Gold Nuggets
- Juliet, the smarter woman, used the word “lawyerly”, and Steve remembers getting into trouble for using the term. They’re going to have to resolve this off air.
- Andrew says you need a team. It’s not about you.
- The culture of an organization matters. Culture is not easily transferable, or purchased. You can’t just take it off a shelf.
- You’re going to be more successful when you can focus on the result that your services are bringing.
- “Your kids don’t need your money, when they’re young they just need your time.”
- It is important to discuss the elephant in the room.
- “A truly wise person knows that they know nothing.”
- Andrew tells us why we, as entrepreneurs, need to have two wills.
- As entrepreneurs, it’s beneficial to think about where the business is going, and when it will end.
- Andrew emphasizes the importance of educational growth, and about the business contingency planning toolkit. “If it all goes down tomorrow, I’ve done everything that I can.”
- Steve and Andrew agree that engineering only makes sense to engineers.
- “There is no such thing as work-life balance. It is all life. The balance has to be within you.” – Sadhguru
Meet Andrew Brown
Our guest is Andrew Brown, the Chief Visionary of Brown Lawyers. His mission is to change the way people feel about lawyers, by building a business that improves the lives of the community, and encourages personal growth.
Smart Man, Smarter Woman References
We talk about a lot in each episode; however, we don’t want you to miss a thing! Here are some key items were mentioned if you want to take a closer look.
Website Recommendations:
https://brownlawyerspc.com/
Book Recommendation:
The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder
Stay Connected:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrownLawyers
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brownlawyerspc/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abrown8/
Learn more about our Cloud Accounting Services here
Transcript
Steve Loates:
Hello everyone, and welcome to our podcast, Smart Man, Smarter Woman, a podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. Thank you very much for joining us today. I’m Steve Loates.
Juliet Aurora:
I’m Juliet Aurora.
Steve Loates:
We are your cohosts. Before I introduce our very special guests for today’s show, let’s hear a few words from my wonderful cohost, the smarter woman, herself, Juliet. How are you doing today? Juliet. How was your drive? You went for a drive there I heard with the roof down and the wind blowing in your hair. How was that?
Juliet Aurora:
It was excellent. I was feeling a little overwhelmed and claustrophobic and just needed to get out and do nothing, so I got in my car, turned up some tunes and drove for about an hour and I could literally feel my blood pressure dropping as I was driving. It was perfect.
Steve Loates:
Awesome. Well, I plan-
Juliet Aurora:
Everyone is having to deal with different things and cope with things in different ways at this time.
Steve Loates:
Perfect.
Juliet Aurora:
Looking forward to today’s show. I have known our guest for many, many years, and he is probably, and I’m going to steal a word see, Steve. He is probably the least lawyerly lawyer, try saying that five times, that I know, but I think that there’s so much value that we’re going to get out of today’s conversation, so looking forward to it.
Steve Loates:
Okay. Well, you and I are going to have to discuss that off air. I got in big trouble, gang, for saying the word lawyerly, because I was informed there was no such word. Now the smarter woman is using that word, so we absolutely need to get into that off air. Anyway, as I mentioned at the beginning, you don’t want to hear us, you want to hear the guest, so let’s get to that. Our podcast, as you guys know, is for entrepreneurs and our goal with every episode is hopefully to provide you with a little entertainment, but most importantly, some value, some insights, a golden nugget or two would be great, that can help you on your own entrepreneurial journey. We have a great show for you today.
Steve Loates:
It’s always kind of fun when we have a guest that we’ve known for a little while and Andrew Brown is the principal at the law firm Brown Lawyers. You will know you have arrived at the right website, which is BrownLawyersPC.com, when you come to the home page to find an image of a large elephant balancing on a large ball. Which, I have to admit, I love the imagery, but that’s certainly not your typical imagery when you go to a lawyer’s website, which is I think what I loved about it. I think as you’ll learn as we have our chat, Andrew was far from your typical lawyer, which is why we invited him onto the show. Without further ado, let’s bring our guest into the show. Andrew, thank you for joining us today all the way from Hamilton, Ontario.
Andrew Brown:
That’s right. Just to be clear that yes, we are part of amalgamated Hamilton, but we would have to make sure it is Waterdown that we’re in right now, but thank you very much for having me, great to be on with you guys. You’ve actually helped me fulfill one of my entrepreneurial goals was to be on this podcast, so you’re really helping me, bringing me along in fulfilling the dream. Thank you for that.
Juliet Aurora:
Excellent.
Steve Loates:
Awesome.
Juliet Aurora:
Excellent.
Steve Loates:
Well, I’m glad we could help with that and I feel quite honored that you’re happy to be on the podcast. Well, hopefully you’re still happy when we’re done, but we’ll see how that goes. As Juliet mentioned, we met Andrew several years ago for the first time when we belonged to the same networking group, and since that time, full disclaimer here, we have used Andrew’s services and have always been very impressed with his, not just his work ethic, but just his professionalism overall. There’s lots to get into today that I think is going to benefit you guys, but before we do that, perhaps we can have Andrew begin by sharing a little of his own entrepreneurial journey. What led you to where you are today, Andrew?
Andrew Brown:
Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s always interesting to hear all entrepreneurs’ origin stories, and mine begins with my family, especially my oldest brother, Nick, who has been a tremendous influence on me. He’s a … and why I emphasize older, he’s about eight years older than I am. I’ve got two older brothers, eight and seven, and then there was me down the road. My brother Nick, he’s a financial advisor and started his own business while I was still in high school. He’d been an entrepreneur all along, owning a hot dog stand and other sort of operations and selling things in university. You can take that for what that is. While he was at university, he quickly became an independent financial advisor, right? Kind of investments, retirement savings, insurance products, things along those lines.
Andrew Brown:
What that really spoke to me as… and again, I’m a kid in high school. I remember coming down to visit Nick I think some spring, it might’ve been March break, something like that. It could have been… it must have been later in spring because it was Tuesday or so, and he was golfing and that’s really what clued me in. I’m like, “Hey, you know what? Being your own boss, doing your own thing, running your own business. If that means you can golf on Tuesdays, then sign me up.” Right? When I was going through and high school in Ontario and doing university selections, that was kind of preordained for me. Didn’t give that much thought, but it was the idea that look, one day I’m going to be my own boss.
Andrew Brown:
I kept that attitude all the way through. That’s really where it came to me. Now, nothing really materialized for me in certain terms of direction, I took a liberal arts degree, but when it came down to it and I was getting to my last co-op term in university and was about to graduate within eight months, it’s kind of like, “Okay, what next? Where am I going to go?” Some of you might say, well, why would I go for a liberal arts degree if I wanted to go into business? Well, I asked around and the feedback I got when like, “Oh, should I go into… get a bachelor’s in business administration, things like that.” What I was told was you can get the business skills anytime, anywhere. What really benefits you is, what else can you bring to the table? Right? What other kind of education can you bring to the table?
Andrew Brown:
I did an arts degree, but what happened was I had a classmate of mine that was going into looking at writing the LSAT, which is the law school admission test. I never thought about being a lawyer. I was not … Nobody in my high school, no one in my town didn’t even have a lawyer growing up, so it really hadn’t crossed my mind, but what I did know was, oh, you know what? That seems like a decent way that you can become your own boss. There’s a lot of lawyers that are their own bosses. I started to poke around that a little bit and lo and behold, I barely qualified to get into law school based on my grades. I had to take this test, so during my last co-op term, about again, six months before I graduated, took this test and did really, really, really well. It was like, okay, well, I guess this is what I’m doing.
Andrew Brown:
Fast forward a little while, part of my discussions when I was entertaining law school, and once my family was kind of blown away, it’s like, “Oh, wait a second. This kid actually can… he is smart. There is something to him.” Right? I remember being in a car and driving a long road trip with my brother, Nick, back up to our hometown, and he was like, “You know, Andrew, with what we do as financial advisors and with you going to law school, if you focus on estate planning, wills, estates, trusts, those kinds of things, we could share a client base really, really easily.” I’m like, “Cool. That sounds like a good idea.” I know what the demographics look like. We didn’t have that much experience with those but had known some families and there was a gap certainly, so those services would be in demand. That, which is unlike most lawyers, I went into law school going, “This is where I’m headed. I’m heading to an estate planning practice to deliver these services and to build a business, so I could golf on Tuesdays.”
Andrew Brown:
I got kind of waylaid along the way. I worked at a big Bay Street firm, summered and articled, really just for that experience and the money, because I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be on the street delivering this. I didn’t know what this looks like, and then when I graduated and got called to the bar, became a lawyer, worked at a small firm in the East Mountain in Hamilton and cut my teeth there doing a Main Street practice that you see basically any town, in almost any North American town or city doing a lot of real estate transactions, doing some basic wills, doing some basic business incorporations, things like that.
Andrew Brown:
After about 20 months of doing that, of entertaining, “Hey, do I want to take over from these old guys,” and then recognizing, “No, I don’t want to be in business with these guys. I want to do this on my own. In fact, if these turkeys can make a go of it, heck, I know I can, too.” That is what it comes down to. That’s coming up on nine years ago, this September, and basically, I just had my… Karen and I, my spouse, our first child, daughter, was born in March. I thought it was a good time in August that we bring our income down to zero and start up on my own and I have not looked back since. I was able to… didn’t own a house at that, so all the expenses were minimized, could cover that. Had a bit of a cushion. Not a lot, but basically, within three months, I had replaced my wage that I was making at that firm with what I was generating on my own.
Andrew Brown:
In the subsequent years, had really just grown from there and recognized Waterdown as an emerging… my family was in… my brothers and my mom were all living in Waterdown. Waterdown needed the service, so focused on that market and focused on what I knew, which was real estate transactions, wills, and business, basic business stuff. One of the things was I recognized, got busy, and really just by networking, just by knocking on doors, going to see banks, going to see real estate agents, and really grew it that way, but I became… I wanted to see a quicker growth. I wanted this… bottom line is I wanted to make more money quicker. You know? I bridged the… call it the Gen X, millennium, millennial demographics and I can recognize a bit of a piece in both of those, of the stereotypes of, well, I want it now, so one way I did that was an opportunity came up to take over from a retiring lawyer. Essentially, buy their book of business, which is not very common amongst those sort of business, but again, I’d been influenced by my brother, Nick, and how he’d grown his business. He had done that quite successfully in their industry and it made sense to me to try that.
Andrew Brown:
The price seemed right because no one had really investigated this. They’ve been buying and selling practice for a long time. We’ll get into this a little bit, but our industry, the legal industry, especially these types of practices are really underdeveloped in terms of building them as a asset, as a business. They’re usually just a service and you make your money while you’re working and then, when you’re done it all disappears, or if you can get someone to take your will deposit, so be it.
Andrew Brown:
I paid some money, I got a loan from my brother and, in fact, was able to as well leverage the relationship that the lawyer I took over from, with his relationship with his bank, and that’s what gave me the money, so I could pay Nick back. What that did, so that was about a year into my practice as I’ve started on my own and in my business, was it would have got me a team as well. I didn’t have that. I had one person three months into it that I was like, “Okay, I’ve got six real estate transactions going on and there’s just me for this week, so I need someone. I need someone to help.” Made a couple calls. There was a very young, new law clerk that I met through the previous business, my previous employment, so I called her up and she and I were a team, a team of two.
Andrew Brown:
We were road warriors and we went around to places, but what in… when I bought the practice, that brought on other experienced members. Law clerks, legal assistants that have been doing it for three years, and that really helped me leverage a lot of my time and the resources, because all those things that I was doing before, now I had competent people to do it. My attitude going, it was like, “Well, this guy was making money and very consistent over the five record, five years that I had reviewed.” I was like, “Okay, if that’s not broke, let’s not fix it.” What I recognized over time was, as I got more experience, developed my own style was, “Okay. Things aren’t as perfect or as good as they would want to be, and I need to make some changes there.”
Andrew Brown:
About that same time, Karen, my spouse, who was also a lawyer, she got on, she came on board as well. She was, at the time, she was a family law lawyer, gaining those skills, and she had helped me out quite a bit in the beginning while she was on mat leave because I was, I’m very much… I’ve always put myself out there, and hopefully the story will tell. I was an entrepreneur that happened to be a lawyer and not the other way around. I think most lawyers, what I’ve learned about our industry, is that most lawyers are accidental business owners. They’re lawyers first and then they’re business owners. That, I think, really informs how they ended up where they are, how we don’t build an asset or the typical model is not to build an asset, but that’s never been my style, through some education as well to recognize, “Okay, look, you need a team. This isn’t just about you. You’re not the only one.”
Andrew Brown:
I don’t want people to call Brown Lawyers go, “Well, I only deal with Andrew.” It’s like, in fact, I really just want, I want Andrew Brown to be a ghost. I don’t want anyone to know who Andrew Brown is. That’s where I’m going with this. Right? Now, that has been… it’s easier said than done for the most part and we’ve had many iterations over the years, but when Karen came on board, that helped tremendously because there are so many the things that I was weak at. Okay. I was good at relationships, at developing, at sales, at giving people comfort, and good with clients right in front of them to be able to distill complex legal systems and trying to get people the best [inaudible 00:15:23] and making people feel comfortable. Really, that was my strength, but my management abilities, managing the team compliance even, and keeping on top of that. Bookkeeping, I was never going to do. I didn’t even attempt to do that.
Andrew Brown:
For a long time, well, the first couple months, my whole practice was on a flash drive and it was in Excel. My trust account ledger was an Excel spreadsheet in different spots, so I was never going to do that and always hired people for proportionately. I didn’t have a full-time bookkeeper because I didn’t need one, but I had people to do that. What Karen brought to the table was I certainly recognize my management style, whatever the opposite of a micromanager is, that was me. Basically, I would not delegate, I would abdicate, and it was like, “Okay, look, we’re all professionals here. You’ve done this lots before. You can just do your job. If you don’t know what it is, figure it out and, of course, door’s always open.” Door’s [inaudible 00:16:26]. Is there any wonder I didn’t get the results from the teams that I wanted?
Andrew Brown:
It’s like, “Oh, why is going to help. No one cares about… as much as I do,” and things along those lines. What Karen really brought to the table was more of a focus on the team and the communication and the operations and the compliance and that really was the yin and the yang that my business needed and that it’s certainly her role is maybe not as… it’s definitely not as out front, but it was absolutely crucial to how we did things because it really helped fulfill a vision. As I’m gaining more and more experience, as the years go by, just recognizing my dissatisfaction with how legal services, when it comes to whether it’s estate planning and any issues involving a family and a business and family businesses and a business succession planning, how unsatisfying and how they’re not meeting the needs of the market, meaning our community because there’s the same issues coming in over and over again and, really, folks treating it like a transaction. Using their lawyer as a necessary evil and not really using it for the advice angle and things along those lines.
Andrew Brown:
I really had to… we had to focus and go, “How are we going to do this? If we see these issues all the time, what are we doing about it?” That really speaks to the… kind of the entrepreneurial lessons that I’ve learned is that you’re going to be a lot more successful when you can focus on the result that your services are bringing. Bottom line for us is, is this improving the lives of our community? Is what we’re doing, improving the lives of our community? I made the stark realization is that if we just keep pumping out wills or real estate transactions or businesses, it’s like, “Hey. Hey, lawyer, I want you to do this.” “Hey, no problem. We can do that for you.” Is this a good thing for you? Is this actually going to accomplish what you want to accomplish? That’s not what you’re paying me for. We’re not going to look at that, so here’s your service. Is it going to be good? I don’t know.
Andrew Brown:
Again, we’re not even canvassing that, just, “All right, and here’s your… not that very big of a bill, because really we’re just focused on turnover, we’re focused on transaction,” and that is the vast majority, unless they’re litigation lawyers, which is just based on bottom line, making money off of people’s problems, making money off of people’s mistakes. That’s where I saw the deficiencies in the business model for being a lawyer in that traditional delivery of practices.
Andrew Brown:
That’s when we started to really focus on the message and why we existed. In addition to that, over the years from there, we’ve acquired two more practices, whether from retiring lawyers or deceased lawyers. At one point, we were up to four lawyers, 14 team members, three locations, and that’s only changed within the last year, so we’ve seen the iterations. I had a vision there for a while of being able to scale and offer the same thing in all these locations, but there was a stark realization again last summer was to go and look. This isn’t going the way we want to, not because we’re losing money or things along those lines, we’re doing okay, but I feel like I’m busting my butt way too hard only to subsidize everybody else and my head space… I’ve got three little kids, right now they’re nine, six and four, I was always conscious that the business needed to adjust to my life.
Andrew Brown:
Even from the very beginning, like I said, I started with an infant at home, so I wanted to be home. The benefit of doing estate planning is you hear the stories from a lot of business owners, most likely, predominantly men who are doing their estate planning and otherwise our society would look at them as successes. A successful business that they’ve maybe sold, certainly the balance of their bank account, their achievements in business, but I’ll tell you, those guys got regrets. They’re very significant regrets because for them to get where they wanted to go and have those, what our society would deem as success, other things were out of balance. What that meant was they miss time at home, they miss time away from their spouses and being a part of those years when frankly, what I’ve kind of put together was, your kids don’t need your money when they’re young, they just need your time. I was conscious of that and purposeful about that, so whatever I did, I had to figure out how to do this within a nine to five. I had to work smarter, not harder as a part of it.
Juliet Aurora:
I’m going to interrupt you for a second, Andrew, only because you have given so many things and I want to drill down into some of the scope of your story. Sorry to cut you off, but I-
Andrew Brown:
[crosstalk 00:21:42]Juliet Aurora:
… had a couple of things that are really important that I actually want to spend a little bit of time for our audience in diving into it. The first one was that you were an entrepreneur that happened to be a lawyer, as opposed to the other way around. Very intentional at the onset that you wanted to be in business and legal services were just what you happened to provide, but you were also very intentional from the very beginning about building an asset. Can you drill down into that for our audience as to what you mean by rather than building a business, which is what a lot of people say, you’ve actually, you’ve specifically said building an asset. Can you-
Andrew Brown:
Yeah.
Juliet Aurora:
… [crosstalk 00:22:26] clarity around that?
Andrew Brown:
Yeah, so I had to learn that, because I had only been presented with one model and that was when you’re a lawyer, your brand is you, and that’s it. That’s what you trade on from here on out and you make your money during the time that you’re working, when you’re not working, you’re not making money. I did start off with that in mind because that’s all that had been presented to me. Early on, with the help of a business coach, Dan Holstein, it was a mindset switch, and this was very, very early on because unlike my brother, Nick, I had not owned a business when I was in high school or going through other… this was my first business. Looking back, I was like, “Yeah, I was ignorant to think that I could do this on my own, or I have the answers because the truth is, I try,” I tell this to my kids all the time, “a wise person, a truly wise person knows that they know nothing.” I hammer that into them and to be able to know that, and he opened my eyes to go, “Well, that’s just what you’re telling yourself. That’s the story you’re telling yourself about your… so you’re fulfilling that way, but the truth is you can have it any way you want.”
Andrew Brown:
I’m like, “Well, I want to build an asset and I don’t want this to be all about me.” How that came to be about going forward was that that meant I had to leverage and have the team like leverage what our coaches say. Leverage team, leverage systems, so what that means is you have to build all these things from the outside and be purposeful about that. Part of the challenge is like, “Okay, well, if I get another lawyer on board, what stopping that lawyer from just getting the knowledge and then taking off? What am I going to do then? Oh, that’s what’s going to happen.” Well, some of it is going, well, culture matters. Culture of an organization isn’t just easily transferable. It’s not easily purchased. You can’t just take it off a shelf, so when you can build a business that people want to work at, that is successful, that does good things, that gets good feedback, that encourages people to, not just team, but clients, customers to grow personally and do good things in the community, then people are going to be attracted to that, and they’re going to stick around for that. Also, it’s not easy starting a business. Right? It takes-
Juliet Aurora:
Sure, it is. Of course, it is. [crosstalk 00:25:09]
Andrew Brown:
Yeah, if you’re doing it right. The idea of not everyone is built with that innate courage or self-belief or just to be able to go, “I’m me, so I will force this thing into success.” That doesn’t mean necessarily next year or even five years from now, but I will will this because I’m me, I will believe this will be done. Building that asset meant that I had to figure out and focus on areas of law, where I could deliver it, so it couldn’t just be me. Or it could be if we bring someone in to deliver the service, as well as to empower the team members, the non-lawyer people on our team to be able to where… where is actually the only things that a lawyer can do, because let’s get everybody else to do things beyond that.
Andrew Brown:
That’s how it began to be able to get to a spot where you build an asset. Where it evolved to today is how important marketing is, how important branding is, because that’s how we differentiate ourselves from everybody else that hangs up their shingle because we represent something. That brand, ultimately, is what we’re going to be able to sell in addition to the systems of delivery and the tools that we created over the years to assist people to help them do with what they come here for, but this is we’re at our stage right now is to take it to that next level where we’re bringing in a marketing system, so that future work is not going to depend on Andrew Brown being there. People will come because they come not for Andrew Brown, but they come for the feeling that they get from us and the confidence they have.
Andrew Brown:
Everybody, and I’ve been told this many, many times from clients like… whether you talk to me or whether you talk to Heather or Jay or anyone at our office, they will receive the same type of experience, the same type of friendliness. It’s compassion, it’s listening, it’s not buttoned up, it’s very much relaxed. It’s like you’re talking to a neighbor and someone who gets it, but at the same time, knowledgeable, certainly more than competent and experienced and having some emotional intelligence that goes along, knowing what people are going through, or at least being open to trying to represent that. This is where I’m at now is to putting all those things together to package, so that it can be a saleable asset, not quite there yet, but because it is going to be, keeps leveraging our marketing system and our position in the market, then someone can step in here with a little bit of training or a little bit of competencies that they’ve developed elsewhere and then going, “Okay, this is how we deliver the services. It’s all laid out for us.”
Andrew Brown:
Certainly not, it’s not a McDonald’s franchise system where it’s two squirts of ketchup on this, but the nuance behind all of that is going, “Okay, well, this is how we handle that.” What I recognize was all the practices that I took over had none of that, had none of that. It was a phone number and it was a client base. They came back because they had a good experience. They do the Cardinal sin of all, business owners, it’s like, “Well, why, what makes you different? What makes you… people come here?” It’s like, “Oh, customer service. It’s customer service.” They come because… but everybody says customer service, right? Everybody says it.
Steve Loates:
You never hear any business owner say, “We give lousy customer service and that’s why they come to us.” All right, I mean, I’ve never heard a business owner say that. I think one of the advantages you have, and I think it’s great is, as you said, you’re not there yet, but the advantage is you are aware of what you need to do to get there, so that you are taking the steps, as you say, with the marketing, the systems, the processes, the branding, to differentiate yourself, which it will at some point in the future, give you what it is you’re trying to build. I think that’s great.
Steve Loates:
One question I would love to ask, because this is something… when, in your opinion, should an entrepreneur start thinking about having a will, power of attorney? When… because quite often when they start, it’s, as you know, it’s just madness just to make some money, pay the bills, stay in business, grow, sell stuff, build something, hire people… I mean, it’s just… and yet it’s extremely important that [inaudible 00:30:14] the power of attorney.
Andrew Brown:
Yeah.
Steve Loates:
When could you tell them it is a good time for them to be thinking about it and speaking to someone like yourself?
Andrew Brown:
Let’s reframe the will, power of attorney, when do I need those kinds of things, because I would say, look, when you’re born, when you’re 18, that’s when you need this stuff, but with a business owner on the practical side, these wills, these powers of attorney, they are just tools that we use in bigger contingency planning. Not just personal contingency planning, but a broader question on business contingency planning. What happens if this happens in my business? There’s all kinds of questions when it comes to what that if is or what we’re talking about. I’d say for a business owner that’s just started, they’re more, what they more should be looking at is insurance. Personal life insurance is when they start because they probably don’t have much of a asset that they can, their families can realize.
Andrew Brown:
I’d say, “Look, if you’re just starting out, yeah, insurance is your best friend when it comes to that, but not too much after that, you got to get these basics covered,” because it’s not just a matter of, okay, it’s a tick the box. Oh, okay. I’ve got that. Now I can move on with my life, it is estate planning never ends. It is an ongoing journey and all it does is supposed to reflect what your reality is today. Look, if it all went down, whether that’s a death, whether that is I’m not able to speak for myself, I’m alive, then I need to be prepared to be able to do that. That doesn’t mean… I think when you are, when you’re maybe younger, you’re going to spend less of your, call it year, committed to talking about this stuff and it becomes more and more as mortality increases and as a chance, but I don’t think there is… if you’ve got something that big you care about, if you’ve got kids, if you’ve got assets, if you just don’t want to leave your family disaster, then… or to, because if you think about it, if this is where this is coming, and this is coming into play, your family’s already been dealt a tremendous tragedy. We don’t need to couple that with the not having direction in place or having legal tools in place.
Andrew Brown:
It’s just part of the kit. It’s just part of it. That doesn’t mean that you need to spend a lot. That doesn’t mean that you need to… you need to make sure it’s done right and that you’re educating yourself, but I’d say as soon as you’ve got something that you care about, that’s when you should be putting in place. What that’s going to do is going to free up your mind frame to go, “Okay, at least that’s covered,” but if it starts, then it starts building your collective and ongoing education because the point is of estate planning is that you build, you start with a foundation and maybe that’s going to be your basic will and power of attorney, but that’s your foundation from then on out. Then you’re going to continue to have that evolve as you change and evolve over time.
Andrew Brown:
It kind of speaks to a question of as well, when I talked to new business owners, someone’s got an idea or they’re leaving their workplace or they’re buying something from their boss. Now, they’re going to become the owner and it’s like, “Okay, I want to incorporate. These are all good reasons.” “Yeah. Of course. Let’s incorporate, you’re going to make money, so let’s do it,” but then it’s like, okay, well, let’s take a break here. First of all, what’s the end game? What is the end game?
Andrew Brown:
I always think it’s beneficial for people to think, where are we going with this and when is it over, because as entrepreneurs, that’s a big thing that I’ve learned over the day. We have to focus on ending it because otherwise, it’s just… and there’s nothing wrong with it. Okay. I’m going to keep doing this until I’m 75 and keep drawing a wage until I’m 75, but as entrepreneurs, we usually have other ideas, too. When are you going to move on to that next idea? The idea is to start, build, grow, sell. We have to keep that in mind and if I’m asking that of a business owner about what does the end game look like. It’s completely analogous to someone, whether they have a business or not, it’s like, what’s the end game? What are you doing? What was this all about? What was this for?
Andrew Brown:
Let’s put some things in place, not because we think we’re going to die anytime soon, but we’re not in control of that. What we are in control of is right now, right here, we can do something about it, we can make sure people are prepared, we can make sure ourselves are prepared. Is it going to be perfect? Absolutely not. We’re talking about a future event. Anything can happen. But the idea is at all times, you want to rest your head on your pillow at night going, “All right, I’ve done everything I can. I have thought about this. I’ve communicated it. I’ve done right by my family. If it all goes down tomorrow, well, it’s not good, but I’ve done everything that I can.” That’s where I would see that, that it’s not a… It’s really about when do you want to start your education about that process that’s going to last the rest of your lives?
Juliet Aurora:
I know that we-
Steve Loates:
Yeah. Now, that’s great. It’s great advice. Sorry, Juliet.
Juliet Aurora:
I know that we’re almost done with the episode, but there is one question that I’d like to highlight before Steve gets into his questions. One of the things, one of the big things that came out of, and Steve mentioned at the beginning, we use Andrew for his legal services, for our business and our wills and estate planning. One of the biggest things that came out of when we sat down with you to do our wills for the first time was you actually had us do two wills, one for us and one for the business. We’ve never done that. I mean, Steve had his retail store for 28 years and only ever had one will. It’s fairly significant and it was fairly significant to me, so I’d like you, if you could just take a minute or two to explain why you need two wills if you’re a business owner.
Andrew Brown:
Right. It’s pure and simple, it is the minimization of your exposure to a certain tax that happens on death, estate administration tax, sometimes referred to as probate fees. Okay? Now, I’m not going to get into the virtues or the red herring that probate is meant… that it’s presented as, but the reason here is that, and anyone who owns shares in a privately held corporation, and if there’s any value in that privately held corporation would be best served if they had a will that dealt specifically with that. The reason is pure and simple is that your shares in a privately held corporation never attract the probate process when you pass away, for your executor to deal with. Bottom line is your executor can get their hands on your shares of your privately held corporation and deal with what they need to do after that, without needing to go through the probate process.
Andrew Brown:
Why that is significant is, bottom line is it saves you essentially 1.5% of the value of those shares. If you’ve got a corporation worth a million bucks, just by this simple technique, we call it a multiple will strategy to deal with these shares, it’s well worth it. It’s the closest thing we get to a no-brainer in estate planning and I make a point of saying there are no no-brainers in estate planning. However, this is as close as we get, because when we only have one will, all of our assets are getting dealt with that. Just the way the system works is that if you need to go to probate, you have to tell the court, “Here is the value of all of my assets that are being disposed of by this will.” Even if it’s just one piece of property, like a piece of real estate that is attracting probate, you’re going to have to lump everything in and that includes your shares of your privately held corporation.
Andrew Brown:
The point is to segregate your probatable assets from your non-probatable assets. If we want to get into a discussion about what probate actually is, because I know it’s a boogeyman for most of our community where we know it’s bad and it’s living under our bed somewhere. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t like it. That’s another question, but bottom line is any entrepreneur who owns shares at a privately corporation and as a part of your estate planning, if you don’t have a, sometimes known as a corporate will, a secondary will, I just like to refer it as a multiple will strategy, then talk to your lawyer. If you don’t have an estate planning lawyer, well, I got one for you. They’re in [inaudible 00:38:52].
Juliet Aurora:
Perfect, thank you. I know, as I said, that was so fundamental when we started down the path with you that I wanted to make sure that we covered it. Okay, so sorry, Steve. I know that-
Steve Loates:
That’s okay. Well, that brings us to our part of the show where we could do the smart man, smarter woman version of James Lipton’s Q&A round.
Andrew Brown:
Love it.
Steve Loates:
If you’re ready, Andrew. Alright, so what one word best defines an entrepreneur?
Andrew Brown:
Courage.
Steve Loates:
What profession, other than your own, would you like to attempt?
Andrew Brown:
Motivational speaker.
Steve Loates:
What profession would you like never to attempt?
Andrew Brown:
Engineering? It doesn’t make sense to me. I just know that’s not good for me.
Steve Loates:
I’m glad it makes sense to engineers because I think we need that for some stuff. Anyway, that’s another discussion.
Andrew Brown:
Even a counselor, I was like, maybe because a counselor has got to be a go-to answer for probably [inaudible 00:39:55]
Steve Loates:
Yeah.
Andrew Brown:
[crosstalk 00:39:56] no, I can do that.Steve Loates:
Okay. What sound or noise do you love?
Andrew Brown:
Popcorn, popcorn popping.
Steve Loates:
What book would you recommend every entrepreneur should read?
Andrew Brown:
Okay. Well, this one is a long one, but it’s well worth it. It’s Warren Buffett’s biography, Snowball.
Steve Loates:
Okay.
Andrew Brown:
One of the reasons I do that, and again, I paid plenty of library fines on that one because it’s a massive book, but it really spoke to me about the long-term, like playing the long game. That’s what it’s about. There’s only one game in town. It’s the long game and that speaks as well for entrepreneurs to say, “Hey, remember what we’re doing here, we’re building capital, so that we can continue to let it go down that steep hill was sticky snow.”
Steve Loates:
Perfect. When your own entrepreneurial journey is completed, what do you hope your legacy is?
Andrew Brown:
That I will have created a business model for my industry that will change the public perception of lawyers, which basically means that the service, the business model that we create, will improve, the services will improve the lives of our community and lawyers will have built an asset for themselves.
Steve Loates:
Perfect. For any members of our audience that would like to connect with you, Andrew, what is the best way for them to do that?
Andrew Brown:
Check out Brown Lawyers PC, that’s Peter, Charlie, dot com. We are on LinkedIn and Facebook, and I think that’s about it where we are there, or you can find us there. There’s some good stuff there. Subscribe to our newsletter and our Life and Balance newsletter that features that big elephant on the ball, which clearly represents the… the idea behind that is the elephant in the room and how important it is to discuss those things, to improve the quality of life when we’ve got all of that on the table.
Steve Loates:
Perfect. Well, we will have your website in the show notes, so people will be able to find it there. We’re going to get to our words of wisdom and again, had a hard time getting this down to one, but I just flipped a coin, came to these, so I thought this might fit quite well for today. “There is no such thing as work-life balance. It is all life. The balance has to be within you.” Now, that’s by Sadhguru, who was an Indian Yogi. That was a good quote. Before we close out here, do you have any final words, Juliet, you’d like to-
Juliet Aurora:
Sure. I guess more than anything, there was so much information in there that I wish that we had more than 45 minutes to dive into some of the things that Andrew said, so we might have to bring Andrew back and tone him back a bit and say, okay, you only get to talk about one thing so we can dive deep into it. There were so many things, so thank you, Andrew.
Andrew Brown:
It’s not the first or the last time that I talked [inaudible 00:43:20]
Steve Loates:
No, I agree. I mean, there was a bunch of stuff I wanted to touch on that we didn’t get to, so you know what? Maybe we’ll have to do a series, an Andrew Brown series of podcasts, where we can get to all of those. Thank you very much, Andrew. It’s been great, lots and lots of great information for our audience. Thank you again to my awesome cohost. As you know, I couldn’t do this without you. Most importantly, thank you to you, our audience for tuning in and giving us a listen. We sincerely hope you found some value. If you did, please subscribe. You can find us in all the regular places, iTunes, Spotify, Google, or you can go to the website, SmartManSmarterWoman.com and subscribe, and you’ll get notified each time we upload a new episode. Thank you very much. Until next time, take good care of yourself and those that you love. Bye for now.
Song by Adam Vitovsky / CC BY 3.0
