By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach With the growing use of the internet, clients, prospective clients and professional referral sources will look you up online and learn about you before they decide to do business with you. So, you have to maintain a quality online presence, more than merely having a good website. You also must maintain a positive online reputation! First, let’s start with some basic questions: Have you ever Googled yourself or your firm before? Do you know that Yelp, Google, and Facebook create profiles for your business (even if you didn’t initiate one) and customers can leave…
Conduct a Successful 2022 “Kick-Off” Meeting with Your Firm
By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law I’ve found that the best way to ensure a successful new year is to start off with a big stride in the right direction, by holding a firm “kick-off” meeting. The purpose of this meeting is to establish clearly defined goals for the year, outline the implementation process and get everyone on board, excited and motivated! It also provides an action checklist that you and your firm can periodically refer back to during the year, so you stay on…
Are You Missing Out on the Lucrative “New” Estate Planning Market?
By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law Over the past 15 years or so, I’ve seen a big shift in the new client market. It used to be that a large percentage of the people coming to our office had no Living Trust or other estate plan. Today, the market has almost completely flipped, with many if not most people coming in with an existing trust or plan. Why has this market shift occurred? Like it or not, the truth I’ve witnessed (and you likely will…
Multiple Financial Advisor Referral Relationships May Be a Big MISTAKE!
By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law Does that sound crazy to you? Probably! But, hear me out. (By the way, if you’re a financial advisor, what I’ll say applies equally to you having too many estate planning attorney relationships.) Over the years, I have consistently heard fellow estate planning attorneys tell me all of the reasons why the dedicated, single-financial advisor referral relationship (or a relationship with only one company or group of advisors) that I use in my practice doesn’t work or why it…
What Things You Can Learn From (and During) This Crisis
By Kristina Schneider, Practice-Building & Marketing Specialist There’s no denying that what we are all experiencing right now is certainly uncharted territory and unlike anything any of us have ever gone through. And, while the news reports and uncertainty that we may be surrounded by right now may create a lot of stress and concern, what I will say is that I do think that there’s a lot of silver linings and positive lessons to be learned from all of this right now. Here are just a few things that I think this whole COVID-19 crisis has brought to light (at…
The SECURE Act: Everything You Need to Know (and How to Advise Your Clients!)
On December 20, 2019, President Trump signed a spending bill which had attached to it a piece of legislation that much of the estate, tax and financial world has been anxiously awaiting for an update on called the “Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019” (or “SECURE Act”). The SECURE Act went into effect January 1st, 2020 and is set to dramatically impact retirement planning for you and your clients! As many are aware, the most important provision of the SECURE Act to impact our clients and the planning we do for them includes the elimination of…
Year-End Sales Tip to Get Clients to Engage You
By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law As we head into the final weeks of the year, you may experience some push back from clients and prospective clients you are meeting with. In particular, they may say that the holiday time is too busy and they’d like to revisit things sometime next year. The problem with this is that once they leave your office, it’ll be much harder to circle back with them, get them in, get them re-motivated to do the planning, and do business…
Top 10 Year-End Practice-Building & Marketing Ideas of 2019
By Kristina Schneider, Practice-Building & Marketing Specialist As we head into the final 2 months of 2019, you may be wondering where all the time went and what can you do in these final two months to really help your practice end the year with a BANG! I’ve put together what I consider to be the Top 10 Year-End Practice-Building and Marketing Ideas for 2019 so that you can end this year on a productive, positive note and head into 2020 with some momentum! IDEA #1: Clean up your database. Now is a great time to take a look at…
Steve Oshins: Interview About the 2019 State Rankings Charts and State Income Tax Chart
By Steven J. Oshins, Esq., AEP (Distinguished) While at the WealthCounsel Symposium in Boston, we at The Ultimate Estate Planner (“UEP”) had the opportunity to sit down and interview nationally-known estate planning and asset protection attorney, Steve Oshins (“SJO”). The interview consisted of a number of questions related to his State Rankings Charts and State Income Tax Chart. UEP: Please tell us about your charts and where they can be accessed. SJO: I currently have four charts. Three of the charts rank the states that have the best Domestic Asset Protection Trust laws, Dynasty Trust laws and Decanting laws, respectively. …
Top Mistakes Attorneys Make Marketing Their Seminars
By Kristina Schneider Many estate planning attorneys think that seminars don’t work—for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons may be valid, but the most common reason that I find when I talk to estate planning attorneys is they say, “I tried it and they didn’t work.” It’s then that we begin to have a discussion about how they went about marketing it and as we begin to look into things further, it is clear to me why they don’t think that seminars work. Worse yet, for some attorneys, I have found that when we actually reviewed the return…