IAM1069- Attorney Helps Families Enhance Their Lives

Attorney John W. Heck’s estate planning practice focuses on helping families enhance their lives today and secure their futures tomorrow. His legal expertise includes family protection, wealth preservation, and values-based planning, as well as planning strategies for unmarried couples and divorced individuals. Basically, his law firm can help you craft a great estate plan and preserve your legacy whether you are married or single, have a traditional family or blended one, or just starting out or looking back on a life well-lived.

John graduated from American University’s Washington College of Law and went to college at the U.S. Air Force Academy. In his legal practice, John has worked as a law clerk, has argued before a federal appellate court, and represented individuals and families in a variety of matters for over a decade. John has chosen to concentrate on the Trusts and Estates area because he is passionate about helping families create happy and secure futures. He is also a published legal scholar and served in the Air Force for over 30 years, retiring with the rank of Colonel.

Most importantly, John is a husband to his incredible wife Amse, and a father of three children, E.V., Caroline, and Henry.

• CEO Hack: (i) Books- Family Wealth (ii) Ability to reach out and keep the network alive
• CEO Nugget: Never ever quit
• CEO Defined: Ultimate form of public service

Website: https://estatelawva.com/

https://personalfamilylawyer.com/lawyers/632/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/estatelawva

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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[00:00:07.59] – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I Am CEO podcast.

[00:00:35.00] – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have John Heck of the Heck Law Firm PLLC. John, it's great to have you on the show.

[00:00:44.00] – John W. Heck

Great so much. Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. It's great to be here.

[00:00:47.20] – Gresham Harkless

Definitely. I appreciate you for taking some time out. Before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about John so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Attorney John W Hecht's estate planning practice focuses on helping families enhance their lives today and secure their futures tomorrow. His legal experience includes family protection, wealth preservation, and values-based planning as well as planning strategies for unmarried couples and divorced individuals.

His law firm can help you craft a great estate plan, and preserve your legacy whether you are married or single, have a traditional family or blended one, or just starting and looking back on a life well lived. John graduated from American University Washington School of Law and went to college at the US Air Force Academy. In his legal practice, John has worked as a law clerk, has argued before a federal appellate court, and represented individuals and families in a variety of matters for over a decade.

John has chosen to concentrate on the trust and estates area because he is passionate about helping families create happy and secure futures, and he is also a published legal scholar and served in the Air Force for over thirty years. Thank you for your service and retiring in the rank of colonel. Most importantly, John is a husband to his incredible wife, Umsa, and a father of three children, Evie, Carolyn, and Henry. John, great to have you on the show. Thank you again for taking some time out. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:02:03.79] – John W. Heck

I would love to, Gresh. Thanks for giving me this opportunity.

[00:02:06.29] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, thank you for doing all the phenomenal work. And to kinda kick start everything, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

[00:02:16.50] – John W. Heck

Oh, yeah. How I got started? I've always been interested in law as a career officer. I saw the importance of rules. My background is as a pilot. When I was in my twenties, I started flying. And so that became just a rules-based world. My father is an attorney. And then about ten years into flying, I wanted to switch over that. It seemed like forever. It goes over twenty years ago now. Moved to DC. I was fortunate enough to get into a good law school, and then, kept it going. Right? The journey has been more of a learning one. Even now as an owner of a law firm, I still feel like I'm in a lot of ways still a student. Right?

I'm not sure you ever truly master a craft because it always is changing and evolving. But, yeah, I tried the big law, but it wasn't giving me the ability to help the clients in the way that I wanted to, in that personal touch. It was more about the billable hour and the transaction, and I didn't want people to become a number, so I decided to branch out, start my firm, and reinvigorate it as an estate planning firm. And, that in my view is the best way to help something with with with the topic that most of us pretty much need. Right? None of us are immortal. But most of us don't have plans in place, and it really can help people. Like you just said, off my bio, I mean, for generations, it can preserve your family wealth and your legacy. So hopefully, that's that helps.

[00:03:33.19] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. It helps a tremendous amount, and I love what you're talking about. Like, we all kinda feel like we're we're constantly learning. And I think there's, like, a quote, the more you learn, the more you realize that you don't know. And it seems like we're always on that journey of learning more and more and more and trying to be masters and masters on top of masters of our craft. So I love that you have that kind of mindset and ability, and I imagine that translates into what it is that you do.

But you're right where a lot of times, you hear stories and they're kinda heartbreaking stories of people that don't have those things set in place when, I hate to say the inevitable happens, but like you say, we're none of us are immortal. But having those things in place before the inevitable sometimes happens is how you can set up yourself, but also your family and your future generations that you said so well.

[00:04:17.30] – John W. Heck
So, yes, that's a great point. And it's it can be a little uncomfortable. I do webinars. I do presentations. I try to keep it light on what can, in reality, be kind of a heavy topic. But it's a topic that is just part of the human experience. And, we're all human and we all have the same. We start kinda out the same. We all kinda finish the same. And it's good to have a plan for every I would say for every stage of life, you need a plan. You know, from the kids, for your education, how you have a family, how you raise that family, and then how you spend your golden years.

And, also, unfortunately, we live in a world where things change very, very quickly as the planet learned a year and a half ago, how fast things can change and how fast things can move. So having that plan, for something that does impact all of us is a critical part. And I find the more I educate and teach, you can see the light bulb comes on, and people like, wow. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Now I understand it. And that's why I get passionate about what I do because it does help families.

So it helps families celebrate life. You don't think it's planning for death, but I would say planning for death helps you celebrate your life because you know that if anything happens, it's covered. You don't have to go to bed at night and wonder what happens if I'm not up it's it's done. Your kids are cared for. You know what's gonna happen. You have everything set in motion already. And then you can just enjoy and focus on the things that life's all about.

[00:05:31.60] – Gresham Harkless

I know you touched on a little bit on how you work with your clients. Is there anything more that you can kind of expand upon to kinda add and and inform us about, like, how that goes and what that process looks like?

[00:05:40.60] – John W. Heck

No. I'd love to. So, we start with an initial fifteen-minute consultation at no cost. And what that consultation does is it just gets me a sense of what it's what's different about you and your family. Have you had experience with probate before? The court process for the viewers who may not know, although most probably do is, for those who die, is called probate. That is the legal system by which we look at an estate, right, and everything people have worked for their whole lives and how that's gonna be handled after they pass. So some people know what probate is, and some don't. I just get a sense of who they are and what they're looking to do,

And then I explain our process. Ours is a little more comprehensive. We're we're pretty different than a lot of lawyers. Our process takes about two months to complete from start to finish. You'll start with what's called a family wealth planning session. And that's a two-hour session, which does require some work from the client first. They have to kind of tell me what they have so I can get a better look at their estate. Then it helps them, but it also helps them get financially organized. A lot of people would be surprised, that they learn, a lot of people don't know what they have. Like, people just don't know what they own. We all go through life and, like, we get a house here, we pick up this thing here, or and we all kinda put piece in it.

But people will rarely step back and take a holistic look at every aspect of their financial life and their legacy. And so that session helps them get maybe better organized than they've ever been before. It's a two-hour working session. We bill that session at seven hundred and fifty dollars, but if the client agrees to do their homework and call the homework in advance and then also show up and not cancel last minute, then the session is at no charge. So they get two hours with a lawyer to do that at no charge. And during that process, we'll explain, if they want to move forward, what kind of plan we could book for them.

And that's gonna vary from person to person. Once we agree and we design that plan for them, if they agree to work with us, then we do a signing ceremony a month after that, and that's where the plan is legally active and in place. But then we do a second meeting a month after that, roughly. That's what makes it for the two months, where we ensure that the plan works. And we also conduct, what I think is one of it's non-legal, but it's probably one of those powerful parts of our process, what's called a life and legacy interview, where we also spend time interviewing and capturing the values and the experiences that have made them who they are.

[00:07:46.39] – Gresham Haekless

So, you might have already touched on this, but would you consider the process to be part of what I like to call your secret sauce? The thing you feel kinda sets either you as an individual part or the business apart and makes it unique.

[00:07:56.50] – John W. Heck
Yeah. I really would. We don't go by the hour. Everything's flat. So when you pay us that flat fee, it's unlimited phone calls. And I think that sets us apart too. Again, we're there to empower families to make the right choices and to get the best plan in place for them individually. And I do think that's part of our secret sauce. So many lawyers and I've had multiple plans done through the military just, I mean, it's been years, but, and I look back at those plans and none of them would have done what I wanted it to do. Right? They they but they were legally valid documents.

They were, and it would have gone before a judge and it would have dragged my family through the wringer, and it would take, at least a year to resolve everything. And that's not the plan I wanna do for any of my clients. I want them to have that peace of mind knowing that what they set in place will happen in the event of their incapacity or the event of their death, and they'll as if they were standing there making their own decisions. And they know that whatever happens, what they want to happen will happen. And I think that's what sets us apart from most law firms, which they bill by the hour and they're a transactional model. They go, you pay us for documents, here's your documents.

You may not understand the documents, but they're there. You may read them and maybe there's some legalese in there and maybe you get it, maybe you don't. You wanna call or ask questions? Okay. That two-minute phone call will cost you fifteen minutes of my billable hour time. So maybe you don't wanna call anymore, and maybe you're a little nervous because you want us to get a bill a month later for a hundred dollars for a thirty-minute phone call. Right? So that's, I think, what sets us apart is that very user-friendly approach that we try to take with every client with every client. Because each person in each family is unique. Each one has their own different needs and desires.

[00:09:29.10] – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:09:38.89] – John W. Heck

So that's another great question. I love your questions by the way. There are two. So the first one is it's kind of you should always dedicate yourself to lifelong learning. We kinda hinted at that a little bit earlier. But reading some books on legacy planning, I swear I'm just becoming such an I'm such an estate planning nerd. It's like all I do is read more and read more because, again, there's so much to learn. There's a book, out there for your viewers if they're interested in it by a now-retired lawyer named James E. Hughes Junior, and his first book was very, very influential on me. It's called Family Wealth, and the subtitle keeps it in the family.

And his concept, which is what I've wanted for this firm is, again, it's that wealth plus the legacy, but he talks about, multiple families that keep wealth in the family and grow it for hundreds of years. And when it fails, why it fails? The past fortune was lost after, I think, five generations because of essentially internal management of the family. And when you view the family as kind of that business, he talks about annual family meetings. One of the things that kills families is keeping too many secrets so they can't work as a group to make sure that those things are passed along. He tells a lot of success stories, but he walks you through that model of why you do a will, why you do a trust, and how you get internally inside your family to build that legacy.

And I always do that as kind of the gold standard for our estate plans. The estate plans we do are foundational. Right? That like, that's kind of the minimum, and when you and you can use that to build anything you want once you get that foundation. They'll just like you're in your house. Right? The other thing that I would say is part of the, critical development is that you're not in it alone. I became involved with a group of lawyers, it's over about three hundred of us nationwide that practice this way, which is a relatively small fraction. I hope it grows because I love this model. And it's run by a woman named, Alexis.

She goes by Ali, but Ali Katz, ktz. She started what's called the new law business model, which is a relationship model where the lawyer becomes your family lawyer, where you should just feel comfortable having a phone number you can pick up and call, ask questions about your plan and what what you think they should do and not at available rates. So that kind of old school where you have that lawyer and and having her and having a group of people that are all in the same mindset has been critical. Coaching calls, having the network, reaching out, and, you know, you may think you're own, but you're not.

And then everyone a lot of people have the same questions, the same concerns, and how they best serve their clients. So having that ability to reach out and keep the network alive has been key. I could not get as far as I have or even much farther without others supporting it. And I'll never forget one of my favorite motivational speakers, Zig Ziglar said, that to get what you want in life, you have to have other people get what they want in life. And so we're all kind of building each other up, and that has been a crucial component.

[00:12:19.29] – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely love, you know, both of those, hacks. And so, I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

[00:12:32.50] – John W. Heck

It's probably something I tell myself all the time, as Winston Churchill said, never, never, never quit. Never, never, never quit. This journey, I love it. Some have told me, and I agree, that becoming a CEO and bringing your own business is as much a personal growth exercise as it is a business growth exercise. And it is so easy to quit. It's so easy to say, you know what? I just not getting clients. I don't understand all this, and then just give up. Don't do it. Ninety-five percent of small businesses fail within the first, I think, year or two years. Right?

And I would argue a lot of that is just because they just didn't put the time in. I mean, it's a marathon, not a sprint, and it's gonna be up. It's gonna be down. And I have resigned myself to the fact that some months I'm gonna have a great business, and some months I'm gonna have not so great, maybe even no clients for a few weeks. And you have to build around that and understand that's part of the journey. But then keep in mind that at the end of that journey, you can help so many people and give them peace of mind for so many families that make such a difference that quitting is harmful to them.

[00:13:33.00] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. And, wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're open now to different, quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So, John, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:13:47.70] – John W. Heck

CEO to me is kind of the ultimate form of public service in my view. Leaders don't build followers. Leaders build other leaders. And when running a company, people can look to you on how to do it and then improve their lives.

[00:13:56.10] – Gresham Harkless

Thank you so much, John, for that perspective. And what I wanted to do is just pass you the mic one more time just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and, of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all awesome things you're doing.

[00:14:06.50] – John W. Heck

Thank you so much for this time. I love sharing this, with your audience. It's a great message from you hopefully, for those who are interested in estate planning. I guess to those listening, I would say for anyone interested in getting a good plan, what it does is when you can't be there, which is probably the worst possible time for your family and your loved ones, right, they're already gonna go through so much if they lose you or you're in a hospital, Don't let them then have to go to court. Don't let them then get in conflict with each other. Make sure you have something in place, whether it's through me, or another estate planning attorney.

Don't rely on just documents. Understand what the documents do and make sure it's what you would want to do. Get that memorialized, get it in place, and have some way to preserve your legacy because it's estate planning at the end of the day is not about you. It's about the people that you love the most. It's a gift to them. And having said that, I can help you. We can help you. Our law firm can help you get there. I'm licensed in Virginia and DC and interestingly, New Jersey and Georgia as well.

So I've got four states. We have a broad network across the country that can help with this. To reach me personally, my, email is John@estatelawva.com.My website, if you wanna learn more about what I do is estatelawva.com. Fifteen-minute consultations are free. Two-hour planning sessions are at no cost. If you do the homework and you don't cancel last minute, so show up. That's the commitment I ask from, potential clients, and we can go from there. So, absolutely, please let me know how I can help anyone in your audience as well today.

[00:15:45.39] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you so much again, John. We will have the links and information in the show notes. I appreciate and love the work that you do. I love how you talked about it being a gift that you can give, especially during a very, you know, frustrating, scary, so many different emotions happening during that time, to be able to provide that gift for your family and then for your your your legacy as a whole is huge. So I appreciate you, reminding us of that and, of course, for the work that you do, and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

[00:16:10 -Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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