[00:00] Introduction Welcome to the Sell My Business Podcast. I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg.
This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience.
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[00:01:44] Jeffrey Feldberg: Dave's Zumpano was born and raised in Central New York. Dave began his professional career with Price Waterhouse and graduated from Syracuse College of law in 1992.
Dave has founded The Estate Planning Law Center, The Estate Planning Protection Trust Medicaid Practice Systems, and provided the first cloud-based law practice management system, integrated with documentation creation software for estate, Medicaid, and asset protection planning law firms.
In 2021 Dave's newest innovation Guidr, a digital, easy-to-use client interface platform was released to lawyers and once again is changing the industry by digitizing how lawyers communicate with clients to meet the demands of modern technological advancements consumers have come to expect.
In October 2021, Dave and his technology partner Guy Remond coauthored, the Digitization of Law: How to Transform Technology Disruptions Into Abounding Opportunities, which provides the basis and support for the future of law practice incorporating digital technology.
Dave has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio and is a regular speaker and trainer to many national, regional, and local legal organizations, banking and financial institutions on estate planning, asset protection, Medicaid planning, and law practice management, utilizing his cutting edge technologies.
Dave's first priority and passion is his wife, Christine, and their children, Maria, Olivia, and Angelo.
Welcome to The Sell My Business Podcast.
And wow, do I have an exciting episode for you today? Because we are going to look into the future. But the future is here today with our guest who is out there creating a market disruption that every business owner is going to want to make. I'm going to keep you in suspense, on purpose for all you listeners out there, and we'll get to what this is.
But firstly, Dave, welcome to The Sell My Business Podcast. Absolutely a pleasure to have you with us, Dave, why don't we do this? There's always a story behind the story. What's your story? What brought you to where you are today?
[00:03:55] Dave Zumpano: Jeffrey. It's great to be here. Thanks. Isn't that true? And everyone's a little bit different. I love hearing the stories and, you know, it's funny. For me, it started when I was a little lad. Actually, I grew up in a family business and I didn't know, I had on-the-job training from when I was about five.
I didn't know it though. And here's another thing, my mom, who I lost about a year ago at the ripe old age of 95 and a half when I say my mom said it has a very different meaning. This was the CEO of the family business in the 1960s, you know before there was a thing called a woman-owned. And she and my dad increased the family business 37 fold over the 25 years that they ran it. And I was a product of that. I grew up in that 25 years that they grew at 37 fold and I didn't know what was happening at the time, but where I sit today, people say Dave how is it that you're doing all these things. How is it you're so innovative? And like, you know, I think it all started from when I was five. I used to work in the family business at the youngest level. And I think this is an important thing for me. We never got a role or status in the company because we are the kids.
We always had a start at the bottom and learn the different parts of running a business. So I guess that's my story that I had the great fortune of growing up in an entrepreneurial household. I think the other thing that's interesting is I'm the youngest of 10 kids. So any woman listening to this, I want to put this thought in your head.
My mother gave birth to 11 children in 12 years. No twins. So in the midst of growing a business, 37 fold in 25 years, she was also raising 10 children. There were all basically a year apart. And it's interesting that about, I want to say five of us are strong entrepreneurs. The other five all do different things in some level of entrepreneurship, I guess. So that's my story, growing up in an entrepreneurial household and coming out of college intending to go to law school. But being solicited by the top accounting firms in the world, so I went off, went to work for one of the big eight accounting firms for a couple of years.
Got my CPA, went back to law school, and really came out of law school, focusing on the elderly. Why? When I came out of law school in 1992, I did research and it's showed that by 2010, 18 years, hence one in five Americans would be 65 or older. And that community of I've lived in central New York in 1992 we are already at 23%. There are a lot of people, aging in America, who're going to need services. So I started my practice in the estate planning area, and then I expanded it to elder law, asset protection, and Medicaid eligibility. I'm, actually credited with being the founder of the Medicaid practice industry for lawyers.
Based on just asking a lot of questions. So I think that's my story is having that upbringing that way and then asking lots of questions. And my favorite one is identifying people's problems and as entrepreneurs isn't that our job to identify something that's missing and then provide a solution that's reasonable for the consumer to benefit. So that's basically what I've been doing in the legal industry. I started practice in '93 and shall be starting actually my 30th year of practice in January. And basically, it's all about helping lawyers for me. It's taken a twist now where I actually help the lawyers create successful law practices in the area of estate planning, elder law, asset protection.
And to be able to service their clients that's through an organization called Lawyers With Purpose where our goal is to protect the personal financial freedom of families. And we start with our members and their families, their employees, and then all of their clients and their families. And that's where it starts creating value, being a value creator, and then solving problems that people have in the most efficient way.
[00:07:42] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. That's quite the story. I can't get my head focusing off of, you know, 10 kids just running around the house and growing up. That's wonderful coming from such a large family. That was something your mom should get a medal for doing that. That is just incredible. And so you had this passion for helping people. You came out of a family business, you directed your focus and attention to the law. And I love what you've done on the estate planning side, but now you're doing something incredibly interesting with Guidr. Talk to the audience, what is Guidr? Why should we really care about that?
And I know where you are today, but we'd also like to hear what's going to be here tomorrow and beyond because this is some really interesting and big things that you're working on.
[00:08:27] Dave Zumpano: Yeah. Having the good fortune of working with lawyers the last 20 years and training them on how to run a law practice, how to run systems and processes so that your customer, your client can always expect consistent results. Guidr came about again by innovation and it was an innovation I had based on an interaction with allied professionals.
So in the estate planning legal space, we tend to work with a lot of financial professionals because they serve our target market and we serve their target market, bankers, insurance brokers, things of that nature. And so one of the advisors said to me, he says, you know, Dave, what I'm really struggling with, I have a lot of clients, they're business owners and they just can't take the time or don't take the time to get their estate planning. All of us, the shoemakers could never wear shoes. And he says, I know how important it is. Is there something you could do to make it really simple? He goes, I try, I can't get them in your office. So I said what if I created, a one-page tool that you can compete with them, send it to us. We can generate the documents and make it like a one or two meeting thing. Yeah, that's good. And eventually, we started getting this is too complicated cause there are too much hands on it.
So I said, you know, this started about five years ago. What else do we know started about five years ago, those large online legal self-help one place? The largest is promoting that they're about to have their 5 million customers.
And note that I say customer, not client because they're not a law firm. So as a lawyer, I say to my lawyers, how is it that all these people are running to this website and are just clicking buttons to get estate plans or business registrations or general transactional legal stuff.
And what happened to us five years ago, I saw the need myself, the internet has changed expectations of individuals. I had this conversation with a tech guy who was in the financial services space for 20 years. He said something I thought was the most powerful thing I've heard in a long time. In this post COVID world, and here's what he said, people don't want to talk to you until they want to talk to you. So think about how profound that is, but isn't it true? Think about you and I Jeffrey, if we want something, are we just going to start calling people? No, no we're going to go online. We're going to look, see what's available.
See if what they're doing helps us. And that we're going to even if it's something we can do ourselves, we'll do it ourselves. So we, I think as a consumer, we have come to expect instantaneously but we don't want to have to be complicated with getting into relationships until we have to. So seeing all this, I didn't have the ability to do this.
I tried it the first time. It didn't work. I then contracted with another technology company to do it. They actually built it. But it just wasn't robust enough. And then I met Guy Remond who is my co-conspirator in this concept called Guidr. And Guy's story is he was building a successful technology company that built digital platforms. He ultimately sold out to a company we now know is Disney+. So after the sale, he had a contract with them. As his contract was coming up, he met me through a business coaching program. We've been involved with Strategic Coach for many years, and we were sitting in Toronto and in the cafe over lunch, we had a conversation. I shared my idea over a 15-minute conversation and he said, let's talk. So he goes what do you need? I said I need a tech guy. And we said let's have a 30-minute conversation.
This is interesting because I think business people we're very busy, so we had a quick call. What's the idea? Is it worthy of pursuing? 30 minutes later, we said, yeah, let's have another call. So we scheduled an hour call the second time. Then third time an hour call by the fourth and fifth call we're building proformas and by the sixth or seventh call, we formed the company.
And the vision is this Jeffrey, Guidr is digitizing law. Because there are so many different meanings of all these words we hear out there. So, What does it mean to digitize? So have a digital practice? Oh no, we have a virtual practice.
I don't know. We have a traditional practice. So I'm going to create a couple of terms here, thinking about anyone listening. What's the least favorite thing is calling the lawyer. So where would I call the necessary? But the good thing with estate planning is people actually like us because they bring us cookies after.
Cause we actually helped them with their personal stuff. But in this concept, I'd like to put this perspective. If you think about traditionally, how you deal with a lawyer, you have a need and you say, what lawyer can help me with this? And then you start interviewing the lawyers and then you say, okay, and then you got to go into their office.
You got to talk to them about your problem. They ask you a series of questions. They give you an analysis and say, you could hire me, and I'm X amount of dollars an hour. You then proceed or not that's what I call the traditional practice of law. In a post COVID world, we have this new thing, which many of us were dealing with prior to COVID.
But now the whole world is, and this is called the virtual practice. What does that mean? There are certain elements of the traditional practice of coming into a law office. You can have now do virtually like zoom and other meetings, Microsoft, all the different platforms. So now what it's done is it's enabled us to minimize some of the face-to-face meetings in person and get those now what we call virtual.
What is digital? Digital, I would subscribe to anyone here, at least in for purposes of we describe it as a Guidr. Digital is the transformation of the legal process itself to technology, thereby taking the knowledge of the lawyer and embedding that into algorithms that the consumer can go directly to the computer.
And get the same essential process they would be getting if they came into my office and met with me personally. It would ask the same series of general questions I would ask. It would have decision trees based upon their answers. So which I would give additional information and then ultimately it would help the consumer identify what they need.
Now, one of the things that Guidr does is it helps them identify things they need that the computer can then come create and complete for them. And it also helps them identify things that they may need, that the computer cannot create and do for them. And this is what the part digital means this whole entire process when it's digital, you know, it's digital because you're not physically speaking or seeing the attorney, what makes Guidr unique?
Is this the first digital platform that actually provides legal services? So, unlike those big self-help law firms, they are not lawyers. In fact, they have to say, listen, we are not lawyers, but we have done with Guidr we wanted to level the playing field for the ordinary solo and small firm lawyers who are getting their heads bashed in from these large digital platforms to say, now you two have a digital platform, but you have one up on them.
You can actually do it by offering legal services through the digital platform. And so that's what Guidr does. It takes the lawyers legal services currently in the world of estate planning, elder law asset protection, and it will allow the consumer to go through and have at it online, have as much engagement with the technology, but here's the uniqueness of it.
The platform itself enables the user. So the consumer to switch between digital, virtual, and traditional as they go through the process. So they go, as far as they want digitally, once they get uncomfortable, they can click a button. They're going to agree to have a virtual meeting or come in and have a live meeting and they control.
And this is the key thing. The consumer controls, how they interact with that lawyer in the process of receiving the legal service.
[00:16:02] Jeffrey Feldberg: So dave, that's really interesting how you've put that together. And it sounds as though you really touched upon a lot of pain points because as business owners, when you ask business owners about lawyers, probably one of the first thing that comes up is, yeah, it's a painful experience. I have to leave the business.
I have to go to these fancy offices and paying so much by the hour a King's ransom by the hour. It seems I get these huge, I get these huge bills, which I never understand. They always seem to come out to the same amount, no matter what's done. And who am I to say that it should be something different?
It's just a painful process. So it looks as though you're really beginning to, if I can use the word democratize law services, because now as a business owner, I can go in and I can have the computer, maybe do the basic kinds of things that is going to save me time and add a whole lot of convenience. And I suspect my bill is going to be a heck of a lot lower than it would be otherwise.
But then perhaps for the more complex things that the computer can't do at this point, then I can engage with a lawyer. But on my terms and my time, I can do virtual like you're saying or in person. And then on the flip side, it sounds as though what you're also doing is you're really providing a platform for lawyers who might not be able to compete with some of them, not only the self-help sites but also the bigger law firms.
Terrific lawyers, smart, but they don't necessarily have that big law firm name behind them, but they have a whole lot of value that they can add. And now they can do that through you. So as a business owner, if I'm using the computer as an example, to put something more or less basic together any sense of cost savings and time savings of what that would look like for us?
[00:17:39] Dave Zumpano: One of the things that make my particular involvement in this unique is I'm not just an attorney who teaches lawyers all over the country on how to do successful practices. I'm also a practicing lawyer doing so I actually have a law firm myself that uses all the systems and processes that we've created over the years.
And in fact is the base camp, a user of Guidr itself. Actually 30 years you get a lot of phone calls and it's hey, Dave, my father was in the hospital this weekend. Again, not a complex case. You know what I was able to say on this particular person, his name was Mike.
I said, listen, Mike, I'm going to send you a code and it's a discount code because I could even give a discount if I choose. I'm going to send you to my website, go on the Guidr platform and they will walk you through everything and you'll be able to create your will healthcare, proxy, power of attorney.
And it will be 25% of what it would cost you if you came into the office.. 25%. So now let's be honest here, Jeffrey, cause there are some words going, oh my God, you're going to put me out of business. For the lawyers listening I would say no, no pay attention. The big, large self-help legal service sites they're gonna put you out of business.
I'm going to put you back in business so you can compete with them because of what the digitization does here, and this is critical for all business people to understand because this transcends law. It's every part of the business. We as business owners believe that we are the magic sauce. The truth is there's something about us that's magic, but our ability to systematize. So if we go back to Michael Gerber's book, the E-Myth, we have to be able to systematize what we're doing, that's the magic sauce. Not us doing it, but creating a system where we can consistently get an outcome or result based on the same information.
You don't want to have it all over the place. So I think what this does is this allows law firms now to delegate. And here's the word I'm using delegate a vast amount of work that currently takes large human resources. You know, your client service coordinator, your reception, all the people that have to get, accumulate information.
And what we're finding in the law firm is there are so many new advantages that it's bringing to the law firm, but different because the digitization of everything is transforming the way we look at it. So what we're finding in our estate planning practice is while yes, people are able to get this document, these basic documents at something far less than what they would do if they came in the office, I say good. Why should we have to charge them a hundred percent? If we can give it to them something good enough at 25%, but in the process, they can then also choose what I would call enhancements. But I got, these are the basic documents, but you could enhance it with this and this and sometimes what you need is far beyond what these documents can give you. Please complete what we call this estate plan advisor. So it takes them through a series of questions and calendar, a complimentary meeting in the office. Now what's happened is they've gone through this estate plan advisor online.
They've given a whole bunch of information which normally takes my staff anywhere from one to two hours to follow up and get all that information. Then the attorneys got to read through it all and figure it all out in the meeting with the client. Now the client's doing that online, it's being sent in a digital format to the law firm.
The law firm has all the information, so they can now officially and effectively have a phone call with that client and fully understand what that client's issues are. And it saves a lot of time to the consumer because now they're not on the phone talking about all this stuff, they've answered a simple interview and it's giving the attorney the basic information they need to make their time with the attorney more efficient.
[00:21:19] Jeffrey Feldberg: So Dave, what it really sounds like is this system is designed to eliminate I'll call it just the heavy lifting in the process of people having to meet to decipher through this information. The business owner is trying to figure out the words and it's going back and forth and the meter's running and the time isn't being spent really in the best way.
So you put the information into the system. The system is smart enough to know that, hey, I can do this for you automatically, here you go or you know what these parts here, I want a lawyer to come into the process and do that. And so then the lawyer gets this information ahead of time in the right format. It's not all over the place, over many meetings. And in a very precise amount of time is able to get the full picture because the information is there. And then come up with a solution and you meet about that and you look to get that done.
[00:22:06] Dave Zumpano: In all businesses, isn't that we're trying to do efficiency and every business owner listening today isn't that our job always is increase efficiency. And I heard something along in my learnings over the years efficiency is not in and of itself enough. Efficiency must lead the profitability.
You need to be efficient in the right things. So with this is doing, is we're finding even from our staff, they're preferring because it's taking a lot of the, what I would call mundane, follow up tasks that they've had to do. And it's now delegated at the technology work. There's an automatic follow-up if the client clicks out and goes to bed, cause they're doing this after the three to eleven shifts.
They'll get an email the next morning, hey, do you want to finish up, hey, you only have three more questions to answer. So it's there just to remind them where they are and a lot of that's automated. So the people in the office love it because they get updates and say, hey, this client, they got this far.
The automation is there, but it's also the ability for the law firm to follow up if they need to. And that's really the beauty of it. And again, the book, Guy Remond and I wrote a book on this called The Digitization of Law: How to Transform Technology Disruptions into Abounding Opportunity.
And really what it talks about is while this could be confronting to lawyers and scary. I think any business owner or any consumer listening to this is liking it. They're like, oh God, you mean, I don't have to go in the law office. You mean, I don't have to talk to a lawyer. You mean I'm not going to pay $85 for a five-minute conversation?
Nothing irks me or you more than when we get a bill from a lawyer. And if you see a phone call that we paid $85 for I'm like, are you kidding? Yeah. So here's the beauty of this you're ready. I'm going to be blunt. The consumer gets to decide. You don't want to pay me to do it, then you do it, put it in it's all there.
You don't want to put it in. Then you're going to pay me to do it. You can't have it both ways, but you get to choose. And that's really what the whole idea of Guidr is it's your attorney, your way. That's the tagline. It's how do you want to work with the attorney? It's your choice. Now, the only way you get that choice is you need this digital platform because that manages all of the information and that's really the beauty of it, is that Guy and I said look at the end who are we trying to help? The consumer. Cause I can tell you as a lawyer, I'm not thrilled that 5 million people went to a non-lawyer for legal advice and said I'll just do this myself. And here's the other side of it. You ready? It's good enough. Those online legal services are good enough, but they're not. They're good enough if you fall into the mainstream basic issues that happen. Nine out of ten of us at some point in our life are going to have issues outside those basic issues. The cost to deal with those for failing to haven't in there to begin with is going to be 10 X minimum of if we just put them in there in the first place.
That's why I think being able to go through a process that's built by lawyers. And not by entrepreneurs, meaning people intending to create a product, which is great, but by lawyers who are actually backing it up subject to our ethical requirements, subject to all of our things that we have to follow, it gives confidence to the consumer that there's a higher level of awareness and a higher level of commitment other than just the basic documents.
And I think that's the difference with Guidr. Guidr will let you do the basic documents, but it will also trigger and let you know when the basic documents are not sufficient.
[00:25:28] Jeffrey Feldberg: What was also nice about that Dave and for both lawyers that are listening out there, as well as the business owners, I would suspect that for the lawyers who may be hearing this, and they're saying, okay, you're going to put me out of business. I suspect probably not getting this business anyways because the business owners, maybe they don't want to pay.
Maybe they don't understand these self-help sites. Maybe they're just too busy. And so it sounds like with Guidr. Number one, I'm getting reminders, hey, have you done this? Or have you checked into that? This is really important because at Deep Wealth and the 9-step roadmap of preparation, so you better be prepared.
You better have the most basic of things. I mean, heaven forbid something happens to you when you're in a business partnership. Do you have provisions for who's going to take over and what that looks like, or is there going to be some issues with your estate and your business partner?
[00:26:17] Dave Zumpano: Are you ready to be partners with your business partner's spouse?
[00:26:21] Jeffrey Feldberg: Exactly, so you know what a mess that is out there in the making. And by the time you find out like you said, it's often too late because you haven't done it. And the best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago. The next best time is today. And so why not start in terms of doing that?
So, Dave, this is where we are today. And I know you're building out the system, you're always adding to it. I'm tempted to use the word artificial intelligence in terms of what's going on with this is this artificial intelligence or are we getting there with that? What does that look like?
[00:26:51] Dave Zumpano: So I would say Guidr, as it sits today it's not artificial intelligence. Although obviously, that's down the road. A lot of artificial intelligence is being done. Let me share with you what I think the difference between artificial intelligence is and what I would call algorithms.
So I call it intelligent design. So intelligent design says we built algorithms that we know to be true for me, 30 years of practice. I know there's no client, that's going to walk through that door that's going to tell me something I haven't heard before. So the question is when these people walk through the door, when you get the story, it falls into one of three or four categories. So what we do into digitization is we take those paths and the information that we know to be true to each of those portals they come into. So when they come in, there's a key portal. They want us for issue one, issue two, issue three, issue four.
Imagine this decision tree, which gets wider and wider as you go through if the lawyer's going to do a power of attorney for you, what are they doing? You're going in and they're asking you a whole bunch of questions and you're answering and they're writing them down. And then they're handing that to a paralegal who's going to enter that into software.
They have software, nobody's typing this stuff up. So they have the software that generates those documents based on how you answered questions. What technology does and digitization allows us to replace ourselves with all of that, what I call regular tasks. So if we're getting certain information, then why can't we just digitize that information and ask it in the software, ask it in the platform and then put it into the software and it could generate the documents.
Whether my paralegal entered all the information or whether you did as the consumer, but we have a few extra things you have to do, we have to build in stopgaps, to stop you from hurting yourself and making sure you put in enough information and the sufficient information. And that's really where it's more complex than just the simple but not as sophisticated as self-learning, which is artificial intelligence, where it learns.
Ultimately artificial intelligence will be interested in what we're doing because it will want to know all the input people are doing. And so when you think about that, it's being built with that in mind because you and I know Jeffrey, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. COVID happened.
Digitizing leads to democratizing. That's what it does because as soon as you digitize it, then it's available to all. And so that's really the important thing that really, we as business owners, lawyers in particular, in our case, don't have a choice. The consumers are demanding this, and I say this to each one of us listening and to me and you.
We operate this way. Isn't this what we want when we go out to get something? We don't want to have to go under the old traditional way of going in, we want to be able to have access online to things. And you know what? We don't want to talk to you until when? Until we want to talk to you.
A true business owner, an entrepreneur is one who could walk away from their business for a year. And when they come back, it's bigger than when they left. Now, just think about that. That changes the rules about what we think being an entrepreneur. Most of us are business owners.
We have a business that generates a profit and supports our lifestyle, but can we walk away from that business?
You built a tremendous system on how to get businesses ready to sell. Your system there it's a system, that's your magic sauce. So my challenge you Jeffrey was how do we digitize, Jeffrey how do we digitize all that stuff that you know, all those processes that you have so that people don't have to call and talk to Jeffrey.
People can talk to you when they want to talk to you and talk to the computer when they want to talk to the computer. And I think that's the challenge to all business owners today is not to fight technology, but to embrace it and turn the disruption, what could be perceived disruption really into opportunity.
[00:30:32] Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. And, disruption, although it can be feared it's actually great. And it's particularly great when you're the one that's creating the disruption. But for business owners who are looking at this to me is really a game-changer because to use an example. Would you rather work with a lawyer who isn't on email doesn't even have a fax machine?
It's just all mail. You're just mailing correspondence or are you going to be with a lawyer who you, they have a fax machine, but they also have this thing called email, and this is really where Guidr is going. So even if you want to have that personal touch with a lawyer. And some business owners, perhaps that's what they want to do.
You can be with a lawyer that can give you that personal touch, but also has a system like Guidr or behind it that perhaps at one point where you don't need that personal touch, it can be more automated. You can just get things done quickly at a fraction of the time and costs and everything really works and it creates a win-win win all around.
[00:31:26] Dave Zumpano: You know what I found, this has been my experience Jeffrey, and I think I'd love to know yours if it's different because I think this is relevant for all people listening. I think too many times people focus on the price and underlying the frustration in dealing with lawyers and getting billed for a phone call, a 15 minute phone call that you get billed hundreds of dollars.
What's the real issue there? The real issue isn't how much you pay. The real issue is what did I get for what I paid? Because people can't value, they can't put a value on a conversation. And again, people say I talk to you and you charge me for this. Well, you know, lawyers, their brain is their value.
But in the end, it's our job in any business we're in to be able to show our value. And I think what Guidr does, it allows clients to choose where they want to spend their money. And the basic stuff, let me do it myself. If I can do it, what do I got to bother you for? And you got to charge me all that money.
Let me do as much as I can on my own, but you know what? There are certain times I do want you a lawyer. I do want your opinion. I do want you to step in and tell me, you know what, this is a downside of this doing it this way. And there's a pitfall down the road that may hit you. Are you aware of it? And that's where I think it's going to every part of our lives.
It's no longer just about the service. Now it's about being able to create a relationship. And this is one of the conversations I had with even one of my own programmers. And in designing it, I'm like Guidr is not about providing legal services. Guidr is about managing relationships.
It's got to manage the relationship between that consumer slash client and the attorney and anyone else in the process. If somebody referred that client to the lawyer, we want to engage them and make sure they're kept in the loop. Because I think when we're all working together and Guidr can be that central platform that keeps everybody in the loop to connect easily and efficiently I think it's a great service. And I think it also keeps track and keeps everybody honest because it's digital. We can track everything you did and didn't do and everything we did or didn't do. So we know and we can go back so that we don't have problems so that we don't have mess-ups.
And again, technology doesn't have to sleep. It doesn't have to take a holiday. Technology doesn't care that Christmas is coming up or Hanukkah or whatever you celebrate. It doesn't care if you want the day off. It's there for whoever wants to be there 24/ 7, 365. And that's I think exciting. And again, to be able to do that for lawyers, at least with the Guidr platform, we're excited, as you said, game-changer, disruptive, but I think long-term really supportive and really helping consumers choose. And with the lawyer not having to bypass the lawyers.
[00:34:03] Jeffrey Feldberg: And you know, what's interesting is as a business owner I can go in. I can check out Guidr. See what's there. Having nothing is terrible. That's just asking for problems done is better than perfect. I can use Guidr and at a very base level, get something in place. And then if I want to enhance it and take it to the next level, then I can engage with the lawyer who's on Guidr and look to get that done.
And everyone comes up better for it than not.
[00:34:29] Dave Zumpano: And in the Estate planning we have a different saying little bit different than what you said, in the estate planning world, you don't have it. You absolutely do have it. If you haven't created it, the government's created one for you.
It's called intestate succession, which means if you don't do it, that government does it for you. And I have not met a client that wants the government's plan for their money.
[00:34:51] Jeffrey Feldberg: That's right. You have a new silent partner. Vis-a-vis the government.
[00:34:55] Dave Zumpano: And that's what I think what it is that this tells people, they don't have to commit an exorbitant amount of time, effort, and energy.
They could start small, get those basic things in place, but also it can also streamline the process of getting more complicated documents done by your willingness to go online and answer the questions that even streamlines the process for the lawyer, for the things that the technology can't provide.
[00:35:17] Jeffrey Feldberg: Well, Well, Dave, this is exciting. And we're going to be keeping a close eye to see where you take this to the next level and what that looks like. But I want to ask you this because we're at the point in our episode here where I get to ask my favorite question, as we begin to transition to start wrapping this up, and the question is this.
I want you to think of the movie Back to the Future. And in the movie, you have the DeLorean car, that magical DeLorean car, which can go back to any point in time. So I want you to imagine now it's tomorrow morning, you look out your window, the DeLorean car is there. The door is open. It's waiting for you to hop in and you're going to go back to any point in your life.
Maybe it's Dave as a young child or a teenager or an adult, whatever the case may be. What would you tell your younger self in terms of, hey, Dave, do this or don't do that, or here's some life wisdom I really want you to know.
[00:36:09] Dave Zumpano: It's a great question. Here's what I would say in my experience, particularly the last 20 years. I remember it succinctly. I have committed a good when someone says, you know, what do you attribute your success to? The number one thing that's had the greatest impact to me has been what I call social sciences. So that means how do we communicate? Everyone says, I always say, look, I'll give you 50 bucks if you can show me something red, nobody else starts showing me something red. But they failed to ask the key question, Dave, what does red mean to you? So I think the ability to listen, reflective listening, where scientific listening, where you actually know you're listening, you're verifying, you clarify, and you restate the persons and they say, yes, that was the first insight for me that I didn't have that experience till I was 36 years.
From there, I learned all the other social sciences, all these online assessments you could take, not for the sake of the assessments, but to understand how I work in relationship to how you work, because all the bickering and all the frustration in the world today, all of the challenges we have in business really comes down to a lack of communication or miscommunication. We're all speaking from our own perspectives. That's been my experience over the years. So what I would do is I would love to know what I know now. And I'd love to go back and redo this, go back to my twenties when I'm making all these decisions in my practice, and I'd love to be able to apply the social sciences. I'd love to be able to apply the listening skills and it opens up your world to so much it's right in front of you that you can't see. So there's so much I missed along the way. So I'd want to go back and see all the stuff I missed, no regrets.
I had a blessed life and I get a lot more to go and I'm continuing to learn every day because I always learn. I'm the least smart in the room. There's always something somebody else knows. And it's my job to figure out what they know and they could share with me. And I love to go back and do it on all the people I never had a chance to figure out what they knew that I didn't.
[00:38:13] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. What a terrific outlook of how you view things back then, but fast-forwarding to today and counting your blessings, which I also think is so important to do. Dave, I'm going to put everything in the show notes so for our listeners, it's easy it's point and click, and they can get to all these resources. If somebody wanted to find you online, where would be the best place?
[00:38:33] Dave Zumpano: You know, I'm one of these guys, email me. But all you have to do is put in a subject line, you know, this show. Because I get so many emails, I do respond to emails, dzumpano[at]Guidr[dot]legal will come right to my desk. And there are all the other things you don't need to talk to me.
You can go to Guidr.legal itself, the website, and see the attorneys in the country that have adopted it. We are onboarding. We just rolled it out nationally at the end of October. And the onboarding process takes 30 to 45 days. So we're 20, 30, 40, 50 firms going and we've got a whole bunch more coming behind them. We've encouraged you to go there as well.
[00:39:06] Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific. I love that. And again, for our listeners, we'll have all that in the show notes to make it super easy point and click. Dave, as we begin to wrap this up firstly a big thank you for taking time out of your day to spend with us on The Sell My Business Podcast. And as always, please stay healthy and safe.
Thank you so much.
[00:39:23] Dave Zumpano: You too. Thank you. And here's my favorite saying may your best day of 21, but your worst day of 22.
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Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table?
Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.
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As we close out this episode, a heartfelt thank you for your time. And as always, please stay healthy and safe.
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