We signed a new contract with a legacy planning company. (Hopefully third time’s a charm.) Our first legacy planner was an individual who works pretty much all by himself, with the aid of an analytics firm behind him. The second legacy planner was also an individual, but with a three-person office staff and an apparently rather long and illustrious history of helping numerous wealthy families with their estate plans. . . . But then we ran into some of the issues I’ve been blogging about over the last couple or three months.

We spent about an hour with two representatives from the company (M____, the planner himself, and J____, his understudy) plus B_____, our structures-and-estate-planning attorney.

A somewhat strange experience. M____ and J____ kept wanting to talk about their company and why we should view them as competent and “the right choice.” Which was fine. But I wasn’t worried about whether they are competent, and I wasn’t looking at alternatives or competitors. My main question had to do with whether and why we should hire anyone at all. So I asked them straight up: “Why should we hire you to guide us after our previous two semi-failed attempts at legacy planning? What unique value will you bring that B____, our attorney, and L____, our CPA, are not able to give us?”

M_____ and J_____ seemed unable to answer the question. Perhaps it was out of concern for B____’s and L____’s feelings. I don’t know.

But since we were getting nowhere fast, I finally decided to take things into my own hands and state exactly what seemed to me to be a good possible reason for hiring them.

I started by quoting L____ [our CPA].

“He has told me, more than once, that our charitable giving is ‘off the charts’ compared to his other clients. He doesn’t have any other clients, of any income level, who are giving even 10% of their income to charity. And here we are trying to blow through the 50% of AGI barrier. . . .”

I turned to B____: “My guess is, B____, that you are the same way. You don’t deal with a lot of clients who are charitably oriented.”

He nodded his agreement.

“So if I understand things accurately”–and here I turned to M____ and J____–”M____ and J____ deal with a lot of clients who are very much charitably oriented.”

M____ and J____ nodded their affirmation.

I then used an analogy that I have found very helpful over the last several years as I have worked in our company.

“When we first begin work on a new company or brand,” I said, “I think of them like lumps of clay. At first they are very hard. You have to work them. Break them down. Knead them. Make them soft.

“That’s what you have to do with a new company or brand as well. You understand conceptually what you’re supposed to do, but employees–the customer service representatives, for example–aren’t able to say the new name quickly and easily when they answer the phone. None of us is confident that we have identified the most salient reasons for potential customers to buy–or not buy–the product or service we have to offer. . . .

“So we have to work with the new brand for some time to “soften it up” (or soften our own minds) and make them malleable to work with the new brand. Only then can we proceed swiftly and confidently with whatever ideas come to mind.

“So it is, I expect,” I continued, “with this whole matter of legacy planning and preparing to maximize charitable giving.

“M____ and J____ work a lot with charitably-minded people, so they have ‘worked the clay’ so to speak.”

I turned back to B____.

“As a result of their experience,” I said, “I expect they are able to work with the different entities and concepts from a very different perspective than you can. The concepts are malleable to them in a way I expect they are not to you. . . . They can think of them from a more strategic and tactical perspective. . . .”

B____ affirmed what I was saying.

I turned to M____ and J____.

“I think you’ve said it well,” M____ said.

It felt nice to think I may have leaped that particular conceptual hurdle.

We were ready to sign the contract.

So we begin anew.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 8:42 pm and is filed under estate planning, legacy planning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.