Estate Planning Is More Than Just Documents, with Texas Attorney Jeremy Cleverly

0:02 So, estate planning can look a whole range of ways. It can look like just a pile of documents. Or, it can look like a customized plan to help you and or your family or protect your family through various transitions. And that scope is all the difference, I think, to depending on who you talk to. In this world of AI and technology, there's a lot of online services that only charge 100, 500, 1,000, 2,000 to have those document packages, but my experience as a real estate agent is most people miss out on getting the customized plan they need. Well, I'm excited today to have Jeremy Cleverly from Aledo, Texas, which is west of Fort Worth, Texas, in the in Fort Worth metroplex area, to talk about estate planning from a Texas style. Jeremy, thank you so much for joining us today. You bet. My pleasure. So, you know, I'm a real estate agent and the worst thing, and I'm in California, which is different, where if you if you know, pass without a estate plan, you're going to go to probate. And in Texas, you have a couple alternatives, but even those alternatives require some kind of planning. In California, I generally say that even a bad plan is better a bad estate plan is better than nothing, cuz at least you're out of the probate court. But obviously, the reason why people need an attorney is a bad plan is not the desired outcome. Correct.

1:19 Yeah. Some of the things that you see in the standard off-the-shelf automated do-it-yourself semi options versus what you offer as an individual attorney, customizing it to customers' needs? You know, I'd say two things come to top of mind. The first, unfortunately, you know, we get one or two phone calls a month from people where you know, baby boomers are starting to get a little bit older now. Hey. You know, they're still

1:45 Hey. I said starting to. Some. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yes. Yeah, hey, we both have some gray here, okay? So, I'm on the same page. Okay. You know, I'll get a phone call one or two a month where it's an adult child is calling because, you know, mom or dad is the you know, one has already passed away, the other's surviving. They got online, they did something years ago, they downloaded some document, they thought they did a trust. And now mom has dementia, she doesn't have capacity anymore. They go to use something and they're told, "Hey, this wasn't notarized, this wasn't filled out correctly." And you know, I have to be the bearer of bad news that like, "Hey, you know, mom has dementia. I understand you paid, you know, 1,500, 2,000 bucks and downloaded this, but she didn't fill it out correctly. And now you may have saved a little bit of money on the front end, but now you're going to have to set up like an adult guardianship proceeding. That's not cheap, easy, or ideal for the family. So, that's kind of the first thing I'd say is it's more than just paper, but we take a different approach. I don't like to get paid for paper. I like to get paid for giving families peace of mind. So, like one of the first questions I will ask is, "Hey, what made you reach out and contact us today? You know, what's your what are your concerns or what are your goals?" Like just truly get to know people, get to know their families, family's different. Work backwards in whatever documents they may or may not need. You got minor kids? Great. Let's do kind of a plan to protect your minor children while they're still young. You know, we want to do long and short-term guardians, medical POAs for them, those kind of things. Or, you know, you've got kids that are you know, no family's perfect. You know, I've got some clients where they have adult children and you know, one or two children might have, you know, issues with creditors. They might have maybe substance abuse issues and the last thing you want to do is have them inherit a large sum of money.

3:30 That's just going to fuel a lifestyle that's not productive. So, there's all kinds of different levers we can pull and having done this for years now, I've never really had two estate plans that are the same, you know, just because each family is a little bit different. I think there's something to be said that, you know, if you just want to check a box and say, "Yep, I've got a will." Okay, you've got a will. That's only part of it. Like that's great. There should be a bunch of ancillary documents and quite frankly, we go a little bit I like to think we go a long ways beyond just the bare minimum where we'll ask questions and we'll assemble a binder that has, you know, tabs for like tax returns, investment accounts, insurance, logins and passwords, just to make sure that, you know, assets aren't missed. You know, even if you do have a will and it's not a trust, whatever, people still need to know where your things are. You know, great example I use is, you know, I don't know if you have a brother or sister, I have a sister. What are you

4:20 I don't know if she knows what bank I use. I don't know if she know, you know, where's life insurance or 401(k)s or investments or anything like that. That's usually not things people just discuss with their loved ones, you know, someone's Christmas now over Christmas dinner, but those are things people are going to need to know if anything happens to you, cuz they need to know what institutions to contact, where are money, where are where's insurance at. So, we kind of we take a holistic approach where, you know, it's almost more never calls it estate plan. I think it's almost more like life planning. You know, let's keep your life in order and we meet with our clients every 3 years for free, because even when you're doing an estate plan, even if you did something online, it's a snapshot in time of what life looks like for you today. You know, it could be like my dad passed away 11 years ago now, just about, unexpectedly. And you know, he'd had a will done that this company he worked for paid to have done, but he never updated it. You know, it still listed myself and my sister as minor children. And you know, just very short bare-bones basically and there was no other ancillary documents involved either. No power of attorneys, no before or anything like that. So, you know, that was what really kind of made me focus in on a much different approach to estate planning. Is to, you know, work backwards, give an actual plan that is going to work for that family and try and look around corners. You know, we talked about minors briefly there.

5:39 You know, a lot of families, you know, they have young kids, they struggle with, "Well, who could raise my kids and who could afford to?" I'm like, those are two separate aspects. You know, who you want raising your kids, that's a decision based upon, you know, values you want your have your kids to have. Who you know, a household you want them growing up in. The money being there, that's actually on you. Make sure you have life insurance or you have investments and you can have someone separately, you know, take care of that money as opposed to the person that's raising your children. But yeah, I mean it's always different each family and just sit down, figure out what their goals are and their concerns and again, give them a plan that's going to give them peace of mind. You mentioned the term life planning, you know, you use throughout your business. Seems to me that a proper estate plan package is useful more than half the time without somebody passing. Right? I mean, somebody's incapacitated or somebody is you know, mentally incapacitated, somebody is, you know, medically incapacitated, temporarily incapacitated. It seems to me that the life planning part is to just think what happen what happens when I pass is an important part of that, but my experience is the people who don't have those plans in place before suffer the most when there's some sort of incapacity or, you know, medical or physical. Yeah, absolutely. So, a great example in one of the documents I talk to my clients about, you know, is a legal or durable power of attorney. Some people call it a financial power of attorney, just kind of the more of the legal side of it. To me, that is a great document to help parents as they age and help them age gracefully. You know, a lot of parents will you know, they'll start to have a little bit of cognitive decline or maybe paying bills on Everything's online. They kind of have a hate relationship with technology. They don't need to be in a nursing home, they don't need, you know, in-home care, but they need a little bit more assistance, you know, just again, paying bills. So, you know, something we did with my mother a few years ago, we updated her power of attorney to take effect upon signing for my sister and I, where, you know, I've used that now to change billing addresses so bills come to my house. My mom can pay bills, absolutely, but it's

7:43 Just something I can take off her plate as she gets a little bit older. She doesn't have to worry, "Oh, did I pay this one? Did I not? I don't know if I logged in correctly or I got logged out of an account." So, it's a great tool for, you know, adult kids to help take care of their parents. But you're right, absolutely. So, legal power of attorney takes effect usually, at least in Texas, upon incapacity, but you can draft it. So, like for married couples, if you want it to take effect for your spouse upon signing, you can do that. For anyone else, only upon incapacity. So, yeah, you know, if you're in an accident, you're in the hospital, like life goes on. Bills need to be paid. Yeah, and it's the unforeseen example of having the power that either works and makes it convenient or difficult. Yeah, I can't I had a case where, you know, we called them uncle. My aunt had lived with him for a long time, but never really got legally married. And then when she was incapacitated, she had some insurance that covered some procedure, but had no proof of it. She's in the hospital. And she knew that she'd paid the invoice for the insurance to help figure out who the company was, but he didn't have any authority to access her bank accounts to get who she wrote the check to for the insurance to find out who covers the insurance. And so, it's one of those things where you don't think about it, but not having power of attorney or not having the ability to access documents when somebody's alive becomes critical and perhaps life-saving. So, these are all things that come up.

9:10 So, part of this also, I mean, these are these are not easy, pleasant conversations all the time. I'm sure occasionally there are, but for the most part, you know, I often think at law school, I don't think they have classes on psychology and emotional trust building and

9:29 Have you met attorneys? Clearly they don't. I've met attorneys. That's what I'm saying. I don't think that's in law school. I think the opposite. How to scare somebody to death, I think you guys take that class a couple times, but on the basic of how to hold somebody's hand through these, you know, what can be difficult decisions, right? Intimate, emotional decisions. So, that to me that seems like the soft skills that most often attorneys don't think about when they make a career choice. So, obviously, this is something that you've done over time. How was it that you ended up making the decision to do this as a career? You're not I'm sure you're not I mean you draft documents I'm sure and you review them with customers but at some point you have to talk to them about the applications. How did that part of the business become something that you obviously aspired to do well in order to succeed? So I guess I didn't take a traditional route to an estate planning law firm where I graduated law school, went to work for a mid-size regional firm litigation, did that for a number of years and then kind of caught the entrepreneurial bug, became an unintentional entrepreneur I would say where one night over the dinner table conversation was like hey our town could use a pediatric specific urgent care. Like that's an interesting idea. This was probably 12 13 years ago I guess. Actually maybe a little bit longer 14 years ago.

10:47 It was supposed to be an investment, found an outside company consultant out of Virginia that was supposed to be turnkey no problem. I'm still working at law firm. I quickly learned consultants are sometimes people you will pay to make mistakes you would have made yourself. So you know, 3 months in I think we blowing through working capital stroking paychecks out of my savings. You know, I think they originally pro forma had a seen like 30 patients a day and I think we're more at like six to seven so quickly realized hey I can't continue with litigation lifestyle and figure out how to run a health care company. So kind of had to wind down the litigation practice and jump feet first into here's how you run a health care company and it was a drastic cultural shift from a high pressure everyone's type A personality litigation firm to welcome to pediatrics and children. You know, no one's yelling F bombs up and down the hallway. It's touchy feely. So did that in 2014 I became a dad. A couple months later my dad passed unexpectedly like we just kind of talked about. That's where I kind of saw his will and I'm like this is this has got to be malpractice, right? This can't be right. Which what you know, obviously got mom taken care of after that.

12:06 That's kind of what led me down to there's a huge need here to actually do this correctly. New father myself I need to get this stuff taken care of. You know, that's kind of what started me in there. I've now scaled sold the pediatric urgent care started scaled sold another company helped to run a third company through a venture capitalist incubator so I've kind of been through that and at the same time I was building my law firm. So kind of right after yeah, right after my dad died I'd say that's kind of what really started it for me was that being a new dad I'm you know, I'm an attorney business owner whatever my own man but I quickly realized there's there were questions I wish I could have asked him about being a dad. So that's one of the other things I work with my clients on. I don't think you get Whatever you do I don't think you get credit for doing what's expected. Like you're an estate planning lawyer someone's going to get a binder with estate planning documents in it. That's nice. But quite frankly everyone has more to pass on than assets. Like make sure you pass along your family history, your values, your goals, your insight, your wisdom to your kids, to your family. So I work with my clients on that. Like I'll ask them hey do you want to write letters? Some people want to do audio recordings. Others might want to do video. You know, there's even that now some kind of you know, side project I've been working on is there a way to almost make an AI interactive approach where someone can kind of upload answers to you know, 50 100 questions that you know, someone can then you know, pick their brain so to speak from an AI standpoint almost an information database on your dad or your mom like simple stuff that like you said they don't teach attorneys how to be compassionate in law school.

13:41 No, I don't think so. School schools don't teach how to buy a car, how to buy a house, you know, how to do different things so you know, go ahead and upload hey here's how I buy my first car. Here's how I buy a house. Here's how I saved and was able to provide the lifestyle for our family and to make sure that my clients pass that information along to. I know in your bio and just what you spoke about now your experience as an entrepreneur successfully exited a couple times through. How does that experience of building a business that you know, as opposed to most attorneys I'm sure you see are really employees in their own in their own business, right? And it's the same with most agents. Most of us are you know, we join a company and we act like we're employees. We're not really focused on building equity having a plan, having a you know, exit plan of some sort. How does your experience as an entrepreneur change the way you run your law practice today? Well, to be honest I'd say you your first time you know, a lot of attorneys first time running a business is their law firm. You know, that urgent care you know, I paid what I call the stupid tax a lot at the beginning, right? Like you make mistakes you're going to learn. You know, and I learned everyone always has that old saying you know, hire people that are smarter than you. I don't know how in the world you're supposed to know that. You know, everybody is smarter than me in one aspect or another. Like I remember the urgent care we had you know, I wanted to change check-in. I would bring the receptionist to operations meeting because those people do that job 40 hours a week. I want their input. So like in my law firm or any other company I hire people that are good at things I'm not good at or like to do the things I don't like to do. I don't like to do payroll. Can I figure it out? Yep. I'll probably need two beers and I'll be stressed out the rest of the day. I hate doing payroll so I outsource that.

15:22 That's just me but ideally if you hire people that like to do the things you don't like to do and are good at what you don't like that you're not good at it leaves you time to do the things you're good at and you like to do. So you know, I know where I am good and I don't like to do $15 tasks. Not that's below me. It's a poor use of my time as an attorney. Anyone I can hire to do a $15 task. Right. I should only be doing the stuff an attorney can do. Right. And that's essentially I'm the CEO of this firm. I need to make sure my biggest job revenue comes in the door to pay people's paychecks and that we service our community. That's my job whether it's meeting with clients doing the stuff only a lawyer can do coming up with their plan, drafting documents or it's out in the community you know, doing interviews like this and meeting referral sources. You know, I serve on a few different non-profit boards. So that's I guess I take a much more I guess from experience business minded approach where I run my law firm like a business. I know what I'm good at. I outsource the stuff that we don't need in house. You know, I look toward you know, we've talked AI briefly. A lot of people are threatened by it. I'm not. How can that make us more efficient? You know, how can we use that as something to amplify what we already do? In your business as a law as well as mine there are successful people who get to a point where they want all their business coming by referral they've already established.

16:43 It's one thing to go out and establish new referral sources. It's another thing to wait for the phone to ring for people to come in. And I in my experience there was a time that you could build a growing business based on that. Nowadays with online Google Facebook ads a lot of the business that would have come to you or come to me from past clients or word of mouth gets siphoned off and in order just to stay even I have to do business development. If I'm going to grow it I have to do more. Is that true in your in your practice? If so, what percentage of your time do you allocate to business development activities? So I use I block I use calendar my I really kind of live by my calendar. I do time blocking. I try to take Mondays and focus on you know, working on my business not in my business. Now that may be some of it's you know, talking with referral partners. Maybe I'm going to go grab lunch with you know, wealth management firm something like that. Or it's also you know, I'll read various business books. I'll watch a podcast. I will review you know, marketing for the next quarter. I will we do community events like we've done like wine and wills, trusts and tacos like kind of stuff like that. So I'll plan those kind of events out as well too where it's more you know, a lot of estate planning I think you know, like you mentioned something people don't like to talk about it. Oh if I talk about it's going to happen.

18:02 It's going to happen whether you talk about it or not. Like you know, everyone's time is going to run out. There's no telling when or when how that's going to happen. So we try to put on you know, every month or every other month kind of just community education events like come have a glass of wine ask whatever questions you want in a laid back atmosphere. Let's do like tacos. Like there's a great Mexican restaurant here. They have a banquet room. Like there's a taco bar. I'll just get up and talk for a little bit and if that people have questions I'll hang out after and answer your questions. So I'd say that's probably you know, 20% of my time just a ballpark on average. And it varies week to week. Sometimes it's 50% of my time getting especially if we have an event or something like that. One of the one of the I think misnomers you and I are you know, in a business now that is being completely disrupted changed with technology artificial intelligence various offshoots of that. Yet at the same time you know, it can either from where I sit be used to replace us poorly or it can be used to enhance us or leverage our time. You know, I know I'm sure one can go online to ChatGPT and get an estate plan done. I'm sure you get something. It'll look like to a layperson it'll look like something. And I think on one hand that is the downside. The positive is someone like you I'm sure has particular issues that come up for clients and you can use technology to be more effective at delivering to them a better document or better strategy. Talk a little bit about how you're using AI in your firm to leverage expand what you do not just replace the everyday activities.

19:36 Sure. I would say you're right. You can pull up ChatGPT. You can type in create a revocable trust for me. It will come up with something that might look like a revocable trust. The problem is it's you know, trash in trash out. The average person is not going to know what to ask ChatGPT. I could go in there and I've played around with it just to see what kind of stuff comes out of it. You know, creating an estate plan, I've got two kids, like, you know, just very basic questions that an average person would type in. And it's lacking. I know that may sound self-serving to say, but it's lacking. But I'm like, all right, let me try this as an estate planning attorney. And the all right, three or four paragraphs of intake questions, things I would ask a client. Right. It gets closer, but it's still it has clauses in there that like this doesn't exist in Texas. Like, what why is this in here? So, it doesn't it's not going to get you where you want to go. It's not a replacement. Like, we use it where I'm sure like in your firm or even on your podcast, you have basically stock emails you would send. Like, a different like we track clients through kind of a portal. Like, a Yeah, portal, but like where are they in the in the flow chart, right? Just had a phone call, intake, drafting, we're gathering documents, whatever. There's going to be almost like stock communication that needs to go out along the road there, right? Why would I want myself or my staff drafting the same email 10 times a day? Where it's 99% correct. So, you can go into ChatGPT, you can create projects if you pay for like the mid-level thing, where we've created an email assistant. Like, hey, I need our stock email for, you know, we need to set a planning meeting. Great. It just populates it, copy, paste, I put in the client's name. I mean, it just has our address, all that stuff that I know they're going to need. No client information goes in or out of any AI with us, but just hey, here's our address, this is what we like to include in our planning meeting, things for them to bring, things to consider. So, it's a time saver in that regard, I would say.

21:34 Transactional emails. Yeah, I feel the same way. A lot of transactional stuff I can automate. The personal emails like to me to a guest for the podcast, you know, they AI always offers to write the email, but it's just never quite my Yep. My style, my tone, not quite right. Even though I've used the same one and keep improving, but it's close. But, you know, I think you know, my business is such that I have a couple referral sources, I'm always looking for one more. Close isn't good enough when you're trying to really get the right fit. Absolutely. At least that's my experience. Yeah, but like on my reminder emails, I think it's great for it. Like, hey, this is the reminder, your meeting's at this time, whatever. That's where we really use it. Like, hey, reminder, bring this, bring that. You know, instead of having someone type that same email 10 times a day, click, paste, click, paste. I mean, to me that's where it kind of comes in. I don't want to say mindless work, but just the repetitive stuff, it can free up a bunch of time. You know, I'll tell you a funny story. I have a We have a standard real estate contract in California for certain transactions. And I have a spreadsheet I've created over time that kind of captures So, as I review a document, I take my notes in the spreadsheet so that multiple offers we can review them side by side. And I have an assistant do it sometimes I do it myself depending on the transaction, who's involved. And I thought, well, this would be great for the AI. You know, I'll just have it read the contract and put it into a spreadsheet. I know how to tell it to do that. And I did it, you know, on a property I had like 10 offers on. Wow, it was amazing. Wow, look at that, all 10 are right there. It's on the spreadsheet. I can evaluate them. Like, one of the key things was in California, we have a probate purchase addendum. So, if it's a probate purchase, there's a separate form to protect the buyer, protect the seller, the agents.

23:13 Okay. It has to be included or we counter if it's not included. So, I have to note, is it in there or not? And the AI's like, yes, it's I go, "Well, that's great." And look at the contract, and it's not. I'm like, "Well, that's a pretty basic mistake. The checkbox was not checked." Yeah. And I put it was checked. You know, and so I think those are the kinds of things that on hand, you say, "Wow, the AI is so fast and efficient." On the other hand, fast and efficient sometimes can get you in trouble. No, you're right. I was covering a hearing for another attorney last week, just a quick probate walk-through. And, you know, I just was kind of like, hey, give me a checklist, everything I need. You know, I was going through it type of thing. I'm like, okay, great. And kind of same thing, it was thinking that the affidavits that were on file were notarized, they were not. I'm like, that's a blank notary block. Like, I you know, like, hey, scan the filings for the court. Like, same thing, download from the court, is everything good? Do I need to bring anything? Nope, your affidavits are, you know, affidavits are filed, they're notarized, looks great. I'm like, okay, but I'm still reviewing the whole file. I'm like, these aren't notarized. Like, these witnesses need to come and testify. So, yeah, same thing, it's good at what it's good at. I use it some for research, too, not legal research, but, you know, just having been an entrepreneur, I think once you have, you always if you see a problem, you know, or an opportunity, you will try to figure out a way to, you know, is there a way I can fix that? So, we can get together again, work on a couple side projects. But when I research like, hey, you know, competition research, market research,

24:45 Yeah. And I'll play different AI platforms against each other. You know, start with ChatGPT, go over to Grok, go over to Perplexity by copy and paste, hey, how is could this be better? Is this correct? Where are holes in this? And I mean, it's pretty good at if you do it that way, kind of almost creating a bit of a business outline or business plan if you wanted to. A good starting point, but I don't think you ever replace the professional. Yeah, I don't think it replaces your tone. You know, I know for me personally, you know, I get an analysis from a real estate agent and I go, well, that's obviously AI. It's just so long. There's no way he wrote what might be a three-page answer to what the property is worth. Versus, you know, can you summarize it in a in a short paragraph? What are the key numbers and, you know, how you get to that spot? And, you know, the AI allows you to do that. You have to have the knowledge to prompt it that way.

25:33 Yep. And I think that's, you know, going to be more challenging as we go forward. So, you know, the other thing I noticed about our industry my industry as a real estate agent, and I think yours as well as an attorney, is that whether it be I think the cause was COVID, there's just a lack of the next generation stepping into the industry. I feel like I should have a lot more competition, but that younger group just didn't get trained right. They just didn't get the resources to learn the business. And so, I feel like I've been able to extend my career for years with a lot less competition. I see with attorneys as well that I just don't see as many coming in the younger group in estate planning than I do in probate as I might think there should be. Now, maybe they're going into other industries, they're going into other aspects of law. How do you see the industry of law as a career path going forward? You know, I've seen I've actually been contacted by a few law students in the last year that, hey, you know, do you have a summer internship? Something like that. So, there is interest out there. You know, I see a lot of attorneys kind of like I'm an unintentional, you know, estate planning attorney. That's not how I started my career. I see a lot kind of want a career shift at some point where, you know, large law firms are great, you make a great salary there, all that, it's not for everyone. You know, some people two, three, four years in, they're like, this is not for me, this lifestyle, you know, I'm working 80, 90 hours a week, never see my family. And they might want to look towards something different where, you know, with litigation, I enjoyed it.

27:06 I'll be honest, sometimes I miss that competition, I guess. But, you know, working a large law lawsuit, you know, at the end of the day, I wasn't making a difference, to be honest. You know, I win, great, this other company's insurance company pays my client. Or we lose, you know, vice versa, insurance company pays. I'm not really making a big difference in someone's life. Same with that urgent care when, you know, we were hemorrhaging money our first year, I was miserable from a financial standpoint, but at the end of the day, I was helping sick kids feel better. So, kind of, you know, with estate planning, you actually make a difference in people's lives. I can say that, yeah, like, hey, like, you know, I know on numerous occasions, like, hey, what we've done helped that family out and, you know, set them up for success. So, I'd say that is also kind of a motivating factor. You know, maybe once you get to a certain point in life, I understand, like, you're in law school, most of them graduate with a, you know, boatload of debt. They're like, I want that salary as high as it can be. But, you know, maybe when you kind of get to a certain point where you've done well enough for yourself, I mean, you can still make a great living in estate planning. And actually, like we talked about first started, baby boomer generation has kind of started up. You know, I mean, they're getting to the point where some of them haven't considered, you know, like, oh, I'll put it off, put it off. I probably need an estate plan at this point. I've got grandkids, like

28:20 I've got friends starting to pass away. You know, so we, you know, as far as who we usually serve, we serve either, you know, clients that are in their upper 30s, maybe 50s, where they've got young kids at home or their kids are in college or young adults or something like that. And we do end up serving some of their parents, too. Like, hey, we did an estate plan for you know, you've got minor kids, much more robust. And, you know, wife just has a dad left, he's got like a house, a car, checking and savings account, very simple estate. But, you know, we just want to make sure he doesn't go through probate. How can we do that? Like, Texas does lady bird deeds, and it's our threshold $75,000. So, with like TOD on accounts, lady bird deeds, we can kind of still keep it out of probate that way. So, that's kind of who we focus in on. But, no, I think as far as who's going into the market,

29:06 You're right, I don't see a lot of young attorneys. It's usually, you know, one or two who join like a larger estate planning firm or something like that. Or it's a larger firm that has an estate planning practice, and maybe they're in there, and they do some tax stuff, too. But, no, it's usually smaller firms. There's not a huge national estate planning law firm, right? You know, you can look at like Morgan & Morgan, huge PI national firm. There's nothing like that in estate planning. It's much more smaller, you know, boutique kind of law firms. And it's, you know, part of it might be a lifestyle thing. Like, my daughter does cheerleading and stuff like that. Like, I can block my schedule so that I can make sure that I can get her to cheer practice, and that's important to me. So, I'm going to see you there at the cheer practice, to you helping her, showing her the moves and the all that.

29:49 I clap I clap really well. That's my confidence. So kind of to wrap up a little bit, you know, the reason why I got into this niche myself was it unlike other businesses, this seems to be there's a market there that's so untapped, meaning there's only so many divorces a year, there's only so many drunk drivers a year, but to me as a real estate agent, at least in California, so many more people need an estate plan than have it. Maybe the market penetration is 50% of what it should be if I just had to make a guess off the top of my head. And part of the other part of the challenge is as a real estate agent, I'll recommend to clients I do know it's a fair amount of work, you know, meeting with the attorney and the paperwork and gathering and all that if you do it right, several meetings and such. But getting them to finish is another problem, right? They meet with you, I'm sure you have this experience, they meet with you and they start the work and then you give them their homework or they don't like to finish up and they kind of disappear, they never get back to you. So if you had a minute just to kind of speak to the marketplace of people, families, homeowners, business owners to say why this is important, what would you say to them? Because to me it just seems like it's more of a motivation and a digging into the market than it is you competing with other estate planners or me competing with other real estate agents. Yeah, no, I take a bit of a different view. I mean, you will see some estate planning law firms out there, it's a race to the bottom. So they just drop their price, drop their price, drop their price. When we initially have a phone call or I do with you know, potential clients, I'm honest with them. I'm like, this is a two-way conversation. We need to make sure it's a good fit. You're a good fit for us, we're a good fit for you. And part of it if people aren't really finishing what they start with you, that's not the attorney. Like it's a business, you need to take the friction out of that transaction as much as you can. You know, make it as smooth as possible. Like we send out a welcome letter, we let people know, like hey, here's what to anticipate, here's kind of the four steps we're going to go through. You know, from the initial phone call to the planning meeting, what to expect, what our expectations are, what our time

31:52 Frame expectations are. You know, we'll follow we'll follow up with them and I understand like life happens, people get busy, stuff like that. You know, one of the things I do because we work with younger families is like every other Thursday night, you know, do you want to have like a Zoom call? Like we can do it at 6:00, 7:00, something like that where I'm not going to have on a coat and tie. I might be in a T-shirt, but you can be in your kitchen, you know, cooking dinner or whatever and we can, you know, meet your customers at that point. I understand they're clients, but to me they're unless I'm talking something legal with them, they're a customer and I think that's what law firms miss. Customer service is free, but most don't provide it. All my clients have my cell phone number. You know, people think I'm crazy for that, but I'm like, why? Like every car warranty and roofing company out there in the world has my cell phone number, why wouldn't I want my clients to have it? They rarely ever abuse it and it's a quick call like, hey, I'm at the bank trying to set up that checking account. Am I doing it right? Yeah, like, yeah, I think you are, but pass the phone to the teller, I'll make sure you get it done right. So again, like I said earlier, you don't get credit for doing what's expected, you know, what do you do that goes above and beyond, you know, from a customer service standpoint, from an access standpoint, from a being human standpoint? And I think that's what's going to set you apart. If that can be for any industry, to be quite honest. I think you're right. I think it's all about doing the extras and getting your customer what they want. Oftentimes the paperwork and the transaction is just part of that process, but they want what they want and we're doing the transaction to get them there. And sometimes it means a couple extra, you know, steps to get the customer what they want. So Or explain why it's important. That's part of it, too. You know, if you see they're stuck, hey, I see you're stuck. I've got a 10-minute slot here. Let's hop on a quick phone call. What are you struggling with? You know, inevitably it's, well, we're just trying to figure out, you know, who would be the best role for power of attorney or backup trustee. I'm like, give me a name you know you'll have both for 3 years cuz we're going to meet with you and every 3 years and in fact update it we can. You know, they'll kind of get like, who can do this for 40 years? I'm like, I don't know who can do it for me for 40 years, you know? So don't worry about that.

33:47 Give me like two or three years and we can update as we need to. So just simple things like that, like recognizing as the attorney, hey, this person's stuck. I've done it long enough, I can probably guess where they're stuck. Let me reach out and let me offer to help you. Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for the overview and your time today and the good job you do helping people, particularly those in Texas with estate planning needs. I think the best place for to reach you would be your website, which is cleverly-law.com. Is that the best place to reach out? And then we have down on the screen as well your contact information. If you want to get in touch with him as well. But I just want to thank you for your time today to explain us both the importance and the kind of you know, what the different standards is are the people should expect. You set a high bar and hopefully we can together help raise the bar for all of our customers and clients together. Yeah, no, I hope so. It's a pleasure speaking with you, Bill, and I hope you have a Merry Christmas, sir. You too. Thank you so much. Thank you. Right. And for the rest of you, this was Estate Planning Weekly. We get together every week and issue another episode. Usually with estate planning attorneys, oftentimes with vendors, people can help us be more effective with our clients and our customers and our business. If I can help in any way, reach out at BillGrossProbate. Call, text, email. If you want to be interviewed on the program or you have an estate planning attorney that should be, please feel free to recommend them as well. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.