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The Practical Planner
Estate Planning Myths, Roadblocks and Solutions with Brent Weiss, Co-Founder of Facet
00:35:10
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- [00:00]
Brent Weiss
Foreign.
- [00:11]
Thomas Coleman
What is up? And welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Practical Planner podcast. I'm your co host, Thomas Coleman, here with me, Ann, and then Brent Weiss, who is the CEO of Facet Wealth. Super excited to have him on today. Talk a little bit about state planning and just really how advisors are using technology in their practice. So, Brent, thanks for joining us today, man.
- [00:32]
Brent Weiss
Yeah. Hey, Thomas. Great to be here. It's a pleasure. I do have to issue one little correction. I am not the CEO.
- [00:36]
Thomas Coleman
Oh, okay.
- [00:37]
Brent Weiss
I am. I am a co founder, but I'm not the CEO. I'm our head. I am our head of financial wellness because I'm a certified financial planner and a smattering of other, like, element Op certification. Just a quick clarification.
- [00:47]
Thomas Coleman
Oh, that's fair. That's on me. I should have been a little better prepared.
- [00:50]
Brent Weiss
No, no worries at all.
- [00:51]
Thomas Coleman
But glad to have you here. Also, love the background. I love the wall. Looks so good.
- [00:56]
Brent Weiss
Oh, well, good. I. If you knew how much money I put into. Actually have a soundproof studio around here. If you know how much money I put into it, it better look good. I actually installed these wood slats sound paneling myself, so it's about the only handy thing I will ever do around the house. But I feel pretty good about it.
- [01:12]
Thomas Coleman
I was gonna say there's, like, videos on, like, all over social media of people doing that, and I just have just accepted that I'm not going to be the person who can do that myself, but maybe.
- [01:21]
Brent Weiss
Look, 98% of the stuff around the house, I will not do this seemed like something I was going to do. It was like the. The. The fine. It was the home stretch, the last thing that had to get done. So I hope for the viewers here, Thomas and Ann, ultimately, that it sounds good when the podcast goes live.
- [01:38]
Thomas Coleman
Well, we know it'll always sound better than Anne's. Anne's always. Ann is always the one that has problems.
- [01:42]
Ann
I'm in the middle of a city, and I swear to God, like, I was thinking about this. I was like, soundproof room. Yeah. Like, where would I install that? There is nothing around me that is, like, remote, close to that. So, anyways, yes, Power washing outside the window today. So that's good.
- [01:57]
Thomas Coleman
Well, anyways, let's dive right into it. So, Brent, like, obviously you're a financial planner. You know, one thing that we wanted to talk about today is just some of, like, the big estate planning myths that you see with, you know, obviously all the clients at Facet.
- [02:10]
Brent Weiss
Well, I. Look, I've Been, this is a milestone year for me. This is my 20th year in the industry as a financial advisor. And even saying that like, gives me pause. Like, it's been 20 years. Like, holy cow. So, so what I'm going to share with you is like my, my, what I've Learned in my 20 years. Not just here at FAST. I think, look, I've, I've been doing this for a long time, not only being a financial advisor, but actually from day one of my career. Our take was that like financial planning done right should actually not just help you like build and grow wealth, but also help you protect it, which is where estate planning comes in. I, I think the misconceptions that, that I've seen in the industry is like, number one, you have to be rich to need an estate plan, right? I'd actually argue it's almost more important if you don't have a lot of wealth yet because you're protecting things that matter more. Your health, your wealth, your family, all of these things. Number two, this is my favorite. It's like it has to be really hard to get and really expensive. But I think this is, this is like the old school way, right? It's like you had to go sit down for a half day consult with an estate planning attorney down the street. You didn't know if you could trust him. You had to write him a check for a couple thousand dollars and they send you this book of documents. You're like, I don't even know what's in it, right? And so I think what happens is like, people are like, well, I don't know that I really need it. I don't really want to have to go to this hard, expensive thing. And like, I'm just not going to do it. And by the way, it's the one thing in my 20 year career, despite the fact that I bring it up all the time, that usually takes people like six or nine months to actually do it.
- [03:34]
Thomas Coleman
I think that's a really important one to accept because I think sometimes advisors are like, hey, you know, why haven't you got your estate planning done? And you, you know, I think when you, especially as a new relationship with a client, there's a lot of things to get done and we can all accept that that is the least fun one, right? And so they're going to start with investments, they're going to start moving cash around, maybe they're going to pay off debt, they're going to do some of the fun things and then eventually you're going to get to this quarter where you're like, what's on our task list? And what I found is I don't give them anything else besides estate planning when we're on the topic. Because other times you can be like, all right, let's get your backdoor Roth done. You know, move cash around, whatever, and they'll do them. But estate planning is a big, big enough one in itself. And if you give them three other tasks, they're going to get those three done and skip that one. So I love that you did say that because it's important for us to level set and understand how people actually behave.
- [04:23]
Brent Weiss
Well, I mean, think about this way too. I mean, to your point, it's not just estate planning and then understanding the documents you need, then each of those documents have a set of like underlying tasks of like deciding who's going to be your executor, like who's going to manage your estate if something happens to you. Like, what about if you have kids? I have a 10 month old daughter who's going to be my guardian. Right. If it's not, if it's not my wife, is it my brother, my sister, my mom? Like there's all these like different questions and I think just people freeze a little bit. Right?
- [04:49]
Ann
For sure. And in private practice, I will tell you, on the, on this side of the house, you know what we would end up seeing are people coming in. They have this, like this energy. Finally I'm going to get my estate planning done. Right. And so they meet with you for a half hour to do that initial intake. They like you, they sign your engagement letter and then they kind of like peter out and disappear because it's like you lost that moment. Right. Like when they had momentum and then something else comes up in their lives and they're just like, I did away with, you know, not having the estate plan and then they come back and it's always right before a big vacation and they're like, I got my tickets, I forgot I don't have my estate plan. This needs to be done in like two days because that's when my plane leaves and I need a notary. Right. And so it's just like this, like pacing just is not great. And I cannot tell you the number of times when, when we did placeholder, like wills, which you're not supposed to do in California. You're supposed to have a trust and. But just because that person was going on vacation and the thing they really cared about, that they had already aligned on with their spouse was Guardianship, they knew, like, that was the thing that mattered to them the most. Which is interesting because it's not binding, but, you know, you want to nominate the people that you love to and that you trust to take care of your kids. But we would do, like, placeholder wills and just be like, please come back. Like, when you're actually back from South Africa, can you please, Like, I guess.
- [06:10]
Brent Weiss
The question, like, how many times did they come back? Right? I mean, I mean, look, like, all kidding aside, though, I mean, like, even as a financial planner, like, we do a lot of work with you guys. I think you have. Now, by the way I should preface this by telling everybody is like, it doesn't have to be all of these things. It's not just for wealthy people. It doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to be, like, expensive. That's like. That's like revealing the secret to all of this, right? But I'm a financial planner and I had a daughter, and I'm trying to get estate planning documents, and now I'm a business owner, so there's a whole bunch of things going on. So it's pretty complicated. And when I sat down with an estate planning. And by the way, I like my estate planning attorney. But then the comment was, hey, you know what you need before we can get started is like, here's my big engagement letter. You got to pay me this retainer up front. And oh, by the way, can you upload all of your estate planning documents from the past so I can read them? And I'm just going, dude, you need to remove some of the friction and just let me come in and do this. Now, I understand as an attorney, I'm not one, by the way, but on his end, as an attorney, there's a lot of stuff you got to get right. Maybe there's like, there's risk on the attorney side, but we have to understand when we think about especially these bigger tasks. And by the way, estate planning also feels harder because the emotional connection to it, right? Like opening up a Roth IRA and putting in a couple thousand dollars is a heck of a lot easier than like, oh, I gotta name somebody if I die, or if I'm, like, incapacitated, like, oh, geez, like, imagine that weight on your shoulder. And then we come in, and a lot of times traditional estate planning attorneys, like, make it harder as a part of the job. Then is like, how do we actually make it feel like something that's really important to you're protecting everything. You work so hard For. And then how do we remove all of the friction from the process? Which is, I think, where wealth.com, i mean, in many ways, but where wealth.com really starts to shine is getting rid of some of those friction points that are really going to stop people from taking action on this.
- [07:54]
Thomas Coleman
Well, that's like the founding story from rof, right? Like, he was basically sold. The company, went through estate planning. It was like, this is horrible. I know tech. I know there's a better way to create it. So it's funny that you said all of that. And I actually kind of want to go back to the, like, placeholder will idea because I think this is something that is. I don't think we've ever talked about it, but I think it does have a lot of value. One thing that we do a lot of times is, like, you have a lot going on. You're in the middle of selling a business, right? Like, or whatever. It's helpful. Let's get a will in place. Because you're like 40 with three kids and you don't even have a will. And I know you're not going to start an estate planning for six months or 12 months from now. It is a pretty valuable tool that I don't think people talk about enough. When you could use wealth to just be like, great, take 10 minutes. Let's get a will in place. Let's have this for the next year until you can go through that full process that realistically is going to take you three to six months.
- [08:44]
Ann
And I think to Brent's point about friction, I mean, Brent, I love that you say that word because. Because there is friction. Because it was expensive. All of a sudden you get your like 3 inch thick binder and you're like, I'm never doing this for the next 10 years. It's just fun and not something that I want to, like, spend money on again. And so I better get it, like, perfectly right. The attorney wants me to get it perfectly right, and I want to get it perfectly right. But the thing is, whose lives don't change for 10 years, right? And so the idea that, like, you should be doing it every three to five years, which, by the way, every attorney is telling you to do, you're like, hell, no, I am going to put that off. Like, thank you for checking this off and like, you know, moving on. And I will tell you, like, I updated my personal trust, so my first One was in 2021, and I just updated it so like three to five years. And it didn't feel that painful because, you know, now that there are tech solutions, you know, I had two kids, bought a house in that time. Like for those younger folks who are like undergoing a lot of those, like, life milestones, like, a lot of it is just going to be, I mean, like a placeholder, but it's actually like a real document, but it's just moving with you as you live your life. So that word of like placeholder may not be totally accurate for what I did, but, you know, you get the point.
- [10:06]
Brent Weiss
So I actually had a coworker of mine who's also a certified financial planner that, and I was talking about, I was actually talking to a lot of our planners about, like, how do we shift the mindset around what estate planning is? Because I think if we're honest, like, estate planning has like a marketing and PR problem, right? Because it's always marketed like if you die or if you're sick. Well, nobody really wants to talk about that. But we were think, we were trying to think about, we're not really selling estate planning. We are serving and making sure we're taking care of our members and the things they work so hard for. And so we're just talking about, like, how do you shift the mindset around people? How do people approach estate planning differently or think about it differently? And a lot of times, to your point, right, it feels like this, this binding thing, it's almost like you're handed this like tablet and stone that you have to like chisel out and you can't do anything with it for a while. But he's like, you know what I, you know what I say to my members? We have a membership here at fast. It's a. That's synonymous for clients, but we call them members. And he goes, you know, I tell my members, he goes, think of it this way, he goes, your first pass should kind of be like your B minus paper that you'd submit to your, to your professor, right? And it's like, then down the road we'll worry about the B plus or the A or improving kind of thing, but just get the B minus paper to start. And to me, that really hit because I'm not the greatest writer. I wasn't a big reader back in high school or college kind of thing. I was like, yeah, I could do a B minus paper pretty quickly, but you said, you need to get an a in your 4.0. Then you start to freeze and then you start to think about the 17 decisions you have to make. And all of a sudden you go, oh, no. So maybe it's not placeholder, but maybe it's like, get the baseline documents in place that really matter to you, and we can figure out perfect down the road. But let's put something like, let's make progress, get something in place, and we'll figure out the rest. As to your point and as your life will change probably in the next six or 12 months.
- [11:44]
Thomas Coleman
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I think that's a really good way to look at. I think depending on the group and kind of where they're at, wealth, wealth wise, really depends on, like, what the goal of this is. Because for a lot of the really wealthy people out there, right, like generational wealth, helping their family, all those are really big goals. So I think if you approach estate planning is like, make sure you have this in case you die is very different than, like, you worked really, really hard for this money. Make sure it actually goes to the right place, places. Otherwise, why are we still working and building more wealth? Right?
- [12:13]
Ann
Yeah.
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Brent Weiss
Well, I mean, look where it is. I mean, you might actually know where this comes from. But I'm just thinking, like in my head, like, where does estate planning come from? I think it conjures up this idea of, like, actually having, you know, 100 acres of land and big mansions and estate sitting on them. Right. It's like, oh, if I have an estate, then I need. Which leads to the misconceptions here around, like, I have to have a lot of money. There has to be something going on. And. But. And this is where I go back to. Like, I think it's actually more important for people who are just getting started in their jokes. I hate saying, like, that. Have less wealth, but are just getting started in their journey. Because, look, I think really good estate planning for wealthy families that I've worked with in my career in 20 years. You know, one of the main benefits. Yes. Is making sure your money goes to the right people, but is reducing your taxes. Okay. And look, I'm not saying you don't want to do that, but if someone's worth $100 million and they pay estate taxes, only give 50 or 60 million dollars to their kids, like, they're probably going to be fine. Right? But if you have five hundred thousand million dollars, you've worked really hard for it, you have two kids that are younger, you want to make sure they go to a good college, get a good education, are well prepared for opportunities in life, like, it actually matters more in my opinion. Right. Yes. Like, the dollars might be smaller, but I would, I Would argue the impact is greater. And that's why to me, by the way, if you want to talk about, like, my role as a financial advisor, and we were kind of chatting before the show started, is like, I don't look at this as estate planning is like someone else's job now. I'm not an attorney, so I can't write the documents. I actually see it as a place for me to elevate my role as an advisor to, like, a trusted life partner. Yeah. And be able to say, look, I care about you. I'm looking at everything holistically to make sure that you, your family, your kids are okay. A really important, important piece of that is estate planning. I don't happen to do it because I'm not an attorney. Right. But we have a great partnership, a great team that'll help you get in place. It's easier using technology, using these platforms. Gone are the days of, you know, taking a full day off of work and driving through an estate planning attorney's office. You can actually get this stuff in place quickly and affordably and have that peace of mind. Like, that's the role that I think financial advisors should be playing in all this. But I think so many people are like, hey, here's some information. Go get it. And they don't actually follow up with accountability. The actions, the nudges to professionally bug our members to make sure they finally get it done.
- [14:22]
Thomas Coleman
Yeah, I think you hit on a lot of good points there. I think statistically, we know advisors are the push for people to get their estate plan done. We talked about it maybe a year and a half or two years ago. I think the stats, like, 71% of people get their estate plan done because their financial advisor set it up in some way. So I think it is important for us advisors to know, like, if we're not doing it, we're not talking about it. I don't even know if you can really consider yourself a fiduciary because you're missing out on one of the biggest parts of financial planning, wealth creation, et cetera. So I think that's a really important part. And I think too, the nudges.
- [14:55]
Ann
Right.
- [14:55]
Thomas Coleman
Like going back to what you're talking about before, we can't just assume you say, you guys need a state plan, go do it. Right. And a lot of advisors do approach it that way. There's like, go do it 1. Where do I do it? Who do I go with? Like, the local estate planning attorney might not specialize in business owners that I know or Might be a higher or lower audience, might be more expensive or too cheap, but then on top of it, like the follow up, right? And so I think, you know, we're talking about these myths. I think people believe one, the estate plan is done. I'm done. It's like, no, you just started. We have funding the trust. We have beneficiary designations. We have thinking about IRAs, for example, right. Should your IRA, the contingent beneficiary, be a trust? Maybe, but not when your kids are over 18. Because now we have different rules on distributions. Like, there is so much that we need to be included in, and if we aren't educating them on it, there's just no way that we should be expecting them to get it done. Because I remember, like, before I even started in this, I wanted to go through the estate planning process like I was told to do it, right? You're kind of out of college, probably earlier than most. I had no idea what any of it meant. Like, it took me years of, like, studying this topic to feel like I knew anything about it. But then we assume our clients should know everything about it. You should hand it off, and they should be like, great, easy executor, you know, guardian. You know, where do I want all my things to go? We think they should know it and they just. They shouldn't. That should be our job to teach them it.
- [16:12]
Brent Weiss
Well, I mean, look, you know, I. The. One of my favorite books is the Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. And what he says is, like, financial decisions aren't made in, like, spreadsheets, right? They're made around the dinner table. They're made at, like, soccer games. But, like, what happens after a meeting with your financial advisors? All of a sudden you go out there and you have two kids and you have hockey practice over here in lacrosse and, or like ballet. Like, life happens. You're so going, oh, there's just too many things not getting it done. You know what I loved about what you, what you said? There is like the, the fiduciary responsibility of a financial advisor. Now that, that, that's like a. That's a whole nother topic that we can tackle later, right? I truly do look at that and go, part of my job is to actually make sure that our members are not just building wealth, but protecting that wealth. The other part of our job is not just to give them advice. It's actually to help them take action on the advice that we render.
- [17:00]
Thomas Coleman
It's almost the bigger part, right?
- [17:01]
Brent Weiss
Because like, I, I always jokingly say it's like, how valuable is advice if you never actually take action on it? It's not, it doesn't actually change your life. And so therefore it's not very valuable. Which is why. And look, I know this isn't like, I'm not trying to make this a sales pitchforwealth.com, but I truly do love the solution. Like, honestly, I'll say this after 20 years of doing it, because you have a platform online, it's easier and intuitive to go through. You can do it all online and digitally for the most part, right? It is a heck of a lot more affordable than going to Joe Schmo, attorney down the street. It's a heck of a lot higher quality than the legal zooms of the world. And you can actually get this stuff done. And also then you can update it when life changes, because it will. And as a financial advisor, I'm sitting there going like, how do I make my life easier as well? So I can spend my time building relationships, helping helping my members build and grow their wealth over time, achieve their goals. And then I know we have a great partnership where I can help them sort of check the boxes and things that matter too, right? The insurance side, the estate planning side, all of these things matter. And frankly to me, like financial planning done right should include all of this. And then it's our job to make sure our members actually do the thing and improve their lives overall.
- [18:06]
Thomas Coleman
And going back to the nudges, I really take, I really use the reset. Re invite, re invite, re invite. Like I have my admin team go in there like every couple of weeks to once a month and just reinvite people over and over and over until they get it done that we meet. It's on our topic list. It's on the follow up task. It's in right capital. We have a whole spot of just their homework tasks that are there. Hit Reinvite, hit Reinvite and eventually it gets done.
- [18:31]
Brent Weiss
Well, one of the things I always so the way, by the way. So like I introduced the topic of estate planning to a lot of people worked with in 20 years. So if anyone's watching this podcast and you I've had this conversation with you, you know how I do this already, but I always go in there. It's like, look, this is not going to be the most fun thing you ever do. It's not going to be the sexiest thing you ever do. It's never going to make you cool at the next cocktail party, but it will matter to the people that you care about most. And it's like, what am I talking about? Estate planning. And I always get the. Like, there's this bro, like, I'm going to have to do this. Like, Brent's going to, like, give me some homework and make me go do it. But then it's like, look, I do this because I care, right? I'm not making you do this because I want you to do some historically really hard task that does nothing for you. It's incredibly high value, and I want to see you get it done. And then at the end of the meeting, I asked for permission to professionally bug them over time. Because I know this is traditionally the one thing that just sort of like hangs out there for a while, you know, and we gotta check in and say, did you do it? Did you do it? What. What questions can I answer for you, by the way, to help you prepare for your first step? But there is a. There is a thing around accountability, making a commitment, having something you're gonna do right, and then having somebody to hold you accountable as a coach to say, hey, Ann, when are you gonna get this done right? It might take you six months, but I'm gonna be there and when we get it over. By the way, we used to call these at my first company. We called them Execution Parties. Horrible name, but very in line with, like, what most people think about when it comes to estate planning and the estate planning process. But they would laugh, they would giggle. We made a little bit fun, as fun as estate planning can be. So it got people over that hump of how you really feel about it and go, look, you're doing this because it's really good for you, your family, your health and your wealth. Not just at the vent if you pass away in the future. And it's really important, like, let's get it done. How do we do that?
- [20:16]
Thomas Coleman
Totally. Totally. I want to kind of go to the next topic I wanted to hit on, which is kind of, you know, how advisors can help. And I know we've hit on this a little bit, but the reason why I think it's important is the other day on LinkedIn, somebody posted about, like, how thankful they were to have wealth and how much it's helped their practice. And one of the advisors commented saying, I disagree. I've tried the different ones and I can't. I can't ever get any clients to get the estate plan done. And I have some thoughts here, but I'm curious on your thoughts on that. And you know, where the advisor can.
- [20:47]
Brent Weiss
Better help well, look, I think first and foremost is making sure you bring it up as start of financial planning. I think when we go back to one of the founding days of fafsa, which is, I mean, we're at nine years now, coming up on a decade, one of the things we looked at and said, financial advice in general is typically limited to investments in retirement planning. There's a longer story about that's primarily how advisors get paid. You want to gather assets, you want to get the money, you want to charge Aum, blah, blah, blah. That's not how we charge. But this is not as fast as pitch. This is about planning. So I think number one is actually making it part of the financial planning process. Right. I think number two is really helping people understand why it's so important. Right. I think a lot of people come in like, nobody wants to buy an estate plan, but they do want to make sure that everything they work so hard for and everyone they love is protected and taken care of. And I think when you start having those conversations, feel like, you know what it is shifting how I think about it. Um, so I always, I make sure I bring it up and say, look, I wouldn't be doing my job if I wasn't having this conversation with you. It's like. And I understand. And this is why I always have a little fun with it. Right? I understand. You're not. This is not the first thing you're going to do. Okay. But it's on my list. I'm going to bring it up. I'm going to make sure you get it done, and I'm here for you along the way. And if three months from now we have a conversation, it's not done, it's like, hey, here's my list. Remember, estate planning is on there. So when are we going to get this done? Answering their questions, supporting them, making sure. And then being there to answer questions too, right. As they go through, and then making sure they get it done at least in a relatively short period of time. And I think if you, by the way, be beginning of this conversation here, I started sharing with you, I think differently about what financial advisors do. Yes. Financial advice matters, Right. Helping our members with their spending habits, savings, investings and diversification, all that kind of good stuff, achieving their goals. I look at it and go, one of the things I say to everybody I work with is like, I want to be top five, at least top 10 on your speed dial when things in your life happen. Right. One of the ways we can do that is by sort of Being the person they can lean on, rely on, call on for anything that touches their financial life. And so I look at estate planning and go, it's not just something that we can convince someone to do. It's actually part of the role that we play as like a valued life partner, not just a financial advisor for our members. And I think when financial advisors make that shift and they start thinking like, how can I better serve my members holistically with their health and well being, that I think you start to provide. First of all, by the way, if your members are calling you about these things, that's a good thing. That means they're coming to you because you are their trusted advisor in life, not just for the financial stuff. So these are some of the shifts that I've used in my careers of 20 years. It's what we talk about here internally at Facet for our financial planners who work with our members across the country. And then wealth.com has become, quite frankly the most seamless solution for us to connect the advice to actually taking action and getting those estate. Estate planning documents. Excuse me. In place.
- [23:44]
Thomas Coleman
Yeah, I love that. A few points I want to hit on one on like process side of things. You know, one thing that I found to be, to be successful with is like, you know, we meet our clients, we have a bunch of meetings, we deliver a financial plan on every topic area and estate planning is what one of them. And then we take all those action items and build them into phases. Estate planning, except for people who are like pressing matter, maybe they're selling a business. We need some irrevocable trust, things like that. State planning, typically for us comes in phase three. That's the only thing we talk about. They know, great. We have meeting, that's phase one. The next meeting's phase two. The next meeting's phase three. In that call, I set them up onto what they need to know. Whether I'm going to an attorney or I'm going to wealth. I am educating them on all the questions I know that they're going to have on the estate planning process. Like, how do I pick an executor? Should that be my brother? Should it be my dad? You know, trustee? Same thing. Should it be? Can my adult kid be that? Hey, I kind of have seen some issues with that with different siblings. Right. Should it be my parent? Well, they're a little older. It can, but we need to update it. Should it be a friend? Should it be professional trustee? Like, there's just all these questions. I know my clients are going to have. And so I prep them for it. And so when I go back to the question I had before of like, you know, some people saying that their clients aren't getting it done, I think about it this way, right? If I'm like, hey, client, you need to do a backdoor Roth, go do it. They would have no idea. They don't know they need to roll IRAs places. They don't know they need to fund the traditional IRA first. They don't know they need to convert it. They don't know what documents they need to send to their cpa. You would never expect them to get it done. But advisors, for some reason, think you need to get your estate plan done. And then they come back three months later and they're like, why didn't you do anything? I invited you to wealth.com, for example. How come you didn't do anything? They're like, I didn't know what to do. I opened it and I. All of a sudden I got stuck. And, you know, that really is a language issue. Right. For us as advisors, our job is to best tee you up where we've already helped you think through all the pain points, all the questions. And then if you get stuck, we've also educated you that you come to me, you say, hey, I'm trying to think about this. You know, do I need a contingent X, Y and Z, or how do I pick this person? Email me, I'll answer the question. You go back to it. But if you don't set them up to be successful in it, you can't blame the client. You have to blame yourself as an advisor.
- [25:54]
Brent Weiss
Yeah, I think that is incredibly well said. I mean, some things that come to mind for me, like from a behavioral finance perspective is, you know, I always say the three is of financial planning are implementable or implementable. Well, excuse me. Iterative, imperfect, and implementable. Right. The whole idea is like, how do we just get started? How do we take these small steps? I think this whole idea of, like, get an estate plan, that's overwhelming.
- [26:17]
Thomas Coleman
Yeah.
- [26:17]
Brent Weiss
But hey, and by the way, so, I mean, here's a small step. Sign up real quick. Go on, complete a questionnaire, ping me with any questions. I love this idea of preparing people in advance again, removing the friction points in that we talked about earlier. It's like, you're gonna have points of friction. How do we get ahead of them and make sure that they're. That our clients, or members, as we call them, are ready for that journey? Because, you know, one of the Things that we always miss as planners is thinking that they know what we know. Of course they know how to name a guardian or of course they know what an agent is or within their financial power of attorney document. All that's going to happen is we're going to get there, we're going to freeze and go, oh, who do I name? I mean usually like the first person sometimes, especially if you're like, you know, you're in a relationship or whatever. But then you start getting like the contingent who's you going to name like as a, as a second person to take care of this stuff and you start hitting all these pain points. So I love that, like keep it simple and educate in advance. If you do that, you'll start to remove some of those friction points and you'll actually probably see people take action, protect what they're building, AKA called getting an estate plan.
- [27:16]
Ann
Yeah, and I will say this too, you know, especially if you are dealing with a couple, right? Like make sure from the get go to set the stage with the other spouse because they will need to be coordinated on an estate plan ideally, right. Put a name as a guardian, like if you're, or you know, an executor. Thomas, if you're having kind of like those kind of fact finding conversations in the beginning, make sure that that other person is in that room too. Just because then all of a sudden that will cause, you know, potentially delays because they have to then relay the same conversation to their spouse.
- [27:53]
Brent Weiss
Yes, that is a great. This is, I mean, look, I'm, I'm a big believer that a lot of financial choices for couples should be made collectively. That doesn't mean you have to, but I think this is one where you probably should be collaborating a bit and having a deeper conversation around, you know, hey, what are we doing? What do we want to protect? What do we want to do for ourselves and for our kids? Ultimate if you have kids kind of thing. I think that's an excellent point, which.
- [28:15]
Ann
Is great for you, Brent, if your goal is to be, you know, in the favorites section of their phones, right? Like the top five to 10, like you want to do that for both people and the couple. Right. And so, and guess what? Like estate planning is that moment in time where you will have a surviving spouse. And so to be in the Rolodex for both spouses is, is super important. So use that actually as the opportunity. If you don't usually speak to the spouse, you know, you have kind of like a, a part of a half of the couple that tends to engage you more. Engage the other half using estate planning, too. It's actually kind of a neat reset.
- [28:54]
Brent Weiss
I'll share with you two stories. One is how you know you've been a good financial advisor for somebody. It's something that happened for at Facet here. And then number two is, you know, one of the moments in my career that I'm very proud of. I'm not happy it occurred, but I'm very proud of. Number one is, you know, when you think about what's the role of a financial advisor in the future with AI and technology people, is it going to replace the financial advisor? I think it'll replace some of the technical aspects, but I look at as not replacing me as an advisor, but it elevates my role in terms of what I can do for the families and the individuals I work with. It is like, to me, it's like the greatest opportunity we're going to have. It can feel scary and daunting, but I think it's a great opportunity. But when we, earlier, when we. A couple years after we, we started Facet, we got a text message from one of our members. And by the way, I know text messaging, all that kind of jazz, but we didn't ask for it. We didn't talk about financial advice. It was a picture of him, he and his wife having their first child in the delivery room. Okay. Now, you couldn't see some of the other stuff going on there, but he's like, this is amazing. I had to share this with you. Can I open a 529 plan from the delivery room? Okay, ladies and gentlemen out there, you know that you've done a good job as an advisor. When your members are doing that for you, that's the relationship you want to build with people, and that's the relationship that I take pride in. And that's the relationship we want to build with our members here at Facet. Like, that's really cool. Now, the final story I'll share here is a less exciting one. But I remember the day I got that phone call from one of my, I said clients at my previous firm, by the way, who called me and her husband had just passed away. I shared the story last week with, with our team of planners and, like, gave me chills. And it's very emotionally, as I mentioned it today, that's a hard thing. That's a hard phone call to get. The. The thing I'm proud of in that moment is I was able to go to that client of mine and say, you will be okay financially. Because we had done a plan for her. She had estate planning documents for her family. When I shared that with her, the sigh of relief that I heard through the phone, I was able to say, you know, call her Pam. That's not her actual name. Right. You're going to be okay. Because she's asking, are the kids going to be okay? I said, your family will be okay. Go spend time with them. Call me when you're ready. I'll take care of everything else. That moment, I hope that never happens for anybody. It'll come for all of us one day. Okay. Unless longevity sciences really kicks in, and who knows what's going to happen. Biblical ages are coming, right? Like, I don't want that to happen to people. But when something in your life does, knowing that you've. You've put in the time and the work to make sure that everything's taken care of and protected. As an advisor, that's a very proud moment for me. And as someone who's had family members go through some stuff, who didn't have documents for various reasons, you realize how important this is. And that's not to, like, carry too much weight on this, on this idea of estate planning. It's just the importance of doing the right things when it comes to your finances. And I think more importantly, the really important role that we have as financial advisors and planners to do really great work for our members.
- [31:51]
Thomas Coleman
I completely agree. Well, I think this has been an awesome episode. Before we wrap up, I do want to give you a little bit of opportunity to talk a little bit about FAFSA for maybe the advisors who haven't heard about it, and then we'll wrap it up.
- [32:04]
Brent Weiss
Yeah. Geez. Yeah. You want, like, the 32nd version? We could go like, on for like.
- [32:08]
Thomas Coleman
Three hours for sure.
- [32:10]
Brent Weiss
Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, I. I always, you know, when people come in and say, brent, what do you do? I always jokingly go back and say, well, the boring version is that I'm a financial planner and actually go, what does that mean? Like, oh, I'm glad you asked. Right. I'm sort of setting up for the conversation. Here's the bottom line. I always answer this question not with, like, what I do or what we do with what we believe. And our take is that unbiased, personalized financial advice that integrates into every facet of your life is essential to living well. Right. Financial advice being financially healthy is no longer, like, optional or something that should be exclusive to wealthier families. Our role is not just to democratize Financial advice, but it's to reimagine the role of money in our lives. And so we started that company in 2016 with the idea, kind of a similar to wealth.com, of how do you blend together this idea of traditional financial advice with technology to lower cost, increase efficiency, access. We were virtual from day one before COVID Right. And so the whole idea is like, how do we make sure that we take really high quality financial advice and make it more affordable and accessible to everybody out there, to Main street, not just to Wall Street. Now, I will say that the primary differences are, you know, we do our work virtually. You do work with dedicated CFP professionals. We charge a flat membership fee. There's no percentage of assets thing. I hate that model, by the way. I know there's like a strong sort of belief around that, but I do not like it. Flat membership fee. And it's just something we're really proud of and we've seen it by, you know, we have about 20,000 members here at Facet, and we're growing and we're proud of what we do, and we do great service for our members every single day.
- [33:40]
Thomas Coleman
I love it. And with your, like, spiel about, like, this isn't Wall street, but Main Street, I was like, you should have taken all Street. I'm really glad you didn't, because that's our name. But it could have fit perfectly for that.
- [33:51]
Brent Weiss
I love it. Yeah. I mean, look, great, great minds think alike. And I think my closing comments will be this. I think they're something that people always get wrong about me is they think I'm running around telling people that all financial planners are bad. That's baloney. There are really good financial advisors out there doing really good work. And I always say, when you're looking for a financial advisor, look for a good financial advisor. Okay? Somebody who's like, high quality, ethical number one. Right. Number two, look for somebody does like, good financial planning, so looks at everything holistically and then look at the fee. Right. I have very strong perspectives on that. But, like, there are a lot of good people out there doing a lot of good work in an industry where there hasn't been totally right. And I look at this and I go for wealth.com here for us. Look, estate planning isn't easy to get done, but there are companies out there who are challenging the status quo to say there are really important things that we all need. I'll repeat that. That we all need regardless of our income and wealth. And I think wealth.com is doing a great job filling that gap.
- [34:48]
Thomas Coleman
Couldn't have said it better myself, Brian. Well, we really appreciate you coming on and kind of diving into this topic with us. This was an awesome episode, and thanks for being here as always. And everybody, thank you for listening. Please don't forget to rate and subscribe, and we'll see you back here in a couple weeks.
- [35:02]
Brent Weiss
Bye, everybody.