true, because you know, I, I do trust I do a lot of revocable trust, to protect assets. So I get curious. And so I start looking up the lawyers in town. And it’s clear that they haven’t done any trust, like their their assets are still in their name, right? Of course, there’s maybe some other ways they could have set things up. So they’re, you know, the popper, without, with his kids without shoes is a big problem, that we take care of everybody. But our own families aren’t like taking care of right. So I think that 72% is probably pretty accurate, based on the people that I encountered in talk to, so y’all can interrupt me. I’m just kind of going on. Like,
Tyson Mutrux
I didn’t want to interrupt you. You’re doing a great job.
Steven McClelland
So I’ll talk specifically like a so about my spouse, right? So my associate is quite young, I’ve been practicing 10 years, she’s been out a year, right? So for me personally, it’s really not about the money, like I have life insurance on me. So if I die basket and take care of my family, right, I really look at my associate taking care of the practice as a, like a burden, my wife does not have to worry about. Does that make sense? So when I was doing our family state plan, and I was tweaking it a little bit, most good powers of attorney will have like business powers of attorney in case somebody does have a business, right? So what I actually did was I, for my power of attorney, I gave my wife, I stripped out all the business powers of attorney, and I gave those to my associates. And I kept with my wife the ability to enter a Buy Sell agreement, okay? So that my associate can run the practice, right? My wife doesn’t have to worry about it. And she can just kind of enter in a Buy Sell agreement. And we’ve kind of come up with a number that we feel both feel comfortable with. I’ve told my wife and my associate. And it’s not, it’s not really about money. I mean, there has to be money in your operating account. You know, they talk about having maybe three or six months worth of income in there. This time of year, it seems like you have closer maybe in the six months, as opposed to three months, right? Because, you know, you just kind of build up or especially personal injury, guys, you guys make all your money in December, and maybe they write those checks for January, I guess, right? So there’s operating income in there for a while, but it gives some flexibility to my wife to do a Buy Sell agreement, what I’ve encouraged my associates to do is just get some life insurance on me. So that if I die, that life insurance can just pay off my wife. So part of losing that weight was to make those premiums they’re talking about losing weight before beforehand, that’s hopefully going to help the premiums because I put on a little bit of weight over the last three years with some kids, you know, and all that good stuff.
Tyson Mutrux
You know, that’s the idea of the insurance policy to pay off a spouse if that’s not something I’ve ever considered. No one’s ever given me that advice either. That’s interesting. So would you say just let’s say that, I guess you know what, maximum lawyer let’s use it as an example. Let’s say Would it make sense for me to take out a policy or maximum or to take on a policy on each of us in case something were to happen to one of us and then they basically pay off our spouse? What would you recommend something like that?
Steven McClelland
I’ve seen that a lot of businesses do that like key employees.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, I was gonna say we did that in my old firm with the three partners we all had that on each other. And if we’re gonna be doing insurance, this would be a good time now that I’ve lost my weight that’s a good time to go in for a quote
Tyson Mutrux
back here that we got to get we gotta get some insurance. Let’s get it done.
Jim Hacking
We really need Becca is what we really mean.
Tyson Mutrux
Also also true, yes. Very good.
Becca Eberhart
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Steven McClelland
I think the older you get, the more you realize the value of these conversations. It wasn’t like it was like three months ago, a lawyer had a car a significant car accident, just driving down the highway and in our small town, that kind of shook him up, right? We don’t take care of ourselves very well, health wise, right, and we’re under a lot of stress, things can happen. So having just a few documents, I think is helpful. So you can I think a business power of attorney is really helpful, you can just create a business power of attorney, if you don’t have an associate, just give that to some friend likes so that a business power of attorney is only good if you’re alive. Does that make sense? Like like a normal power of attorney if I’m dead, you can’t really use the power of attorney. Right. So that’s when you have to tweak kind of your operating documents in your business documents. So this is a good encouragement to do yearly minutes in your corporate book, wherever it is right put yearly minutes that you met, and you discussed how you want to do your succession plan that should be in your in your minutes. There are some agreements to close your firm in the future that you can kind of create, which would kind of be the next step with that life insurance that that already that agreement can be in there. I don’t have to worry about attorney client privilege when I’m dealing with an Associates. But if if you don’t have an associate or another attorney, and you know, that’s kind of an issue, you have to be mindful of. If a third party takes over that, I think it’s important to set up your associate for success. So having a letter that she can send out to the client saying hey, I, I’m going to tell you she’s she’s fantastic. She’s been working with me this many years, she is going to service you and your estate plan be there for your family. I’m sorry, I wasn’t right, can really be very impactful and help her have success. Does that make sense?
Tyson Mutrux
It does i? This may seem so silly. But like what about like a video? Like what about like a video where like, Jim sits down and record that? You know, like,
Jim Hacking
if you’re watching this exactly if you’ve been murdered on a desert island? And
Tyson Mutrux
well, those types of videos, like, what about things like that? You see those in the movies? Do they Does that make sense? Well, that’s
Steven McClelland
funny, that was kind of my hack of the week was going to talk about, you know, we have these great phones, and we talked about them for promoting our business, right, and you know, running the ball from the right way. But in doing it the right way can also be done with these phones. And, you know, if you have kids, you know, I have daughters, and so my hack was going to be if I’m gone. I mean, they’ve lost a significant male figure in their life. So I have videos that those girls can watch. In the event. I’m not there for high school graduation of their wedding. And I had asked for my great I actually did this for my grandparents, my grandparents have videos to my daughters on the night before their wedding and did that before they died. So they can be there at that that moment. So these phones is video, it’s really a way to keep your voice and your impact far beyond you know, your life.
Tyson Mutrux
That’s that’s really heart wrenching. Actually, don’t even think about my my children doing that. But I have more of I guess a more practical question about that. I mean, how do they get it? Like, where do you put this stuff? Like what like, what’s your advice on where to put these things? I know that Tiffany’s former partner had like a document like one document, like a one sheet, and he talked about it quite a bit. What about things like, you know, how to get into your phone and like what app like, has, like, you can take and go, Hey, I was such I was Tyson, the spouse? Can I get into his phone? I mean, Verizon is not going to do that. For me. Apple’s not probably going to do that with for me, but I guess I don’t know how that works. I mean, what do you do in that situation?
Steven McClelland
So here’s kind of how I’ve set things up. It’s not perfect, right? But as far as the passwords for your, for your firm, there are a lot of these one password, ones that you can set up like LastPass and whatnot. And so that’s what we’ve set up for some of our firm accounts. Okay. But there are some master ones like the the credit card or the bank accounts that, you know, I wouldn’t want my staff to get unless I die, right. So there’s like there’s you and then there’s what your staff immediately has access and there’s something in the middle, right. So it’s very simple just to create a dummy account in the middle, right? It’s never used Unless you die, right, so that one master password at that time then would have access to everything, right. And you wouldn’t give it to anybody until you died. So where you put that password that one password, it would be important. So people can have access to it. It’s not hard. As far as the videos for family, you can just set up a Gmail accounts. And if you have an idea for a video, just shoot it and stick it in that Gmail account. Give it to your best man. I talked to a buddy of mine a few weeks ago, and I said, Hey, if I die, it’s your job to walk my daughters down the aisle. And he was like, he was like, blown away. And it’s like, he’s like, is everything okay, you know? And I get that question a lot. And I was like, No, I just do estate planning. And I talk about death all the time. So you know, it’s probably on my mind more than most folks. So those are, those are kind of some ways that you can you can do that. The phone thing is tricky because of the biometrics that set up on it. So that’s why I liked the LastPass extra email to bridge the gap between what you give them now it currently.
Jim Hacking
My question was, Stephen, what we talked a lot about death. And at the beginning, you had mentioned disability. So I’m wondering, are there special concerns? Or? I mean, obviously, I think everybody should have good disability insurance, long, long term, the short and long, I guess, but what are the other considerations when the person doesn’t actually pass away? So
Steven McClelland
there’s a lot of things, you know, colas are the big question, are they going to make it? Maybe I need to be in a coma for three months, right? And that’s why having, you know, maybe it’s just some kind of car accident, my body needs to heal before they’re waking me up, right. That’s why the business power of attorney is so important, because that can run the business while I’m incapacitated. Right. Long term care insurance. I about six months ago, the bar had somebody like the local bar, I reached out to him. And they’re just a mess, like I sent them information I applied for and how to tell them I’m a private pilot, right. And for whatever reason, they haven’t gotten back to me about that, but I can’t remember what the quote is, they had a quote, It wasn’t really that much. I mean, for the amount of money that you can get up to 1020, you know, 10 to 15,000, a month or so. That you, you got to I looked at it. And I thought, well, full time care for me, let’s say I need a full time caregiver, right, that’s going to eat up maybe 40,000 a year, right? And then that doesn’t even replace any income. Right? So I do think that my partner had long term care insurance, and then he got rid of it when he was 65. Because he said, it’s hard for lawyers to be disabled, like, we would really have to be in a coma, we can they can will us to work, right. If a hands not working, we can still work. So to meet those qualifications of being disabled is kind of hard. So he got rid of his when his net worth was high enough that it didn’t really matter, to have that replacement income.
Tyson Mutrux
I mean, well, I mean, let’s say that we do everything you’re talking about doing. And let’s say that something bad happens. Like you talked about setting up the payroll, right, but let’s say that you’ve got the business power of attorney, so someone can make some of the decisions, but like, do you stop paying your bills? Like Like, like for the business? Like, how does all that stuff start to start to play out? Because I mean, if this would have happened right now, honestly, in my firm, I don’t think people would know what the hell to do. I need to do a better job of having that succession planning. So like, what do people do? Whenever that happens?
Steven McClelland
So first, most of everything we have is set up on on auto pay, right? So there’s not a whole lot of paper bills that are sent to us. It’s frustrating, because some of the paper bills we get are actually this will be automatically deposited, you know, or withdrawn, right. So like, I don’t need this extra paperwork, right. But we have a list for our we have three different offices. So each office has different utilities, right? And having that power of attorney and having things auto set up, that gives you plenty of time to get those power of attorneys to those utility companies, because typically, the way it works is you can’t just walk into a bank and use a power of attorney, typically they have to send it to their legal team. And then within 24 hours, they’ll say, okay, yes, we’ll recognize this power of attorney. Makes sense. So one of the issues you have to think about is do you want the power of attorney to be effective immediately? Or do you want to have one or two doctors saying you’re incapacitated to take over and when I do estate planning, unlike I really don’t want to have to get to new doctors to say you’re in capacity just to use something. Right? So for individuals, I don’t do that I just make them effective immediately. Because if you don’t trust that person, you know, I don’t know why you’re not name your power of attorney, but you may want to have one doctor and have to sign off and say you’re incapacitated before it’s effective. So that’s a little nuance about your personal ratio, business power of attorney, but it’s gonna it’s gonna take a while to it should The best thing I can tell folks for estate planning is write everything down. And I’ll tell you in the in the, I don’t know how many 1000 meetings I’ve had with people, clients get Richard in estate planning meetings, unlike any other meeting, they just get, they have, oh, I forgot about this $20,000 in this $5,000 account, and so they like, oh, you know, so, everybody today, if they do nothing should just get a piece of paper and write down where their assets are. Right? And that, if you just do that, you’re gonna save a huge headache for everyone, cuz you don’t want them to go on a treasure hunt to find things. Right? So that’s what I’d say about trying to make that as easy as possible for them. It’s gonna be it’s gonna be terrible anyway, right? I mean, it’s, there’s going to be issues, but I think we can do a lot. And that can help a lot.
Tyson Mutrux
So when it comes to the business side of things, though, like, where do you put those documents? Do you make sure you tell everyone in your in your firm? Or do you tell like one person or another person? Like, where do you store this stuff? So that from a business standpoint, I’m not really talking about that, from the personal standpoint, but like a business standpoint, like do you go on you to save? Like, what about things like that? Oh, someone mentioned,
Steven McClelland
affirm Wikipedia, and like, years ago, right? So we have a firm Wikipedia that’s got that information on it, where those utilities are, I don’t really care about, about that, if you I tried to make it as simple as possible, right? I mean, you just put the account numbers on there, the business, all my associate needs to know is where I bank at, she knows because we set up a firm expense account. So instead of them having access to our major account, we have a smaller account that has less money in it. So if they were to commit fraud or something, right, it’s not going to affect everything that’s in there. So they know where the where we bank at, right? And you can give that bank a copy of those powers of attorney and we’re a small community. So they’re, they’re gonna know what’s happening. You know, everybody knows everybody to some degree, or if something happened to me, or you guys, I’m sure people would, would know. And so you can you can put it in your we have a safe, I think everybody has a combination of my safe. You can put it in the affirm Wikipedia. I mean, I guess we typically say don’t give out your password, right? That’s what we tell people, right? But I think it’s important to at least like, like the master password, maybe that’s something that you put in a safety deposit box, right? You don’t change that. And you on that safety deposit box, you say, Okay, I want this person to have access to it, right. And so they can go in there and get access to that that code. I don’t think there’s any really wrong way to do it. I think many of us, we want the perfect plan before we do something, right. And I have heard over and over again, a plan that’s executed is better than a perfect one that doesn’t get done. So I wouldn’t get so caught up in the details that you don’t do anything, I would do something and you’re going to tweak it and it’s going to be so individualized for your firm in what’s best for you. We often say don’t let the person you want to be hate who you are today. Right? Don’t let the perfect succession plan. You know, hey, who you are today just do something. Right? So I’m just taking words that other people have said and applying everything applies I think to succession planning to
Tyson Mutrux
Alright, so I’m gonna ask you one last question, then let Jim ask the last question. If he if he’s got one, but not the personal stuff, not the will not the not the trustly. If you’re gonna if you’re gonna put together one document for your firm, what should that document be?
Steven McClelland
One document for the firm? It’s hard if I just said that business power of attorney doesn’t help when I die. Right? I would say in your corporate documents have a succession plan in those corporate documents, because I can give that to a bank in the event of incapacity or death, and they can know who’s in the trust. So that would be the document, I would make sure it says what you what you want to happen, are it so
Jim Hacking
Stephen, one of the things you said, I think it’s the most one of the most important pieces of this by getting people to move and that is the you said it’s gonna be horrible anyway, right? Like, what we’re talking about our worst case scenarios, situations where a spouse or children or employees are left without a mother or father or partner or boss. Can you talk a little bit about how, or if you’ve seen it, effective ways for people to sort of process that and work through that? I mean, my buddy, Jim McMillan, who who does a lot of estate planning, he told me that he had probably 10 estate plans that he had been fully fully paid for. And he tried his best to get the people to come in and sign it. And they wouldn’t just because I think there were some mental block about that. If, right. Do you have any tips or anybody on that? Well, most
Steven McClelland
of the folks who do talk to an estate planning attorney, I asked them, what are their goals? And they say, I want to make things as easy as possible for my kids, right? And that’s what all of us as parents want, right? We do that. We always care about them. And so that is is extremely motivating. The truth is estate planning and succession planning is very altruistic. I think that’s the word, right? It’s something you’re doing for someone else, right? You could just leave this world like many lawyers do and just die and and let others clean up the mess. But most say, you know, it’s bad enough that I’m gone, I don’t want them to have a mess to clean up. So that’s the conversation and the silent generation, which is the 77 and 97 year olds, they don’t talk about anything. The baby boomers 77 to 57 are much better, because they dealt with no communication, having no idea what’s going on. So I’m seeing more discussions and more openness and transparency with the baby boomers children, then with first Silent Generation. So there’s generational impacts to how people view the end of life. I think it makes you live more fully whenever you talk about the end. Right? That, you know, my kids know, my dad talked about it right. And he was ready. You know, that’s the goal. We can’t be here forever. So
Tyson Mutrux
it’s great stuff. All right, we’re gonna wrap things up. Before I do. I want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. There’s a lot of great information being shared there every single day. If you want a more high level conversation, join us in the guild, go to max law guild.com. We would love to see you in the guild. And while you’re listening to the rest of this episode, if you don’t mind leaving us a five star review, we would greatly appreciate it. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week?
Jim Hacking
My hack of the week is a podcast that I just stumbled upon. Now. Some of you might have read the wonderful book, Deep Work by Cal Newport or the the end of email. Little did I know that Cal Newport has a podcast and very interestingly, he handles things a little bit differently. So he does do questions from the audience to create his podcast. But you know, he’s very much about being efficient with his time. And so he makes people email on the question or record it and then he puts that into the thing. So he’s not about the human interaction. And he’s about how do I get as much done as possible. I learned about his podcast because Tim Ferriss had a special episode A little while ago, he had parts of Tara brash, and Ryan Holiday and then Cal Newport. So like Cal Newport has a whole thing in there about, you know, time efficiency and time management, all that stuff. So the podcast, it’s called deep questions with Cal Newport, and they’re long episodes, but it’s good stuff.
Tyson Mutrux
I just now subscribe to it. So thanks for sharing that. It’s cool. Love it. Alright, Steven, you we kind of teed you up before, suddenly, you already have a tip for us. So what you got forth. So
Steven McClelland
I was going to say create videos for your team in case you’re gone. And that way, what a way to soften that blow. If that’s even a thing. Do that for your family do that for your kids. My partner died, he had letters that he I remember him arriving in the office that he didn’t do videos, but he wrote letters to his kids after he was gone. And those notes I think can have such a great impact on how you are remembered and how you help them grieve your loss.
Tyson Mutrux
That’s good. I’m gonna do that. I’ve already been writing a little book for my kiddos. So I’m gonna I’m gonna do something. I think it’d be kind of cool to do like a private podcast for him. That’d be so cool. But I don’t know. I’m gonna do some creative. I didn’t who knows that podcasts are gonna be a thing in 10 years. I think they probably will. But you never know. But my tip of the week is a an app. I’ve been doing a lot more tick tocking and Instagramming reels, doing some reels. And a really easy editor while I’m just kind of hanging out in shot it is if you do have to pay for it. They have a monthly one you can do a yearly one I just bought the the the lifetime one for like 3499. So it’s not super expensive. But it’s really easy like all those tiktoks and Instagram reels that you see a lot of the edits you can tell are done in in in shot. It’s really easy to do. So you can even do like picture and picture with the videos. It’s really cool. So highly recommended. A Steven, thank you so much for joining us really appreciate it. I think this is great. We thought it was a great idea of Jim to turn this into a podcast as we were just going to do this for the guild, but I think it is something that’s pretty valuable for everybody. So thank you so much for joining us.
Steven McClelland
Thanks, guys. All the best. Thanks, buddy.
Jim Hacking
See you brother.
Speaker 1
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