Estate Planning Innovations In A Digital World Meet Guidr

And so it's all what we set ourselves to think about. But I think there's another hidden thing underneath all this, and we've all been kind of alluding to it. It can't be for the sake of entrepreneurialism. It has to be for the sake of creating value. And that's what entrepreneurs do, we create value. Look, it does no good if Guy and I spend all this time, energy and cash to do something that doesn't benefit someone that's willing to pay for it. And the beautiful part is were saying paying way less, taking a zero off. And that's where I think that's the job of entrepreneurs again, to really enable and get more access.

How do you create an international collaboration in your business and revolutionize the legal industry using technology? We're joined today by two incredible entrepreneurs who are joining us from both the United States and all the way across the pond over in the uk and we are going to have an incredible conversation about the power of collaboration, what it's like to own a business for as long as these gentlemen have. The combined knowledge base of business here today with us is really profound. And so we are joined by Guy Red Rimond, who has an unbelievable career, is a technology wizard and has founded and sold companies and has joined an incredible collaboration with Dave Panel who is a legal professional on estate planning. Founded the Estate Planning and Law center, has a bio longer than you could possibly imagine was things that I'm completely amazed by that he's been able to do. In fact, in 2001 he founded the Medicaid Practice Systems MPS and then he transformed that in 2012 to lawyers with Purpose where he leads lawyers in estate planning, elder law and asset protection. And through this mechanism and through all this knowledge base he's developed, it led to an incredible collaboration with Guy in 2001 with their newest innovation, the Guider platform, a digital easy to use client interface. Released two lawyers and is changing the industry by digitizing how lawyers communicate with their clients. And in October 2021, Dave and and Guy both co authored Digitization of Law how to Transform Technology Disruptions into Abounding Opportunities. So you guys, I'm so humped and excited to have this conversation. A little while back we had a wonderful chat after an introduction made by one of our strategic Coach colleagues. And so I'd love if you can kick us off a little bit about how your relationship began and brought you into this collaboration. I think there's a glue that's there that our listeners would be really interesting to hear.

So I kick this one off, Dave.

Sure.

So Dave and I have both been on coach for Strategic Coach for probably, I think probably 15 years or more. Certainly I've been around for about 15 years, Dave. I think a little bit more than that.

If I 20.

And even though we've been in the same kind of program and class for a number of years, we'd never actually spoken with each other in. I think you mentioned the data actually, Richard. 2019, October 2019, Dave and I were introduced together officially by a guy called Ash Fore, a British guy. And you know, Ash knew that Dave had an idea. Ash was, was interested in that idea as well and he knew that I had a tech background. So it was just one of those semi fortuitous, right time, right place conversations. So we sat around the lunch table. Dave was explaining about his idea, the fact that he tried it with a couple of other companies over the past couple of years and it hadn't quite gone the way that he imagined it had gone. And I remember thinking, well that's kind of a cool idea. I mean I think I can make this happen. And you know, my background is the 20 years prior to that was building a software development company, building kind of cool platforms but for other people. Right. So I exited that in 2017 and you know, this seemed like a good opportunity. So we started the conversation and it got to around about March 2020 and we decided to, to do this. So we hit the kind of start button and then the world hit the stop button and it was like, ah, right, okay.

Didn't start first day, did it?

Ah, no, nothing Dave. So we carried on, right, and we carried on the conversations, began doing some of the sort of engineering just to prove the concepts in the background. You know, I wanted to prove to Dave and, and also, you know, as part of kind of bit of due diligence that we could, we could technically do this. So we did that and we could and we, we carried on and we, we formed the company. We, we, we built the platform over the preceding two years. And literally six weeks ago I met Dave for the second time in person. So I flew over to New York and then into Syracuse and Dave was, came to meet me at the airport and took me to the hotel and it was great to finally meet him for the second time in person and in the preceding days the team for the first time, even though I've been working with them for sort of 18 months, two years building this platform, building this company, launching it, and like you say, with the pond in between us, it Was amazing, amazing experience and amazing to meet everybody in person. I have to say, after all that.

Time, the sharp example of the use of technology and how Zoom has changed everything permanently for people all over the world.

Absolutely. You know, I think in the tech world, you know, we, we, we were, we were kind of dealing with companies in the US in 2008 over Skype, you know, because obviously that was one of the first decent video conferencing technologies that came along. And then Zoom came along. But I think what has happened over the pandemic period is that everybody else has begun to use Zoom. Dave was an early adopter, you know.

Dave, a couple of years prior, 2018 with. Because I had remote employees and it was great. I couldn't get anyone else to use it though. I couldn't get my clients to use it. I couldn't get my professional, my professional relationships. No, no, no, not going to do all that nonsense, you know, and then, you know, then it's brilliant. When Covid hit, it became brilliant for everyone. So that's. Isn't that true for technology though? There's always those five layers, right? The laggards and then there's the innovators. Yeah, I forget the five different classes, but it's pretty interesting.

And so what tip? What tipped the scale for you guys? What inspired you to create this, this platform and how is it, you know, helping the folks who utilize it?

You know, I think I'd be remiss if I didn't start with, you know, what happened after I met Guy in October of 19, until we actually formally set the company up, I think in February, January, February of 20. And what happened was very simple. And this is really from an entrepreneurial perspective. We had a 15 minute conversation at a lunch. I was leaving and I threw my card at Guy and I said, look, Guy, let's have a phone call, 30 minutes and we'll decide if this is worth having a second phone call. And he said, sure. So we did a quick email, scheduled a 30 minute call. At the end of 30 minute call, we said, yeah, let's schedule another hour. And then we said, okay, let's schedule one more hour. And then it was, okay, you do this, I'll do that and let's meet in two weeks. And so what it was, was due diligence, like, okay, is this a model that works? Entrepreneurs, we have lots of ideas. It doesn't mean we should pursue them. All right? And so as Guy talked about, we started to look first at the value proposition. Right? What's the prop who benefits in this? And we saw what made it so powerful is there was two beneficiaries. The primary beneficiary was the consumer and the consumer benefits. Because what Guider does, again, a concept back then, but real and already launched six months ago here in the U.S. what Guider does is when you take all those self help websites out there in the legal space where you can do your own wills, you could do your own trust, you could do your own, you know, business formations. Those big websites are not moist. And so what I recognize because I have a national legal organization of estate planning lawyers who do estate planning, I realized and saw some statistics that some of those one particular website was about to near its 5 millionth customer. And you notice I say customer because they weren't clients, because it's not lawyers. And so I said, you know what? That stuff is, okay, but it's not lawyer and it doesn't solve, you know, some of the things. It's the basic, basic stuff. So I said, how can we give the people what they want? How can we give them access to lawyers? Which is quite complicated, right? People wanting to call lawyers is probably like trying to go, want to go have surgery on something, right? It's not on your top list of things to do. So what guy and I on these phone calls are saying, well look, can we solve this problem of people and their aversion to seeing lawyers and can we solve the other problem with lawyers and they're to get them out of their little bubble they live in to say, hey look, the world is changing. You need to communicate with consumers different, right? So we had two beneficiaries, the one primary beneficiary being the consumer who wants to have quick, easy, accessible 24 7. And we, the other beneficiaries, the lawyers, can we make them competitive with the big self help websites? And the answer was we could. And when we saw that we could, we, we continued on and started building Guider. And what Guider does is exactly that. Guider is your attorney your way, your lawyer your way. It says you get to decide how you work with the lawyer. But it's a lawyer and it's your lawyer, it's your local lawyer. So for example, anyone in my community who knows me, they see me on tv, they see the billboards, they see all the other stuff. They can now go on my website and say, you know what, Dave, I really don't want to talk to you. Right? Because the new world doesn't want to talk to anybody. They want to do other research first online and they could click the purple guider button on my website and do it all themselves. And they're getting access into my back office and my document system and they're just answering the questions instead of going through the process of having me do all that. So, as Guide always says, what we've done is we've digitized and democratized access to law. And the beautiful part about this platform, what makes it unique, is it's a true platform guy success. He's a humble guy. His company that he sold is very, very successful. Many of us know it. It has now gone on to become what we know as the Disney streaming services and Disney. So when he took that knowledge that he had and said, how can we make this user friendly, that's what we've done. And we've actually, there's some barriers we've had to really break down. We've had to break down the barriers for lawyers because lawyers really struggle with. The idea was, well, computer can't do this. They can't do what I do. And we said, no, no, no, they can't. But a computer could do a lot of what you do, and digitization could do a lot of what we do. So what we've done is we've processed what the lawyer does and we've digitized it. And the beautiful part is in the platform the guy's team has created, the consumer has the choice to bump between them. So the consumer could do it themselves on the digital platform, or they can switch to the virtual platform and have some help where they want it from the lawyer, or they can go to the traditional model and go into the office and do it personally and switch in between those three models. Anywhere through the process that's transforming the practice of law, it's transforming consumers access to the lawyers.

Wow. What's fascinating, what's it going to take to make that platform real here in Canada?

Just time. It will, it will be there. There's no question, because our first six months here in the US and we're loading on as many attorneys as we can and, and, you know, we're, we're getting two to three a week on. And so, you know, time. But yeah, it's just a matter of time. It will be there. It's going to be the uk We've had a lot of interest in the uk things of that nature.

I think, I think the uk, Canada, kind of perfect fits for the, for the next stage. So, you know, yeah, without a doubt, we will be moving.

Yeah. For, you know, our Canadian Listeners, you know, the clients that we work with and talk to each and every day. The, you know what happens when the topic of creating a will or taking care of some estate planning requirement or just general, you know, legal counsel is procrastination. And I can't tell you how many times we've had meetings with folks where we've emphasized the importance of you know, getting a will in place, personal directives, power of attorney, all of these things. And then, and then we meet again and we say hey, how, how are you progressing toward the achievement of those outcomes? And it's like oh gosh, you know, we really haven't created the time yet, we haven't connected with the attorney and people want ready access to the information without having to rely upon hours of operation. When you think of attorneys, you think of downtown, metropolitan area. I gotta find parking, I gotta put my Sunday best on. I gotta, you know, overcome the fear of sounding like a dang, like I don't know what I'm talking about. And so the procrastination, the enthusiasm of getting it done dries up. And so this platform, this is, you know, full disclosure for our listeners. This is my first exposure to a conversation about this platform. And as an entrepreneur I can immediately see how this is a benefit to the consumer and to the attorney.

You know I'll tell you Jade, that we actually had to hold back meaning we can put right now we've limited it to wills, healthcare proxies and barge of attorney. And then we have a second option called a, an estate plan advisor where the consumer can answer 20 or so questions and it'll give them advice on okay, is a well healthcare proxy private attorney enough or should you consider a revocable trust or an irrevocable trust. And then we have one other feature on there which is asset protection. So the number one threat to people's lifetime of assets is long term care costs. So as Richard read in the beginning, I'm the founder of the Medicaid practice industry. I have developed the only technology to date that can all through a series of a direct interview can tell you meaning online interview can tell you exactly when you could qualify for government based benefits and how much of your assets could be protected and how quickly. So we don't have that whole thing up yet, but we have an introduction to that up on there. Now why didn't we build all these to begin with? And this is going to sound crazy, the world's not ready. Meaning I can't get the lawyers that far that fast and I Can't get the consumers that far that fast. So we said okay, let's start simple. So the good news is once this thing starts taking hold, there's so many more features and functions that we'll be able to add because essentially the legal industry has to become digitized by Google. And Guy always says it digitized, democratized and demonetized. And so here's how the demonetized works. This is true story. No one will believe me when I'm telling you the will healthcare proxy and power of attorney that a couple, a husband and wife can go onto my website, click the guider button and do online at 2 o' clock in the morning if they want. Is this virtually the same plan they'd get if they came into my office? Pricing if they came into my office to do it 1295 online about 3 to $400 depending upon if they opt for a, an addition of an in office visit to review it and execute it so it's executed properly. Now that's called demonetizing. And some say well Dave, why would you do that? Well here's why I would do it. Because while it reduces, I love this statement. Someone told me once, while it reduces my price by a zero, it increases access to the number of people by a zero. So they work out. And in the end my job is not about making money. My job is to get as to many people as possible to help them get those essential documents in place. And if we can break down those barriers, that's great. The other thing the platform does well is for those people that they it identifies, for those that are trying to be quick, easy and cheap to say okay, it's okay to be quick, easy and cheap. But here's what you're not getting and if you do want these other things, click this button and we'll help you get them. And so now it's not just relegated to only the minimum standard. What the websites can do, the web portals, right, that are not lawyers, they can only give you the minimum. We can give you as much as you need, will start you at the minimum. And that's really what I see the relationship between lawyers and consumers changing. And as Guy's famous words, digitized, democratized, democratized means makes it available to everyone and demonetize make it as efficiently and effective and as low as price as possible.

Imagine having a service available for entrepreneurs who want ready access to setting up a buy sell agreement, funding the agreement, getting, getting all of those things in place where we know the entrepreneur is busy being an Entrepreneur and they just want it done. And I mean they're, the possibilities are just endless in terms of what the both of you have created. And you know, I don't know if you can see that. Can you see that hamster spinning in there? People on the. It's wow. I, I can.

Yeah.

This is a very, very interesting, interesting platform.

Awesome. That I wanted to get connected is to see that hamster wheel spinning. And a couple of things that you said, Dave, that really I want to reflect on here is you talked about, you know, okay, the discounted price, but at, you know, dropping a zero and adding a zero. So my interpretation of that is volume and velocity. And so you have the ability to create a new level of volume that your, your typical office structure wouldn't be able to handle with all those appointments and calendars and physical meetings in the board room. So you can add time volume that wasn't there before and then you can put speed on that volume by meeting a lot more people using the systems and processes that are in place. But the other thing that you identified is the ability to create a relationship. So we think about the digital world often as breaking down relationships, eliminating relationships. But Guider is actually the opposite. It's a digital entry to a new relationship.

Oh, beautifully said. Yeah, because I think what's happened and why I'm so, I mean, look, when I've been interviewed a thousand times and you know, what do you think of the self help websites? They're legitimate. The fact that 5 million people went to them tells you, I'd rather have those 5 million people have something than nothing. But I'd rather have those 5 million people have access to something and more a relationship with me, their local attorney, who they see in the grocery store, whose kids play on the same ball team with their kids and, and, but give them the ability to not have to date me. You know, they can, they can access me. The famous saying I've heard recently is nobody wants to talk to you anymore until they want to talk to you. Right. Who goes now to a car lot to shop for a car. You do it all online and then you just decide which one and you connect with them through email and you go pick it up or not. Now you got Carvana to drop it off in your driveway. So, you know, but again, not that relationship. And as guys always said, what guy loved about the model from the beginning is we can maintain this relationship and start with simple, with a simple, well, capacity borrower attorney. But now as needs increase for these clients, we're There, we're there for them when it's can't be done on.

Yeah, people want the ride, they don't want the car.

Oh my gosh, that guy. You should resonate with that one. They don't want the car. That's our, that's our whole slogan. That's our. Tell them, what is Guider's intention? What do we intend to be?

Well, we want to be the largest accessible law firm in the world that doesn't employ any lawyers. And actually that's not Pine and Sky Target. You know, I did a quick bit of research and I can't remember the precise number, but it was around about 3,470 odd lawyers in the world's largest law firm. So if we get 3,478 lawyers on our platform, which is distinctly possible in a relatively short space of time, then we become the by de facto the largest law firm in the world, accessible law firm in the world that doesn't employ any lawyers. And if you look at it, it's just like Uber became the largest taxi firm in the world that doesn't have any cars, and Airbnb became the largest landlord in the world that doesn't have any property. You know, the list goes on. It's just the way the modern world works. So I think, you know, the legal industry is, as Dave kind of described before, a little bit of a laggard when it comes to technology. They're kind of coming into this kicking and screaming. It frightens them like it does with all industries, that technology suddenly kind of sweeps through. But actually, if the law firms and the lawyers and the entrepreneurial lawyers in particular look at this and go see this as an opportunity, then it's a huge opportunity. Right? Because at the moment, I think in Dan Sullivan's world words, we're playing in the freedom frontier at the moment because there are no other companies working with lawyers, helping them kind of digitize their services. Most platforms out there trying to bypass the lawyers. Now, we don't think that's a good idea. Lawyers go through many years of TR for a really good reason. And establishing a relationship, as Richard alluded to before, with a law firm, even when you're in your 20s, it's a really good idea because you never know when you're going to need. So doing that through a digital mechanism like Guida makes absolute sense. And then if you do need to extend that for, for whatever reason, you know, whatever happens in your life where you need a lawyer, then you have that relationship and you can go in there. But at the moment, I believe we're playing in the, we're playing in a park on our own. We're in the freedom frontier.

Yep. The free zone frontier. Absolutely. And I would make one other point to your comment, Richard. You know, you talk about, both you and Jason talk about, you know, entrepreneurs. You guys must work with a lot of entrepreneurs. Anyone? Yeah. And so one of the things what I'm going to call a strategic byproduct of this is most of you are focused on this entrepreneur or people later on in life who have trying to figure out how their lifetime of earnings and savings can continue to work for them so that they could be secure the rest of their life. But in those conversations, how many conversations are you having with those clients and saying, hey, how are your kids? Oh, your kids graduating high school? Did you know you no longer have any legal rights over him if he's in a car accident and he has to go to the hospital? Did you know you have no legal rights to help? You can't pay his bills or you could do nothing for him financially or legally? So we always run promotions at around graduation time for high schools and say, hey, don't let your high school grad leave for college without a health care proxy. Bar of attorney. I'm even less concerned about the will because they probably don't have anything to give to anybody but the power of attorney and the health care proxy. Now you could be, you could be added extra benefits to your own clients and say, look, not only you, but get your kids to get these things done. Because at the end of the day, your entrepreneurial clients or your, you know, your, you know, higher net worth clients, that and, or not higher net worth clients, you want to see the world go to zero. I don't care how much money they have, I don't care how many businesses they run, let something happen to one of their kids and they don't have legal rights or access to even get information from the doctors. So that's the stuff where we can really have exponential impact because the parents don't have to. They could just say to the kids, hey, go there. Do that thing and, or do it with them. And literally I had a young person, not young, 42 years old, call call us last week and say, you know, I went online, it took me about 35 minutes. It was really cool. And you know what? I never really, it's always been out there. I've always thought about it, but just never really had the means to do it or the Drive to do it. I feel good. I kind of feel like a relief off my, off my chest, you know. And that's the third strategic byproduct. It's opening up a whole new access to a whole new generation of, you know, those millennials. Millennials now outnumber the Gen X and the, even the boomers. So now, you know, giving access to this, you know, 18 to 35, 37 year old who are young, married, maybe have kids again, getting those essential documents done at a demonetized price, but be able to protect with a local relationship. It's a no brainer.

Reminds me of something that our late mentor used to say often the late R. Nelson Nash. He would say that until you understand the problem, the solution just won't matter to you. And so when you educate someone to the degree where they understand the problem, then the solution becomes clear and they'll know exactly what to do. And if you provide that solution in, in outside of the confines of a 9 to 5, I need to find parking, I gotta go downtown, I gotta put on a three piece suit to let me grab my smartphone. It's 2am on a Saturday. I can get the solution that I'm looking for and have a really good digital experience. Then, you know, lawyers will come along. I couldn't imagine why they wouldn't. But I think, you know, it begins with the consumer. It begins with the consumer saying, listen, I'm getting ready access to the solutions that I need. My problems are being solved and I don't have to pay as much and I don't have to, you know, disrupt my own day to do it. I can take care of it at my convenience. And so my goodness, this, this is not just limited to attorneys, gentlemen. I'm sure you guys are already thinking about that. There are other professions that can benefit from this.

You identified not just the discount in pricing, but I think an even more intrinsic value proposition is the discount in time. So there's the lawyer's time and then there's the client's time and the trying to match calendars up to make those things happen. Like Jason said, it's driving downtown, it's fighting downtown traffic to get to the lawyer's office, all those little pieces of time. And in today's world, we are time starved to a degree and people are recognizing, where can I, you know, things like door to door delivery services for your groceries, well you might pay a little bit of a premium for that. But what do you say to time? So people are making time based decisions and guider provides them a massive time advantage to get the thing that they want at any time that they want faster than they could do the traditional method.

Well, something else I would add, and I'll let Guy give his view from this, but he had a very different view, not a view, very different experience than I did because I'm a lawyer and he's not. But the poor guys had to learn to work with lawyers. What people don't appreciate the hardest, most complex part of building this platform was we had to build it in a way to maintain attorney ethics and client confidentiality. Worse right now when you think right when you go into those self helps, they don't have any of that to worry about. They don't have to worry about if someone else sees your stuff or doesn't see your stuff and all that. We do, we have ethical restrictions and requirements when we work with clients. The beautiful part of this, what I think really makes what we've done really significant is we've broken the barrier. We have done it in a way to comply with all of the legal ethical requirements and the confidentiality. But I would love your side of it Guy, because guidelines, I think it was a big thing for him because you know, he's the, he's the tech guy, you know, he always talks about. When I met him I said I need a tech guy. And it really shocked him to say what's all this stuff we got to do with, you know, all these extra layers? But you know, from your perspective, Guy, you know, because you would have the same perspective as a consumer at this point. What did overcoming those things make you consider that you'd never considered?

Well, technically it's a, it's an added layer of complexity. However, what we I think have managed to achieve actually is that the consumer doesn't see any. It's a pretty seamless thing. And any good platform or user system application now has to have an amazing user experience. And actually two thirds of the initial engineering was around user experience. So we tried to make it super simple. Dave, you went through an exercise where you drill down 150 questions down to I can't remember exactly how many, seems like 110.

So you, you took out even way less than that. We got that 150 down to about 38.

So but the second part of that was that the, the, the UX people got involved, didn't they? And they worked with your team and they managed to by asking one question, eliminate three questions and that kind of thing. So you know, there was a lot of work and effort that went into really simplifying this thing so that it is a great experience for the user. You know, literally in 30, 35 minutes they go through a proper process, a thorough process, but they get a genuine legal document at the end of it, which, as you pointed out, Dave, can be signed off by a lawyer if that's a, if they want that service as well.

Well, two things. It is signed off by the lawyer before they get it. So once they go online and enter other information before the document goes to them, the lawyer actually gets a ping on their phone or at their desk. And we actually review to make sure that the choices the client made were consistent with the issues they identified. And then we approve it and send it back. If we don't like something, we will might send a message instead and say, hey, look, we've reviewed this. You did X. Typically people don't do that because of this. Just want you to know, please call us to discuss it because we're looking out for them. But now they didn't even know that they did something that was inconsistent. But we're there to kind of catch that. It's all part of that process.

Yeah, nine out of 10, you know, it happens and there's no need for that phone call. And the, you know, it's only 1 out of 10 where. But the, that's, that's the future of this, you know, they would not be captured with a typical self help platform.

Right.

Reminds me of something again that I heard, gosh, this was way back in 2013, if my memory serves me right. And I was with a group, we were at an event in Cleveland and it was, and Dan Kennedy was there and he said to the group, he said, look, if your business can be Amazon, it's only a matter of time before that happens. And the whole teaching point was that once people really, really embrace that experience, Amazon Prime, Everything on Demand shows up at my doorstep. And the pandemic just escalated that dramatically. People are looking for other solutions that give them that similar, you know, experience of ease and convenience. You know, I'm not sure if on your platform if you have some form of subscription model, but wow, what a great way to build a pretty loyal base of customers that can give you a lot of data too. Like you can supply attorneys with a lot of data.

I think Jason just let the cat out the bag on that one. You know, it's definitely something that we are moving towards the subscription model because it's perfect for this scenario. And, and actually most of the kind of legal document that we could add to this, this platform as well.

There's a.

Because at Lawyers with Purpose we have a, we have what's called the maintenance program. So in my office, probably near 90% of the people that do estate plans with us will opt to pay an annual fee to have access to us all year round without getting a bill from the lawyer. And when the law changes, we update their plans and they don't have to pay for it because they're part of the maintenance program. So we have already identified that we can do this again, democratize it and digitize it and then demonetize it down to the simplest level, even on Guider. So that is a obviously a future target of ours to do because again, it just makes sense.

Jay, go ahead and mention the buy sell type arrangement for a business owner. And there's a lot of needs of a business owner, the corporation and different aspects. And then, you know, further to a conversation that we had previously, we talked about another area of contracts which is in, you know, the real estate area and doing things around loans and mortgages and contracts around that. And that being, I think, a really great space where I can see the platform just really being amplified to a great degree. Especially, you know, selfishly speaking for, you know, Jason and myself thinking about the need of critical loan documents as we teach people the, the premises of Nelson Nash and becoming your own banker. And more and more people seek to do private lending and things of that nature. But I also don't recognize that, you know, there's, there's, you know, I think about Guy, your experience of selling your company and, and having that going through that exit phase and I would imagine doing that for the first time. That's not something that people do on a, on a recurring basis. A lot of times you're not selling multiple businesses throughout your lifetime because your business is often your baby and you grow it over a 20 year time frame, what have you. But the experience of doing that. I'm sure there was many things in the learning phase of that going through that, that exit, that there's components of that that could also help someone who's going to go through a business exit that your platform could identify and simplify for them as well.

Yeah, for sure. I've been through the exit process myself and you know, I think preparing entrepreneurs for exit so they get all the ducks lined up is a really important part of that whole process. And we did it manually because I had an on exec who was really experienced kind of guy and he'd Kind of been there, done it, got the T shirt and he was kind of my guiding light for that. So actually as a company, we were pretty well set up before that. But then, you know, I know there's plenty of companies out there that aren't ready for this. And you know, having some of these services online which do. Does prepare them for an exit is absolutely something that could be done and I think would really help a lot of entrepreneurs.

You know, I. Kudos to Guy because one of the things, you know, when we were building this platform and he, you know, there was, you know, we had teams, 10, sometimes five to 10 programmers on a call with me and Guy saying, okay, what does this thing have to do? How does it have to work the way they built the platform? I can't even. Your mind can't even contain it. But it's simplicity can apply to anything professional. I mean, I can see CPAs using this, financial professional, bankers using this. I can see everyone and anyone using this who has a process and documents, right? Process and documents. This platform could handle any process and documents and how they integrate. But a third thing it can handle that has not been handled in the past is the operations of the individual professional or center who's providing that process and documents. And so that's, I think the third, makes it to the third instead of squared is that it really integrates all those things. And it's the future. I mean this, this Guider is the future. Whether it's Guider can get it all the way there or something else will come and swallow up Guider and make it part of something bigger. That is really what the future is.

For all professional services.

And then you start adding AI into it, because then what AI does, AI starts just tracking and showing. Look, here's what every single person in this process has done. So it could even start to support and help the lawyers, it could support and help the consumers and say, hey, here's what all 89% of the people in this same fact pattern did this. And here's where the issues they looked at, right? I mean with AI, it just, it just takes any limitation off this getting. We haven't built that in yet, right?

Guy, 1, 1 profession @ a time.

It's really, it's. But again, it's, it's so true of what we've all experienced. Anyone who's Alive today in 2022, you know, those of us that are in business and have been for 20 years or more, we've seen a heck of an evolution. I mean, we all remember Y2K, Y2K. Everything's going to shut down. Get the body bags right. And, you know, it just hasn't been true. It's, it's, every guy says it on every podcast. So I'll say it for you today, guy. You know, everything you say says the advancement we're going to make in the next 10 years will be more than the last hundred. And so, you know, it's just what we've become accustomed to now. It has some downsides, but not what we're doing. We're trying to keep up the important things so people don't let those fall off.

I was just sharing with, with our team Q2 kickoff here on Monday this week, said, look, you know, if you think about it, take take a look at an organization like Netflix. 14 years ago, they were still sending out DVDs in the mail. And so where do you think our industry is going to be 14 years from now? You know, the consumer wants ready access to what they need 24 7, 365 on a platform of their choice. And so what are we going to do to innovate, to be at the forefront of that? And this is what the both of you are doing. You're at the forefront of this change that's inevitable. It's coming. And so if you've got folks who have been practicing in, in the, the field of law for 20 plus years, well, they may not see that. But if you start to take them through that journey of these different companies that got to the forefront of things, and companies like Blockbuster that said, oh God, now people will be pulling up here on a Friday night only to find out the movie they want is sold out anyway. So they'll pick up a bag of popcorn and we'll get to stay in business. Like you've got to. You have to change. There's nowhere to hide from it.

There's so many examples out there. Jason, you're absolutely right. Uber's a classic example. Right. And I know, you know, London tried to ban Uber, and I know there was a number of states over in the U.S. i think Texas might have been one that tried to ban Uber. And they did for a period of time. But the reality is that consumers demand it. Yeah, it was a service that, it was an industry that was rife for disruption. It was an industry that needed something different to freshen it up. It being done the same way. Taxi drivers have been working in exactly the same way for decades and decades. There was no innovation in that industry. Then Uber comes along and Gives the consumer a much more efficient way of traveling around. Because it's efficient, there's lower costs involved, and they kind of democratized it from both from a consumer point of view, but also from a driver point of view. They allowed people with a simple smartphone to sign up and be an Uber driver. Obviously, I think you probably, in some states you've got to have the relevant taxi license as well, but you know that's going to happen. And you know, you can kick and scream. In London, the taxi drivers are throwing bricks at the Uber windows, in the office windows. And, yeah, like, well, what you're trying to achieve here, the reality is that they're offering a better service than you can offer at the moment. Now, what you need to do is go back and instead of trying to fight them with bricks and shouting at them, think of a way how you can actually compete. So go and build your own app, provide a great service like they're offering, then you're on a level playing field, then you can compete with them. And there's loads of examples like that where companies have come in, technology companies have come in, and they've changed industries almost overnight because they just have a better offering. You mentioned Amazon before. You know, you could go through every single sector, and the legal sector is one of the few remaining sectors that hasn't been disrupted in this way yet. So it certainly is a huge opportunity. And I think, you know, Jason, you said before that this whole process, this platform, could apply to other professional services. You're absolutely right. You know, there's a ton of services in the financial services sector that would benefit from this type of thinking as well. There's only so much we can do. So we're concentrating the legal sector for the time being. But you just don't know where this can go. There are tons of possibilities with it.

Oh, God. If you think of, you know, from my perspective, what I've heard in how you've described the platform, there's a difference between disruption and collaboration. In a disruption discussion, it's primarily somebody wins, somebody loses. We're going to take something away from you to disrupt your industry versus what both of you are doing.

You're.

You're wanting to bring the attorneys along. You're saying, look, we. This is a collaboration in the sense that we understand here's the key. And for every business owner that's listening, pay very, very close attention to this. What so many companies do, they're completely backward. Their product first, customer second. If you truly understand, if you develop a deep understanding of what exactly it is your, your customers that you have now and the customers that you want to have truly value, then you can go and create that. And if you deliver that consistently and you do it well priced and you do it well delivered, you're going to be successful. But if you try to go out there like most companies do, which is completely ass backwards, let's develop the product first and then go take it to the customer. Go develop a deep understanding of what the customers you have and the customers you want to have truly value, and then go build the product. And then rather than be disruptive, be collaborative. And that's what you guys are doing. You're bringing these attorneys along with you on the journey.

Yeah, the interesting thing here is we're collaborating with the lawyers, right? It's the lawyers that are providing the service that the consumers are looking for. And that's the beauty of this, right? So, you know, we're helping lawyers digitize and democratize their services and by doing so, they can offer services to the customers that they couldn't offer before. Because actually building this type of platform isn't easy. You know, you need money and you need knowledge, and you need knowledge from a tech point of view, but you also need knowledge from a domain point of view. And that's where the collaboration between myself and Dave come in. It's a perfect collaboration from that perspective. Because, you know, Dave, how, I don't know how many decades Dave, but you know, judging by your white hair and my white hair, we got quite a number of decades of experience. I'm not too slightly. It gets us all. So, you know, there is this collaboration is going on everywhere here and that is always a great sign of a good opportunity, I think.

Oh, and a perfect, a perfect global landscape for you guys with the current state that, you know, the world is in and you know, these, these waves involved in the pandemic. And you're still dealing with countries and major cities in various places around the globe that are still in situations where they're locking down. And so your, your platform, what a, what a perfect time and a great service that people are going to, to want and demand, because that's what starts to happen. Attorneys will be proactively reaching out to you guys, saying, hey, my client's asking me about this service and how do I, how do I get on board, how do I engage?

Actually, you know, the, the interesting thing here is that because we're making noises about this by doing shows like this and you know, our own podcasts and our own blogs, and, you know, the book and, and, and you know, so on and so forth. We're actually going unintentionally in some ways, kind of intentionally, but we're not really targeting them, but we are hitting the consumers directly. So what that means is we become an amazing marketing tool for lawyers as well. So we're reaching out to people that they wouldn't ordinarily come across because they heard about Guida. So they go on and they go onto this platform and all they do is put the postcode in and immediately it brings up all their local lawyers who are on the platform. So they can then choose whichever of the local lawyers that they want to engage with and they do that and then they go through the process and even though they're not speaking to this lawyer directly, they're engaging with them through the platform and they're building that relationship. And it goes back to what yourself and Richard were talking about before, where you know, this allows law firms to nurture future clients. And that's, you know, just an amazing marketing tool.

This is something the Nelson Nash Institute needs to look at.

Richard, I agree. And one thing I want to highlight here before we glaze over too much is we've spent so much good conversation about the importance of the technology and the advancement and the thinking that was required to create Guider. So the importance here, this all begins with thinking and then it begins with a conversation. And here's the thing I want people to understand as they were listening to this, is that we're talking about a whole business and a whole technology platform that's been created off of a chance meeting centered around the Strategic Coach organization, which is high performing entrepreneurs getting together, thinking proactively about their thinking and how to collaborate and seeking collaboration. So there's, there's like a, it's, it's a rock thrown in a pond. Strategic, a strategic coach and the community around it. And a chance meeting, throwing out a business card, leading to a first conversation, to a second and a third and a fourth conversation. Not even having the opportunity to meet together in person, two different countries over a two year timeframe. And look at what has been created. So this is not something to be glazed over. The power of what is available to us, the opportunities that exist in our life, you never know where they're coming from. But if you're not ready for them, you're not thinking about them and you're not open to accepting where opportunity can show up, you might be missing out. And opportunities show up to those who are well capitalized. Both in capital and cash reserves, but also in what's available here in their mental capital, their mental capital reserves. And that's where I think all being members of Strategic Coach, we're really amplifying how we're growing mental capital to be able to be receptive to these opportunities that show up in our life.

Dan Sullivan said something to me in October of 2018 that I'll never forget. And he said, when you begin to think collaboratively versus thinking competitively, collaboration opportunities begin to appear everywhere.

Who was that? I think Henry Ford said, if you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. Yeah. Right. So it's all what we set ourselves to think about. And. But I think there's another hidden thing underneath all this, and we've all been kind of alluding to can't be for the sake of entrepreneurialism. It has to be for the sake of creating value. And that's what entrepreneurs do, create value. Look, it does no good if Guy and I spend all this time, energy and cash to do something that doesn't benefit someone that's willing to pay for it. And the beautiful part is we're saying paying way less, taking a zero off. And that's where I think that's the job of entrepreneurs, again, to. To really enable and get more access. Guy said, we want to be the largest, most accessible law firm in the world that doesn't employ a single lawyer. And access is critical because access is not granted to everyone equally, but on your phone it is. On the web, it is. Everyone has access to that pretty much now, today. And that's our job as entrepreneur. To think always is to simplify down, to grant access to previous people that might not have had access, and more importantly, like you said, to help them avoid what they never want to learn, which is what happens if you don't have these documents in place? What happens if you don't take the time. Now, people never have the time to do it right the first time, but they always have the time, which takes three or four times more and more cost to try and fix what broke because it wasn't done right in the first time.

Unless you understand the problem, the solution just won't matter to you.

Exactly.

Rich, take us home.

Well, gentlemen, this has been a lot of fun. I'm sure our listeners will get a ton of value out of this. And you know, when being your two, two people from two different industries, two different countries, you may not necessarily feel like you walk through the world wearing a superhero cape, but Every time that you go and create value, as you said, Dave, you are showing up as a hero to someone somewhere. A hero for the lawyers that the Guider platform will use and the people they're now able to serve, and a hero for the consumers that are getting these services that they never before recognized was available to them in the way that you've made it.

So.

So our question for you and David, I'll throw it to you first, is who would you most like to be a hero to? Oh, man.

You know, I'm a big family guy, right? So for me, I have a sign on my wall. I look at it, says, a good dad knows that one day his children will follow his example instead of his advice. And so for me, it's all about, I want to be a herit of families. I want families to be protected. I want them to enjoy each other. I want them to get the benefit of their lifetime of work, and I want them to avoid the catastrophes that can happen without proper planning that don't have to, because there's always that catastrophe, but then it turns into a double one when you got to deal with all the legal stuff that you didn't anticipate. So, yeah, that's who I want to be a hero to is families. People who enjoy that family unit and that community.

Awesome.

Thank you.

And, Guy, you've shared so much with us today. Who would you most like to be a hero?

You know, every. It won't surprise you to learn that every company that I'm involved with has a technology angle, because that's my background. So, you know, I want to be a hero to people by using technology to make their life simple and save them money and provide a service that has genuine value. And I do that in every single enterprise that I'm involved, whether that be as a business owner or an investor and a business advisor.

Love it. Well, gentlemen, this was a ton of fun. Thank you so much for your time today, for sharing your wisdom and your. Your combined years of knowledge and the excitement that you have for the future that you're forging forward in and creating for so many with this wonderful new technology you put together, and for your vision to see it, see it through, and to see it.

So thank you. It's great being here, and thank you to your audience for listening. You know, we're happy that we're able to contribute value any way we can.

Absolutely enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.

Thank you, gentlemen. And for all of our viewers that are watching this on the YouTubes, you'll see a playlist that just showed up. It just magically showed up, as it does every single time. Because our editing team are amazing. And we're also going to include some links in the show notes if folks want to get a copy of the book. If they want to just ease on over to the guider platform and just take a drive around and see what the platform is all about. And a gentleman again, thank you sincerely for your time and to all our viewers and listeners, continue your journey of learning. Thanks for joining us again on another episode of Wealth Without Bay Street. Have an outstanding rest of your week. Thanks, everybody.