Episode 228 – Unwrapping the Inheritance Enigma: A deep dive into Legacy Planning

Episode Transcription

This is the Ultimate Advisor Podcast, the podcast for financial advisors who want to create a thriving, successful and scalable practice. Each week we’ll uncover the ways that you can improve your referrals your team, your marketing, and your business operations, helping you to level up your advising practice, bring in more assets and create the advising practice that you’ve dreamed of. You’ll be joined by our hosts Bryan Sweet, who is moving fast towards a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson, the driving force for advisors looking to improve their operations and company culture, and Draye Redfern who can help you systematize and automate your practices marketing to effortlessly attract new clients. So what do you say? Let’s jump into another amazing episode of The Ultimate Advisor Podcast.

Brittany Anderson 1:07

Welcome back to The Ultimate Advisor Podcast. Brittany Anderson right back here with you. And today you are in for a treat. Today I’ve got with me Joe Clark, who is the founder of financial enhancement group Trust Services. He is a USA Today Best Selling Author known for his ability to distill complex concepts into easily understandable language. He has a was a talk show radio host our talk radio host for many years. It absolutely shows you’re gonna find this here shortly. He has made more than 100 appearances on CNBC, Fox Business News, and other reputable networks. He also likes to talk about cigars, hiking, golf, jeeps, scuba diving, Christianity, quitting alcohol cooking, but today, we are going to talk about legacy planning. Joe, welcome to the show.

Joe Clark 2:05

Thank you, Brittany glad to be here.

Brittany Anderson 2:07

Well, it is our pleasure to have you. So Joe, we’re gonna get right into things here. Why did you create FEVG Trust Services?

Joe Clark 2:15

Well, like most of your listeners, I’m a writer, I’m an independent fiduciary. I’ve been in the industry for 36 years now. That means I’ve taken care of people for four or five decades. And I’ve watched both myself mental acuity kind of decline. But most importantly, I’ve watched the families that we serve, I’ve always focused on distribution. And I believe that I promised to help people complete their financial journey. That doesn’t mean abandon them when they need it most. And I think most legacy plans are designed to help people transfer assets to their beneficiaries. And truly legacy planning is more than just leftovers and beneficiaries. What about you, and I created the Trust Services Division for our company, to be able to help people with necessary issues that I saw relevant in their lives, I think the families that we serve, and that you likely serve our unique, what the legal world and 60 minutes would like to talk about with the nanny stealing money or the neighbor scamming you. Those are the stories that you hear my 35 years of experience will tell you that no, it’s usually us having a bad day that we didn’t recognize until it was too late. And so in helping people complete the financial journey, the Trust Services Division became a nest necessity, we help people create a document that allows them to have flexibility to complete that journey, both with dignity, some independence, but most importantly, applicable choices.

Brittany Anderson 3:57

You know, I want to comment this for our listeners. Today, we’re gonna go we’re really gonna go into the nitty gritty, and it’s a little bit different than what we normally do. But Joe has so much value and insight in the technicalities of this legacy planning that we’re talking about. So, Joe, we’re gonna we’re gonna go a layer deeper here. When you think about who your trustee should be, what does that look like?

Joe Clark 4:20

So you’ve got, essentially you either die testate or intestate, you either die with the will or the one that the state that you live in is provided for you. And when most people describe a will, they’re really telling you what a trust does. Starting from my grandma when I was 22 years old, saying, Well, Joe, it’s in the will, right? It doesn’t matter what’s in the will if it never gets there. Somewhat of a simple way to understand a trust is that you’ve put assets you maintain control typically, but you’ve transferred them to a legal entity known as a trust, so there’s no tax exchange, there’s no no there’s, there’s no event there that occurs. The inside of that trust, you are typically in what’s called a grantor or revocable living trust, you are typically in charge, you are the big kahuna, the trustee at some point in time, and this is where legacy planning really gets complex. At some point in time, there needs to be a transfer of power from a trustee to a successor trustee. That either occurs as most documents are written when you’re gone when you’re deceased, but what I’m experiencing and what you are with longevity, and as people live longer, there’s really a need for people to step in. And while you’re still here, I really want you to think about what about you? Right? It’s not just leftovers and beneficiaries. What about you? And so who that successor trustee needs to be is very, very critical. Now, Brittany, what happens is there are two default answers. For some reason, the legal world tends to look in most revocable trust grantor trust, as it’s an either or option. Either you pick your children, and you’re typically your beneficiaries as your successor trustee, one, they know you, presumably you trust them, and three, you’re getting that they’re gonna get the assets anyhow. But really, the fourth is they work for free. Right. The other option is to go with a institutional trustee. And most people don’t like the headache of dealing with people that they don’t know, not sure who’s going to be there in the future, pay fees that they don’t necessarily understand. But most importantly, they’re put again, in a box, where there’s no unique thought process into their family. It’s here’s the bank’s trust departments document. At the financial enhancement group Trust Services. I say listen, and you have to understand I’m attend Quickstart. If you understand Colby, I’m an entrepreneur. I don’t like rules, I want best solutions. And so I looked at it and said this is this is odd. In my case, my wife, Barbara, my two daughters, Kaylee and Kendra, once a nurse, clearly understand my life issues where I need to live, what doctor, I should go to what how much I should be able to give to my church on a weekly basis, they clearly understand that better than somebody at a bank that I’ve hired, that doesn’t know me at all. But on the other hand, Daddy’s managed the money, or by CFAES, at my company have managed the money for the last 30 or 40 years, the idea that I will take my life’s work, and hand that financial responsibility over to people who aren’t trained to do it makes no sense at all. And so we created the trust Service Division said, Okay, I’m going to create a unique document for each of the families that we work with knowing that all assets are not equal, nor are beneficiaries equal. My wife and my children are responsible for what I call the life discussion, the life issues that need to transpire decisions that need to be made when I can’t make them or third would be making them. And then there’s a financial trustee that steps in, that is able to make those decisions for me. So in our case, we work with other custodians and other advisors. But I work a lot with the families that we take care of it the financial enhancement group or an independent Ria, it doesn’t mean that I don’t work with Brian, or sweet financial or other financial advisors that are out there that say, Hey, I need to be able to use this mechanism. So I think you need to look at the trustees based on the job that you need them to do. I have a unique ability, a very definitely a very defined skill set. It doesn’t mean you want me operating on you, right. And I don’t want my children forced into a position where they’re making financial decisions that they’ve never made. And I don’t want a financial institution trying to determine whether or not I should live in Arizona, or Indiana or see this doctor or that doctor.

Brittany Anderson 9:27

You know, Joe, I had to kind of chuckle to myself when you were talking about how your grandma used to say it’s in the Will my grandma used to say go write your name on the bottom of it. That’s well, so you know, for our advisor, audience listening right now. These are, this is just gold to bring to your clients and to be able to really understand because the bottom line is, estate planning can be really tricky. So Joe, this is a question that I know commonly comes up with clients. And that is what’s the difference between a trustee that you’d laid out and a power of attorney. Can you lay that out for us?

Joe Clark 10:04

I think the first one is in we need to understand life changes. Right? I’ve been teaching demographics when I taught at Purdue for seven years. And as in their financial planning department, nowadays, Anderson university teaching their demographics matter a lot. And we all know what the baby boomers you learned in college, it’s 1946 to 1964. But you really need to recognize the peak of that baby boom was 1957 in 1961. If you gotta take a wager on how old somebody is bet that they were born, and then it’s a very large percentage of the US population that is an adult and likely represents many of the families that you serve. So as needs change in mass, typically, regulators, state law, federal tax code responds to that as well. And that’s really what we’re seeing. So when you have a power of attorney Brittany, if you give me a power of attorney, you have extended to me the right for me to sign your name. In no way did you take away your right to sign your name. And that is a critical differential between that. And a trustee. Brittany still owns the asset, she’s given Joe the right to sign her name, but she’s not taken away her name. Now, I will tell you in the state of Indiana, in order for a power of attorney to be legally binding, it has to be filed in the courthouse of the county that I reside in if I’m the one giving away the power. I doubt if people that sweep financial or anywhere else, if a recent power of attorney is brought to your office, I doubt many of you pick up the phone, call the courthouse and make sure that is indeed filed. In fact, I know attorneys who write Power of Attorney documents and don’t tell the family the client that they need to file the power of attorney document, the only way that you can pull the power back from the court or Brittany is to go to the courthouse and resend it. That’s the only way they know. So today, a lot of those legal processes aren’t followed, I will bet you Van Gogh’s missing ear that it will be followed eight to 10 years from now, because of the mass of people. As you see more and more powers of attorney that are used, this is going to become more and more commonplace. In a trust. That’s not the case. If you ever open up a trust account at a custodian, they’re going to want to see who’s in charge, not who the owner is. Typically, the grantor, the person who put the assets in is typically in charge, but not always. That’s when the successor trustee kicks in. And whoever that trustee is, whoever has those powers to invest and make decisions has the power Britany if you have a trust, and I am your trustee, and you watch a nightly news show and say, here’s a great idea, I think I’m going to move all of my money to Bitcoin. Or here’s a great idea. I think China is on a research, right. And you call TD Ameritrade or Charles Schwab or purging or fidelity and try to put all of the money in, if you’ve given me your power of attorney, they’re still going to take the trade, because all you did was extend that if it’s in a trust, they’re gonna say, wait a minute, Brittany, I don’t know who you are. The trustee of this trust is a financial enhancement group Trust Services, you can’t call and make that trade. And that is really the key difference. You do not lose power and control by putting in a trust, but you do protect yourself from your bad days in the future.

Brittany Anderson 13:52

So, Joe, again, as we’re peeling kind of peeling back the onion here and really getting the layers opened up. Why would somebody use all that being said, Why would somebody use a trust protector? And should that be the same person as your successor trustee?

Joe Clark 14:07

I take care of middle America. People who have done the heavy lifting, who have saved and accumulated most of the time they have more money now than they ever thought they would have it 1980 When defined contribution plans were created. The IRS the Congress, none of us thought we would see million $2 million dollar 401 K’s on a regular basis. And now we do that’s I’ve got many of them that I take care of we manage more than $650 million. You guys were the same. We we know the situation is probably in no circumstance. None of any of those families that I take care of more than 1100 Does any one of them like legal fees or court proceedings. Second only to the IRS is their disdain and approve creation for what goes on in the legal world. So when you have a legal instrument, whether that be a will or a trust, and somebody has to make a decision, you wind up in court, you wind up paying attorneys, you wind up with a judge, hopefully rendering a verdict in the favor of the plaintiff. But that’s not always the case, when you need to make a change to a trust. So Brittany, when you create your trust, it is revocable, the moment that you are no longer the trustee. The tax nature doesn’t change that by by statute to trust becomes irrevocable, meaning the successor trustee is limited in the changes that they can make. And that’s what most attorneys tell you should be the trigger. That’s how most people think about it, I will tell you that there are hundreds of different things that I’ve seen happen to people over the years, most of them are not likely in your life. But the probability that one or two of them occur is really, really strong. So inside of my trust, you have life trustees, in my case, my wife and children, you have financial trustees, the financial enhancement group Trust Services, and my in my side, you have my beneficiaries, my wife and my children, right, my my nephews and niece, right there. They’re built in some charities that are built in that I put in a trust protector. Now some of you some states do not allow trust protectors in Indiana, it’s about a six year old opportunity. So trusts that are older than that automatically need to be updated. Not having a trust protector is kind of like having a shoes without shoestrings. Right? Maybe they go on your feet, hopefully they stay on the why take the chance to tie the shoes kids, right? If you have the opportunity to put in a trust protector do so now the powers that you can give a trust protector are are kind of endless, you can give them the same power that you had as a grantor, right, the power to amend even beneficiaries if you would so choose, most importantly, as states become competitive, Indiana versus Iowa, in my example, right, Iowa made some changes, it made more sense for our trust to be an Iowa trust. Now Indiana’s fixed it. Now we’re back to Indiana again, Nevada, South Dakota, probably the two best states for lead for generation in dynasty trusts. You can live in one state and have a trust that’s that’s domiciled in another state, if that state allows that you need to have a trust protector to be able to do that. But the easiest way that I explain it to the families that we serve, is you’ve named your trust protector as the judge. They get to interpret what your intentions were inside of the trust without dragging your family and your funds, ie your money to court to have a judge try to render a decision over what is as we all know the definition and established many years ago, right? So now you’ve got somebody that you said, I want you to have the gavel, I’m going to indemnify you, you get it wrong, you get it wrong, but I want you to know my intention and make the decisions.

Brittany Anderson 18:23

So, Joe, I think it’s so interesting, because clearly your listeners tuning in now can understand that you definitely know what you’re talking about. You eat sleep and breathe this, this is your passion. So, you know, there’s something that you’ve often said, I want to know, why do you call typical trust language, a nuclear option.

Joe Clark 18:44

So as you age, you’re still quite young. But as you aged Britain and your parents gave you more and more liberties. You got to stay up later. You got to make choices, do more things. You know, we all love choices. We just hate decision, right? Because they decisions have consequences, and they’re fine. And, and what happens as an adult, I’m 56 years old, I can do anything I darn well, please, with an awful lot of money, and an awful lot of authority because of the choices that the world have given me. Now, everything that I own short of my 401 K and Roth IRAs are inside the trust. Right? There is in my trust, there was as in most of the people who are hearing this including your own a very, very small provision that talks about when you can’t do it anymore. Right. So my first draft, I was 30 some years old. I had two young kids. It was 22 pages long, and a page and a half dealt with me. A page and a half said if a judge, probably one that I didn’t know says I’m incompetent, which means Somebody had to take me to court. Good luck with that. Right? Or if two doctors say that I am incapacitated mentally or physically, physically is pretty easy to find mental, we all know we can show up on game days, right? We all know we have good days, even in cognitive decline. The problem is we can make decisions on bad names. But if two doctors say yes, indeed, Joe has lost the capacity, then all of a sudden, we’re successful trustees have the power to step in, remove me as trustee and take control. But it’s a nuclear option. It’s not that gradual incline you had as a child where you had more and more opportunities, more and more choices that you could make. You go from having all choices one day than no choices, the next and let’s face it, nuclear weapons are rarely used. Now, I know especially in the state of Texas, I have found this out, there are doctors all over the place, happy to have a competency conversation with you. The only thing that I can tell you is the families that I serve 35 years of doing this, I have not seen it happen once. I have seen doctors sign off on incapacitation, if somebody was in a car wreck of coma put in an Alzheimer’s unit. Absolutely. Right. More often, I’ve watched people say, Hey, I don’t want to do this anymore. Right? You take over you do it. But what really happens is most of the time, mom, dad reached 92, right? They’re clearly not paying the bills, nobody files anything legally, you just kind of sneak in and start paying the bills. Right. And that works fine until you need them to sign their name. And then you have a horrific problem, that this creates a lot of problems. So it’s a nuclear option. So I sat back and I said, like, how would I want this to be for me out, you know, and Douglas Brockman wrote driven, it’s a great book. And, and one of my favorite quotations from Doug is, if you think a psychiatrist didn’t learn psychiatry to solve their own problems, you’re sadly mistaken. Most of us from the financial world got into this to solve our own problems. I watched Mom and Dad fight over money, Barb, and I were in a trailer, I wanted a different life. So I got into the world where I can understand this better. And that’s probably many of your stories as well. So I looked at this and said, Listen, the smartest people I know, Six Sigma engineers, Baker grads from Harvard, that I take care of, are declining, they are not able to make the same decision today that they were able to make 1015 and 20 years ago, what kind of naive, narcissistic, what, how deluded would I have to believe to be that I wouldn’t follow suit. And I want the best decisions that I can have made for my legacy. Now, that doesn’t mean that I need to go from being able to make bold decisions to none in one fell swoop. And so I treat that trademark, the process that we call incremental incapacitation, that essentially says, When I can’t do this, as defined by my trust, my trust protector is to relieve me of these duties, right? Just like you can stay up past nine when you reach 14, or whatever the age is, or when you got your cell phone or, or whatever that was, were things were added. Now things are subtracted. Right. And so it’s an incremental process. One, I have found that kids are more apt to use it. Right? Most of us will have the conversation with mom and dad at some point in time about not driving the car, right? They they will do that Dad, you just can’t do it anymore. Right. But they don’t want to have the financial conversations. And they don’t want to have that personal part of that finance, which is so, so disruptive to people. Right. And so this gives the kids the ability, the successor trustees the ability via, in my case, the trust protector, to be able to step in and incrementally remove responsibilities, remove the ability for me to destroy things without taking away all of my choices at one time.

Brittany Anderson 24:23

Now, Joe, I’ll tell you a little funny here, when you’re talking about let’s just say your ability to do certain things going over over the years. I remember I was in high school and my dad at the time told me that if I ran for a local call it beauty pageant, just tried that I would lose my curfew. And I’ll tell you I did it just because I didn’t want to have which probably explains a lot about my adult life. But I also quickly realized I’m like, I don’t think I’m very good at being put inside the box and told where I have to exactly perform. I want to shine where I want to shine. So I just thought And that’s a critical point
of this video,

Joe Clark 25:01

I think most people are put in legacy document boxes because they don’t know the options that are out there. Most attorneys, in my opinion are not entrepreneurial inclined. Here’s the rule, follow the rule. Right. I have not taught when it comes to incremental incapacitation. I interviewed neurologist, federal judges, attorneys, lord knows the families that I take care of, I have yet to have anybody go, that’s not a that’s not a problem that needs a solution. But we don’t have one or we don’t want to get involved, or attorneys actually tell me that it’s too ambiguous? Well, for God’s sakes, there’s a reason I have to have an attorney and you have to have an attorney. That’s because documents by definition can often be ambiguous, you want the best trade, the I want the best trade in the deal. And so that’s why we have to have opposing counsel to be able to negotiate that inside of the trust, I don’t need that kind of excitement. Right? I don’t want that kind of excitement. Here’s my wills, here’s my wishes, here’s my needs. And here’s my trust protector to work between my beneficiaries and my trustees to make sure that those wishes are carried out that my legacy is protected, and not just left in a box, because some state said, here’s a great idea, pick a trustee, pick a solution. Now, don’t think about beneficiaries being different, right? You may, they may all be equal, they may look alike, they may be loved equally, but believe me, their lives are not equal. And so creating a distribution strategy where they’re treated equally, is not caring for that. Right. It’s it’s leaving them consequences that you didn’t intend to set up by a structure that is seemingly archaic to me. You know, it needs to be customized.

Brittany Anderson 27:01

I think that’s so dead on. So you know, Joe, you’ve kind of brought us through that incapacitation, and what that might look like, and you’ve talked about this incremental incapacitation. So why don’t most families implement these incapacitation tools?

Joe Clark 27:20

Well, because its nuclear option is what doesn’t get implemented. Nobody wants to tell me I can’t do anything. Right. And that’s, that’s essentially what you do that the some of that is, is the nuclear option. But that the the, we have biases in life, right. So I trademark the decision making process. And it starts with what do you want to believe to be true? Right, that way you can identify your bias. The challenge is, attorneys will do everything they can, by their nature to safeguard your power, right there. Their bias is that way they they want and that’s not a bad thing. They want to do everything they can to make sure that Brittany retains all of her rights. Anybody who intercedes with your rights, tries to take control, manipulate in any way, shape, or form, deviate from you being able to control your future, they’re going to try to perfect. That’s their that’s their bias. My point is, I understand the Joe that you’re hearing today is not the Joe that’s going to be here in 10 years, it’s certainly not going to be the Joe that’s here in 20 years. And I am trying to protect myself from myself in the future by knowingly and willingly giving away those rights under predetermined conditions that I have provided. Most attorneys are not willing to take that, to understand that and to apply that. Now you get into the second part of the equation, and it’s a thing I called character trust and competency trust. So character trust Brittany and I have because we’re in the same mastermind group, we’re in the same funny we have, we have things that we understand about each other she’s watched me for four or five years in the background. I’ve been able to watch her Brian and I’ve been friends for a long time. There is character trust, and and you can go and find it wherever you want to, you know, it’s we we have similar ideas, similar values, similar circumstances, that is character trust. Competency trust is my ability to manage and Ria, it is my ability to found a Trust Services Division and it goes through all of that. And quite frankly, your clients, my families that I serve, very few of them have the ability to measure our competency. Most of our relationships are driven around Character trust, not competency trust, when you get into the services industry, when we buy a car, it either drives or it doesn’t. right competencies determined very, very quickly when you leave the mechanic. It is not such when you leave the financial advisor, it’s not such when you are leaving a legal and will these documents work or won’t they work, right. And so we rely on character trust. And when I see most documents done, I have the unique, I can remember a lot of things still, to this day, I’ve got over 300 different law firm trust documents in my office. And I’ve read them all because I’m a geek, and some are good, and some are horrendous. And I won’t tell you which side more of I’m lean to. And what I want to make sure is that people understand what’s inside of their documents, that it matches their unique circumstance. And it gives them the flexibility that the legal world provides whether or not their their person that they’ve picked that goes to church with them, or fishes with them, or hunts with them, or wherever that character trust came from. I want to make sure that we have competency that’s involved to create those best documents.

Brittany Anderson 31:19

So, you know, Joe, I want to make sure we touch on another topic that is really important I’m going to start with this story is my grandfather was an engineer by trade worked for Rockwell before it was bowing. And at one point, he asked me a question about beneficiaries. And he said, Brittany, what do you typically see? Do you assign beneficiaries equally? Just because that’s how many kids or grandkids or whatever you have? Or do you wait it certainly, depending upon the individual circumstance? So I would be curious, Joe, how are beneficiaries not equal. Talking a little bit about family peace here.

Joe Clark 32:04

So let’s look at let’s look at our situation, Mama’s of modest means. We grew up as public educators, not with a lot of money, again, probably a lot like a lot of you. And Mom has money in a Roth IRA. Because Joe knew that one, she didn’t have the money to save but two she qualified. So I put the money inside of the Roth IRA and named me as beneficiary. Right now, I’m a successful entrepreneur. There’s no way to hide that. And my brother does quite well now. But for years, he was a pastor. So financially, just a wee bit different. If my brother was on the screen, you would not know the difference between he and I, we look identical, I’m substantially better looking at four inches taller, but other than that people commonly mistake us and in public. Right, but we are not equal in terms of assets. When my brother was only preaching the idea that he was a beneficiary equally in a Roth, and equally in an instrument that was tax deferred made no sense. Now, as registered investment advisors, fiduciaries, there’s not one of you that just heard that that doesn’t understand it. Sometimes it’s hard to convey that to families. But you understand the rule, you understand you never leave Roth money to a charity, but you certainly leave IRA and 401k money that is tax deferred to a charity, you understand that assets are different. What I will also tell you, though, is that beneficiaries are different in the way distributions need to be made. Most attorneys like to talk about special needs trust, if you go to somebody that calls himself an estate planner, and keep in mind, your secretary can call herself a financial advisor, there is no license for that, right? They can’t say they’re a CFP. They can’t say they’re a registered investment advisor. But you know, my daughter can declare herself a financial advisor, there’s no law against it. There’s also no law for an attorney to say I’m an estate planning attorney. Right there, there are certifications for it. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t use the title. Right? And so you’ve got character trust, you extend that character trust presuming competency trust, and voila, here we have a mess. But anyhow, back to the story. Special Needs is typically done for a special needs trust that’s typically done for somebody who’s on medical provisions from the federal or state government, currently, meaning they’re getting Medicaid or whatever. And so that special needs trust. There’s typically a clause that says something like if any of this money is ever deemed as reducing or removing benefits provided by the local legal entity, then those distributions aren’t stopped. You’ve given clear, precise instruction to the trustee, to make sure that distributions are not reclaimed. And that’s what trustees want. as clear direction, again, that’s why trust protector is so important, a trust protector can step in and kind of oversee that process to make sure that okay, we’re following the letter of the law. But that didn’t mean not to give the kid money, you’re just going to take them to Disney, you’re not going to afford the money and give it to the other beneficiaries. What I have found is it shouldn’t be called special needs, and should be deemed as special circumstances barbil. I’ve been married for 35 years, statistically, the probability of the divorce is very, very remote. But let’s face it, even though my family has not experienced divorce, it happens. I’ve seen some ugly stuff and 35 years of being in this industry, I would not want my trustee to deliver money to my child, if she was going through a divorce. I don’t foresee that, I hope it’s not happening. But I want to have a mechanism that’s in place to be able to deal with that. I can’t imagine one of my daughters getting hooked on opioids or taking up a gambling addiction. But over my dead body, am I working this hard to fuel the casino down the road, I need to have somebody that has the ability to make that determination. And so that’s where beneficiaries aren’t equal i i try to I fail sometimes Britany that I try to document mistakes that I’ve seen made. And I said this earlier, the probability of any one of the 200 documented oopsies that I’ve got, are not likely individually in your life or your kids lives later on. But the possibility that one of them could occur, could be a detriment, not a benefit to your beneficiary, even if the distribution is not properly strategy not strategized for their unique circumstances.

Brittany Anderson 36:53

Joe, again, I think that this session has been so value packed. And I know, you know, being in this industry, you really want to make sure that you have reliable resources when it comes to things like estate planning and legacy planning for your client. So if any of our adviser listeners want to reach out to you, what’s the next step? How do they get a hold of you? What do they do? What does that look like?

Joe Clark 37:19

So the the way that things happen, and I use this, I will tell you as a marketing tool, it was accidental, it’s what strategic coach would call a strategic byproduct, but I created a standard of care. So when advisors call us and so you, you can go to FBg trust.com, and find us, you can always email me, you know, me and finally on the on the worldwide web bridge, he’s got that in the show notes that you’ll be able to see that when I work with an advisor, and another custodian, and and they have a CPA that they want to work with, they have another advisor that they want to work with, I have a definition of standard of care, to be able to say as long as Brian sweet continues to provide these these measurable standards, then we will continue to use their services. As long as your CPA continues to function under this standard of care, we will continue as a trust serves as the trustee to use their services is we have 180 day guarantee for the pension to the financial enhancement group, our IRA, here’s here’s what we do. And that stands for the things that are on that list. Surprisingly enough matter to me. If I was going to employ an RIA, I would want most of those things offered to me. Right? So this is not tough stuff. This is what most of you already do. But by documenting in a standard of care. When Brian comes in and says, Joe, I want you to work with my favorite thing. I don’t have time to put together a Trust Services Division. It’s not near as simple creating it and running it as it sounds on the open end. It’s easy on the front stage. There’s some difficulty on the backstage but I got that that’s my job. That’s our in house counsel. It’s the work that I put into it for the last five or 10 years. But so now we’re taking care of one of Brian’s families Brian still the financial advisor Brian still getting paid his Ira fees, he’s just not really losing the relationship to a kid who’s coming in and taking over the management of the assets. He’s not losing the business because the guy watch the CNN news story or heard of Fox Business thing and thought here’s a great idea let’s buy nothing but gold or so you’ve got a somebody to be able to step in is that middle person to help Brian complete the financial journey? Right? That’s how it’s designed to do that when you create that standard of care letter. And you’re able to show it to people and say this is what you know, this is what they have to do it at the GE or they get fired. Right? This is what have to do at Sweet financial or they get fired. All of a sudden people go wow, like the bank down the streets not doing that, you know, the the Jones office down the street, you know that guy’s a great guy goes to church with me i golf with him every week, but he’s not doing that. Right. And it’s I found that as a strategic byproduct to help grow the other side of our firm and, you know, feel free to use it. FBg trust.com your life after work.com is our Ria. If you want to get more than news stories, happy to help and if you want to get on our mailing list, you know for ideas that come out the the incremental incapacity will be a word that you hear for many years to come. And so I spent the money to trademark and it is the number one thing that is missing in most people’s trust is that nuclear option. As longevity increases, we need to have an answer for ourselves and for the people we serve.

Brittany Anderson 40:58

Joe, one of our main objectives with this podcast and with ultimate advisor coaching as a whole is to put resources in front of our advisor audience to help them differentiate themselves, and to help them really stand out to provide exceptional service. And you my friend have absolutely delivered on that today. So Joe, thank you so much for your time. It is the only commodity we can’t replace and get more of. So we’re so grateful for you

Joe Clark 41:25

very well. It’s great to be here. Brittany, I wish you nothing but the best and look forward to seeing you soon.

Brittany Anderson 41:29

Awesome. That wraps up today’s episode of The Ultimate advisor podcast. We’ll catch you right back here next time.