Strategies to Uncover the Hidden Truth with Geoff Kunkler

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for joining us today. With over 10 million downloads and listeners from more than 180 different countries, it's dedicated listeners just like you who have made Negotiate Anything the number one negotiation podcast in the world. I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, author, and the proud CEO of of the American Negotiation Institute. Now, before we get into today's insightful conversation, I have a golden opportunity for those of you who recognize the power of negotiation in your professional lives. Have you ever found yourself wishing that you could navigate those high stakes conversations with more confidence? Or perhaps you're looking to empower your team with the art of persuasion and conflict resolution? At the American Negotiation Institute, we've crafted specialized keynotes and workshops tailored for those very needs. We've transformed the negotiation skills of professionals worldwide and we're eager to do the same for you. We believe the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And our goal is to help you improve your lives and the lives of those around you one difficult conversation at a time. Don't let another challenging conversation leave you second guessing. Click the link in the description to discover how we can help you find confidence in conflict, negotiate better deals, and have stronger relationships. Because in the world of business, every conversation counts. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview.

Jeff, thanks for joining us today.

Happy to be here.

We are happy to have you. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Sure. My name is Jeff Kunkler and I'm one of the partners at Carlisle, Pachetta Murphy. We're a mid sized law firm in central Ohio that does essentially everything so we call a full service firm. And my role in that is that I'm primarily in the family wealth planning group. So I help individuals and families figure out who would make their decisions. If they can't do so themselves, then ultimately what would happen to their estate in the event of their eventual demise as well.

I love it. Yes. And listeners, you see, if you look at my LinkedIn, you'll see, of course, American Negotiation Institute, and you'll also see Carlyle, Patchen and Murphy. So I'm of counsel at Carlyle, so Jeff and I are colleagues. And today we're talking about conflicts within families. And you're probably wondering, well, why is Jeff coming in to talk about family conflict? Well, this is something that comes up pretty frequently. So can you give the listeners a little Bit of background on that element of your work.

Sure. Yeah. It's quite interesting. I work with families trying to figure out, you know, who they're going to pick to be their decision makers, where they're going to leave their estate when they pass. And within that, we dig into some pretty deep dynamics. And, you know, there's some birth order things that come into play. There's some notions of who thinks they can or can't make certain types of decisions. So I'm often not just jotting down, you know, Kwame, you want your wife Whitney, to be your power of attorney. Of course, it's not always that easy. Sometimes it's, do you want it to be your son or your daughter who's local, who's actually capable of making, you know, a difficult healthcare decision, who's capable of making a financial decision? And then by necessity, if we're picking one person for these jobs, we're not picking the rest of the cast of characters. And so then how do we tell both the people we are picking and also tell those that we aren't? And so you get into some real sort of family dynamics where, whether it's a sense of entitlement or being the oldest, that there's these notions of who's going to do these jobs. And in my experience, confronting that on the front end. So helping the parents have the conversation now goes a lot better than when this is unknown. Mom and dad have passed. We're doing the reading of the will that you see on tv. It's not quite as formal as that, but when we're going through that process, finding out after the fact that you haven't been chosen for something or aren't getting something that you thought you were going to get is a really hard conversation to have. And so I try to get folks to have the difficult conversations in advance through authors like you. You know, we can be empowered to have those difficult conversations. It's not always so easy to get people to do, and they don't necessarily know what they're signing up for when it comes into, you know, their will or their estate plan. But I try to guide people through that on a daily basis.

Yes. Okay, this is good. Let's dig into this, Jeff. And there's so many different angles that we can take on it. But I'd be interested to hear, let's go to the beginning of your career. When you started practicing in this area, did you think you're going to have to do so much conflict resolution?

Absolutely not. Admittedly out of law school, I Had an opportunity to go work at a law firm in my hometown. I had met my now wife who was not from my hometown, and so I turned down the job offer and landed at an estate planning firm. I took wills and trust and estates in law school, but didn't really think too much into what it means to be a trust and estates lawyer full time. So absolutely not. I did not think it was going to be difficult. Conflict resolution types of questions. I thought it was, you know, who is your power of attorney? A, B and C. Who is your health care power of attorney? D, E and F. And how do you divide your will up? Well, just equally. Your kids. Right. As easy as that. Jot it down, sign it, you know, file it away, and you won't need this for a long time. Coming up with the answers to those questions is not so easy. And sometimes it's the older generation like I was talking about. Sometimes it's guys like you and me. Who's going to take care of our little kids if we're not around. Is a conversation that can be really hard to have with you and your partner. Yeah. So I had no idea you'd be talking about such difficult conversations. I mentioned dealing with the older generation before. Which of your kids are going to make decisions on the other side of that coin? Another really hard conversation to have could be who's going to raise your minor children in the event you pass away? You and I both have little ones, as do a lot of my clients. And if the partners don't agree as to who's going to raise the kids, that's an impasse that we're not going to be able to complete your estate plan because we need you to make the decision and ideally have your wills both say the same thing in terms of who it's going to be. And you know, there's a ton of factors into that calculation. Is it your siblings who are awesome at being an aunt and uncle? Is it your grandma and grandpa? I have that conversation all the time with people whose kids are our age. You know, I'm raising a toddler with grandparents who are 60 or 70. Could they raise a toddler? Sure. Well, what if we fast forward a decade? Could grandparents raise a house full of teenagers when now that they're 80 or 85, probably not a great fit. And so this is a decision that is hard to make, but then you have to revisit it over the years as well. And so I had no idea I'd be talking about these types of issues or that it would Be so adversarial. And adversarial is probably not the right word. That's probably too strong. I'm not in court, I'm not litigating cases. But we're having difficult conversations on a daily basis and making difficult decisions.

Yeah, absolutely. And how many times have you run into this situation where you ask a question and a person answers confidently and then their partner looks at them or the family member looks at them, just completely confused, like, are you serious? That's your answer?

If I don't get that at least once a week, I'd be surprised. And it might be a very innocuous question, like what happens? And I have to ask hard questions all the time. You know, one of the hypotheticals is, you know, Jeff, what if you, your family and your kids are all in the same car or airplane and all die at the same time? People don't think about that as a course of their regular life. But I need to put that answer into their plan. And so sometimes I'm thinking, you know, is it as easy as he has half to your family and half to his family? That sounds pretty easy. And one will jump in, yes, that's exactly right. And the other just turns shock that why would we ever include your family? You know, they've done nothing for us or they don't need it. And so you get into this level of conversation that you're not expecting. So I try to go into the conversations not making any assumptions or presumptions about the answers that might come out. But absolutely, I'd say if I deal with 100 families a year, at least 10, 15% of the time, do I have someone who has a confident answer that their spouse or significant other is surprised that that's their answer?

Yes. No. I can see how that makes for great tv, but a really tough conversation. And you're right, this happens a lot. And I want to focus in on something that you said in passing, but I think it's really important you're trying not to make assumptions. And that's critical because a lot of times I think the worst types of assumptions that we make are the ones that we don't even realize that we're making. And so it seems like for you, you have to do a lot of kind of self work beforehand, not assuming the answer before you ask the question. Because if you do, that can kind of change the way that you direct the conversation.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, if I. However many estate plans I've done, you know, hundreds, I'm over thousands now. If you check the counter on my website, no two of that thousand are the same. And so if you just assume you're going to pick the oldest child to be the decision maker and we're going to divvy everything up equally, that is never going to be the right answer. And so you have to get much more into it. And some stuff, stuff they may not want to talk about. I've had more than one occasion where, you know, every client who comes in brings in an intake questionnaire where I ask, you know, give me your info. If you've got a spouse, give me their info, give me your kids info. I've had more than one occasion where digging into just the family tree has revealed that we've left branches off. We didn't want to bring up this child because they're not close to us or they're estranged or they've had trouble with the criminal justice system or whatever the answer might be. Well, in my world, if we don't mention people in a very specific way, if we're not intending to include them, they might have a right to claim against the estate. And so I have to try to uncover and dig more than what they've revealed. And in that sort of digging, excavation process necessarily comes sensitive topics, sensitive subjects. And it gets even more complicated when, of course, we're generally honing in on one side or the other of the family tree. So now we're kind of crossing lines and dealing with how people feel about their in laws, which is always a sensitive subject as well.

Yes. Okay. Now, how do you respond when you are having a conversation and you're asking the questions that you need to ask in order to do your job as a lawyer and the person almost starts to vilify you because you're getting invasive and they start to push back and they're not giving the information that you need. What do you do in situations like that?

Yeah, I try to sort of level set before we get into the difficult conversation. So as a starting point, I try to let everyone know, you know, you got certain protections, you're dealing with an attorney and we have attorney client privilege. So things you tell me are going to be kept within the walls of the office outside some pretty limited circumstances that would put someone at harm specifically. And so I try to let everyone know, as a general premise, oversharing is the right thing.

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I want you to tell me everything in the world and I will determine if that's an important fact or not. I don't want you to walk into it trying to say, I didn't think he needed to know this. I finish up a plan. The way these plans work, you know, I write them today, and hopefully you're not going to die for a few more decades. So 40 years from now, when they're reading your will, something you didn't tell me could cause a big problem with your plan. So I want everyone to be an over sharer and allow me to determine what is and isn't going to happen. And then I also try to say, you know, I'm not trying to, you know, to your point, to be sort of vilified. I'm not the enemy here. We have a common goal. I'm trying to solve a problem that you, because you're an adult, need to have these documents in place. It's not a negotiable, it's not an option. All adults have certain things they need to lay out because if you don't do it, you're going to rely on the court system and the laws we have in place to fill in the blanks. And they do a pretty poor job at that. And so the premise is we have to get this done and so don't view it as negative or that I'm the enemy. But we have to have the conversation. And maybe we need to table a conversation. Sometimes in an intake meeting, I get every detail I need. The next thing I do is draft your estate plan and send it to you. More often I say, you know, we considered A or B, but you're still thinking about C. And so we may need to go back and forth a few times. There are certain things we're going to have to decide in order to do it. And then I also have the wisdom that I can say, this is what, you know, similarly situated people have done. This is the considerations I think are important. And I've also administered enough estates that I can say, yes, this sounds like a good idea, but in practicality, do you think about, you know, just the geography of these two people? That doesn't make sense to name them for this role. For instance.

Oh, this is so good.

So, listeners, I'm going to break this down really quickly because in these situations where, Jeff, you're saying that, you know, it could be a potentially difficult conversation, some more difficult than others, but we can reasonably foreshadow that it could be tough. First of all, number one, your level setting before the conversation happens, and number two, you're taking the time to frame the interaction collaboratively because, you know, hey, there are times where you might look at me as the enemy. I want to let you know I am on your team. Saying that explicitly is really important because we can think about this in a traditional negotiation setting a lot of times. Oh, we could think about this, Jeff. And some of the deals we've been on, working together with the other side. Right. It's easy for the other side to kind of vilify us or see us as the enemy, but you have to take the time to frame it and say, hey, listen, we're all lawyers here. We're trying to work together, trying to get the best resolution possible for our respective clients. So let's work together to get there. But you have to do that up front, because if you have. If you don't and you just start the conversation and you're just like, hey, Jeff, this will be a really easy conversation. And then you're digging into all of these, these dark family secrets, people are going to be taken aback. So I think getting them mentally and emotionally prepared for what's coming is really powerful and really important.

Yep, absolutely. I mean, I ask everyone on. On their intake form list your family, and are these people included or not? And it's not necessarily as easy as a yes or no box. And even if it's a yes, I still want to know, what does included mean? You know, are they a decision maker? Are they going to inherit? Are they treated equally or differently? And then, you know, the types of things families have often then shift the conversation even further. So let's say it's a fairly simple situation. You know, you've got a house and some savings and a couple of cars. Pretty easy to divvy up. What if you have a family business and only one or two of your kids is involved in the business? Well, is it fair or equal to leave the business to those two, but not to the other two? Fair and equal are very different words and are very important for us to kind of nuance out what that might mean. And, and then it's a lot of times, if we're going to go this way with certain assets, what else can we do to make up for it to the others? Or do we even need to make up for it? Maybe, maybe your child has put in a ton of their time and effort and sweat equity and if it weren't for them, your business wouldn't be worth what it's worth and so it's okay to leave it to them. That conversation is hard enough on its own. I think the harder one is then, then telling the family, this is the decision we made and why. And it's a much better outcome in my experience, if the family can have that conversation while everyone's still living and still competent and still able to have it. So you have an opportunity to say, mom or dad, I appreciate what you've done here, but I disagree with it. Respectfully. If mom and dad have passed and I'm the one revealing this information, there's no changing it. There's no explaining what happened. I probably can't get into how or why they even made the decision. And so now you've got kids who are mad at you from beyond. And you know, I don't want to be the one who, the plan made it so Thanksgiving never happens again. And you don't get together over the holidays because the kids are mad about what mom and dad did. So I try to then tell people, Step one, difficult conversation with Jeff. Let's get it on paper. Step two, now we need to actually tell the people you're up, signed up for this job, you are or are included in this capacity. And that way you're not going to be surprised if I'm in an accident or I pass away someday, that I picked your older sibling for this or I picked your younger sibling and maybe they're more qualified. If you need a healthcare power of attorney and one of your kids is a doctor, we've got a pretty good candidate to serve the role. Maybe they're not the oldest and there's this notion that the oldest always assumed they would do this. Well, I'd rather you have that conversation while everyone's living so that people can give you feedback than to wait until you've passed away. And again, you're not there to answer the questions at that point. And so it leaves a lot of unresolved conflict with your children.

Okay, let me throw a hypothetical at you. And maybe I'd be interested to know if this happens because maybe, let's say You. You give that spiel to the person who. Who's writing up the will. You have a husband and wife, they write the will up. Great. And then they are excluding siblings, things like that. And then you say, you know what, this might cause some conflict for your family members after you pass. So we should bring them together and we should have a conversation about this. And they're like, jeff, I'm glad you brought this up, because my strategy is to die, so I can't have this conversation. How do you persuade that person to have the conversation if they are completely averse?

It doesn't always happen. Unfortunately, it doesn't. I have plenty of people who've told me flat out, I'm not going to have that conversation. I think a compromise, if we're trying to come up with some solution that might help, is I do have some people who say, I'm not going to have that conversation, but I encourage them. Maybe we leave a separate writing. It's not your actual will or your trust, your power of attorney, but a letter explaining how and why you made certain decisions. So I have dozens of people who've given me some sort of writing they've left behind to explain what they did and why they did and try to give some comfort to the kids who aren't going to be included. And then, depending how estranged there are, I have a lot of people who unfortunately come to me and say, you know, I've got four kids, this one here I haven't spoken to in years, so I'm surely not going to have a conversation with them now saying, hey, son, who I don't talk to. By the way, you're out of my will. Probably not going to go very well, no matter how much you prep for it or how much training you have in difficult conversations. And so there's some of those that we just know aren't going to happen. The law gives us some tools that I can put in sort of defenses to make sure that they can't contest it or challenge it in the future. But there's going to be some conversations that unfortunately you're just not going to be able to have, and it just doesn't practically make sense to have. And so there are lots of those floating out there that I've prepared. Like I said, my preference would be, if we can, let's confront it on the front end. But it's not always going to be perfect and it's not always going to happen like that.

Yep, makes a lot of sense. And now let's fast forward. Let's say the family is actually leaning in and having this conversation first. What is your mindset? Do you go in as the lawyer representing those like the people who wrote the document, or are you switching your mindset to saying, I'm a mediator resolving this conflict and trying to help the conversation to be productive?

Yeah, great question. So I'd say in many, if not most instances, I'm encouraging this to happen. And in many cases it's happening on its own venue. I've given you homework, Kwame. We've written your plan up. I want you to go home. Next time the kids are in town over Thanksgiving or whatever the holiday might be, let's have the conversation. Then they might report back whether it went well or didn't go well. That's most of the time. That's not all the time. I've had meetings just recently, for instance, where people came in to have this conversation. And so it's a tightrope that I have to walk and I need to level set with parents from the start. Am I acting in a role as your attorney in which you generally have attorney client privilege and I'm bound to do what's why I have a fiduciary duty to do what I believe is in your best interest. So is that the role I'm playing here or am I playing some other role? And so being clear about the parameters and what isn't or isn't going to happen are very important. And then I also have to remind the kids, by the way, they're letting you into the fold here. But this is mom and dad voluntarily choosing to do so. If they tell me I can't give more information to you. And by the way, if you just call me next week without their consent because of privilege, I can't rehab this conversation or talk to you on your own about it. Gets even more complicated when I get into multi generational planning. I got plenty of families where mom and dad are clients and so are kids. If we've got common assets like a business, where does that cross? And so we try to do a very good job being clear from the outset who is the client and what do we represent. Maybe I represent the business as an entity and it's my job to act on behalf of the business. We've got different generations who own parts of it, but at the end of the day, the client is the business. Well, that's important to know from the outset. I have other engagements, but that's not the way it's structured. I represent one of the Owners of the business. Well, that's a very different take and spin instead of motivations that I have to be sort of guided towards when we're having those conversations. And so I think it's really important, as you suggested, to know what's your role in this conversation. And I try as best as possible to define that in a very clear written way that says this is the scope of this work and what role I'm going to be serving. And as you get into the conversation, it can be hard to stick to that, honestly.

Yeah. And so, listeners, I want to highlight a couple of things here. So first, what we're recognizing is that there are some high level conflict resolution strategies happening here with the way that Jeff just described that. And at the same time, there are also some high level ethical types of things that we have to worry about as lawyers. And this little, you know, little plug here is why Carlisle Patchen Murphy won the Torch Award for Ethics in business. Because we care. And this is a great example. So I wanted to find a way to weave that in. Jeff.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Yeah, no worries, man. We deserve it. We deserve it. So I think that's good. And the other thing is, I think there's something that we can all take from this, even if we're not practicing lawyers or professionals that have those types of heavy ethical obligations. And let's shift it from an ethical question to a question of identity, because each of us have different identities that we bring to the table at different times. So think about you, Jeff. You're a father, you're a husband, you're a lawyer, you are a philanthropist. You're going to jump in some icy water for a good cause. In a few months, we'll put a link to the description of that as well. I want to give you an opportunity to shout that out at the end of the episode. But sometimes those identities come into conflict. And so if people recognize you or know you in different capacities, they might look at you in that capacity when you might need to act as another capacity. So I think it's really helpful from time to time to call that out. Sometimes in business, for instance, for me, right, running a company, I have to be clear because sometimes friends are on the team. I have to say, this is Kwame talking as a business person. This is a business decision. And I have to let them know which part of my identity I'm bringing to the table so they can respond and we can have a conversation that's on the same level. Because sometimes if I'm talking as a business owner, and they're talking to me as a friend. We're going to have problems. It's going to. They're going to be disconnect. So I think I just wanted to shout that out because I think that's a really important point.

I think that's great. I mean, the specific, specific role you're playing and which identity you're using may not be clear to the other people, even though it may be very clear to you. So taking the time and opportunity to say from the outset, this is what I'm going into this serving and doing so you can. Oh, he's saying this because he's viewing this as Kwame the business owner, not calling my friend who pulled me aside to talk about a personal issue or a family issue. And like you said, it's not just advice for those who have ethical standards, whether that's attorneys or counselors or anyone else. This applies to everyone. And also, every person I'm having the conversation with needs to be on the other side of this coin, too. Literally everyone needs to have this plan and have this conversation. And so these are useful tools in that sense as well. I've been pulled into it on both sides because I'm the only lawyer in the family. I, of course, do this planning for my parents, and when I had living grandparents, I did planning for them as well. And so, you know, my dad, every now and then, I'll just kind of check back, and he's like, my stuff's taken care of, right? And I'm like, yes, dad, your stuff's taken care of. But, like, maybe we could have a little deeper conversation now. Theirs is pretty easy. They've got me, and I don't have any siblings, so there aren't choices as to who's going to do it. The caretaker is going to be me someday. I'm going to be the one to make the decisions. But nonetheless, you know, is it taken care of? Isn't quite enough of the conversation to have. And that's my own family that I'm trying to drag to the table. So you can imagine the impediments that people have to talk about this stuff. It's not easy, you know, is it a fun exercise to say, kwame, you and your wife are driving down the road with your kids tomorrow, and, you know, the. The proverbial bus takes you out. What do you want to do? Like, that's not a fun exercise, but it's important and it's necessary. I try to make it easy. We try to be as Light hearted as we can about it. But at the end of the day, you need to have those conversations. And like you said, knowing what role you're having the conversation from is really, really important. Am I, Kwame, the protector of my family who's making these decisions, or am I serving as a lawyer? Am I serving as my business owner? You might have some different hats at different times. If you tell me which one you're wearing, I know what to expect from you. But if you don't tell me, I may have assumed Kwame is wearing a different hat.

Yeah, I'm laughing as you're saying this because, yes, I'm of counsel at the firm, but I'm also a client of the firm. And it's really funny interacting with the lawyers who are my colleagues. And, and sometimes I just put my, my, like my, my face in my hands and I'm like, wow, I'm a lawyer. Why am I not. Why did I not see that?

What?

Because Kwame, the business owner, overly optimistic, not seeing these types of problems. So I think it's just important to realize that if it's important for us to be clear on our identity to other, for other people, for their clarity, but also for ourselves too, because it changes the way that I think if somebody says Kwame, approach this conversation or this problem as a lawyer, it's different when you say Kwame, hey, approach this as a mediator or a father or a husband. So I think that identity shift is important for ourselves as well. And I've seen you negotiate, I've seen you interact with clients. I know you are exceptional at what you do. And so I want to give that caveat before I ask this question because we both went to Ohio State Law School. Did you take any of those classes in mediation, conflict resolution before graduating?

I did. I think you may be involved with it now, but I was the, the not fun student who spent one entire spring break taking a negotiation and conflict resolution class. It's a way to get some extra credit. You may recall your spring semester, rather than taking a week off, you take an immersive course in it. So I am fortunate enough to have that course work. And even though I didn't ultimately want to be a trial lawyer, I thought it was important to have that skill set. So I even took a trial advocacy class with a federal judge, Marbley, which was an incredible experience to be able to be in a courtroom and pretend to be a trial lawyer. Now I watch trial lawyers and greatly appreciate what they do. And I'm very glad I'M not one, but I think that advocacy, the negotiation, being able to approach it as if it's adversarial is a really useful skill set to apply both in and outside the law, frankly.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And the reason I ask that, Jeff, is because there are, we both know of lawyers who have graduated without ever taking a negotiation or conflict resolution course. And I think I'm recognizing this more and more often in the professional world. There are people who are negotiators, we're all negotiators in different ways who have never taken the time to learn how to negotiate because you're not a mediator, but you're relying a lot on mediation skills, whether it's with friends, family at work, whatever it happens to be you're going to be.

Oh, it applies everywhere. I mean, literally Monday night I'm biting my nails over a fantasy football match and I need to watch the Monday Night Football game and my wife, wife is a die hard Cavs fan and she's got the Cavs game on. And you can guess who won the negotiation. We kept the Cavs on. And I'm watching on my phone the tiny little screen trying to figure out if I'm going to get enough points from Najee Harris. And man, when he got injured, I'm freaking out and I'm like, can I just turn it on and see how serious it is? I don't know what abdominal injury means on a text thing on my phone. And I did not win that negotiation, so I wouldn't want to know what my record is within the marital relationship. But it is true. Everything, literally everything is a negotiation. And that's why your listeners come to you, is to get the expertise to apply in and out of their careers, in and out of their families, work, life. It's all applicable. And you're right, some proper training, whether that's listening to podcasts like this, reading up on it, actually taking coursework is invaluable whether you're a lawyer or anything else in the world. Literally everything you do, there's give and take to. And what does give and take necessarily involve? Well, it's negotiation.

Exactly. No, I appreciate this. This is really, really helpful. I appreciate very helpful content. And nobody's come on the podcast to talk about the inter family types of conflicts. So I appreciate that. And before you go though, I want to give you an opportunity to talk about what's coming up for you in February with the cold dive.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for mentioning it. So I am currently the chair of the board of Directors for Special Olympics Ohio. So we serve more than 20,000 athletes with intellectual disabilities. There are sports at the core of our mission. So we provide year round sports opportunities, but also goes a lot beyond that. Everything from involvement in the schools to healthy athletes to a number of distant disciplines to help make sure that our population is served in terms of their health, their fitness, vision, all kinds of good stuff. And so our single biggest fundraiser for that is something called the Polar Plunge. And now all 50 states do this. Unfortunately, I'm not the chair of the board of Special Olympics Florida or Texas or Southern California. I'm the chair of the board of Special Olympics Ohio. And so on February 11, I will be jumping into a pool outside of lower field where the Columbus Crew plays in order to raise money to support our mission. It is the biggest fundraiser of the year and I'm currently the back to back to back top individual fundraiser. So if anyone is interested in supporting a really good organization, I would appreciate the help to try to defend that title. Hopefully we'll be raising literally hundreds of thousands of dollars. But it's a fun event and unfortunately being in Ohio, it's probably going to be icy cold in February. We've, I've done open body of water, I've done them at different facilities. This year we're partnering with the crew, so it'll be pretty exciting. And with the World cup going on, it's timely. So hopefully the men in advance on Saturday, but we've got some involvement from the crew that'll be pretty exciting for fans as well.

That is great. Kudos, man. You are a brave, brave man. I will be sending you warm thoughts on February 11th and listeners take a peek at the link in the description. I love it if you could support Jeff because it is a very, very worthy cause. So Jeff, before you go again, let the listeners know about you, about Carlyle and how they could work with you.

Yeah, absolutely. So again, Jeff Kunkler with Carlyle, Patch and Murphy. If you want to learn about our law firm, the easiest thing to do would be go to our website, which is www.cpmlaw.com. if you want to find me personally, it's just my name. So Jeff Kunkler.com will get you there. And if you're interested in supporting the fundraiser, Kwame will have a link in the bio in the notes as well so that you can support the Special Olympics through my Polar Plunge. So thanks for having me, Kwame.

Hey, my pleasure.

This was awesome.

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