$15k Client Loss ... and How Caring, Holistic Lawyers Can Do It Better

Ali Katz:
If you can dive into that world and really understand how to help your clients get access to capital, what an asset to your business owner clients. What an asset, right? Because that's what many of them are often thinking about. If you can dive into the world of intellectual property and how to help them make sure they're protecting what they have, if you can dive into the world of contracts and help them make sure that they've got the right contracts and agreements in place, if you can dive into the world of entity management for tax savings using multiple entities to save money on taxes and really understand that, have a really fantastic relationship with a CPA that gets it and can help you and your clients make great decisions, what an asset you become.

Ali Katz:
Hello and welcome to the NewLaw podcast where we guide entrepreneurial lawyers to build law practices into businesses they love. I'm Ali Katz.

Ali Katz:
In today's episode, you are going to hear a very personal story that I shared on a recent coaching call with our LIFTed business advisors about a situation where I was looking to hire an asset protection lawyer and how he lost the engagement, a $15,000 engagement that I would have hired him for if he had just taken me through his engagement process in a different way. And so if you've considered adding high level legal services at a flat fee with ongoing recurring revenue to serve clients, especially if you want to serve business owner clients, you are going to want to listen to this episode and consider how it can apply to your practice and how it can apply to the way that you engage clients. So listen in and I'll be back after the episode.

Ali Katz:
It is March 21, 2024. 21 years ago today, I gave birth to my son, my youngest child. Yes. And that was the beginning of me becoming an entrepreneur in many respects, and the beginning of really, in so many respects, the discovery of even the need for what is LIFTed business advisor because I wasn't a business owner, I didn't know what business owners needed. I was serving business owners in the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson as an associate lawyer there. But I really didn't even understand the transactions that I was working on.

Ali Katz:
I didn't understand why we were doing them. I had some sense that it was about saving Warren Buffett money on his taxes, but I didn't understand how that fit into the bigger picture of anyone's life. And in many respects, it probably didn't, right? These were just like siloed transactions. And in so many respects, it was really the beginning of my journey that would lead to a discovery that there is a new kind of advisor that is needed. And that advisor is a LIFTed business advisor. And you are all here in the creation of that with me through your own practices, through your own businesses, as you offer it to your clients, as you really provide them with a service that is beyond anything that truly exists. For the most part right now, I think we're going to see a lot more of it over the next 5,10, 20 years. I can start to see talk of it in like, wealthmanagement.com, which, by the way, if you don't get that publication, I would strongly recommend that you sign up for that publication.

Ali Katz:
You go to wealthmanagement.com, and then I think they have all these different newsletters that you can join and sign up for. They have a Trust and Estates magazine, Trust and Estates quarterly. I just strongly recommend that you do that because you'll see what's happening in the industry and you'll start to get ideas of ways that you can serve your clients that you may not be thinking of right now. And so the more that you can think of that, the more you can offer it to your clients, really be helping them in ways that they aren't normally used to a lawyer being able to serve them. And the reason is because we haven't had billing models where you could serve your clients in a way that made sense for you because you were focusing on selling documents or hours. And as a LIFTed business advisor, you're not selling documents or hours. You're selling a package, you're selling outcomes. You're selling support, you're selling guidance, you're selling coordination, you're selling them being able to see what they have every month, every quarter, every year, depending on your package and what they actually need so that they can make good, clear decisions with the support of the right advisors on board.

Ali Katz:
So I want you to really begin to look at your role as the person that helps your clients to see what they cannot or do not otherwise see. That helps them to ask the questions about the things that they're not currently asking the questions about, because nobody's bringing up the questions that are the things that are, frankly, most likely to come up when they become incapacitated or die. You know, their family really is going to wish somebody had looked at these things with them, but by then, it's too late, right? Or as they are thinking about the future of their business. And so, you know, as always, where I like to start on these calls is really who are you serving as a business owner? Who are your business owner clients and what is happening for them in their life and in their business right now? What is your in, what is your entry point? And I'll tell you about a recent experience that I've had with an asset protection lawyer that almost certainly has lost my business because of how he structures things. I have no doubt that he's an amazing asset protection lawyer. His name is Hillel Presser. I'm curious if any of you have heard of him. I heard about him because from two places.

Ali Katz:
First of all, he is the kind of the go-to lawyer, so he knows who his clients are. His clients are CEOs of companies, whether they're founder CEOs or hired CEOs. So that's his target market, CEOs of companies. And they did like a strategic partner spotlight. In fact, I'm going to show you this because I think it's really helpful for you to see how he was marketed. So the subject line was "Live webcast on protecting your assets". I don't know if this goes to everybody opted in or if it goes to everybody that is in their client list. I'm in their client list.

Ali Katz:
So I don't know if it was just for clients or for everybody on their list. "Don't let a lawsuit take everything away. The CEO's guide to asset protection". "Awesome" subject line. "Awesome" headline. "What if one lawsuit took away everything you worked so hard for? You may think that insurance and trusts will keep your wealth safe and that you don't need asset protection. But the truth is that for every 60 minutes you spend making money, you should spend 60 minutes thinking about how to protect it."

Ali Katz:
So they're promoting a webinar, how to protect your personal and business assets. Biggest misconceptions about asset protection, why an S corporation may be the worst entity to have. Business succession planning, the difference between estate planning and asset protection. So they did this webinar and then the next place that I saw him was, he was sponsoring at Wealth Councel. So he had a booth at the Wealth Counsel Symposium.

Ali Katz:
Would you love direct support? To help you grow your law practice into a business you love, go to newlawbusinessmodel.com/show and sign up for a call with one of our trusted law business advisors. Each of our advisors has been trained directly by me over the past five years plus to help you chart your path from wherever you are now to where you want to go as efficiently and effectively as possible. You're ready to grow. We are here to help.

Ali Katz:
What lawyer has a booth at the Wealth Counsel Symposium, you know, but he did. Maybe it wasn't the Wealth Counsel Symposium, it was Heckerling. He had a booth at Heckerling. It was not the Wealth Counsel Symposium. So he's smart enough to realize, oh, I should have a booth at an event with a whole bunch of lawyers. What lawyer has a booth at an event with a whole bunch of lawyers selling legal services, asset protection to the top estate planning lawyers in the country who go to Heckerling? This guy. Smart, smart marketer. I book an appointment with him and he is booked out two months in advance, three months in advance. I just had my appointment with him last week.

Ali Katz:
I think I probably called in January. So however long he's booked out, two, three months in advance. So you can be sure that I was keeping that appointment because I didn't want to not keep the appointment and then not be able to get in with him again for two, three months. If you all are worried about, like, I'm booking people too far out, that's not a bad thing. As long as you're keeping in touch with them between when they book with you and when you actually meet with them. His CSD version, his person that says CSD emailed me every week or two before the appointment. It was not good. The emails they sent could have been a million times better, but at least they were in contact with me.

Ali Katz:
So we have the appointment, and it's basically a 30 minute intake by him. He didn't even have me do any homework ahead of time. Not smart. He's basically filling out. He just asked me what my assets are, and then he summarizes what he assumes that I want. He's like, okay, based on what I'm seeing here, I assume that your goals are to protect your assets from estate taxes, from the government. You know, want to make sure that I, everything's taken care of in the way that you want and something happens to you. He lists out like four things.

Ali Katz:
I'm like, yes. He said, okay, I'd love to take five or ten minutes to let you know how we work. He says there's two stages of engagement. The first stage is architecture planning consulting. He describes it as if he's an architect. He analogizes it to, if you have an acre of land and you want to build a dream house, first you hire an architect. They design the plan, while I'm like a financial architect. So my team and I are going to come in, I'm going to bring in my estate planning attorney who has an LLM, my succession planning attorney.

Ali Katz:
So basically he's bringing in his whole team and we're going to spend however much time it takes to review everything you have. We expect it'll take about 15 to 20 hours to do that. And we're going to put together a financial puzzle for you. And if it sounds comprehensive, it is. It's all customized, tailored. We review everything, all your agreements between your companies, with everybody you have. And then we're going to put everything together from an asset protection point of view. And we'll need about. He says we'll need about three to 4 hours of your time. You'll fill out an asset worksheet, you'll send in all of your documents, and then we'll have about an hour or two to present our findings. And that's going to be a flat fee discounted of $15,000. He says that's not designed to make any money, but just to make sure that we really have the time we need to really get into everything and look at everything that you have and architect the right plan and, and you can expense that from whichever business you want. Then he said, that's stage one. And then stage two, we'll be building an implementation. So we'll present all of the options from stage one a la carte. You can do as little or as much as you want, as quick or as slow as you want.

Ali Katz:
It's not all or nothing. You're going to prioritize. There will be 15 things we'll decide together. It'll be flat fee per project on each of those things, all flat fees. And then we have a trusted advisors department. So anyone that we need to talk to on your team, it's all included, your CPA, your financial advisor, your CFO. And at the end we'll give you a whole education with diagrams, binders, usb, plus training sessions on how to open your bank accounts and how to sign everything and how to make sure that you've set everything up so that everything you have is protected. And I asked him, I said, well, what about ongoing? How do you, you know, how do you make sure that everything you're putting in place for me works? And he said that some people want the ongoing, some don't.

Ali Katz:
They have concierge management services for anywhere between 3 to 5000 a year, up to $35,000 a year. This is LIFTed business advisors. This is LIFTed business advisors. He's just selling it really poorly and he's selling it through the front door of asset protection and he really didn't do a good job of closing the sale. He just said, okay. You understand everything? Yes. Okay. Then I'm going to transfer you over to my practice management advisor and he'll confirm all the information about you and get you scheduled for the first meeting.

Ali Katz:
I said, okay, and he transferred me, but he probably thought he engaged me, but he didn't engage me. I wasn't a yes to the $15,000. I wasn't a yes to working together. But I think that, you know, that happens a lot where the lawyer thinks, oh, this person said yes, but I never said yes. He definitely didn't lock me in. He did do this cool thing where he put me on hold on Zoom, and it played music, hold music about his firm, and then the practice management person or the client services director picks up. That was pretty cool. It was a little cool thing.

Ali Katz:
It felt like there was a big enterprise. So I liked that. So why I'm sharing all of this with you is that I think you all can do much better by having the systems really structured where the clients can feel really confident that they're going to be able to rely on you. Because I think that's really what happened for me in the engagement, is I felt it was a cookie cutter. I didn't feel as if he was really going to get his arms around my reality and help me to manage my reality from a current asset protection standpoint and then ongoing throughout my life. In fact, if he would have focused on the ongoing upfront instead of me having to ask about it, I probably would have been a yes, if he would have said to me, so for $15,000, we're going to get our arms around everything. We're going to architect the plan, then we're going to bring it back to you. You're going to have a list of 15 different things that you can do, and then we're going to do those things based on what you choose and in the order you choose.

Ali Katz:
And you're going to pay me $5000 a month, and we're going to do them over a period of the rest of your life or whatever. And we're going to meet together every month or every quarter or whatever the amount of time was based on what he was charging me. If it was 3000 a month, maybe it's, you know, somewhere between 3 to $5000 a month, or if it's 3 to $5000 a year, we're going to meet together once a year, twice a year. If it's 10 to $20,000 a year, we're going to meet together once a quarter. If it's $35,000 a year, we're going to be meeting every month. If he would have told me that from the beginning, I would have probably hired him. Okay, great. You're going to be walking through life with me for $3,000 a month.

Ali Katz:
You're going to hold my hand. You're going to look at everything that I have. You're going to make sure I'm making good decisions from an asset protection standpoint, from a contracting standpoint, from an entity management standpoint, making sure that I'm being smart about what I have. But he didn't. Right. He presented it as a typical transactional attorney, and I know what's going to happen. Great. Okay, you're going to come in, I'm going to charge you $15,000.

Ali Katz:
You're going to give me a whole list of things to do. Maybe I'm going to do them, maybe I'm not. And then even if I do do them, they're not going to be maintained over time. And I'm going to have to be the one proactively leading the way. I don't want that. I don't want that. And so what I'm giving you all here is another possibility. A way that you can do it differently.

Ali Katz:
A way that you can establish that foundation with your clients where they actually feel held by you to be making really good decisions throughout the life of their business and bringing in your estate tax person with the LLM and the succession attorney, and you know, maybe the intellectual property lawyer or litigator or any number of other professionals on the dream team, the insurance person that's going to come in for this specialized kind of insurance that you think that they might need or. Right. Or you are going to bring in the right professionals, but your role is to hold it and to manage the relationship and to really help the client, the business owner feel that their own capacity is significantly expanded because their brain and your brain together creates more capacity for them to feel the confidence to do what they need to do, take on more capital, take on more risk, make bigger investments, grow their business, maybe do things that they didn't even know. Right. So I'm just now getting, for example, into the world of funding. Where does money come from to grow businesses? If you can dive into that world and really understand how to help your clients get access to capital, what an asset to your business owner clients. What an asset, right. Because that's what many of them are often thinking about.

Ali Katz:
If you can dive into the world of intellectual property and how to help them make sure they're protecting what they have. If you can dive into the world of contracts and help them make sure that they've got the right contracts and agreements in place. If you can dive into the world of entity management for tax savings using multiple entities to save money on taxes and really understand that, have a really fantastic relationship with a CPA that gets it and can help you and your clients make great decisions, what an asset you become.

Ali Katz:
I hope you learned a lot hearing my personal story of how an asset protection lawyer lost not just $15,000 of business, but the ongoing recurring revenue that that lawyer would have been able to capture from me.

Ali Katz:
I pay about $10,000 a month for legal guidance and I would have happily paid it to this lawyer if he would have engaged me differently. So what do you learn from that? If you want to become a holistic advisor serving clients with estate planning, asset protection, business guidance on not just a one off transactional basis, but recurring revenue being a true trusted advisor, I call it a LIFTed business advisor. LIFTed stands for legal, insurance, financial and tax. Then you will want to talk with one of my law business advisors at newlaw.co/show. That's where you can apply for a call and I look forward to seeing you on the other side.