Ep63 - Rethink: Are Your Estate Documents in Order? – Featuring Cody Barbo

Cody Barbo, CEO and co-founder of Trust & Will, joins Adam Holt and Derek Notman for a candid conversation about why so many Americans—including financial advisors themselves—still don't have their estate planning documents in order. They discuss the surprisingly low rates of will and trust ownership, the opportunity this gap creates for advisors to deepen client relationships, and how modern estate planning tools are making it easier to close the gap.

• Why most Americans lack basic estate planning documents
• The advisor's blind spot: their own estate plans
• How estate planning deepens client trust and retention
• Modern tools simplifying wills and trusts
• Opportunities for advisors to add estate planning as a service
• Common misconceptions about beneficiary designations

Full timestamped transcript.

[00:00:29] Adam Holt: Derek, are your estate planning docs in order? Pretty serious question. Well, I figured I needed to ask is your friend.

[00:00:40] Derek Notman: No, I appreciate that. Uh, and, and in fact, they are, uh, for a long time, they were not probably, I mean, even after the birth of my son, I didn't have anything done initially.

Really stupid looking back. I had beneficiary. I mean, you don't just mean beneficiaries on accounts. Do you? Yeah. Isn't that, isn't that what a state planning is?

[00:01:02] Adam Holt: Uh, you're a CFP. I mean, come on, you, you know, there's so much, so much you have to think about so much you have to think about.

[00:01:09] Derek Notman: Yeah. My wife and I redid all of our docs maybe two or three years ago, everything, and then just refreshed them and looked at them.

I think it was in the last six months. Wow. So

[00:01:21] Adam Holt: you have an

[00:01:21] Derek Notman: active

[00:01:22] Adam Holt: capacity to update them and access them.

[00:01:26] Derek Notman: Yeah. I mean, life happens, right? , whether it's new businesses or assets or whatever, life changes and kids grow up, get older and who you want to list as a guardian might change, , All that stuff happens.

[00:01:40] Adam Holt: ,

how about you? I do have my docs in order. Although I went through a whole process, uh, probably about 5 or 6 years ago, hired a super high end estate attorney, spent a boatload of money, took probably 4 or 5 months to get it done and needed my Chief of staff to actually help me get it done. Cause it requires so much complex, you know, when we have businesses and business interests, some of that stuff's in our own name, some of the stuff we choose to put in trust and, you know, do all kinds of complex structures.

And this stuff gets really, really complicated and intimidating more than anything. But I think the biggest challenge has been as a financial advisor, getting our clients to do this has been really, really tough. And I think that we've let a lot of people down, Derek. A lot of people. I mean, you've probably experienced, have you ever dealt with a family that's not had their docs in order?

[00:02:32] Derek Notman: Yeah. More often than not, Adam, unfortunately I've seen this many times over the years and I always made it a point to ask, like, do you have a will, do you have a trust and when was the last time you had it updated, but most people said no, they hadn't done it, uh, for some of the reasons you even sex, it can appear to be a very challenging and overwhelming thing to do, but then also, , I would offer like, okay, well, you probably should do that.

I'm not an attorney, but you should get it done. And then would recommend some attorneys and 2 years later, they haven't done anything, you know, but I remember 1 client specifically who said that they had done their estate planning and I had a copy of their trust. Their will powers of attorney client passed away, wasn't updated enough.

And there wasn't enough dialogue between the attorney and the client. His life happened. This was over 10 years ago. And the family is still fighting. And it's interesting because the whole family before he passed away, super successful, self made man, seventh grade education. But multi multi millionaire and his whole family said, kids, grandkids, cousins.

Oh, we all love each other. We everything's fine. He died. They're still fighting over the money today. Wow. Not the legacy. He probably not at all. Not at all. You know, it's just so sad to see things like that happen. How about you? Have you ever dealt with something

[00:03:59] Adam Holt: like that? You know, I got inspired by this.

Idea a bunch of years ago called the 100 year legacy. And I started asking my clients this question. What's what's the 100 year legacy? Of course, most people had never even heard of this and I said, I'm literally making it up. What is 100? I mean, if you want to be as intentional as I have 100 year impact on the planet, your family, whatever charity church, Government, whatever it might be.

You can actually be intentional, but it's going to take actual documentation because you're not going to be here to tell us. And I've had a couple of situations. I had a situation, gosh, not too long ago, where a couple was always like, you know, we're not going to do it. I got to do it. They decided to become pilots.

You can kind of hear the end of this. They took their private plane and they flew to go visit their daughter and the plane didn't make it. And their argument was always, well, I'm The other spouse, if we lost one, the other spouse would have everything in order to fix everything and get it in order and get the assets and insurances and the income.

, now what? So the surviving daughter was obviously in a very, very difficult situation. I couldn't help, but think, gosh, I could have done a better job of really forcing it. And not too long ago, my neighbor was actually in a long term relationship and there was no documents, no planning.

They never wanted to talk about it. And, uh, her, her partner just upped and died unexpectedly and she got left with nothing and he was supporting her a hundred percent for the last 10 years. So there was, it was a, it was really difficult. Like, you know what I find the number of people who go from having a loving relationship.

To literally cursing the name of the departed person because they left them in such a lurch because they just didn't do their basic docs. Yeah. It happens that much stress literally destroys the memory and the legacy. And , that's something we can actually avoid. We can help people avoid that. So there's a cure

[00:05:57] Derek Notman: for this,

[00:05:57] Adam Holt: right?

Yeah, you can do it. There's a cure. Gosh, it doesn't have to be like this. But yeah, for some reason, still people avoid it and so forth. So that's why we wanted to talk to Cody Barbo. So as you probably noticed in the title here, we invited Cody because Cody is the co founder of Trust in Will, probably the fastest growing estate planning tool, if not the fastest, out there where they've actually figured out how to scale solve this problem across all 50 states.

Tell me what you know about Cody.

[00:06:24] Derek Notman: Yeah. I've known Cody for man, it's gotta be four years now, give or take, , really great guy, a dad, a serial entrepreneur. , Very supportive of the entrepreneur, um, community as well, but like trust and will is, is partially a brainchild of just some issues that he went through and experienced himself, which you'll hear him talk about here in a moment.

, They're onto something. I mean, he even references that so many people in the country don't have any estate planning done at all, at least formal estate planning done. Cause remember, at least I would argue this, let's get an attorney to verify. But I think every state. Has, what are they called?

Intestate laws, where you die, you, if you die with nothing in writing, the state decides for you,

[00:07:10] Adam Holt: right? It has a default plan.

[00:07:12] Derek Notman: Exactly. It has a default plan. I would rather control that plan myself, but it's such a massive problem. And he talks about that and why they did it and all that, but just a really interesting story and their success is fantastic there on a rocket ship.

And then some for sure. That is true. That's true.

[00:07:30] Adam Holt: Awesome. Well, let's hear what he had to say. Cause I think you'll find this pretty enlightening.

[00:07:34] Derek Notman Tank: Cody. Thanks a ton for joining us today. Really appreciate it. Please tell us more about your, unique perspective on the financial advice space.

[00:07:45] Cody Barbo: Yeah, I mean, we've been in the channel for over four years now, and I think one of the biggest shifts we're seeing with advisors, I'm trying to use this term, the full stack advisor, and you're like the therapist to somebody's entire life. So your expectations to have knowledge and expertise on tax, estate planning, insurance, in addition to finances, is pretty important, and maybe just like general life advice as well.,

[00:08:07] Adam Holt Tank: I'm curious because you were obviously you, you worked on several other startups before you did trust and will. I'm curious what brought you into this space specifically?

[00:08:15] Cody Barbo: Yeah. So first startup was in the social media space at the onset of Instagram and Snapchat.

That's like a 2011 to 2013 in my chapter. And then, uh, last company was in hospital. I did work in fine dining for a big restaurant group. And we were trying to bring a next generation, kind of like a LinkedIn like platform to hospitality professionals, people make it their career. And, um, and we scaled that business.

We raised venture and, and what led to TrustML was more personal reasons. You know, like my wife and I. Now I'm married for almost seven years and we'd sat down, uh, as almost newlyweds and had never really talked about money and taxes and insurance. And, you know, when it came to estate plans, like she had lost her dad when we had started dating and he didn't have a will and the house went to probate.

The cars, the guitar collection were assets that, you know, at least amongst her, her brother and the step mom were just painful disgust. And like, I never felt like it was my place to bring anything up. So I just. Kept my mouth shut. And sometimes, you know, I wish I said something, but, you know, at least in the context of our own lives, I was like, I want to say something if we're going to spend our whole lives together.

And at the time we didn't have much, but now we've got a house, we've got kids, we've got cars, we've got a life, we've got aging loved ones, like it's a lot more full center as like a sandwich generation and put all three of us in that bucket. And no one was doing this with like a modern best in class solution.

And that's, that's really what set out Daniel and Brian, my, my two other co founders and I to want to solve for this is like, this is an everybody problem. And if nobody's doing it to our expectations, like no offense to legal zoom, like let's go try and build the best version of our,

[00:09:46] Adam Holt Tank: our, our vision for what this could be.

Got it. I mean, do you have ideas of how big these problems are in terms of how many people are. Unprotected with respect to wills and trusts.

[00:09:56] Cody Barbo: Yeah. I mean, the, the stats, this is late 2017. So there's not like a de facto source on a state planning. Like when we tried to figure out, well, who's doing this, why is there not a TurboTax like company?

That's like very prominent in the market. Nobody talks about a state planning. And that's kind of what we, we surfaced with some back of the napkin math for like, okay, there's a couple sources that say more than half of all adults don't have this. Generally, if you look at like the demographics boomers about, you know, 50, 60 percent have a Gen X there's bigger gap millennials, there's a huge gap.

And over the last five years. We're six years since we started, I put myself in the elder millennial bucket now on the back half of 30 that, you know, most of us are, are getting married, having kids built, like really building our wealth for the first time. And we figured that there would be like the same adoption we saw with Gen X and boomers with millennials over the next 20 years.

The one thing that we weren't thinking of that's very prominent today in our pitch, mostly to investors. Is the wealth transfer piece. You have boomers over the next 20 years, transitioning 70 trillion in assets, mostly to younger Gen X and millennials. And it's like the one lottery ticket you get in life is an inheritance and nobody's prepared for that.

And that's, that's really what got us excited about solving this business opportunity. Beyond just to save plenty of documents. That's what people think of us for. That's great for consumers, but to our investors and to our partners, like we're solving for wealth transfer over the next, you know,

[00:11:14] Adam Holt Tank: 10 to 20 years.

It's a great transition into the fact we know that you guys have been moving into the advisor space, uh, pretty significantly. Can't go very far without saying Andreas anywhere at a conference in FinTech these days. Um, but what, what do you think is the missing opportunity that advisors are just not addressing?

They don't have estate

[00:11:33] Cody Barbo: plans themselves. I think that's one of the, the key reasons why we got into the channel, , we've been in business for six and a half years, the first two and a half, we didn't have an advisor tool. And we'd have advisors reach out and like, you know, ask like, Hey, do you have PDFs?

Like I talked to my clients about this, you guys would be a great option in my menu. Cause every advisor should have the attorney relationships a lot don't own, or they can't get the clients to actually go meet with the attorney, let alone do the estate plan. So that was kind of our belief as we, there's only one player at the time, which I guess has been rebirthed as Encore state plan.

So I'll give him some credit, but like, there was no one in this channel building a brand and building awareness for the importance of estate planning. So our go to market was. Let's just go meet with advisors and ask them if they have an estate plan themselves. If not, then yeah, Hey, check out, trust them all and see if it's a good fit.

And if it's a good experience, like, would you feel confident recommending it to your clients? And, you know, fast forward four years later, we've got over 13, 000 advisors now that have signed up with us, large, large broker, dealers, RIAs, everyone in between. And now that the conference circuit's been in full swing back last year and a half, like we've got a team that's out there and just trying to create awareness for this.

Even with other players in the space too.

[00:12:41] Derek Notman Tank: Well, it sounds like one of the action steps is that advisors, anyone listening to this should take a look at their own estate plan. Um, and if they don't have one, maybe get one. What else, what other action steps would you ask advisors to think about when , they're working with their clients and estate planning comes up?

[00:13:00] Cody Barbo: Yeah, it's not just the clients not having an estate plan. It's when's the last time it's been updated. I, you take an average advisor and their, their book of business and client age range can be like late twenties to sixties and seventies. And you know, as much as we like to anchor in on the positive, it's like, Hey, you got married, bought your first house, had kids.

You know, advisors, I go back to that therapist angle, but like, they're typically the first to know if you are going to get divorced or if you're having a major health scare, you just lost a loved one, a parent, or even a spouse or partner. And if you're getting remarried, you have a blended family. There's dynamics that are in play that you're often the first person that's being told about this.

And you're thinking about it through the lens of their financial life and wealth journey, but you spend your whole career navigating this family and their estate. Why not protect it multi generationally? So we, we really want to encourage advisors, not just to get their clients to create the state plan, but come back and make updates.

Cause that's the thing all the time. I ask my team last at this point, cause I ask it on every call, every, every external call, especially in ask people in person, if they have an estate plan, people say, yeah. And then my follow up question is, well, when, when did you create it? When's last time you updated it?

Most often people never touch it again. It goes in the box for 30, 40 years until you expire.

[00:14:10] Adam Holt Tank: And nobody knows where it is.

[00:14:12] Cody Barbo: That was the other thing , with trust and will, like, I was prompted by my, my wife's experience, but my own parents, , like modest retirement and they'd never mentioned to my brother and I, I'm the oldest, they'd never mentioned the, the estate plan.

And I was like, Hey, like, do you have this? Mom goes into the garage, gets a box. It's in there. I'm reading through this like legal gibberish that no consumer understands. And I see my brother and his name all throughout. And I'm like, Oh shit. And then I'm seeing age provisions. So I'm like, okay, at the time when they created it, we were younger.

So there's age provisions. Now we're older. I was like. I am responsible for this and my brother and I split everything evenly. We've got a great relationship, but that was my first question back to them. I was like, who set this up? Who do I call? Like if you guys, I like what's the order of operations. I think this is, this is something nobody's prepared for in the country.

And that's where with trust ML, um, You have the ability to notify loved ones of the estate plan that it exists on TrustML, similar to how Apple has a legacy contacts feature. You can appoint a legacy contacts. I travel a lot, so every time I leave, I tell my wife or my mom, say, Hey, something happens to me, you're, you have access to the estate on TrustML.

And same with my parents, they updated as they followed us out to Texas, they updated their estate. And you can share access with the plan as well. So I have my mom's plan in my dashboard as well. So if something happened to them, I can click into it and have some next steps. So kind of, you know, create a network effect around the state plan.

That's really thoughtful.

[00:15:38] Adam Holt Tank: Is there, I'm curious, is there anything else you think needs to be heard? We're debated by the advice community.

[00:15:45] Cody Barbo: Uh, yeah. And one thing that I actually really appreciate about the advisor channel is like, so we sell trust and wills and most people know what a will is through family or pop culture.

So we do a lot of education. That's really like the biggest barrier to this is the lack of education and good old procrastination. So like, it's funny how in the advisor channel, like everybody gets hung up. Well, how do you guys compare to Walter? No, I'm like, Okay, let's, why start there? Like, let's talk about your book of business.

How many of your clients have an estate plan? Like how many of them have an estate plan? Cause if you can't get most of them to do this, like who cares? There could be 50 more companies coming into this channel, getting the client to do it as the hardest part. And that's really where we anchor back into the presentation to advisors, especially if they're looking at it through a competitive lens.

I'm like, who's going to be the best firm that gets your clients to do this. And like some firms are geared towards your high net worth and above clients. The others like trust them over more mass market. It's totally fine. You can have multiple tools that you use as long as you're getting your clients to get the estate plan done.

That's the single most important thing. So like, I'm a huge advocate for just continuing to be educated, you know, education first. And for our team with obviously Andreas and a great team on the advisor side, just be helpful and like be helpful in educating the advisor and their clients. And if we do that, we're doing our job..

[00:16:59] Adam Holt Tank: I'm curious. You want to talk at all about where you're going?

[00:17:01] Cody Barbo: I'd love to share a little bit about

the future of Trustamone.

So we're, we're six years in on our journey.

We've raised 50 million in capital. We've got a hundred people on our team. And I think people sometimes, and maybe this is, this is intentional because you have an advisor audience and network, but like people think of us in this like relationship of like wealth, vanilla, Trustamone. I'm like, that's fine.

That's great. But like, we've built a massive consumer business. that by next year, this time next year, we're targeting nine figure run rate. We're targeting trust mobile being the largest estate planning company in the United States. Like that's the business that we set out to build. And because we're solving for wealth transfer, not just paying points for advisors and the client relation to estate planning, like we're building a national brand.

So TV can TV campaigns and commercials. Yeah. Uh, you know, ambitions to do a Super Bowl spot as an example, we have a hundred institutional partners that are not broker dealers and RAs. These are some of the largest financial institutions like UBS, American Express, USAA, maybe federal. We work with large insurance companies.

We've got, um, AARP, we're the official state planning partner of AARP. Like, TrustMill wants to be everywhere and anywhere that a family is. And if we're doing our job, that's the reach that we get in helping families actually do this at the end of the day. So. We're building a ton of new product. We have some marquee partnerships, including in the advisor space that we'll be announcing later this year.

And, uh, and we're still having fun. Like I think founders, you get so stressed out and bogged down and like the day to day of the business, like we get to help families every day and we've built a great business. And that's what keeps me going, uh, all these years.

[00:18:30] Derek Notman Tank: I love that it's working really well.

It's working. That's working hard.

[00:18:34] Cody Barbo: Don't shy away from that. like the thing that people least want is like to think about their own death and mortality and it's every day we got to get just fired up and excited about it. And if we can get partners excited about it, advisors excited about it, clients will get excited about it.

And like, that's, that's what changes this actual, like trend in our culture is to be okay, talking about death and what happens to our staff and our family.

[00:18:54] Derek Notman: Ends on a pretty deep note, right? Talking about our death, but about how they get excited every day to talk about it, to help people make sure that their wishes are, are executed on. It's, it's pretty powerful.

[00:19:06] Adam Holt: Well, I don't think they're excited about death. They're excited about that. When somebody dies that people aren't actually lost also.

So, yeah. There's been a, uh, I used to joke around a lot with the trust and will guys years ago, when they first came out, I said, this is perfect because when most people are lost, they need a map and they need directions. That's what you need when you're lost. I'm like, as a map is the map and trust and will is the directions.

It's that kind of classic meet the core need. And I love what he said is that it doesn't really matter so much. If it's the best planning tool, it's the reality is people have zero, right? So they're starting from no place. Yeah. We've seen this a hundred times with our clients. Oh my gosh. So many times over the years.

[00:19:50] Derek Notman: And you know, how many times as an advisor, have you said, Hey, you know what? If do you have a will or a trust? No, we don't. Okay. Well, you really should, I'm going to introduce you to three attorneys. You make the introductions, you check in, nothing happens a year or two goes by. Yeah. Adam, I really should have done that.

Life's been busy. Do we have the same clients? I mean, that's exactly what I'm going through. Seriously, I think most advisors are going to probably chuckle because it's the same, same problem, the same clients that really just don't want to actually, you know, it's really scary. The number of financial professionals that don't have their estate plan in order is probably laughable.

You know, it's funny because I look back at my early days as an advisor and I, I did ask this question quite regularly. And try to nudge them to like, Hey, you should go talk to an attorney. And here's a couple of people I know I didn't have anything. Right. Yeah. You know, I mean, uh, yeah, I didn't have a lot going on back then, you know, married in a house, but no kids and more debt than income, stuff like that.

So I was like, whatever, but, but it's, it really is important. Uh, but the pain of doing it from going from zero, as you say, and getting it done, man, it was just. It's too much. Yeah. There's something actually that's really cathartic about actually doing your estate plan and getting it done. And that relaxation you get in your shoulders when, ah, I finally have done it.

Yeah, now I can actually say with a straight face when I'm talking to people, I'm not trying to hide it and be like, yeah, yeah, that's uh, yeah, I got my beneficiaries on my IRA. Yeah, right, right. That is not estate planning. Isn't it? I set up the person who's going to get my life insurance at work is. Yeah.

That's known. Yeah. My, my, my uncle's buddy is getting my life insurance. Oh, my estate plans done. Right. That's right. I did it. I did it. All right. Well, let's talk about it. So there was some, there were a lot of key takeaways and I know you put down a bunch of notes. So help everybody was listening to this really summarize and let's debate the tank.

Well, , let's dig in and think about what he had to say. One of his first comments that I really liked was the term full stack advisor. And he's referring to it in a technical way. What other profession does the, the professional have the capacity to talk to and advise on so many different aspects of a person's life?

I've joked about like an advisor, we know more than your attorney, priest and shrink all combined. Right. Yeah. We hear all kinds of things, but you've said that I have, but in all seriousness, We do. And that gives us an opportunity to be able to actually have a meaningful conversation about estate planning.

Doesn't mean we have to implement it. We're not attorneys. But to at least have an understanding and have that conversation to get it on the radar, super important.

[00:22:58] Adam Holt: Absolutely. You know, it's full stack is interesting term because as you and I know, full stack is a developer term, the technical engineer full stack means you understand the front end and the back end of development, the database and the user experience for that.

So that's a rare person under full stack, but full stack. For a financial advisor would imply that you are looking out for things that you don't necessarily get compensated for, that you're actually thinking about this holistic mindset that a lot of advisors have been using this best interest, holistic, comprehensive advisor.

And yet we're still seeing such a gap in the estate planning and the, and the GSD of getting it done. Right.

[00:23:38] Derek Notman: Yeah, we've touched on this before. Maybe it's an issue that the advisor doesn't get paid to do it. Hmm. I don't know. Maybe, maybe not, but like literally while we're recording this, I got an email from a client asking if I do Wills , like, so it's top of mind like, no, I've never done that, but I have a resource for you.

Yeah. And it'd be cool to give them a resource that's client directed. It's easy. It helps them get it done quickly. , I mean, it just, it makes a whole difference on the user experience.

[00:24:11] Adam Holt: Yeah, well, I think you don't want to get it

[00:24:12] Derek Notman: done.

[00:24:13] Adam Holt: No, look, there's lots of reasons why we've talked about every excuse in the book.

You can probably even think about them yourself. If you're an advisor, why your clients won't do it almost all the time. It's comes down to procrastination or intimidation, or I don't know the answer. I don't, we're going to debate and have a fight over who should be the guardian. So I don't want to start that fight today.

Let's just kick the can and let's not discuss what we want in our wills because, you know, the guardian, who's going to take care of the kids or whether I want a DNR or I don't want a DNR, uh, right. These things are going to be fights in a household. Sometimes people avoid that, or they don't want to look at the cost.

And I think what trust and will is in the hundreds of dollars to get it done. You know, we had a situation in our family where someone , was getting surgery. We got it done using trust and will literally in two hours notarized. It was amazing. Everything amazing. Seems nuts all online, no attorneys involved.

, and we got it done. I think that was more important from a just relaxing standpoint, from a Oh relief.

[00:25:09] Derek Notman: Yeah. We've got it

[00:25:10] Adam Holt: done.

[00:25:10] Derek Notman: They facilitate a great experience. Uh, my family and I, we did all of our estate planning through them. They mailed our docs to us. We had a, a notary public, a mobile one come to our house.

No, no way. And we got it done. It was just, it was a great experience. So it, they do make it a lot, a lot easier. What I like, but he also had to say is that this is an everybody problem and he and his team were trying to think like, how can we solve an everybody problem that we're experiencing ourselves?

And it's true that because not a lot of when they came out on the scene, not a lot of companies were really doing this at a mass scale. I think the 2 experiences you and I just shared , are great examples of why people would consider a service like this. Yeah. , versus over the old way of doing it.

But he did mention that for the advanced estate planning and cases, for the smaller percent of population that is super high net worth, they're probably not the best solution that it's okay to go into to an attorney and pay for those services.

But that's, you know, that's okay too. So I know it's, , it's really interesting how they've tackled this. Absolutely. Look,

[00:26:20] Adam Holt: scaling of solving a massive problem is really quite amazing. I mean, you see the kind of the social impact they're going to have, especially as employers are starting to offer this as a fringe benefit or a voluntary benefit.

I think you're going to start to see more and more people attempt to try to just get this done. There's enormous amount of slack in the system and that that creates enormous arbitrage when you think about the money management that is about to move from generation to generation. Uh, boomer and and oldest generation that's still surviving to X and millennial, we keep talking about this major transfer.

But the reality is, is that I think a lot of our individual younger clients that may be inclined to get this done. Their parents haven't actually done the planning. So there could be an opportunity actually to embed oneself in a family. By helping a younger family, we'll call it X millennial by solving this problem for them and then actually referring it up to their parents.

So, cause they know they're going to wind up becoming the surprise executor and there's no documents. There's no organization. There's no map and directions, if you will. And so there's going to be a great incentive to make sure that the generation that's, that's alive right now has

[00:27:27] Derek Notman: their stuff in order.

A hundred percent. Great opportunity, uh, to even broach the conversation. Sometimes that's a little bit awkward, but this is a great way to get in there. It's interesting. You, you have a note here about advisors, expanding services. And we talked about what this Jamie Hopkins in our last episode about what's your differentiator.

And you don't have to do it all in house or build it yourself. And so maybe your estate planning service that your firm offers is simply outsourcing to a solution like Trust and Will. It's a great way to outsource , but still have that value add there. Like, Hey, by the way, like we don't do this in house, but here's a great thing that we know you could try looking at.

[00:28:06] Adam Holt: No, it's very true. It's very true. You know, I wrote this note down. You could probably see it. But effectively, I said that we do find a lot of times that our clients are saying, well, is this the best or do I need to interview five different attorneys? And guess what happens? They don't get it done. But somebody said to me a long time ago, they said, what's the best life insurance when you die?

That's the one that's enforced the one you bought. That's right. The one that's actually going to pay a claim. Yeah. And it turns out that whether you bought term or perm or real or whatever, it actually, at the time of claim, it's usually a lot more than the premium you've paid, but if you don't do anything.

Then then does it really matter? So we sometimes, I think, debate the wrong thing. And, and this is such a convenient, as Jamie Hopkins also talked about convenience economy, this is such a convenient solution. You can literally just use this as a bridge, get it done until you have it renewed again. And I think that's the big question that we should really be asking all of our clients and all of our other fellow advisors is, is when's the last time you've really reviewed this and what are you going to do about it?

Okay. Can't you just get this done this weekend and, Just move on. And then at least by yourself, a little bit of, of, of space.

[00:29:15] Derek Notman: 100%. And if you go through it as an advisor, yeah, you're taking care of yourself and your family, but now you can speak to the experience. With conviction. If you are actually going to end up referring it and it's not just, it's not just like what I used to do, like, Hey, you should get a will.

And no, I don't have one. No, that's right.

[00:29:31] Adam Holt: You should all over them. I should all over you. You should do this. You shouldn't

[00:29:37] Derek Notman: do this. I haven't done it, but don't worry about me. This isn't right.

[00:29:41] Adam Holt: Right. Investments. No, I don't have investments. Insurance. What's that? I don't have to do. I'm just insane. You should buy it.

I tell you what, it's really funny. My, I know that my business had some real moments that it exploded when I started doing what I was telling my clients. It changed from like a conviction. I. Do this myself, let me show you mine. And they're like, Oh, you do it. I'll do whatever you do. Right. Cause they figure you're going to do what's best for yourself, but we see the shoe cobbler situation and advisors haven't done half this stuff, let alone set up the trusts and put all this stuff off, off your balance sheet.

I mean, there's lots of stuff that we know how to do, but don't do what we know.

[00:30:20] Derek Notman: You know, it's almost a risk as an advisor. Think about you are one question away from appearing to be almost, I don't know if this is the right word, but I'm going to say it anyways, to be a fraud. Oh, and maybe that's not the best word, but I think, but let me explain is that what if a client asks, Hey, what do you own whole life?

Do you own term? Do you invest your money in this with this wealth manager? And if your answer is no, then that's a major red flag to the client. And I don't know how many clients are going to ask that, but some will. And I would say probably more now into the future than not, just because we are all about information.

So how are you going to be able to answer that

[00:31:01] Adam Holt: question? Yeah, but the funny thing is I think about it from the alternative side, which is instead of them asking, why don't we just volunteer that information? Because we have already done. That's why I'm saying my business changed when instead of the clients didn't have to ask, I just say, let me show you my asset map and let me show you how the complexity that I'm dealing with.

I had to do this and this, this to work around it, but I'm recommending you do this, but you don't need to do this yet. You're not ready for that. Right. So I have bought all this insurance, but I put it all in trust at the inception because I know what's happening to my net worth. And I'm planning for that inevitability.

Oh, Adam, why are you doing it that way? We want to do it that way too. I'm like, okay, fine. Well, we could do that, but we don't have to. So , there's a way when you've walked to the path to say, Hey, walk this path with me. The estate plan is no different. I, when I did, I did a full estate plan. I went crazy and I followed one of my wealthiest clients.

And so I'm like, I'm going to do what they did because they know what they're doing. And I literally structured everything took months with a, with a really top end attorney, , which was, a lot of money as well. Right. But once I had done that and I shared that with people, it gave me a much different credibility all day.

I wasn't asking them to basically go jump off the cliff. I had already done that and I knew how to land. And , that's an important aspect, I think for this.

[00:32:12] Derek Notman: What a great way. And we're, we've been talking about what's your value adding or differentiator offering the service, but also being a consumer of that service.

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. That's great.

[00:32:23] Adam Holt: Can I do an experiment here? Oh, sure. Don't worry. It's not going to cost anything. So here's if you're listening to this right now, I want you to pay attention to the following questions because we're going to ask you these questions. All right. So, you know, the answer, cause we can't hear you.

All right. So I want to ask you a question. You're going to answer inside your own head because hopefully you're not going to lie to yourself. Are you ready? Are you asking me to? Well, you sure you can answer these in your own head. Okay. All right. So I won't

[00:32:51] Derek Notman: talk. All right. Okay. Ready?

[00:32:52] Adam Holt: Here's the question.

And I'd like you to practice this because you're going to ask your client something. When was the last time your will was reviewed? Okay. That's question number one. Number two, do you know who the guardians of your dependent children are?

Do you and your partner, if you have one agree? That's

[00:33:16] Derek Notman: a big one.

[00:33:18] Adam Holt: And is it in writing? Oh yeah. Do you have a power of attorney that is durable, which means that if you're incapacitated, it still holds and people can still make financial decisions for you. Do your documents include a HIPAA authorization, a more modern concept where family members would need to get medical information from you in order to make decisions, They don't have HIPAA authorization in your documents.

They ain't getting it. Do you have a living will that says what your plans are for medical decisions to be made and who is making that decision? Who is making that decision? Does it matter? Or can anybody make it? Do you have a do not resuscitate order in there? Or are your family members going to be taking care of your vegetable body for the next 20 years and paying the rest of your money for it?

And that's okay. But is that intentional and do you have special needs dependents, people that require additional thoughtfulness in terms of what they're eligible to get for public benefits, as well as private benefits. And is your current planning aligned with it? And the last one was mentioned just, yeah, just in last episode.

What is the plan with your digital assets? Is there a clear documentation of the digital assets and how to access it and who can access it? There's a lot of new legislation that's changed in the last 10 years there at the state level and at the national level. Cause some of these things didn't even exist.

The cryptocurrencies really exist. NFTs, your login to your Facebook account with a multi factor. Is anybody getting into that thing? All new. Yeah. So my thought, look, if you're listening and you actually answered, I don't know to any of those questions. This is the moment that you've been waiting for, for someone to tell you to go do this or do something like it.

[00:35:18] Derek Notman: That's so powerful, Adam. I'm glad you mentioned all that. So if you're listening, go stop what you're doing after this episode's over and go, go. Figure the, the answer is to put us on pause, right? They can put us on pause, but yeah, they got to finish the episode still. They got to finish. What could be coming?

That's awesome. No, I don't even know really what to follow that up with. Honestly. I think that is a really, those are solid specific takeaways. And it helped yourself help your clients. I mean, it's huge.

[00:35:51] Adam Holt: You look at it's as easy as we just did that, right? I mean, that wasn't scripted in any forum. That's a list.

You guys know this in your head. If you've been in the space for any, any length of time, these are just smart things to get done. The challenge is nobody's asking these questions to the rigor that I think we all are, should be, and I think are expected to as their financial advocate. And I think that's important, not just for the clients that you're dealing with, but also for their parents, your client's parents, if they're still alive, may very well be.

Unknowing executors or executrixes. Trustees are guardians and they don't even know it. It

[00:36:23] Derek Notman: could

[00:36:23] Adam Holt: change your life to find out all of a sudden your brother's kids are now yours.

[00:36:28] Derek Notman: Yeah. And they're in a different state.

[00:36:30] Adam Holt: Oh, and nobody thought about the finances and your brother didn't have any insurance or any trust planning.

And now all the assets are going to his second wife and you got the kids. Does that change your plans? It might, especially if they're underage children. Right? So think about that. Like, just this little, little thing, you could get some stuff done and you'd have some ammunition to deal with these challenges.

And I think we just, we tend to turn a blind eye because we don't want to talk about it, but it's really dumb. It's like dumb already.

[00:36:59] Derek Notman: Well, yeah. Right. And last time I checked every single one of us has an expiration date. We don't know when it is, but it's going to happen. So wouldn't it feel better just to get this stuff done, have the peace of mind and then go do the things you really want to do

[00:37:14] Adam Holt: just so you know, none of us, we're not compensated by trustable at all, but then use them or use anyone else.

The real key here was to bring up the topic and hopefully get us thinking about it because this is rethinking financial advice, Derek, and that's what we're asking everybody to do. 100 percent man. I love it. All right. Well, with that, we're going to wrap this up and give you time back to go get some of this stuff done.

And of course, check and see if your documents are in order or ask the people who would know in your family and make sure that there's a path to get something done. I really challenge you to try to talk to this person. Three to five people this week, right? Ask these questions, get more comfortable talking about it.

And if you have a resource like trust and will, that's fantastic. Or if you have a relationship, go use it, but just please put it to work and make sure you take care of several families. This week alone, they will appreciate it. And I'm guaranteeing it's going to come back to you in many ways, uh, forward.

And that's just a, that's just an experience we've both had in doing this personally.

[00:38:11] Derek Notman: Well, thank you, Adam. I, and Cody, thank you for joining us. Love what you and the team were doing over at trust.

And we'll really appreciate you sharing more about your journey and what you guys are doing to help help people at large or being across the country at this point. , SO all of our listeners, thanks for joining us again. As always, we know you're giving us lots of five star reviews because those are the only ones we allow.

Um, make sure you follow us on LinkedIn, subscribe to the podcast, , please share it. There's so many advisors out there that can benefit from the stuff in this podcast. So please share it and get the message out there. And if you've got something you want us to talk about, send us a note.

[00:38:50] Adam Holt: And you could watch this on YouTube if you're not watching. Oh yeah. We're starting to do video now too.

[00:38:53] Derek Notman: That's

[00:38:54] Adam Holt: right. So you can see how silly we look all the time. That's it. Yeah. All right. That's good. Awesome, my friend. Well, great to see you, and I look forward to our next opportunity to rethink financial advice.

[00:39:03] Derek Notman: Sounds good, buddy Chat. Cheers to you. Later. Cheer.

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