What's going on everybody? Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Bronx Attorney broadcast. I'm your host, Will Forero. On today's episode, we have Jeff Bellomo of Bellomo & Associates. Jeff is an elder law and estate planning attorney, and his model is based on giving away free information in things like seminars. We talk about his new podcast, how he's cultivated a positive workplace for his employees, and his upcoming book. Enjoy.
How's it going, Jeff? Nice to see you. Thanks for taking the time to chat this afternoon. I'm looking forward to learning all about you and your practice. 100% man. I'm excited too. This is going to be a good time. So just to get started, can you tell me a little bit about yourself? We're in New York, but I know you're in York, Pennsylvania, where I went to college. Yes, so I'm Jeff Bellomo with Bellomo & Associates. We are an estate planning and elder law law firm. You're exactly right.
Out of York, Pennsylvania, we do have an office in Lancaster as well. And even before the pandemic and COVID, we were pretty virtual, but now we've become a lot more virtual, obviously, just because people are more open to it and more accustomed to it. So we are able to service pretty much all of Pennsylvania. So when you say virtual, do you mean that you're taking on clients virtually or your employees are working from home or both?
Yes, the both actually. I mentioned it in the context of clients. But we do have 13 remote team members all over the country. So yeah, so actually that as well. But we do help anyone over the state of Pennsylvania. I am only licensed in the state of Pennsylvania. So obviously that's my geographic area.
But yeah, we do have team members and we've just found that clients in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and Erie and all over the state are really more inclined now to be okay with doing a meeting or two on Zoom if they need to come or we need to meet in person. We can arrange that but it's working really well. And it was something we did a little bit before, but the resistance was more about, well, I don't want to be on Zoom or I don't want to be on.
I don't find that as much at least around here anyway. I guess people are accustomed to it now they're doing it for work so they're like, you know, why not do it for, you know, my personal issues that I have going on as well. 100% agreed.
And I've been finding that I've been offering the people I say, you know, I could come meet you, you could come, you know, to the office and we could meet there, or, you know, we could just do a zoom thing and most of the time people are like, let's just do the zoom. Let's just do it. I agree, man. 100%. I think it's a good idea to do the ball rolling on Zoom. It's, you know, it's quicker to get started that way. People don't have to take an afternoon off of work or something like that.
100%, they don't have to find parking that well, they don't have to find parking at our office either but that's always the fear, right? I gotta drive there, I gotta find parking, I gotta, sometimes that's just easier to do it on Zoom or on a social media platform. Your firm focuses specifically on its elder law and estate planning, right?
Yes, that's all we do is estate planning and elder law and, you know, I always get the question, you know, why is that your niche? I mean, most elder law attorneys are usually elderly because they did a estate planning for years and I think the common misconception is elder law means elderly people. And the truth is, it actually doesn't. It's really another word for asset protection and government benefits planning but people just assume, well, it means elderly.
No. And my family had the unfortunate circumstance of my mother being ill. We didn't know the answers to, will dad lose the house? How are we going to provide for her? How are we going to get her the care she needs? How, you know, should we have done planning sooner? Are there ways to protect assets? What's hospice? I mean, what's Medicare? What's Medicaid? How do they play? How...
We couldn't find the answers and I went to two law firms and paid $300 consult fees and at the end of the consult it was kind of one of those, you know, well, if you hire me today, I'll roll over in the planning fee and the solution you need is, you know, $15,000. Well, what is the solution? Like, what are we doing? Like, what is it? What am I paying for? Oh, I can't tell you that. Well, I'm not going to pay you for something. I don't know what it is.
And, you know, when you... I was lucky, you know, I got a lot of my education out at a younger age. I got my JD and then I went right on and pretty much got my master's in taxation. And I got a certificate in estate planning. I became a certified elder law attorney and my joke is, you know, I had all those crazy initials after my name, but the only ones that I really need were a J.O.B.
I needed a job because I was broke and I did. And, you know, you know, I mean, when you get a job in a bigger law firm or any law firm, for that matter, let's not say big, small, whatever. Your job is to make money for the partners. Your job is to bill. Your job is to follow their process. Your job is to be seen and not heard.
And it took a few years, but 2008, I was leaving a meeting and literally, right, you know, put my hand out to shake the lady's hand and was like, well, ma'am, that'll be $300. If you hired me today, I'll roll it over into the planning fee. And I went, oh my gosh, I became one of them. And I started crying. I mean, to this day, that client just, she laughs about it. And she's like, I thought you were nuts.
She's like, you were sobbing in my arms. You know, this grown man is sobbing in a client's arms and I had no idea what was wrong. And it didn't matter. I was, you know, I was there for you. I was telling you everything would be okay. And I went out in the car and I called my mom and I was like, I'm quitting my job. I'm going to go be a social worker, a teacher, like I should have done.
And she was like, for the first time in your life, I'm disappointed in you. This is not the Jeff I raise the Jeff I raise wouldn't be running from a profession. He would be changing the industry. He would be making a difference. He would be not letting that happen. And I remember saying something to the effect of mom, you know, I'm broke. I'm living off of my wife's salary. I'm risking, you know, I have no money. Like, what, what am I going to do?
It's if you're going to quit your job and you're going to go open up a law firm and you're going to change the industry. And I was very fortunate to find a national company that trained in estate planning and elder law. And we call it, you know, elder law in a bag is kind of the phrase that we use. And a couple years later, I became one of their main trainers and I traveled the country teaching lawyers and training for their program and, you know, help me a lot understand.
But the biggest thing is that they do everything through education. Everything is, you know, you give education and then, you know, you figure out, you know, does it make sense? What are the costs? What is it going to cost? You know, you know, all that up front. So there's none of this. I have $300 of your money and I'm hiding the ball.
Right. It's let me pull the curtain. Let me teach you everything. And my philosophy is more of a business philosophy, which is life is about relationships. And, you know, if they don't want to hire me after getting four and a half hours of free education, I'm good with that because they weren't going to hire me anyway.
So I have no issue. My joke always is, and I just finished one. I was, you know, running a few minutes behind here, but my joke is, you know, either fist pump me on the way out the door, or you decide to move forward and schedule the next meeting. Either way, I'm cool. Like, I don't have any poems about somebody walking out after getting, you know, a couple hours of free education, because I want them to hire me because they like me, they trust me, they want to work with me.
No, because I have $300 of their money. Right. Right. And tell me some more about that. The, you know, you have this free education, free information model where you're providing a lot to prospective clients. So what exactly is it that you're doing?
Two hour workshops essentially and doing a state planning and elder law through stories. So real stories, you know, real life cases, real life clients and basically entertaining. I mean, to be honest, I mean, you and I know that people are going to work with you because they trust you and they like
you. And not how smart you are. I mean, nobody cares how smart you are. Nobody care where you went to law school and nobody cares, you know, how you did on the bar, you know, did you pass right. So I just love entertaining and I love educating and so we just we literally do break down the area by stories, real life stories and then
how interesting basically teach people like what's happened through cases that were done properly cases that were done not properly. You know, I do a story called this the pull boy and baby the bar made and, you know, I talk about the downsides of leaving money outright to a spouse and
of course, you know, we have a good laugh and I talk about, you know, biff the pool boy and a speedo cleaning the pool. But people remember stories. Right. I was at a mall one day and I was walking down the mall and I thought I recognized the face but I don't acknowledge
the face of the clients like I feel like that's their job, or their prerogative should I say to to acknowledge me, especially if I'm with my family like, it's up to them if they want to say hello to me I'm not going to breach the confidentiality or pretend I know somebody and this lady was like,
I don't take a backable guy because I have a story where I say, you know, a gift is non take a backable. Right. And it's, I made it up on the fly one day, and it is so funny how it's taken legs, like that phrase people remember five years later.
But when you talk about okay well, what about a gift or like well I'm not take a backable. You know, I always joke I don't know if they know that's good or bad, but they remember. And people don't forget stories they remember stories they remember jokes they remember punchlines.
And my job is to educate them to where, if they were ever in a situation where a loved one is needing a long term care or whatever the situation is that they're, maybe they don't remember exactly what I said, but they go, you know what I remember that guy.
He did that workshop and he told us about it. I don't remember what he said but we should reach out to someone I mean, I know people think that it's all about me. The truth is, it's about the education and the knowledge and sure I would love for you to like us, of course, I mean, yeah, of
course, as long as somebody knows information that we didn't know that's all I care about at the end of the day as long as they're educated and they don't go into something blind and have everything taken because a nursing home, which also is not their fault by the way I want to be very clear you know I always tell people the nursing home is providing a wonderful service.
The system is broke the system is the problem not not the people providing the care don't don't miss guide the anger you know I believe that truly. So how are you getting people to come to the your workshops and you do a lot of workshops you're doing them like multiple times a month right. Yeah, and in two different locations to.
So, one is I've been in practice for 20 years. So, one is just simple in that, you know, word of mouth, people I've been around a long time. A lot of advisors know me a lot of accountants know me a lot of funeral directors know me. We also have a component of our practice that is retail as well so not only we call that side wholesale where we talked to advisors talk to accountants.
But we also have a component which is retail which is okay we're going to do a direct mail piece, inviting people to the workshop we might do some Facebook targeted advertising where on when they're on Facebook up comes one of our ads for one of our workshops and person clicks on it and they register for the workshop and so we kind of have a multifaceted approach but one of the things that I have learned recently that I never knew before and you know here I am 19 years and 20 years
now but 19 years of practice and learned a lesson last year. We are now in two markets so we are primarily in York and have been for you know, my entire career, but now we're kind of expanding over to Lancaster. And it's going really well. Well, of course you would think I mean literally, you know, geographically, this office from the other offices about 22 minutes apart.
Now, for most people in the country 22 minutes is nothing right, but there's a river called the Susquehanna River in the middle. And my joke is you have to get your passport stamp when you're crossed the Susquehanna River now. It's a joke, but you and I both know that it's a joke but not really a joke. And there is like a divide there, people will not cross that river.
I lived beginning of my career when I clerked for a judge. I lived in York County and drove to Lancaster County, and I was literally on the edge of your county. So it would take me 15 minutes to be downtown in Lancaster, but it would take me 20 minutes to be downtown in York. People are like, you drive the whole way to Lancaster. I'm like, you know, it's right across that river. Like I can see the river. Like you realize, you know, and it was just fascinating.
But the thing I learned was in York, Facebook advertising works really well. Direct mail works really well. Like, you do a direct mail campaign, you do a face paid campaign, we pretty much have the numbers narrowed down to exactly how many people will come. I mean, you pretty much know your conversion rates. I mean, you can pretty much predict that over 20 years. Well, we went to Lancaster, and we did Facebook ads, we did a direct mail piece and like literally nobody showed. Really?
And one of my one of my buddies who's over there said to me, put an ad in the newspaper. I said, no way. Absolutely not. In York, we did, you know, we spent a couple thousand dollars on ads in the newspaper. We didn't get one thing and he said, trust me. Really? I said, no way. We did an ad in the newspaper and we have 48 people show up at the next workshop in Lancaster. And I realized while they're that close, I mean, they're 20 some minutes apart.
It is completely different worlds as far as how they receive information. Very interesting. Yeah. Don't do direct mail to them. They won't read it. Don't do a Facebook ad. They're not going to open it. But you do a nurse newspaper ad in that newspaper and by gosh, they're going to show up. It is the it's the most fascinating thing. And I'm always reminding, you know, our marketing team, like guys, you know, yes, it's great to have plans. Right.
And it's great to have ideas, but you have to be willing to pivot. And clearly the direct mail wasn't working over there. So the problem is now we're running like two completely different campaigns. Right. Right. When really it's the same workshop and we're targeting the same people, but we have to do it completely differently. We're 20 minutes apart. Yeah. It's just I never would have thought that. Well, you're lucky you had that friend to tell you that your audience was so different.
Yeah, because I actually thought it was I thought it was the area. I thought it wasn't. It sounds terrible. I didn't think it was me. Right. It was it was them. But no, the truth is, I thought, well, okay, maybe it's the messages and being heard there. And the truth is I wasn't giving the message on the platform that they were hearing it.
So it was amazing. And it's just changed everything now because now I know where to find them and where they're going to read and where they're going to listen. That's pretty good valuable information. There's another story that you told me before today about the whiteboard when you were making your firm and deciding what you wanted into seeing your firm and you pulled out the whiteboard.
Yep. And so it was a, it was a she wasn't with me at the time, but we were friends and we were kind of just together at, you know, and kind of wrote on a whiteboard everything that we didn't like about firms that we work for. And of course, then the other whiteboard was, okay, so what's the opposite of that basically, I mean, I'm, I'm definitely paraphrasing. I'm definitely summarizing, but it was essentially, what is it we didn't like.
And then what would be the opposite that we would like. And then we basically made those our core values made those a rules of engagement and kind of, and then eventually about six months later she ended up leaving the firm she was with and coming to join me. And then we built it together. I mean, we were together for about 18 years. She left last year. I helped her find a friend of mine who's starting out.
And I was, I trained him a few years ago and he's just a great dude and she was looking for a change something different. I think she really wanted to kind of take somebody under her wing and do what she did with me, you know, where we started together and then she kind of built it so she enjoys that she's a great label. So yeah, we basically whiteboarded everything we didn't want to see or what we experienced and what the opposite would be and then made that our vision.
And are you still carrying forward those, those values and that mission statement today? 100%. We read them. And we modify them now because of course now we have a just about 30 team members. So we're certainly grown since you know the days have just, you know, me alone and then her and I but yeah, we still have rules of engagement. We still have our mission statement. We still have our purpose, our core values.
They haven't really the core values haven't changed at all but some of like the things that we did. More of the rules of engagement. So what we do is every week in our team meetings, our team reads out loud our rules of engagement. So, you know, one is have fun. One is if something is bothering me, I'll go directly to the team member. And rather than, you know, to other people on the team and there's like 15 of them and we read them out loud every week and it really fosters an open environment.
And a lot of those are the same ones that we created 18 years ago. Well, 20 years ago, actually. And then some are new, like as we had team members, we'd ever retreat, we kind of talk about it and see what we want to add or take away and then one of the things that we do now is once a month, we basically say,
Okay, so who on the team has exhibited one of the rules of engagement. Hey, I want to, you know, I want to shout Jeff out because he whatever I want to shout will out because he you know whatever.
And then we also do shout outs every week of our core value so who exhibited our core values last week and then once a month who exhibited where they honor the rules of engagement and follow the rules of engagement and we, we encourage that because that's we're trying to foster an environment where people are comfortable and speaking their mind and saying things that being opened, but doing it in a respectful and polite manner you know there's always a always a way to do it.
This episode of the Bronx Attorney broadcast was brought to you by me will Ferraro. I'm an attorney at prior law in the Bronx, we primarily practice personal injury law, but we can help you with just about any legal issue that you may have. And if it's not something that we can personally help you with, we can connect you with an expert in that area of law. You can find me online on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, my handle is typically at Bronx Attorney.
And if you can't find me on one of those social media pages, you can email me ferraro at prior law calm or call me at the office 718-829-0222. And now back to the show. So you talk about the workplace and the workplace culture that you've cultivated. How do you feel like your employees have responded to that? You know, I was asked this question recently, it was the first time I actually really thought about it.
I think the biggest testament is to how long we've had people on the team and how little turnover we have. And even honestly, like we had one individual retire, we had someone that took some time off. The person I was mentioning earlier who went to work with another law firm, there's no ill will at all. One of the rules of engagement is if I'm not happy and I don't feel that this is the right bus, I'll tell Jeff and he'll help me find a job and we'll go another route.
And I, you know, I've said that for years, I mean, it's one of our rules of engagement, we read it constantly. And I've had, you know, just a handful of people take me up on it. But I think the biggest one that was the most eye-opening for the team was the team member who had been with me for 18 years. And she just wasn't, you know, she was at the point where she liked when it was just the two of us. She liked being my right hand. She liked direct, you know, contact with me.
And, you know, when you have 30 team members, there's a leadership team. I'm trying to get myself out of the day to day. I don't want people to rely on me. I want it to be about the systems, the processes of the team. But I honestly, I sent an email out on her behalf to a couple hundred lawyers that I've worked with and that I've trained. And she got several offers.
She was, I was the one that she came through to ask me which offer to take. In the meantime, she was still working for us. She was still collecting a paycheck. And I helped her find a job making significantly more than what she was making with us. So, I mean, you know, the proofs in the pudding and one of my team members said, wow, it was so cool that you did that.
And I said, well, what did you think? That's one of the rules of engagement. Well, I know, but no, we didn't think you were serious about it, right? Because nobody wants to get rid of their, their good employees. And she, you know, I say this, you know, she's one of, if not the best, you know, worker that we've ever had. And I want what's best for them and I want what's best for her.
And it wasn't a fit. I mean, I agree. I think we both kind of outgrew each other. I think that, you know, we're in a different place. I think that she was hoping it would just stay the two of us. And that isn't the vision that I have. That it's not where we want to be. But that doesn't mean that what we built together and what we created isn't amazing and isn't a great place to work and isn't, you know, I would never turn my back on someone.
And so it's just interesting how when you do something like that, other people are like, wow, he is serious. Like, this is for real. And the other thing that she and I did, but when we first opened the firm, we said, you know, when we hit our 10 year anniversary, we're going to go on a cruise.
So we made we made the statement and it never got brought up again. Like, we never talked about it. We never discussed it. And here we are in like our ninth year a few years ago. I mean, this is back a few years, because we opened in 2009. So 2019. She came to me in 2018 and said, Hey, our 10 years next year. Should I call the travel agent and book the cruise.
And without missing a beat, I said, Yeah, let's do it. And she looks at me and says, What? And I said, Yeah, we agreed. She's like, Yeah, but there's like, you know, 20 people on the team now, like we have like 58 people going on a cruise. And I said, Let's go. We said it. You all went on the cruise. You did. We have 58 people on a cruise. That's fun. I paid for my team and you know, we budgeted for a year. We put money away every month and we had the absolute most amazing time.
And, you know, a lot of my friends are like, Dude, did you really want to spend a week with your team? Yeah, you're right. I did. And we also opened it up to some, some clients. Well, we opened that up to a lot of clients, but several of them took us up on it. So we were able to get them a discount, like because they were coming with a group. So we got the bus and we bought them, you know, things to kind of enjoy, have them enjoy being with us.
But then my team got on, you know, we had a bus that took us all down to the port and we got on the cruise ship together and we spent the week together and we're doing one in 2029. We have another one that we're booked. I've already started putting money away for that with our team being as big as it is now. It's going to be a little more of an expense, but yeah, it's just stuff like that.
Like, you know, it's fun. I like being around them. I enjoy them. And I think because we have such an open environment to the people who aren't, they typically don't stay around because they know there's no pressure. My big thing is, you know, I don't want to see a resume and a copier. If you're not happy, just tell me I'll help you find a job.
But you start sneaking around and lying and that's not the environment that I want. And she was honest and upfront and I helped her find a job and kept her employed until we could part ways. And, you know, so it's just cool. I really, I'm glad that it worked out. I mean, I hate that it didn't work out forever. I mean, obviously that's the goal, but it's okay. I mean, I'd rather know it. We'd rather help find something that you're excited about.
Yeah, I think that's great. It sounds like it's really going well. Yeah. Another thing I wanted to talk about was how, you know, you really separated yourself from the pack in regards to other people in your field when the coronavirus hit. It seems like you were more prepared or willing to adapt more so than, you know, the competition was. Well, yeah. And I don't know that I could take the credit for that one. So back to the individual who was with me from the beginning.
We relied on her a lot because at the beginning there might have been two or three employees, but she was the one who was there from the beginning. She was the one who helped me kind of start it. Also the one who attended the national organization with me who got trained with me. And she fell down the steps one day. And luckily she blew out her knee but not her. She didn't hit her head.
And the reason I say that is because, you know, we hired an IT company right out of the gate. I mean, that was the one thing that we did. Probably right, which was we hired a real IT company probably well before we could afford them to be honest, but it was great because they kind of set everything up to be able to scan and to be able to scan things and upload to matters and not have to be in the office and access it from anywhere.
And, you know, and in 2009 that wasn't nearly as common as it is now, obviously. So when Tammy went down, one of the things that we realized was, Holy cow. I mean, had that been her brain or had she passed away? We might have, I mean, the whole firm might have crumbled at that time because there was only like two or three employees and she knew everything and nobody knew everything. But luckily she worked from home. We were delivering files to her. We had it set up that she could work remotely.
And then, okay, so that was the first remote employee. I'm going to guess that was probably 2000 and maybe 11, 2012. So we had a remote worker and we worked out some of the kinks. We worked out some of the bugs. And then, you know, people were working home, maybe one day a week, maybe two days a week.
And then right before in 2019, we hired another full time remote player and then maybe a second remote. So when the, I remember when the governor announced, you know, everything was a Friday, you know, as of tomorrow, everything is shut down, you know, I was like, what are we going to do? And my team leader was like, what do you mean, what are we going to do? I'm like, what are we going to do?
She's like, we're going to work from home. Everybody has, we all have it. Everybody set up. We know how to do it. We have several remote team members. I'm like, what am I going to do? She's like, I'll come to your house and I'll set up your computer. Because I didn't work from home at that time at all.
Right. Right. And I remember, and this wasn't planned, but the Monday after everything shut down, we happened to have a retreat. So obviously the topic of the retreat was a little different than maybe what we had planned. We spent the entire day basically saying, okay, how does everybody work remotely? Who's going and you know, who's going to be, and we had a team member who was right across the street.
And we were considered essential. So she was able to come over and kind of check the voicemails. I mean, we had the doors closed, but she was in here checking voicemails and making sure the mail was taken care of, shipping it out to all the team members. Well, I lost a lot of the referral sources because of course they were just worried about making a living and keeping their head above water. So we basically turned on the retail stuff and just kind of turn that on.
And then we went to, we went right to zoom, we started doing all of our meetings on zoom, then we did all of our workshops on zoom. Well, next thing we know, you know, we're getting more estates and we're getting more Medicaid because a lot of the people in our industry were older. We actually bought two practices of people were like, you know what, I don't want this, I'm out, I don't want to practice this way.
But they weren't set up remotely, they didn't have any access. So, you know, we kind of doubled down and grew. I mean, we grew significantly in the pandemic. I mean, I want to say we added at least seven, eight new team members during that time. Wow. And for us, it was, you know, a tough time, don't get me wrong. I won't say it was easy, but because we were already set up to be remote, we were set up to do everything that way.
It was difficult for me to learn because it just wasn't my forte. But when the rest of the team didn't skip a beat and, you know, I came along the back and kind of picked it up on my time and, you know, once you start doing eight, nine, 10 meetings a day on zoom, you pick it up pretty quickly. Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, so, you know, overall, I think that we didn't really lose anything and, you know, the access to some of the loans and stuff was able to keep everybody employed and then add some more people and, you know, that's kind of what I think was good for us. I mean, in terms of being able to evaluate the situation and adapt quickly. And post pandemic, you also started podcasting, right? I did, I did. So, it's awesome, man.
Yeah, it's the, it's the red wagon real estate. No, not real estate, estate planning and whatever else you want to talk about, right? Yeah, so I do the red wagon estate planning and elder law show where we talk about the state planning and elder law and well, hey, anything else we want to talk about. I love it. And it's fun. I so not something that I really shared publicly too much. But last year I did get COVID in January.
We were on our way to Bonn air to go scuba diving and got tested positive in the airport in Miami getting on a plane to go to Bonn air. I was quarantined, you know, couldn't fly for 14 days. And basically we run at a house in Naples and just stayed in Florida for 14 days.
And I was, I was really sick and from that I ended up having, you know, severe sleep apnea and stuff that I never had issues with before. And, you know, they didn't know right away what it was and then I finally got into a sleep study but then it took months to get the
iPad machine. So for a good part of last year, I mean I wasn't sleeping at all I was falling asleep constantly. I was struggling just to stay awake so we ended up I ended up kind of voluntarily saying right I'm not going to drive like you don't need to pull my I don't
need any of that I have smarter than that I'm you know I'm a responsible human being and a good citizen. And so we pretty much took me out of meetings in the office and said Jeff will be working from home. And I was able to do some via zoom but we knew that I couldn't
count on me too much because I was only able to go when I would lay in bed for 11 hours I would sleep for one. So, when you're only sleeping one hour a night, you know, you can't go all day and you can only do that for so long and it's we're talking seven eight months is how long it was for me.
And when I got home I said I need something to do. So, basically I started podcasting and then I also did started writing a book. And those were the two things that kind of occupied my time. While I was kind of home recovering and then eventually I got the
I was a by pat machine and then I don't know if I told you this part will but January 1 of this year I was like okay. I gained a lot of weight. I gained the COVID 30 or whatever. And then I had the then after my actual COVID episode I gained more because I was feeling I was home and I just, you know, from January 1 to today which is what three months, January, February, March, yeah, pretty much three months. I started at 320 and I'm down to 262 so Wow.
I feel great. I feel like a new human being I'm back to where I was, you know, before COVID hit. And I feel like I'm back to my fight and wait, you know, which is great so yeah the podcast has been a ball. I probably did about, I'll say maybe 30 of just me. And then I was like, okay, like, I need guests. Like so I'm doing what you're doing and bringing guests on and it livens it up for me and it makes it fun and now I'm having a lot of fun again and lucky for me I had enough in the
hopper that I was able to kind of ride out all the ones that I had and now we're back so we're about four weeks out and as far as our production schedule but it is so much fun and then we also started on a local radio station here broadcasting the podcast on the radio show on Saturday morning. And it is amazing how many people are like, Oh, I heard you on the radio I heard you on the radio. What do you just like send the audio file over and they just play it. Yep. Yep. I get hooked up with that.
I try I try to make everyone about 30 minutes because I knew that the radio spot was 30 minutes so a couple of them go a little short so what they did was they asked me for like a filler I think is what they called it. So I just did a filler of like inviting people to our workshops and inviting people to come to listen or getting a link and so whenever the podcast is shorter than 30 minutes they just play the filler. Gotcha.
So it takes the time and it sounds like it's the same podcast I mean, we do that within the podcast anyway where I'll talk about it if I think about it so it's worked out really well and and I'm fascinated. Like I don't listen to the radio anymore like I'll listen to Sirius XM or the NFL channel or, you know, whatever but I don't typically listen to talk radio much.
And so for the number of people that have been like, I heard you on the radio. I'm like, whoa, like, yeah, yeah, I hear that more than I hear a heard. Your podcast. Gotcha. No, it's the same thing. You and I know it's the exact same thing but that's where they're hearing it is on the radio. Yeah, I listened to the deal order the other day. Yeah, I love that because I do not remember what his name is but I remember that he is the deal order. Pennsylvania's only deal. He's a character.
He's a character. Man Dylan is a he is a trip man. He I love it on all that podcast. He did talk about, you know, he was a rap artist, I believe. Yeah. And he said, I mean, he said it on the podcast. He's like, you know, I had a persona as a rapper and that wasn't viable with rising a family and you know, having kids and stuff and but everything we do is is persona everything we do is relationship.
It's acting. And so he kept his, you know, what bees like and he literally does he has bees on his glasses and tattoo on his on his hand to be and he totally takes that to the end to agree and I mean, I bet he's very memorable. I bet he does really good. He's amazing dude. I mean, honestly, I he puts he actually posts it but in the country he's usually like number one for an individual and he usually finishes like third or fourth as a team and he's by himself. Wow.
It is just fascinating. The dude has just built the heck of a business and we have a few other professionals that we've interviewed that are coming up and but he's definitely a personality man. He's fun. He's a lot of fun to be around. I might have to steal some of your guests and they'll do the they can do the podcast circuit with us.
Yeah, let them let them know you heard it on mine and you want to do those guys would love that, you know, I he just likes to be out there. Let's put it that way. Yeah, he's a good dude. Real good dude. So what type of content can we expect in this book and when can we expect to see it? Yeah, so I'm thinking it'll be in print and available on audible. I'm going to guess somewhere around August. The title of the book is modern estate planning has taken the other fork in the road.
And I talk about how the old school planning and some of the old school things that we did don't work anymore. And to the extent they don't work. They also aren't really applicable and we need to we need to pivot we need to shift we need to talk about asset protection.
And basically used a true story of a husband and wife who went into a local attorney's office wanted to protect assets wanted to try to avoid probate keep the cost down and the attorney was like you can't do that like what are you talking about like you do a well you don't have
the $20 some million dollars you know you don't need trust that's stupid. And ultimately the way I ended up in the nursing home they lost several hundred thousand dollars, then the kids inherited the money outright which you didn't want to have happen, right. one son paid off the mortgage, a couple of months later, the wife files for divorce and takes half.
Oh, God. The other son ended up on public benefits and lost all the money because he was receiving public benefits and that wasn't done properly. And the third son was a spent thrift, maybe an addict. In the book, I was a little vague because honestly, the facts were vague. They didn't really tell me exactly, but he blew all of it. I mean, the short end of it is the three kids inherited a lot less because mom ended up in the nursing home losing, I think it was like 750,000.
Wow. Then they ended up losing the rest of the money because of their situations. Right. And the guy was clear, man. He went and got a second opinion from another local attorney. The second opinion agreed with the first opinion. Oh, no. And then the son came into my office, who I called Mark, obviously that's not the real name of the client, but Mark came in my office and went to my work shops. And he came up to me at the end and he's like, this is what my parents wanted.
This is what they went to two lawyers to hear. This is what exactly he was looking for asset protection during life and after death. And everybody told him he didn't have $20 million. And I think the basic premise is most attorneys only know the planning for people that have federal estate tax issues because back in the nineties, that was for people that had more than $600,000. Nowadays, it's 12.92 million a person. It's not the same planning.
We don't have that many people that have more than 26 million statistically across the country. It's very few. But that's not the truth. I mean, you get somebody with $250,000 to $2 million. And they know that they could be in a nursing home at $14 grand a month. That they'll protect it. That money means more to them than somebody with $20 million because they could lose it in months. So that's a true story. It's absolutely an actual case. Clearly changed the names.
And then ultimately for the son, we ended up putting the money in an asset protection trust, protecting it for the kids. And of course, he had similar kids. And I called them Jeff, Dan and Reese. I just made those names up. But I'm one of the attorneys in the office. Dan's another attorney in the office. So I just went with Jeff and Dan. I was the individual who ended up with the special needs and received public benefits.
But because his father marked it right, 100% of the assets were protected. And Reese was the one who was a spendthrift and money was protected. And Dan was the one who got divorced and his money was protected. So it's just a real life story of what we see in our office and what happened in real life. And basically talking about educating for free and not charging for consults. And I don't plan to sell it. I plan to use it as essentially an expensive business card.
I mean, I plan to give it out to mostly financial advisors, accountants, financial directors, professionals, and use it as an expensive business card in that this is exactly what our office is, what we do, how we do it, and what we believe in. And if you don't like that, that's okay. Like, you know what? You don't have to be a fit for everybody. You have to believe in what you do. And if they like that, then they'll seek a sound. If they don't, it's okay.
So it sounds like you got a lot going on. I'm going to be following along. And we might have to have you back on to give us some more knowledge about estate planning. I feel like we just scratched the surface. Yeah, man, I will. And I love it. And it's a lot of fun. I'm excited for the book to come out. I'm excited to do the Audible. I'm going to be the author. I'm going to read it myself. The guy said, you know, we have professional voiceover people who do that.
And I was like, nah, I got to do this. Like, I love this kind of stuff. So no, I want to be. And he's like, fair enough. All right, fair enough. But like, I know I'm not a professional, but I think me reading it would mean a lot more than me. And it's a lot more personal to the people who then will call you up and hear your voice. Well, it's more personal for me, too. I mean, I don't do this because of a situation that happened with my family and I just hearing somebody else tell it.
I just, I don't know. I just, I want to be the personality and the face and the voice. And, you know, again, I'm not selling it. I'm not looking to make money off of it at all. I just wanted to tell a true story and what happens when you don't do the planning correctly. And unfortunately, you know, like I had a gentleman tonight that said, I want to go to talk to my lawyer and I said, no problem. You know what? There's no pressure.
But remember, if he knew how to do it, he would have told you about it. And he was like, well, that's true. And I'm like, I'm just, I mean, and if he brings it up now, why didn't he bring it up before? You know what I mean? Like, and he was like, wow, I didn't think of that. I'm like, feel free to take your time. There's no pressure. But if he, you know, didn't know about it before, what would make you think he could do it now? Like, what changed? One last question before I let you go.
Let's do it. If what, what type of advice would you give yourself the 2008 version of you when you were thinking about opening your own firm? Do it. Believe in yourself. I had a lot of self doubt and there was a couple other friends of mine who wanted to leave a firm and kind of go out and do something on their own. And I didn't go. I didn't believe in myself.
I didn't believe in my, my talents, you know, the other thing I would tell myself is get coaching, you know, regardless of who you think is the greatest golfer of all time. Let's just, I'm going to go with Tiger Woods because that's my generation. Yeah. You know, in his heyday, he had three to four coaches. And you know, there's nothing wrong with having somebody to talk to, to guide you and to give you advice and to push you.
And when things changed for me was when I joined the national organization and started getting coaching on a regular basis and understanding numbers and understanding how to break the business down and setting key performance indicators for every department and looking at them every week and looking at the numbers every week. And, you know, you respect what you inspect. And at the first six months, it was kind of me, just whatever felt good and, you know, feeling good only gets you so far.
And so I wish I would have done it sooner, but I don't know that I was ready. I don't know that the older version, the younger version of me would have been ready any sooner. So probably happened at the right time. But and then the last thing I would say is we're not taught how to run businesses in law school. That's a big one. And I'm one of the other teachers. I didn't know anything.
And when I went to this national organization and started getting coaching and understanding how to run a business, that's when everything changed. And I think a lot of times lawyers, they have this belief of if you if you hang out your single day will come. And unfortunately, you know, nowadays with the marketing way it is and stuff, you have to stay with it. You have to stay on top of it and, you know, being your own boss and creating the culture around you the way that you want it.
There's a lot to be said for that, man. And it's it's so rewarding. I mean, is it scary? Yeah. You know, I was talking to a dear friend of mine today and he's on his own now for about two years. And he said, when does it get easier? When do you stop worrying? And I said, you don't. You don't. And the headaches only get different. I mean, it's, you know, when you're when you have one employee versus 30 employees, you know, it's not any better. And am I out of the day to day?
Yeah. But ultimately, who's the one on the hook? You know, who's the one with all the risk who's the one me? But it's fun now. Like I'm really enjoying it. And I I'm my journey was my journey and I don't regret it. But knowing where I know now I'm trying to encourage people. I mean, there's nothing wrong with firms. This is not meant to be a disparagement whatsoever, but to be able to do your own thing and create the culture that you want and put your fingerprint on it is pretty cool.
Pretty cool. All right, Jeff, thanks so much. Thanks man. This again. Take care. Absolutely. Appreciate it. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Bronx Attorney broadcast. Please like, review and subscribe so we can help the channel continue to grow. And if you're interested in connecting with any of the guests, please let me know and I'd be happy to make the introduction.