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Hindsight is such a tricky thing. We’ve all dealt (tolerated) with the “good enough” employee. After a few weeks we start to see little hints. You find yourself explaining the same thing, over and over. Consistently talking them off the ledge when they are “overwhelmed”. They start calling in sick…when was the last time YOU took a sick day? Or the 1st flake of snow they say they can’t make it in because of fear the local weather channel is breathing into the community because the news is lacking anything of substance for the day.

Or maybe the signs aren’t that blatant, there simply is just something “off”. Like a chip missing or batteries not included. But you “muscle through” or start to question yourself because maybe your unrelenting standards or expectations are too high. It is only an “X” dollar an hour employee after all. Or you really start diving deep with justifying their personal situation or feeling responsible for their livelihood. The list drones on and on.

Nonetheless, when do you know your tolerating “good enough?” Let me introduce you to our star player, Marci Otts. Marci has been with LWP for 1 ½ years now. Marci experienced our baptism by fire training process that delicately includes consistently last minute changes and “emergencies.” Not long after finally truly understanding her role and goals, the head of finance quit. Marci stepped up and assumed the role of finance without an official training process. We then decided to rebrand the entire company, including the creation of a new website where 1,000’s of video, audio and word files needed to be moved in less than 1 week. Once again, Marci stepped up. In an organization of change and growth, the one thing you can depend on is constant change. And for an 8 follow through, that can be daunting!

The past 90 days have been challenging for all with rebranding the company, year end, the new year, etc. Last night, I received an email from Marci that pretty much sums up the difference between good enough and a team member whom is beyond invested in the not only the future of the company but making certain they are with you until the end.

“Can I say how amazing it is that I still think about work when I am at home, and in such a positive light! I wanted to write before I got back into work in the morning as it is really resonating with me at the moment. It is such a testament to our work when we receive feedback with such excitement and pride, I am floored by our members, and those that have chosen to push through their fears and own the future they are growing into. Just astounding. We are surrounded with such positive energy and it only reiterates that we are doing something so good and so true. I am so proud to be part of this organization. I see such a difference in those that chose their futures…whether at our retreat or during their coaching calls…we have a tidal wave of positive energy on our hands and it is my intention to continue to guide our members on this path! I want to take a moment as well to thank Dave, Molly and Victoria. I have been touched on a personal and professional level and I only see remarkable things in our future. You know you have truly found your place when you love the people you work with, the people you work for and the future you are creating is better than anything you ever could have imagined!”

So when do you know your tolerating the good enough employee? You see glimmers of the above stated email….daily. You see it within the 1st few weeks of them starting with you, and you see blatant evidence of it 12 yrs after them being with you. It really is that straightforward and simple. We just tend to complicate it by justifying how its not that bad. I have Marci’s message hanging right on my wall in my office to remind me the next time I get that feeling that so and so “may” not work out to choose the short term suffering route and move on to attract another superstar vs. good enough.

Molly Hall

What is the greatest success you’ve had since joining LWP?

The greatest success I have had since joining LWP has to be, without a doubt, establishing relationships through synergy meetings. I have bankers, financial advisors, assisted living facilities, social workers and even Medicaid Office workers referring clients to me. Granted it takes a while to get these referral sources to provide clients (have to establish trust). By no means am I a salesman, but when I explain the PROCESS!!! we use and the follow through we offer, people are very comfortable referring their clients to us.

What is your favorite LWP tool?

This is actually a very tough question to answer because we don’t use anything else but the LWP tools. When I say nothing else, I mean nothing else. No retainer agreements, not an interview questionnaire, not even a separate design template. If I had to pick just one tool that is my favorite it would be the Estate Plan Audit sheet. It makes it so easy for us to use the Vision Clarifier because I can show the client exactly what plans cover what is important to the client.

How has being part of LWP impacted your team and your practice?

LWP provides structure that we otherwise would not have. Its systems are purposeful and deliberate. LWP has allowed us to enroll clients, not just retain clients. LWP also provides the tools that allow us to focus our practice, track our clients efficiently, and provide the exact product the client desires not just push the client into a trust of our choosing.

Last week I spent three days with estate planning attorneys training them on what they were already masters at, Medicaid and asset protection planning. I was intrigued by the end of the three days how perplexed they were at how much they didn’t know. All of the options and variations one can have when drafting a trust or asset protection plan. Most notably however was the response when they were able to see for the first time how document creation software can be more than a trust drafting system.

For example, they learned how designing a trust with the client became a celebration and an experience as we walked the client through their lifetime and asked them the various questions of what they would want to have happen. The power of customizing at every single decision point was especially intriguing. But most exciting was the result of the design experience that created a highly customized trust that was part of a package that generated all the documents necessary for the plan that the client created.

Then, what shocked them even more was discovering how the software was merely the culmination of an entire education-based client enrollment system of teaching clients what they don’t know in a two-hour workshop, followed by revisiting the 15 major challenges in estate planning and comparing them to the prospective clients current plan to identify where all the holes were. Finally allowing the client to identify which of the missing issues were most critical for them to solve.

Their process once again culminated in choosing an estate plan or asset protection plan that was hand picked by the client, based on their needs, not on software the lawyer used. The beauty of it all came together when the attorneys learned how they could design a plan according to a structure which confidently allowed them to delegate the drafting of the trust to staff.

The excitement of these lawyers seeing drafting like this. And for the first time that they may not have to draft trusts and doing estate planning could be something far greater than just legal work, but rather a creation of documents that exemplify the client’s life and goals.

I just returned from presenting a three-day training for attorneys on how to provide asset protection planning to their clients. The primary concern obviously being loss of a lifetime of assets in nursing homes.

The attendees were shocked to learn how technology can support them in not only their legal-technical needs, but also their marketing. By utilizing a process that identifies the legal issues relevant to strategic spend-down planning, technology becomes your best friend. Right before their very eyes they witnessed how utilizing the law in a processed way can quickly and easily provide them the answer to their clients’ asset protection and Medicaid needs.

They learned how to use our Medicaid qualification worksheet and how it follows the law and provides the key answers that clients need, and they saw the full power of technology. They saw how the Medicaid planning software not only generated the asset protection plan, but also the funding plan AND an opinion letter for the client or their financial advisor. Not only did it provide an opinion letter for the client but also a visual graph of what assets were going to be protected and what would be at risk and for how long.

Finally legal-technical competency meets technology and as a result everybody wins: the lawyer, the client, and your family! And your team because once everything is generated from the software it is neatly tucked away in a file for a thorough documentation of everything that is input.

The term leader, leadership, step up, etc., are all the buzz of today’s wish list in building a team. Yet when we ask people what leadership means to them we sadly find the meaning having an underlining theme of  “working with people that don’t 'bother' me, do their job, make sure the team is doing what they need to and a team where I can 'delegate to and they get it.'” Or some other compound variations that equal relieving them from any form of relationship—put your head down, do your work and you will get your paycheck. We’ve even heard “They should be thankful they have a job in this economy.” We can assure you; this is no way shape or form, leadership.

In our experience leadership is charting or changing the course for taking a stand for power for the people. It is simply put as mindfulness with hope and compassion.

Mindfulness is Self Awareness + Social Awareness + Self Management.

Self Awareness is showing up on time with empowering energy, general concern for everyone’s time and experience while with you. Social Awareness is holding people up, refraining from gossip, showing up focused, honoring your meetings, keeping your word and taking full responsibility for how you show up in the world. Self Management is showing up prepared without an unstable tone combination w/tension demands an onward motion. Even though most leaders are active, you don’t want to show up harsh with self serving need to “delegate.” The minute you become disengaged and start pointing at them you resign from being a leader.

Leadership is not strength or force.  It is not based on “old school” thinking that smart is good enough and that great leaders are tough and can always hang while leading—no one can sustain continuous strain. It is not survival of the fittest. Leadership does not manage from a place of control – go along to get along & must stay in the box built. It is not from a place of political position – sway whatever way, don’t make decisions or from a place of authoritative—fear based.

Every great leader touches your head to make you think, touches your heart to make you feel and always gives you something to carry with you later, a walk away message. The way we see leadership:

• Never dehumanizes, fills up, to guide, to include and create
• Tend and befriend vs. command and control
• Willing to live the examined life, a spiritual seeker
• How we do what we do, is just as important as what we do
• Emotional intelligence
• Power is used to bring wisdom and clarity for others
• Not forced, common practice
• In order to empower, you have to give up your power
• Of the people, for the people while honoring them for their conviction

There is a new way of leadership that we are so excited to see glimmers of in small businesses across the country. The mental, physical and psychological toll extracted by the “old school”  pressures have lead to escalating personal sacrifice and ultimately, the well-phenomenon known of “burnout.” Through recognizing the cycle of Sacrifice and Renewal, entrepreneurs are renewing themselves using Mindfulness, Hope and Compassion. Through renewal, leaders can counteract the effects of work-related pressures, perform at their best over the long-term, and lead their companies to sustain long-term financial success.

5 Key Attributes to Unlock the Leader Within You

• Have  a vision, be with a company that has one
• Be authentic (know they self)
• Be competent, while projecting warmth in your presence and delivery
• Have confidence to make decisions
• Be a communicator

What we find so amazing about the true abilities leaders, even when they have lead in a lot of areas. They have an ability to get people behind one another and bring the best in them out. They identify their weaknesses, and provide them solutions to increase their efficiency and productivity. They have the ability to be the manager (traffic control cop) and make sure that tasks are getting completed, with an empowering leadership element in that. It usually is very difficult to be manager/leader at the same time, but a true leader can accomplish this at all times. They can verbalize the “hard” things to say, even when it hurts, because it is accurate and necessary for the success of the company and the individuals in the company to personally succeed. 

A leader is loyal and committed with a calming way that permits people to let go of panic and trust in themselves to accomplish their goals.  A leader has the ability to help individuals sort through a tremendous amount of information and put them on a path of clarity and direction, with specific short term steps that lead to long term success

You know you have a great leadership when you have engaged employees that are innovative and empowered to get the job done!

Molly Hall

Overwhelm is in the air. Seems most of our  attorney clients are creating/experiencing some form of overwhelm here in Mid-January. We want to start with stating that overwhelm is a state of mind and a way of being. It is NOT a set of circumstances. It is resistance to what is. The DISTINCT difference of how to STOP overwelm is what you are willing to do about it and how to take responsibility for your part in it. Here are 3 tips to help you out.

1. Don’t Ask…Present! Think about it… Lets say for example you are asking your boss, the business owner, for a raise, you want to speak his language, right? You want to put it in terms that make sense to him. Well, let’s consider how he gets paid. Ultimately, he puts dollars in his pocket from getting clients to hire him. Now, to obtain this money, he doesn’t ask clients to hire him… he has to make a presentation of your company’s services and conclude it with the price it will cost the client to have these services. 

So often we forget that we, as employees, should treat our bosses as we treat our clients. We would never show our worst side to our clients. We make the extra effort to make sure things are presented and prepared well for them. We should do the same for our bosses. Often, when working in a small business, things are casual and you work closely with your boss, which is great, but it can allow us to get too comfortable, or even sloppy, in our presentation to our boss. It’s not that you can’t be comfortable or even have a friendship with your boss, but you should always make sure you are presenting yourself as a valuable resource. Make sure they have facts about the results you produce–tracking reports, sales numbers, clients billed, and so forth. This is never more important than when you are making a presentation for a raise.

So, when you feel it’s time to discuss a raise, schedule a meeting and prepare a presentation. Never bring personal issues into the conversation (i.e., personal financial struggles, the cost of childcare or tuition, your divorce, etc.) Again, working in a small office can lend an aura of intimacy that sometimes just isn’t appropriate in certain conversations, like asking for a raise. It’s often hard to draw a line between “what goes” and “what doesn’t,” but you should be able to tell by instinct and by reading your boss’s personality. So, discussing personal issues with your boss depends on your relationship. However, even if you do talk about these things, they don’t belong in this discussion about a raise. You should never request or receive a raise based on personal need. You should request and receive a raise based on your value to the company.

2.There’s a Time and a Place. Nothing can hijack a conversation more than the wrong time or place. In an already potentially awkward conversation, eliminate distractions and disruptions that can make you lose control of the setting. Carving out quality time to present your proposal is a slippery slope. This doesn’t have to be a desperate thing. Don’t grab any 10 free minutes your boss might have. That would result in bad timing, lack of his attention, and usually a “let me think about it and get back to you” answer because there isn’t enough time to work it through together.

3. Getting Down to It. So, now you’re here for the meeting. Your boss is paying attention, and it’s Show Time!

First, always thank your boss: “Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to meet with me today. I appreciate it.”

Next, acknowledge him. “I know you have a lot to do, so I’ll keep our time commitment and make sure we stay on track.”

Then, get to it. “I’d like to go over with you where I’ve grown over the past and share the value I have produced and talk about where I would like to grow over the next year. I want to make sure it’s in line with what you need from me and that you see how I can support you and the firm more. And I’d like to talk about how to value the role I currently play in the firm. I have some ideas I’d like to share with you.”

Usually, a boss is more than willing to listen to your suggestions and give feedback, and prefers this to having to come up with all the ideas himself. And usually you end up with a decision closer to what you ultimately wanted if you initiate the ideas!

Now, there’s a dangerous pause where you can lose control of the meeting. Let your boss reply, but don’t let him start throwing out ideas and thoughts. Go over what you have prepared before you start brainstorming about the future. So, if your boss starts to toss around ideas, politely interject:

“Great, let me jot down what you said so we don’t forget that idea, and if I could, let me run through what I’ve accomplished over the past (time frame since last raise). I found it very interesting when I reviewed it, and I think it will help us see what I am capable of in the future as well.”

See how we just “spun” this from being a laundry list of things you have done to an essential part of the “future idea” process? It’s much more engaging for a business owner.

So, are you willing to let some things go and acknowledge your full plate and schedule? Can you find a peaceful center when dealing with things that normally seduce you into worrying? Can you find the right question to ask yourself? Tony Robbins recommends these questions when faced with a big problem:

1. What is not perfect yet?
3. What am I willing to do to make it the way I want it?
4. What am I willing to no longer do to make it the way I want it?
5. How can I enjoy the process while I do what is necessary to make it the way I want it?

The idea is to focus on solution rather than the problem itself.

Overwhelm is in the air. And now is the time to embrace the reality that you CAN stop overwhelm dead in its tracks if  you are willing acknowledge it, take responsibility for your part in it and recreate your interaction with it.

Molly Hall co-author of — Don’t Be a Yes Chick!

Over the last several months, everyone was waiting with anticipation as to what Congress and the President would do about the expiring estate tax exemption. We know now that they made the enhanced estate tax exemption of $5.21 million permanent and attached to it an inflation rider for inflation adjustments.

This is great news for IPUG™ planners. IPUG™ (irrevocable pure grantor trusts) (IPUG™) trusts are a strategic asset protection trust that allows individuals to protect their assets without having to give up control and allows them to maintain many benefits from them. An IPUG™ trust is an irrevocable trust where the grantor remains trustee with the power of appointment.

An irrevocable pure grantor trust allows the grantor to remain in control and change the beneficiaries or the investments in any manner he deems appropriate during his lifetime. These trusts have become extensively popular for middle-aged and elder Americans who want to protect their assets from the government, lawsuits, and nursing homes. The new expanded estate tax exemption just over $5 million ensures that these trusts can be utilized by 99.5 percent of Americans. Only one-half of 1 percent of Americans have an estate over $5 million.

Further, couples with up to $10 million can utilize these trusts. Since the grantor maintains sufficient powers, no separate tax returns are required and it's included in their taxable estate but since inclusion in their estate provides for a step-up in tax base, this actually provides an extended benefit to users. The permanent extension now expands the application of these strategic trusts to essentially the entire estate planning marketplace.

For more information on IPUG™ trust planning, you can read my law review article on irrevocable pure grantor trusts at Syracuse University College of Law.

Veterans and Widows of Veterans can obtain tax free income to help pay for unreimbursed medical expenses through a program called Improved Pension, often referred to as Aid and Attendance. The question often arises as to if a person is a widow. Usually this is in the context of when the Veteran and the spouse were divorced or separated. If the couple was divorced, then they are considered EX-spouses, not widows. But what about separated? Or, what if the divorce was set aside?

The initial criteria to establish widow status is that the Veteran and the spouse:

(1) had a valid marriage (not to include same-sex marriages that are legally recognized),
(2) were married for at least one year prior to the Veteran’s death, and
(3) were continuously cohabitating when the veteran died.

As with any law, there are exceptions to the law. With regard to being married at the time of death, there is a possibility that a divorce can be set aside or vacated after the Veteran died. If so, the VA Regional Counsel, upon review of all relevant documents, such as the court decree that set aside the divorce, can determine that the decree setting aside the divorce is a valid means that the claimant was the legal surviving spouse of the Veteran.

But, the issue of continuous cohabitation must still be established. Continuous cohabitation sounds like the Veteran and the spouse must have lived in the same place, without separation, until the Veteran’s death. For most couples, that is the case. However, there are acceptable exceptions.

The couple may be separated and living apart if the separation is due to:

(1) medical reasons,
(2) marital discord wherein the surviving spouse was not materially at fault in the separation, or they
(3) lived apart for other reasons that do not show an intent on the part of the surviving spouse to desert the Veteran.

When in doubt, seek counsel from an attorney who is accredited by the Veterans Administration. VA benefits can be instrumentally helpful, but navigating the system can be daunting. Attorney Members of Lawyers with Purpose, LLC receive continuous education about how to assist Veterans and their Families.

Written by Victoria L. Collier, CELA and Co-Founder of Lawyers with Purpose