Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Fix the Thing 70% of Americans Are Ignoring

Transcript

Fix the Thing 70% of Americans Are Ignoring · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
What happens to everything you built if you disappear tomorrow?
0:02
Who decides where your money goes?
0:04
Your company, your assets, your story?
0:06
And what if the answer is not you?
0:09
If you don't have a will, you're not building wealth, you're
0:12
outsourcing your life to the government.
0:14
Because the second you're gone, your legacy turns into
0:16
confusion, conflict, and sometimes a full blown family
0:19
war over things that shouldn't matter but suddenly do.
0:23
And here's the reality. Over 70% of people still don't
0:26
have a will. Not because they don't care, but
0:28
because it's expensive. It's over whelming and honestly
0:31
they don't even know where to start.
0:33
So the delay and delay is the most expensive decision you can
0:36
make. Now flip this.
0:37
As a founder, what if you could take something complex,
0:40
emotional and avoided and turned into a simple guided experience
0:44
that thinks with the user? Not just forms, but a system
0:47
that asks the right questions, explains decisions, and helps
0:50
people figure out what they actually want in real time.
0:53
That's the opportunity. Because most industries aren't
0:56
broken, they're just overcomplicated and when you
0:58
simplify them, you don't just create value, you unlock scale.
1:02
So here's the question, are you building something that people
1:05
use or something that they put off until it's too late?
1:08
Welcome to AI for founders. I'm Ryan Estes.
1:11
This is for founders who want to turn expertise into scalable
1:14
products, use AI to move faster than ever and build businesses
1:18
that solve real problems people can't ignore.
1:21
Today, you'll learn how to productize professional services
1:23
and where AI replaces friction, not judgement, and how to build
1:27
in massive markets hiding in plain sights with David Rosati.
1:30
If you want sharper thinking and better opportunities in your
1:33
inbox, go to aiforfounders.co. It's the newsletter founders
1:37
read when they're tired of surface level advice.
1:39
It's how you stay early on what actually matters.
1:42
Subscribe at AI for founders.co and build something that
1:45
compounds. And if this hit, leave a review
1:47
that your future self would thank you for.
1:49
And if you want to become a voice in your industry, go to
1:52
kickcaster.com. They get founders booked on top
1:54
podcasts so your ideas reach the people who actually make
1:58
decisions. That's kick Caster by MO Burst.
2:08
David, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining
2:10
me. Thanks for having me.
2:13
Absolutely. I'm talk, I, I'm excited to talk
2:15
to you today because your company is very important.
2:18
It's succession wills.com and basically this is a a flat fee
2:25
product that helps you design your your A state after you pass
2:31
your last edge right, but as it were an overview of the product
2:36
itself. So succession will is an online
2:42
will builder and, and more as well.
2:45
But the, the the main feature that you know, it's sort of the
2:49
front door to the platform is an online will builder.
2:53
And what that means is it's a, it's an alternative to going to
2:57
a lawyer to get your last will and testament done.
3:00
I am myself a lawyer and been practicing for 15 years.
3:04
And I'm, they only did wills in the states as sort of a, an
3:10
ancillary part of my practice. I was more of a corporate lawyer
3:14
and merger and acquisition transactional lawyer.
3:17
And so when I would do wills in the states for people, it was
3:20
for those sorts of high net worth individuals with, you
3:25
know, multiple businesses and companies, etcetera, complicated
3:28
estate planning stuff. And that being what I was used
3:34
to when I would get a, you know, sort of a normal person coming
3:37
to me to get their will done, whether it's friends, family,
3:40
whatever, it became apparent to me that, you know, it's kind of
3:44
overkill. And most people out there in 90
3:46
something percent of people, it's kind of the same deal,
3:50
right? They have house, couple of cars,
3:54
some investments in the bank and they want to leave everything to
3:57
their kids equally that that most people's will.
4:01
You don't necessarily need to spend 2 grand and and a couple
4:05
of weeks on going back and forth with a lawyer for that.
4:08
So I wanted to create a solution for kid of the Mass is when I
4:14
came to doing their last Morden testament and that's what's
4:17
affecting it. Incredible.
4:19
And it's 79 bucks for the download and printable or if you
4:22
want it, the printed package delivered.
4:24
It's 100 and 2499. So very reasonable price point
4:29
and just a really important solution.
4:32
You know, if, if you live long enough, then unfortunately
4:35
you're going to have people pass, you know, and I think
4:38
probably every family has the same situation where you, on one
4:42
side, you're, you're, you're grieving the loss of a family
4:46
member. But then invariably there is
4:48
some kind of grab at the end and it gets very contentious and
4:53
completely can destroy families, you know, for, for many, many
4:57
years, maybe permanently if this isn't taken care of.
5:00
So maybe underline that point, you know, the importance of
5:03
setting a will and, and really when our our audience is
5:07
thinking about it, you know, when should you start to kind of
5:09
consider putting a will together?
5:12
Yeah, so I mean the the importance of it cannot be
5:16
stated strongly enough. If you pass away without a will,
5:20
then there are basically default rule depending on your state.
5:26
Then as to what happens to your, your, your act.
5:30
That's what happens to your will.
5:33
Well, what happens to your kid do if you have minor children,
5:37
though, all a will is just a legal document where you are
5:40
stating what your actual wishes are.
5:43
And if you do it right, if you, if you do that document
5:46
correctly and it's signed correctly, it becomes legally
5:49
binding on, on everybody you leave behind.
5:52
So to make sure your wishes are fulfilled, it's very important
5:56
to have one. And I say to people as well, you
6:00
know, it's very important to do a proper legal will, not just,
6:04
you know, right down on a, on a cocktail napkin who you want to
6:07
leave up to, because that can actually make it worse.
6:10
Because what happened then is there's document that says what
6:14
you want to happen, but it's not properly legal and binding.
6:19
And therefore the, the default rules that I mentioned of what
6:23
happens when somebody doesn't have a will at all, they
6:25
actually apply. And now they're the, now there's
6:27
a conflict at place. You're almost better off not
6:30
even doing anything in that situation.
6:32
It was very important to get a will done.
6:34
It's very important to make sure it's done right.
6:36
There are certain depth, certain features that the document has
6:41
to have it signed in the correct way, etcetera.
6:45
And you mentioned the the hard copy mailing version that we
6:50
offer. And the reason for that is in a
6:52
lot of states to this day, a will is one of the few legal
6:57
documents still that has to be on paper signed in ink the old
7:03
fashioned way. You can't electronically sign,
7:05
you can't DocuSign. Some, some jurisdictions are
7:08
modernizing more so and there are electronic options, but in a
7:11
lot there aren't and that's why we do that.
7:14
Amazing. So, you know, as far as your
7:16
customers, who do you see that's kind of like signing up for this
7:19
the most? Is this kind of a boomer type
7:21
ICP? Honestly, it it's the full
7:25
spectrum and you, you asked earlier at at what point should
7:29
somebody think about doing their will?
7:31
The answer is very earlier than you think.
7:37
I generally recommend it to my own client essentially when they
7:42
get, if they're getting married or having their first style or
7:47
if they start to make a good amount of money in their career
7:51
or their business or whatever, whatever it is.
7:52
So those sort of are the three main triggers.
7:56
And it doesn't matter how old you are.
7:57
It's, it's about if one of those three things has occurred
8:00
really, and you have money and you want to make sure you, you
8:07
know where it's going to go after you pass.
8:09
Having a will is very important, especially if you don't have a
8:12
family of your own yet. And that these are the kind of
8:14
things that people get wrong, right?
8:16
They think, oh, well, I don't have kid, I don't have a family
8:19
anyway. So what do I need?
8:21
A will? It actually means you need a
8:23
will even more so because the default rules I talked about
8:28
those generally assume sort of a traditional lifestyle, right?
8:31
So if if I pass, I am, I'm married and I have two kids.
8:34
If I passed away right now without a will, the default
8:38
rules are going to leave everything to my wife and kids
8:41
anyway. For the most part.
8:43
And most are thinking it's, it's the, you know, the young
8:45
entrepreneurs or people who otherwise don't fit that mold,
8:52
that it's even more important for them to have a will so that
8:55
they can make sure, you know, that particular niece or nephew
8:59
or that particular charity that they had in mind.
9:02
Is, is who's going to benefit? Yeah.
9:04
And then what about just kind of safeguards?
9:07
You know, sometimes shenanigans happens at the end of people's
9:11
lives, particularly on Nanas and Papas, and people swoop in and,
9:15
you know, you get some kind of Game of Thrones situation with
9:18
getting some signatures going and stuff like that.
9:20
How do you kind of protect against that?
9:22
Kind of like coercion and fraud perhaps?
9:27
Well, again, dealing with it early is the best medicine on
9:31
that. The the ultimate way to embroil
9:36
your your estate in controversy or fighting is to sign like a
9:42
deathbed will. And and that happens right, is,
9:46
you know, you have the lawyer come to the hospital room so you
9:49
can make some sort of a change to your will or or something
9:52
that is, you know, my far and away what what causes the most
9:56
problem, especially when you're dealing with, you know, second
9:59
marriages and things like that. So being at proactive is
10:03
possible. Honestly, would be would be if I
10:05
had to choose one answer. It's that.
10:07
Yeah, amazing. And it's cut and dry.
10:10
Good utility, perfect product. I, I, I, I love it.
10:13
So talk a little bit about the inception of this and kind of
10:16
how you got, how you began, how you financed, kind of how you
10:20
built the team out. Well, like I said it, it started
10:25
sort of just because I saw that gap myself in my own practice as
10:30
a lawyer knowing, you know, there's a large chunk of the
10:33
population out there that doesn't have a will.
10:36
There are many reasons we can get into for that.
10:39
I think that's a multi factorial issue, but certainly price and
10:44
convenience is, is part of it. So I saw that gap and I thought,
10:48
you know, we could really use something like this.
10:50
I always had a bit of a tech bent for a lawyer earlier in my,
10:57
in my youth, I wanted to go into coding and software and all
11:02
this, this is in the early 2000. And so back then, this is like,
11:07
you know, post dot com bubble and everything it way going into
11:11
tech would not the thing to do to get rich, right?
11:13
You go become a doctor, a lawyer.
11:14
So that's what I did instead. But I always had, you know, an I
11:20
for for technology. And so very early on in my
11:23
career, I was sort of stealth teaching a little bit of coding
11:28
to myself to be able to automate certain elements of document
11:32
preparation and things like that in my law practice.
11:35
And a lot of that was very nice Doc, that's only useful for a
11:40
lawyer. But one thing that jumped out at
11:42
me is, hey, if I could do this for a will, this is something
11:47
that actually, you know, the general population could use.
11:51
Now, of course, I needed it to be user friendly and acceptable.
11:56
So I teamed up with a friend of mine.
12:00
He's my partner now in this, and he's a software developer.
12:04
He's been doing it for for many, many years and we've just sort
12:08
of bootstrapped the whole thing. We spent a lot of time building
12:12
and that was because meeting a lawyer, I'm used to, you know,
12:16
everything's got to be perfect before it goes out the door.
12:19
You can't have, you're dealing with with sensitive stuff,
12:22
important stuff. Of course, my partner coming
12:26
from the tech world is like, well, no, you know, you get an
12:29
MVP out there and you see how it goes and you and you build the
12:33
parachute as you're falling, right.
12:36
So there was a bit of a of a tension there during the
12:38
building process and ultimately I kind of got my way.
12:42
And so we made sure that the, that the product is, is fully
12:46
operational, no MVPS before we got started.
12:49
So it took like a little bit of time, but we just launched in
12:53
January and we're, we're humming along.
12:57
It's great. This episode is brought to you
13:00
by a dangerous idea. It's called reading,
13:03
specifically the AI for Founders newsletter. 47,000 Founders
13:07
strong now. And it's the good stuff.
13:09
No top ten AI tools that will change your life written by
13:13
someone who doesn't ship product.
13:14
It's just real breakdowns of what's actually working in AI,
13:18
who's raised, who failed, who pivoted, and which founders
13:21
quietly built $1,000,000 in ARR while everyone else was arguing
13:25
on X. It's written for people building
13:28
with AI every week. You get tactical frameworks,
13:30
unfair advantages, breakdowns of real companies, and the
13:33
occasional existential question about whether your startup is
13:36
intelligent or just, well, branded.
13:38
It's free. It's sharp.
13:39
It might mildly offend your current workflow.
13:42
Go to aiforfounders.co and subscribe before your competitor
13:45
does, because the only thing worse than being replaced by AI
13:49
is being replaced by a founder who reads.
13:51
That's the newsletter at AI for founders.co.
13:54
Now back to the show. Incredible.
13:55
So fully bootstrapped 2 man team and you just launched the
13:59
product in January. Cool.
14:03
Yeah. And through the development of
14:04
that product, I I know that you've made some some pivots in
14:07
the tech stack, largely because, you know, the AI augmented
14:10
coding has become so prevalent. I mean, in the last really the
14:14
last three or four months as as it kind of really turned a
14:17
corner. So talk about that like how you
14:20
began the product, developed it and then how do you decided to
14:24
incorporate AI into the tool? I mean, I think AI is has
14:30
transformed us and our product in two big ways.
14:34
There's there's the the user facing element of it, the actual
14:39
AI features that we now have in the product.
14:42
And then there's you know what's happening behind the scenes in
14:44
terms of how it's changed how we operate.
14:47
I mean, the, the rate of progress to the speed at which
14:53
we can rule out changes or or new ideas now is astronomically
14:59
faster than it was a year ago. Like it's crazy.
15:02
We, we, we right before the January launch at the last
15:06
minute, my partner Nick said, I think I'm going to rebuild the
15:09
whole front end. I, you know, I don't, I don't
15:11
really like how it looks. Let me change.
15:13
It took them, you know, it was honestly maybe a few days now.
15:17
Don't get me on the back end and all that logic was was still
15:21
there unchanged, but to totally not just face lift, but redo the
15:26
entire front end and UI in a matter of days.
15:30
Something that originally took March was, you know, truly
15:33
astonishing. So that was the first time that
15:35
hey, we're in a different world in, you know, late 2025, early
15:40
26 than we were a year or two prior now.
15:46
And and that has had filtered through to the whole thing.
15:50
You know, you said we're, we're A2 man team running the company.
15:54
That wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for the various AI
15:58
solutions that we've managed to, to implement.
16:02
And it's been especially transformative for me because,
16:05
you know, I'm a lawyer. I'm not a tech guy, or at least
16:09
I wasn't. And so a year ago, my knowledge
16:13
of AI and really anything technical, you know, extended
16:17
about as far as going on to a free ChatGPT account and, and
16:22
asking it dumb questions, right? And now I am now I have my own
16:26
open claw VPS, dedicated VPS server with my open claw and
16:31
everything. It's, it's wild.
16:33
And I, I joked to Nick that it's changed even the way I speak,
16:38
right? I'm finding myself in emails or
16:40
falls with clients now, like as a lawyer and I'm using various
16:45
text speak all the time because I've just gotten so used to
16:49
conversing with, with Claude and, and the sort of terminology
16:53
that it's using, right? So that's what's happening
16:57
behind the scenes as far as what the users see.
17:01
What we've done with AI in my view, you know, is what truly
17:06
touches apart. Though I wish I could say we're
17:08
the only online will builder out there.
17:10
We're not. There are others.
17:12
And before online will builders, there were what were called will
17:16
kit, which was like literally a kit with pieces of paper and
17:20
instructions to do your own will.
17:23
These things have existed for a long time.
17:26
What the other online will builders do is, in my view,
17:30
it's, it's half the equation. You're trying to replace the
17:33
lawyer experience. And what they do is, is replace
17:37
half of that lawyer experience. So you a traditional will
17:40
builder you, you log in and you basically walk through a series
17:45
of questions, right? You're filling in fields, you're
17:49
answering questions, you're selecting things from drop down.
17:52
Basically you're inputting your data, you're inputting your
17:55
wishes into a wizard based system and then that wizard is
18:01
doing what it needs to do on on the back end and and spitting
18:05
out the legal document. The problem with that is it
18:09
assumed that people any understand everything they're
18:13
seeing and be that they already know what they want and the
18:16
reality is that usually not the case.
18:19
Sometimes that's the case, but it's usually not.
18:22
It's rare that as a lawyer, I have a client come into my
18:25
office and I could hand them a questionnaire with everything I
18:30
need to know and they could fill it out on the spot and hand it
18:33
back to me. And now, you know, hey, give me
18:35
5 minutes. I will pop over to my desk and
18:36
drop that your will for you. In reality, it's more of a, a
18:41
back and forth conversation, right?
18:43
It's me asking them questions. It's me, you know, sort of
18:48
soliciting for them to think about what they need to think
18:52
about, sort of poking and prodding for answers.
18:56
And they're asking questions too.
18:58
In the meantime, I'm explaining corn's depth.
19:01
I'm giving them examples or suggestions of, hey, this is
19:05
what a lot of people do in that situation, etcetera.
19:07
And it's more of a, it's more of a conversation.
19:11
Well, that's the perfect job for AI.
19:14
So what we've done is the will builder itself, what's actually
19:19
drafting the will is still completely deterministic model
19:24
that is based on what Nick and I built from the ground up.
19:29
You know, every line of text that could show up in that will
19:33
was it is part of the logical and drafting process that we set
19:38
up. There's no AI doing any
19:40
drafting. This is not chat CPT drafting
19:42
your will. Where our AI comes in is that
19:46
it's been, it's a it's a model that's been trained on.
19:50
Well, it's been received extra training on sort of the legal
19:53
elements and wills and estates and estate planning and all
19:56
that. But then it's also been trained
19:58
on, on that app on that deterministic will builder.
20:03
And its job is to basically be the lawyer in that example that
20:08
I gave you, right where it will walk you through the process it
20:12
will. You the questions rather than
20:15
you having to have your answers ready to go.
20:18
It will answer your questions in real time, give you examples,
20:22
give you suggestions in the same way a lawyer would, so that the
20:25
process for the user emulate the actual lawyer experience that
20:30
much more because they now have this interpreter and the guide
20:35
walking them through the process.
20:37
Yeah, amazing it. Now, there are some pretty big
20:42
incumbents, you know, in the space that are, let's say, just
20:46
advertising in the Super Bowl, you know, so as you're kind of
20:49
going to market as a bootstrap product, where are you going to
20:52
find your first customers? Believe it or not, it just the
20:59
old fact that FDO works incredibly well in this space.
21:03
It's an area that a lot of people, you know, a lot of
21:06
people have a lot of question when it comes to Weld and estate
21:10
planning and just having informative articles and
21:18
formative. Yeah, we we want to be an
21:21
authority. We want to be a resource to
21:23
people outside of just the wheel builder itself.
21:26
And the more content we produced like that, the more people come
21:32
in and it's actually been deprising how well just that
21:36
traditional SDO is work. And I think the only thing is
21:39
that, yeah, there are some big incumbents, but it's a, it's a
21:43
big market. There's no, there's no stored
21:46
it, You know, it's literally something that everybody needs.
21:48
There's no demographic almost involved here other than I
21:52
guess, you know, minors are not included.
21:55
But it's a very, very big market.
21:57
Everybody needs 1. Something like 70% of Americans
22:01
still do not have a will in place.
22:03
So there's plenty of of pie to go around.
22:06
Yeah. Talk a little bit about your SEO
22:08
strategy, like basically how did you determine which content to
22:11
publish, when did you start publishing and how soon we did
22:14
you start seeing results and and also kind of maybe did you, are
22:17
you starting to see LLM recommendations come in a little
22:19
bit more? I'm not sure that I've seen any
22:23
LLM recommendations coming over the the FEO strategy.
22:28
I mean again, we've just gotten started.
22:30
So, you know, we launched in January in terms of putting the
22:34
app live and the site live. So, you know, and then it's
22:39
taken some time to get to get some momentum going on the
22:42
content production. So it's, it's still an ongoing
22:46
thing. We're still very early days.
22:47
But honestly, it's just simple, simple education, right?
22:51
I'm a lawyer. I've been doing this for a long
22:53
time. I know what kind of make people
22:57
tick in this space. And I actually have a position
23:01
of authority. I have education in this space
23:05
to be able to produce educational content.
23:08
Obviously it's not legal advice, it's educational content, but it
23:12
comes pretty naturally as a result of my my back.
23:16
Yeah, you bet. Amazing.
23:18
Now let's talk about pricing. 7999 is the price I would expect
23:23
you to you to charge for listening to my voicemail.
23:26
As an attorney. I know how you guys are.
23:30
How did you land on that price? So, yeah, and, and, and that
23:36
surface is the key thing here is again, it's not legal invite.
23:39
At the end of the day, Succession Wells is a is a
23:42
software platform. It it's a self help tool.
23:45
The, the, the user is interacting with the software
23:50
and essentially preparing their own will using this tool.
23:54
We're not, you know, getting on calls with people and, and, and
23:59
giving them legal advice. That would be a whole separate
24:02
can of worms and that yeah, that's a big way that we can
24:05
keep caught in pricing down. Beyond that, honestly, the the
24:10
pricing is based on what we felt, you know, the market would
24:16
support in terms of, you know, how we reach a broader audience.
24:21
How do we, how do we get that 70% of people don't have a will?
24:25
How do we get that number down? And you know, like any because
24:30
we're bootstrapped, because we're, we're small and nimble,
24:34
you know, we don't have large investors breathing down our
24:38
neck. We don't have, you know, a burn
24:42
rate this or that that we need to worry about.
24:46
So we're we're totally lean. We can offer that, you know, the
24:50
most competitive possible price. And that's essentially how we
24:54
came to it. Cool.
24:56
Did you use design partners for any of the UI or for pricings, a
25:01
way to kind of ballast some of your expectations and your
25:04
expertise against kind of what what the market wants?
25:06
And then as you're looking at pricing, you know, maybe you
25:09
have a ABC type package, did you want to kind of be priced high?
25:13
How did you kind of approach that philosophically?
25:17
Well, the pricing is, is still something we are working
25:22
through. If I'm being honest with you,
25:25
the $80 or 7999 or 1:20 1/24/99 for the hard copy package is
25:33
sort of a all you know all in one introductory price.
25:38
Because we're still so new, we will most likely be breaking it
25:42
down into tiers in the near future which that will become
25:46
the middle tier. So we're going to possibly be
25:49
offering an even left expensive version where it simply
25:53
translates into fewer customizations available for the
25:59
for the user, right? You sort of taking care of the
26:01
big picture stuff that the low hanging fruit, the stuff that
26:04
really needs to be dealt with and, and some of the bells and
26:08
whistles are, are not there. And then we're also going to
26:11
have a more advanced version with, with even more bells and
26:15
whistles, more customization, trying to emulate that lawyer
26:19
experience even more. As far as the current UI and the
26:24
current pricing, you know, plenty of research obviously.
26:28
And we do have a member of the team in addition to Nick and I
26:31
who is a freelance marketer and she is a former, a former
26:41
employee of, of one of the big players.
26:43
So he has some pretty useful insights.
26:48
Yeah, maybe some recommendations for folks, you know, obviously
26:51
the money, the the big ticket items, whether you're talking
26:54
about property assets, cars, blah, blah, blah.
26:56
Jewelry, I guess, you know, those, those probably are kind
27:00
of like pooled and then split, you know, But a lot of times
27:03
aside from the, the, the assets, it's sentimental value.
27:07
And those are kind of hard to assess.
27:09
You know, I would assume that if I passed, my kids would be
27:12
interested probably in my guitars and my pocket knives or
27:16
something, because it's like those are what's sentimental to
27:19
me, but I really don't know what's sentimental to them.
27:22
Do you, do you kind of advise that they you, you have this
27:26
conversation openly with your family as you're starting to
27:28
stitch some of the stuff together?
27:31
Yes, but with one big caveat that I actually don't recommend
27:36
that that be part of the process of actually drafting your will.
27:40
So what often happens with these things is perfect becomes the
27:45
enemy of good. The, the, the more emotionally
27:50
driven decisions in the process are often the hardest.
27:54
And what can happen is it leads to procrastination and it leads
27:59
to in some cases never even getting it done right.
28:03
Because there's, you know, these, these few gating items
28:06
that are, that are blocking you and you and you're not finishing
28:09
the process. And So what I often recommend to
28:11
people is just get it done. You know, if you have to say,
28:15
all my stuff goes to my kids equally and leave it at that.
28:18
Do that and you can come back afterwards and start to get more
28:24
granular with how you want to do things.
28:27
And in reality, what a lot of people do is when it comes to
28:30
those sort of individual, what we call specific book, left
28:34
right individual item is going to this person.
28:38
A lot of times people will do that in a non binding document
28:44
that sort of it's like a rider that goes along with the will,
28:47
but it's not actually binding. So that if, when the time comes,
28:53
circumstances have changed significantly between then and
28:58
the time that you wrote the will your your representatives, your
29:02
executors are not sort of, you know, tie have their hands tied
29:06
by by what you wrote when you got to a specific in the will it
29:08
show. That's wise, you know, because
29:12
succession wills, you know, 7999 take you about 20 minutes to get
29:17
through it. Or you add in the conversation
29:20
of who gets Dad's lucky spoon and now that's a three month
29:23
process. Yeah, just get it done, figure
29:27
it out. And, and part of, you know,
29:31
putting our money where our mouth is on that is that it's a
29:35
lifetime act that's like you pay, you pay the 7999, you're
29:39
not paying for this particular will, you're paying for access
29:43
to the platform. So I could go on and do my will,
29:48
pay my 7999, print it whenever and change my mind in a week.
29:53
And I could just log back on, make the change and, and reprint
29:58
it. I'm not being charged more or
30:01
anything like that. And so, so the idea is there's
30:04
access to a platform, the will builder is there for you
30:08
whenever you need to redo things or change things.
30:12
Because that's another piece of advice I'd give to people is a
30:16
lot of people treat doing their will as sort of a, you know, set
30:20
it and forget it kind of thing. Really, it's going to be
30:23
something that you come back to every few years or with every
30:28
major life circumstance change. And it should be a bit more of
30:34
a, of a living breathing document than that, because
30:37
things do change over time and you need to be able to come
30:39
back. And that again, is, is a way in
30:42
which, you know, we're adding value because if you're going to
30:46
a lawyer and doing that, you're, you're paying that lawyer again
30:50
that second time around, right? You're not, they're not making
30:53
those changes for free. So with it, it provides a very
30:57
cost effective solution where a person can have active to that
31:02
for the long haul all. Right.
31:05
We're at that time in the podcast where we're going to the
31:07
quantum round. Are you ready for this?
31:10
Are you ready? I'll have her beat, all right.
31:12
So I love this product and I love this category.
31:15
I feel like this is going to grow.
31:17
Now. You have an experience in
31:19
mergers and acquisitions. Do you see other applications
31:22
for this, which is to say that like here, this, the function is
31:25
basically we have one singular problem.
31:27
We're we're creating one singular document to solve that
31:30
problem. It's a, it's a low cost, low
31:33
barrier of entry for people to get involved with the product.
31:35
It, it lasts a lifetime. It's brilliant.
31:38
Are there other kind of legal documents that you could see
31:41
kind of like a product like this springing up around?
31:45
Yeah, and this already get the big one.
31:47
The next biggest one after wills, I think is prenups and
31:52
cohabitation agreements because it's a very similar thing,
31:55
right. It's something that I know it's
31:57
not very romantic, but as a lawyer I'm trained to say that,
32:01
you know, everybody should have one.
32:03
If you, if you don't have a prenup or cohabitation
32:07
agreement, then you're letting you know you, you essentially
32:11
there are charms of what happens if the couple splits up.
32:15
It's just that you're, you're leaving it to the state
32:17
legislature to decide what those, those terms are.
32:19
Rather than prenup, you're putting it in a contract
32:23
yourself and you, the, the, the the two status are, are deciding
32:27
what those terms are. So it's a very similar
32:29
situation. The wills where you know, most
32:33
people don't have one. It's actually far lower
32:35
percentage of people actually have a prenup or cohabitation
32:39
agreement. Legally speaking, it's just as
32:41
wise of a thing to have. So there's this gap that exists
32:45
and just like with Will's that I think it's a multi factorial
32:50
issue. Obviously it's an awkward
32:52
conversation to bring up with somebody you're about to get
32:54
married to, but pride and convenience and all that are a
32:59
factor too. So maybe if couples could do
33:03
this as something that they're doing together from the comfort
33:06
of their own home and privately, maybe they would be more
33:09
inclined to to do them. So that's just one example.
33:13
You know, plenty of others, whether it's partnership
33:15
agreements for new businesses. And that's another one.
33:17
You know, I can't tell you the number of times clients come
33:21
into my office and you know, the, the business has been
33:24
running for X number of years and they have nothing in place
33:28
to actually say who owns what or, or what the terms are
33:32
between them. And it's only when a dispute or
33:37
something comes up that they that they finally want to deal
33:40
with these things. So partnership agreement and the
33:44
no shortage of these sort of very, very ubiquitous legal
33:50
document that everybody, not everybody needs, but a lot of
33:54
people need that they're just not doing because going to a
33:58
lawyer as seen as as cost prohibitive.
34:01
Now, don't get me wrong, like with will, I don't I certainly
34:05
am not trying to put my industry out of business.
34:08
There are, you know, if you can afford it and and and it's
34:13
appropriate, you know, getting proper legal advice is, is going
34:17
to always be the best often, but the reality is that people will
34:23
do what they're going to do. Like I, I get statue PT legal
34:27
document coming across my desk all the time now, right, because
34:31
people, they know they couldn't do it.
34:33
They know they shouldn't rely on chat TPT to draft that contract,
34:36
but they don't want to. They don't want to pay the big
34:39
bucks for, you know, when the business is early on, etcetera.
34:42
So they do it anyway. And it's if people are going to
34:48
be doing it anyway, at least, you know, those of us in those
34:52
founders out there and myself included, you know, coming up
34:56
with solutions that at least mitigate some of the risk and
35:00
and make it so that that whenever they're producing is as
35:05
strong as possible in the circumstances, I think is in
35:07
that benefit. Yeah, how is succession wills
35:10
like going to be more bulletproof than ChatGPT?
35:13
Just maybe some examples if people like I did my will
35:16
through ChatGPT. Well, don't get me wrong,
35:21
ChatGPT is surprisingly good sometimes with legal drafting.
35:28
Ultimately it comes down to, like I said, with wills, they're
35:33
very specific, like formatting and and processes for like what
35:41
the will needs to contain certain language, etcetera.
35:44
That ChatGPT won't always catch, especially depending on which
35:49
model you're on, right? Like people, a lot of people,
35:51
they'll go on and they're on the pre tier and they're on a lower
35:54
model of ChatGPT. They don't necessarily realize
35:57
that they don't understand the different models and, and
36:00
pricing tiers. And those lower models, you
36:04
know, when it comes to complex legal reasoning and drafting are
36:08
a huge difference. I mean, going on to quad opus
36:10
versus haiku to, to draft a legal document is a is a big
36:15
difference. And, and that's something a lot
36:17
of people could stumble into without realizing the other
36:22
element is just being able to. So I, I guess what I'm getting
36:28
at here is the theme of this is if you really know what you're
36:30
doing with AI, you probably could get a pretty good legal
36:34
will out of something like chat CPT or Claude.
36:37
But most people don't have the requisite skills that with using
36:43
AI to do that safely and responsibly.
36:46
Because the other thing what I was about to say, you know,
36:48
getting it, getting the context in there properly, right?
36:51
Most people, you're going to go to a fresh start.
36:54
It's got no context unless you know what to prime it with.
36:58
It could make some silent assumptions in the background
37:02
that are going to bite you later.
37:03
You bet. What's a cohabitation agreement?
37:08
I've never heard of that before. I, I know what a, what a, a
37:11
prenup is. That's a great idea.
37:13
A, a founders organization agreement.
37:16
That's crucial just like a, a, a prenup, because in the beginning
37:21
you're like, oh, it's going to be roses in five years, we'll
37:23
have an IPO and at some point somebody's going to want to bail
37:27
and you're going to need to have all your provisions accounted
37:30
for. So I kind of understand those.
37:31
But what? What cohabitation agreement?
37:35
And yeah, on that, trust me, corporate divorces and, and that
37:38
is what we call them in the trade.
37:40
Corporate divorces are just as messy if not messier than than
37:44
actual divorces. So you're absolutely spot on
37:47
there. Some cohabitation agreement,
37:49
again, it may, it may be based on your state, cause not all
37:52
states, different jurisdictions deal with this differently.
37:55
So some jurisdictions and me, I'm from Canada, we have this
38:00
system where there's something called, you know, being a common
38:04
law couple, which means if you live together and certainly
38:10
conditions are in play, you can be treated like a married couple
38:14
legally even though you never actually got legally married for
38:18
for certain things. So when a cohabitation agreement
38:21
does is for those dates and jurisdictions in which that kind
38:26
of family law regime applies, if it's thankfully A prenup for
38:30
people who aren't getting married, right, you're about to
38:32
move in together. And once that happens, you will
38:38
potentially, you know, sort of bring the family law legal
38:42
system into your house by doing so inadvertently.
38:45
And a cohabitation agreement is basically the prenup for that.
38:49
Yeah, OK. Any other categories?
38:52
It's this is a fascinating business model, largely because
38:57
you're, because the temptation is to go to LLMS with your legal
39:03
concerns, which it's great for summarizing, you know, legal
39:07
documents and saying, you know, I always run things through and
39:10
say like, find all the red flags and give me potential conflicts
39:13
of interest and stuff. Because it's very hard to read
39:16
legalese if if you're not accustomed to that.
39:18
And it kind of is a good introduction.
39:21
But even even through the acquisition of my business last
39:23
year, you know, it was like, like having attorneys on the
39:26
team made a big difference. You know, you don't want to sit
39:30
down at the table and you know, GPT is your, your legal only
39:36
legal recommendation. So I think there's a lot of
39:38
opportunity, even if people could, that they're going to
39:42
want to have the kind of expertise and they're going to
39:44
want to have us a place dedicated to that.
39:46
Because, you know, at this price point, it's like, no, this, this
39:49
makes me feel better because it's been obviously built by
39:54
attorneys. So any other categories that you
39:57
think would kind of lend itself to this, this kind of business
39:59
model? I mean it, it's really just the
40:03
same theme, right? What are the types of legal
40:06
documents that people need often and, and are very widespread
40:11
because those tend to be the same ones that people are taking
40:15
into their own hands. So, you know, when you're doing
40:17
a merger and acquisition deal and you're going to acquire a
40:20
company, you're going to have a team of attorneys on there
40:22
because you know, hey, this is a big deal.
40:24
This needs to be done, right? Those kinds of thing, you know,
40:28
that's going to stay in a lawyer's wheelhouse.
40:31
But it's that sort of everyday, ordinary courses business type
40:36
of stuff where the law touches business that I think lends
40:40
itself more to the, to the, you know, whether it's AI or, or
40:44
other software solutions, right? So I gave you a few example, you
40:50
know, employment contracts, right, when you're hiring
40:53
employees or consultants, which is another example, as I said,
40:56
NDA, you know, service agreement, if if you're in a
41:01
service industry, you know, having a solid template for what
41:06
you have your clients sign when they engage you, things like
41:10
that. So all basically anything in any
41:12
industry where business and the law are sort of meeting on a
41:18
day-to-day ordinary course of business basis.
41:22
What about a cap table? You know, I, I've been offered
41:24
equity as kind of a distribution founder.
41:28
Basically, I represent them, help bring them to market with
41:31
my platform in exchange for equity, which is a, a
41:35
tantalizing prospect. And I would definitely be
41:38
interested in that depending on certain factors.
41:40
I mean, you got to do your diligence for sure, but
41:42
ultimately I was like, I don't want to get a lawyer involved
41:46
and that's annoying and you know what I mean?
41:48
Like there was the, the, the barrier for me to consider.
41:51
It was weighted with like 10K and lawyer fees in order for
41:55
like lunch in two years. I don't know, you know, do you
41:59
think you could do something like that with on the cap table
42:01
where there there's a way for founders to to easily provide
42:06
equity in their company through a kind of a, a product like
42:09
this? Yeah, and there, there are some
42:13
software solutions already when it comes to cap tables and all
42:16
that, you know, I, I there, there's really two elements to
42:21
that. There's the actual cap table
42:23
itself, you know, the, the, the spreadsheet or the database
42:28
that's tracking who's got what. That's one element.
42:32
And obviously that lends itself very well to technology.
42:38
Yeah, I would, I would probably lean towards something more
42:41
deterministic than AI based for or something like that.
42:45
But certainly if you're based with a large enough data that
42:48
and you're coming in as an investor using AI to help
42:52
analyze that data, it's huge. The other element of it is the
42:58
actual legal documents that are behind that cap table, right.
43:01
So the cap table is tracking the numbers who owns what, what are
43:05
the, the classes, etcetera. There are legal documents that
43:10
exist somewhere that are actually giving through legal
43:15
meaning to all that. The cap table itself, generally
43:19
speaking, it's just a tracking mechanism.
43:21
It doesn't actually carry the legal weight, right.
43:23
There's going to be an operating agreement or or a sheriff's
43:28
certificate or something somewhere that's going to
43:31
actually dictate what, who owns this?
43:35
What are the different classes of the owner step?
43:37
What are the different rights associated with those different
43:41
classes? What am I getting into if I buy
43:43
into this? So that element of it, you know,
43:48
you end up having to make that cost benefit decision that that
43:51
you described in your own example of is that worth hiring
43:56
the lawyers, spending 10K, etcetera to look at all of this
43:59
depending on how much material it is.
44:01
Often times, you know, the materials is quite heavy as
44:04
well. So you know, again, using AI
44:09
there to to help soften that process helps.
44:13
And, and one thing I tell clients is because they think,
44:16
you know, lawyers don't want us going to use AI for legal stuff
44:21
because it's going to put lawyers out of business or
44:24
lawyers always think they know better, etcetera.
44:26
There's some truth to that, sure.
44:28
But when I often tell clients is go ahead and, and use you know,
44:34
your, your LLM of choice to, to review this document first
44:38
before you bring it to me. Or if it's that you want to, you
44:41
know, you and your partner are starting a new company and you
44:44
want to put together your, your, your founders agreement, your
44:48
partnership agreement. Go ahead and, and use your LLM
44:51
of choice to to take a stab at drafting that, but treat it, but
44:56
know the limit and treat that as merely a, something you can now
45:01
bring to the lawyer to actually draft the real agreement.
45:05
Like Preeta adds a wireframe essentially, right?
45:09
It's going to draft that CPT is going to draft this partnership
45:11
agreement. You can take your time prompting
45:16
it and giving it all of the terms you want, etcetera,
45:18
without worrying about racking up, you know, billable hours.
45:21
And now when you go to your lawyer, you have a document that
45:26
already has all that, that granular legwork done for him or
45:30
her and Rod. So if you come to me now, I'm
45:33
not starting with a blank slate anymore.
45:36
It's not a it's not an empty canvas.
45:38
I already know, you know, 80% of what the clients want.
45:42
I just now need to draft it in a proper document.
45:47
And maybe there's going to be, you know, some edge case
45:51
questions and issues that I need to raise, but it's going to
45:54
significantly take a chunk out of the work that the lawyer has
45:57
to do and therefore the client paid less money.
46:00
Yeah. So there is like kind of a
46:02
medium step there, you know, where you have the attorney that
46:04
you want signing off on it because you rely on their
46:07
expertise and if it goes to court, you'd be happy it did.
46:11
But it you're not, you're not spending a mint on it, but
46:15
you're not also just taking a handshake deal.
46:17
OK, man, you'll get me when it all comes down.
46:20
And then, you know, you kind of end up on the outs anyway, OK.
46:23
Or just take taking what that GPT spin out and hoping for the
46:26
best, right? Yeah.
46:28
You're using it as a as a stepping stone, a wire frame.
46:32
You know whenever you want to call it to to streamline and
46:38
therefore make factor and more cost effective the job of the
46:42
lawyer in doing the actual legal document.
46:45
Cool. All right, couple more.
46:47
We'll get you out of here, buddy.
46:49
If you were, if you were to go to college today, would you
46:52
become an attorney again? Probably not.
46:56
I I had that. So when I moved from Canada to
47:00
Florida three years ago, everybody asked me that
47:02
question. They said, are you going to, are
47:05
you going to go, you know, get your law license in, in Florida.
47:10
And I said, well, Florida is one of these states that doesn't
47:13
have any reciprocity with Canada.
47:16
So I would be back in law school first year with like a 20 year
47:20
old. And I have no intention of doing
47:23
that. So I will, I, I won't say yes or
47:25
no, but I'll, I'll leave you with that anecdote and and you
47:29
can interpret it as you will. Nice.
47:32
You said you wanted to become an attorney because that's how you
47:35
get rich. Are you rich?
47:39
Working on it. Working on it.
47:41
I love it now. Also, I know that you support a
47:47
local Humane Society. Tell me a little bit about that.
47:51
Yeah, well, I, so it's back in Canada that in Ontario in a city
47:56
called Burlington, it's, you know, about 45 minutes outside
48:01
of Toronto. It's where Ryan Gosling is from.
48:03
That's what Burlington's claim to fame is.
48:08
It's a, it's a small animal shelter.
48:10
It's a charity. Well, it's actually a big animal
48:12
shelter, but it's a, you know, A1 location charity.
48:16
But we, we do such good work and, you know, the, the
48:22
community around us is very generous so that we are able to
48:26
afford to provide, you know, really top quality care for, for
48:31
our animals. And often times we haven't
48:34
resources to actually go out and help other help animals in other
48:39
communities. Sometimes we'll even actually
48:42
bring in animals from the US, you know, to help with, with
48:47
other animal shelters that are over capacity.
48:50
So it, it's a great organization.
48:52
We do great work. Small organization.
48:53
I've been on the board there for 10 years now and even when I
48:59
moved away, I, I, you know, I'm still, still part of the board
49:02
there. So a lot of love to the
49:05
Burlington Humane Society. Yeah, and if you're listening to
49:07
this in Burlington, go down there and get yourself a dog or
49:10
cat. You got dogs or cats?
49:14
Yeah, I'd be any cat, but Shinely, they're no longer with
49:17
us. Oh, rest in peace.
49:19
Yeah. Thank you.
49:20
You're you're, you're ready for another.
49:24
Make one day, yeah. Cool David, this has been
49:28
absolutely amazing. Tell us the best place to
49:31
connect with you personally online.
49:36
Personally, online, I mean, best thing to do is e-mail, e-mail
49:41
off that session will like I'm again, we just started we're
49:46
bootstrap. Like I'm quite literally, yeah,
49:50
I have AI obviously built into it to flag any e-mail that call
49:56
for my specific attention. And I'm personally answering and
50:01
and connecting with people still.
50:04
And it's actually been really good.
50:05
It's it's been great for my own education and it's been great
50:08
for the company to really, you know, get that first hand
50:12
feedback. So certainly, you know, go to
50:14
successionwill.com. e-mail us at info@successionwill.com.
50:21
You can reach us on LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook exception
50:29
Will and I I have my own personal LinkedIn as well for my
50:35
like on my law practice side of things as well, where I
50:41
basically talk all things tech and AI in terms of the
50:45
intersection of of the law with with with tech and AI.
50:50
So I'll, I very nice link for that, but I'll, I'll send it to
50:56
you afterwards. Ryan, maybe you can post it in
50:58
the show note. Happy to do it, David.
51:01
Congratulations on your new company.
51:03
It's very cool and thank you so much for joining me.
51:06
Thank you very much for having me.
51:08
You are about to spend anywhere from 100,000 to $300,000 on your
51:12
kids college education, and that's not a small bet.
51:16
And right now there's a very real chance that they graduate
51:18
and can't find a job. Not because they weren't smart
51:21
enough, not because they didn't work hard enough, but because
51:24
the job market changed and nobody told them.
51:26
Employers are hiring AI native candidates, people who don't
51:30
just know their field, but know how to work with AI at a
51:33
professional level. And most colleges are not
51:35
teaching this, not even than close.
51:37
AI native student.com is the program that fills that gap.
51:41
It takes high school and college students and teaches them how to
51:44
actually think and work with AI the way top companies expect on
51:47
day one. So your investment in their
51:49
degree actually pays off. You're already paying for
51:53
tuition, housing, textbooks. This is the one thing that
51:55
actually makes it all worth it. Go to ainativestudent.com
51:59
because a diploma is a starting point.
52:01
Being AI native is what gets them hired.
52:03
That's AI native student.com. Yeah.