Read The Transcript Of The Episode:

 

Speaker 1:

This is the Ultimate Advisor Podcast, the podcast for financial advisors who want to create a thriving, successful, and scalable practice. Each week, we'll uncover the ways that you can improve your referrals, your team, your marketing, and your business operations, helping you to level up your advising practice, bring in more assets and create the advising practice that you've dreamed of. You'll be joined by your hosts, Bryan Sweet, who has more than half a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson the driving force for advisors looking to hire, improve their operations and company culture, and Draye Redfern who can help you systematize and automate your practice's marketing to effortlessly attract new clients.

 So what do you say? Let's jump into another amazing episode of the Ultimate Advisor Podcast.
 

Brittany Anderson:

Welcome back to your Ultimate Advisor Podcast. This is Brittany Anderson, back with you.

Today I have a couple of really, really special guests. Today we have with us, the founders, the creators of My Life and Wishes, Jon and Michelle Braddock. Welcome you two. How's it going?
 

Jon Braddock:

It's going great. Thank you. Thank you for having us.
 

Michelle Braddock:

Yeah, thank you. We appreciate being here.
 

Brittany Anderson:

Absolutely. Well, we are going to get right into the good stuff. We don't like to keep people hanging into your much. I would love for you to talk about, obviously we are familiar with your service because we use it through Sweet Financial Services, we know the value of it, we know where you came from, but our audience members do not, so if you could share a little bit of the history on My Life and Wishes and what exactly it is for our advisor audience, that would be wonderful.
 

Jon Braddock:

Oh absolutely. Well, what My Life and Wishes is it's a secure online platform for [inaudible 00:01:59] end-of-life planning. It essentially is a place to store and record, such as uploading and all your final wishes and documents to make things easier for those you love following your death. Our background briefly, as you know at Sweet Financial, Michelle and I were in the financial services industry also for about 35 years. Following a personal life experience, a death in the family, we found out just how time consuming and heart-wrenching it is to try and track down and locate everything that a person has. And so thus My Life and Wishes was born; a way to make things easy.
 

Michelle Braddock:

Yeah, and just to add to that. Things are different today than they were 20, 30 years ago. Technology has made our life so much better and so much easier today, but when it comes untangling someone's affairs when they're no longer here, it just complicates that whole process. As Jon often does, he sees a problem and he has to find a solution. If there's not a solution out there, he's going to create a solution. So he watched me go through this process and came up with the idea of, "Hey, there's got to be a better way," and that's what launched us down this path today.
 

Brittany Anderson:

Well, I think something that's worth pressing on a little bit is you do have a reason close to your heart as to where this came about. I'll say it from my own perspective, hearing you guys talk about the why behind the platform, I think helps advisors to be able to communicate from a heart-centered place why this is important and how this can serve their clients. So I would love for you guys to share, tell the story, talk a little bit about where this came from. Let's get into some of the details because I think it's going to give context. Even more importantly, I think that just about everybody out there, every advisor especially, whether it's personally or through a client that has experienced this and can understand and relate. So share a little bit about the why of where this came from.
 

Jon Braddock:

The why; when Michelle's father died unexpectedly, they live less than a mile up the street from us, and yet trying to track down and locate things like the will, active life insurance policies, copies of important documents like tax returns. He was an old IBM guy and so he used a computer a lot, and so trying to track down his passwords to log into accounts, bill pay accounts, auto-pay because let's face it we don't receive bills in the mailbox, the thing out front of the house anymore. That's reserved for Christmas cards and pizza flyers. All of our bills show up in our inboxes and unless someone has access to that and into our accounts, it becomes a nightmare.
 

Michelle Braddock:

Let me just tell you why that's important. We've heard hundreds of stories since we've gone down this path. For our story, my parents were in their 80s, dad was 88 when he died, and how they operated was he did all the bill paying. He handled all the finances. So mom didn't really know anything. So when he was suddenly gone, she had no idea how the bank accounts worked, how the funeral home was going to be paid, and so as a child, you step in, and she doesn't care, quite frankly. I mean, her whole world was just devastated. She can't even comprehend that much less try to deal with, is there a will. Who can be handling this stuff? Who's going to pay the funeral home? How are they going to get paid? As her daughter, it's like, you want to have them not go through that process, and you want to save them the grief of dragging them around to the banks and getting the appropriate forms signed and doing all the things. And so you step in without having any of this information and it makes it really challenging.

 I think the why for families is somebody has to do it and going through the stress and the grief, if you will, is not the time to be figuring all this stuff out. Figure it out ahead of time. Save your clients, your family members the heartache and the stress. Just get it done ahead of time, so you don't have to be stuck where we were trying to figure this stuff all out when everybody's really emotional and grieving their loved ones.
 

Jon Braddock:

Yeah. We want people to have time to be sad and to grieve. Those are natural emotions. We don't want to change that because those are important. They're part of the healing process. But there are emotions that aren't normal, and that is added stress, anxiety, confusion, frustration, anger. Those are the emotions that are completely avoidable, but the only way they're avoidable is if I am proactive and pre-plan so I know I'm going to make things easier for my loved ones when that time comes.
 

Brittany Anderson:

Well I think an interesting way to look at this too, is that I think as our industry, as the wealth services industry evolves, it's up to us to truly be holistic and planning, and I think that means so many different things. We can't just be giving investment advice anymore. We can't just be the person who helps with just their goals and their plan. We need to be a resource and we need to be somebody as an advisor that can truly help people in so many facets of life in order to remain relevant. We won't go down that rabbit hole because that's a different conversation. I think that something that would be helpful is talk a little bit about why advisors are using this and maybe how it's different from some of the other just document storage services out there. I think that's important for people to make note of.
 

Jon Braddock:

Yeah. Well, I'll touch on why we created this and why advisors are using it. It's a huge, huge differentiator for them. This platform gives the advisor the ability to have a much deeper conversation with their clients than they've been having before. It truly shows that the advisor's highest priority is their client's family, their client's legacy, their client's planning and hard work that's gone into things. And so by creating that deeper conversation and deeper relationship, your listeners who are already highly successful advisers, this ups the game to another level, something that the other competitors simply aren't doing.
 

Michelle Braddock:

Well, and the other piece to that, Brittany, is that you hit the nail on the head. I mean you're advisors, and you need to be educating your clients on what's going to happen, what they're going to face and how to prepare for that, so I think this is all part of it. They may not even recognize that this problem exists for them or their family. And so I think it's incumbent upon us, which is why we're trying to get the message out and educate people that, "Hey, today's world is different, and here's how you need to deal with this."
 

Jon Braddock:

We were talking about it earlier today on another conversation about differentiating, but to differentiate, you have to step outside of the box as it were. You have to look for other things to do. Someone that you and I both know well, Brittany, uses the expression, "You cannot read the label from the inside of the jar."
 

Brittany Anderson:

There is so much truth to that. I think that you when you look at not only using this as a differentiator, because I think you're dead on, and I think that it's up to us to have that bird's eye view, so to come out of the jar and to be able to have that bird's eye view on what. I go back to this adage and it's a little bit provocative. I think I've said this to you guys before, but Darren Hardy, founder of Success Magazine, he said in a training one time, he's like, "Get in their bed to get in their head." Now again, a little provocative, but if you think about it, he's dead on with the statement, because what he's meaning is, is you have to understand what keeps people up at night and you have to understand and know what they're lying in bed thinking about when they're trying to go to sleep and their brain won't shut off and it won't let them.

 I think one thing that's come about from some of our clients is that they're looking at this as it's really a one-stop shop. It's really one place to kind of have everything so that if you do have a loved one that passes, that you're able to access that information that you need.

 Now, the one thing that I want you guys to talk about a little, because this question comes up every single time we're talking about My Life and Wishes, really twofold. Number one, how are advisors using this with clients? But number two, how can they ensure that their client's information is protected? So if you have a next generation that you're like, "You know what, Tommy's a great kid, but I don't know that he's ready to see how much mom and dad or grandma and grandpa have," or whatever the case is. So talk a little bit about how advisors are using it and then how people can actually protect their information so they don't have to share the world, but just share what's most important.
 

Jon Braddock:

Right? Well, I'll touch on two little pieces of that and let Michelle fill in the blanks. The security standpoint ... We created this, our children were teenagers at the time. We didn't want them to have access. So within inside your secure portal or site, you have the ability to designate authorized users, who are other people who can see it, and you have the ability to toggle on or toggle off what they can and cannot see within the platform. As an added step, we also have built into that a notification system. So if one of our children went to access our account, they'd get a popup, which would say, "Hey, you're about to access mom and dad's account. Do you wish to proceed? They will be notified." That gives them the bailout. They can bail out. If they proceed, then we are immediately emailed that our account was just accessed by so-and-so at such and such a time.
 

Michelle Braddock:

Yeah. I think as to how advisors are using it, which is what I love, because we're really flexible with this, and we've designed different scenarios to fit different advisors' needs. As an example I would say the bulk of advisors that have partnered with us are just partnering with us. They're offering it to their clients as a value added service to help with all those reasons we talked about; differentiation and that sort of thing, leaving all the service and that sort of thing up to us at My Life and Wishes.

 Some of them are taking on a little bit more of a role, meaning they're partnering with us, but their staff is actually taking on setting up the accounts initially for their clients, uploading the documents that they've prepared for that particular client or policies that they've worked with for this particular client and then they hand it off. So they get them started so to speak. We actually even have advisors we've partnered with that are doing this as a revenue share where they're actually increasing what is our published retail price, but they're adding in, besides setting up the accounts for the clients, they're continuing to add in scanning services of documents and other things that their clients may not be able to have know functionality of.
 

Jon Braddock:

Almost like a concierge kind of service for the older client perhaps who might not be as tech savvy and have those abilities.
 

Michelle Braddock:

Right. So really as a value add to the degree that they get involved or want to get involved, we're completely flexible in designing that for whatever fits their size for them.
 

Brittany Anderson:

I think just bringing that up, my wheels got to turning because I know obviously in knowing you guys it's been more than a few years now, but in knowing you guys for several years, and I understand that you're very entrepreneurial in nature and I think that's really a blessing in a vendor type relationship. I use that term loosely. I think that's really important because I know as we get advisors that come through the podcast and they'll call, and they'll talk to us about ultimate advisor coaching and what's that about, and how can we help them further and all of that good stuff, what we find is a common theme; the people who are reaching out have that same entrepreneurial spirit.

 I think what's interesting about you guys, and as we were navigating this together initially as to this is a newer service, how are we going to make this work, what's going to work for clients, how is this going to work in this model for a business, how's it going to work over here, is the thing I can appreciate about both of you is that there was never a time where it was just like, "Nope, we're not doing that. We can't add that in." Or, "We're not going to try to troubleshoot that." Every single time we interacted with you guys and even to this day, it's, "Yep. Let's figure it out. Let's do this together." I think that's just something to acknowledge because I think our advisor audience will appreciate that in both of you, that that's constantly your frame of mind is not know, but how can we figure it out together? That's something that I want to compliment you both on, just because I think that's important in today's world.

 The second thing that came out of that, what you were just saying, is how you were talking about the different models. So how some advisors maybe they'll do a revenue share opportunity or something. The thing that I would hope that the advisors listening to this would pay attention to, especially those that are fully independent under their own RIA or whatever that structure is, is that there are so many ways you can add value to clients while at the same time adding to your business. I think that's something that My Life and Wishes provides an opportunity to do or provides an opportunity for the advisor. So I think what you guys are saying here, it kind of helps open people's eyes and minds to what's possible. I think that's what's exciting. That's why we have you as a guest here is because I think that, again, it's the future, it's the future of our industry. It's our due diligence and our responsibility is of as advisors to pay attention to this stuff that's coming down the pipeline.

 One question that I know we would get, if this was a live session where we had people asking Q&A, I know this would come up is, "Okay, in a nutshell, how is this a benefit to my clients? Yes, I understand the document storage. Yes, I understand ease of access. But if you could really summarize how this is a benefit to the client, give me what you got.
 

Jon Braddock:

Well, it's a great question. To frame it a different way, people often say to me, which might be a client, saying, "Well, why do I want to do this?" And I answer that with a question, which is, "What do you want the experience to be like for your family after you die?" Hopefully most people want that to be a good experience. Hopefully it's not one of those scenarios where it's like, "Well, I don't care. They'll figure it out."

 The benefit to the client is truly to make things easier for those that they love. I know I don't want our kids to have to go through what we went through; the time and the expense and the aggravation of trying to figure things out and thinking, "Man, dad was a selfish SOB. He could have at least thought through some of this stuff and laid it out for me."

 It effectively is eliminating pain for your family. It's not about me anymore. Most things we do and plan are done selfishly; vacation, buying a new house, shopping, those kinds of things. But this is truly an act of love because I'm not going to be here to benefit from it, but I have the peace of mind of knowing that I've done everything I can to make things much better for family.
 

Brittany Anderson:

I think that's so beautiful. It makes me think of the story, and I think I've shared this with you two before, but I don't think we've ever talked about this on the podcast. Bryan had an aunt and uncle who were very, very impactful in his life. This is Bryan Sweet we're talking about for all of those listening. You know him well by now if you follow the podcast. He has an aunt and uncle that he spent a lot of time with growing up that were huge influences in his life. Uncle passed away a few years ago and that left his Aunt Jean. She was around for fortunately some years after that. Well, she ended up passing, gosh, I believe it was earlier last year.

 He's going through that proverbial box that we all have, where you get some important documents and you leave it on the counter and then after time you're like, "Oh, I got to tidy up. Somebody's coming over." Well, I'm going to take those important documents and I'm going to put them in a filing cabinet. Well then the filing cabinet gets a little full and you're like, "I got to make space, but I can't get rid of this stuff." So then I'm going to put it in the proverbial banker box and I'm going to kick it under the couch until it's time for it to come up.

 We joke about that. It's sweet. But in reality, thinking about Bryan and his experience. So after his aunt passed, he was going through that box. Fortunately she did keep really good documentation, not in the My Life and Wishes setting, which would have made things a lot easier, but he found in there she had funeral instructions drawn up and she wanted yellow roses. So he was able to give her in her funeral, the yellow roses that she wanted.

 I think about how you just said this is really about kind of blessing your family going forward and making it easier and it's an act of love. I think not only on eliminating some of the bad stuff that can come about and the frustration and as many of us know anger is one of the ways that we deal with grief too, and sometimes when that's ignited, that's not a good thing when it's made even worse. But I think about the flip side and I think about having a place where you can really document everything; down to the yellow roses and having your loved ones know that you're going to get what you want even in your passing. I think that's a beautiful thing, and I think it's part of legacy. It's part of making sure things are carried on the way that you want and that your family knows exactly what that wants is.

 All of that being said, before I ask my last couple of questions, if somebody wanted to reach out and get a hold of you guys to just talk about your service and how you could potentially help their practice, how would they go about doing that?
 

Jon Braddock:

Really the easiest way is they can simply just email me. It's Jon, J-O-N, no H, jon@mylifeandwishes.com. I handle all my own email and I respond to everybody.
 

Michelle Braddock:

In addition to that if somebody does want to go to the website, which is www.mylifeandwishes. Again the word, and, mylifeandwishes.com. There is a section up in the upper right for advisors. They can click on that. It tells a little bit about some of the things we were talking today; the whys and that sort of thing. At the bottom, there is a form to request a quote and they can contact us that way too, just ask a few questions so we can get back to them and go from there.
 

Brittany Anderson:

That sounds perfect. I will say again for our audience listening, they are so responsive. Again, that's one thing I can appreciate because there's nothing more annoying to me than you're trying to do business with somebody and they're just cold, quiet on the other end. You're like, "This must be your anti-revenue department." I appreciate you're very responsive.
 

Jon Braddock:

Well, we appreciate you saying so. One of the things for us is our mission, our personal mission is to help 1 million families avoid this inevitable scavenger hunt that awaits them. They just don't know. Responsiveness is helping us get there. The flexibility is helping us get there.
 

Brittany Anderson:

Yeah. I think too for our advisors listening to this, think about what Jon just said. Their mission, what he and Michelle want is to help 1 million families. Now, I want you to think about that from your own perspective as an advisor listening to this, that's a big goal. That's a big dream. That's a big objective, but there's such a solid why behind it that I believe they will get there. Thinking about that from your own perspective, as well as an advisor, what are your big dreams for your business? This may be one of those things that can help you accomplish and impact lives in an even deeper way. I think that's something that's just so powerful. That's again why I love talking to you guys because you do have a mission that's so much bigger than yourselves and bigger than what some may even think to dream about.

 On that wonderful note, if you could offer one piece of advice to a successful advisor, what would it be?
 

Jon Braddock:

Great question. I guess for me, to always be looking for ways to add more value, which in turn create exit barriers. You're finding more value for your client, you're making things better for them, and you're tying them even more closely to you.
 

Michelle Braddock:

Just to add to that, I think much like us we were in the same industry for over 35 years, and something happened in our personal lives that completely changed our direction. Totally not in my comfort zone at all. I think part of that process of adding value and creating exit barriers is trying something new, trying something different, getting out of that comfort zone to see what else is out there, keeping current. So if you try something and it doesn't work, great, move on. I think that the key thing is get out of your comfort zone and try different things that will again, bring value and update your business.
 

Brittany Anderson:

I love that. We've said in quite a few of these episodes and we talk about this internally too, is getting comfortable being uncomfortable. That's where true growth comes into play. I think you just spoke to that exactly. I didn't even set that part up. That's great.

 My last question before we wrap is what didn't I ask you that I should have?
 

Jon Braddock:

Good question. You're always so thorough and you ask great questions. I guess the one thing that we've experienced, this has been built around making things easier for people when I'm gone. What we've found is that this is an amazing tool that benefits you today while you're still alive, then your family later, and you might add to that.
 

Michelle Braddock:

We did. We talked about all this because of our story, and the purpose and the reason it was created was to solve this problem at death. That's what we get wrapped up in talking about. How else does it work? Why wouldn't I procrastinate and do this later? Because it is, as Jon mentioned, such a valuable tool today. All of us have so many accounts, so many websites and passwords that we have to keep track of, documents in paper form that could go up in a fire. There's just so many things that could damage the documents that we have now.

 I think the question would be is it just a planning tool for when I'm not here anymore? No. It's actually a really valuable organizational tool today. I know I use ours. Most days I'm in there just to grab passwords, login information and things for everyday life.
 

Jon Braddock:

To just kind of amplify that just a little, we do, we have stuff in safe deposit boxes. I have stuff here in our office and file cabinets. I have stuff at home in file cabinets. But if we just look back to March when the world shut down and our trust documents are in a safe deposit box, but if I wanted to review that I couldn't have gone to the bank and gotten those because the banks weren't letting me in, but I have a copy of it stored in the cloud and I can open up PDF form and I can look through anything I need.

 The beauty of having everything available to me 24/7 from wherever I am ... I could come up to Minnesota and visit with you guys at Sweet Financial. You could ask me a question on a document and from my laptop or my Smartphone or my iPad, I could pull that information down immediately.
 

Brittany Anderson:

I think that's such a good note to end on. When you think about what 2020, which is when we're recording this, we're wrapping the year of 2020, I think that what it's taught us is that we have to be willing to pivot and we have to know what it takes to stay relevant. I think too, just kind of summarizing what you guys have talked about is giving a service to your clients that can help them have that ease of access, but also have you help them on that level too. It's helping them get organized. It's helping them plan for the future. And it's really making sure that regardless of what's going on in this crazy world around us, that we have access to the things that are absolutely the most important. It's our lives. I mean, that's really what it is. It's My Life and Wishes. You guys named it perfectly.

 Again, if you want to get a hold of Jon and Michelle, Jon, J_O_N at mylifeandwishes.com, or you can go to www.mylifeandwishes.com, spell out the and, no abbreviations for my quick typers.

 I just have to say, thank you both so much for being on today. I think that you guys have such a powerful mission, a powerful vision, and I know that this would be a great service for so many advisors.
 

Jon Braddock:

Well, thank you so much. And to everyone listening on your podcast make 2021 an amazing year.
 

Michelle Braddock:

Thank you so much for listening. And thank you, Brittany, for all your kind words.
 

Brittany Anderson:

Oh gosh, absolutely. This wraps up our Ultimate Advisor Podcast. We will catch you right back here next week.

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