Latest / Marci talks money (and life) / Building HeirLight: Wills, Family & Money with Jermaine Ee
Transcript
- Marci Grossman (01:00) Hello, I am MoneyMarci, welcome. I am thrilled to welcome today's guest, Jermaine Ee. Jermaine is a founder and storyteller interested in three things; how we spend our time, the work we do, and what we leave behind. His career has zigzagged across ed tech, logistics, toys, political campaigns, executive search, and impact projects, but the through line has always been the same, helping people make better decisions about their money, careers, and futures. He's run financial aid workshops in low-income high schools, built a startup to help kids confront their fear of math, and worked inside the venture capital and private equity ecosystem, studying how talent shapes enduring companies. Through Rotary and other efforts, he has helped lead humanitarian projects from Los Angeles to Colombia, Mexico, and Ukraine, working on refugee housing, medical transport, and frontline logistics. Today, Jermaine spends most of his time on HeirLight, a simple and smart Will maker designed to turn one of adulthood's most avoided tasks into a fast, modern, emotionally intelligent experience. Born in Los Angeles and raised between LA and Malaysia, he thinks a lot about belonging, identity, and the quiet instructions we leave behind for the people we love. Welcome, Jermaine. Jermaine @ HeirLight (02:27) Thank you for having me, Marci Marci Grossman (02:29) I am thrilled. We just went through that introduction and I feel like we could sit here for hours just getting through everything. The podcast doesn't run that long, but I'm looking forward to having this conversation. Jermaine @ HeirLight (02:42) Likewise, where should we start? Marci Grossman (02:45) We can start, you know, you're a young guy. That's a lot of careers in a period of time for a younger guy. So what are you looking for to get you to you are now, where you are now? Jermaine @ HeirLight (03:03) The crazy thing is I feel like I'm just getting started. am 34 now, so I feel like my life is finally at a place where if I have a vision of something I want to do, I know how to get there. Or at least I think I know how to get there and I have the people to call and a little bit of resources to help me realize these dreams that I have. A lot of times I think about all my 20s as just figuring out what is interesting to me, why things matter to me, or maybe why don't they matter? And checking off a lot of these things in my twenties. Marci Grossman (03:36) Well, that makes sense. Did you go to college? Jermaine @ HeirLight (03:38) I did, I went to USC here in LA, quite a famous school, famous mostly for film and for football and all the other things. Marci Grossman (03:46) Okay, and you got a degree? Jermaine @ HeirLight (03:48) Yeah, I got a degree in political science and business. At the time, I wasn't sure what I wanted to study, but I heard this saying somewhere that money talks and bullshit walks. So I wanted to just tackle both of that. You know, I'm going to learn about politics. I'm going to learn about business. Marci Grossman (04:05) Well, I can see the business in all the various things that you've done. Is HeirLight the first startup that you've done? Is that your first foray into being an entrepreneur? Jermaine @ HeirLight (04:16) We can think of it in projects. So the first quote unquote business or project that I did was when I was 12 years old, when I sold mixed tapes in school. At the time it was still cassettes where we would wind the tape and record what was on the radio station. And I would draw a beautiful artwork in front of the cassettes and sell them in school and get in trouble for it. That was my first foray into entrepreneurship, at a pretty young age. I've had many, startups and some of them I wouldn't even call them startups. Those are real businesses that are generating money in logistics, for example. Marci Grossman (04:58) Okay, so you didn't go and join a logistics company, you created your own to do logistics. Jermaine @ HeirLight (05:05) Well, let's take a step back from it. So my, one of my first jobs ever when I was 16 years old was a IT guy at a freight forwarding company. Essentially I hooked up the printers, you know, I figured out when some email messaging isn't working, but I learned the business. And in a full circle moment, many, many years later, my mother raised four kids. I'm the oldest of four. And when she wanted to go back to work, she felt. a little bit of this imposter syndrome of having raised four kids, even though she had her MBA, she didn't want to go for a job that I thought she deserved. So she went to work as an admin at a logistics company and in eight years, because of her people skills and her ability to just operate, she rose up the ranks and became the vice president. And during COVID, I had a conversation with her and I thought, Hey mom, You know, I want to see you more like why don't we start a business together? Why don't we just you're great at logistics. I understand the business. Why don't we do something together where we get to spend a lot of time next to each other? And so we did that. And that's the greatest decision I've made. And she made. She took a leap of faith. Marci Grossman (06:20) Okay, but then you didn't stay at that company. Jermaine @ HeirLight (06:23) Today, because my mom suddenly passed away six months ago. I am running that company. yeah. Marci Grossman (06:27) I'm sorry. I'm sorry for your loss. And so in the midst of everything else, how many companies are you currently running right now? Maybe that's the better question I should ask. Jermaine @ HeirLight (06:41) the perfect world is I would just be focused on HeirLight I believe in focusing on one thing and building it fully. But, you know, due to life circumstances, life gets messy. And, you know, with my freight forwarding company that my mom and I and my dad is working on it. And now my sister's just put in her two weeks notice to try to learn the business, because I think in some way she wants to keep my mom's business going. Marci Grossman (07:07) leaving a different job to come to your logistics company. Jermaine @ HeirLight (07:11) My sister could have a whole book about her life. She works at a hedge fund by day. She sings at night and now she's going to quit both of those, put it on hold to work on this family business. Marci Grossman (07:26) Okay, that's nice. Jermaine @ HeirLight (07:27) It is a lot. Marci Grossman (07:28) So then in the midst of all of this, how long has HeirLight been in existence? Jermaine @ HeirLight (07:32) HeirLight has been around as an app for about six months now. Marci Grossman (07:38) So you started it after your mother passed or before? Jermaine @ HeirLight (07:41) I got an insight from a lunch that I had with my parents. Because we spend so much time together when I'm in Los Angeles, we go to lunch often. And in one of these lunch, the insight that I got was that their anxiety about retirement isn't the lack of resources, but it's the lack of clarity. And what I mean by that is when we were having lunch at this Thai restaurant right next to our office, I asked them hey, you're in your sixties now. Like, when do you want to check off your bucket list? When you want to do all these things that you always wanted to do. And what I realized was that there's a underlying fear of running out of money before you die. To put it simply, I don't know what I have now and I don't know what that means for the rest of my life. And so I built a chat bot to ask my mom these questions. Chat bot asked her, Who were you before you had kids? What were your hobbies? What are the things you like? The people that you cherish and have memories that you want to save that you don't want to forget. And I asked her selfishly because I wanted to know. But what I realized in a few months was that if I had your information about the things that you love the most and the people that you love the most, I can organize all this into a legal document, a very simple will. And so that's how HeirLight came about. Marci Grossman (09:02) You're not an attorney. Do you have an attorney involved at all because you are creating a legal document? Jermaine @ HeirLight (09:05) I am not an attorney. The legal bills are my most expensive expense right now. And as you know, the probate code in all 50 states, they're different. Some states even define a minor at 18 versus 19. And some states don't have executors, they have personal representatives, for example. So as we're building out HeirLight legal bills is kind of what's slowing me down a little bit because Marci Grossman (09:17) for HeirLight. Jermaine @ HeirLight (09:42) we're working with attorneys to make sure what we're putting out there is good and it's responsible to the promise we make to our users. Marci Grossman (09:49) And so does it say, by the way, this is good in these states, or are you releasing it to all 50 states at the same time and working with across the country? Jermaine @ HeirLight (10:00) So we are currently, as of the time of recording, only live in California. But I just got the green light for Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, and I believe Ohio. And so depending on when you're listening to this, we may be live in your state. And when you download the app, the first question we ask you is, where do you live? Because we need to know what jurisdiction are we organizing this information for you. Marci Grossman (10:25) Okay, and a lot of people don't want to think about these things and I was just talking to a friend the other day, a friend and a client about one of the biggest challenges or sadness I guess that I see is when someone is in let's say their 80s and they have plenty of money and they're still in that save mode and they're not willing to spend it on themselves and do the things they want to do. You know at a certain point in time you've filled that bucket of money that you need. And if you work out your financial plan, you can say, yeah, I can afford to do the things that I want, but it's really hard to do that mental shift into, yeah, I'm not in save mode anymore. And even though this sounds like it's a will maker, it sounds like it's so much more to help them figure out how to do some of their dreams in there too. Jermaine @ HeirLight (11:19) It certainly is. My mom passed unexpectedly. So I want to be clear. My mom had a trust. And what I realized was that it isn't a lack of tools or information or really anything. It is an inaction problem. We have users who are in their 60s. And I know for a fact that they have the resources to talk to an attorney. In fact, they should have an attorney. But I can't give them legal advice, right? I can only serve them to the capacity of them being a user of this app that I built. But what I realized is that, a lot of times for many people, money means safety and not freedom. And if we're hard coded for our entire life to save, we never really thought about how to spend. You know, I remember the first time I brought my mom to a very nice hotel. I should give this credit to my sister. She brought us to a very nice hotel. And my parents were frugal because they came to this country with nothing and they worked and built up this life and gave me this privilege of being able to think about freedom when they thought about survival mostly. I realized she didn't know how to spend. And it was also Marci Grossman (12:22) Hahaha! Jermaine @ HeirLight (12:44) a big part of this conversation of like, how do you judge yourself worth? Is it your ability to take care of your family or are you worth a little bit more than just that? And I think for my mom, her entire identity was rooted in her ability to protect her four kids. And that meant saving till the day she died suddenly. Marci Grossman (13:07) That's hard because really in her 60s, you're only starting to think about making that shift of going from a saver to, this is what I saved for. Now I get to start doing those things. You want to try and do those when you're still in the notes and stuff from our conversation approaching it about the present versus the future. You don't want to spend the present just saving for the future because you have no guarantee. My father passed young as well. I was just 22, so we were just starting to get into that adult adult capacity and relationship and he passed suddenly. He hadn't even started getting into his 60s and start thinking about that retirement and that shift. And it's so important to find joy in the present as well. Jermaine @ HeirLight (14:04) Yeah. And I think, when we're in a certain age, we have things that we can do that we can no longer do when we're in a different age. For example, 34 now, and in my 20s, oftentimes people now choose between do I focus on my career and work really hard or do I live my life and not regret in my 30s settling down and not having the stories to tell. And the truth is, there's certainly a lot of people who overlived and now undergrew their career, their life. And certainly there's the other way around, too. And that balance is so delicate. I think if we knew when we're going to die, we're able to kind of think, right? Okay, we're going to plan to have X amount of fun at a certain time. But even for myself, like I am thinking about this topic all the time. And I still wonder sometimes, should I have gone to Europe and stay in a hostel and backpack in my 20s? Because I didn't do that. I worked on my 20s. And in some ways, I don't think I underlived my 20s. But there are certain things that I wouldn't do now, because now that I'm 34, I don't want to be in a youth hostel, hanging out with folks who are 19 and 20 years old and partying. It's just a different experience. Marci Grossman (15:27) Right. Jermaine @ HeirLight (15:28) And ⁓ for my mom, one of the best things about building HeirLight was that we had a lot of these conversations. I asked her even before we started building HeirLight, is there something that you want to do that you've put it off for so long that you forgot? And it doesn't have to be travel the world. It can just be something simple. And in that, we discovered a few things. One of it was that she had wanted to go back to Oklahoma, the first place that she arrived at in the United States. And she wanted to see her life and how things have changed. And we didn't know that was a trip that would have meant a lot to her until we had this conversation. And so we did. We went back last year and we filmed it. You know, my little brother, myself and my parents did a road trip and gosh, am I grateful that I have this footage. Marci Grossman (16:24) That's so great that you had that opportunity, that you had the time to find out about it and do that because obviously no one knew what the future held at that point in time. Marci Grossman (16:35) Let's talk a little bit more about HeirLight what it does, what it doesn't do, who it's for. Jermaine @ HeirLight (16:43) HeirLight is technically for everybody, but we think we're for the people who feels like it's too big of a conversation or task to begin. So we want to help you take the first step. If you come to us and you learn about some terms that you may not want to ask a lawyer for whatever reason or your friends and you realize, hey, I want to go to a lawyer after because now that I understand what it entails, we're totally cool with it. We really believe in this truth that, most people are just putting off the first conversation. And the insights that we got now is that people put it off for all sorts of reasons. The most common one is most likely that life is just busy. Right. I don't, I don't have time for this. Marci Grossman (17:32) is for writing a will. It's not for a trust and for other parts of it. that kind of information. Jermaine @ HeirLight (17:36) So we do the will, We do the healthcare directive, as well as the financial power of attorney. So we thought long and hard if we should try to tackle having a trust. And the truth is, we think it's hard enough to get someone to have a first conversation about the Marci Grossman (17:40) Okay. Okay. Jermaine @ HeirLight (17:56) We leave it up to the others to figure out how to create a trust and move their assets into the trust, a part that a lot of people don't do. So we don't want to tackle that. We want to help people start their first conversation and get the first document done as easy as possible so that now they have this comfort of, and clarity of thinking about these things. Marci Grossman (18:03) Right. Right. That's so important. So many people don't have a will or they have a will but it's too expensive to go to the attorney to update it. So it's been 10 or 15 years since they've updated their will and for a few hundred dollars, I guess, what was it for for HeirLight? Right, so under $200 you can get a basic will that, for the states that you're covered in and Jermaine @ HeirLight (18:37) We're at $179 right now. Marci Grossman (18:49) as you said, you've been vetted by attorneys in those states so you know that as of this point in time, it follows the laws for the states that you're saying, yes, we can do this. So it gives you a starting point on having a basic will and then maybe if you're looking at a trust or if you're looking at more complex issues, then you really need to be talking to an attorney specifically who can look at all of your information rather than an app. But having an app and having that that privacy to get started is so important. I know so many people that just, gonna kick that will down the road. I'm gonna kick the will down the road. And the medical power of attorney Jermaine @ HeirLight (19:29) The Healthcare Directive or the Advanced Healthcare Directive. Marci Grossman (19:32) Right. And does that include like when kids go off to college because now they're over 18? Is that the same form that they would need so that their parents can make decisions if there were, God forbid, an accident or something? Jermaine @ HeirLight (19:47) Yeah, I think every adult should have one. Sometimes it's as simple as saying, if something happens to me, here's who I want to have the ability to make a decision for my body. And sometimes we think it's simple. And oftentimes, if the family structure is mom and dad and kids, it is probably simple. But oftentimes, you're in a position where Marci Grossman (20:00) Right. Jermaine @ HeirLight (20:15) Maybe there's disagreements of who should be making the decision. I just always think back to the story of this actress that I still don't know the name of in Florida, who her and her husband had talked about what they want to do about their bodies. Should they be in a coma? And her husband and her agreed that they don't want to be in a vegetative state if they were just to be kept alive in a coma, that they're rather just to be let go. So when this woman got in an accident. Her husband knew exactly what to do, but her parents didn't know that it was her wish. So they fought in court for six years about what to do while she was in a coma. And I just think of the emotional trauma and overwhelm for all parties, as well as the legal bills. Yeah, the legal and medical bills. Marci Grossman (21:04) And the expense, I forget the legal, the medical expense. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a huge expensive decision to come in. I assumed that when you were married, your spouse got that and your parents didn't have anything to vote with. But you'd still in that situation might need a legal piece of paper in case your parents, siblings, or whomever else thought that they knew you better than your spouse if you've got it signed over. That's huge, but yeah, like I said, kids go off to college and now they're 18. Now they are legally adults, so the parents may or may not be the ones who know what they want and have the position and the... I don't know if authority is the right word, but certainly... the implied authority or the granted authority by the young adult. Jermaine @ HeirLight (21:59) Yeah. And I guess what we're trying to do is just to say, yes, it feels like a heavy topic. It feels like an expensive task. We're building this tool to make it so simple so that if you love somebody, what you can do for them is to just give them this clarity, give yourself and them this clarity as to what should happen if the unfortunate circumstances do come up. You know, when, when I lost my mom six months ago, I thought I had everything in order. We had a trust set up. We knew clearly my mom was in a coma for eight days and the family, we, we all knew that she didn't want to be kept alive if she was just, hooked up to a machine. and even then like going through this, this death, this situation where now we come back and we got to deal with the estate and things like that. It's still so overwhelming. Even if we were aligned and we had the legal documents, I just can't imagine, someone going through that and having to go to probate, which is a court process that, you go through even with a will. But if you go to probate without a will, gosh, it's just so much. Marci Grossman (23:18) Right. And that 'so much' translates into time and money and aggravation. Jermaine @ HeirLight (23:26) So the question then is what can we do? What kind of conversation can we have to get people to take action? Marci Grossman (23:32) And I love that you're making that conversation more affordable. Okay, we're not willing to have the really big conversation, but let's start having the small conversation. Let's start putting a couple of guardrails in place so that we've got an idea of what we want to do and how we want it to go. So I think that's so beneficial. Jermaine @ HeirLight (23:32) the ultimate question. Marci Grossman (23:55) I look at these other things that you've done, financial aid workshops and venture capital and the Rotary and humanitarian You're always thinking big picture and yet working on the small picture. The big picture is where we want to go, but the small picture is how we get there. And it's important to have a path. Jermaine @ HeirLight (24:18) I got really lucky that I stumbled upon Rotary when I was 23. So when I joined my Rotary club, for those of you who don't know what it is, it's a 130 plus year old humanitarian organization, a nonprofit. And the idea of it was to have local business and civic leaders come together to help the community that they live in. That was how it started in Chicago. And I got lucky. I joined a very big club with very successful people. And what came with it is I got to become friends with a lot of folks who are much older than than I was at the time. And the perspective that it gave me about life and success and about service, about, doing something for others shaped a lot of my 20s and it still continue to shape the way I live right now. And so I think of it as such a blessing. even though yes, rotary now is perceived as this retirement community oftentimes in most towns. Marci Grossman (25:20) I wasn't even thinking about that, just knowing their community involvement. We all want a better world and Rotary and other organizations like that are hopefully getting people together to kind of find ways to work toward that. The things that you've done, Is that something you were brought up with or is that something you decided as you were reaching adulthood, hey, I want to be involved in the greater community? Jermaine @ HeirLight (25:47) So we grew up in a Buddhist household, which focused a lot on giving. I grew up watching my mom get out of our car in the rain to help push a car that's stranded on the street. That's the kind of household we grew up in. And then I grew up also watching my father build businesses and projects and charitable programs to help people, always thinking about how can we want to do something, but let's structure it and do it in a bigger way. I grew up watching my parents do a lot of this and it's fun. Some of the trips that my family has taken is like we drove down to Mexico and and with our own hands and we're not very handy. I'm like a city boy ⁓ built a community center for a very small village in in middle of nowhere Mexico. And that's the kind of family things that we would do together. it's fun. I think it normalizes helping people. And also why not? You know, we're only in this world for a very short time. I think if we can do something good for others, it takes the focus away from the me, like constantly thinking about what do I have to do? What do I have? Who am I? Versus, thinking about slightly the bigger picture, the collective good. I think it helps lower anxiety and makes life a little bit more fun for me. Marci Grossman (27:10) Okay, and I'm gonna go backward from doing for the world and back to yourself. Did you talk about money growing up? You got a degree, one of your degrees was in business and were they entrepreneurs, you said your mom had an MBA? Was that something she got after they came here or did she have that before they moved to the United States? Jermaine @ HeirLight (27:31) Yeah, both my parents moved to the United States for their bachelor's and their MBA. So both my parents have their MBA since I want to say the late 80s. And yeah, so we talk about everything. I think in our family, we're pretty open to each other. We talk about, spending and saving, mostly saving. I think my parents, lots of credit to them. Marci Grossman (27:36) Okay. Jermaine @ HeirLight (27:55) They have the self awareness that they were brought up a certain way, but their kids have a totally different reality than what they were handed. One of the conversations and credit to my dad for having the self awareness for this was that I remember when I was about 28 years old, I had just raised a few million dollars to build a business at the time. I remember my dad telling me that You know, when I was 28, I was working a basic student job in Oklahoma. And the fact that in one generation that you just told me what you told me standing in the streets of New York City on Park Avenue, feeling the way you feel, he acknowledged that he did his job to set me up for this, but he may not be able to give me the advice that I need to keep going. So I think that self-awareness. it's good for him for saying that. And I think about it all the time. Marci Grossman (28:52) Right. I often tell people, the generation that, your age, which is slightly older than my kids, the world you're being brought up in is different than the world I was brought up in. But for you, with your parents being immigrants, it's even all of the experiences are even further removed from the world you're growing up in just because they came here to create. Jermaine @ HeirLight (29:14) You know, one thing I realized about money is that even with my friends, so now that I'm 34, my friends are coming into senior level positions at their jobs. And many of them are in a golden handcuff. They're making enough. Well, the numbers is high. They're making probably healthy six figures, two, three, $400,000. But their lifestyle inflation is so crazy to me that they're basically stuck. They can't do anything. I often ask them, hey, do want to travel somewhere? And they're like, ⁓ no, we're pretty tied down. Our mortgage is X amount of our total pay. And I think sometimes I try to have these conversations with my friends of like, maybe take a step back and think about what really matters to you because this game that you play, like sending your kids to the same private school as the other five kids just to keep up with the Joneses, that's not really serving you. You ought to align your value with what truly makes you happy. And if making you happy is sure sending your kids to the same private school because I don't know whatever reason that is, sure. But I just want you to have this conversation with yourself. Why do you want that? Marci Grossman (30:21) Right? It's important. That reflects back to are you working for today or working for tomorrow. Jermaine @ HeirLight (30:46) Yeah, money can be a great measurement of your self-worth, measuring stick to your place in society, or it can be a great tool to live a better life, to enjoy what we have while we're here. Marci Grossman (31:02) Yeah, so important. Jermaine, can you think of anything that you'd like to talk about that maybe we haven't covered yet? Jermaine @ HeirLight (31:10) I think if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably someone who's looking to make an improvement in your life. And if there's something that has been on your to-do list for a very long time, but you're putting it off, maybe close your eyes and think of it a little bit and ask yourself why and ask yourself why a few layers. Why haven't I started my estate plan? Oh because of this. But challenge that. Challenge that assumption and think a few layers deeper. What you realize is like, maybe the problem isn't as difficult as it is. Maybe it's just the narrative that we just tell ourselves every day, you know, financial planning or whatever it is that is such a big topic. I need to get to a certain point. Then I start talking about it, right? It may not be that. So if you're putting off something, just challenge that assumption. Marci Grossman (32:09) Jermaine, thank you so much for being my guest today. I appreciate you taking the time to join me here. Jermaine @ HeirLight (32:16) Thanks for having me, Marci And you know, I'm easily found online. So if you're interested to check out what I'm up to, I'm Jermaine Ee and HeirLight is spelled H E I R L I G H T dot com. And Marci, I'm going to send you a link. Anyone who comes through your link will get 50 % off the first year for HeirLight. Marci Grossman (32:33) Okay and to my listeners I will be sharing Jermaine's links and information in the show notes so please check him out. Check out HeirLight. There's a lot of interesting information and don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review and stay tuned. I'll see you next time. This has been MoneyMarci on Marci Talks Money (and Life). You got this. See ya!