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237: The Politics of Estate Planning - Bob Clements
96 Plays3 months ago
Estate planning is at times a vexing issue – it seems like plenty of films and TV shows have shown the heated family dynamics of legacy and also money is often not exactly fun to navigate! Does it need to be done differently to become less of a taboo topic or can we even accept that inheritance is a gift, not a birthright? I do wonder. My guest has two decades of experience in the financial services industry and knows the world of estate planning well. Bob Clements’ focus lies in delivering sophisticated wealth management solutions, along with tailored financial, business succession, and trust and estate planning services.
Working seamlessly with families, individuals, and businesses, Bob collaborates with existing trusted advisors and family members. This collaborative effort seeks to comprehend clients' current financial plans, providing guidance intended to sustain and maximize long-term wealth. Bob's journey began as an options trader on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange before venturing into various distinguished firms within the Philadelphia area's financial services industry. He earned his Chartered Financial Consultant® (ChFC®) designation in 2011 and his Accredited Investment Fiduciary® (AIF®) Designation in 2015. Graduating from LaSalle College High School in 1994, Bob furthered his education, obtaining a degree in Economics and Business Administration from Ursinus College in 1998.
Hear from Bob on:
1. When in life does your estate planning need to happen?
2. How often do estates get challenged in court and is that usually successful or worth it financially?
3. How can estate planning be done with intention rather than family expectation in your financial planning?
4. Do estate plans need regular updates and if so, when?
5. Why do estate plans go wrong? Examples of this in action, please.
6. Your #1 business tool or hack (not a smartphone) and what can it do for you that helps?
7. Your biggest life lesson to date and why?
8. How do you define your version of success?
9. Takeaway: What is your final message on The Politics of Estate Planning?
Connect further:
Website: https://frsadvisors.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/frs-advisors-private-wealth-department/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FRSAdvisors
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Transcript
Introduction to The Politics of Everything
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the politics of everything. I'm Amber Danes, your host and podcast producer. This is a half hour of power podcast dropping every week where I unpack the politics of everything from money to motherhood, nutrition to narcissism, startups to secularism, the environment, quality and much, much more.
00:00:22
Speaker
Our guests are seasoned in the field of topic of their choice, even if you've not heard of them yet. This is a nonpartisan show. So while I love exploring varied views and get a buzz from a healthy debate of ideas, this is not a purely blue, white, green program. Please subscribe, tune in and enjoy the politics of everything.
Estate Planning Complexities
00:00:46
Speaker
Estate planning is at times a vexing issue. It seems like plenty of films and TV shows have shown the heated family dynamics of legacy and also money is often not exactly easy or fun to navigate. Does it need to be done differently or become less of a taboo topic? Or can we even accept that inheritance might be a gift and not a birthright? I often wonder these things and my guest today has two decades of experience in the financial services industry and knows the world of estate planning very well.
00:01:14
Speaker
Bob Clements' focus lies in delivering sophisticated wealth management solutions along with tailored financial business succession and trust and estate planning services. He works seamlessly with families, individuals and businesses and Bob collaborates with existing trusted advisors and family members.
00:01:30
Speaker
This collaborative effect seeks to comprehend clients' financial plans, provide them guidance and obviously how they want to maintain and sustain their long-term wealth. Bob's own journey began as an options trader on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange before venturing into various distinguished firms within the Philadelphia area's financial services industry.
Meet Bob Clements
00:01:49
Speaker
He has earned a number of accolades including being a chartered financial account consultant designation in 2011 and eleven and andnie he's accredited investment fiduciary designation in 2015. He graduated from high school in 1994 and furthered his education obtaining a degree in economics and business administration from Regency's College in 1998. I warmly welcome Bob to the politics of everything to get stuck into our topic today, which is the politics of estate planning. Welcome, Bob. Thank you very much for having me.
00:02:20
Speaker
Podcasting remotely can be challenging, but it doesn't have to be. Since day one of the politics of everything, I have relied on Zencasters all in one solution to make the process quick and painless, the way it should be for those of us who just love great content and want to get our ideas out into the world. If you know me, I'm obsessed with quality in terms of my guests, my sound, and everything about my show has to be great the first time. I'm Time Paul.
00:02:46
Speaker
It's so easy to use Zencastr. I'm not tech savvy and you don't need to be either. There's nothing to download. Just click on the link and off we go. Zencastr is all about making your podcasting experience easy and with everything from local recording to automatic post productions now in their toolkit, you don't have to leave your browser to get that episode done and done fast. I have a special offer for you and I hopefully you can experience what I have with Zencastr. Go to zencaster dot.com forward slash pricing and use my VIP code, the politics of everything, all lowercase in one word, to get 30% off your first three months of ZNCaster Professional. How good is that? I want you to have the same easy experiences I do for all my podcasting and content needs. It's time to share your story.
Bob's Career Evolution
00:03:33
Speaker
Young Bob, did you think you'd work in finance when you were a young kid or did you have different dreams and hopes? Can you join your career story together for us from, I guess, when you were really young to kind of where you are now? Well, when I was very young, I think, like most kids that ah that I grew up with, we all thought we were going to be professional baseball players. But, you know, quickly realized that that wasn't a reality in a situation. And as I got older in the high school, I started to like taking interest in politics and history.
00:04:02
Speaker
So I started considering that maybe a law career would be the way it goes for me. Everybody had always said that I'm a talker and I like to argue. Oh, there you go. You watched probably enough TV shows to know that that's kind of that's part of the deal, but not all the deal. Exactly. Then when I got to college, I just wasn't feeling that as ah as a direction I wanted to go.
00:04:23
Speaker
I considered it for a little bit, but then I decided to go into economics, finance, a little bit of accounting. And coming out of college, I had a friend of the family who was an options trader in Philadelphia, and he was he was doing really well. and So he started talking to me and I'm looking to go in that direction after college. So I took a job just for a couple months when I graduated you in ah in a large financial company, just doing basic administrative work, just out of some money while I continue to try to get my foot in the door of the exchange in Philly. So I started cold calling companies down there mailing resumes.
00:05:02
Speaker
And eventually he got me a couple interviews and he got me an interview with somebody and I went down and met with him. He presented me the deal and I was excited about it. There was no money in it for the first couple of months, but thankfully I was still young enough I'm living at home and I could get away with that.
00:05:18
Speaker
So I worked there, did a training program for a handful of months, and then started trading options. And I did that from 98 to 2003. And it was a great run. It was a lot of fun, on unlike anything I ever thought I'd be doing, um and certainly unlike anything I've seen since. But I saw the writing on the wall towards the end that ah the industry was changing dramatically and doing what I did wasn't really sustainable. And I was, I think, 27 at the time. And I just wanted to try to build something for myself in the long term. My best friend was a financial planner. I was actually his client at that time, so he'd done some things for me. So I started to talk to him about going into that field and what he thought about it. So he got me an interview with his firm. I went through you know a series of interviews, got my licensing, and then went through their training program.
Starting a Business During a Pandemic
00:06:12
Speaker
and work there for about 10 years and that's where they were more of a insurance based company and it was great for a little bit. The the training program was excellent. ah The exposure I got to the insurance, the estate planning and some investment planning was ah was incredible. um But I wanted to build something a little differently on the investment side of things and doing more of full service financial plans for clients.
00:06:37
Speaker
So in 2013, a colleague of mine, we we left that firm, joined another one, and became more of independent financial planners focusing on wealth management, with the insurance being more of a financial tool than the lead of what we were offering. We were there for a while, and then we spun off and started our own company with a couple other individuals in 2019. Some really good momentum started in December 2019, and then March 2020 COVID hit. Oh, that little thing.
00:07:05
Speaker
yeah Yeah, exactly. and Great time to start a business. Great time to start a business. It sent us to a grinding halt. I had a couple little kids at home at the time. and My wife was working. She was a chief people officer for a pretty decent-sized consulting company. so She was swamped. and I had a lot of clients calling because the markets were dropping. Nobody knew what was going to happen.
00:07:28
Speaker
So we navigated that, came back stronger than ever and it continued to build and grow. And, you know, we have a pretty nice offering with a handful of partners and associates that we work with. And you know I love the direction that we're headed in and it's something I'm very passionate about. I value my clients deeply and I look forward to to helping people, whether it's their investment planning, state planning, education planning for their children, ah insurance. you know we We really cover it all and work with a nice stable of ah of other advisors outside of our company, whether it's accountants or attorneys.
00:08:01
Speaker
that we'll partner with to help bring some of their expertise to the table for our clients and work hand in hand with our clients' advisors as well. We're not looking to replace ah longstanding relationships. so's Yeah, that collaborative approach, I think, is what I took away from, I guess, ah that introduction as well.
Phases of Estate Planning
00:08:16
Speaker
And I guess my next question is, when in life does your estate planning need to happen? I feel like a lot of people leave it till they're getting older. They have a health issue. They might be going through a major life change like a divorce.
00:08:28
Speaker
They might inherit money from um parents, and so then they think about it. But is it is there a point when it's too early? How often do we need to worry about these sorts of things in life? That's a great question. And I think there's two different ways I would look at estate planning. you know for For certain people while they're accumulating their their wealth and building their their net worth, a estate planning can be as simple as you just need to get a will in place. you know you mean if you have If you're about to have babies or you get married,
00:08:57
Speaker
um You really just need to have a will in place that would control the how your assets would transition if something were to happen to you, potentially protecting from taxes or or the probate process depending where you live.
00:09:10
Speaker
and and And just making sure that your family is going to be taken care of if something happens to you and or your spouse. So you know if if you're still in college or just getting out of college and starting your your career, you know you probably it's not critical to have it. It can't hurt. But you know once you get married or start to build some some wealth, then you definitely want to have an estate plan. That's kind of the first phase of estate planning and the basics of it. But as your estate really grows, and hopefully it does,
00:09:40
Speaker
You, that's when you want to start to look at phase two of your estate planning. Is it, you know, having trusts in place for, for taxation protection or controlling your assets from the grave, protecting your children. If assets transition to them, you know, protecting them from themselves, bad decisions, bad marriages. It's, it's a critical piece. And then also, if you have minor children, who do you want to have take care of your children if you're gone?
00:10:05
Speaker
Everybody always assumes it's going to be like an aunt or a grandparent or. But also they're really old, right? Like that's the reality we face. So I had kids a bit later, my husband and I have to have that. We've actually done our estate planning a few times every five years. We tend to review it for various reasons. And I think that's the one thing it's like, but there was logistics and then the kids are like in school here where we moved, where they have to move states. And you know, there's this kind of like, I guess, emotional pull to the, then there's a reality in it. So I think,
00:10:34
Speaker
That's an interesting part of what you do. Sure. and I mean, I look at my own situation, you know, the the natural guardian for my children would be my sister-in-law, but she lives in Charlotte. We live in Philadelphia. So the thought of them having to relocate there or her having to come up here, her kids are, you know, out of the house now. But but that's That's a burden on a lot of different parties. So it's something you really have to think about. And and even if it's someone's local and you have three kids and you want to appoint your guardian and maybe it's your sister or brother, but they have four or five kids of their own, you know, are they equipped to take in three more? And have you done the right planning financially? Do you have enough insurance or other assets to provide for your children so that that doesn't become an enormous financial burden to them and and compromise their financial plan?
00:11:22
Speaker
So yeah, I think that's you know that's a critical piece for basics of estate planning.
Business and Family Dynamics in Estate Planning
00:11:27
Speaker
And then as you grow or start a business, have family owned businesses, then it starts to get really complicated where you have different piles of assets, whether it's real estate business, invested assets, you may have children that are active in a business that you own, some children that aren't active in the business. What happens in that scenario? If the children active in the business inherit a $10 million dollars business to take it over,
00:11:50
Speaker
Do you feel you need to equalize the estate for the children that aren't involved in the business? And do you have the assets to do that? And then also, what's are you setting your family up for success long run? you know I know as well as I do. if i if If I passed away without my estate plan and my wife and I passed away without estate plan,
00:12:09
Speaker
and I have $4 million dollars of life insurance. When my kids turn 18, that's divided three ways between them, um along with every other asset. you know i I like to think I was extremely mature, but if you would have handed me that kind of money when I was 18 years old, it would have been ah bad news. So you really need to protect them from themselves, as I said earlier.
00:12:31
Speaker
and and and create some kind of a plan where, sure, they have access to there their their money for you know basic health, maintenance, education support, but be above and beyond that, it's protected in trust and governed by a trustee, someone that you have confidence in and makes would make similar decisions on their behalf as you and your spouse would. So it really starts to get complicated. and then you know ah in in In America, the state tax law changes quite regularly. Yeah, there's that too, right? Because you're set and forget, but it's not really like that, I guess. It's not. and I mean, and it's it's a weird topic. the estate plan The estate tax is something that I think you know the topic of this being the politics and everything. It's something that I believe gets politicized and talked about more regarding politics than it actually comes into play because the majority of people
00:13:24
Speaker
in America aren't subject to the federal estate tax because the exemption is so high. um so if so I think it gets talked about a lot because people try to carry favor when it comes to their tax planning when they're running for office.
00:13:39
Speaker
But that said, there are quite a few people who who are over that number and there was a time while I was in this business where that number was, you know, probably 20% of what it is now significantly lower. So who knows what could happen in 2026 with the estate tax law. So it is a fluid situation, something you do want to review pretty regularly.
00:14:02
Speaker
It doesn't mean you have to overhaul your estate plan, you know, every year, every two years, but you should pull it out every year or two and just look at it. Have my fiduciaries changed? Have I fallen out of favor with the people I've designated as guardians or trustees or executives? Have they?
00:14:17
Speaker
maybe made some compromising life decisions that I don't agree with anymore and wouldn't want them being in charge of my my my children's money. So it's it's important to go through that process and 90% if not more of the of the public is never going to do that without some kind of professional guidance. People don't like to think about their demise. They don't worry about what's going to happen to them if they're gone until, as you said earlier,
00:14:41
Speaker
Maybe there's a life event, um you know, an illness or someone else in the family passes away and they get a little bit of a kick in the butt. But, you know, it's important to be proactive with any type of planning and estate planning included.
Contesting Estates: Rare but Impactful
00:14:56
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So how often do you find in your experience and maybe with your colleagues and peers you might chat about these two estates get challenged and is it worth it? I think obviously different jurisdictions are different. I know in Australia it's quite difficult to contest a will or a state if you like. um It's quite expensive and you have to make sure that it's worth your while, not just emotionally but financially as well. I mean how How often do you see that in your practice or does that is that something we just reserve for the movies?
00:15:28
Speaker
I think it's probably more for the movies because I've never really seen it. i mean I'll hear about it every now and then with you know some of the celebrities who have larger estates and maybe multiple marriages or children from you know outside of the marriage. but you know By and large, most of the people that I deal with, ah you don't really see any kind of contestant of the estate of the estate um because it's it's more than likely all all it's going to do is delay the process the probate the settlement of the estate process and you're gonna walk away with nothing other than maybe your own set of legal bills unless you have a legitimate case i would have a hard time seeing what that is but you know if there's a pending lawsuit out there um you know there's things like that that could come into play but i think it's more rare than than um
00:16:12
Speaker
They could probably portray it. Yeah, absolutely.
Aligning Estate Plans with Personal Intentions
00:16:16
Speaker
How can estate planning be done with the intentions you have rather than family expectation in financial planning? like I think people just a lot of people just assume, oh, my kids will like what you've mentioned, like get equal share, or you know I might choose a charity and and the people are very surprised I'm leaving my a charity when they feel like they should be getting it all. and you know One thing is,
00:16:36
Speaker
but I always say is it it's my estate and you know inheritance to me in some ways is not necessarily a birthright. It's not money my children have earned. Yes, I'll leave the money. But you know for us and our family, we've had discussions about philanthropy and why that's important. And it's not about being super rich to do that. It's just the fact that's that's a values match for me. i I don't want to leave everything to my kids to you know do what they want with. I want to make sure there's other thought that's put into what my legacy might look like. Is that something that you See quite often or do people just generally do something quite vanilla? No, it's's everybody has a different thought on that and I think a lot of times it comes from how you were raised. I have some clients who are doing everything they can right now to make sure they have a huge estate to pass on to their family and and one of my best clients and close friend, he's he's a large client, has a nice estate with a business attached to it, some family in the business, family out of the business and you know he's he's
00:17:33
Speaker
Done a great job providing for his family educated them, you know, make sure they went to the schools They wanted to go to they're great kids But his main objective is not to make sure that when he's gone that they're set for life He considers it a burden more than than help and he thinks he's setting them up for failure in their life If he hands them a lot of money, I tend to agree with that, you know, I believe more in the Warren Buffett philosophy and of how you would leave money.
Balancing Inheritance and Self-Sufficiency
00:18:00
Speaker
yeah It's not going to be your legacy. It isn't going to be, I made a bunch of people, a bunch of my kids rich so that they didn't have to work past 30 years old. And to be honest, most of the wealthier families that I know, I have a PR agency and the clients I have and so forth, they will often have candid discussions and they will literally say to me, I think my kids will probably just squander it. It's not going to necessarily do them any favors to say, here, I bought you a house or here I gave you everything. They need to also find their own way in life, you know, sometimes. yeah that doesn't work. Yeah, and um and we're we're doing a lot of work with clients. And when once their kids are, you know, north of 20, maybe 25, I'm trying to get my clients to schedule a family meeting that I would help facilitate, meet with the two spouses beforehand and just say, let's let's put an outline in place of what do you ultimately want to have happen with your money?
00:18:53
Speaker
while you're living and and after you're gone. and it's you know in In that scenario I mentioned before, it's you know once it's set up a family foundation and the kids will be part of that, the work and the foundation. you know Perhaps they can draw an income off of it for their work and their time, and but he wants them to see the importance of trying to make the world a better place.
00:19:13
Speaker
and so i think that it's critical to to get them in the room. It's a lot easier to explain it to them now than to have them try to figure it out after you're gone. I feel like it helps for people to hear it from your mouth versus... Yeah, isn't that interesting? I mean, I guess when we were doing our estate planning a few years ago, my kids are younger, of course, but I remember having that moment. Like, do i do we share a copy of our will? and They're like, no, no, no. Just let them know that, you know, they live with us and, you know, if anything happens to you or when it something does happen to you,
00:19:44
Speaker
theyd contact their office like they weren't a fan of having that discussion. No, I get it. and they're They're young. yeah But I think in the mid 20s, it's critical to have that conversation versus that hearing from a lawyer reading out the will. Yeah. um So, you know, we're happy we're working a lot of facilitating this type of meetings now and getting everybody in the same room.
Communicating Estate Plans
00:20:02
Speaker
And, you know, playing bad cop if we have to, but you know a lot of things will start to complicate that down the road when you have a spouse you know when those kids get married and have a spouse you know who knows what they're hearing and and more important than anything families if you passed away and you know okay I had all this money and I left to buy him for my kids and I'm so happy I did that but you saw from the grave that these kids were now fighting over that money and not talking to each other anymore to destroy your children's relationships with each other
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, you think a bit differently, wouldn't you? You absolutely would. And so I think it's important ah to to have that discussion ahead of time. And you know it's funny, I saw a clip of, because it was Jerry Seinfeld driving in a car, dropping these kids off in one of his million dollar cars and The kid basically saying like, hey dad, are we rich? And he's like, I'm rich, you're not. Yeah, I love that. And that's 100% true. It's like, yeah, I recently watched a documentary of um pop star robb Robbie Williams and he was talking about the fact that he and his wife fly first class and the kids are in coach and he's like, it's my money. They're they're eight years old. Like, what why do they need to have this? It's, um you know, it'd be some backlash, but I totally get it.
00:21:11
Speaker
But you also have to manage their their expectations in life, too. You start applying first class when you're eight years old, where do you go from there? you know Yeah, where's the motivation? to If every vacation is at the nicest resort or private island, you know where do you go from there? And I feel bad for the person you married if they can't you know live up to those standards for you.
00:21:30
Speaker
So yeah, I think that you you have to be proactive with all this and get out in front of it and have that conversation and nobody likes to have the conversation. No, it's one of those things I reckon you'd put off as long as possible, but it does make sense so that in hindsight, it's all done and dusted.
Regular Updates: Why They Matter
00:21:44
Speaker
How often do you advise clients to sort of, you know, review and regulate, you know, regularly update their wills or their estate plans and things like that? I mean, obviously, the Age of Life events, we talked about that, but you know, is there a kind of,
00:21:56
Speaker
every five years, every one year, like how how do you kind of navigate that? Well, we'll bring it up yearly with our clients. Depending on our clients, we typically meet with them twice a year, some of the more complex clients, maybe four times a year. Usually we'll try to have a different agenda for each meeting where we focus on one meeting might be investment in retirement planning, some might be insurance planning, education, but we'll at least talk about estate planning once a year. Hey, is anything, here's, we'll have a one page summary of their will.
00:22:25
Speaker
pull it out and just say, look, just look this over real quick. Are all these people still the same? Are these ages you want to transition their assets to the kids? Is it still consistent with your goals? Has anything changed? And yeah again, it doesn't have to be a whole revision of a will.
00:22:41
Speaker
But I think yearly, at the minimum, every two years, you should at least have that conversation to make sure that it still checks all the boxes of of what what you're looking for. Because you know as well as I do, if you go back in time one year, two years versus where you are now, I'm sure there's been significant change in your life.
00:22:59
Speaker
Just if you have a business, I'm thinking, and there's economic downturn, or you want to exit the business, and you always thought you'd pass it on to your kids, or you know you might be working in farming and livestock, and you find out the kids and you say, look, i hey, Dad, I never want to be on this farm. I want out. So you know there's lots of things that happen within a year. You're right. And um it's easy to think that not a lot does change. But I think if you remind people that you know you need to have these conversations, it's probably better than just hoping for the best.
00:23:27
Speaker
Yeah, hoping for the best and avoiding it is is typically the the worst plan that you can have. um and I don't care if it's estate planning or you know retirement planning, just hoping that things will work themselves out. Yeah, like it will come in. Absolutely. So what are some of the most common things that you see when estate plans go wrong? you know There's some sort of you know things which come to mind. It might be a really big example. It might be just a common thing which you see time and again.
00:23:54
Speaker
um I think the most common is we what we just spoke about is really failing to even have a plan, but you know not having your plan in place or not revealing it. A lot of people I'll meet with and say, can I get a copy of your will? I left in about 10, 15, 20 years to even find it. so That's a big one. and then Also, you know you feel a little bit like a doomsday. a advisor when you're talking to people about their state planning, because all you're talking about is worst case scenarios. What do you want to have happen if this happens? What do you want to have happen if this happens? What happens if one of your children develop a substance abuse issue? How do you want to protect their assets from them? Or if they get in a bad marriage, how do you want to make sure your assets stay inside your lineage?
00:24:34
Speaker
So you're constantly bringing up all these worst case scenarios but the reason you bring them up is because as remote of a possibility as it might be, it is still a possibility and I have seen things happen where you know people didn't address it appropriately and ah you know their wishes may not have been met. and you and And a lot of times if you see people in second marriages,
00:24:56
Speaker
A lot of times they don't make the appropriate changes to some of their financial vehicles, changing the beneficiaries on IRAs or life insurance. It's ah it's it's a big pitfall. and Then you're fighting for that money. it's it's just real you know they're They're the things you want to try to avoid, just being proactive, working with a professional. you know There's an expense to having an estate plan drafted. Obviously, the the larger and more complicated the estate, the the greater the price tag.
00:25:23
Speaker
But there's just some things that you want to pay for. And the me the reason you're paying for it is accountability and forcing you to get it done versus I'll just go online and try to create a will on my own. that's Rarely are you going to get to that because life's just going to get in the way. I have to make a checklist or notes for every single thing I need to do from scheduling an oil change for my car to ordering groceries. So, you know, it's easy for something as long-term as estate planning to slip through the cracks.
00:25:51
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. It's one of those things that you just got to keep keep
Innovations in Estate Planning Tools
00:25:55
Speaker
on it. Otherwise, it's just never going to happen. I think changing tack a little bit. What is your favorite business tool hack at the moment? How is it helping you? Well, that's a great question. I don't have a ton of business tool hacks, but the new thing. So we're constantly investing in technology and recently because it kind of goes hand in hand with with a state and business succession planning is we've hired and partnered with a business valuation software company that has a really nice offering for our clients. It's it's a free service to them, but it basically all they have to do is upload some basic documents to a website and within a minute they'll have a value spit out on their business.
00:26:36
Speaker
So for me, a lot of my clients find that extremely attractive because nobody really knows what their business is worth. but A lot of people right now are being approached by, excuse me, private equity, you know, and looking to buy their business. And nobody really understands what they think they should get for their business. So a lot of them are really interested in this, in this valuation company that we're working with. And then also at home, that's for estate planning. You know, you if you have a business and you think it's worth $5 million dollars and we get a value that's worth $20 million. dollars That probably changes the level of estate planning we need to do and also changes the the type of succession planning we're going to do. How are we going to transition that to your family or key employees? It's a lot different for a $5 million you know at a $50 million dollars company. That's been a great a great piece of technology. and
00:27:23
Speaker
you know that's Some of the technology in the AI in this world scares me a little bit. Yeah, some of it's not there yet and too much, and I just want to keep control of something, particularly with what I do with writing and PR and information. I have a lot of confidential information which could move markets and change stock prices, and I just don't love plugging that into AI so much. I hear you on that. I agree.
00:27:46
Speaker
it's It has its place, but it's not you know not the be-all end-all. We don't really do a lot in that space, but from a technology standpoint, we're always looking for any technology that can benefit our clients, whether it's you know an Apple website, an investment tracking portal, electronic vaults, whatever it may be. But that one right now, and we've signed on with that a couple months ago, and we're having great traction with it. It's a really cool tool.
00:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, cool. And your biggest life lesson to date and what has it taught you Bob?
Taking Risks and Support Systems
00:28:17
Speaker
My biggest life lesson, I believe, I was very fortunate in life to always have a great support system. you know I had a family that built me up to conquer the world, you know that that I could do anything I wanted to do. And it it gave me the confidence to to go for it. And whether it was starting my own business or leaving a steady job and going to work at the exchange for four or five months and not earning an income with no guarantee on the end of that, I was even gonna have a job.
00:28:46
Speaker
And then when I was at the exchange, I was making really good money. And I decided to leave that and go work for ah you know about 10% of what I was making because I wanted to try to build something long term. And then I redid that again in 2013. So I just think you have to take that risk. If you truly want to be entrepreneurial. Yeah, I totally agree.
00:29:06
Speaker
No risk, no reward. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's a calculated risk, but it's so worth it once you get there.
Defining Success and Encouraging Estate Management
00:29:14
Speaker
But you have to be ready for sleepless nights. And I know we're not on camera, but I don't have hair. I don't know if it's because of the risk. That might have just been genetics. You can't. Let's go with that. But I wouldn't have changed anything. And I continue to want to expand and build. And I'm extremely aggressive with the direction I want to take my business in. And I just highly recommend, not for everybody, but if you have a desire for it, especially if you're younger, just swing from the fences. Go for it. Take as many chances as you can. It's OK to fail. How do you define your own version of success?
00:29:51
Speaker
My success to me is having the freedom to be at and coach all my kids' games when I can and when I want to, that I have a client base that that trusts me with their most important, other than their children, you know their estate, their investments, their net worth, or that's the most important thing to them other than their family. They trust me with that. So that's an incredible honor to me. So I think that's,
00:30:20
Speaker
My version of success is having a team of competent partners and then a group of clients that really value what I offer them and do for them. And then allowing me to be able to live the personal life that I want to live on top of that. That's that's success to me more than what's in my bank account or my wallet. And I do believe in trying to make the world a better place as well.
00:30:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's great. Excellent. I love, I love hearing people's holistic view of of that particular question. Just a final takeaway message for us on the politics of estate planning. The main thing is I would recommend if you haven't done it, just, just get something done and get an estate plan done. Don't avoid it. Don't think, well, I don't really have an estate. I hear that a lot. I don't have an estate. You have a house, you have an IRA.
00:31:12
Speaker
you have some assets, you have some life insurance, you do have an estate, and whether you either decide what happens to it or a judge or a government's gonna decide what happens to it. So I think you'd rather be in control of that. So just get it done. The more complex it is, find the right team of people to help guide you and ah be proactive, spend the time in getting it done now, and hopefully it'll save you a lot of time and and and money on the back end.
00:31:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's been a fabulous conversation. If everyone wants to connect further with Bob, there are details on those show notes. Until next time, please take care.