Josh Nelson from Nelson Elder Care Law

Speaker1: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Speaker2: [00:00:23] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Cherokee Business RadioX Stone Payton here with you this morning. And today’s episode is brought to you, in part by Elma Coffey, sustainably grown, veteran owned and direct trade, which of course, means from seed to cup, there are no middlemen. Please go check them out at my Elma Coffee and go visit their Roastery Cafe at 34 to 48 Holly Springs Parkway in Canton. As for Harry or the brains of the outfit Leticia and tell them that Stone sent you. You guys are in for a terrific treat this morning. Please join me in welcoming back to the Business RadioX microphone with Nelson Elder Care Law Mr. Josh Nelson. How are you, man?

Speaker3: [00:01:10] I’m doing great stone. Thanks for having us back. We definitely appreciate everything you do and being on your show with you.

Speaker2: [00:01:15] Well, it’s a pleasure to have you in the studio. You were so kind very early on when we got the great news that our offer was accepted on a house here in Woodstock. I’d promised Holly for some time now that when we got settled that I would open up a studio here and here in the area and you were saying you had to have been like the first one or two interviews that we officially did for Cherokee Business RadioX. It was so kind of you to accept because you didn’t know me from Adam’s house cat. It was a marvelous conversation then, but I know that things move very quickly in your world, so I’m really excited about getting caught up before we go there, though. Just a brief primer mission purpose. Just a little overview of of your domain, the work that you do. Can you just speak to that in general force?

Speaker3: [00:02:07] Absolutely. First, glad to be with you again. Like I said, amazing to see you grow into what you’re turning into now. You’ve got a beautiful studio here. Everybody should come join your show if they get the invite. But what I do at Nelson Eldercare Law is help people plan for their future. We really focus on helping people make educated decisions to protect themselves and their loved ones as they go through life. And so a lot of people think about it as estate planning, but it’s not quite that we use a lot of the same tools like wills, trusts, powers of attorney, but we do it more in a way that you can really protect yourself. Make sure that you’re qualifying for any kind of government subsidies or benefits that you might be eligible for and maintaining your autonomy so that nobody is like throwing you in a nursing home or making decisions for you that you wouldn’t want to be made.

Speaker2: [00:02:50] Well, I got to tell you all of those things sound important to me, but the last one, when you talk about autonomy, there are two people, one people in this world. I can guarantee you that would be the court that is Pete Payton, my father and Stone Payton sitting right. That would be one of the most important factors.

Speaker3: [00:03:07] Well, I think that’s one of the scariest things that keeps people from the traditional estate planning is that it gets scary whenever you’re signing paperwork that says, you know, even your kids can start making decisions for you, you’re like, Oh, this feels a little wacky. So we want to make sure that everybody knows that the way that we do it, we really sit down with you over four different meetings, sometimes five or six, to get to know, you know, your story, what’s valuable to you, what kind of values you want to instill in the next generation, but also making sure that you understand how you can have a plan in place. It doesn’t restrict your freedoms.

Speaker2: [00:03:40] So do you find that there people have some preconceived notions about this whole area? Maybe some of which kind of keeps them from wanting to come in? It’s like, it’s like not wanting to go in and get your checkup right again. Guilty here. But do you find that that that sometimes they they they have some misconceptions or they’re just downright wrong about stuff and you need to kind of get them educated? Is that why the four meetings?

Speaker3: [00:04:08] Yeah, it’s really. We always start with just a free consult, which kind of sets us apart in the elder law arena is we’re giving a lot of value, we’re giving a lot of education. So a lot of people charge for that. We feel it’s important to remove that barrier so that people can make educated decisions. So many people have misconceptions about I need a will or I need to trust whatever they really don’t. You know, if you just have a bank account or an investment account with fidelity, maybe you don’t need some of that stuff. Maybe it doesn’t work the way that you think it works. The biggest thing that I think most people need is just a plan. And most people come in focused on the actual documents or the tools not thinking about how it all works together. So whenever you sign up with us, one of the big things that we do over there is different meeting processes is actually talk with you about your finances, talk with you about your bank accounts. We actually send somebody to your local bank with you to make sure that it’s set up right. A lot of times people don’t realize if you have a joint account with your spouse and one of you passes. It just goes to the other one. It’s that simple. You don’t need some fancy court process or trust or anything to make that happen.

Speaker3: [00:05:18] But then whenever you start talking about how you get it to the kids? Now, all of a sudden, we just need a little thing called a pod or Todd on there and a lot of cases, which is just payable on death or transfer on death. It’s a form you fill out with your bank. You don’t really need an attorney to do it. But whenever you work with us, we’re going to guide you through every step of the process so that it really works the way it’s supposed to. The scary part coming about the next couple of months is we get into what we call probate season, which is we get a lot of calls about people that have passed or. You know, mom’s going quick or dad’s going quick, and we don’t know what to do. And sometimes it’s just too late by that point where you know you’re going to get stuck in this court process that takes months and is expensive and people fighting just by having one little card at the bank, you could have skipped all that. And so we try and help people through that and make sure it’s practical and easy, something that the family is not going through a burden some time later for.

Speaker2: [00:06:11] So even though we have the word elder in the work that we’re talking about, should somebody at 30 be thinking about this stuff and lining stuff up, or at least having a conversation about and get some basic stuff in place?

Speaker3: [00:06:24] Yeah, I mean, I think it’s hard for some elders, a horrible name. It’s I always go back and forth. Are we going to change it or we’re going to change it? Everybody tells me we need to change it, but it’s refers to a specific type of law that focuses on asset protection and benefit qualification. So as we get older, whatever that means to your listeners and you out there, I got seven clients over one hundred and a couple of them still tell me they aren’t old.

Speaker2: [00:06:49] That is fair. Seriously, you’ve got. Wow, that’s cool.

Speaker3: [00:06:54] My average clients are going to be over 50. I’ve got so usually it’s the kids are about 18 somewhere around that age, and they’re trying to think about what the next step is. Their friends are starting to worry about getting sick. They’ve started to amass some wealth and they’re starting to think to themselves like, Man, if I got sick and I had to go to the hospital, what does this look like? Let me get some clarification to make sure that if my business fails because of whatever’s going on in the world, that I’m not losing my house, that I’m not losing my personal stuff.

Speaker2: [00:07:25] Well, guys, this is a perfect reason to have your own radio show because I’m getting some great advice here. No, if I don’t talk her out of it, my wife is going to retire next year and I own 40 percent of a pretty good little business, and then I own 100 percent of this little business the way that we’re structured. So, I mean, there’s a lot of moving parts that maybe it’s not nearly as complicated as it’s wheeling around in my head, but I bet sitting down with you guys and just talking it through would probably saved me a lot of heartache and reduce the friction and shrink the timeline for just getting things set up, right? Yeah.

Speaker3: [00:08:05] Yeah. I think a lot of people focus on like their financial advisor or their tax strategist or their accountant or just kind like their business coach. And it’s all just piecemeal. And so what we do is kind of quarterback the whole process, just walk you through and make sure that your life insurance is set up right, that your business is set up, right? And then just talk about questions. And so whenever we’re sitting down with you, we’re going to get to know you really well. Ask you about the 40 percent of the business that you have. Do you have an actual articles of incorporation? Do you have a membership agreement? If something happened to you, where do you really want the other part to go? Right. And so often we get people that just don’t think about it from that perspective, they’re like, you know, Oh, I set this up years ago. I’m an 85 percent owner. I got a 15 percent guy and he’ll pay out my wife. Uh. Well, that doesn’t really work. You know, we had a guy come in that had over $20 million in real estate holdings as an eighty five percent partner.

Speaker3: [00:09:06] And whenever he died, his wife just thought this other guy was going to kill him, a check for eighty five percent the value of the firm, and he just couldn’t get liquidity. There’s no way for him to just go finance us all of a sudden and her walk away with money, let alone. Can you imagine what the capital gains would have been if it did work like that? And so whenever they originally structured that nobody talked them through the practicalities of how it actually worked? Yes, they had something on paper. It wasn’t like they’re just going into it blind, but they didn’t see what the real result was going to be. And that’s pretty scary. So now this lady’s a business partner with a guy that doesn’t want to be a partner with her. Right? She doesn’t really know how to run the business. And so pretty sure that’s going to end up in what we call a coup where, you know, the partners just end up fighting or overtaking each other. And that’s a scary business to be in.

Speaker2: [00:09:54] So what’s next for you coming into the to year end and on a new year? Do you and your firm focus on a certain aspect of the business or

Speaker3: [00:10:05] Yeah, as we get into kind of the last quarter of the year, whenever most businesses are slowing down for the holidays, we actually get really busy, huh? And it’s busy with the kind of work that’s a little bit heartbreaking, but it’s important to do. And so often what happens is this is what we call our crisis season or dealing with people that go and see their loved ones that may be over the phone. They’ve been hiding a couple of things, you know, maybe whenever you talk to mom or dad on the phone, you don’t realize there’s a little bit of cognitive impairment going on. And then all of a sudden you show up for Thanksgiving and you say, Oh, this can’t wait. Then we get the people that do see something and they’re trying to figure out, Is this something concerning? Is this something we need to deal with right away? Or is this something that we can just start taking baby steps for? We call it crisis planning or just advisement, depending on what the level of health issue is. So often our parents can cover for each other, especially if both of them are still alive. Right? You know, dad’s not going to tell you that mom is being a little wacky and mom’s not going to tell you dad’s being a little wacky.

Speaker3: [00:11:06] But then all of a sudden, whenever you see him, you’re like, We need to. We need to check into this. And so what we normally do with people like that is the kids can come in and talk to us a little bit about how to have some of those hard conversations. Nobody wants to again lose their ability to make their choices. If your kids came to you and we’re like, you know, hey, I think it’s time for you to go to a place, the first thing you’re doing is locking everything down, right? We aren’t even having this conversation, but there’s ways to talk about it and just say, you know, Hey, are you feeling safe? Are you needed a little bit of help? Maybe we start getting cleaning person or a cleaning company to start coming in. Take a little pressure off of mom or dad if they’re in that caregiver role. And maybe we start getting things like the ability to just talk to the doctors so often, especially as guys. Unfortunately, whenever we go to the doctor, the doctor is like, How are things going? And you’re like, Say,

Speaker2: [00:11:59] Good, my wife shows up with a composition notebook and I’m like, Yeah, I’m good. I’m not hurting anywhere.

Speaker3: [00:12:07] And that’s what I think a lot of people don’t understand is it’s baby steps like maybe go into the doctor with your parents just to make sure that you’re hearing the right thing. So often whenever we speak with people, they mishear things. I always talk about my grandmother. She’s a sweet, sweet lady. But one day she came home from the doctor and said, Doctor told me to quit eating vegetables. I was like, Well, that doesn’t sound right. That doesn’t sound like a real thing. And what happened is she was on some blood thinners and she would eat right for a couple of weeks. She’d go get her blood test done, they’d reduce her medicine and then she’d go back to eating all the junk that she normally likes. And then they’d have to raise her medicine. And she’s on like this ebb and flow cycle that was just really frustrating. And so somehow the doctor said something who knows what it really was, but she heard. Well, let’s get off this roller coaster of medication adjustment, I’ll just quit eating vegetables. I don’t think that’s what the doctor said. So I started going to the doctor with her and come to find out. She has a little bit of inconsistency with it, but we were able to get a good plan going that she lives with. And it’s just the kind of thing where having that extra set of ears is really important.

Speaker3: [00:13:18] Even for myself. I’m a pretty young guy, but a couple of years ago I had a medical issue where the doctor calls me on my cell phone, and this should have been a big red flag. Like, when was the last time your doctor called you right? It’s always a nurse or a PA or something like that. And she was like, Hey, I think you need to go over to the hospital, is what I heard. And then a couple of hours later, I get a call from my mom who’s like my next like an agent for health care. And she’s like, You know, did you get in a car accident? Why aren’t you over at North Side? Like, what happened? I’m like, No, I’m at work. And she’s like, The doctor called me. I wasn’t way, you’re not there. Well, come to find out. I had a test that showed some internal bleeding, and I swear whenever I talk to the doctor, that’s not what I heard it was. It’s just as like cognitive dissonance that we have whenever it’s about us. And so it’s always good to have somebody there, and that’s one of those baby steps. It’s not anybody taking power away from you. It’s not anybody stepping in, but just so that you make sure you’re walking out of the conversation, hearing the same thing that the doctor is telling you. There can be a big step.

Speaker2: [00:14:19] Well, it sounds like marvelous advice. It really does. You spoke earlier in the conversation about people in other domains, professional services advisors, your your financial planner personally. So it’s it’s incumbent upon you. You coordinate with all of those folks, don’t you, or you or you’d like to. At least that’s the ideal scenario whenever you

Speaker3: [00:14:47] Come in and work with us really, ever since January of twenty twenty, we’ve done this kind of full quarterback system. Ok? And the reason for it is before that, what happened was people would come in and they’d get a plan. It’d be a good plan and we’d give them a list of stuff that they needed to go do is what we call kind of like homework or follow up steps. Mm hmm. And they wouldn’t do it. And the problem was before what happened is we tried to like charge differently for it, we’d say, Hey, if you want us to send the person to the bank with you, here’s what it charge. Here’s what it costs. If you want us to work with your accountant, here’s what it costs. And nobody saw the value in it just because they just we couldn’t do a good enough job educating people on it. And so now we just wrap it all into the package and we say, Let’s get you a good place out. Let’s make sure that you don’t have to worry about whenever your wife passes thinking about What do I do? You call us, everything’s already put together. Everything is already in the system. Now we are financial advisors. We’re not tax accountants. We don’t try and control your money. That’s an old estate planning trick.

Speaker3: [00:15:49] We don’t do anything with that. We work with your people, it’s still your financial person, it’s still your tax accountant. But at least they have a better idea. You know, your tax accountant whenever you go to them, they probably don’t do a whole lot of trust. They need somebody to tell them how this really works, right? If something happens to your house where you’re selling your house, I know you just moved. But eventually, whenever you move, you want to make sure that you’re still getting the same tax benefits that you can. What’s called like the one twenty one exclusion makes it so that you don’t pay capital gains on the first two, fifty or five hundred thousand of your house. We can keep all that, but we’ve got to make sure your tax account knows that because if they don’t file the right way, then you’re like, Oh man, I missed out on that opportunity. Or even things like whenever you do need in-home caregivers or, God forbid, your parents go to an assisted living or something like that. All that’s medical expense, that’s deductible. And people forget about that. You know, if your accountant’s not used to working with people in assisted livings, right, they may not look at that. And that could be $60000 a year worth of medical deduction.

Speaker2: [00:16:50] Wow. So there is a hole, and I’ll stay with the analogy and the team, if you will, if there’s a hole, if I’m missing a position. It strikes me that you probably have some marvelous, trusted relationships with CPA aides, financial advisers, these kinds of folks. Yeah.

Speaker3: [00:17:09] Absolutely. We’re always looking for more. So if you get listeners out there on your business network here, you don’t want to reach out. We’re always happy to sit down and talk about it. We do have some high standards for people that we refer to just because we want to make sure that they have the same holistic approach that we do. But overall, I mean, we work with who you have, and if you don’t have somebody who will help you find that person, a lot of times what we deal with lately is people that come in that don’t know who there are power of attorney should be or they don’t know who their trustees should be or their executor. And we think it’s a conflict for us to serve in that role because then there’s no checks and balances on us, but we can help you find people that can serve in that role, even if you don’t know who it is. Maybe your kids are horrible with money. You don’t want to be your power of attorney. Yeah, maybe you don’t have children. Maybe your children have supplemental needs where they just can’t handle the stress of losing you and doing this right. We want to make sure you have a good plan and those are historically the people that we’ve seen that don’t do anything because they don’t know where to turn to.

Speaker2: [00:18:15] And so someone in a professional capacity can be one of these, like they can be the power of attorney. And it’s not they’re not your nephew, they’re not your uncle or anything. They are trusted and have to live up to some code of ethics and standards and all that jazz. Yeah.

Speaker3: [00:18:31] So they’re actually called professional fiduciaries, and that’s just a fancy way of saying they have to do what’s in your best interest, even over their own. Okay, even if your kid does it, they’re a fiduciary for you. They sign acceptance of like the power of attorney. But usually what we’re talking about here is either a retired social workers that kind of are getting out of it and saying, Hey, let’s help people with this right. A lot of times it’s retired attorneys or retired CPAs, and they’ll step up and do this for you. And they have the experience, they have the guidance. Usually we’re going to get ones that are insured in bondage just in case things go south. Then your family is protected. But it’s a really, really good way for people that maybe have family that’s busy. You know, we have a couple of clients that have kids that love them dearly. But just work 60 hours a week, yeah. You know, if your kids live out in Seattle or out in Utah, maybe they can’t be here to do what you need to do. So let’s find you somebody local that can step in and your kids can oversee that. They can be the checks and balances and things like that, right? Or especially a lot of times of the older generation right now, like people in their late 80s and 90s, the women just didn’t handle the books. And so if the dad passes, us, guys generally go first. Unfortunately, yeah. In one of the kids isn’t financially sophisticated or able to step up because of other obligations. Maybe we need to have somebody in there helping mom. It doesn’t mean that we’re taking power away from her. Maybe it’s somebody that sits down at the kitchen table with her and helps pay her bills and balance your checkbook. It costs about one hundred, one hundred and fifty bucks a month to do that, but it’s probably worth it.

Speaker2: [00:20:14] Well, one of the things that is striking me during this conversation and I feel like I’m getting the free consultation that you talk about, but it’s it’s how not so challenging, not how big and hairy. Some of these ideas are that, but I’m just unaware of them, you know? I mean, like, just never, you know, hadn’t thought about it. Like, you don’t have to come storming in and take dad’s keys. Tell mom she’s got to do a, you know, whatever. You could just do little things to start, you know, and just kind of ease into it.

Speaker3: [00:20:47] I think that’s a good point. Everybody wants to make sure that as they’re going through the process, that it works. If you get to the process and you just come barging in which a lot of times kids try and do, they call up and they say, I don’t like Dad’s new girlfriend. Like, how do I take something away from it? That’s not the business for it, but sometimes it’s having that conversation. A lot of times we act more as like a counselor or like a life coach or anything else, but we can’t even do that until we sit down and meet you. And that’s really why we do offer that free sit down at lasts between 60 and 90 minutes, right? A lot of people are shocked by what that process really is because it’s really just getting to know you like, how is this affecting you with your time? How is this affecting you with your family and how is this affecting you with your money? Everybody thinks it’s about the money whenever you talk about an estate plan, but it’s really about how your reputation with your kids. How is your reputation with your spouse? What are you going to do as far as time management, if you’re going to be the child that’s taking care of mom and dad? Everybody thinks, you know, equal means fair, and especially if you’re like a child caregiver and you’re giving up your time at work or time with your family. Maybe it’s not for kids. Get 25 percent each, but let’s plan for that, right? The other thing is, we’ve been through this with over 3000 families.

Speaker3: [00:22:11] And so whenever you come with just a really dumb idea, we don’t say, you know, Hey, Stone, that’s a dumb idea, but we’ll walk you through some of the practicalities of it. A lot of times cohabitating is really, really a bad idea. And so most people start out saying, you know, Oh, I’ll let mom come live with me or I’ll let dad come live with me, and that can work well, depending on what their medical condition really is. You get somebody that has late stage Alzheimer’s or cognitive impairment. That’s not going to be something that you can really care for if you got teenagers at the house still right or if you do want to try it, let’s at least sit down and talk about some ground rules. You know, communication and a plan is always better than not having a plan. Who’s going to set the rules? Remember, whenever you lived under your parents’ roof, they were the boss. Right now they’re under your roof and you want to be the boss. How do you balance that? How do we talk about if you want to go out on date night, who’s supervising mom or dad, especially if they got cognitive impairment? Right? These are all just things that we got to talk about. Not necessarily just for the moment now, but also for the future. You know, it’s usually a five year, 10 year long plan whenever we do one of these. How do we make sure that we’re thinking about it through all the stages?

Speaker2: [00:23:30] So for those of you who are listening, the vast majority of people who listened to to our work listen on demand so, you know, they could be listed, we are. I would love to say tail end, but we’re late in the COVID thing. And it’s it’s it’s in November of 2021, so it’s still really fresh on our mind. And there’s people, you know, arguing over whether to get vaccinated and there’s people who are getting it and all that kind of stuff. So I want to set that context for people who may hear this six six months from now. But my question is, has that dynamic impacted your world at all or not?

Speaker3: [00:24:08] Really, it’s impacted us hugely. I mean, I think everybody was really taken back last year. We’ve. Work a lot with assisted living and nursing homes, which have a lot of restrictions on visitation even in November. Twenty twenty one here. There’s a good chance that depending on your community, whether it be assisted living or a nursing home, if somebody gets it, somebody has COVID, they’re probably locking down again. And so you’re at least under another 14 days of quarantine. If you want to go into a community, you usually have to quarantine. A big problem right now is staff, too. And so we walk through families about how to better utilize staff. Just this morning, I got off a call with a guy who his father’s sick enough that he needs to be in what we call skilled nursing or a pretty high level of care. And we work with the family instead of paying eight, nine thousand dollars a month. The guy gets it for free through the government subsidies. Wow. But then he wonders like, How do I make sure dad’s getting good care? And it falls back to again, a lot of non-legal stuff, just checking on it, making sure that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so to speak, bringing in some cold drinks or some Starbucks gift cards for five bucks to the staff there. Uh-huh. Don’t you think that dad’s going to get a little bit of better care than if he’s not? People always say, you know, that’s not fair. Well, I don’t want fair for my loved ones. I want them to have an upper hand. And so that’s why I’m going to bring in donuts or cupcakes or cookies or whatever. I mean, I always joke that having a little candy bowl with those like, you know, go to CVS or whatever and get some of that discount Halloween candy right? Throwing the ball, you know, don’t do unwrapped candy. Like one time I had a lady that heard me say that and did M&M. That’s just gross. No, don’t do don’t do something. We’re always sticking their hand into a jar anymore.

Speaker2: [00:26:02] There goes my M&M sponsorship, Janet.

Speaker3: [00:26:06] We’ll get you on the Milky Way’s or something funny. But it’s the kind of thing where just that extra little treat, you know, think about if you’re a caregiver. Most of these people are making less than 13 bucks an hour doing a job that most of us wouldn’t really want to do. If there’s a little candy dish in there, don’t you think they’re at least stopping by in? No person is going to stop in and grab a little candy bar and not say, Hey, how are you doing? Right, right? It’s the little stuff like that that makes a big difference.

Speaker2: [00:26:32] So if I if I have one of these initial consultation skills with you a few weeks out or whatever you are. What are some things that I should do could do in preparation so that we would get the most out of the out of the meeting? There’s probably a few things that I could show up and might even facilitate the maximize the meeting.

Speaker3: [00:26:53] We really don’t put a whole lot of barriers, you know, so many law firms have you fill out these like five 10 page worksheets to ask you all about your money and your Social Security number and all kinds of crazy stuff before you even meet them? We don’t do that. Like I said, the first meeting is really just talking through whatever issues you want. If you want to bring some questions, we’re happy to walk you through and it’s just because, like now we start chatting. It’s good to write them down, so we make sure they get covered right. But other than that, we have a script. If you don’t have your questions, that will go through. It just asks about where you’re at, where you’re going, where you want to be. And just gets to know you and talks about, can we help you? You know, there are some people that come in that we just can’t help. And the reason for that is maybe they’re too late. You know, if mom doesn’t know who you are or who she is, what she’s signing. You can’t do a good plan, then you know, you’ve got to go through this court process called a guardianship conservatorship. And we can help you with that, but it’s pretty expensive. It’s kind of off putting to people how much that costs. But then whenever we talk about people that are, you know, do have cognitive capacity or legal capacity to still make a plan, we’re going to walk you through all the facets and we don’t expect you to not know what you don’t know.

Speaker3: [00:28:07] Whenever you walk in, of course, you can bring in a ballpark of what your net worth is. You can bring in a ballpark of what business entity you have. You know, is it an LLC or a C Corp and SE Corp? But if you don’t know that stuff, we don’t need to know it at that stage whenever we decide to work together. We’ll give you a list of what we need and after you sign up after the first meeting, there’s another meeting that’s pretty quick after you usually within 24 to 48 hours or at least the same week, and then you’re going to sit down and we’re going to give you some homework for that meeting. Just some things to think about. And then we’re going to start with a foundation. And so the foundation for us is always going to be like a power of attorney and advanced health care directive, which is like a medical power of attorney. We just call it something different in Georgia, a HIPA release that you already have it. All your doctors makes it so that people can see your medical records and stuff like that and then just get kind of a basic estate plan going so that if something did happen to you, you at least know where your stuff goes.

Speaker3: [00:29:03] Then after that, you’re going to have two more meetings where we get on top of that foundation and start building on it, making sure that it works the way that it’s supposed to and really start talking to you about things that you want to have happen. So often we have what are called like blended families where it’s like, you know, a second marriage, maybe kids or previous kids for another one. If something happens to one of those spouses, you have to be realistic about the fact that the mom in law or the dad in law probably doesn’t have a great relationship with your biological kids. If you die, you’re the thread that holds them together. Yeah. And so we’ll talk to you about hard conversations like, do you want to have part of your inheritance, be a trip to support them? And so what really works well in our experience is paying for a trip to wherever you guys thought, like the coolest place to go was right. And then make like step mom and the kids and the grandkids and all go and you pay for it. Like, think about that way to really like, grieve and create new memories compared to just normally. Kids are like, step mom’s holding me up from getting my share. Right? Yeah. And so just sitting down and having those like those kind of conversations, those talks really makes a big difference for people.

Speaker2: [00:30:15] I cannot believe that that this work must be so well. And I don’t mean to suggest that it’s not fraught with its own set of challenges, but it must be incredibly rewarding work.

Speaker3: [00:30:29] Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think people don’t realize how good it really is to help people. And so just last Thursday, we had four clients come back in and do some video testimonials. And you know, I’m a strong guy. I won’t say that it made me cry, but it definitely pulls on the heartstrings to hear the difference in people’s lives that you can really make whatever most of the clients come in. I mean, we’re hugging even in post-COVID era, just because you’re changing these people’s lives for the better. They walk in and they got something stressing them out, whether it be money or sickness, or they just not don’t know where to turn right. And you can literally see the stress come off of people’s shoulders like I never realized before. I did this that you can see people take a true sigh of relief, which is just so cool.

Speaker2: [00:31:21] So I was normally I will ask a guest, I’ll often ask them where they draw their inspiration and usually it’s from. It’s often outside of the work, but I suspect most of yours is drawn from the work itself. But is there a place you go? When I say a place, I don’t necessarily mean a geographic place, you know, whether it’s books or movies or whatever. Where do you draw inspiration? Getting fresh inspiration, if you will, if it’s outside of this?

Speaker3: [00:31:52] I think it sounds really quirky, and I know that before I got into it, I thought it was pretty fufu. But you hear people talk about like, mindset work. Yeah. And I think it’s more important for a business owner than anybody realizes. And you know, you go through these different stages as a business owner where first you have, you know, three employees and then five employees. And then we’re at nearly 30 people now and we have two offices, ten thousand square foot of office space. We’re helping somewhere around 60 clients a month. I mean, the amount of good that we do is just. Flabbergasting, it just blows your mind that seven years ago, whenever we started with one attorney, we’d be where we are now. We help so many families, but there’s a lot of stress that goes with it, and so making sure that you’re doing constant tune up of your mindset that you’re ready for the next challenge is that you’re hanging out with other business owners that are better than you. So this weekend, there’s a big event in Atlanta for attorneys that we’re going to go to. Where guys are doing, you know, like John Morgan and Alex Shannara, these huge, huge attorneys that run like multistate practices, right? And you go to dinner with them and you sit down and chat sort of like what we’re doing right here. You know, there’s always somebody that you can talk to, whether it’s in your industry or not, it’s better than you.

Speaker2: [00:33:15] And so go, Paul. It wouldn’t be any challenge for me at all. I think I could find them.

Speaker3: [00:33:20] That’s like, you know, go pull and get inspiration from them, talk to them. You know, it’s sort of like if you’re in fourth grade, you know, a sixth grader can still show you some things, right? Right. You don’t have to go to the teacher all the time. And I think that’s one of the biggest things is just making sure that you have an eye towards growth and eye towards improvement. As we’ve grown the staff, one of the big things is making sure we’re doing staff development for the same kind of stuff. It’s like next week we’re going to shut the office down for a day and do a big training just because it’s important to keep everybody on your team going in the right direction. But if it was one thing that I think really is the focus, it’s you got to make sure that the mindset is right and then the team’s mindset is always under development.

Speaker2: [00:34:03] Amen. Before we wrap, if we could, let’s leave our listeners with a few quick tips. I’ll call them and we can we we can go in any direction you want, or maybe sprinkle a few across the business owner, the aging person, or the person that is trying to plan for that, the kids of aging parents or other professional advisors, how and how and why or what to be thinking about in terms of teaming up with an elder care law. For any of that, just if we could just leave him with a few ideas, that would be fantastic.

Speaker3: [00:34:37] Yeah, I think the biggest thing is just to always ask. What happens after this, so a lot of people think that like whenever somebody has a will, they just walk into a bank and walk out with money? It doesn’t work like that. A lot of people think, Oh, I can just invest my money enough where I don’t need to worry about long term care costs. Well, that’s not the reality for a lot of us. A lot of times people look at their accountant and don’t realize that they’re not a tax strategist. And so the person that gives you your tax strategy is probably different than the person that actually files your returns. It might be in the same office, but it’s just a different task. Thinking about things from a higher level or like a 10000 foot view allows you to see more of this. The guy that’s down there grinding and putting stuff into your 10:40 probably isn’t the same person that has the big picture. That’s like, you know, Hey, Stone, make sure your truck has more than a six foot bed so you can deduct the whole thing this year. It’s the little stuff like that that you got to make sure your advisors are looking at all the facets. And I think that so often people are afraid of business getting stolen or, you know, like, Oh, whatever firm over here, and then he’s going to refer them over to some other guy, or he’s going to throw me out of the bus where if you really do it in a collaborative way, everybody wins.

Speaker3: [00:35:53] I mean, think about if your client has a great, great outcome from your financial plan and then whenever they pass, their wife is the one that comes in with you and they see it work well. Then the kids see it work well. They’re going to be throwing your name to everybody they know. And so your business grows exponentially compared to trying to hoard those small clients or hoard the kind of sole advisor role. You look at people that are truly wealthy and they always have teams. Yeah, it’s not just one person. And so that’s really where we want to bring that to people that aren’t as wealthy. You know, most of our clients have under a million dollars, including their home. Hmm. Just because those are the people that are really worried about health care costs and protecting their future, you know, we help people with small businesses. We help people against all aspects. But especially with these new looming tax rules, you need a team because if they change something fast, you need to make sure that I can call your financial guy and we can say, you know, let’s switch this this week rather than 30 days from now.

Speaker2: [00:36:59] Well, Josh Nelson with Nelson, the elder care law. This has been an absolute delight, incredibly informative. A little, you know, I feel like maybe I’ve left some things undone, so maybe just the least little bit unnerving, but it doesn’t seem as big and hairy. Now some of these topics as they did, you know, an hour ago? Well, I think

Speaker3: [00:37:20] That, you know, first always. Removing barriers for people to come in. Nobody likes attorneys. Everybody’s scared of us. You know, I always joke with people, you know, attorneys ruin everything, even though I am one. It’s. You know, even things like what you can do for your spouse has changed over the last 50 years, and it’s all attorneys faults. But if we really look at it, we try and reduce some of those barriers. We try and take away some of that fear. Whenever we do work with somebody that’s always flat rate, they know what it costs up front. There’s no like hourly billing where you get invoices later about scary stuff.

Speaker2: [00:37:54] Well, and that’s one of the scary things to to a person like me. You know, I see on TVs, some soap opera, whatever the attorneys throw in the meter, right?

Speaker3: [00:38:03] Yeah. Even like the Britney Spears thing, whenever we see that her court appointed attorney got more than three hundred grand. I mean, it’s like, that’s just mind blowing, right? And so that’s why we do everything flat, right? And you know what it is whenever you’re coming in, we offer payment plans and stuff like that because it isn’t cheap, but it’s valuable. And again, just if you don’t know what questions to ask, we’re the right firm for that because we’re just going to sit down and talk with you. There’s no pressure or anything like that. We end up having people come in that will hire us three years later because they just had to think about it that long. And that’s

Speaker2: [00:38:38] Ok. You’re not going anywhere, are you? We’re here. All right. If our listeners would like to and I’m sure they will, if they’d like to reach out and have conversation with you or someone on your team about any of these topics or to set up that initial consultation, let’s give them some coordinates. The best way to do that. Whatever is appropriate, email website, LinkedIn, whatever’s appropriate.

Speaker3: [00:39:01] We generally do best with starting that on a phone call, and so it’s just six seven eight two five zero nine three five five four Nelson Eldercare Law. We also have Nelson Takealot.com. You can even text through to us if that’s more your style. I know that as the time passes, less people are excited to jump on a phone, but you can text into us and everything like that and we’ll make it work. But you do have to text through our website there at Nelson Eldercare dot com.

Speaker2: [00:39:25] Josh Nelson, thanks again. So much, man. This has been

Speaker3: [00:39:29] Marvelous. Oh, absolutely. Any time you want. Thanks so much.

Speaker2: [00:39:32] This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Josh Nelson with Nelson Elder Care Law and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you next time on Cherokee Business Radio.